John Saul - Creature

His eyes, burning with fury only a second earlier, cleared, and he focused on Linda. For a moment he was silent, then his mouth opened.

"Help me," he pleaded, his voice barely a whisper as his eyes now flooded with tears. "Please help me…"

As Linda stared after him in shocked silence, the attendants led Mark to the van, put him inside, and drove away.

Twenty minutes later, driving Elaine Harris's car, Sharon pulled up in front of the school, shut off the engine, hurried up the front steps and into the main hall. She glanced in both directions, then spotted the sign on the door of Malcolm Fraser's office. Her heels clicking loudly on the marble floor, she strode toward the principal's door, then stopped to compose herself before stepping inside. Finally, praying that the fear that still held her in its grip didn't show too clearly on her face, she went in.

Shirley Adams, only back at her desk for a few minutes after helping the rest of the staff herd the students back into their classrooms, looked up from her desk, her expression annoyed. "I'm sorry," she began, "but I don't know-"

Her voice faltered as she realized the person who had just come in wasn't one of the kids. "I beg your pardon," she said. "I thought you were-" She faltered again, then managed a recovery. "May I help you?"

Sharon's breath caught as all her internal alarms sounded a warning. Something was wrong-she knew it as certainly as she knew her own name. She forced herself to produce a friendly smile. "I'm Sharon Tanner," she said. "Mark's mother." She heard the secretary gasp audibly and saw her eyes flick instantly toward the inner office. Every nerve in Sharon's body tingled.

The secretary pressed a button on an intercom. "Mr. Fraser? I think you might want to come out. Mrs. Tanner is here."

There was something wrong. Why would the woman have summoned the principal before she had even stated her business? The inner door opened and a balding man of fifty or so years came out, rubbing his hands nervously before offering one of them to Sharon. "Mrs. Tanner," he began, and Sharon was certain his voice was a shade too hearty. "I was just going to call you."

She felt her knees begin to shake. "It's Mark, isn't it?" she demanded. "Something's happened to him."

"Now, just take it easy," Fraser began, but Sharon's eyes only fixed on him furiously.

"Where is he?" she asked, her voice rising dangerously. "What have you done with him?"

Fraser's eyes flicked toward the secretary, and Sharon knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that whatever he was about to tell her would be only a part of the truth. "I'm afraid he got sick this morning," the principal said. The fingers of his right hand were nervously twisting at the wedding band on his left, and he couldn't meet Sharon's eyes as he spoke. "I'm sure it's nothing serious, of course, but we always want to do the best we can for our kids."

Sharon felt a chill in her spine. "I want to know where he is!" she exclaimed. "If you've done something to my son-"

"Mrs. Tanner, please," Fraser begged. "If you'll just calm down, I'll try to explain."

"No!" Sharon stepped toward him. "I will not calm down, and you will tell me immediately exactly what has happened to Mark."

Fraser seemed to wilt before her anger. "The sports center," he said, his voice suddenly weak. "The nurse-and Phil Collins, too-they thought it would be best to send him out to Dr. Ames."

"Dear God," Sharon groaned. Turning away from Fraser, she pushed her way out of the office then broke into a run toward the main doors.

The sports center.

They'd sent him to the sports center, where all this had started.

As she bolted from the building and stumbled across the lawn toward Elaine's car, she prayed she wasn't too late.

Phil Collins stared at Mark Tanner in disbelief. The van was parked in the garage in the rear of the Rocky Mountain High building, and the three attendants were struggling to get Mark out of the vehicle. That brief moment of calm-those few seconds when Mark had stared so piteously at Linda Harris-had long since passed, and now he lashed out with his legs, his torso thrashing madly in the rear of the van. One of his feet caught an attendant on the chin and the man swore loudly, but ignored the ooze of blood that instantly began dripping from the cut on his face. Snatching a coil of rope from the corner of the van, he tied a loop in it, and when Mark again struck out at him with his foot, the attendant was ready. He slipped the loop over Mark's ankle and jerked it tight. Before Mark knew what was happening, the attendant yanked on the rope, pulling him out of the van and dropping him to the ground. Mark's head struck the concrete with a loud crack. He lay stunned for a few seconds, his vision blurred.

The attendant seized the opportunity to throw three more loops of rope around Mark's legs, binding them tightly together, fixing the end of the rope to the buckle of the straitjacket.

"Okay," he said grimly when he was done. "Let's get him inside."

The other two attendants, with Phil Collins helping, picked Mark up and carried him through the same door through which JeffLaConner had been brought the night the police had carried him down from the hills. Collins gazed curiously at the tile-lined corridor and the light fixtures covered with heavy wire mesh. He'd never been in this part of the building before, and his first fleeting thought was that it looked more like a prison than a clinic.

As they took Mark into a small cubicle and strapped him onto an examining table, Collins heard a high-pitched wail echo from somewhere nearby. He glanced at the attendants, but none of them seemed even to have noticed the strange sound.

A moment later Marty Ames came into the room and went immediately to Mark. Ignoring Collins completely, he set to work. Making certain that Mark's body was strapped securely to the table, he directed the attendants to begin cutting away the straitjacket.

A brilliant overhead light was suddenly switched on. Mark howled with pain as the white glare struck his eyes. He clamped his eyes closed and turned his head, and suddenly Collins could see his face clearly.

It seemed to be changing almost before his eyes.

His forehead had taken on a slope, and his brows jutted out, giving him a simian look. His jaw, too, was enlarged, and when his lips curled back as a snarl of rage rose in his throat, Collins could see the roots of his teeth where they emerged from the gums.

Mark's teeth seemed too large for his jaw, and two of his incisors were already overlapping.

His canines, much longer than the rest of his teeth, had taken on the look of fangs.

The attendants finished cutting away the straitjacket, and now Collins could see Mark's hands.

His fingers, the knuckles swollen into misshapen knots, were working at the straps as he struggled to loosen them, and his thick nails-almost like claws-were scratching at the heavy webbing, leaving rough abrasions on the nylon from which they had been constructed.

"Jesus," Collins breathed. "What's happening to him?"

Ames glanced at him. "He's growing," he snapped. "Isn't it obvious?"

"But yesterday-"

"We stepped up the treatment yesterday," Ames said. "His whole system's gone out of balance, and now it's out of control." He plunged a hypodermic needle into Mark's exposed arm, but even before he could press the plunger home, Mark lunged upward. The strap over his chest parted, and as Mark came to a sitting position, the needle snapped, leaving its end still buried beneath Mark's skin.

"The prods!" Ames commanded, but the order was unnecessary, for already two of the attendants were holding electric cattle prods against Mark and pressing on the buttons that would activate them.

As the shocks entered his body, Mark's muscles went into convulsions and he flopped back to the table. "Again!" Ames demanded, already preparing a second injection. As Mark once more went into a convulsion, Ames slid the second needle home and in the same movement pressed the plunger.