Monster

by Christopher Pike

  “Go, girl,” Angela said. “Go see the water.”

  Plastic looked at her with her who-the-hell-do-you-think-you-are-giving-me-orders expression. But she turned and went up the stairs, nudged the slider open, and went out to sun herself.

  “Smart dog,” Kevin remarked.

  “Yeah,” Angela agreed. “She likes you more than me.”

  “Most young females in heat do.”

  “Where have you been?” she asked.

  “I've been here and I've been there. And I've been in between.” He paused. “Did you go to the funerals?”

  “Yes. I just got back. How come you didn't go?”

  “I wasn't invited to the party.”

  “Be thankful for small favours.”

  “How were they?” he asked.

  “The funerals? Awful. I don't know why they bury people. I don't want to be buried.”

  “Do you want to be cremated?” Kevin asked.

  “I want to be shot into space and dropped into the sun. Really, where have you been? How come you didn't call back this weekend? I called you twice.”

  “Did you leave a message?” he asked.

  “Two.”

  “Can I use the excuse that my machine wasn't working?” he asked.

  “If you really need to. But I needed you this weekend.”

  Kevin appeared genuinely concerned. He was ordinarily protective of her. He reached over and put his hand on her knee. “I'm sorry. I went to a computer convention in Chicago. I didn't even know about the shootings until I got back late last night.”

  “How come you didn't tell me you were going to this convention?”

  “Because I didn't get invited to the party.”

  “You said that already.”

  “Then it must be doubly true,” he said.

  Now she was concerned. “Did it upset you that I went to the party without asking you? You understand it wasn't my party. I couldn't invite people.”

  Kevin nodded. “It was Jim Kline's, I know. And he almost got killed at it. The word is that you saved his life.”

  “That's an exaggeration. The cops saved his life.”

  “I heard you took a bullet that was meant for him.”

  Angela laughed. “These stories. Does it look like I took a bullet meant for anybody?”

  He studied her for a minute. “You look terrible, Angie,” he said quietly.

  Angela sniffed and lowered her eyes, playing with her fingers, an old habit of hers whenever she was upset. “Of course I look terrible, I feel terrible. Two people died, and Mary's in jail. I don't know. I almost feel like leaving Point and going back to live with one of my parents. They only fought with words – they didn't use shotguns.”

  Kevin moved closer. He put his arm around her, and Angela sagged into his side. “You can't leave,” he told her. “I’ll go on a rampage if you do. I'll sleep with every girl in school and get them all pregnant, and they'll have to close the place down just to save face. It would be a disaster for the whole state.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “It’ll happen, Angie dear, if you leave me.”

  She sniffed again and smiled, but her smile didn't last. For all her contact with both Mary and Kevin over the past summer, the two of them didn't really know each other. They moved in separate orbits. “Mary's lost her mind,” Angela said softly.

  “I heard you talked to her at the station,” Kevin said.

  She sat back and wiped her face. “News sure gets around fast. Did you hear what we talked about?”

  “No. Nobody has any idea why she did it. Everyone is waiting for you to tell them.”

  “If I tell you what she told me, can you keep it secret?”

  “Absolutely,” he said.

  From experience she knew Kevin was one to keep his word. “Mary says she had to kill Todd and Kathy and Jim because they were monsters.”

  “I could have told you that,” Kevin said with a straight face.

  “I'm serious, Kev.”

  Kevin blinked. “Tell me the whole story.”

  She did, everything that had happened the night of the party, and then everything Mary said at the police station. Kevin listened patiently without interrupting. He had a keen mind; he was a straight-A student. As she spoke she hoped he'd be able to shed new light on what had happened. When she was done, she sat patiently and waited for him to speak.

  “She certainly sounds like she's lost her mind,” he said.

  “That's what I think.”

  “But maybe it's not her fault.”

  “What do you mean?” Angela asked.

  “I hesitate to bring this up. It probably won't help, but it's a theory I'm sure the papers will get to eventually.”

  “What is it?”

  “It happened last year, before you arrived. Point High had just opened. Before, we used to take buses to Balton High. It was a pain in the ass – forty-five minutes each way, and Balton High was way overcrowded. Anyway, we got our school, and everybody was happy until last fall, near the end of football season. That was when a group of students started to get headaches and stomachaches. There were about thirty of them, maybe more. A couple passed out in class, and it wasn't unusual for someone to run to the rest room suddenly to throw up. Everyone got spooked, and a huge meeting of parents and faculty and students was called. Experts were called in to study the school's water, the materials that had been used in constructing the buildings, even the grass and flowers that landscaped the campus. They didn't find a thing wrong, and then suddenly the problems began to diminish. Although they didn't go away altogether. The experts chalked it up to mass hysteria.”

  “What did they think brought on the hysteria?” Angela asked.

  “They had a few theories. The weirdest one was that summer had gone on too long. We did have strange weather last year. It was November, and we still had some days in the mid-eighties. But like I said, the problem seemed to take care of itself. Yet the interesting thing was that only a certain segment of the students was affected. Your story made me remember that.”

  “The football players and the cheerleaders?” Angela asked.

  “Exactly. I wasn't affected. None of my friends was. But I think all the girls on the cheerleading squad were. I know Kathy Baker was. I remember her mother wrote a nasty letter to the local paper saying how something at the school was poisoning her dear daughter.”

  “Was Jim Kline affected? Or Todd Green?”

  “I couldn't say for sure. They might have been.”

  “Was Mary?” Angela asked.

  “I doubt it. I think it was only those two groups.” Kevin chuckled. “Maybe it was hysteria caused by stress. The football team lost all but two games last season. That’s not unusual for a school that's just getting started, but I know the players didn't like the ribbings they constantly took.”

  “Did any of those who got sick act emotionally distraught?”

  “Not that I know of,” Kevin said.

  “Then what does this have to do with Mary? The contamination theory – or whatever you want to call it – can’t be used to explain what she did.”

  “You're looking at it backwards,” Kevin said. “The contamination theory could be used to explain what Mary says the others did.”

  “You honestly believe that they did those things?” Angela asked.

  “No. As I said, it's just a weird theory. I think Mary blew a circuit and started shooting people. It's happened before, you know. Maybe Jim was dumping her and she was upset.”

  “He told me he was dumping her,” Angela said.

  “You talked to him?”

  “This morning, at the funerals.” She didn't bring up the fact that he had sort of asked her out. Kevin would jealous.

  “How is he?” Kevin asked.

  “Fine. His leg is better.”

  “Already?” Kevin asked. “I heard she shot him good.”

  “That's just a rumour. She barely winged him.” Angela stood and paced in front of the couch. “I don
't want to drop this getting sick business yet. Are you sure the experts found nothing unusual?”

  “That was the official announcement. They closed the school for a few days while they took samples of everything. I went up and watched them. They were thorough.”

  “Did any of the symptoms return later in the year? Like when track and baseball season started?”

  “We didn't have a track or a baseball team last year. I’m not sure we'll have one this year. We're still getting the teams together. We only have a student body of six hundred to draw from. But to answer your question, I really don't know.”

  Angela stopped her pacing. “I just hate to accept the idea that Mary's gone bonkers.” She frowned. “Maybe those three were affected by something and did do strange things.”

  “How did Jim seem when you talked to him?”

  “Fine,” Angela said.

  “Did he look capable of eating anyone alive?”

  Angela waved her hand. “Even Mary admitted that she never actually saw them hurt anybody.”

  “She was quick to blow them away with the little evidence that she had,” Kevin said. “We could go check out that warehouse.”

  “We can't. She couldn't remember where it was.”

  “How convenient,” Kevin said.

  Angela nodded. “I thought the same thing. Hey, would you like to go to the library with me? I'd like to read more about the reports of the students getting sick.”

  Kevin stood. “Sure. As long as you promise me you won't leave the area for fear of catching an invisible disease.”

  Angela chuckled. “There's no danger of its being invisible with me. When I catch the least little thing, it always shows.”

  Angela had never been to the library in Point. In Chicago it might have been mistaken for a private bookshelf. It was dismally small. But they had come only for back issues of the local paper, The Point Herald, and there were plenty of copies available in the back, the Librarian said. She was an old woman, perhaps a bit senile, and she must have been losing her sight. She was listening to a book on tape when they entered. As they knelt to collect the issues they wanted, they heard the Ghost of Christmas Past chewing out Scrooge for being such a cheap bastard.

  It took them only a few minutes to rind the right papers. As Angela read the articles, she discovered little new. About three dozen students had complained of being ill. Doctors were brought in and could find nothing wrong with them. Contractors and chemists were contacted. They, too, couldn't find anything wrong with the school. Then the students had got better, the experts had gone away and everybody was as happy as could be until Mary Blanc had crashed a party with a shotgun and a serious attitude problem.

  There was, however, one thing that Angela learned that she hadn't known before. It came out of an interview with the head of the contracting firm that had built the school. Angela called Kevin over and showed him the quote.

  I lost money on the Job. The foundation took us three times as long as we thought it would because the ground was so hard. Our engineers say the iron content of the soil was ten times what they thought it would be. We should have built a steel mill there instead of a high school. Maybe the geologists are right when they say the lake was formed by a meteor.

  “Point Lake was formed by a meteor?” Angela asked.

  “That's what I've heard,” Kevin said. “At least the hole in the ground was. The water came later, of course.”

  “Where does Point High get its water?”

  “From the lake. Didn't you know that?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Angie, there's nothing wrong with the water. I drink it. You drink it. And there's nothing wrong with us. Besides, they tested the water inside out when the students started to get sick. It's perfectly OK.”

  “Is that where my grandfather's water comes from?” she asked.

  Kevin thought a moment. “I don't think so. I think he gets it from a well high up on the hill, where my family gets theirs. Lots of people on our side of the lake get the water from there.”

  “Why get water from a well when the lake's sitting right here?”

  “I don't know,” he said. “Good question.”

  “You said that some people say the lake was formed by a meteor. Do other people disagree?”

  “First off, it's not that unusual to have a lake – or any body of water, for that matter – formed by a meteor. They say Hudson Bay was created by a meteor long ago. But as far as Point Lake is concerned, there haven't been any studies done to be sure. Personally, I think a meteor must have formed it.”

  “Why does our young scientist believe that?” Angela asked.

  “Because you can't get a proper reading on a compass in this town. The needles just spin. The iron in the ground here is magnetic, and meteors are often magnetic. But before we go too far with this, I must say again that the students' getting sick and Mary's going berserk has nothing to do with the water or the meteor. If that were the case, we'd all have been affected. In fact, thousands of people would have been affected for the past hundred years, since this town was built. Even before then – the Indians were here first. As far as I know, the water didn't bother them.”

  Angela shivered, although she didn't know why. Maybe it was just the thought of living beside a lake that had been carved out by something from outer space that made her feel suddenly chilly. She remembered again how cold the lake water always was — even in the summer.

  “I suppose you're right,” she said distractedly.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Friday night found Angela at the football game. There had been talk all week long of cancelling the game out of respect for Todd and Kathy. But it was finally decided that the contest could be dedicated to the two, rather than abandoned. It was the first game of the new school year, and it was against Balton High, played in Balton's stadium because Point High didn't yet have one of its own.

  Angela had had an interesting week at school. Everywhere she went people talked in whispers at her back. She had dual claims to fame: she had helped stop Mary, and she was Mary's best friend. She supposed one was good and the other bad, but she didn't know if they cancelled each other out. Actually, she talked to very few people all week. When she didn't see Jim Kline around, she assumed his leg was bothering him more than he had let on.

  Yet Friday night he was starting quarterback.

  Angela had gone to the game without Kevin. She felt guilty about that. When he'd asked her if she wanted to go to a movie, she had answered that she wanted to stay home. There was no chance he'd attend the game because he disliked football as much as he disliked football players.

  Angela sat by herself high up in the stands after buying herself a couple of hot dogs and a large Coke. Mary was much on her mind, especially after she'd spoken to her parents briefly on Thursday – a difficult conversation. It wasn't as if Mary were recovering from an illness or anything. Hi, how's your daughter? How's her cell? Does she like her striped pyjamas? I hear she's got a rapist for a cell mate. Yeah, that's tough when the warden won't even let her call collect. Angela hadn't known what to say. Apparently though, Mary had yet to have her bail hearing with the judge. Mary's parents didn't know why it was taking so long. They sounded so sad, it broke Angela's heart.

  The game started. Angela tried to push away her gloomy thoughts and enjoy it. Ordinarily she liked football. She pretty much liked all sports and had hoped to go out for volleyball or basketball. She was disappointed that no teams had been formed yet and might not be until after she graduated.

  At a glance it was clear Balton High was the favourite. As both teams lined up for the kick-off Angela could see how much bigger Balton's players were. The reason was simple. Bolton High had a student body five times Point's size. Five times as many kids to draw from. Angela stood and cheered as Point received the kick-off. She hoped it would be a good game. Point ran the ball back to the twenty-yard line, and the offensive unit, led by Jim Kline, came on to the field.

&nbs
p; “Then Jim would pass. He would throw tight, clean spirals that you could hardly see. When they hit the receivers the guys would double up as if they had been shot. Those passes would hurt, and I mean hurt.”

  In the next six minutes, on the opening drive of the game, Angela watched Jim throw five complete passes, the final one thirty yards into the end zone for a touchdown. All of them were tight spirals, but none of his passes made his receivers double up in pain. He did appear to throw them hard, however, and accurately. His performance was amazing, to say the least. But Angela did not get the impression she was watching a superhuman play. In fact, she hardly thought about what Mary had said once she was into the game.

  And a fine game it was, from Point's perspective, Balton might have been bigger, but they weren't as quick or as coordinated. Point quickly jumped to a two-touchdown lead. By the end of the first half the score was 21 to 7, and it seemed as if Point was just getting warmed up. As the players jogged to the lockers for the half-time break, Angela hurried down to the bleachers towards the fence that separated the stands from the playing field. Jim was one of the last players to leave the field. Three tiers up still, she was able to call down to him as he passed by. She hoped she wasn't drawing undue attention to the act.

  “You're killing those guys,” she said.

  He removed his helmet and raised his head. Right then, at that moment, he didn't look anything like a clumsy jock. He looked more like a conquering gladiator. He flashed her a quick smile. “Are we still on for tonight?”

  “I'm on if you're on,” she said.

  “I'll meet you outside the showers twenty minutes after the game.”

  “I’ll be there.” It was sounding more like a date all the time.

  The second half was a repeat of the first half, except it was more devastating. Point ran off two touchdowns in a row before Balton could respond with a field goal. There was nothing supernatural at work. Balton was simply being outplayed, both offensively and defensively. They were also being outcoached. Only two players came out with injuries, both on Balton's side. Two was not a lot to lose in a football game, Angela thought. It was probably below average. The second player, though – hurt in a pile-up in the last minutes – did have to be carried off the field.