Phantoms Part 23

But this boogeyman was real.

Half a year from his thirty-first birthday, Tal Whitman was discovering that he could still be afraid, regardless of how strenuously he denied it. His fearlessness had brought him a long way in life. But, in opposition to all that he had believed before, he realized that there were also times when being afraid was merely being smart.

Shortly before dawn, Lisa woke from a nightmare she couldn't recall.

She looked at Jenny and the others who were sleeping, then turned toward the windows. Outside, Skyline Road was deceptively peaceful as the end of the night drew near.

Lisa had to pee., She got up and walked quietly between two rows of mattresses. At the archway, she smiled at the guard, and he winked.

One man was in the dining room. He was paging through a magazine.

In the lobby, two guards were stationed by the elevator doors. The two polished oak front doors of the inn, each with an oval of beveled gla.s.s in the center of it, were locked, but a third guard was positioned by that entrance. He was holding a shotgun and staring out through one of the ovals, watching the main approach to the building.

A fourth man was in the lobby. Lisa had met him earlier-a bald, florid-faced deputy named Fred Turpner. He was sitting at the largest desk, monitoring the telephone. It must have rung frequently during the night, for a couple of legal-size sheets of paper were filled with messages. As Lisa pa.s.sed by, the phone rang again. Fred raised one hand in greeting, then s.n.a.t.c.hed up the receiver.

Lisa went directly to the restrooms, which were tucked into one corner of the lobby: SNOW BUNNIES SNOW BUCKS.

That cuteness was out of sync with the rest of the Hilltop Inn.

She pushed through the door marked SNOW BUNNIES. The restrooms had been judged safe territory because they had no windows and could be entered only through the lobby, where there were always guards. The women's room was large and clean, with four stalls and sinks. The floor and walls were covered with white ceramic tile bordered by dark blue tile around the edge of the floor and around the top of the walls.

Lisa used the first stall and then the nearest sink. As she finished was.h.i.+ng her hands and looked up at the mirror above the sink, she saw him. Him. The dead deputy. Wargle.

He was standing behind her, eight or ten feet away, in the middle of the room. Grinning.

She swung around, sure that somehow it was a flaw in the mirror, a trick of the looking gla.s.s. Surely he wasn't really there.

But he was there. Naked. Grinning obscenely.

His face had been restored: the heavy jowls, the thick-lipped and greasy-looking mouth, the piggish nose, the little quick eyes. The flesh was magically whole again.

Impossible.

Before Lisa could react, Wargle stepped between her and the door. His bare feet made a flat, slapping sound against the tile floor.

Someone was pounding on the door.

Wargle seemed not to hear it.

Pounding and pounding and pounding...

Why didn't they just open the door and come in?

Wargle extended his arms and made come-to-me motions with his hands. Grinning.

From the moment Lisa had met him, she hadn't liked Wargle. She had caught him looking at her when he thought her attention was elsewhere, and the expression in his eyes had been unsettling.

"Come here, sweet stuff," he said.

She looked at the door and realized no one was pounding on it. She was only hearing the frantic thump of her own heart.

Wargle licked his lips.

Lisa suddenly gasped, surprising herself. She had been so totally paralyzed by the man's return from the dead that she had forgotten to breathe.

"Come here, you little b.i.t.c.h."

She tried to scream. Couldn't.

Wargle touched himself obscenely.

"Bet you'd like a taste of this, huh?" he said, grinning, his lips moist from his hungrily licking tongue.

Again, she tried to scream. Again, she couldn't. She could barely wrench each badly needed breath into her burning lungs.

He's not real, she told herself.

If she closed her eyes for a few seconds, squeezed them tightly shut and counted to ten, he wouldn't be there when she looked again.

"Little b.i.t.c.h."

He was an illusion. Maybe even part of a dream. Maybe her coming to the bathroom was really just another part of her nightmare.

But she didn't test her theory. She didn't close her eyes and count to ten. She didn't dare.

Wargle took a step toward her, still fondling himself.

He isn't real. He's an illusion.

Another step.

He isn't real, he's an illusion.

"Come on, sweet stuff, let me nibble on them t.i.tties of yours."

He isn't real he's an illusion he isn't real he's- "You're gonna love it, sweet stuff."

She backed away from him.

"Cute little body you got, sweet stuff. Real cute."

He continued to advance.

The light was behind him now. His shadow fell on her.

Ghosts didn't throw shadows.

In spite of his laugh and in spite of his fixed grin, his voice became steadily harsher, nastier. "You stupid little s.l.u.t. I'm gonna use you real good. Real d.a.m.ned good. Better than any of them high school boys ever used you. You ain't gonna be able to walk right for a week when I'm through with you, sweet stuff."

His shadow had completely engulfed her.

Her heart slamming so hard that it seemed about to tear loose, Lisa backed up farther, farther-but soon collided with the wall. She was in a corner.

She looked around for a weapon, something she could at least throw at him. There was nothing.

Each breath was harder to draw than the one before it. She was dizzy and weak.

He isn't real. He's an illusion.

But she couldn't delude herself any longer; she couldn't believe in the dream any more.

Wargle stopped just an arm's length from her. He glared at her. He swayed from side to side, and he rocked back and forth on the b.a.l.l.s of his bare feet, as if some mad-dark-private music swelled and ebbed and swelled within him.

He closed his hateful eyes, swaying dreamily.

A second pa.s.sed.

What's he doing?

Two seconds, three, six, ten.

Still, his eyes remained closed.

She felt herself carried away in a whirlpool of hysteria. Could she slip past him? While his eyes were closed? Jesus. No. He was too close. To get away, she would have to brush against him. Jesus. Brush against him? No. G.o.d, that would snap him out of his trance or whatever this was, and he would seize her, and his hands would be cold, dead-cold. She could not bring herself to touch him. No.

Then she noticed something odd happening behind his eyes. Wriggling movement. The lids themselves no longer conformed to the curvature of his eyeb.a.l.l.s.

He opened his eyes.

They were gone.

Beneath the lids lay only empty black sockets.

She finally screamed, but the cry she brought forth was beyond human hearing. Breath pa.s.sed out of her in an express-train rush, and she felt her throat working convulsively, but there was absolutely no sound that would bring help.

His eyes.

His empty eyes.

She was certain that those hollow sockets could still see her. They sucked at her with their emptiness.

His grin had not faded.

"Little p.u.s.s.y," he said.

She screamed her silent scream.

"Little p.u.s.s.y. Kiss me, little p.u.s.s.y."

Somehow, dark as midnight, those bone-rimmed sockets still held a glimmer of malevolent awareness.

"Kiss me."

No!

Let me die, she prayed. G.o.d, please let me die first.

"I want to suck on your juicy tongue," Wargle said urgently, bursting into a giggle.

He reached for her.

She pressed hard against the unyielding wall.

Wargle touched her cheek.

She flinched and tried to pull away.

His fingertips trailed lightly down her cheek.

His hand was icy and slick.

She heard a thin, dry, eerie groan-"Uh-uh-uh-uh-uhhhhhhh" -and realized that she was listening to herself.

She smelled something strange, acrid. His breath? The stale breath of a dead man, expelled from rotting lungs? Did the walking dead breathe? The stench was faint but unbearable. She gagged.

He lowered his face toward hers.

She stared into his eaten-away eyes, into the swarming blackness beyond, and it was like peering through two peep-holes into the deepest chambers of h.e.l.l.

His hand tightened on her throat.

He said, "Give us-"

She heaved in a hot breath.

"-a little kiss."

She heaved out another scream.

This time the scream wasn't silent. This time she pealed forth a sound that seemed loud enough to shatter the restroom mirrors and to crack the ceramic tile.

As Wargle's dead, eyeless face slowly, slowly descended toward her, as she heard her scream echoing off the walls, the whirlpool of hysteria in which she'd been spinning became, now, a whirlpool of darkness, and she was drawn down into oblivion.

20.