C of Lot 49: Help me parse these sentences

[Mark Kohut]

"That phone line could have pointed any direction, been any length [p 12 hc]  It's---[phone line? Lamont's ambiguous words regarding a visit to Mucho?]---- quiet ambiguity shifted over, in the months after the call, to what had been revived: memories of his face, body, things he'd given her, things she had now and then pretended not to have heard him say."   THEN

"It took him over".....The "It' is those memories? The "It" is Pierce as Lamont? .....Those memories took "him'---the real once-alive Pierce?---over. ??

'And to the verge of being forgotten".....??  By now having those revived memories, he---the real once-alive Pierce?---is 'to the verge of being forgotten.".....

IF the reading is more or less corrrect, don't we mostly think someone is NOT FORGOTTEN if we keep our memories of them alive????

Or, is Pierce as Lamont the Shadow now her memories of him, not him as Pierce?  He is now his shadow---like a shade/ghost---self? 
She now remembers his darker self, not the whole Pierce?