Predator and Prey Prowlers 3 by Christopher Golden

two ghosts. Probably this part of town was swarming with lost souls on a regular basis, wandering through the commutes and regular schedules they’d had when they were alive. But right now, it was just these two. The others had all been faster or smarter or just more awake. The others had gotten away.
    They were nothing. Spirits. Wisps of intelligence and imagination, the essence of people long dead. But here in the Ghostlands, the realm of the spirits, they were more than tangible. The world of the living was all gray and washed out, but the ghosts were real and solid . . . and screaming.
    It tore them apart.
    As Jack watched, unable to tear his eyes away, this obscenity clutched at them with enormous paws, its claws gleaming silver. Its matted fur squirmed with life; things like maggots crawled through the thick black coat. It opened its massive jaws and ripped and tore chunk after chunk out of the dead souls. It was eating them, their essence, all that made them human.
    “We have to stop it. Help them,” Jack said, his voice a rasp. “And you, man, you’ve gotta go! Get out of here!”
    At last Artie looked away from the thing, and then it seemed as though he could not look back. He shied from it as though he could pretend it was not real.
    “You can’t help them. We don’t know yet how to stop it.”
    “We’ll figure out a way,” Jack said. “For now, just get the hell out of here.”
    Artie gave a reluctant nod and rushed off in the other direction, not even pretending to walk now. He simply floated off until, maybe twenty yards away, he seemed to dissipate in a kind of mist. Jack thought for a second that meant that his connection to the Ghostlands was severed, but then he saw that the living people around him were still phantom images, the city like a shadow of itself.
    But Artie was safe, at least for the moment. Right now that was all he could wish. When he turned to look up the street again, the thing was snuffling its black muzzle in the last bits of the old homeless man, in the ectoplasm or whatever it was that made up his ghost. The Ravenous snatched a piece of the old man up in its jaws, tossed it in the air, and scarfed it down in one gulp. Tiny shreds of the man’s soul fell onto its filthy fur, still moving, squirming, and Jack realized with deepening horror that the things in its coat were not maggots at all, but remnants of its victims. He had seen monsters before, up close, but the Ravenous made him hold his breath, made icy shudders run through him.
    “God,” he whispered.
    The Ravenous paused. Then it turned around and looked at him. Jack’s mouth opened but nothing came out. His chest hurt, his throat was dry, his bladder felt too full. He could hear the echo of his heartbeat in his head; too loud, too fast.
    It saw him.
    Jack Dwyer was alive, not a ghost, but when he was looking into the Ghostlands, the Ravenous could see him.
    A growl like thunder shook the ground under his feet. The Ravenous whipped its scorpion tail back and forth, bared its fangs like gleaming scalpels, and started toward him.
    Jack stumbled backward. He held his hands up. Then it hit him. He had to stop seeing. He closed his eyes tightly, pressed the palms of his hands against his face, and then opened his eyes again.
    Still the Ghostlands, gray fog and the monster coming for him. It roared, loud enough to hurt his ears.
    “No!” Jack shouted. “No! Make it stop! Stop seeing!”
    Again he squeezed his eyes shut, slapped himself in the temples, and began to stagger away, then to run, eyes closed. He slammed into someone and went down hard on the cobblestones. Voices shouted obscenities at him.
    He heard the snarl of the Ravenous, could practically smell its stink. In his mind’s eye, he could still see the soulmaggots in its fur, and the way it had torn apart the spirits of the dead.

    “No!” Jack shouted again, and he opened his eyes.
    Business suits. Briefcases. A couple of teenagers gawking at him, and an