Creature

Chapter Twenty-Seven

It had been nearly two weeks since the funeral at which they'd buried her family. Every morning since then, when she'd awakened, totally disoriented, in the unfamiliar surroundings of the small bedroom next to Linda's that theHarrises had moved her into the day her family had died, Kelly Tanner felt the dampness on her pillow and knew she'd been crying. But this morning-a Saturday-Kelly knew where she was from the moment she came awake.

And the pillowcase was dry, which meant she hadn't been crying that night at all. Or at least not enough to get the pillow wet.

She lay in her bed for a few minutes, listening to the sounds of theHarrises's house. It wasn't really much different from the way her own house had sounded in the morning, and if she closed her eyes and concentrated very hard, she could almost imagine that nothing had changed, that she was back in her own room in the house on Telluride Drive.

The shower going on would mean that her father was already up, and the clatter of pans in the kitchen meant that her mother was making pancakes. She could even imagine that thethumpings from down the hall were coming from Mark's room; that he was doing the exercises he'd started a month ago.

But it wasn't Mark, and it wasn't her mother and father. It was just theHarrises, and even though she knew they were trying to be very nice to her, she always had a niggling feeling at the back of her mind that they didn't really care about her, that they thought they had to be nice to her because she was an orphan now.

An orphan.

She turned the word over in her mind, kept examining it, until suddenly it had no meaning at all. It was a game she played sometimes with herself-taking the simplest word and repeating it over and over and over, until instead of meaning something, it wasn't anything but a sound.

For the first time that morning she was able to think about the funeral without crying. She didn't know whether it had been like other funerals, because she'd never been to one before. There hadn't been very many people there, and it hadn't taken very long, and as she sat in the front pew of the little church, listening to a man she'd never seen before talking about her family-and she knew he'd never even met her family, so how could he talk about them?-she tried to convince herself that it really was her father and mother and brother in the three coffins lined up in front of the altar.

But the tops of the coffins were closed, and nobody had let her see the bodies at all, and it had been hard for her to accept that any of it was real. In fact, when she'd heard the door open at one point, she looked back, almost expecting to see Mark walking down the aisle toward her. But it hadn't been Mark at all. It had just been another stranger, so she turned back and faced the front again. And then, when they'd gone out to the little cemetery behind the church, she had the strangest feeling as they put Mark's coffin into the grave.

He's not in there!

The thought had come into her mind out of nowhere. She tried to tell herself that it was dumb-that if Mark wasn't in the coffin, they wouldn't be burying it.

But the thought stayed with her. Several times since the funeral-she wasn't sure how many-she'd come awake in the middle of the night, the memory of a dream fresh in her mind.

It was like she was in the grave, too, and Mark was with her, and they were both pounding on the sides of the coffin, but nobody could hear them. They knew they were buried and that they weren't going to be able to get free, but they weren't dead.

She remembered crying those nights.

The other nights she must have had other dreams that had made her cry, but she didn't remember them.

Only the one of Mark, struggling to get them both out of the terrible prison of the coffin. When she awakened from the dream and found she wasn't in the coffin at all, she'd known that Mark wasn't, either.

Tears threatened to overcome her, and she put the thought out of her mind, determined not to start crying again. She got out of bed and dressed, pulling a clean pair of jeans out of the bottom drawer of the dresser they'd brought over from the house on Telluride Drive. Then she put on one of Mark's old flannel shirts and pulled a sweater over that.

She liked the feel of Mark's shirt against her skin, even though it was much too big for her, and even though it had been washed last week, she imagined she could still smell Mark in the shirt. When she wore it, she felt close to him.

It was as she left her room that she decided what she was going to do that morning.

Today, she would go and visit her parents.

TheHarrises were already at the breakfast table when Kelly came out and silently took her place next to Linda. Mrs. Harris, whom she still hadn't managed to call Aunt Elaine-even though Mrs. Harris had told her she ought to-was looking at her. She finally managed a polite smile.

"Did you sleep all right, Kelly?"

She nodded, then her gaze returned to the stack of pancakes on the plate. She really wasn't very hungry, but she remembered her mother telling her that it wasn't polite not to eat whatever was put in front of you.

She began forking the heavy cakes into her mouth.

Twenty minutes later, when her plate was empty, Kelly looked up shyly. "May I be excused?" she asked.

"Of course," Elaine Harris told her.

She scuttled out of her chair and went back to her room, where she dug in the bottom drawer of her dresser until she found the little bank she had kept her allowance in for as long as she could remember.

She pried the bottom of the little brass box open and pulled out five dollars. She wasn't certain how much flowers cost, but it seemed like five dollars should be enough. She hid the bank away again, pulled on her jacket, then walked quietly to the front door. She'd just pulled it open when she heard a voice behind her.

"Where are you going, Kelly?"

It was Linda, and Kelly looked shyly up at her. "The- The cemetery," she admitted, and felt herself blush. "I just wanted to go visit my family."

Linda smiled at her. "Can I go with you?"

Kelly hesitated, then bobbed her head. "All right."

Half an hour later they walked into the little graveyard behind the church and slowly approached the three graves that were lined up next to each other, a single wide slab of marble marking the spot. In Kelly's hand were two red roses. At the flower shop, when she'd bought them, Linda had asked if she didn't want three, but Kelly had shaken her head, and Linda, frowning thoughtfully, had said nothing. Now, as they stood in front of the graves, Linda watched as Kelly carefully placed one of the roses on her mother's grave and the other on her father's. Only when the little girl finally straightened up did Linda speak.

"Why didn't you get one for Mark?" she asked.

Kelly was silent for several seconds, then her brows knit thoughtfully. "B-Because he's not here," she said, her voice barely audible.

Linda felt her heart skip a beat and her breath catch in her throat. "Not here?" she echoed.

Kelly shook her head.

"He's not dead," she said. Her eyes drifted toward the mountains to the east. "I think he's up there," she said. "I think he's up there, and he's going to come back someday." Her eyes met Linda's, and there was a pleading quality to them that made Linda want to cry. "If he were really dead, I'd know it, wouldn't I? I mean, wouldn't I feel it, like I do about Mom and Dad?"

Linda slowly nodded.

"But I don't," Kelly said. "I just feel like Mark isn't dead at all."

Now it was Linda who was silent for a few moments. Finally, she reached out and took Kelly's hand.

"I know," she said as they slowly walked out of the cemetery. "I feel the same way." She smiled at Kelly again, and winked. "But we won't tell anybody, will we? It'll just be our own little secret."

Kelly said nothing, but squeezed Linda's hand.

Now she didn't feel quite so alone in the world.

"But what if he's not dead?" Phil Collins asked. He was in Marty Ames's private quarters in the sports center, and though a fire blazed cheerfully on the hearth, its warmth had done nothing to dispel the chill Collins felt every time he glanced out the enormous picture window that faced the mountains. The thought that Mark Tanner might still be alive up there somewhere had haunted him from the moment Jerry Harris's men had given up the search two days after Mark's disappearance. But now Marty Ames looked at him scornfully, and Collins felt the sting of the doctor's open contempt.

"How many times do I have to explain it?" Ames said, his voice taking on the condescending tone he might have used on a child. "He was already dying when he escaped. Every system in his body had gone out of balance-his growth hormones, adrenal gland, the works. You saw what he was like when we brought him out here. He was already half crazy. The only way we were able to keep him under control at all was with heavy doses of barbiturates."

"Which didn't work," Collins reminded him, his voice bitter.

"All right, I'll admit we shouldn't have lost him," Ames replied. "But the fact is we did, and the fact is also that he's dead! Christ, Collins-he was sick, he was going crazy, and he didn't know anything about survival in the first place. You really think he could have survived up there?"

He nodded toward the mountains, and as if to underscore his words, a gust of wind howled outside, rattling the shutters and making the pine trees bend.

"I suppose not," Collins reluctantly agreed. Each day was getting shorter than the one before. Though it was only six o'clock, it was already dark outside. But the mountains, he knew, were covered with snow now, and this morning he'd seen a few early skiers heading up the valley toward the lift, intent on being the first to hit the slopes that year.

What Ames had told him made sense. "But I still wish we knew for sure."

"We never will," Ames told him, rising to his feet in an obvious gesture of dismissal.

Collins drained the last of a double shot of bourbon from the glass in his hand, then heaved himself out of his chair and walked to the door, where his thick, plaid hunting jacket hung from a brass hook on the wall. Shrugging himself into it, he eyed Ames warily. "What about the rest of the boys?" he asked. "How are they looking?"

Ames offered him a wintry smile. "If you mean are any of them getting sick, the answer is no," he said coolly. "If you mean are any more ofthemgoing to get sick, obviously I can't tell you. That's what experiments are all about, you know: finding out what will happen." He held the door open for Collins, and as the coach left the apartment on the second floor and headed for the staircase, Ames spoke once more, his voice edged with sarcasm. "Sure you're not afraid to walk home alone in the dark, Collins? You never know what might come out of the hills, do you?"

Collins ignored him, walking heavily down the broad staircase and leaving the lodge. He walked quickly toward the main gate, where men were now posted twenty-four hours a day, and nodded to the guard as he passed through. As he moved down the driveway toward the main road for the half-mile walk back to his home on the eastern fringes of the town, he found his pace quickening and suddenly wished he'd brought his car instead of deciding that the hike would be good for him.

Five minutes after Collins left his office, Marty Ames glanced at his watch, winced at the lateness of the hour, then shrugged indifferently: If Jerry Harris didn't want to wait for him, that was his problem. After all, Ames was in the driver's seat now, at least as far asTarrenTech was concerned. They'd covered up so much, allowed themselves to become so deeply entangled in Ames's research, that they would never be able to extricate themselves. From now on, Jerry Harris-and Ted Thornton, too-would do exactly as Marty Ames told them.

As he left the building and slid behind the wheel of one of the station wagons with rocky mountain high emblazoned on its side, he smiled to himself. He was, indeed, the man who knew too much, and it was his own knowledge-his own brilliance-that made his position withinTarrenTech impregnable.

He pulled through the gates, raising only a single finger from the steering wheel as an acknowledgment of the guard's presence, then stepped on the accelerator, his whole body responding to the surge of power from the car's engine. The car was still gaining speed as it passed Phil Collins a minute later. Ames, if he noticed the coach at all, didn't bother even to wave to him, let alone offer him a lift.

Ten minutes later he was on the west side of Silverdale, speeding toward theTarrenTech building. His mind was only partly concentrating on the road, for most of his attention was focused, as always, on his research. A new family was arriving in Silverdale next week, and the medical records for their son had been placed on Ames's desk only that morning. Already his mind was at work on the boy's treatment and how he might avoid the failures he had experienced with Mark Tanner, JeffLaConner, and Randy Stevens.

When the headlights of the station wagon first picked up the oddly hulking shape that stood frozen in the middle of the road a hundred yards ahead, Ames didn't even see it.

And when he did see it a couple of seconds later, his first thought was that it must be a deer, for all he could truly see in the glare of the headlights was the bright glow of a pair of eyes shining out from the dark shape.

Large, animal eyes.

Then, as the car sped closer, Ames realized that it was not a deer in the road at all. It was another sort of creature entirely.

A creature of his own creation.

He gasped as he stared at Mark Tanner.

It wasn't possible-the boy should have been dead by now-should have been dead at least a week ago! Ames's hands froze on the wheel as he stared, transfixed, at the creature that now seemed to be hypnotized by the glare of the lights.

The car was only a few yards away from Mark when Ames suddenly realized that the boy wasn't going to move out of the path of the speeding vehicle, that he was only going to stare dumbly into the headlights until the car overtook him, and crushed him.

Ames was going to kill his own creation.

At the last second, he knew he couldn't do it.

He jerked his right foot off the accelerator and smashed it down on the brake, at the same time twisting the wheel violently to the right.

The tires screeched angrily as they lost their traction on the pavement, and the station wagon slewed off the road, shooting across the shallow ditch beyond the shoulder only to smash head-on into a boulder on the other side.

Marty Ames experienced an odd sensation of detached surprise as the frame of the station wagon crumpled beneath the force of the impact, and the engine block moved back, jamming the steering wheel and the twisted wreckage of the dashboard into Ames's chest. At the same moment that the wheel crushed his chest, his head flew forward, snapping his neck and shattering the windshield.

He was dead even before the brief moment of surprise had faded away.

Mark Tanner gazed curiously at the wreckage of the car, then crouched low to the ground. His eyes-the wary, canny eyes of an animal-remained fixed on the ruins of the station wagon as he crept close. He paused a few feet away, sniffing cautiously at the air, then reached out and touched the twisted metal of the driver's door, which was attached to the body of the car by only a single broken hinge.

The metal felt cold to his touch. He moved his finger away and touched the neck of the man inside the car.

Though the man's face was covered with blood and totally unrecognizable, Mark knew who he was.

For a moment he had an urge to wrench Martin Ames loose from the wreckage and tear his body limb from limb, leaving the remains wherever they fell.

But then the urge passed, and he turned away, silently disappearing into the night.

The wind was rising now, and Phil Collins tugged his jacket collar up around his neck, hunching his shoulders, resisting the urge to turn around and look up toward the mountains that rose around him.

He came to the corner of Aspen Street and turned right. He paused then, and his skin crawled with the uneasy sensation that he was being watched.

Now he did turn around, shading his eyes against the glare of the streetlamp that glowed overhead, but seeing nothing in the inky darkness; only a silent blackness that seemed to close in around him, a suffocating, strangely malignant stillness.

He told himself he was imagining things, but once more his pace quickened.

His house was dark as he approached it, and he had a fleeting moment of uncertainty as he tried to remember if he'd turned the porch light on or not. But of course he hadn't-it had still been broad daylight when he'd left the place a couple of hours before. He took the steps to the front porch in two quick bounds, then reached up to the ledge under the eaves for the key that he always left there.

A moment later he stepped through the front door and groped for the wall switch. The overhead light came on, washing the shadows from the living room.

Collins hesitated.

Something was wrong. His big German shepherd, who was invariably waiting for him by the door, was nowhere to be seen.

"Sparks?" he called out. "Where are you, boy?"

He heard a quick bark, followed by an eager whimpering, but the dog still didn't appear. Frowning deeply and with an odd prickling sensation running over the back of his neck, Collins moved through the living room into the small kitchen.

Sparks was crouched down by the door to the cellar, his muzzle pressed to the crack between the door and the floor.

He looked up as Collins came into the room and his tail wagged, but then he went back to his eager snuffling of the gap below the door.

Collins's frown deepened. There couldn't be anyone down there. He'd trained Sparks as a watchdog himself, and he knew the animal wouldn't let anyone into the house without his permission. He'd even had some complaints from the neighbors about the dog's fierceness; complaints he'd totally ignored.

"What is it, boy?" he asked. "What's wrong?"

The animal got to his feet, his tail wagging, and scratched eagerly at the closed door.

"Okay," Collins said, pulling the door open. "Go on down and get it, whatever it is."

The dog dashed down the steep flight of stairs and disappeared into the darkness.

Collins waited for a moment, listening. He could hear the shepherd whimpering eagerly, but there were no other sounds. Finally he reached for the light switch by the door and flipped it.

Nothing happened.

Cursing softly, Collins rummaged in the top drawer by the kitchen sink and found a flashlight. Its batteries were weak, but it glowed dimly when he pressed the switch. From another drawer he took a large butcher knife.

With the light held firmly in his left hand and the knife in his right, he started down the stairs.

When he came to the bottom, he stood in the darkness for a moment, listening. He could still hear Sparks, off to the right, making the eager whimpering noises that always emerged from his throat when Collins scratched him behind the ears.

But why?

There was no one there-there couldn't be.

He played the light in the direction of the sounds and suddenly froze. Reflected in the light, glowing strangely, were a pair of eyes.

Not the eyes of an animal.

But not the eyes of a human being, either.

They were something else, something Phil Collins had never seen before. And as he stared at them an icy finger of terror moved slowly down his spine.

He took a step forward, his fingers tightening on the knife. He knew he had to strike first, plunge the knife into the creature in the basement before it could attack him.

He had to kill it while it was still blinded by the glare of the flashlight.

Then, without warning, there was a sudden howl and Sparks lunged out of the darkness toward him. The knife clattered to the floor as Collins dropped it in shocked surprise. He raised his arms to fend off the animal, but it was too late.

Spark's jaws closed on his throat, and he felt razor-sharp teeth ripping into his flesh, felt his windpipe puncture, then felt a warm sticky gush as the animal's fangs ripped into his jugular vein. He sank to his knees. A scream rose in his throat as he groped wildly for the knife, but it was already too late, for his vocal cords had collapsed under the dog's furious attack and the knife was far out of his reach. He dropped sideways, sprawling, to the floor, then rolled over, face down on the concrete.

Sparks, snarling furiously, tore at the fallen body, ripping away large pieces of flesh and tossing them aside, then leaping to the attack once more.

At last a strange guttural voice spoke in the darkness, and it was over. The dog stopped its attack, whimpered once, then turned and trotted up the stairs.

Mark Tanner waited a moment, then stepped over the body of the football coach and started up the stairs himself.

Sparks was waiting for him by the back door.

Together the two of them slipped out into the night, moving silently through the darkness, away from the village and up into the foothills above the valley.

Mark had no idea what time it was when he reached the cave ten miles away from the valley. He'd lost all sense of time days ago and was now aware only of daytime and nighttime.

He slept in the daytime, curled up at the back of the cave he'd discovered on his third day in the mountains, always having carefully banked his small fire-the fire he never allowed to go entirely out-so that it would still have a few coals left when he awakened just before sunset and began preparing for the night's hunting.

His eyes had changed quickly, and now the glare of sunlight nearly blinded him. But at night his large pupils gathered in every trace of light and he could see clearly; watch the owls and bats flitting through the darkness, see the other creatures of the night as they crept about in the constant search for food.

He was one of the hunters now, too, and though he had survived those first few days on little more than water from the streams and a few fungi he'd risked sampling, he was quickly shifting over to a carnivorous diet.

He'd captured his first rabbit on the fourth day, but it had been crippled-nearly dead when he'd stumbled upon it. Nevertheless, he skinned it clumsily with a broken knife he'd scavenged from an empty campground, then cooked it on a skewer over the fire he'd spent hours trying to light the day before, when he first discovered the cave. For a while he'd been afraid someone would see the smoke of the fire and come looking for him, but he never let the flame burn too high, and the smoke was nothing more than a faint wisp that quickly dispersed in the constant breezes of the mountains.

Almost every night he'd found himself drawn back to the hills overlooking Silverdale. Tonight he'd known he was going down into the village itself almost as soon as he left the cave. It hadn't taken him long to make the trip, for his body had hardened and he could move tirelessly all night long.

He'd stopped twice on the way to the little valley where the town lay, the first time for only a few minutes. He'd heard a sound in the brush and paused, listening. But when he heard it again, he knew it was only the rustling of a mouse and went on.

A few miles later he'd smelled a rabbit and stopped instantly, his nostrils sniffing the wind eagerly. He located the rabbit after a few minutes, nibbling at a small patch of dried grass beneath a clump of aspens. He stalked it carefully and patiently, keeping himself downwind of the creature, moving silently until he was only a few yards from it.

When he finally pounced, the rabbit had no time even to react. It had simply paused in its eating, its ears pricking up before Mark's hands had closed around its throat, killing it with a fast twist that snapped its neck.

He tucked the rabbit under the piece of rope he'd found somewhere and now used as a belt, then gone on. Mark was almost certain the creatures he killed felt nothing at all, just as he was certain Martin Ames had felt nothing when his car had hurtled off the road a little while ago.

It had been odd, watching the car race toward him, and knowing that he wasn't going to move out of its path. It had been a strange experience, staring into the headlights, blinded by them, for the first time truly feeling like the wild animal he had become.

And when he'd paused for a moment to gaze at the body of Martin Ames, he'd realized once again just how much he'd changed. For as he stared at the body of the man who had taken his very life from him, he'd felt nothing.

No rage, and no remorse.

And yet he knew, even then, that although part of him was now truly feral, there was another part of him that was still human and always would be.

When he'd come within sight of the village, he sat for a while, oblivious of the cold, staring down into the town. He knew there were things he needed, some things he hadn't been able to scavenge in the campgrounds, or even in the dump he'd discovered forty miles away, on the edges of another village.

He might have stolen from anywhere, but he knew he wouldn't. It was Silverdale that had made him what he had become, so it would be Silverdale that supplied him with what he needed.

And only certain people in Silverdale.

He'd known Collins's house was empty from the moment he'd seen it. All his instincts told him that it would be safe for him to go inside. Even when the dog had begun barking before he'd managed to force the back door open, he hadn't been afraid.

His instincts told him the dog wouldn't hurt him.

And he'd been right, for as the door had finally given way under the strength of his arms, the barking stopped abruptly, and the dog's head had lowered. Then the dog came forward, sniffing curiously, and finally licked tentatively at his hand.

Mark had spoken to it in the strange guttural half-language that was all his deformed jaw allowed him now, then reached down to pet him. As his hand touched the animal's fur and he whispered softly to it, the dog had become his.

He'd gone quickly through the house, taking only the things he needed most-a pair of heavy denim pants and a thick flannel shirt from the closet in the bedroom.

In the cellar he found a set of camping pans and a Swiss army knife.

He'd been about to leave when he heard the front door open, and he moved swiftly up the stairs to close the cellar door. He would wait until the house was silent, then slip away.

But the dog had unwittingly betrayed him, and then, when he recognized the voice of the man who came down the stairs a few minutes later, he'd felt a pang of fear, a pang the dog understood.

He had let the dog kill Collins-he knew that. He could have stopped him, but he hadn't.

After it was all over, he found that the last of the rage that had plagued him was gone, and that at least a part of what had been done to him was over. There was no more anger left in him. Still, as he loped back to the cave with the dog trotting along beside him, he knew that he would return to Silverdale one more time that night.

But not yet.

Not until the darkest hour of the night, when the moon was low, and the people of the village were asleep.

Kelly wasn't certain what woke her. One moment she had been sound asleep, and the next wide awake, sitting up in bed, her senses tingling with anticipation.

Mark.

He was here, somewhere very close to her.

She slipped out of bed, crept to the window, and peered out into the blackness beyond.

The moon was low, almost ready to disappear behind the mountain ridges, and deep shadows lay across theHarrises ' backyard. Although she could see nothing, she could still sense that there was something outside in the night.

She backed away from the window, then slipped through the door of her room and let herself into Linda's room next door.

Linda, too, was wide awake.

"He's here," Kelly whispered. She moved across the room to Linda's window and moved the curtain aside. A moment later Linda, pulling a robe around her shoulders, joined her, and together they gazed out into the darkness that shrouded the house. It was as if a shadow had slipped over the fence-a presence so silent, so nearly formless that for a moment neither of them was sure she had seen it at all. And then, very suddenly, a face appeared at the window.

Though it was an ugly face, a twisted, grotesque mask that was barely human anymore, neither Linda nor Kelly flinched or turned away.

For it was Mark's face, and from beneath his lowering brows, it was Mark's own gentle eyes that looked out at them.

His hand came up and gently touched the windowpane, and Linda knew immediately what he wanted.

She unlocked the window and slid it silently upward.

For a long moment nothing happened at all, and then, his gnarled, misshapen fingers trembling, Mark reached out and touched Linda's cheek.

The fingers of his other hand gently brushed a lock of hair away from Kelly's brow.

He leaned forward and slipped his arms around them, pressing the two girls close to his chest.

A slight sound, almost like a sob, rose in his throat.

Then he released them and turned away, disappearing into the night as silently and as swiftly as he'd come.

Kelly and Linda stayed where they were for a long time, neither of them saying a word. Finally, Linda slid the window closed again and gently guided Kelly back to bed.

"Will he come back again?" Kelly asked as Linda tucked her in.

Linda bent down and kissed the little girl on the brow.

"Of course he will," she said. "He'll always come back, because he'll always love us."

Kelly gazed up at her, her brows knit into a worried frown. "But will we always love him?" she asked.

Linda was silent for a moment, then nodded.

"Why would we stop loving him?" she asked. "It doesn't matter what he looks like, or what's happened to him. He's still Mark, and inside he isn't any different than he ever was."

That night, for the first time since the funeral, both Linda Harris and Kelly Tanner slept soundly, undisturbed by dreams.

For on a hillside, far up in the mountains above the town, Mark Tanner sat alone, watching over them.