Phantoms

by Dean Koontz

The civilized human spirit . . . cannot get rid of a feeling of the uncanny. Dr. Faustus, Thomas Mann

Frowning, Henderson got up and headed toward the door, adjusting the holstered revolver on his right hip.

When he turned, however, he discovered that he wasn’t alone any more. And suddenly he wasn’t the least bit bored.

microwave oven,

Doubl Microwave?

One of those sociopaths who seemed to be in such abundant supply these days.

reminder that autumn’s tenancy in the Sierras was always brief and that winter was eager to move in and take up residency.

They hurried into the unbeating heart of the town.

Nothin’ says lovin’ like somethin’ from the oven!

There are silences and silences. No one of them is quite like another. There is the silence of death, found in tombs and deserted graveyards and in the cold-storage room in a city morgue and in hospital rooms on occasion; it is a flawless silence, not merely a hush but a void. As a physician who had treated her share of terminally ill patients, Jenny was familiar with that special, grim silence.

This was it. This was the silence of death. She hadn’t wanted to admit it. That was why she had not yet shouted “hello” into the funereal streets. She had been afraid no one would answer. Now she didn’t shout because she was afraid someone would answer. Someone or something. Someone or something dangerous.

At last she had no choice but to accept the fact...

indisputably dead. It wasn’t really a town any more; it was a cemetery, an elaborate collection of stone-timber-shingle-brick-gabled-balconied tombs, a graveyard fashioned in the image of a quaint alpine village. The wind picked up again, whis...

The streetlamps were more widely spaced, too, and the small pools of amber light were separated by ominous lakes of darkness.

the blood on Mr. Kale’s hand when he made those two prints—was little Danny Kale’s blood.”

In the mountains, a mile from the turnoff to Snowfield, the night landscape was rendered solely in black and moon-silver. The looming trees were not green at all; they were somber shapes, mostly shadows, with albescent fringes of vaguely defined needles and leaves. In contrast, the shoulders of the highway were blood-colored by the light that splashed from the revolving beacons atop the three Ford sedans which all bore the insignia of the Santa Mira County Sheriff’s Department on the front doors.

The slob laughed as if he had said something unbearably funny. Frank wanted to punch him in the face. Didn’t.

Bryce nodded. However, although he couldn’t say why, the big puddle seemed significant to him.

except for the sodden carpet in the living room. It was literally soaking wet; it squished beneath their shoes.

BootlegPreacher The Normally Sober Acquaintances

Jake strained, twisted, flexed, jerked, and writhed in an epileptic dance of panic, a spasmodic fandango of escape.

“On December 10, 1939,” Flyte said, “outside the hills of Nanking, an army of three thousand Chinese soldiers, on its way to the front lines to fight the

Japanese, simply vanished without a trace before it got anywhere near the battle. Not a single body was ever found. Not one grave. Not one witness. The Japanese military historians have never found any record of having dealt with that particular Chinese force. In the countryside through which the missing soldiers passed, no peasants heard gunfire or other indications of conflict. An army evaporated into thin air. And in 1711, during the Spanish War of Succession, four thousand troops set out on an expedition into the Pyrenees. Every last man disappeared on familiar and friendly ground, before the first night’s camp was established!”

Flyte was still as gripped by his subject as he had been when he had written the book, seventeen years ago. His fruit and champagne were forgotten. He stared at Sandler as if daring him to challenge the infamous Flyte theories. “On a grander scale,” the professor continued, “consider the great Mayan cities of Copán, Piedras Negras, Palenque, Menché, Seibal, and several others which were abandoned overnight. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Mayans left their homes, approximately in A.D. 610, perhaps within a single week, even within one day. Some appear to have fled northward, to establish new cities, but there is evidence that countless thousands just disappeared. All within a shockingly brief span of time. They didn’t bother to take many of their pots, tools, cooking utensils . . . My learned colleagues say the land around those Mayan cities became infertile, thus making it essential that the people move north, where the land would be more productive. But if this great exodus was planned, why were belongings left behind? Why was precious seed corn left behind? Why didn’t a single survivor ever return to loot those cities of their abandoned treasures?” Flyte softly st...

“No, I’m okay,” she said, fighting back tears.

in spite of his acute interest in women,

21 The Big Story

Leaning against a cooler full of cheese and lunchmeat, Bryce told them about the moth,

The refrigerated air inside the locker rushed out, mixing with the warmer air in the market. Tendrils of frosty vapor rose along the length of the open door.

the voice was shaky, echodistorted, yet recognizable.

“Bryce . . .Tal . . .? Who’s out there? Frank? Gordy? Is somebody out there? Can. . . somebody. . . help me?”

Not wasting the time it would have taken to run to the gate, Bryce clambered up onto the waist-high cooler in front of him, stepping on packets of Kraft Swiss cheese and wax-encased gouda. He scrambled across and dropped off the other side, into the butcher’s area.

Bryce shouted, “Jenny!” “Yeah?” “Does this store have a hardware section?”

“Odds and ends.” “I need a screwdriver.” “Can do.” She was already running. Harker screamed. Jesus, what a terrible cry it was. Out of a nightmare. Out of a lunatic asylum. Out of Hell. Just listening to it caused Bryce to break out in a cold sweat. Copperfield. reached the locker. “Let me at that handle.” “It’s no use.” “Let me at it!” Bryce got out of the way. The general was a big brawny man—the biggest man here, in fact. He looked strong enough to uproot century-old oaks. Straining, cursing, he moved the door handle no farther than Bryce had done. “The goddamned latch must be broken or bent,” Copperfield said, panting. Harker screamed and screamed. Bryce thought of Liebermann’s Bakery. The rolling pin on the table. The hands. The severed hands. This was the way a man might scream while he watched his hands being cut off at the wrists. Copperfield pounded on the door in rage and frustration. Bryce glanced at Tal. This was a first: Talbert Whitman visibly frightened. Calling to Bryce, Jenny came through the gate. She had three screwdrivers, each of them sealed in a brightly colored cardboard and plastic package. “Didn’t know which size you needed,” she said. “Okay,” Bryce said, reaching for the tools, “now get out of here fast. Go back with the others.” Ignoring his command, she gave him two of the screwdrivers, but she held on to the third. Harker’s screams had become so shrill, so awful, that they no longer sounded human. As Bryce ripped open one package, Jenny tore th...

But Billy was a Catholic. Modern Catholicism tended to downplay the sulphurous-pits-of-Hell stories in favor of emphasizing God’s great mercy and infinite compassion. Extremist Protestant fundamentalists saw the hand of the Devil in everything from television programming to the novels of R. L. Stine to the invention of the push-up bra. But Catholicism struck a quieter, more light-hearted note than that. The Church of Rome now gave the world such things as singing nuns, Wednesday Night Bingo, and priests with degrees in psychology. Therefore, Billy Velazquez, raised a Catholic, did not immediately associate supernatural Satanic forces with the chilling cry of this unknown beast—not even though he so vividly remembered that old road-to-Hell comic book story. Billy just knew that the bellowing creature approaching through the bowels of the earth was a bad thing. A very bad thing.

Would fire succeed where bullets had failed? What had happened to Harker? What had happened to Velazquez? What will happen to me? Copperfield wondered.

He was beginning to wonder if this whole thing might actually be in Isley’s and Arkham’s territory. Isley and Arkham, the two men without names on their decontamination suits, were not even members of the Civilian Defense Unit. They were from a different project altogether. Just this morning, before dawn, when Dr. Valdez had been introduced to them at the team rendezvous point in Sacramento, when he had heard what kind of research they were doing, he had almost laughed. He had thought their project was a waste of taxpayers’ money. Now he wasn’t so sure. Now he wondered . . . He wondered . . . and he worried.

Arkham said, “We’re not Army Medical Corps. We’re Air Force.” “Project Skywatch,” Isley said. “We’re not exactly a secret organization, but . . . well . . . let’s just say we discourage publicity.” “Skywatch?” Lisa said, brightening. “Are you talking about UFOs? Is that it? Flying saucers?” Jenny saw Isley wince at the words “flying saucers.”

Isley said, “We don’t go around checking out every crackpot report of little green men from Mars. For one thing, we don’t have the funds to do that. Our job is planning for the scientific, social, and military aspects of mankind’s first encounter with an alien intelligence. We’re really more of a think tank than anything else.”

And what did you finally decide about the poltergeist up there in Vermont?” Jenny asked. “Decide? Nothing,” Isley said. “Just that it was . . . interesting,” Arkham said.