John Saul - Creature

Her eyes flicked open again. The light was softer now. To one side of her she could make out a face.

Marty Ames's face.

She tried to speak, but the words choked on her palate.

"Give her a little water," she heard Ames say. "Not much-just enough to rinse her mouth."

She felt a hand raise her head, then felt the touch of a glass against her lips. She sucked thirstily at the water, sloshing it into the corners of her mouth, then swallowing it as she tried to suck in yet more.

"That's enough," she heard Ames say. Then he was looking down at her once again.

"Wh-Where am I?" Charlotte gasped, barely able to recognize the croaking sound that was her own voice.

"In my clinic," Ames told her. "You had a breakdown, Charlotte. You've been asleep."

"H-How long?"

"A few days," Ames replied. Charlotte groaned softly and closed her eyes again. And then, dimly, she remembered what had happened just before the darkness had settled over her.

"Jeff…"she whispered. "Where's Jeff?"

"He's here, too," Ames told her.

Charlotte's features moved slightly, as if she were trying to frown but couldn't find the strength. "Here? But I thought-"

"He's sick, Charlotte," Ames told her. "He's very ill, and we're trying to find a cure for him."

"Sick?" Charlotte echoed. "I thought-" She faltered then, unable to formulate the words that seemed to hover just beyond her grasp. "See him," she breathed. "I want to see him. Please…"

For a long time she heard nothing, but the effort to speak was too much for her. Then, once more, she heard Ames's voice. "He's very sick, Charlotte."

Charlotte struggled again, forcing herself to find the right words. "I-I'm his mother," she gasped. "I can help him." She blinked her eyes open again and stared up into Ames's face. "Please," she begged, "let me see him… let me help him."

Slowly, a smile spread across Martin Ames's face. "Yes," he said. "I think maybe you can help him. And there isn't really any reason why you shouldn't see him, if you really want to." He disappeared for a moment. When he came back, he was pushing a wheelchair in front of him. He released the restraints from Charlotte's body, men gently helped her off the table. Her entire body felt exhausted from the slight effort required to get into the chair, and though she tried to keep her eyes open, tried to watch as Ames pushed the chair out of the room and into a corridor, the effort was too much. She let her eyes close again. She could feel sleep overtaking her once more. She tried to fight it, tried to concentrate on the words Ames was speaking as they moved slowly through the building. She could only catch snatches of it, though, and her fogged mind couldn't make sense of even the little she heard: "… tried to correct the imbalance… hormones… something… out of control… have to try something else…"

Then his words were drowned out as suddenly the air was filled with the nightmare sounds that had plagued her sleep and her consciousness for so long. But the sounds were clear now, no longer muffled. They pierced the air and swept away the mists that had settled over her mind.

She stiffened in the chair and her eyes came open to see at last the source of the screams that had haunted her.

It was a room very much like the one in which she'd awakened, except that in this room there was a series of cages-large cages, built of heavy-gauge wire mesh supported by iron posts. Most of them were empty.

Two were not.

In one of them a creature huddled in the far corner, its legs drawn up against its massive chest, its head dropped down as it stared out at the world through burning eyes that glinted from beneath a jutting brow. The creature's jaw, hanging slack, exposed a row of massive teeth, and from the depths of its throat an unending series of low moans was rising and falling, as if it were in some kind of unutterable pain.

Its arms were wrapped around its legs, and at the ends of its enormous fingers Charlotte could see the jagged remnants of fingernails that had turned to claws. As she stared at the creature, one of its fingers disappeared into its mouth and it began mindlessly chewing at the claw, all the while still moaning softly to itself.

Charlotte, horrified, had never seen a creature like it. The sight of it both sickened and mesmerized her. Finally she tore her eyes away and, hesitantly, turned to look at the other cage.

A scream rose in her throat, but was choked off by the sudden constriction in her vocal cords as she realized with terrible clarity that she was staring at her own son.

Or at what had once been her son.

Jeff was still barely recognizable as having once been human. Indeed, it was still possible to recognize his blue eyes peering out from their sunken sockets. His face was twisted now, and his jaw had grown heavier. His teeth, protruding from his mouth, had forced themselves out of alignment as they grew, and now he could no longer close his mouth at all.

His shoulders had broadened grotesquely, and at the ends of his arms, which now hung below his knees, his hands had grown into massive clubs out of which sprouted the gnarled, twisted claws that were his fingers.

It was from Jeff's throat that the hideous sounds of rage were boiling forth. As Charlotte watched in paralyzed horror, he hurled himself from one side of the cage to the other, tearing at the mesh until his fingers bled.

Ames pushed the wheelchair closer. Suddenly Jeff caught sight of his mother for the first time. A howl surged up from the depth of his torso as his eyes fixed on her, blazing with uncontrolled fury. As the roar of pure rage resounded through the room, bounding off the tiled walls to assault Charlotte from every direction, Jeff threw himself toward the front of the cage. There was a narrow gap there, a small hatchway through which attendants could slide a bowl of food. Jeff's right arm snaked through the tiny space.

His hand closed around Charlotte's throat, his long fingers completely encircling her neck, the claws that were his fingernails digging deeply into her flesh.

She tried to scream once more, but this time her entire throat was closed by the pressure of Jeff's grip and no sound came out at all.

And then, with a sudden jerk of his wrist, Jeff snapped his mother's neck.

Ames stared at the spectacle before him in silence for a moment, then reached out and pressed a button near the door. Immediately an alarm sounded. A few seconds later three attendants burst into the room, only to stop dead as they saw Charlotte's body, still held tight in Jeff's hands.

"Jesus," one of them whispered. "What the hell-"

"I couldn't stop it," Ames broke in. "She pushed herself toward the cage, and he just grabbed her." Then his voice grew angry. "Don't just stand there like idiots-get the hose!"

Instantly, one of the attendants pulled a fire hose from its rack on the wall, expertly flipping the kinks out of it as another twirled the valve that would release the torrent of water.

It took two of them, gripping the nozzle together, to keep it under control and aim it at Jeff.

The stream of water struck him in the chest, and for a moment he seemed surprised by what had happened. He looked up, bellowing with rage, then released his mother's neck and staggered back a step. Then both his hands closed on the wire mesh and he braced himself against the force of the water, screaming mindlessly at his tormentors. While the first two attendants concentrated on keeping the nozzle trained on him, the third wrestled Charlotte's body back into the wheelchair and pushed it quickly out of the room.

Martin Ames followed after the chair. As soon as they were away from the furious cacophony, he said, "Get her into dissection immediately. I want her pituitary and adrenal glands within five minutes-the rest can wait."