John Saul - Creature

"But he's ill, Mrs. Tanner," Ames's assistant began again, licking her lips nervously. "We're just trying to help him."

"Is that what you believe?" Sharon flared. She glared at the woman. "Well, let me tell you that Mark was perfectly fine until he came out here. Now where is he?" Her voice rose and she leaned forward, bracing herself on the assistant's desk. "I want to see my son," she said once more. "And I want to see him this instant! Do you understand me?"

Marge Jackson's demeanor changed. Her look of sympathy congealed into officiousness and she rose to her feet. "I understand that you're upset," she said, her voice stern. "And you have a right to be. If my son were ill, I'd be upset, too. But you do not have the right to storm in here making demands that are impossible to meet. We're trying to help your son-at the request of your husband-and if you will calm down, I'm sure Dr. Ames will be able to explain everything to your satisfaction. But he cannot attend to both you and Mark at the same time, so I would suggest that you make up your mind right now what is more important to you-having your questions answered or having your son cared for?"

Sharon took a step backward. Her tone, as well as her words, had pierced Sharon's armor of indignation. She suddenly felt uncertain of herself. What if she were wrong?

As she stood staring at the assistant, trying to judge the sincerity of the woman's words, the silence that had fallen over the office was broken by a faint scream.

Sharon stiffened.

And then it came again, louder this time.

Like a wild animal howling in the night.

Sharon froze, remembering Kelly's nightmare and the sound she had heard drifting through the early morning darkness as she'd opened her daughter's window.

The sound of an animal howling in the night.

She spun around and strode to the door, her mind made up. She knew Mark was here, knew she had to find him. The sound she'd just heard hadn't come from an animal at all.

It had come from a human being.

Or at least something that had once been a human being.

As she stepped into the corridor, two white-coated attendants appeared on either side of her, seizing her arms.

"No!" She tried to jerk free, but knew she had no chance. Both of them were far larger than she was, and their hands closed tighter, digging into her flesh like bands of iron.

My God,it is a prison, she thought as one of the guards gagged her and both of them hustled her along the corridor. It was a prison, and now she was a prisoner.

She knew now that it had indeed been a mistake to come here.

But she also knew it was too late.

Blake Tanner sat staring at the computer terminal in front of him, but his mind refused to focus on the columns of figures that covered the screen. Finally he leaned back, stretched, stood up and walked to the window. He gazed out at the mountains rising to the north and east, their jagged, forbidding peaks covered with snow. In another couple of weeks the skiing season would begin. It had been years since he'd taken the time to go skiing in California, and he was looking forward to it now. In fact, on the coming weekend he might take Mark shopping and get him outfitted for the winter sports ahead.

Mark.

His son had been on his mind all morning. Indeed, he'd gotten little sleep the night before as he'd lain restlessly on the sofa in the den, his head propped up at an awkward angle by the hard pillow that had never been intended to serve as anything more than an armrest. But it was more than the discomfort of the sofa that kept him awake, for despite the stance he'd taken with Sharon, he was beginning to worry about his son, too.

That morning he'd once again gone over the material waiting for him the morning after Mark had been beaten up, when Jerry Harris had first suggested putting his son under Martin Ames's care. And this morning all the data he'd reviewed still looked totally innocuous.

There was a lot of theoretical work, speculating on the relationship between vitamins and hormone production within the human body, and even more data-not all of which Blake had understood-that purported to demonstrate the factual basis of the theorizing. All of it, this morning as well as when he'd first studied it, seemed totally harmless.

Too harmless?

He tried to reject the question but found he couldn't. For if the compounds being administered to Mark were truly as innocuous as the data made them out to be, how could the changes in Mark have taken place so quickly and been so radical?

Nor was it simply a matter of the physical changes- perhaps, if there'd been nothing more, Blake could have accepted them at face value. But the personality changes?

About those Blake wasn't nearly so comfortable, despite the assurances he'd made over and over to Sharon that their son was merely going through the normal vacillations and inconsistencies of adolescence. Indeed, as the night had worn on, he'd begun to wonder whom he'd truly been trying to convince: his wife or himself.

This morning, his eyes heavy with lack of sleep, he'd tried to study Mark as the boy gulped down his orange juice and gobbled a bowl of cold cereal before departing for school, but he still wasn't convinced he'd actually seen anything.

Perhaps, after the argument with Sharon, he'd only imagined that Mark's features looked coarser and his eyes sunken. For a moment he'd thought that Mark's fingers looked oddly oversized, too, but he decided that was ridiculous and dismissed it from his mind.

And yet…

The intercom buzzed, rousing him from his thoughts. He turned away from the window, returned to his desk and pressed a key beneath a flashing light. "Tanner."

"It's Jerry, Blake. Can you come over to my office?"

Though the words were innocent enough, there was something in Jerry Harris's voice that made Blake frown. "Problem?" he asked.

There was an empty silence for a moment, then the speaker in the intercom crackled to life again. "You might say that," Harris finally replied. "Just get over here, will you?"

Blake released the switch and saw the light go out. Leaving his computer screen still glowing with the report he'd been staring at all morning, he headed for the door to the corridor, then changed his mind and went toward his secretary's office instead. As he came out of the inner office, Meg Chandler glanced up at him. "Shall I hold your calls or forward them?"

"Hold them, I guess," he said. Then: "Anything going on this morning?"

The young woman shrugged. "Nothing that I know of. Why?"

Now it was Blake who shrugged. "Who knows? Harris just called me and he sounds sort of…" He hesitated, searching for the right word. "I don't know-sort of funny."

Meg shook her head. "Don't ask me. One thing that's not in my job description is to know what's going on in Jerry Harris's mind."

"Remind me to revise your job description, then," Blake observed darkly as he left the office to go to the suite next door.

Jerry Harris's secretary waved him directly into the inner office, and when he entered, Harris himself waved him to a chair. His voice dropped as he quickly finished the phone conversation he'd been involved in. When he finally turned to face Blake, his eyes were grave.

"I'm afraid we do have a problem," he said. His eyes met Blake's, and suddenly Blake was certain the problem concerned his son.

"It's Mark, isn't it?" he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.

Harris nodded. "I'm afraid he got sick at school this morning," he said. "He's at the sports center right now, and Marty Ames is taking care of him."

"Sick?" Blake echoed. "But-But he was fine this morning." He glanced at his watch. It was barely ten-thirty. "Christ, I only saw him three hours ago! What's wrong?"

Harris took a deep breath, then stood up and came around his desk. He leaned against it, gazing down at Blake. "I'm afraid something's gone wrong with his treatment," he began.