by John Gault
The first thing David saw when he came to was the last thing he saw before he collapsed—Becker Torrey’s unsmiling face.
“Can you move your fingers?” Torrey asked, which was a bit strange, David thought, for an opener, especially under the circumstances. He tried and he could.
“That’s good,” Torrey said. “I’ll tell the doctors.”
Doctors? Oh, yeh, he was in hospital. It was all white and clean. He was fully conscious now and working at some important questions.
“How bad was it, Beck?”
“Two dead—Frank Gorman and the girl you tried to save—and three wounded, including you.”
“Three?”
“Yeh. A couple of kids from Buffalo camped overnight by the quarry. They were swimming this morning when one of those things attacked them. The boy killed it with his bare hands, in the water, just as it was dragging the girl under. They arrived on their motorcycle just a few minutes after you were taken away. A bit cut up, but not as bad as you. They’ll need the shots too.”
“Shots? What shots? Tetanus?”
“Rabies, Dave. Those things might have been rabid.”
David knew damn right well that if the creatures had been rabid, a quick and simple test of their bodies would establish it. “What do you mean, might have been? Either they were rabid or they weren’t.”
Torrey drew a long breath, and let it roll back out. “David, remember what I told you about my great grandmother, about things that I couldn’t understand but that I had to accept?”
Come on, Beck, out with it. What are you trying to say, anyway?
“They’re gone, David. Not a sign of them, just a few pieces of tissue and some blood we were able to collect on leaves and bark and that sort of thing. I didn’t see it, but Pedersen and Cogan did, and you can believe it if you want to: just as they broke into the clearing they saw two live ones carrying the dead ones down into that hole. By the time they got there, the things were gone. They—Pedersen and Cogan and half a dozen other guys—just emptied their guns into the place. Then Cogan went down. There was a rope there, David, a knotted rope. Somebody let them up!”
David fell back onto the pillow and threw his good arm across his eyes. No, of course this couldn’t be real, nothing in the past five days could have been real. I’ll just close my eyes and when I open them, Beck’ll be gone and I’ll be at home in bed, waking up with a hangover.
Torrey was still there.
Oh shit!
Torrey was holding out a pair of dark glasses. He turned them slightly in his hand so that David could see the name taped to the armiture: Miss Emma Oliphant “Cogan found these,” he said, “half-buried down there.”
“Anything else?” David swallowed.
“No, nothing. He saw three tunnels, but he wouldn’t go in, even if he could have.”
“So where do we go from here?”
“It’s already underway, Dave. I’ve got machinery going in there now. We’ll have to dig up the whole field, probably.”
“And sow the ground with salt,” David whispered.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.” Torrey was getting up to go when David remembered his very last question. “Beck, you said you got some blood samples. Can they tell yet what kind of animal those things were?”
Torrey stopped and turned slowly. He looked David in the eye and said in a still-disbelieving voice. “The tests so far have been only preliminary, but it appears the blood is human.”
C H A P T E R
24
Jamie woke just before sunrise, and it took him a few minutes to figure out just where he was. Oh yeh, Seattle, on the farm, their new home. They’d arrived last night, him and Barbara—and Teddy, of course—and Tom was coming along as soon as he could. Jamie slipped out of bed and went to the window; the first muted rays of sunlight were spreading out on the eastern horizon.
“Morning, Jamie,” Teddy said behind him.
“Hi, Teddy. What do you think of this place?”
“Not bad, partner, not bad at all.”
“Hey,” Jamie smiled, “how about we go out and explore, before Barbara gets up. It should be great here, Teddy, for us, I mean. Nobody else around. You can come with me lots of times, not like back home . . . er, not like back in Wisconsin.”
“Yes,” Teddy said, “let’s do that.”
He dressed and gathered the bear into his arms, stopped in the hallway to get his bearings, then slipped quietly downstairs. They were halfway across the yard, heading toward the barn, when an unfamiliar voice behind them said, “Hello, you must be Jamie.”
Standing there was probably the most beautiful little girl he had ever seen, all dressed in pure white, so beautiful that she made his throat go dry and his stomach get all warm-watery. And the strange thing was she was just a kid, like him. Younger even, maybe only ten. Who was she? Where had she come from? What was she doing there, on his farm, at five or six o’clock in the morning.
She moved closer, and with every step she grew more and more lovely. There seemed to be a soft mist around her, and her feet hardly seemed to touch the ground.
“Uh . . . yes,” he stammered, “I’m . . . uh . . . Jamie. And this is . . . uh . . . Teddy. He’s my friend.”
“My name is Alicia,” she said. Her voice was like a little bell, a bell made of crystal and gold. “I live down the road, and I often go out for early walks. I love the morning, especially before the sun comes up.”
“Uh, me too,” he said, feeling foolish and not quite sure whether or not he did love the early morning, because it was the first time he’d ever thought about it.
“I know a secret,” she said, cocking her perfect blond head to one side. “Do you want to see it?”
“Sure,” Jamie said, suddenly more sure of himself. “I know some secrets too. We’ll share.”
“Okay,” she said, “but first you have to cross your heart and hope to die.”
Oh, he thought, doing so, this is all going to be just great!
She led him and Teddy across the fields and into a woods about a quarter-mile from where his mother lay sleeping. On the other side was a creek, and beside the creek, a very familiar-looking mound of earth. Alicia waved him closer, and they stood together on the lip, looking down into an equally-familiar black hole. “There are creatures down there,” she said very seriously, brushing her hand against his and sending happy little electric waves through his body.
“I know!” he said, doubly excited. “They’re trogs—troglodytes!”
“Yes,” she said, her mouth close to his ear, “that’s just what they are.” Then she stepped back and gave him a little push. Just enough.
She gathered Teddy into her arms and walked slowly away. She stopped at the bank of the creek, pulled off her shoes and stockings and dangled her tiny feet in the cool water. “Well, Teddy,” she said, “unless you have other plans, you can come home with me.”
“That’ll be fine,” Teddy replied.
“My, what a nice voice you have. You sound just like an actress. I wish I had a voice like that.”
“You will,” Teddy said. “You will.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JOHN GAULT was born in Cornwall, Ontario in 1941. After attending the University of Toronto, he wrote for most of the major Canadian newspapers and magazines. For three years, he was first a senior editor, then executive editor at MacLeans. His books include The Fans Go Wild, Crossbar (a CBS-TV movie) and Teddy (now a major motion picture).
Table of Contents
TEDDY (THE PIT)
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
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sp; CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
ABOUT THE AUTHOR