John Saul - Creature

Verna felt her stomach tighten as she saw Mark. It wasn't the first time she'd seen that strange look in the eyes of one of the boys. She reached for the phone and punched in the intercom code for Phil Collins's office. As soon as she heard his voice at the other end of the line, she told him to come to her office right away. "It's Mark Tanner," she said. "It looks like we have a problem. He… well, he looks just like Randy and Jeff did when they first started getting sick."

She put the phone back on the hook, then stood up and hurried around the desk. She laid a hand on Mark's forehead, but quickly withdrew it as he flinched away from her touch. She picked up one of the thermometers arrayed on the shelf above her sink, automatically swabbing it with cotton soaked in alcohol. "Headache?" she asked.

Mark nodded. Another wave of pain was cresting in his head, and he was unable to speak.

"It just started a few minutes ago, Miss Sherman," Linda told her. "M-Maybe he needs some aspirin." Even as she made the suggestion, Linda was certain that whatever was wrong with Mark, aspirin wasn't going to help. "Is he going to be all right?" she asked anxiously as the nurse tried to slip the thermometer into Mark's mouth.

Instantly, Mark's hand came up and knocked Verna Sherman's away. The thermometer clattered to the floor and rolled beneath the desk. Linda gasped, but Verna waved her away.

"Leave it," she snapped as she reached down to retrieve the thermometer. Then, sensing the lash of her own words, she spoke again, more gently. This wasn't, after all, Linda's fault. "It's all right. I can take care of him now. Just go on back to class."

"But-" Linda started to protest.

Verna shook her head. "I can't take care of both of you," she insisted. "I'm sure Mark will be fine, but not if you and I waste time arguing. All right?"

Linda still hesitated, but as the nurse turned back to Mark, kneeling next to him now and reaching tentatively toward his face, she decided she'd better do as Miss Sherman had told her. As she started out of the office, she heard the nurse speaking to Mark, her voice low, her words carefully enunciated.

"Now, Mark, I'm going to look at your eyes. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm your friend. Do you understand?"

Frowning, Linda turned around in time to see Mark, his eyes once again glowing oddly, staring at the nurse, finally nodding his head so slightly Linda almost missed it. Carefully, almost warily, Linda thought, the nurse reached out and tried to tip Mark's head toward the light.

Once again Mark's hand flashed up, striking the nurse painfully on the wrist.

Linda was about to go back into the inner office when a voice stopped her. "It's all right. I'll take care of this."

Linda, surprised, spun around to see Phil Collins, his breath coming quickly, as if he'd been running, standing just inside the door of the waiting room. Without waiting for her reply, he hustled her out into the hall, firmly closing the door behind her. As Linda started slowly back to her classroom, she heard the inside door close as well.

In Verna Sherman's office Phil Collins took one look at Mark Tanner and picked up the phone. A minute later he was talking to Marty Ames. "It's Tanner," he said. "Christ, Marty, it looks like JeffLaConner all over again! What the hell's going on?"

Ames cursed silently. He knew he'd been taking a risk with Mark, but after his conversation with Jerry Harris last week, he'd decided it was worth it. And yesterday, after another call from Harris, he'd doubled Mark's dosage of the growth hormone again, added a steroid compound, and strengthened the subliminal suggestion as well. If the boy turned on his own mother, who could blame anyone but Mark himself? And from what he'd heard already this morning, it apparently had almost worked.

But now…

"All right," he said aloud. "Just calm down, Phil. We'd better bring him out here. Just keep talking to him and try to keep him calm. Ifhe is going-" He broke off his words, then began again. "If he's having a breakdown, there's a lot of pressure building up inside him, both physical and mental. Thevan'll be on its way within a couple of minutes."

Collins hung up the phone, then looked once more at Mark. He seemed to have shrunk back in his chair, but his eyes were flicking watchfully between the coach and the nurse, and when Collins moved toward him, his whole body tensed and his hands knotted into tight fists.

"Easy," Collins said. "Take it easy, Mark. We're going to help you. We're going to take you to the doctor, find out what's wrong, and fix it. Okay?"

Mark said nothing, but his head dropped down, hunching low between his shoulders. He flinched as yet another stab of pain shot through his skull. It felt as though his head were going to explode. As the pain spread out through his body, the red haze that fogged his vision deepened, and he squinted his eyes nearly closed in an effort to see.

Then a flicker of movement caught his attention and he instinctively struck out at it. There was a muted cry, then a thump as something hit the wall and fell to the floor.

"Jesus!" Collins swore softly. "You okay?"

Verna Sherman nodded and struggled to her feet, rubbing the bruise on her shoulder where Mark's fist had struck her. "What's wrong with him?" she asked. "Some of the other boys got sick, but I've never seen anything like this."

She started to move toward Mark once again, then thought better of it and retreated to the chair behind her desk. "Is Dr. Ames coming?"

Collins nodded. "There should be a van here any minute," he told her.

His words seemed to strike a nerve in Mark. He leaped out of the chair and started toward the door. Instantly, Collins threw his own heavy frame toward Mark and his arms snaked around the boy's waist as they both fell to the floor. For a second Collins thought it was going to be all right-Mark was pinned beneath him, and he outweighed the boy by at least fifty pounds. But as Mark lunged upward and to the side, Collins felt himself lose his balance, then Mark wriggled loose from his grip entirely and made another try for the door. Collins reached out, grasped one of Mark's ankles and jerked hard.

Mark dropped heavily, grunting as his left knee struck the floor, then spun around to glower at the coach, his grunt of pain giving way to ananimallike snarl as he confronted his attacker. The sheer fury in his eyes made Collins instinctively draw back, and Mark coiled himself to strike out once more.

Suddenly the door opened and three men from Rocky Mountain High pushed their way into the small office. As two of them grabbed Mark, the third one began forcing a straitjacket over Mark's head.

Bellowing with anger, Mark tried to duck away from the heavy canvas garment, but the two attendants holding him were too strong. The armless tube dropped over his torso, pinning his arms to his sides, and one of the men instantly pulled a heavy strap between his legs and buckled it in place while another one adjusted the neck so it couldn't slip down over Mark's shoulders.

"That's it," an attendant said when the straitjacket was firmly secured. "Let's get him out of here." Half carrying Mark, half dragging him, they escorted him out of the office and into the corridor. They were almost to the main door when the bell signaling the end of the hour clanged loudly and the corridor, empty only a moment before, instantly filled with milling teenagers.

As soon as they saw Mark, swaddled in heavy canvas and supported by two men, they stopped, staring curiously. Just as the attendants were hustling Mark through the front doors, Linda Harris pushed her way through the crowd.

"Mark? Mark!"

Mark had been struggling wildly against his bonds, a series of unintelligible grunts and snarls boiling up from his lungs. But as Linda Harris called his name, he froze for a second, then turned toward her.