Dean Koontz - Phantoms

They came to the Lovely Lady Salon, where Jenny always had her hair cut.

The shop was deserted, as it would have been on any ordinary Sunday.

Jenny wondered what had happened to Madge and Dana, the beauticians who owned the place. She liked Madge and Dana. She hoped to God they'd been out of town all day, visiting their boyfrien& over in Mount Larson.

"Poison?" Lisa asked as they turned away from the beauty shop.

"How could the entire town be poisoned simultaneously?”

"Bad food of some kind.”

"Oh, maybe if everyone had been at the town picnic, eating the same tainted potato salad or infected pork or something like that. But they weren't. There's only one town picnic, and that's on the Fourth of July.”

" Poisoned water supply?”

"Not unless everyone just happened to take a drink at precisely the same moment, so that no one had a chance to warn anyone else.”

:"Which is just about impossible.”

"Besides, this doesn't look much like any kind of poison reaction I've ever heard about.”

LieberTnann's Bakery. It was a clean, white building with a blue-and-white-striped awning. During the skiing season, tourists lined up halfway down the block, all day long, seven days a week, just to buy the big flaky cinnamon wheels, the sticky buns, chocolate-chip cookies, almond cupcakes with gooey mandarin-chocolate centers, and other goodies that Jakob and Aida Liebermann produced with tremendous pride and delicious artistry. The Liebermanns enjoyed their work so much that they even chose to live near it, in an apartment above the bakery (no light visible up there now), and although there wasn't nearly as much profit in the April-to-October trade as there was the rest of the year, they remained open Monday through Saturday in the off season. People drove over from all the outlying mountain towns-Mount Larson, Shady Roost, and Pineville-to purchase bags and boxes full of the Liebermanns”

treats.

Jenny leaned close to the big window, and Lisa put her forehead against the glass. In the rear of the budding, back in the part where the ovens were, light poured brightly through an open door, splashing one end of the sales room and indirectly illuminating the rest of the place. Small cafe tables stood to the left, each with a pair of chairs. white enamel display cases with glass fronts were empty.

Jenny prayed that Jakob and Aida had escaped the fate that appeared to have befallen the rest of Snowfield. They were two of the gentlest, kindest people she had ever met. People like the Liebermanns made Snowfield a good place to live, a haven from the rude world where violence and unkindness were disconcertingly common.

Turning away from the bakery window, Lisa said, "How about toxic waste?

A chemical spill. Something that would've sent up a cloud of deadly gas.”

"Not here," Jenny said. ' aren't any toxic waste dumps in these mountains. No factories. Nothing like that.”

"Sometimes it happens whenever a train derails and a tank car full of chemicals splits open.”

"Nearest railroad tracks are twenty miles away.”

Her brow creasing with thought, Lisa started walking away from the bakery.

"Wait. I want to take a look in here," Jenny said, stepping to the front door of the shop.

" Why? No one's there.”

"We can't be sure." She pushed the door but couldn't open it. "The lights are on in the back room, the kitchen. They could be back there, getting things ready for the morning's baking, unaware of what's happened in the rest of the town. This door's locked. Let's go around back.”

Behind a solid wood gate, a narrow covered serviceway led between Liebermann's Bakery and the Lovely Lady Salon. The gate was held shut by a single sliding bolt, which yielded to Jenny's fumbling fingers. It shuddered open with a squeal and a rasp of unoiled hinges. The tunnel between the buildings was forbiddingly dark; the only light lay at the far end, a dim gray patch in the shape of an arch, where the passageway ended at the alley.

"I don't like this," Lisa said.

"It's okay, honey. Just follow me and stay close. If you get disoriented, trail your hand along the wall.”

Although Jenny didn't want to contribute to her sister's fear by revealing her own doubts, the unlighted walkway made her nervous, too.

With each step, the passage seemed to grow narrower, crowding her.

A quarter of the way into the tunnel, she was stricken by the uncanny feeling that she and Lisa weren't alone. An instant later, she became aware of something moving in the darkest space, under the roof, eight or ten feet overhead. She couldn't say exactly how she became aware of it.

She couldn't hear anything other than her own and Lisa's echoing footsteps; she couldn't see much of anything, either. She just suddenly sensed a hostile presence, and as she squinted ahead at the coal-black ceiling of the passageway, she was sure the darkness was… changing.

Shifting. Moving. Moving up there in the rafters.

She told herself she was imagining things, but by the time she was halfway along the tunnel, her animal instincts were screaming at her to get out, to run. Doctors weren't supposed to panic; equanimity was part of the training. She did pick up her pace a bit, but only a little, not much, not in panic; then after a few steps, she picked up the pace a bit more, and a bit more, until she was running in spite of herself.

She burst into the alley. It was gloomy there, too, but not as dark as the tunnel had been.

Lisa came out of the passageway in a stumbling run, slipped on a wet patch of blacktop, and nearly fell.

Jenny grabbed her and prevented her from going down.

They backed up, watching the exit from the lightless, covered passage.

Jenny raised the revolver that she'd taken from the sheriff's substation.

"Did you feel it?" Lisa asked breathlessly.

"Something up under the roof. Probably just birds or maybe, at worst, several bats.”

Lisa shook her head." No, no. N-not under the roof. It was c-crouched up against the w-wall.”

They kept watching the mouth of the tunnel.

"I saw something in the rafters," Jenny said.

"No," the girl insisted, shaking her head vigorously.

"What did you see then?”

"It was against the wall. On the left. About halfway through the tunnel. I almost stumbled into it.”

"What was it?”

"I… I don't know exactly. I couldn't actually see it.”

"Did you hear anything?”

"No," Lisa said, eyes riveted on the passageway.

"Smell something?”

"No. But… the darkness was… Well, at one place there, the darkness was… different. I could sense something moving… or sort of moving… shifting…”

"That's like what I thought I saw-but up in the rafters.”

They waited. Nothing came out of the passageway.

Gradually, Jenny's heartbeat slowed from a wild gallop to a fast trot.

She lowered the gun.

Their breathing grew quiet. The night silence poured back.

in like heavy oil.

Doubts surfaced. Jenny began to suspect that she and Lisa simply had succumbed to hysteria. She didn't like that explanation one damn bit, for it didn't fit the image she had of herself. But she was sufficiently honest with herself to face the unpleasant fact that, just this one time, she might have panicked.

"We're just jumpy," she told Lisa." If there were anything or anyone dangerous in there, they'd have come out after us by now-don't you think?”

"Maybe.”

"Hey, you know what it might have been?”

"What?" Lisa asked.

The cold wind stirred up again and soughed softly through the alleyway.

"It could have been cats," she said." A few cats. They like to hang out in those covered walkways.”

" I don't think it was cats.”

"Could be. A couple of cats up there in the rafters. And one or two down on the floor, along the wall, where you saw something.”