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 Cover of Phantoms |
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| Author | Dean Koontz |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Thriller, Mystery novel |
| Publisher | Berkley Publishing |
| Publication date | March 1983 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover, Paperback) |
| Pages | 448 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-425-18110-3 |
Phantoms is a novel written by the best-selling author Dean Koontz, released in 1983.
Contents |
Plot summary
Jenny and Lisa Paige, two sisters, arrive one weekend in September in Snowfield, Colorado, a small ski resort village nestled in the Sierra Nevada where Jenny works as a doctor -- only to find the entire town completely desolate. It seems as though the town's population has mysteriously and suddenly vanished moments before their arrival--homes are lit, dinner tables are set with food that's still warm, and rooms are locked from the inside, yet no living people, nor even any household pets, are to be seen. The Paige sisters gradually discover a few dead bodies of local townspeople, all of which are either mutilated or reveal some other strange form of death. In particular, victims' bodies are covered with universal bruising, and their faces are frozen as though they died abruptly in a moment of extreme terror. Compounding these gruesome discoveries is the fact that all electronic communications servicing the town seem to have been somehow deliberately cut off. Growing more and more scared, the Paige sisters finally manage to make a distress phone call to the police in nearby Santa Mira, Colorado. When the Santa Mira police show up, however, a mysterious series of phantasmic occurrences effectively seal off the sisters and their police aides within Snowfield. At this point it becomes apparent that some powerful, unseen force is watching them, and they are now prisoners in the town; escape is impossible. This same phantom force then begins killing off the newly-arrived police officers one by one, mounting the suspense. Eventually, the sisters and the surviving officers are able to make contact with the outside world, requesting help from the U.S. military. A military squad is sent in an attempt to investigate and secure the area, bringing along with them a team of top government scientists, but all of the new arrivals are eventually killed by the phantom force dominating Snowfield. News of the Snowfield situation soon reaches the ears of an obscure, elderly British writer named Timothy Flyte, who then springs into action because he believes he knows what is happening. Long ago, Flyte theorized the existence of a giant amoeboid creature he dubbed "The Ancient Enemy," a shapeshifter that fed only once every several millennia, but its massive feeding resulting in the sudden disappearance of large localized populations. Flyte wrote that this Enemy either caused or aided in the extinction of the dinosaurs, as well as many of the great mysterious mass vanishings throughout history: Mayan civilization, Jamestown, Roanoke, ghost ships, etc. Flyte is convinced that such a creature resides in the ground beneath Snowfield and is responsible for the events unfolded thus far in the story. Flyte is whisked from England to Snowfield, meets with the survivors and confirm that he was right; his Ancient Enemy is a real, cognizant, intelligent being that seems to take cruel pleasure in terrorizing, and then killing and eating, human beings. Flyte and the survivors manage to make a series of discoveries regarding the Ancient Enemy that explain all the phantom occurrences thus far; unfortunately, all their newfound insight seems for naught, as the Ancient Enemy makes it clear that it's just a matter of time before it tires of their "scientific games" and kills them like all the others. Things seem hopeless for the survivors, until they make an invaluable discovery: the creature's only vital organ is a nucleus located in the center of its main body, deep underground. The creature's cells are also found to be very similar in molecular structure to fossil fuels such as oil. Upon discovering this, the survivors pull off a last-ditch effort to kill the Ancient Enemy by using oil-eating bacteria to destroy the monster right down to its core nucleus. (The genetically-modified bacteria are the real-life creations of Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty.) The novel ends with the lucky survivors of the Snowfield incident leaving the desolate mountain town with new ideas about the nature of human evil, since the monster's own sadistic tendencies were revealed to have been taken directly from the minds of humans it had consumed.
The Ancient Enemy
The creature's abilities and form greatly resemble John Carpenter's version of The Thing, the movie monster The Blob, the creature in the short story "Slime" by Joseph Payne Brennan and the "shoggoths" envisioned in the works of H. P. Lovecraft. The Snowfield survivors discover that the creature consumes other life forms as sustenance, and is able to perfectly mimic any creature it consumes. It can create small "probes" or "phantoms," imitating consumed life forms, to go forth and hunt more prey, obeying the orders of its "hive mind." In addition, the creature absorbs the mental capacity and memories of those it consumes, so its mind grows more powerful, intelligent and self-aware over time. (In fact, the creature initiates contact with the survivors and personally requests Flyte to come to Snowfield, referring to him as its "biographer.") Besides being able to mimic real animals and people, the creature can also form phantoms based on mental images from its victims; it takes sadistic delight in creating phantoms in the shape of religious demons and monsters to terrorize its victims before killing. The shapeshifting Ancient Enemy can contort its body into the smallest of spaces (through keyholes, air ducts, etc.), which is how it managed to kill and eat people who locked themselves inside rooms and cars. It also possesses extremely keen sensory organs and extremely fast speed, which explains why even the animals around Snowfield didn't escape its predation. Conventional weapons and firearms cause no damage to its gelatinous body. It feeds by completely enveloping its victims (hence the universal bruising seen earlier) and then secreting a digestive enzyme, thus leaving no biotic traces of its victims. Toward the end of the novel the monster declares that it considers all other life forms, including humans, to be intellectually inferior to itself, nothing more than cattle to be consumed when it is hungry. The creature discloses to Flyte and the other survivors that it has come to think of itself as Satan, due to thoughts acquired from the minds of past humans it consumed (notably a devil worshipper). The absorption of these thoughts changed the creature over time from merely predatory to overtly sadistic; it engages in a number of intentional, non-predatory evils, including torture, psychological warfare, blasphemy, profanity, bigotry, attempted rape, and overall cruelty.
Film adaptation
Phantoms was adapted into a movie in 1998 starring Peter O'Toole, Rose McGowan, Liev Schreiber, Ben Affleck, and Joanna Going. It was directed by Joe Chappelle, produced by Neo Art & Logic, and released by Dimension Films. It was filmed in Colorado. The film is referenced heavily (and highly) in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, including once by Affleck himself. The ending to the film is very similar to the ending in Twilight Zone: The Movie.
