Creature

by John Saul

  “There really isn’t any choice, is there?” he heard Jerry Harris asking.

  Finally he turned around and faced them. Jerry Harris and Marty Ames were staring at him, their eyes hard.

  Even Marjorie Jackson, her face pale, her hands clasped nervously together in her lap, was watching him expectantly.

  Finally, he came to his inevitable decision.

  “All right,” he said. “But what about the little girl? Kelly, isn’t that her name?”

  Suddenly the tension in the room broke. Marge Jackson, sighing with relief, stood up and went to a large coffee urn that sat on a sideboard, poured herself a cup, then poured another for her boss.

  “She’ll be taken care of, of course,” Harris said. “Lord knows, none of this was her fault.” He glanced sharply at Kennally. “What about your men?” he asked.

  Kennally shook his head. “We’ll keep them out of it entirely. No one but Collins and I should ever know exactly what happened out here.” His eyes met Harris’s. “So I’m going to need some of your men for the search party.”

  Harris nodded abruptly. “How many?”

  Kennally shrugged. “No more than half a dozen. I’ll use Mitzi to track them, but I don’t expect they’ll get far.” His eyes wandered to the mountains again. “Fact is, I’ll bet they’re just sitting up there in your wife’s car, waiting for us.”

  The decision at last made, he rubbed his hands together briskly, eager to get started. The sooner it was over, the sooner he could begin trying to forget it had ever happened.

  Kelly Tanner had been fidgeting all day long, squirming in her seat, barely listening to her teacher. She wasn’t sure what was wrong, but as the day stretched on and the clock didn’t seem to move at all, she got more and more nervous, until she felt as though she might jump out of her skin. But the last bell finally rang and she slithered out of her seat, scurrying toward the door to be the first one out. Erica Mason, who Kelly had already decided was going to be her best friend, caught up with her in the hallway.

  “Want to come over to my house?” she asked. “My mom said we could make cookies this afternoon if we wanted to.”

  Kelly shook her head. “I think I better go home.”

  Erica’s expression crumpled in disappointment, but then she brightened. “Maybe I’ll come with you,” she offered. “Maybe your mom will let us make cookies.”

  But Kelly shook her head.

  Something was wrong at home, but she didn’t know exactly what it was. All she knew was that something was wrong with Mark and that her parents had been fighting about it most of last night. And then her mother hadn’t even come down for breakfast in the morning, which only happened when she was sick.

  But her father hadn’t said her mother was sick—in fact, he’d hardly said anything at all. But he’d kept looking at Mark, and Mark had gone off to school earlier than usual, and he’d hardly said a word, either.

  And all day she’d had one of the feelings she got sometimes.

  It wasn’t anything she could identify very clearly—just a funny feeling in the pit of her stomach, and an idea that something was going to happen.

  And whenever she had that feeling, she had one of her fidgety days. But she’d never had a fidgety day as bad as today. “I just have to go home,” she mumbled. “There’s some stuff I have to do.” Turning away, she left Erica standing in the hall and hurried out into the schoolyard. She stopped to pull on her jacket, then slung her book bag over her shoulder and started home.

  Fifteen minutes later she turned onto Telluride Drive and saw her house halfway down the block, on the other side of the street.

  She stopped walking and stared at it.

  Though it looked just the same as it always did, there was something different about it this afternoon.

  Even from here it looked sort of empty.

  Moving more slowly, the strange queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach getting worse every second, she continued toward the house, then stopped again when she was directly across the street from it.

  Suddenly she wished she’d gone over to Erica’s after all, or let Erica come home with her. Standing on the sidewalk, staring at the house, she had a lonely feeling.

  But that was dumb, she told herself. She wasn’t a baby, and she’d come home lots of times to find nobody home. And there would always be a note, stuck to the refrigerator door with a magnet, telling her where her mother was and what time she’d be home.

  But of course, before, Chivas would always be there, and he was lots of company for her.

  Today, Chivas wouldn’t be there.

  Tears flooded her eyes, but she resolutely wiped them away with the sleeve of her coat. Finally she trudged on across the street and up the walk to the front door.

  Her feeling that the house was empty was even stronger now. She started to reach into her pocket for her door key, then a tiny voice in her mind told her to try the door.

  It was unlocked. She frowned and pushed it open.

  Usually when the door was unlocked it meant her mom was home.

  But today the house still had that funny empty feel to it.

  “M-Mom?” she called out as she stepped into the foyer, leaving the door standing open behind her. “It’s me! Is anybody home?”

  Her voice echoed back to her, and when there was no reply, her vague feelings of worry closed in on her. If there wasn’t anybody home, how come the door was unlocked?

  She told herself that nobody in Silverdale ever locked their doors, but she still knew that her family always did.

  She went to the kitchen and dumped her book bag on the table, then searched the refrigerator for a note.

  There was none.

  Her first impulse was to call her father at work and ask him where her mother was, but she decided not to. She was only supposed to call her father if it was a real emergency, like the house was on fire, or someone was sick, or something like that.

  Just because her mother hadn’t left her a note didn’t mean anything was really wrong.

  She opened the refrigerator, her eyes scanning its contents as she tried to decide if she wanted to eat something, then closed it as she realized she wasn’t hungry at all.

  Pursing her lips, she went to the back door, parted the curtains and looked out into the backyard.

  And for the first time she saw that something was wrong.

  The door to the rabbit hutch was standing wide open, but inside she could see the rabbits all squinched up together.

  That was strange, because whenever they had a chance, the rabbits always tried to escape from their cage, slipping through the door whenever anybody opened it.

  She remembered Chivas again, and a chill ran through her.

  She shivered as she opened the back door and stepped out once more into the chilly afternoon. She zipped the jacket all the way up to her chin, but it did no good, for as she reluctantly crossed the lawn toward the rabbit hutch, her whole body seemed to turn cold.

  Kelly was standing silently, tears running down her face as she stared at the limp corpses of the rabbits, when she felt a hand touch her shoulder.

  She jumped with the unexpectedness of the touch, then looked up, expecting to see her mother. When she recognized Elaine Harris and saw the look of strain on her face, she knew that something was, after all, terribly wrong.

  “I’m afraid there’s something I have to tell you, Kelly,” Elaine said, gently leading the little girl back toward the house. Kelly moved stoically, her feet feeling leaden, certain she already knew what Mrs. Harris was going to tell her.

  She listened silently as Elaine Harris slowly explained that her parents and her brother were dead. Her eyes, wide and unblinking, fixed on Elaine, and she struggled to control the tears that threatened to overwhelm her.

  “It was a terrible accident,” Elaine finished, repeating the words her husband had spoken to her only a little while ago, words that she had no reason to doubt. She slipped her arms around Kelly and tried to
hold her close, but the little girl’s body felt stiff. “We don’t know what happened, and I’m not sure we’ll ever find out. But your mommy and daddy were trying to help your brother. He—Well, he was sick, and they were taking him to the hospital.”

  Finally a sob shook Kelly’s body and she slumped against Elaine.

  Elaine said nothing for a while, but simply held Kelly close, her own eyes flooding with tears as she felt the child’s acceptance of what had happened. “It’s going to be all right,” she assured Kelly. “Your Uncle Jerry and I are going to take care of you, and you’ll never have to worry about anything.”

  She held Kelly for another moment, then gently disentangled herself from the little girl and started leading her out of the house. “Let’s go now,” she said softly. “We’ll go over to our house and come back and get your things later. All right?”

  Kelly, her mind numb, nodded mutely as Elaine took her through the house and out the front door. But then she paused, tugging at Elaine’s hand until Elaine stopped walking.

  Kelly turned and looked back at the house.

  She knew deep in her heart that she was never going to see her family again.

  The image of the house began to swim crazily as tears flooded her eyes. Then, once more, she turned away.

  Sharon was breathing hard and her whole body had turned into a mass of aching muscles, but still she trudged onward. Ahead of her on the trail, Mark seemed to be tireless, striding ahead, pausing every now and then to wait for her to catch up. But even when she could go no farther and had to sit down for a few minutes to catch her breath, he’d kept moving, hurrying back down the trail or moving off it entirely, always searching for a spot that would give him a view of the valley. Each time he found such a spot, he would stand and stare like a frightened animal, his eyes searching the terrain below, looking for signs of the hunters they both knew must be coming after them.

  When they’d arrived abruptly at the end of the road several hours ago, where there was nothing but a large parking lot at the base of a ski lift, Sharon’s heart had sunk. She should have gone the other way, sped through Silverdale and headed down the valley. Now they were trapped. For a moment she was tempted to turn around, but Mark seemed to read her mind.

  “We can’t go back,” he told her. “They’ll block the road and we’ll never get through.”

  “Well, we can’t stay here, either,” Sharon replied, but Mark was already out of the car, staring up at the mountains.

  “Up there,” he said at last. “We’ll have to hike out.”

  He began rummaging in the back of the station wagon, but the only thing he found that would be of any use at all was a worn blanket that looked as if it hadn’t been used for anything but spreading on the ground for picnics over the past dozen years. Worn and thin, and filled with fragments of grass and leaves, it would offer little protection against the cold of the night, but it was better than nothing. With the blanket tucked under Mark’s arm, they had set off.

  For the first few miles they moved quickly, but as they climbed steadily upward, Sharon began to tire.

  Mark, on the other hand, felt his body quickly begin to respond to the exercise. His legs seemed to take on a rhythmic stride of their own, and as he climbed the steep trail, his body began to sweat as his system struggled to keep his body temperature in equilibrium. Finally he felt the last remnants of the headache fade away, and he kept moving, breathing deeply. When his mother eventually called out to him that she had to rest, he turned back to face her without thinking.

  For a moment, as he caught sight of her face, the now-familiar anger built inside him, but he fought it, forcing it back down, repeating to himself over and over again that it wasn’t real, that it was only something Ames had induced in him, a Pavlovian response like a dog salivating at the sound of a bell. Finally, as the afternoon wore on, he found that he was able to control the rage completely.

  It was still there, smoldering within him, but he was no longer afraid that at any moment he was going to strike out at his mother, close his strong fingers around her throat and begin squeezing.

  The sun was setting when he spotted the search party. He wasn’t certain how many of them there were, but they were moving swiftly, climbing the trail he and Sharon were following, and for a moment he wondered how they could be so certain they were following the right path.

  Then he caught a glimpse of the dog—a big shepherd—straining at a heavy leash as it pressed forward, its nose close to the ground.

  “Oh, God,” Sharon moaned when he told her about the dog. “What are we going to do?”

  “Keep going,” Mark replied, his voice grim. “We’re not just going to sit down and give up.”

  And so they’d gone on.

  Darkness closed around them, and with the night came a cold breeze, slicing through their clothes to chill their skin. Sharon felt herself shiver as the wind cut through her thin coat, but Mark, his legs still moving with an apparently endless energy, barely seemed to notice it. And then, as the dusk turned into pitch-black night, Sharon stumbled, a sharp pain shooting up her leg as her ankle twisted.

  She yelped out loud and sank to the ground, rubbing gingerly at her injured joint. “Mark?” she called out. “Mark!”

  He turned back, then hurried down the trail and squatted beside her. Taking her ankle gently in his large fingers, he tried to massage it. Sharon winced, partly with pain, partly from the sight of his deformed hands and the strange feel of his rough skin against her flesh. At last, with Mark supporting her, she got to her feet and tested her weight on her throbbing leg.

  She was able to walk, but she was limping badly now.

  Saying nothing, Mark moved next to her and slipped his arm around her, then started walking up the trail again, half supporting her, half carrying her.

  After an hour Sharon could go no farther.

  They were on a hillside, and the trail wound through a maze of enormous boulders. Mark left Sharon where she was and moved forward a few yards, scouting the area. Finally he found a boulder that was deeply undercut, with another, smaller rock sitting a few feet from it. Between the two rocks there was enough space for the two of them to sit for a few minutes, and the rocks themselves would provide them with at least a small amount of shelter from the wind. But even as he led Sharon to it, he knew the boulders couldn’t protect them from the dog that was tracking them.

  And the dog would bring the men with it.

  “We can’t get away, can we?” Sharon finally said after they’d been sitting for several minutes. The blanket was wrapped around her shoulders, and her injured leg was stretched out straight in front of her. She felt like crying, but wouldn’t give in to the urge.

  “I—I don’t know,” Mark replied after a few more moments. “Unless I can figure out a way to kill the dog.”

  He said it so matter-of-factly that Sharon shuddered. But then she remembered the carnage she’d seen in the yard of the sports center, and steeled herself against the weakness of her own emotions. So Mark had once killed a dog and would do it again? So what? Compared to what Ames had done …

  “How?” she asked. “How could you do it?”

  Mark shook his head. “I can’t, unless they let it go. But they won’t let it go.”

  They sat silently then. After a while they began to hear the baying of the dog as it climbed the trail below. At first it was nothing more than a faint sound in the distance, but it grew steadily closer.

  Even as the fear built inside her, Sharon couldn’t bring herself to get up, couldn’t force her body to respond to the need to get away.

  Mark, as if understanding, sat next to her, apparently resigned to whatever might happen next.

  The dog was close now, barking, and they could even hear the voices of the men shouting to each other and see the flickering beams of flashlights as they tried to light the trail ahead. Then, as if sensing it was closing on its prey, the dog fell silent.

  A moment later a man’s voice b
lared through the darkness, amplified by a bullhorn.

  “It’s all right, Mrs. Tanner. It’s the State Patrol. It’s all over. You can come down.”

  Sharon froze. Was it really possible? But how?

  And then the voice came again.

  “We’re here to help you, Mrs. Tanner. Your husband called us this afternoon when they wouldn’t let him speak to you at the sports center. It’s over, Mrs. Tanner. We have them all.”

  Blake! Blake had finally believed her and called the State Patrol! Almost crying out with relief, she struggled to her feet, but Mark’s hand closed on her wrist.

  “They’re lying, Mom,” he whispered. “It’s just a trick!”

  “No!” Sharon whimpered. “It’s all right—we’re going to be all right!” She couldn’t see Mark’s face at all in the darkness, but she felt his hand tighten on her wrist. She spoke again, struggling to keep her voice calm. “Mark, what if it is a trick? We can’t get away. I don’t think I can take more than a few more steps. So let me go out, darling. Please? If it isn’t a trick, we’re all right. And if it is, well—” Her voice caught for a moment, then she went on. “If it is a trick, you’ll have time to get away from them by yourself. If you don’t have to carry me, they won’t be able to catch up with you.” She paused, and could almost feel his indecision. “Please?” she breathed.

  Slowly, she felt Mark’s grip on her wrist ease, but then he pulled her close.

  “I love you, Mom,” he whispered. “No matter what happens, I love you.”

  She kissed him then, her lips brushing against his distorted mouth, her fingers tracing the rough line of his swollen brow. “I love you, too,” she whispered. Then, her ankle threatening to give way beneath her, she stepped out into the trail.

  “I—I’m here,” she called out, and instantly the night was filled with lights, all of them trained on her. She took a step forward.

  And then the guns began to sound.

  The night exploded with shots, and Sharon’s body crumpled, dead before it even hit the ground.

  Bullets ricocheted off the boulders, screaming like angry hornets as they flew through the night.