Creature

Chapter Six

Sharon Tanner stood at the kitchen sink, her lips pursed, her brows pulled together in a worried frown. Though there were four steaks sizzling on the grill behind her, she had forgotten them for the moment, for she was watching Mark, who was seated cross-legged on the lawn near the garage, staring blankly at the rabbit hutch. Though she'd been watching him closely for only a few minutes, she'd been vaguely aware of his presence in the backyard for at least half an hour. That in itself wasn't unusual; Mark usually spent at least an hour a day taking care of the rabbits, petting them, checking them, or just playing with them, letting them run free in the yard forChivas to chase, confident that the dog would bring them back unharmed.

But today something was different. Instead of frolicking around Mark and sniffing eagerly at the hutch,Chivas was sprawled out on the ground beside his master. The dog's forelegs were stretched out in front of him and his massive head rested quietly on his paws. Behind him, his tail lay limply on the ground, and though he looked as if be might be asleep, Sharon could see even from the kitchen that his eyes were open and staring up at Mark's face.

Chivas, too, apparently sensed that something was wrong. And now that she thought about it, Sharon realized that it wasn't only today. All week, it seemed in retrospect, Mark had grown quieter and quieter, spending more and more time by himself, wandering around in the hills withChivas after school, or just sitting by himself in the backyard, staring at the rabbits in their cage. But she was almost certain he wasn't seeing the rabbits at all. No, something else was on his mind, something he hadn't been willing to talk about. When Kelly came into the kitchen, demanding to know when dinner was going to be ready, Sharon made up her mind.

"In a few minutes, honey," she told the little girl. "How'd you like to take care of the steaks for me?"

Kelly's eyes glittered with pleasure, and she instantly picked up the large fork from the counter by the grill and stabbed experimentally at one of the thick T-bones that were just barely beginning to brown. "Is it time to turn them?"

"Every four minutes," Sharon replied, glancing at the meat and deciding she had at least fifteen minutes in which to talk with her son. Leaving Kelly alone in the kitchen, she went out into the yard and dropped down on the lawn next to Mark. As if sensing that help for his master had arrived,Chivas sat up, his tail wagging, his big trusting eyes fixed on her expectantly.

"Want to talk about it?" Sharon asked.

Mark glanced at her curiously. "Talk about what? Did I do something wrong?"

"No," Sharon replied. "But I'm your mother. I can tell when something's bothering you. You get quiet. But quiet won't fix anything."

Mark took a deep breath, then sighed. "I-I guess I'm just not sure I like Silverdale," he said, looking away.

"This is only Thursday. In less than a week you've already decided you don't like it? You were the one who was so excited about coming, remember?"

Mark nodded glumly. "I know. And I know how much Dad likes it. Even Kelly's stopped sulking about her friends at home."

"And you don't want to rain onanybodys parade. Right?"

Mark hesitated, then nodded. "I guess so," he admitted. But then, as he met his mother's gaze, everything that had been building up inside him since Monday came pouring out. "All anyone here thinks about is sports," he said. "Mom, I can't even get a job, 'cause I'm not on any of the teams."

Sharon stared at him in confusion. What on earth was he talking about? "A job?" she asked. "Why are you looking for a job?"

Mark flushed self-consciously. "I-Well, I thought if I had a job, Dad might get off my back about going out for sports. I mean, if I was working, I wouldn't have time to play, would I?"

Sharon could hardly keep from laughing out loud, but the look of appeal in her son's eyes stopped her. "Well, aren't you the devious one," she said, allowing herself a small chuckle. "I have to admit, it would probably work. So what's the problem?"

Mark shrugged, and told her what had happened at the camera store on Monday afternoon. The scene had been repeated on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons, as he'd presented himself at other shops. Today, Henry Spalding's words had been repeated to him again, this time at the drugstore. "What am I going to do? I'm not going to make any of the teams, and I'm not going to be able to get a job, and Dad's going to start riding me."

The two of them sat without speaking for a few minutes, as if the silence itself might provide a solution. Finally, Sharon shrugged. "I wish I knew what to tell you," she said. "I'll try to keep your father from pushing you too hard. But you know your father." She gave Mark an affectionate pat on the back, then scrambled to her feet. "Come on. Supper's almost ready."

But Mark shook his head. "I'm not very hungry," he said, looking up at her. "Is it all right if I just skip dinner? Maybe I'll takeChivas up into the hills."

Sharon considered it for a moment, then made up her mind. He's almost sixteen, she told herself. He has to start working things through for himself. "Okay," she agreed. "But just make sure you get back before dark. I don't want you getting lost up there."

Mark grinned at her, and the change in his expression alone was enough to make Sharon certain she'd made the right decision. "I won't. But even if I did,Chivas would get us back."

As Sharon started back to the kitchen where Kelly was already yelling that the steaks were going to burn, Mark andChivas disappeared down the driveway.

Mark wasn't certain how long he'd been gone. In fact, he hadn't really been paying too much attention to how they'd gotten here. WithChivas romping ahead of him, he'd walked north until he'd come to the edge of town, then followed the winding course of the river for a quarter of a mile to a small footbridge. Crossing the bridge, he'd found three paths leading in as many directions, and chosen the one that would take him uphill. Within twenty minutes they'd come to the edge of the valley and started up into the mountains.

The tree-dotted meadowlands of the valley quickly gave way to thick stands of pines interspersed with groves of aspen.Chivas, his whole body quivering with pleasure at the strange aromas that filled his nostrils, kept bounding off into the woods, giving chase to the squirrels and birds, or anything else that moved. Mark himself kept to the trail, working ever higher. Then, as he came around a tight bend, he found himself standing at the top of a steep bluff that commanded a view of the entire valley. For some reason the crest of the bluff was clear of trees, but in several places the tall grass had been matted down where deer had apparently bedded for the night. Mark glanced around forChivas, but the big dog was nowhere to be seen. The sun, still a little above the horizon, felt warm after the deep shade of the woods, so he dropped down onto one of the deer beds and gazed out over the valley.

A few minutes later he stretched out on his back and let his eyes close. Just for a few seconds…

It was with a start that he realized the sun had dropped below the horizon.Chivas, a low growl rumbling in his throat, was standing next to Mark, his body trembling as he gazed off into the distance, one forepaw raised slightly off the ground, his tail dropping in a slight curve behind him, every muscle in his body tense.

Mark shook the sleep out of his head, then got to his knees. Squinting in the fading daylight, he followedChivas's steady gaze but could see nothing.

Still, something had alerted the dog, and jarred Mark himself out of his light sleep.

But what?

And then he heard it.

It was a low, vaguely wailing sound, and when it first drifted up to him out of the valley, he wasn't sure he'd heard it at all. But then, as he strained his ears andChivas's growl grew louder, the sound changed, becoming a scream of something that sounded like pain.

Pain, or fury.

It was an animal sound, vicious and feral, and Mark felt a chill in his body as the howl slashed through the peace of the evening.

A split-second later the howling abruptly ended, leaving not even an echo to reverberate through the hills.

Chivas, at his side, barked once then fell silent.

The two of them stayed where they were for several long minutes, listening for the sound again, but a silence seemed to gather, and as the sun continued to set and the sky in the west took on a brilliant, pinkish tinge, long, deep shadows could be seen in the valley below.

"Come on, boy," Mark said, instinctively dropping his voice to little more than a whisper. "Let's get home." He rose to his feet and started back along the path through the woods. This timeChivas, instead of bounding off on a path of his own, stayed close to his master. Every few yards the dog paused to look back, a soft whimper rising in his throat. Mark hurried his step, but it wasn't until they'd crossed the bridge once again and were back in the more familiar surroundings of the town that he finally felt himself begin to relax.

Linda Harris watched anxiously as Tiffany Welch took a deep breath, ran three quick steps, jumped, then hit the end of the springboard perfectly. The board launched her upward, and she executed a near-perfect flip in the air before landing unsteadily on the shoulders of Josh Hinsdale and Pete Nakamura. The two boys, feeling Tiffany's legs tremble, grasped her ankles to steady her, and she threw her arms wide as she remained on their shoulders for a moment before losing her balance. Yelling for them to let go, she jumped back to the mats that covered the floor of the gym.

"All right," she said, reading the look in Linda's eyes. "So it wasn't perfect. But at least I got up, and by the time we have the homecoming game, I'll be able to stay up."

Linda shook her head. "Or you'll wind up with a broken back. I'm telling you, Tiff, if Mrs. Haynes finds out what you're doing, she'll kill us all."

"So we won't let her find out," Tiffany said. "I'll just keep practicing until I get it right, and then we'll show her."

"Well, I'm not practicing anymore tonight," Linda told her. She glanced up at the clock. "It's almost nine, and I still have to do my algebra. Come on."

The two girls said good-bye to Josh and Pete, then hurried into the locker room, showered quickly, and dressed. "Want to grab a Coke?" Tiffany asked as they left fifteen minutes later, their hair still wet, but drying quickly in the dry mountain air.

Linda shook her head. "Can't. Besides the algebra, I've got an English paper due."

" 'My Summer Vacation, by Linda Jane Harris'?" Tiffany asked, her voice edged with sarcasm. ''Don't you just hate those things?"

Linda giggled. "Except that this one's even worse," she said. "I have to come up with a thousand words on 'The Most Important Person In My Life.' Maybe," she went on, as a sudden image of the English teacher's humorless face came into her mind, "I'll do my paper on Mr. Grey himself."

Tiffany shook her head. "My brother tried that two years ago. Mr. Grey gave him an F and made him do it over again."

As they turned the corner around the school building, a figure suddenly stepped out of the shadows ahead. Both the girls froze for a second, but then they heard, "Hey! It's just me."

The figure moved fully out of the shadows, and JeffLaConner appeared in the light of the streetlamp above. "I was waiting for you," he said to Linda.

Tiffany glanced at Linda out of the corner of her eye. "How about Jeff?" she said. "You could write the paper about him, couldn't you?" Then, before Linda could think of a good retort, Tiffany said a quick good-bye and hurried away, leaving Jeff and Linda alone.

Jeff fell in beside her and slipped his arm around her shoulders. It wasn't the first time he'd put his arm around her as they'd walked, but tonight, for some reason, it made her feel uncomfortable. Almost instantly she realized why.

Mark Tanner.

Linda had been dating JeffLaConner since last spring. But even during the summer, when they'd spent time together almost every day, she hadn't been certain how she felt. Of course, at the beginning she'd been thrilled that Jeff was interested in her at all, since she was only a freshman and he was a junior. And a football star, at that. And she'd loved the envious looks Tiffany Welch and the other girls had given her when Jeff came over to sit with her at lunchtime. But as the summer wore on and Jeff began spending more and more time practicing football, she'd had misgivings. It wasn't that she didn't like him-she did. It was just that he didn't seem to be interested in anything but football, and half the time, when he'd come over to see her, he and Robb ended up out in the backyard, passing a ball back and forth while she sat on the porch wondering why he'd come at all.

And then last weekend Mark had come to town, and on Saturday, before Robb had arrived and Mark had gotten so quiet, she'd enjoyed talking to him. Not that they'd really talked about much. But it had been easy for her to talk to Mark, because unlike her brother, or Jeff most of the time, he really listened when she talked to him. It had been the same every morning this week, when they'd walked to school together. Even at lunch hour, though most of the time she was with Jeff, she'd found herself looking around for Mark.

"We still on for the pep rally tomorrow night?" she heard Jeff asking now. As he spoke, she felt his hand tighten on her shoulder, and there was a roughness in his voice she couldn't remember having heard before.

"T-Tomorrow night?" she asked, stammering slightly. "But you didn't ask me, did you?"

Jeff stopped walking and turned to face her. They were a few yards away from a streetlight, and though Jeff's face was partly in shadow, his expression appeared angry. "I didn't think I had to," he said. "You're going to be there, and I'm going to be there, and we always go out afterward, don't we?"

"Do we?" Linda asked, then felt stupid at the sound of her own question. Of course they did-everyone knew they did. Why had she said something so dumb?

Mark Tanner: that was why.

"What do you mean, do we?" Jeff asked. There was a definite tinge of anger when he said, "You're my girlfriend, aren't you?"

Linda swallowed. "I-I don't know," she replied. All of a sudden it seemed as if her mind had gone off on its own and she no longer had any control over her own thoughts. "I think-well, maybe we've been spending too much time together…" Now, why had she said that? Sure, she'd been thinking about Jeff, wondering how she really felt about him, but she hadn't really been thinking about breaking up with him, had she?

Maybe she had.

Jeff's eyes were glittering angrily now, and he reached out, putting his hands on her shoulders. "It's that Tanner creep, isn't it?" he demanded. "If that little shit's been trying to hit on you-"

"Stop it!" Linda hissed, glancing around, hoping no one was watching. "It doesn't have anything to do with Mark."

But it did, and Jeff seemed to know it. His hands tightened on her shoulders, and she felt a stab of pain where his fingers dug into her flesh. The streetlight was full on his face now, and suddenly he looked different to her. His anger had done something to his features, and his face-the face that-she had always before considered so handsome-seemed coarse.

"I don't want you talking to him anymore," Jeff was saying now, and suddenly Linda's own anger rose inside her. Who was JeffLaConner to tell her what she could do and whom she could talk to?

"Let go of me," she demanded. "I'll talk to whoever I want-''

But she couldn't finish her sentence, for Jeff's face had darkened with rage and he was shaking her.

His hands dug deep into her arms now, and she felt flashes of pain shooting down into her hands. Her head was flopping back and forth and her eyes filled with tears.

"Stop it!" she screamed. "You're hurting me! Jeff, stop that right now!"

It was her cry of pain that penetrated Jeff's anger. As suddenly as he had begun shaking her, he stopped and released her. Her face was streaked with tears, he saw, and she was rubbing her left shoulder, her fingers kneading at her own flesh as she tried to massage the pain away. Jeff stared at her mutely for a moment, then abruptly turned, smashed his fist into a tree, and with a cry that was half pain and half frustrated anger, broke into a run and plunged away into the night.

Linda, breathing hard, her heart pounding, watched him go. After a while the pain in her shoulders began to ease, and finally she resumed walking home. What on earth had happened just now? Jeff had never acted like that before-never!

Tonight she'd actually been terrified of him. And she hadn't done anything, not really. But if he was going to act like that…

My God, what if he came back?

She quickened her step, finally breaking into a run. By the time she got home, hurrying to her room without even speaking to her parents, she had made up her mind.

She picked up the telephone and dialed the Tanners' number, only realizing when their phone started to ring that, without even thinking about it, she'd already committed their number to memory.

"Mrs. Tanner?" she asked a moment later. "This is Linda. Can I talk to Mark?"

It was nearly midnight, but Mark still hadn't been able to fall asleep. He'd been in bed for more than an hour already and still couldn't stop trying to figure out what had happened that night. When he'd first heard Linda's voice on the phone, he hadn't thought much about it. But when she'd asked him if he was going to the pep rally tomorrow night, then asked him if he'd go out for a hamburger with her afterward, he'd started to wonder what was going on. He'd accepted the invitation before he'd even thought about it, but as soon as he hung up the phone, the questions had started coming into his mind.

Why had she called him?

She was JeffLaConner's girlfriend, wasn't she?

And her voice had sounded kind of funny, too, as if there were something wrong.

Eventually he concluded that his mother, worried about him after this afternoon, had called Mrs. Harris and asked her to have Linda call him.

But his mother had denied it, and Mark was pretty sure she wouldn't lie to him. She might try to explain why she'd done it, and try to keep him from breaking the date, but she wouldn't lie about it.

Still, it had to be a mercy date. Linda probably just felt sorry for him and had asked Jeff if it would be all right if she invited him along.

That was it! She intended to have him tag along with her and Jeff! He'd look like some kind of an idiot!

He'd almost called her back right then, but as he reached for the phone, he'd changed his mind. Linda wouldn't do a thing like that, would she? He thought about it for a long time and finally decided she wouldn't.

He'd spent some time on his homework, then gone to bed. But he still couldn't figure it out-Linda was a cheerleader, and going out with the star of the football team. And even though she wasn't very tall, she was still an inch taller than he was. So why would she want to go out with him?

Giving up on sleep, he switched the light on, got out of bed, and went to stare at himself in the mirror.

Skinny. Not wiry, like his mother always told him. Just skinny. His chest looked narrow, and his arms were much too thin.

Unbidden, an image of JeffLaConner came into his mind. Was there really a chance he'd ever look like that?

Then he remembered Robb Harris. Three years ago, when theHarrises had lived in San Marcos, Robb had been just as skinny as Mark was now. But Robb had put on weight, and looked great.

Maybe he could do it too, Mark thought as he stared unhappily at his own image.

And it wasn't just Linda, he told himself. It was everything. He knew he'd been thinking about it all afternoon while he andChivas were walking in the hills. He just hadn't admitted he was thinking about it. But there wasn't any point in putting it off any longer.

He was in Silverdale, and he wasn't going anywhere else. And if he was going to live here, he was going to have to fit in with everyone else, even if it meant learning to like sports.

Even if he didn't learn to like sports, he could fake it. He could go to the games and cheer as loudly as anybody else.

And he could start doing exercises. He'd been doing them in gym since seventh grade, and he could do them again.

That was the whole thing, he decided. He didn't like the way he was, so he would change himself.

Lying down on the floor, he braced his feet under the lowest drawer of his desk, then folded his arms behind his head. Taking a deep breath, he began to do sit-ups.

To his own surprise, he managed twenty-five of them before his stomach began hurting so much he couldn't go on. But tomorrow, he told himself as he climbed back into bed, he'd do thirty. And the day after that…

His thoughts were interrupted by a sound that cut sharply through the night, instantly silencing the insects that had been buzzing softly outside.

It was the same piercing, agonizing scream he had heard earlier, when he'd been up in the mountains.

Except that now, in the darkness of the night, the scream sounded different.

It sounded almost human…