Quicksilver

by Dean Koontz

These beasts were like menacing presences from those disturbing dreams that have their origins in generations long before our own, those dreams that boil up from the primordiality of our creation. They moved through the restaurant and settled into the booth near the entrance to the kitchen. They lacked anything that could be called a face. Screamer alert, Bridget had told her grandfather. I understood why she would call them Screamers. These things seemed to be perpetually straining to scream, although no sound escaped them. Where a face should have been, there were no apparent eyes or ears or nose, but only a pale-lipped mouth fixed open wide, as circular as a drain, like the mouth of a hookworm. At a distance, I couldn’t be sure, but I thought that a repulsive organ slithered continuously within those disgusting orifices, as though they were greedy for sustenance.