Creature

  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 Jeff LaConner 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 Jeff LaConner’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 Jeff LaConner came into his mind. Was there really a chance he’d ever look like that?

  Then he remembered Robb Harris. Three years ago, when the Harrises 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 and Chivas 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.…

  7

  Charlotte LaConner glanced at the clock that glowed dimly next to the bed. Nearly one-thirty. Beside her, Chuck was snoring softly. How could he sleep, knowing that Jeff had still not come home? Charlotte got up, slipped her arms through the sleeves of a light robe, then went to the window and peered out at the street. The night was quiet. A gentle stillness lay over the valley that seemed totally at odds with the turmoil in her mind.

  It had been a bad week for her, and every day things seemed to be getting worse. It had begun on Monday evening, when she’d tried to talk things over rationally with Chuck. He’d listened patiently while she’d told him about seeing Ricardo Ramirez. But when she’d gone on to say that she’d decided Jeff was going to have to quit the football team, his expression froze and a hard look came into his eyes.

  “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” he’d said.

  His words had lashed her like a whip, but she’d bitten her lip, then tried to argue with him.

  It had done no good. “It was an accident,” he’d insisted. “You don’t ask a kid to give up his favorite sport just because of an accident.”

  As far as Chuck had been concerned, that was the end of it. If he’d even noticed the tension in the house since then, he’d given no sign, acting as if nothing had changed. But Cha
rlotte, unable to get Rick Ramirez out of her mind, had grown quieter through the week, and become acutely aware of changes in Jeff.

  If they were really changes.

  For by now, she wasn’t sure. Perhaps Jeff hadn’t really changed at all, and she was simply reading things into his behavior. Still, she believed his personality actually was changing. Jeff’s temper—always so even when he’d been younger—appeared to flare up now at the least provocation, and twice this week, when she’d asked him to do something, he had yelled that he already had too much to do, then slammed out the door. On both occasions he’d come back a few minutes later and apologized, and she’d been quick to forgive him. A repeat of the scene on Saturday night was the last thing she needed.

  But her son’s sudden rage had led Charlotte to watch him closely, searching for clues to his mood before she spoke to him. And as she observed him, often when he wasn’t aware that she was watching, she’d begun to feel that it wasn’t just his personality that had undergone a transformation—he seemed to be changing physically as well.

  His eyes seemed to her to have sunk slightly, and his brow, always strong, now seemed to have thickened and grown heavier. His jaw, carrying the same square line as his father’s, had a slight jut to it, giving him an aggressive look that became even more pronounced when he lost his temper.

  When Jeff had come home after football practice today, his hands looked swollen, and when she’d asked him about it, his eyes flashed with quick anger. “Anything else?” he demanded. “Got any more problems with me, Ma?”

  Charlotte had recoiled from his words, then tried to tell him she was only worried about him, but it had been too late. He’d already disappeared into his room to spend the hours until dinner working out on the Nautilus equipment Chuck had bought him the previous summer. Immediately after dinner he left the house, and she’d neither seen nor heard from him since.

  She heard the faint sound of the big clock at the foot of the stairs striking two, and finally turned away from the window. With mixed emotions—part trepidation, part anger that she’d come to fear her own husband—she went to the bed and shook Chuck. He stopped snoring, then wriggled away from her and rolled over. She shook him again, and he opened his eyes and looked up at her.

  “What is it?” he mumbled. “What time is it? Christ, Char, it isn’t even light out!”

  “It’s two in the morning, Chuck. And Jeff isn’t home yet.”

  Chuck groaned. “And for that you woke me up? Jeez, Char, when I was his age, I was out all night half the time.”

  “Maybe you were,” Charlotte replied tightly. “And maybe your parents didn’t care. But I do, and I’m about to call the police.”

  At that, Chuck came completely awake. “What the hell do you want to do a thing like that for?” he demanded, switching on the light and staring at Charlotte as if he thought she’d lost her mind.

  “Because I’m worried about him,” Charlotte flared, concern for her son overcoming her fear of her husband’s tongue. “Because I don’t like what’s been happening with him and I don’t like the way he’s been acting. And I certainly don’t like not knowing where he is at night!”

  Clutching the robe protectively to her throat, she turned and hurried out of the bedroom. She was already downstairs when Chuck, shoving his own arms into the sleeves of an ancient woolen robe he’d insisted on keeping despite its frayed edges and honeycomb of moth holes, caught up with her.

  “Now just hold on,” he said, taking the phone from her hands and putting it back on the small desk in the den. “I’m not going to have you getting Jeff into trouble with the police just because you want to mother-hen him.”

  “Mother-hen him!” Charlotte repeated. “For God’s sake, Chuck! He’s only seventeen years old! And it’s the middle of the night, and there’s nowhere in Silverdale he could be! Everything’s closed. So unless he’s already in trouble, where is he?”

  “Maybe he stayed overnight with a friend,” Chuck began, but Charlotte shook her head.

  “He hasn’t done that since he was a little boy. And if he had, he would have called.” Even as she uttered the words, she knew she didn’t believe them. A year ago—a few months ago; even a few weeks ago—she would have trusted Jeff to keep her informed of where he was and what he was doing. But now? She didn’t know.

  Nor could she explain her worries to Chuck, since he insisted on believing there was nothing wrong; that Jeff was simply growing up and testing his wings.

  As she was searching for the right words, the words to express her fears without further rousing her husband’s anger, the front door opened and Jeff came in.

  He’d already closed the door behind him and started up the stairs when he caught sight of his parents standing in the den in their bathrobes, their eyes fixed on him. He gazed at them stupidly for a second, almost as if he didn’t recognize them, and for a split-second Charlotte thought he looked stoned.

  “Jeff?” she said. Then, when he seemed to pay no attention to her, she called out again, louder this time. “Jeff!”

  His eyes hooded, her son turned to gaze at her. “What?” he asked, his voice taking on the same sullen tone that had become so familiar to her lately.

  “I want an explanation,” Charlotte went on. “It’s after two A.M., and I want to know where you’ve been.”

  “Out,” Jeff said, and started to turn away.

  “Stop right there, young man!” Charlotte commanded. She marched into the foyer and stood at the bottom of the stairs, then reached out and switched on the chandelier that hung in the stairwell. A bright flood of light bathed Jeff’s face, and Charlotte gasped. His face was streaked with dirt, and on his cheeks there were smears of blood. There were black circles under Jeff’s eyes—as if he hadn’t slept in days—and he was breathing hard, his chest heaving as he panted.

  Then he lifted his right hand to his mouth, and before he began sucking on his wounds, Charlotte could see that the skin was torn away from his knuckles.

  “My God,” she breathed, her anger suddenly draining away. “Jeff, what’s happened to you?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Nothing,” he mumbled, and once more started to mount the stairs.

  “Nothing?” Charlotte repeated. She turned to Chuck, now standing in the door to the den, his eyes, too, fixed on their son. “Chuck, look at him. Just look at him!”

  “You’d better tell us what happened, son,” Chuck said. “If you’re in some kind of trouble—”

  Jeff whirled to face them, his eyes now blazing with the same anger that had frightened Linda Harris earlier that evening. “I don’t know what’s wrong!” he shouted. “Linda broke up with me tonight, okay? And it pissed me off! Okay? So I tried to smash up a tree and I went for a walk. Okay? Is that okay with you, Mom?”

  “Jeff—” Charlotte began, shrinking away from her son’s sudden fury. “I didn’t mean … we only wanted to—”

  But it was too late.

  “Can’t you just leave me alone?” Jeff shouted.

  He came off the bottom of the stairs, towering over the much smaller form of his mother. Then, with an abrupt movement, he reached out and roughly shoved Charlotte aside, as if swatting a fly. She felt a sharp pain in her shoulder as her body struck the wall, and then she collapsed to the floor. For a split-second Jeff stared blankly at his mother, as if he was puzzled about what had happened to her, and then, an anguished wail boiling up from somewhere deep within him, he turned and slammed out the front door.

  Chuck, stunned by what had happened, stared at the closed door for a moment, then knelt down to help his wife to her feet. As Charlotte began sobbing quietly, he led her upstairs.

  First he’d get her calmed down and back in bed. Then he’d start hunting for Jeff.

  Jeff shambled away from the house, stumbling down the sidewalk to the street. But as the glow of the streetlight struck his eyes, he blinked dazedly then quickly ducked away, darting across the street and disappearing into the deep shadows between two h
ouses.

  His head was pounding with a dull throbbing pain that seemed to penetrate the very bones of his body, and tears were streaming from his eyes. How could he have done that? It was bad enough shaking Linda Harris like she was some kind of rag doll, but to have hit his own mother that way …

  He tried to force the thought from his mind. He couldn’t have done that—he couldn’t have! It must have been someone else.

  That was it. There was someone else inside him—someone evil—who was making him do things he never would have done himself.

  But if there were someone else inside him, it meant he was going crazy. He was losing his mind, and they’d lock him up. That’s what they did with crazy people, he knew—at least if they got violent.

  He crouched in the shadows for a moment, his eyes darting like those of a wild animal that knows it’s being hunted. How long did he have before they would start looking for him, how long before they’d come for him? He had to get away, had to find someplace to hide.

  He kept low to the ground, balanced on the balls of his feet, then darted across a backyard, vaulting over the low fence that separated one yard from the other. He crossed two more yards that way, then slipped once more between the houses, pausing to search the street for signs of life before dashing across its open expanse to the welcome darkness on the other side. He wasn’t certain where he was going yet, but his instincts seemed to be leading him to the other side of town, out near the school. And then he knew.

  There was someone he could go to, someone he trusted, someone who would help him. His breathing eased slightly as his panic began to subside and his mind to clear. Even the terrible pain in his head was lessening, and he broke into a loping stride, slipping from one shadowed area to the next, carefully avoiding the bright pools of yellow light that illuminated the sidewalks. No more than ten minutes later he reached his destination.