Earlier, he had believed that the shape-changer had spared him and a few of the others so that they could entice Flyte to Snowfield. Now he realized that wasn't the case. It could have consumed them and then imitated their voices on the telephone, and Flyte would have been coaxed to Snowfield just as easily. It had saved them for some other reason. Perhaps it had spared them only in order to kill them, one at a time, in front of Flyte, so that Flyte would be able to see precisely how it functioned.
Christ.
The shape-changer towered over them, quivering gelatinously, its entire grotesque bulk pulsating as if with the unsynchronized beats of a dozen hearts.
In a voice even shakier than Bryce felt, Sara Yamaguchi said, “I wish there was some way we could get a tissue sample. I'd give anything to be able to study it under a microscope… get some idea of the cell structure. Maybe we could find a weakness… a way to deal with it, maybe even a way to defeat it.”
Flyte said, “I'd like to study it… just to be able to understand… just to know.”
An extrusion of tissue oozed out from the center of the shapeless mass. It began to acquire a human form. Bryce was shocked to see Gordy Brogan coalescing in front of him. Before the phantom was entirely realized, while the body was still lumpy and half detailed, and although the face wasn't finished, the mouth nevertheless opened and the replica of Gordy spoke, though not with Gordy's voice. It was Stu Wargle's voice, instead, a supremely disconcerting touch.
“Go to the lab,” it said, its mouth only half formed, yet speaking with perfect clarity. “I will show you everything you want to see, Dr. Flyte. You are my Matthew. My Luke. Go to the lab. Go to the lab.”
The unfinished image of Gordy Brogan dissolved almost as if it had been composed of smoke,
The extruded man-size lump of gnarled tissue flowed back into the larger bulk behind it.
The entire pulsating, heaving mass began to surge back through the umbilical that led up the wall and into the heating duct.
How much more of it lies there within the walls of the inn? Bryce wondered uneasily. How much more of it waits down in the storm drains? How large is the god Proteus?
As the thing oozed away from them, oddly shaped orifices opened all over it, none bigger than a human mouth, a dozen of them, two dozen, and noises issued forth: the chirruping of birds, the cries of sea gulls, the buzzing of bees, snarling, hissing, child-sweet laughter, distant singing, the hooting of an owl, the maracalike warning of a rattlesnake. Those noises, all ringing out simultaneously, blended into an unpleasant, irritating, decidedly ominous chorus.
Then the shape-changer was gone back through the wall vent. Only Frank's severed head and the bent grille from the heating duct remained as proof that something Hell-born had been here.
According to the electric wall clock, the time was 3:44.
The night was nearly gone.
How long until dawn? Bryce wondered. An hour and a half? An hour and forty minutes or more?
He supposed it didn't matter.
He didn't expect to live to see the sunrise, anyway.
Chapter 37
Ego
The door of the second lab stood wide open. The lights were on. The computer screens glowed. Everything was ready for them.
Jenny had been trying to hold to the belief that they could still somehow resist, that they still had a chance, however small, of influencing the course of events. Now that fragile, cherished belief was blown away. They were powerless. They would do only what it wanted, go only where it allowed.
The six of them crowded inside the lab.
“Now what?” Lisa asked.
“We wait,” Jenny said.
Flyte, Sara, and Lisa sat down at the three bright video display terminals. Jenny and Bryce leaned against a counter, and Tal stood by the open door, looking out.
Fog foamed past the door.
We wait, Jenny had told Lisa. But waiting wasn't easy. Each second was an ordeal of tense and morbid expectations.
Where would death come from next?
And in what fantastic form?
And to whom would it come this time?
At last Bryce said, “Dr. Flyte, if these prehistoric creatures have survived for millions of years in underground lakes and fivers, irk the deepest sea trenches… or wherever… and if they surface to feed… then why aren't mass disappearances more common?”
Flyte pulled at his chin with one thin, long-fingered hand and said, “Because it seldom encounters human beings.”
“But why seldom?”
“I doubt that more than a handful of these beasts have survived. There may have been a climatic change that killed off most and-drove the few remaining into a subterranean and suboceanic existence.”
“Nevertheless, even a few of them”
“A rare few,” Flyte stressed, “scattered over the earth. And perhaps they feed only infrequently. Consider the boa constrictor, for example. That snake takes nourishment only once every few weeks. So perhaps this thing feeds irregularly, as seldom as once every several months or even once every couple of years. Its metabolism is so utterly different from ours that almost anything may be possible.”
“Could its life cycle include periods of hibernation,” Sara asked, “lasting not just a season or two, but years at a time?”
“Yes, yes,” Flyte said, nodding, “Very good. Very good, indeed. That would also help explain why the thing only infrequently encounters men. And let me remind you that mankind inhabits less than one percent of the planet's surface. Even if the ancient enemy did feed with some frequency, it would hardly ever run up against us.”
“And when it did,” Bryce said, “it would very likely encounter us at sea because the largest part of the earth is covered with water.”
“Exactly,” Flyte said, “And if it seized everyone aboard a ship, there wouldn't be witnesses, we'd never know about those contacts. The history of the sea is replete with stories of vanished ships and ghost ships from which the crews disappeared.”
“The Mary Celeste.” Lisa said, glancing at Jenny.
Jenny remembered when her sister had first mentioned the Mary Celeste. It had been early Sunday evening, when they had gone next door to the Santinis' house and had found the table set for dinner.
“The Mary Celeste is a famous case,” Flyte agreed, “But it's not unique. Literally hundreds upon hundreds of ships have vanished under mysterious circumstances ever since reliable nautical records have been kept. In good weather, in peacetime, with no 'logical' explanation. In aggregate, the missing crews must surely number in the tens of thousands.”
From his post by the open door of the lab, Tal said, “That area of the Caribbean where so many ships have disappeared…”
“The Bermuda Triangle,” Lisa said quickly.
“Yeah,” Tal said, “Could that be…?”
“The work of a shape-changer?” Flyte said, “Yes. Possibly. Over the years, there have been a few mysterious depletions of fish populations in that area, too, so the ancient enemy theory is applicable.”
Data flashed up on the video displays: I SEND YOU A SPIDER.
“What's that supposed to mean?” Flyte asked.
Sara tapped the keys: CLARIFY.
The same message repeated: I SEND YOU A SPIDER.
CLARIFY.
LOOK AROUND YOU.
Jenny saw it first. It was poised on the work surface to the left of the VDT that Sara was using. A black spider. Not as big as a tarantula, but much bigger than an ordinary spider.
It curled into a lump, retracting its long legs. It changed. First, it shimmered dully. The black coloration was replaced by the familiar gray-maroon-red of the shape-changer. The spider form melted away. The lump of amorphous flesh assumed another, longer shape: It became a cockroach, a hideously ugly, unrealistically large cockroach. And then a small mouse, with twitching whiskers.