Phantoms by Dean Koontz Page B

anyone but you. She’s on line three right now.”
    Bryce reached for the phone.
    “One more thing,” Tal said, worry lines creasing his forehead.
    Bryce paused, hand on the receiver.
    Tal said: “She did tell me one thing, but it doesn’t make sense. She said...”
    “Yes?”
    “She said that everyone’s dead up there. Everyone in Snowfield. She said she and her sister are the only ones alive.”

10
    Sisters and Cops
    Jenny and Lisa left the Oxley house the same way they had entered: through the window.
    The night was growing colder, The wind had risen once more.
    They walked back to Jenny’s house at the top of Skyline Road and got jackets to ward off the chill.
    Jenny tried the car phone in her Trans Am. It didn’t work.
    Then they went downhill again to the sheriff’s substation. A wooden bench was bolted to the cobblestones by the curb in front of the town jail, and they sat waiting for help from Santa Mira.
    “How long will it take them to get here?” Lisa asked.
    “Well, Santa Mira is more than thirty miles away, over some pretty twisty roads. And they’ve got to take some unusual precautions.” Jenny looked at her wristwatch. “I guess they’ll be here in another forty-five minutes. An hour at most.”
    “Jeez.”
    “It’s not so long, honey.”
    The girl turned up the collar of her fleece-lined, denim jacket. “Jenny, when the phone rang at the Oxley place and you picked it up...”
    “Yes?”
    “Who was calling?”
    “No one.”
    “What did you hear?”
    “Nothing,” Jenny lied.
    “From the look on your face, I thought someone was threatening you or something.”
    “Well, I was upset, of course. When it rang, I thought the phones were working again, but when I picked it up and it was only another dead line, I felt... crushed. That was all.”
    “Then you got a dial tone?”
    “Yes.”
    She probably doesn’t believe me, Jenny thought. She thinks I’m trying to protect her from something. And, of course, I am. How can I explain the feeling that something evil was on that phone with me? I can’t even begin to understand it myself. Who or what was on that telephone? Why did he—or it—finally let me have a dial tone?
    A scrap of paper blew along the street. Nothing else moved.
    A thin rag of cloud passed over one comer of the moon.
    After a while, Lisa said, “Jenny, in case something happens to me tonight—”
    “Nothing’s going to happen to you, honey.”
    “But in case something does happen to me tonight,” Lisa insisted, “I want you to know that I ... well ... I really am... proud of you.”
    Jenny put an arm around her sister’s shoulders, and they moved even closer together. “Sis, I’m sorry that we never had much time together over the years.”
    “You got home as often as you could,” Lisa said. “I know it wasn’t easy. I must’ve read a couple of dozen books about what a person has to go through to become a doctor. I always knew there was a lot on your shoulders, a lot you had to worry about.”
    Surprised, Jenny said, “Well, I still could’ve gotten home more often.”
    She had stayed away from home on some occasions because she had not been able to cope with the accusation in her mother’s sad eyes, an accusation which was even more powerful and affecting because it was never bluntly put into words: You killed your father, Jenny; you broke his heart, and that killed him.
    Lisa said, “And Mom was always so proud of you, too.”
    That statement not only surprised Jenny: It rocked her.
    “Mom was always telling people about her daughter the doctor.” Lisa smiled, remembering. “I think there were times her friends were ready to throw her out of her bridge club if she said just one more word about your scholarships or your good grades.”
    Jenny blinked. “Are you serious?”
    “Of course, I’m serious.”
    “But didn’t Mom...”
    “Didn’t she what?” Lisa asked.
    “Well... didn’t she ever say anything about... about Dad? He died twelve