Dean Koontz - Phantoms

But he was there. Naked. Grinning obscenely.

His face had been restored: the heavy jowls, the thick-lipped and greasy-looking mouth, the piggish nose, the little quick eyes. The flesh was magically whole again.

Impossible.

Before Lisa could react, Wargle stepped between her and the door. His bare feet made a flat, slapping sound against the tile floor.

Someone was pounding on the door.

Wargle seemed not to hear it.

Pounding and pounding and pounding…

Why didn't they just open the door and come in?

Wargle extended his arms and made come-to-me motions with his hands.

Grinning.

From the moment Lisa had met him, she hadn't liked Wargle. She had caught him looking at her when he thought her attention was elsewhere, and the expression in his eyes had been unsettling.

"Come here, sweet stuff," he said.

She looked at the door and realized no one was pounding on it. She was only hearing the frantic thump of her own heart.

Wargle licked his lips.

Lisa suddenly gasped, surprising herself. She had been so totally paralyzed by the man's return from the dead that she had forgotten to breathe.

"Come here, you little bitch.”

She tried to scream. Couldn't.

Wargle touched himself obscenely.

"Bet you'd like a taste of this, huh?" he said, grinning, his lips moist from his hungrily licking tongue.

Again, she tried to scream. Again, she couldn't. She could barely wrench each badly needed breath into her burning lungs.

He's not real, she told herself.

If she closed her eyes for a few seconds, squeezed them tightly shut and counted to ten, he wouldn't be there when she looked again.

" Little bitch.”

He was an illusion. Maybe even part of a dream. Maybe her coming to the bathroom was really just another part of her nightmare.

But she didn't test her theory. She didn't close her eyes and count to ten. She didn't dare.

Wargle took a step toward her, still fondling himself.

He isn't real. He's an illusion.

Another step.

He isn't real, he's an illusion.

"Come on, sweet stuff, let me nibble on them titties of yours.”

He isn't real he's an illusion he isn't real he's."You're gonna love it, sweet stuff.”

She backed away from him.

" Cute little body you got, sweet stuff. Real cute.”

He continued to advance.

The light was behind him now. His shadow fell on her.

Ghosts didn't throw shadows.

In spite of his laugh and in spite of his fixed grin, his voice became steadily harsher, nastier." You stupid little slut. I'm gonna use you real good. Real damned good. Better than any of them high school boys ever used you. You aren't gonna be able to walk right for a week when I'm through with you, sweet stuff.”

His shadow had completely engulfed her.

Her heart slammed so hard that it seemed about to tear loose, Lisa backed up farther, farther-but soon collided with the wall. She was in a corner.

She looked around for a weapon, something she could at least throw at him. There was nothing.

Each breath was harder to draw than the one before it. She was dizzy and weak.

He isn't real. He's an illusion.

But she couldn't delude herself any longer, she couldn't believe in the dream any more.

Wargle stopped just an arm's length from her. He glared at her. He swayed from side to side, and he rocked back and forth on the balls of his bare feet, as if some mad4M-private music swelled and ebbed and swelled within him.

He closed his hateful eyes, swaying dreamily.

A second passed.

What's he doing?

Two seconds, four, six, ten.

Still, his eyes remained closed.

She felt herself carried away in a whirlpool of hysteria.

Could she slip past him? While his eyes were closed? Jesus.

No. He was too close. To get away, she would have to brush against him. Jesus. Brush against him? No. God, that would snap him out of his trance or whatever this was, and he would seize her, and his hands would be cold, dead-cold. She could not bring herself to touch him. No.

Then she noticed something odd happening behind his eyes.

Wriggling movement. The lids themselves no longer conformed to the curvature of his eyeballs.

He opened his eyes.

They were gone.

the lids lay only empty black sockets.

She finally screamed, but the cry she brought forth was beyond human hearing. Breath passed out of her in an express train rush, and she felt her throat working convulsively, but there was absolutely no sound that would bring help.

His eyes.

His empty eyes.

She was certain that those hollow sockets could still see her. They sucked at her with their emptiness.

His grin had not faded.

"Little pussy," he said.

She screamed her silent scream.

"Little pussy. Kiss me, little pussy.”

Somehow, dark as midnight, those bone-rimmed sockets still held a glimmer of malevolent awareness.

"Kiss me.”

No!

Let me die, she prayed. God, please let me die first.

"I want to suck on your juicy tongue," Wargle said urgently, bursting into a giggle.

He reached for her.

She pressed hard against the unyielding wall.

Wargle touched her cheek.

She flinched and tried to pull away.

His fingertips trailed lightly down her cheek.

His hand was icy and slick.

She heard a thin, dry, eerie groan-"Uh-uh-uh-uhuhhhhhhh"-and realized that she was listening to herself.

She smelled something strange, acrid. His breath? The stale breath of a dead man, expelled from rotting lungs? Did the walking dead breathe?

The stench was faint but unbearable.

She gagged.

He lowered his face toward hers.

She stared into his eaten-away eyes, into the swarming blackness beyond, and It was like peering through two peepholes into the deepest chambers of Hell.

His hand tightened on her throat.

He said, "Give us”

She heaved in a hot breath.

'a little kiss.”

She heaved out another scream.

This time the scream wasn't silent. This time she pealed forth a sound that seemed loud enough to shatter the mirrors and to crack the ceramic tile.

As Wargle's dead, eyeless face slowly, slowly descended toward her, as she heard her echoing off the walls, the whirlpool of hysteria in which she'd been spinning became, now, a whirlpool of darkness, and she was drawn down into oblivion.

Body snatchers in the lobby of the Hilltop Inn, on a rust-colored sofa, against that wall which was farthest from the restrooms, Jennifer Paige sat beside her sister, holding the girl.

Bryce squatted in front of the sofa, holding Lisa's hand, which he couldn't seem to make warm again no matter how firmly he pressed and held it.

Except for the guards on duty, everyone had gathered behind Bryce, in a semicircle around the front of the sofa.

Lisa looked terrible. Her eyes were guarded, haunted.

Her face was as white as the tile floor in the ladies' room, where they had found her unconscious.

.,Stu Wargle is dead," Bryce assured her yet again.

"He wanted me t-t-to… kiss him," the girl repeated, clinging resolutely to her bizarre story.

There was no one in the room but you," Bryce said.

"Just you, Lisa.”

"He was there," the girl insisted.

"We cam running as soon as you screamed. We found you alone”

"He was there.”

"on the floor, in the corner, out cold.”

" He was there.”

"His body is in the utility room," Bryce said, gently squeezing her hand." We put it there earlier. You remember. don't you?”

"Is it still there?" the girl asked." Maybe you'd better look.”

Bryce met Jenny's eyes. She nodded. Remembering that anything was possible tonight, Bryce got to his feet, letting go of the girl's hand.