by James Dixon
Eugene, meanwhile, was frozen in the center of the swimming pool, afraid to look to the right or to the left for any means of escape. He could only stare straight ahead at whatever it was that was coming at him.
It was closer now, much closer. All hope of a joke gone, he could see it was much too small to be Davis. He could hear the panting, the guttural breathing of something extremely deadly—he was sure of it—drawing closer, ever closer, coming at him.
Suddenly a voice! . . . In the distance, but nevertheless a human voice!
“Eugene,” it said. It was Dr. Forrest’s voice!
Eugene tried to answer. He opened his mouth; all he got was a mouthful of that foul, putrid water. Again he tried to call out; all he managed was a gasp as a splash of the water slid disgustingly down his throat.
“Eugene!” the voice repeated, closer now. Dr. Forrest was moving across the lawn, for some reason drawn toward the pool, as if he knew Eugene was down there. Maybe Davis had told him.
“Eugene, are you out there? Why aren’t the lights on? Don’t you hear me?” Dr. Forrest called. “Answer me, for God’s sake!”
The creature, or whatever it was, had stopped. It, too, listened to Dr. Forrest’s voice.
Detective Perkins and his men, heading up the driveway, froze as they, too, heard Dr. Forrest’s voice.
“Eugene?” he called again.
Upstairs, Jody was awakened by the voice below. She turned and, half awake, heard someone calling, the voice full of tension and alarm.
“I’m coming, Eugene,” it said. “I’m coming down to the pool.”
Jody jumped out of bed. She saw that Eugene’s bed was empty. Grabbing the old bathrobe, she rushed out of the room into the hall. Turning left rather than right—which would have taken her downstairs and out the front door, down to the pool—she ran down the hall, deeper into the building.
Almost immediately she was lost in a maze of hallways and closed doors. Then, at the end of the corridor, there was another room, its door wide open. She rushed down the hall and through the open door.
Then she screamed! Nothing she had ever seen or done in her life had prepared her for this. Lying across the bed was the nude body of Steven King, his throat ripped out, the sheets covered with red, red blood.
Below, Perkins, still frozen in response to the cries of Dr. Forrest, heard the scream. Immediately he knew that a creature similar to the one he had had a hand in destroying two years before was again at its evil work. Immediately he fired a bright red flare into the dark sky, summoning his men to this spot.
In the pool, Eugene looked up as the flare illuminated the sky; then he turned. He saw it! It was there! This monster, closer even than he had suspected, its teeth bared, its claws ready to strike!
“No!” Eugene managed to scream, trying futilely to get away from it.
Too late! As the flare waned and the sky went black, the creature was on him. More screams erupted from Eugene and mingled with the growls of the creature as both vanished and splashed beneath the surface of the water.
Dr. Forrest, close to the pool, had seen the attack. The infant was illuminated by a second red flare as it flew at the terrified Eugene Scott. Behind him the doctor saw the police, guns drawn, rushing toward the pool; and clearly he realized their intent was to shoot the infant and never mind who was in there with it.
“Wait,” he yelled, “there’s someone in there!”
More flares went off as more police swarmed around the pool and stared down into the water trying to get a glimpse of the monster for a good shot at it.
“There it is,” said one policeman, and a shot rang out.
Desperately, Dr. Forrest looked around, trying to find someone in command. He saw a plainclothesman, Detective Perkins, gun drawn, as he moved out toward the edge of the pool.
“Please, sir,” he cried, approaching him urgently, “there’s a man in there.”
“We know it,” the detective answered, his eyes trained on the water, waiting for the creature to show itself.
Suddenly both of them appeared briefly in a life-or-death struggle, and then quickly they disappeared again below the surface of the water.
“There it is!” yelled Perkins.
More flares as the police leaped into the water, some swimming, others with guns held high as they thrashed their way to Eugene’s rescue.
“Careful,” shouted Perkins, instructing his men. “Not too close.”
Underwater, distorted, almost obliterated by the bubbles of life’s breath, the swirling, twisting shapes of Eugene Scott and the creature at his throat were barely visible to the policemen. They were only able to catch a brief glimpse of this small thing as Eugene turned, twisted, and struggled to release himself from its grip.
Above, the police waited, their guns aimed, hoping to get a clear shot at the infant.
“Easy, now,” said Perkins. “It’s got to come up for air. Just watch out for the man.”
Suddenly a few trickles of blood appeared on the surface of the water.
“Oh, no,” moaned Dr. Forrest.
Then, just as suddenly, it was there! The infant broke the surface, gasping for air, its teeth bared in a growl, the police too startled, for the moment, to shoot.
“There it is,” roared Perkins, he, too, astonished by the spectacle but finally finding his voice. “Get it!”
Only a few shots rang out, but at this point-blank range they were more than enough.
Without a sound the creature sank back into the water and then floated almost completely submerged, along with the leaves, just below the surface of the water.
Over toward the side of the pool, policemen emerged carrying something: Eugene Scott! Helping hands reached down and lifted him out of the water onto the side of the pool.
From where Dr. Forrest was standing he could see Eugene’s back and then his chest as they rolled him over; both the back and chest were bloody from the creature’s claws.
“How is he?” a voice called out.
“He’s all right,” answered a policeman, watching another giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to Eugene. “Just swallowed a lot of water.”
“Jesus,” said another policeman, “look at what that little bastard did to his back!”
Dr. Forrest, on hearing that Eugene Scott was alive, came out of the trancelike state he had been in since he saw the infant killed. Quickly he moved around the pool toward where the policemen were ministrating to Eugene.
“Excuse me,” he said, trying to maneuver his way through the body of policemen.
The policemen looked at him questioningly wondering who he was.
“I’m a doctor,” he said, responding to the question before it was actually asked.
A policeman’s hand reached out, holding him. “Hey, Lieutenant,” the policeman called.
Perkins appeared, coming around the side of the pool.
“This guy says he’s a doctor,” the policeman said as Perkins came closer.
“Yes?” said Perkins, next to Dr. Forrest now, looking at him appraisingly with his candid policeman’s eyes.
“I’m a doctor,” he repeated. “I want to see about this man.” Dr. Forrest pointed to Eugene. “I want to see how badly he’s hurt.”
“You connected with this lunacy?” Perkins asked, gesturing toward the mansion behind them.
“Uh, yes . . . I am,” said Dr. Forrest, caught completely off guard by the bluntness of the question.
Perkins nodded, then said to the policeman, “Take him down to the car, Sacco.”
“Now just a minute,” protested Dr. Forrest. “You have no right to arrest . . .”
Perkins interrupted. “You see, Doctor,” he said, pointing to the trio of white-clad figures running toward the pool from an ambulance that had just pulled up, “we have our own doctors.”
“Yes, but . . .”
“Take him away, Sacco,” Perkins repeated, moving away to more important matters.
At the end of the pool, over
by where the floodlight had been borken, Perkins looked down at the bullet-ridden body of the monster. Then he turned to one of his assistants.
“It’s dead,” he said. “We finished what we came for. Sound the all-clear.”
“Yes, sir,” said the policeman, anxious to oblige, just itching to use the official-looking police bullhorn he had clasped in his hand.
“All clear,” he shouted into his contraption. “We killed it! Relax.”
Another uniformed policeman, this one down by the police car, blew a whistle once, twice, three times, as if this were the signal agreed on before the raid.
In various places all around the grounds of the old estate, policemen, on hearing the whistle three times, began holstering their guns, relaxing, laughing with each other. They knew how dangerous these creatures could be and that one of their number had been killed by the Davis baby the last time a raid like this took place in Los Angeles.
On a steep hillside behind the estate Mallory and two policemen saw the flares and heard the whistles.
“One, two, three,” counted the young policeman. “That’s it, three whistles. They got it,” he said, elated.
The other policeman, older, an old buddy of Perkins assigned to Mallory and told by Perkins to keep “the pain in the ass the hell out of the way,” looked at Mallory and saw the frown on his face.
He couldn’t resist it. “Disappointed, Mr. Mallory?” He smiled.
Mallory turned to him with his standard cold stare. “About what?” he said.
Fighting off Mallory’s malevolent stare, the policeman, named Haskins, prattled on. “Not being there,” he said, “when they got it.”
“Don’t you worry about that, sonny,” answered Mallory. “There’ll be others. You can bet on that. Plenty of others.”
With that, he started down the hill toward the continuing light of the flares.
“Let’s find the Scott woman,” he said, “and Davis.”
“What for?” asked Haskins, winking at the other officer. “You can’t charge them with anything. They might even say we’re violating their constitutional rights,” he said, directing his laugh to his fellow officer.
Mallory, ahead of them, was busy grabbing bushes, working his way down the steep incline, thinking to himself. Let them laugh, the stupid bastards. Ignorance is bliss, as my mother used to say. They don’t know what they’re up against. This whole thing—the house, the medical unit—hasn’t been set up for a baby born a few days ago in Tucson. This is an entire organization that has to be crushed!
And in the house, upstairs in the room that held Steven King’s dead and mutilated body, Jody still stood in her original position as if frozen with fear, staring down at the bloodied sheet. Flares from the window lit her face. Who was this man? She wondered dazedly. She’d seen him before, but briefly.
“We’re wrong in doing this. It shouldn’t be allowed to live.” She heard his words, seeping out of her subconscious mind. Now she remembered! This man, hadn’t he been one of the nurses in the delivery room? Hadn’t he said those words?
Jody moved closer to make sure. More flares, rekindling the light from outside. Jody looked again at his face.
“Oh, my God,” she said aloud. “It’s him.”
She wanted to turn away but she couldn’t. What did this have to do with her? Was she responsible for this? Did this have anything to do with her baby?
“Oh, no,” she muttered, “oh, no.”
Jody leaned closer, following the tracks of the dead man’s blood down his face, down to his throat.
Oh, my God, the throat! The throat was like . . . how could she describe it? As if it had been ripped out.
She heard something—something above the police whistles blowing outside, something in the room!
She straightened up. She heard it again, the sound of a growl. It was behind her, she thought. She turned; as she did, another growl, this one high, piercing, threatening.
She looked around her. The room was spasmodically illuminated by red flares from outside; all she saw were drapes billowing in the Santa Ana wind.
“It’s a dog,” she said hopefully. “That’s what it is. A dog, growling and barking at the intruders.”
Whatever it was, she must get out of this room. She took one tentative step backward. If she could only reach the door, get through it, close it, she would be safe.
She started again, edging backward, one step at a time, getting closer and closer to the door. That’s it, she thought, almost smiling. It was outside, a dog outside, that’s what it was. One more step . . . Suddenly again, lower than before but much more ferocious, came the growl. She stopped, frozen, and then she saw it! For the first time she saw it; only the outline, though, crouched on the floor, ready to spring, outlined by the red flares, the monster!
She tried to move. She couldn’t. She must do something. She tried speaking, forcing her voice out of her tight, almost closed throat.
“What,” she whispered, “what do you want?”
Another growl, even more menacing.
“I didn’t do anything,” she said, as if trying to reason with this thing. “I have nothing to do with them, those people outside. I’m not like them. I don’t want to harm you.”
Another growl, this one even more terrifying, as if it were about to attack.
Jody knew now that it was going to kill her, just as it had that poor man in the bed. She saw the door, the hallway, one step away. She must try it or else she’d be dead. She must make it out that door!
She bolted forward, faster than she’d ever moved before, quickly through the door! She grabbed the handle of the door, slamming it shut just as the creature threw itself against it. She heard it slamming its small body at the door, clawing at it viciously, trying to get out.
She fell to the floor, still holding on to the door, holding it closed. On the other side she heard the scratching and scraping of the long claws ripping at the door. And the growl.
“What is this?” she said. “What is this thing?”
Could this be her baby? This thing that wanted so badly to kill her . . . that she was so deathly afraid of?
Then it stopped. The clawing, the slamming stopped.
“Thank God,” murmured Jody, lying against the door, keeping it closed.
But why does it want to kill me? she wondered. Frank Davis said it sought out its parents, its mother especially. Why would it be after me? But wait a minute! Maybe this one isn’t mine. Maybe this is one of the other ones.
That’s what it is, this is one of the other ones. This one doesn’t even know who I am.
But never mind, she smiled, we’ll straighten all this out later. I’ll just rest here a while. After all, it’s on the inside and I’m on the outside. Someone will be along in a minute to help me.
Suddenly a noise. Jody looked up. The doorknob was turning! The thing had obviously gotten up on its hind legs and had reached up and turned the doorknob. Now the scratching and scraping became even more furious as the door was pulled open a few inches. Jody was on her knees now, using all her strength to keep it shut. But she was losing! No matter how hard she pulled, the door, inch by inexorable inch, was opening more and more!
Jody panicked. She knew she couldn’t hold on much longer. Even now she could see the edge of that hideous, brutish body straining to open the door. Frantically she looked down the hall, praying for somebody to come, somebody to help her.
She saw a light coming from her room, the room she occupied with Eugene. A door that had a lock on it. That’s it, she thought. She must try it!
She got to her feet, still holding on to the doorknob, still keeping the door closed so that the thing inside couldn’t get at her.
She had to run down that corridor, get to her own room, get inside, arid lock the door before that thing got to her. It was only about forty-five feet away. She was barefoot but she could run that in just a few seconds. But could the creature get outside the room and catch up to her in that time?<
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What was the difference? The door was opening more and more. She could see more and more of that thing, pulling with its superhuman strength.
She had to take the chance!
Ready. She was on her feet now, still bracing the door. Finally she let go! The door sprang open. Jody was running, screaming, racing for the light from her open door. The forty-five feet seemed more like a mile. She heard the scraping, running sound at her heels.
“Help!” she screamed. “Help!”
She reached the door of her room, grabbing the doorjamb to stop herself as she heard the infant skidding by. Then, as she saw the infant recovering, coming back at her, she grabbed the door and slammed it shut, hitting the infant, knocking it out into the hallway again.
She’d made it, she was inside, safe. She heard the creature, incensed, slamming against the door, almost forcing it open. She turned the bolt. Again the infant rammed the door. There was a chain lock. She applied that, too. The thing outside leaped against the door, pounding, growling. But I’m safe, she thought, catching her breath; I’m inside this fully lit room and that’s that; I made it; this thing can pound and pound all it wants and it’s just not going to get me; I’ll just stay here, waiting for help, for Eugene; oh, where is Eugene?
She turned. She looked back at her bed as if deciding what she would do with herself until they came, all of them, to help her.
Then she saw the mess! Her clothing, the clothing she had worn when she went to the movies with her mother, when she escaped to this place. There is was, ripped apart as if by some madman.
The dress chosen so carefully to survive the journey; to last possibly a few days, torn in two. The large leather handbag, the one Eugene had bought her at that Indian place in Santa Fe, torn open as if by claws.
All of her belongings, her compact, her address book, everything was ripped apart. And there in the center of it all was that lipstick. That strange, unidentifiable lipstick, torn open now as if bitten through by a set of incredibly powerful teeth, the wires and transistors hanging out for all to see!
Jody moved closer. Staring at it, trying to figure out what it was, what it had to do with her.