‘Just come up the stairs,’ James said. ‘They’re out here on the left. Just shout for us and we’ll come and meet you.’
‘Right… OK.’
As the other two left Sean looked at the headmaster again; he didn’t like being left here with him – he didn’t like it at all.
CHAPTER 25
They had only been gone for ten seconds when Sean felt an overwhelming urge to call out to them. So the man was tied up… So what? The creature inside him was capable of all sorts of things. Sean looked at the tied wrists and feet. Waites seemed to have done a good job, but it might not be good enough to keep the man restrained when he woke up.
A sound that came from out in the corridor interrupted Sean’s thoughts. It was an odd scratching or gnawing, and it seemed to be getting closer. He tried to ignore it, but it continued – until finally he had to go and have a look.
He poked his head out of the office doorway; then, when he was confident enough that there was nothing in the immediate vicinity, he stepped out and peered down the long corridor that led past the laboratories and the lecture hall. There was nothing there. The sound had stopped too, so he couldn’t tell where it had come from; though as he turned back he heard a new sound, this time a whining – maybe from some lonely or frightened animal in the first laboratory. He knew he shouldn’t go any further, that he shouldn’t have even left the office, but it sounded like something was in pain, and his instinct was to try and help it.
James led the way up the stairs to the first floor. He had only been up here on a few occasions: it contained sleeping quarters, storage rooms and little else of interest. But he had once gone to Morrow’s room to leave him a note about something. He suddenly remembered the doctor was dead; it had completely slipped his mind, and he felt guilty: Dr Morrow had been a friendly, helpful and interesting man, someone James had learned a lot from. He would miss him.
He found the room and opened the door. The bed was made; money, receipts, books and mugs were assembled on top of the chest of drawers. A solitary sock lay on the floor near the bed, and a tiny red light indicated that the TV was still plugged in. A lot of mundane stuff, but considering the owner of the room had been alive until a few hours ago, it all made James feel sad and angry. He walked over to a pile of magazines and notebooks lying on a chair and dumped them on the bed. He and Waites sifted through them, checking each notebook for anything recent. All the notes were old, however.
‘Doesn’t look like there’s anything here,’ Waites said.
James dropped the two books he was holding onto the bed and went over to the bedside cabinet. In the top drawer was another notebook, but this one looked new, hardly used. ‘Maybe there is…’ he said.
‘Got something?’ Waites asked as James flicked to the last few pages of the book.
‘I think so.’ He read out the last few lines of the last page. ‘I am going to wait until tomorrow, then venture outside. I must get away, I must warn everyone about this thing before it is too late…’
The laboratory was cold and a window had been left open so rain and leaves had got in and covered much of the floor and furniture. Nature was invading the building. Sean looked for a light switch and turned all the lights on. The room reminded him of the science labs at school. He couldn’t hear the strange sound any more, but he stood still anyway, and waited. Sure enough, after a minute or so he heard something moving at the far end of the room. He went over, stooping to look under the benches in case there was something hiding there. He was almost at the far wall when he saw it. Hunched up in a wet, bedraggled ball was a small dog. It was looking at Sean, its eyes wary, uncertain. Sean approached it slowly now, not wanting to scare it off.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Who are you then?’
The dog’s ears pricked up, but it stayed where it was. Sean knelt down and reached a hand forward very carefully towards its head. The dog shrank back a little at first, then moved forward again, sniffing Sean’s fingers, then licking them. Sean stroked it, but its fur was wet and smelly. All of a sudden it turned its head as though it had heard something.
‘What is it?’ Sean asked the animal. ‘Did you—?’ Then he remembered his responsibility and where he should be and cursed himself for being distracted. ‘Come on. Come with me,’ he said, then got to his feet and ran back towards the office. He didn’t look back to see if the dog was following, but it was. Outside the door he stopped, then went forward more slowly, ready to turn and run at the slightest hint that something was wrong. He inched forward, step by step, wondering if Titus had regained consciousness.
The answer to this, as the rest of the room was revealed, was a clear ‘yes’. The second, more urgent question, however, was: where the hell had he gone?
James read the previous two pages of Morrow’s diary entries, while Waites stood beside him and did the same. Things had clearly gone seriously wrong at the study centre. The creature had been allowed to progress from a state of harmless dormancy to one where it could manipulate a human being into performing acts of violence; and all the people in the study centre had been murdered by its first host, Holland.
‘Are they going to believe this?’ James asked. ‘The police, I mean.’
‘I don’t know,’ Waites said, shaking his head. ‘I’m still not entirely sure I do. This should help though. This and any more notes we can find on Morrow’s experiments will help explain things. It still doesn’t give us anything we can use to stop this creature though. Why did he try and point us towards Sally Cooper when he died? What was he trying to tell us?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘This guy he mentions in his diary, Holland. Did you know him?’
‘Not very well. I saw him a few times around the centre. Bit of an oddball really. Kept himself to himself most of the time. Morrow never got on well with him.’
‘Obviously not. Perhaps he knew something about the creature. Where’s his room? We should go and see if he kept a diary or made notes.’
‘It’s just down the hall. Shouldn’t we go and check on Sean though? I don’t like leaving him on his own with that thing.’
‘All right, you go to Holland’s room and grab what you can. I’ll make sure Sean’s OK.’
While Waites headed back to the stairs, James hurried down the corridor. Even before he got to Holland’s room he could smell it. It was a pungent composite smell of various elements. Some he couldn’t quite make out, but the strongest one was familiar. Blood.
The dog padded into the office, sniffing around and wagging its tail. It circled twice, then sat down and looked at Sean. Sean himself was trying to work out what to do. He went to look around the small foyer between the offices, listening for movement, his heart pounding. Titus could have gone anywhere. The dog started sniffing the damp floor where Titus had been lying, and the discarded cord from the blind. After a second or two it gave a sharp bark, then turned and left the room.
Sean knew he should probably go to look for Waites and his brother, but the headmaster had been his responsibility, and he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he allowed the creature to get away. He headed off after the dog, hoping that Titus had simply collapsed somewhere else, and that he would be able to drag the body back to the office before the others got back from their search.
James pushed the door open slowly; the horrible smell was even stronger now, making his stomach turn. As far as he knew, Holland was the first person to be infected by the creature; Sean had supposedly witnessed his death on the riverbank. If that was true, then the bodies in Holland’s room must have been murdered while the creature had been in control of his mind. He paused for a moment, swallowing, then reminded himself that he had an important job to do: this was no time for wimping out.
Important job or not, it was impossible not to be stunned and horrified by the carnage. James guessed that there were the bodies of three people in there, though the number of limbs and lumps of flesh could easily lead one to think there had been more. The car
pet was soaked with blood and other matter, and although at first he couldn’t work out what had caused the devastation, the long, chewing saw marks in the cupboard suggested a chainsaw. He hoped it was now well away from the wrong hands.
The urge to vomit was powerful but not as strong as James had expected; what he’d already seen had clearly desensitized him to such horror. He approached the desk, which had been damaged by the saw, and noticed the computer monitor. He moved the mouse, flinching as his fingers smeared a drop of blood, and was surprised to see the screen blink into life. The computer had obviously been left on, and as James scoured the desktop icons he noticed one labelled journal. He double-clicked on it and a word-processing application loaded up. He scrolled down to the last few pages of the document but there were so many mad ramblings and random symbols that he had to scroll back up to find a paragraph that made sense. And what he saw almost made his heart stop.
‘Oh my God… no…’ He re-read the passage, hoping that he’d misunderstood it, but no such luck. It was too much of a coincidence; it had to be real. In which case they were in far more trouble than they realized. He thought for a second or two, then set about deleting the file. It wasn’t enough though: he took out his penknife, unscrewed the computer case, removed the hard drive and the screws holding it together, then cut the thin magnetic disks inside to shreds.
When he was satisfied, he tossed the pieces onto the floor and left the room. Thunder was once again reverberating outside and the rain resumed its merciless attack. This is the end of the world, James thought. Who would have believed that it would start here?
CHAPTER 26
Sean recognized the laboratory as the one in which he and James had found Morrow earlier that day. He hadn’t really noticed much back then, but now he stared at all the containers and bottles in the cabinets along the wall, some with coloured liquids in them, others with preserved animal and marine specimens. He thought he saw something moving in one of the large tanks. Since he was already on edge, he decided not to go and find out what it was; instead he went over to the desk and looked through the notes Morrow had left there. He and James had forgotten about these papers. Maybe the answer to Morrow’s cryptic message was here somewhere. But he could find nothing that seemed linked to it. Looking down, he saw that the dog had followed him and was now busy sniffing his feet. It glanced up at him questioningly.
‘What?’ Sean asked. He sighed and looked back at the shelves. He should be tracking down the headmaster, but there might be something here, something vital. He scanned the labels on some of the bottles: distilled water, rain water, sea water, lake water, tap water. Someone was clearly mad about water. Since it was a lake study centre, Sean supposed they did study water here, though he couldn’t imagine it made for an interesting job.
All at once he heard a sound somewhere in the laboratory behind him. The dog was still sitting quietly by his feet, so it was something else. He swallowed, realizing how dry his throat had become, and slowly turned round.
In a state of panic, James almost tumbled down the stairs, straight into Waites – who was pretty worked up himself.
‘We’ve got to destroy that thing now!’ James blurted out. I don’t care how we do it, we have to destr—’
‘They’re gone,’ Waites interrupted.
‘What?’
‘Sean and Titus. They’re not in the office any more. Come on, we have to find them.’
Together they ran down the corridor.
‘What were you saying?’ Waites asked breathlessly. ‘About destroying it.’
‘It’s worse than we thought,’ James said, unwilling to give away too much. ‘But just promise me that if that thing gets into me… Don’t let me out of your sight.’
‘Fine.’
‘I wish I could tell you what I’ve just discovered, but the fewer people who know, the better. It narrows the chances of the specimen finding out.’
Waites wondered what that discovery could be, but understood that sharing it could indeed be foolish if he were to become host to the creature.
They were hurrying past the laboratories when they heard Sean scream.
It looked like the parasite was the only thing keeping Titus alive. His skin was an awful translucent yellow pocked with bleeding craters and sores, while the creases around his eyes and mouth had now become cracks that wept openly, the blood more black than red. His eyes were weak and watery and seemed to bulge as though being squeezed by some invisible force. Many of his teeth had fallen out and clumps of hair were also missing. The tie that had once gagged him had long been thrown off along with the cord. He hissed at Sean, his breath giving off a stench of festering, spoiled meat.
‘Mr Titus. Are you… Are you still in there somewhere?’ Sean asked.
Ignoring this question, the man advanced, still hissing, still fixing Sean with that crazy stare, hands reaching for the boy, for its next victim. Sean backed away, but behind him there was only the whiteboard and the wall; there was nowhere else to run.
‘Mine,’ the creature hissed again; the smell was atrocious, but Sean was too terrified to feel sick.
‘Please, Mr Titus…’ Sean could hear the quaver in his voice, the terror. Tears were collecting in his eyes now, ready to spill down over his cheeks. ‘Please don’t do it. Please.’
Titus opened his mouth slowly, and Sean thought he was going to speak. Instead he saw the black, wriggling thing coil around in the ruined mouth, flexing in preparation. Sean was paralysed with fear and unable to defend himself when the creature sprang.
There was a noise like someone hitting a large sheet of metal with a hammer, a clang that went on reverberating. It felt as if someone had attached a sink plunger to his face and was trying to pull it off. Sean fell back against the wall and reached up to try and pull the invader off.
It was too late though. It had already slithered into his mouth, and though the obvious thing to do was bite down on it hard, he couldn’t summon up the courage. Then it was at the back of his throat and up inside his head, moving about, finding somewhere to hide. He looked up and saw the headmaster stagger backwards, looking at his diseased hands and then at Sean.
‘Oh God… What has it done?’
In response, Sean could only shake his head, feeling stunned, almost drugged, unable to do or say anything. He was helpless. The dog, realizing something was very wrong, and not liking the smell of the headmaster one bit, retreated to the other side of the lab to watch.
‘Sean,’ Titus muttered through cracked lips. ‘No…’ He looked around for something he could use to save the boy, almost whimpering in desperation, already feeling guilty for what had happened. Then he spied the jars of water on the shelf. He squinted at the labels, and almost jumped when he recognized something. He grabbed a jar, re-read the label to make sure he had identified it correctly, then unscrewed the lid.
Sean’s vision was changing: Titus appeared to be a great distance away. And sounds were changing too. The drumming of the rain became louder, then seemed to disappear altogether. He couldn’t feel his legs and wondered how he was still standing. And all of a sudden, he wasn’t.
‘Put it down!’ came a voice from behind Titus.
The headmaster turned to see Waites and James, the former giving him a stern, angry stare, the latter shocked and deeply concerned.
‘Please,’ Titus said, not putting the jar down, but trying to placate them with both hands nonetheless. ‘It’s not in me any more. It’s in Sean, but I know how to get it out.’
‘Get away from him,’ James said, moving forward.
‘James,’ Waites warned. ‘Don’t get too close.’
But James wasn’t scared of Titus now, just angry. ‘I said get away from him!’
‘Please, you have to listen. I can get it out of him. Please let me, before it’s too late.’ Titus held up the jar, but James slapped it out of his hand, sending it flying towards a workbench, where it smashed.
Waites rushed over and looked for the la
bel. When he found it he shook his head. ‘Oh God, James, I think he’s telling the truth…’
James turned, unwilling to take his eyes off Titus, but the headmaster was also looking at Waites.
‘Look,’ the teacher said, holding up the sodden label.
‘Sea water.’
‘So?’
‘I think that Morrow’s dying message wasn’t "Sally"; he was trying to write "salt"… He just forgot to cross the "t".’
‘He must have worked it out during his experiments… Or maybe he discovered it when that thing was in his head.’
‘Yes!’ Titus was nodding, drool dripping from his mouth now. ‘It hates it! It can’t stand any salt – even the trace salt in the human body almost drives it mad.’
‘Well then,’ Waites said, eyeing the broken jar. ‘Now we have a weapon.’
CHAPTER 27
The revelation was punctuated by a deep and unsettling laugh that came, most unnaturally, from Sean’s mouth. In an instant he was on his feet. He kicked Titus in the stomach – which ruptured the man’s stomach, spilling blood and matter out onto the floor. Staggering backwards, Titus hit the corner of a bench, cracking his spine and releasing his liquefying kidneys. He sank to the floor in a twitching, haemorrhaging heap. All life was gone from him in seconds.
Sean panted like an animal, then rushed down the aisle between the lab benches, making for the door. Waites was quick to respond and rugby-tackled him to the floor. He knelt on his legs and drew his arms behind his back, incapacitating him.
‘James! Quickly, get some more salt water from somewhere. We have to drive it out.’
‘What? From where? I—’
‘If there isn’t any more sea water, find something similar.’
‘There might be some saline solution somewhere.’
‘That might not be strong enough,’ Waites said as Sean struggled beneath him with surprising strength. ‘Get some neat salt, and try boosting the saline with that. But hurry, we might not have much time. We’ve got to get it out of him now.’
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