Dean Koontz - Phantoms

The San Francisco police had been able to supply background on the missing Harold Ordnay and wife, in whose room Timothy Flyte's name had been found. The Ordnays owned two bookstores in San Francisco. One was an ordinary retail outlet. The other was an antiquarian and rare book dealership; apparently, it was by far the more profitable of the two.

The Ordnays were well known and respected in collecting circles.

According to their family, Harold and Blanche had gone to Snowfield for a four-day weekend to celebrate their thirty-first anniversary. The family had never heard of Timothy Flyte.

When police were granted permission to look through the Ordnays”

personal address book, they found no listing for anyone named Flyte.

The police had not yet been able to locate any of the bookstores”

employees; however, they expected to do so as soon as both shops opened at ten o'clock this morning. It was hoped that Flyte was a business acquaintance of the Ordnays' and would be familiar to the employees.

"Keep me posted," Bryce told the morning desk man in Santa Mira." How're things there?”

"Pandemonium.”

" It'll get worse.”

As Bryce was putting down the receiver, Jenny Paige returned from her safari in search of drugs and medical equipment.

"Where's Lisa?”

"With the kitchen detail," Bryce said.

"She's all right?”

"Sure. There are three big, strong, well-armed men with her. Remember?

Is something wrong?”

" Tell you later.”

Bryce assigned Jenny's three armed guards to new duties, then helped her establish an infirmary in one corner of the lobby.

"This is probably wasted effort," she said.

"Why?”

"So far no one's been injured. Just killed.”

"Well, that could change.”

"I think it only strikes when it intends to kill. It doesn't take halfway measures.”

"Maybe. But with all these men toting guns, and with everyone so damned jumpy, I wouldn't be half surprised if someone accidentally winged someone else or even shot himself in the foot.”

Arranging bottles in a desk drawer, Jenny said, "The telephone rang at my place and again over at the pharmacy. It was Wargle." She told him about both calls.

"You're sure it was really him?”

"I remember his voice clearly. An unpleasant voice.”

"But, Jenny, he was-”

"I know, I know. His face was eaten away, and his brain was gone, and all the blood was sucked out of him. I know.

And it's driving me crazy trying to figure it out.”

"Someone doing an impersonation?”

"If it was, then there's someone out there who makes Rich Little look like an amateur.”

"Did he sound as if he, Bryce broke off in mid-sentence, and both he and Jenny turned as Lisa ran through the archway.

The girl motioned to them." Come on! Quick! Something weird is happening in the kitchen.”

Before Bryce could stop her, she ran back the way she had come.

Several men started after her, drawing their guns as they went, and Bryce ordered them to halt." Stay here. Stay on the job.”

Jenny had already sprinted after the girl.

Bryce hurried into the dining room, caught up with Jenny, moved ahead of her, drew his revolver, and followed Lisa through the swinging doors into the hotel kitchen.

The three men assigned to this shift of kitchen duty-Gordy Brogan, Henry Wong, and Max Dunbar-had put down their can openers and cooking utensils in favor of their service revolvers, but they didn't know what to aim at. They glanced up at Bryce, looking disconcerted and baffled.

"Here we go 'round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush.”

The air was filled with a child's singing. A little boy. His voice was clear and fragile and sweet.

" Here we go 'round the mulberry bush, so early in the moooorrrninnnggg!”

"The sink," Lisa said, pointing.

Puzzled, Bryce went to the nearest of three double sinks.

Jenny came close behind him.

The song had changed. The voice was the same: " This old man, he plays one; he plays nicknack on my drum.

With a nicknack, paddywack, give a dog a bone-”

The child's voice was coming out of the drain in the sink, as if he were trapped far down in the pipes.

"— this old man goes rolling home.”

For metronomic seconds, Bryce listened with spellbound intensity. He was speechless.

He glanced at Jenny. She gave him the same astonished stare that he had seen on his men's faces when he had first.pushed through the swinging doors.

"It just started all of a sudden," Lisa said, raising her voice above the singing.

"When?" Bryce asked.

"A couple of minutes ago," Gordy Brogan said.

"I was standing at the sink," Max Dunbar said. He was a burly, hairy, rough-looking man with warm, shy brown eyes.

"When the singing started up… Jesus, I must've jumped two feet! “

The song changed again. The sweetness was replaced by a cloying, almost mocking piety: "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

"I don't like this," Henry Wong said." How can it be?”

" Little ones to Him are drawn.

They are weak, but He is strong.

Nothing about the singing was overtly threatening; yet, like the noises Bryce and Jenny had heard on the telephone, the child's tender voice, issuing from such an unlikely source, was unnerving. Creepy.

"Yes, Jesus loves me.

Yes, Jesus loves me.

Yes, Jesus-”

The singing abruptly ceased.

"Thank God!" Max Dunbar said with a shudder of relief, as if the child's melodic crooning had been unbearably harsh, grating, off-key." That voice was drilling right through to the roots of my teeth!”

After several seconds had passed in silence, Bryce began to lean toward the drain, to peer into it — and Jenny said maybe he shouldn't — and something exploded out of that dark, round hole.

Everyone cried out, and Lisa screamed, and Bryce staggered back in fear and surprise, cursing himself for not being more careful, jerking his revolver up, bringing the muzzle to bear on the thing that came out of the drain.

But it was only water.

A long, high-pressure stream of exceptionally filthy, greasy water shot almost to the ceiling and rained down over everything. It was a short burst, only a second or two, spraying in every direction.

Some of the foul droplets struck Bryce's face. Dark blotches appeared on the front of his shirt. The stuff stank.

It was exactly what you would expect to gush out of a backed-up drain: dirty brown water, threads of gummy sludge, bits of this morning's breakfast scraps which had been run through the garbage disposal.

Gordy got a roll of paper towels, and they all scrubbed at their faces and blotted at the stains on their clothes.

They were still wiping at themselves, still waiting to see if the singing would begin again, when Tal Whitman pushed open one of the swinging doors." Bryce, we just got a call. General Copperfield and his team reached the roadblock and were passed through a couple of minutes ago.”

Waiting in the lemon sunshine, Tal wondered if Boaz's Newsstand was still doing business at its old location. Most likely, it was now just another empty store, filthy and vandalized. Or maybe it was selling magazines, tobacco, and candy only as a front for pushing dope.

As he grew older, he became ever more acutely aware of a tendency toward degeneration in all things. Nice neighborhoods somehow became shabby neighborhoods; shabby neighborhoods became seedy neighborhoods; seedy neighborhoods became slums. Order giving way to chaos. You saw it everywhere these days. More homicides this year than last. Greater and greater abuse of drugs. Spiraling rates of assault, rape, burglary.

What saved Tal from being a pessimist about mankind's future was his fervent conviction that good people people like Bryce, Frank, and Doc Paige; people like his Aunt Becky-could stern the tide of devolution and maybe even turn it back now and then.