Creature

Chapter Nineteen

Kelly Tanner knew they were out there, knew the creatures were hunting for her. She didn't know how she'd gotten there-wasn't even quite certain where she was.

Mark had taken her for a hike up in the hills, and at first it had been fun.Chivas had been with them, and they'd followed the stream up into the hills and found a little waterfall. A grove of pines was clustered around the pool beneath the falls, and she and Mark had sat down in the scented bed of needles beneath the trees whileChivas sniffed around the boulders at the edge of the river, scratching at a hole some animal had dug there. Suddenly Mark had picked up a rock and hurled it atChivas. The dog, yelping in pain, had whirled around, crouching low to the ground, stared at Mark for a moment then slunk off into the woods.

"Why did you do that?" Kelly had asked.

Mark hadn't answered her. Instead, he'd just gotten up and walked away, disappearing into the foliage afterChivas.

She hadn't liked that-she knew Mark wasn't supposed to leave her alone-but at first she wasn't worried. He'd come back in a few minutes, she thought, andChivas would be with him. Then they'd start back home.

But Mark hadn't come back. She'd waited and waited. And suddenly everything had changed.

The branches of the pines-so sheltering only a moment before-now seemed like arms reaching out to grab her.

The sun, too, had disappeared, and at first she thought it was nothing more than a cloud drifting by. But then the darkness had closed in on her and she felt the first pangs of fear.

She called out to Mark then, but there was no reply.

She scrambled to her feet. All she had to do was follow the stream, and pretty soon she would be out of the hills and back in the valley, and there would be the familiar houses and stores of the town.

Except that as she walked, the trail seemed to change, growing narrower and narrower, until she could barely make out where it was at all.

That was when the sounds had started.

They were faint cries at first, coming as if from a great distance away. Then she heard them again, nearer this time, and Kelly froze in the path to listen.

The sounds came ever closer, and began changing.

First they were moans-strange, strangled sounds, like someone crying. But then the moans shifted into a cacophony of shrieks that echoed in the hills around her, and Kelly shuddered.

She searched the cloying darkness around her, looking for the source of the terrifying sounds.

A twig cracked somewhere behind her, and she spun around, but could see nothing.

Another twig cracked, but this time the sound came from a different direction.

She started running then, but every step seemed to take forever. Her feet felt heavy; she could barely move them. She tried to cry out herself, tried to scream for Mark to come and help her, but her voice strangled in her throat and all that emerged was a faint rasp.

They were all around her now-whatever they were-and she thought she could hear them sniffing at the air, searching for her scent.

She knew what would happen when they found her. They would circle around her, closing her in, then come to get her, their yellow eyes glowing evilly in the darkness, their fangs dripping with saliva.

Suddenly she saw one of them.

It was big-bigger than anything she'd ever seen.

It had long arms, with curving claws extending from the fingers, reaching almost to the ground.

It was grunting, pushing its way through the brush, and she could smell a sour odor in the air as it breathed.

It was almost there, almost upon her, and she gathered what was left of her strength for a final scream.

That was when she woke up, her whole body jerking in a spasm of fear.

In the darkness the image of the monster still lurked, and in the distance she could still hear the cries of the others. She whimpered, gathering her blanket close around her, and then another, softer scream burst from her throat as her bedroom door opened.

"It's all right, darling," her mother told her, snapping on the ceiling light and filling the room with a brilliant glow that washed away the terrifying shadows. "You were just having a nightmare, that's all." Sharon came and sat on the edge of the bed. She put her arms around her daughter and held her close. "Do you want to tell me about it?"

Shakily, Kelly tried to repeat what had happened in the dream, and finally she looked up at her mother, her eyes large. "Why did Mark just leave me like that?" she asked.

"But he didn't, sweetheart," Sharon reassured her. "It was just a dream, and the things in dreams aren't real."

"B-Butitfeltreal," Kelly protested. "And Mark was so different from the way he really is. At least," she added, her voice dropping and her eyes shifting away from her mother's, "he was different from the way he used to be, before we moved here."

Sharon felt a knot of tension twist in her stomach, but when she spoke, she did her best not to betray her own feelings. "What do you mean?" she asked.

Kelly shrugged elaborately, then snuggled down into the bed, pulling the covers up under her chin. "I don't know," she said, her small face screwing up into an expression of intense concentration. "He just seems different, that's all. I mean, he doesn't even care about his rabbits anymore, and I don't thinkChivas likes him the way he used to."

Sharon laid her hand on the little girl's cheek. "What about you?" she asked. "You still like Mark, don't you?"

"Y-Yes," Kelly replied, but there was a hesitation in her voice, as if she weren't really sure. "Butheis different. He-He even looks sort of different."

Sharon smiled tightly. "That's because he's getting a lot of exercise, and because he's starting to grow faster."

Kelly scowled and shook her head. "It's not that," she said. "It's something else. It's like-"

She suddenly stopped speaking as a sound drifted through the night. Though it seemed to come from far away, Kelly recognized it instantly.

It was the same high-pitched scream of fury she'd heard in her nightmare only a few minutes before. Her eyes widened into fearful circles and she clutched the covers tighter. "D-Did you hear that?" she asked.

Sharon hesitated, then went to the window and opened it. The chill night air poured in from outside, and she drew her robe tight around her. It was silent outside, and in the east the first faint hints of dawn were silhouetting the mountains against a brightening sky. She listened for a moment, but heard nothing.

She was just turning away from the window when the sound came again.

There was no mistaking it this time. It was some kind of animal out hunting in the night, but it sounded now as if it were in pain. An image came suddenly into Sharon's mind of an exhibit she'd seen in a museum years ago. It had been a diorama, and behind the glass, caught forever in a moment of agonizing pain, had been a stuffed mountain lion, its mouth agape in a silent roar, one of its immense feet caught in the jaws of a trap. Smears of realistic blood stained the fur of its foot, and the skin was torn away from its leg above the trap, where the creature had tried to gnaw itself loose.

The sound that rent the night as Sharon stood at Kelly's window was exactly the sound she had imagined coming from that trapped and wounded cougar's throat.

The cry died away, and Sharon closed the window tightly. "It's only an animal, darling," she told Kelly, who was sitting straight up in bed now, staring at her with frightened eyes. "It's up in the mountains somewhere, and it can't hurt you."

"B-but what if it comes down?" Kelly asked, her voice quavering.

Sharon glanced at the clock on Kelly's dresser. It was almost six, the sky outside was brightening by the minute. "Tell you what," she said. "Why don't you and I get dressed and go downstairs? We can fix a nice breakfast, and surprise your father and Mark."

Kelly brightened immediately, and she instantly slithered out of the bed, stripped off her pajamas, and began pulling on her clothes.

"A shower first," Sharon reminded the little girl. As Kelly headed for the bathroom, she went downstairs and started a pot of coffee. But even after Kelly joined her a few minutes later, Sharon found herself not saying much, her mind still occupied with what Kelly had said about Mark.

For Sharon, too, had been acutely aware of the changes taking place in her son. She'd tried to attribute them to the hormonal imbalances of adolescence, and yet even as she'd insisted to herself that nothing was wrong, she knew she was lying to herself.

The changes were coming too fast and were too marked to be anything normal.

Indeed, she'd even tried to talk to Blake about it the night before, but he'd put her off, as he seemed to lately about anything but the most banal of topics. "Be happy," he'd advised her. "He's finally growing up."

Growing up into what?

She opened the freezer and reached for a can of frozen orange juice, her eyes resting for a second on the small package, wrapped in butcher's paper, that was tucked away at the back of the freezer. Though it looked for all the world like nothing more than a small steak ready to be thrown away, she knew it wasn't.

Wrapped inside the butcher paper were the corpses of the two rodents she'd retrieved from the trash atTarrenTech.

She'd told nobody about them yet, hadn't even looked at them again herself. And yet she was certain they were very important, and that until she'd decided exactly what to do with them, she shouldn't even mention them to her husband.

An hour later, when Blake and Mark came down for breakfast, Sharon found herself surreptitiously watching her son, searching his face for signs of change.

This morning she thought she saw them.

There was a hardness about Mark's gentle features that she didn't remember seeing before.

Three hours later Mark trotted into the locker room to strip down for his P.E. class and realized that this week, for the first time in his life, he had actually begun to look forward to the hour on the practice field. He was still among the last to be chosen as the class was split up into teams, but yesterday there were still four guys standing unhappily, waiting to see which of them would be the "stuck-with" for the day (an honor that had, until this week, invariably been Mark's), when to Mark's surprise one of the team captains had actually called out his name.

Nor had he played football badly yesterday. He'd caught two passes, one of which had developed into a touchdown when he'd successfully evaded the two opponents who'd attempted to bring him down.

So today he put on his shorts and T-shirt eagerly, then trotted out onto the field with the others. Again to his surprise, immediately after he'd fallen in for the ten minutes of calisthenics that began each hour, the teacher called him out of the ranks and sent him to the gym.

His heart sank as he saw Phil Collins waiting for him, and he wondered what he might have done wrong that called for a dressing-down from the football coach. But to his surprise, Collins was smiling amiably at him.

"I've been hearing good things about you, Tanner," Collins called to him. The coach was at the far end of the gym, idly hefting a large leather-covered medicine ball. "Marty Ames tells me you're putting on a lot of muscle."

Mark grinned bashfully. "I guess so," he admitted.

"So let's see what you can do," Collins went on. Without warning he hurled the ball toward Mark, and Mark found that instead of giving in to his usual instinct to duck away from the heavy object, he stepped forward, caught it, and immediately shot it back toward the coach with enough force that Collins staggered slightly as it hurtled into his hands.

"Not bad," the coach observed, his right eyebrow arching appreciatively. "Want to try the rope?" He nodded toward a heavy strand of twisted nylon, its length studded with large knots at regular intervals, which was suspended from a heavy hook in the ceiling.

Mark said nothing, but walked over to the rope and gave it an experimental tug. Then, grasping it with both hands, he lifted his weight off the floor. He released his left hand and quickly moved it to the knot above, then repeated the process with his right hand. Without even thinking about it, he automatically bent his body at the hips so that as he moved steadily toward the ceiling his legs were nearly parallel to the floor. He paused at the top for a second, then slapped the ceiling with his right hand. A moment later, on a sudden whim, he released the rope completely, dropping nearly fifteen feet to the floor. His knees bent gracefully and he tumbled to one side, then scrambled back to his feet.

"Careful there," Collins said after whistling admiringly at the maneuver. "If you don't know what you're doing, you can break an ankle that way."

"But I didn't, did I?" Mark replied, grinning.

For the next thirty minutes Collins put Mark through a rigorous set of exercises, but even when he was finished, Mark's breathing was only a little heavier than normal. Though a sheen of sweat showed on his forehead, his shirt was still dry and his muscles felt as if he could have gone on for another hour.

"Definitely not bad," Collins commented when it was over. He signaled Mark to follow him, and went into his office. Flopping down in the chair behind his desk, he eyed Mark speculatively. "Ever thought about going out for football?"

Mark licked his lips nervously. "N-Not until a couple of weeks ago," he said finally. His eyes fixed on the floor a few feet in front of the coach's desk. "I'm kind of small, aren't I?"

Collins wiggled his right hand indifferently. "A lot of guys make up for small size with other things," he observed. "Speed, agility, all kinds of things can make the difference. And there's the basic will to win," he added. "If you have that, it can make up for a lot."

Mark turned the coach's words over in his mind. He knew it was true-knew it if only from the rowing exercises he'd been doing at the sports center, where the sight of other rowers overtaking him had been enough to send adrenaline streaming into his blood, giving him that extra surge of power he needed to catch up.

"I think I'd like to try it," he said finally, and Collins grinned at him, standing up.

"Then I'll see you after school today," he said. "Talk to Toby Miller about a practice uniform."

Mark's eager expression faded. "I'm supposed to go see Dr. Ames today," he began, but Collins silenced him with a gesture.

"It's okay," he said, winking at Mark. "I thought you might want to take a shot at it, so I already fixed it with him. You're rescheduled for later, after practice."

Mark stared at the coach in surprise, then a slow smile spread across his face. "Hey, thanks," he said. "Thanks a lot. See you later."

He trotted out to the locker room, stripped off his gym clothes, and hit the showers. As the hot needle spray stung his skin, he felt a sharp surge of joy run through him.

It was going to be great, he thought. He was going to make the team, and his father would finally be proud of him.

And then, unbidden, an image of his mother came into his mind. His joy was suddenly blunted. He could already hear her telling him he was too small for football, that all that would happen would be that he'd get hurt.

Even as he began dressing, the tiny germ of anger toward his mother that had sprouted in the shower was already beginning to grow.