Dean Koontz - Phantoms

The beast fed more frantically than before, in a silent frenzy, and in seconds there was no sign of Gordy at all. He had ceased to exist.

There was only the shape-changer, grown larger, much bigger than the dog that it had been, even bigger than Gordy, whose substance it now incorporated.

Tal and Bryce rejoined the others, but they didn't run for the inn. As the twilight was slowly squeezed out of the sky in a vise of darkness, they watched the thing on the sidewalk.

It began to take a new shape. In only seconds, all of the free-form protoplasm had been molded into a huge, menacing timber wolf, and the creature threw its head back and howled at the sky.

Then its face rippled, and elements of its ferocious countenance shifted, and Tal could see human features trying to rise up through the image of a wolf Human eyes replaced the animal's eyes, and there was part of a human chin. Gordy's eyes? Gordy's chin? The lycandiropic metamorphosis lasted only seconds, and then the thing's features flowed back into the wolf form.

Werewolf, Tal thought.

But he knew it wasn't anything like that. It wasn't anything.

The wolf identity, as real and frightening as it looked, was as false as all the other identities.

For a moment it stood there, confronting them, baring its enormous and wickedly sharp teeth, far greater in size than any wolf that had ever stalked the plains and forests of this world. Its eyes blazed with the muddy-bloody color of the sunset.

It's going to attack, Tal thought.

He fired at it. The bullets penetrated but left no visible wound, drew no blood, caused no apparent pain.

The wolf turned away from Tal, with a sort of cool indifference to the gunfire, and trotted toward the open manhole, into which the field lab's electric power cables disappeared.

Abruptly, something rose out of that hole, came from the storm drain below the street, rose and rose into the twilight, shuddering, smashing up into the air with tremendous power, a dark and pulsating mass, like a flood of sewage, except that it was not a fluid but a jellied substance that formed itself into a column almost as wide as the hole from which it continued to extrude itself in an obscene, rhythmic gush. It grew and grew: four feet high, six feet, eight…

Something struck Tal in the back. He jumped, tried to turn, and realized that he had only collided with the wall of the inn. He hadn't been aware he'd been backing away from the towering thing that had soared out of the manhole.

He saw now that the pulsing, rippling column was another body of freeform protoplasm like the animal that had become a timber wolf; however, this thing was considerably larger than the first creature.

Immense. Tal wondered how much of it was still hidden below the street, and he had a hunch that the storm drain was filled with it, that what they were seeing here was only a small portion of the beast.

When it reached a height of ten feet, it stopped rising and began to change. The upper half of the column broadened into a hood, a mantle, so that the thing now resembled the head of a cobra. Then more of the amorphous flesh flowed out of the oozing, glistening, shifting column and poured into the hood, so that the hood rapidly grew wider, wider, until it was not a hood at all any more; now it was a pair of gigantic wings, dark ' and membranous, like a bat's wings, sprouting out of the central (and still shapeless) trunk. And then the body segment between the wings began to acquire a texture-coarse, overlapping scales-and small legs and clawed feet began to form. It was becoming a winged serpent.

The wings flapped.

The sound was like a whip cracking.

Tal pressed back against the wall.

The wings flapped.

Lisa's grip on Jenny tightened.

Jenny held the girl close, but her eyes, mind, and imagination were fixed upon the monstrous thing that had risen out of the storm drain. It flexed and throbbed and writhed in the twilight and seemed like nothing so much as a shadow that had come to life.

The wings flapped again.

Jenny felt a cold, wing-stirred breeze.

This new phantom looked as if it would detach * itself from whatever additional protoplasm lay within the storm drain.

Jenny expected it to leap into the darkening air and soar away or come straight at them.

Her heart thumped; slammed.

She knew escape was impossible. Any movement she made would only draw unwanted attention from it. There was no point wasting energy in flight. There was nowhere to hide from a thing like this.

More streetlamps came on, and shadows slunk in with ghostly stealth.

Jenny watched in awe as a serpent's head took shape at the top of the ten-foot-high column of mottled tissue. A pair of hate-filled green eyes swelled out of the shapeless flesh; it was like viewing time-lapse photography of the growth of two malignant tumors. Cloudy eyes, obviously blind, milky green ovals; they quickly cleared, and the elongated black pupils became visible, and the eyes glared down at Jenny and the men with malevolent intent. A foot-wide, slitted mouth sprang open; a row of sharp white fangs grew from the black gums.

Jenny thought of the demonic names that had glowed on the video display terminals, the Hell-born names the thing had given itself. The mass of amorphous flesh, foaling itself into a winged serpent, was like a demon summoned from beyond.

The phantom wolf, which incorporated the substance of Gordy Brogan, approached the base of the towering serpent.

It brushed against the column of pulsing flesh-and simply melted into it. In less than a blink of an eye, the two creatures became as one.

Evidently, the Just shape-changer wasn't a separate individual. It was now, and perhaps always had been, part of the gargantuan creature that moved within the storm drains, under the streets. Apparently, that massive mother-body could detach pieces of itself and dispatch them on tasks of their own-such as the attack on Gordy Brogan-and then recall them at will.

The wings flapped, and the whole town reverberated with the sound. Then they began to melt back into the central column, and the column grew thicker as it absorbed that tissue.

The serpent's face dissolved, too. It had grown tired of this performance. The legs and three-toed feet and vicious talons withdrew into the column, until there was nothing left but a churning, oozing mass of darkly mottled tissue, as before. For several seconds, it posed in the gloomy dusk, a vision of evil, then began to shrink down into the drains under it, down through the manhole.

Soon it was gone.

Lisa had stopped screaming. She was gasping for air and crying.

Some of the others were nearly as shaken as the girl. They looked at one another, but none of them spoke.

Bryce looked as if he had been clubbed.

At last he said, "Come on. Let's get back to the inn before it gets any darker.”

There was no guard at the front entrance of the inn.

"Trouble," Tal said.

Bryce nodded. He stepped through the double doors with caution and almost put his foot on a gun. It was lying on the floor.

The lobby was deserted.

"Damn," Frank Autry said.

They searched the place, room by room. No one in the cafeteria. No one in the makeshift dormitory. The kitchen was deserted, too.

Not a shot had been fired.

No one had cried out.

No one had escaped, either.

Ten more deputies were gone.

Outside, night had fallen.

Saying Goodbye The six survivors-Bryce, Tal, Frank, Jenny, Lisa, and Sara stood at the windows in the lobby of the Hilltop Inn. Outside, Skyline Road was still and silent, rendered in stark patterns of night-shadow and streetlamp-glow. The night seemed to tick softly, like a bomb clock.

Jenny was remembering the covered passageway beside Liebermann's Bakery.