The Mary Celeste was found with dinner placed on tables and no one on board, no passengers and no crew. Nothing was wrong with the passenger ship but every soul had disappeared. A New World Colony in 1711 was found entirely in place and seemingly completely functional but all 200 or so colonists were gone. No Indian massacre and no evident disease and no bodies. An Eskimo village was found with all inhabitants gone. They were all there in the morning and all gone by afternoon. Since they left their canoes and their weapons behind they had obviously not migrated to another location.
Jennifer Paige returned home to Snowfield, California, a place she loved. Jennifer had established her Medical Practice in this picturesque ski resort town and knew all 500 residents almost like they were family. She and her little sister arrived to find the place really quite. No dogs were barking, no birds chirping, no people on the sidewalks, no cars or bicycles in the streets. No one at all was around. Curiously the housekeeper was not around. So they began searching and found the bloated and bruised body of Jennifer’s housekeeper lying behind the kitchen island. She had apparently dropped dead in the middle of getting supper prepared.
They quickly dropped the groceries Jennifer brought and their luggage, and went frantically next door to see ask their neighbors what was going on. When they made their way into the neighbor house without any reply to their knocks and calls they found no one home. Dinner had been set on the table but the couple was not there.
At the next home Jennifer and Lisa visited they found more bloated bodies which caused near panic. But Jennifer was a Doctor and felt she had to search for people in town who may be injured and need her help, whatever was happening to cause all this death. Instead Lisa and Jennifer found more and more bodies. They finally stopped their searching and decided to call the police in the bigger town down the road. The phone lines were at first dead and then Jennifer began hearing strange sounds like sea gulls, dogs barking, people wailing and crying and all sorts of noise on the phone line. But she could not get a dial tone to call out. So she and Lisa got in her Mustang and went down the road to make a call from the phone booth and finally got the sheriff who responded with three squad cars.
His doubts were quickly put to rest when he was shown the bodies and it was not long before the whole group were attacked by an impossibly big moth, the size of a German Sheppard. The big moth latched onto the face of one of the deputies and sucked off his face and sucked out his whole brain and all of his blood. It was impossible but it was also a fact they had to face. Sheriff Bryce called in more help from the federal level and even the scientists that came out could not determine what was happening. By the time they became convinced that some strange monster that was invulnerable to normal things like bullets, they were all to become victims. This left Sheriff Bryce, his main deputy, Jennifer and Lisa alone to deal with the problem.
A clue left in eyebrow pencil on a bathroom wall in the hotel where a couple of the victims had been killed identified a man by the name of Professor Flyte and said it was the “Ancient Enemy”. It transpires that this professor had written a book wherein he theorized that there must be an ancient and very different life form that is responsible for all of these worldwide mysteries of missing people. Flyte is brought out to Snowfield and works with the Sheriff’s crew to try to figure out what is happening and what can be done, if anything.
I won’t spoil the story for you by telling you about this strange alien monster and how it is able to get into locked rooms and kill all therein without opening a door or defeating the locks. The story is exciting and a bit terrifying but it is all good. If you like suspense mixed in with your mysteries you will love “Phantoms”. I give this one a 9 of 10 on the Weaver meter.
