Creature (21 page)

But she couldn’t wait any longer. Now it wasn’t just Mark Tanner who was in the hospital; it was Jeff, too. Only five minutes after Chuck left, she hurried out into the night.

She pulled into the parking lot of County Hospital ten minutes later, not even pausing to glance around for her husband’s car before hurrying through the doors into the waiting room. From behind the glass partition Karen Akers looked up curiously, then, recognizing Charlotte, stood up and came out of the little office.

“Why can’t I see him?” Charlotte asked without preamble, her voice trembling. “What’s wrong with him that they won’t let me see him?”

Karen stared at Charlotte in bewilderment. What on earth could the woman be talking about? “Wh-Who?”

“Jeff,” Charlotte said. “Chuck said they took him to the doctor …” Her voice trailed off as she realized that the waiting room was empty and the building itself was totally silent. “Isn’t my husband here?” she asked, but knew the answer even before Karen Akers spoke.

“There’s no one here, Charlotte, except Mrs. Tanner. She’s sitting with Mark.”

Tiredly, her mind reeling helplessly, Charlotte sank down into one of the Naugahyde-covered chairs that lined a wall of the waiting room. She was silent for a moment, gathering her wits about her. “But he said—” she began, her voice taking on a note of desperation. And then she knew. They hadn’t brought Jeff here at all—they’d taken him out to the sports center, to Dr. Ames, just like the last time, when Jeff
had slammed her against the wall then stormed out into the night.

Somehow, the knowledge made her feel better. After all, Jeff had come home the very next day—not even come home, actually, but gone straight to school. And he’d been fine. Maybe Chuck was right.

She looked up at Karen Akers, feeling foolish. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said, then saw the look of concern in the nurse’s eyes, as if Karen thought she were losing her grip. Charlotte forced a lame smile. “I mean, I’m sure Chuck must have told me where they were taking Jeff. It—Well, I guess it hasn’t been an easy night for any of us.”

Karen Akers’s expression cleared a little.

“How is he?” Charlotte asked then. “Mark Tanner, I mean?”

Karen hesitated, uncertain what to say. But as she saw the genuine worry in Charlotte’s eyes, she nodded toward the corridor. “He’s sleeping now. But if you want to peek in, I don’t suppose Mrs. Tanner would mind.”

Charlotte got to her feet and started down the hall, pausing next to the door to Ricardo Ramirez’s room. Taking a deep breath, she crossed the hall and gently opened the door to Mark’s room. It was almost dark inside; only a single, small night-light cast a soft glow from the corner next to the bathroom door. Mark lay motionless on the bed, and on the chair next to the bed, Sharon Tanner was nodding fitfully. Charlotte hesitated, and was about to back out of the room when Sharon’s head came up and her eyes opened.

“H-Hello?” she asked tentatively.

“It’s me,” Charlotte whispered. “Charlotte LaConner.”

Charlotte could see Sharon stiffen, and suddenly she wished she hadn’t come into the room. But then Sharon stood up and came toward her. “I just wanted to see how he was,” Charlotte said. “And to tell you how sorry I am.…”

Charlotte’s words trailed off, and to Sharon’s surprise, she found herself feeling a pang of sympathy for the woman. She eased Charlotte out into the hallway, then pulled the door
closed. “He’s going to be all right,” she said. Keeping her voice as neutral as possible, she asked, “Have they found Jeff yet?”

Charlotte swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded. “They took him out to Dr. Ames,” she said. “He … I don’t know what happened to him, Mrs. Tanner.”

“Sharon,” the other woman replied.

“Sharon,” Charlotte repeated, pronouncing the name carefully, almost experimentally. “He—Well, I guess it was like the night he hit me,” she said. “It’s his temper. He just can’t seem to control it anymore. Something sets him off, and he just blows up.” She frowned, as if a distant memory were coming back to her. “Like Randy Stevens,” she went on, speaking slowly now. “That’s what he’s like. Like Randy, before they took him away …”

Sharon stared at Charlotte. Randy Stevens? Who was he? She’d never heard the name before in her life.

   Chuck LaConner stared dully at Dr. Martin Ames. They’d been sitting in Ames’s office at the sports center for thirty minutes, while Ames had gone through the speech he’d rehearsed so many times, a speech carefully designed to accomplish both his own aims and those of Ted Thornton.

“Of course, I won’t be able to release him,” Ames had concluded, spreading his hands helplessly on the desktop. “We’ll do the best we can to correct the chemical imbalance in his brain, but I’m not at all certain that anything will be effective.”

It had taken a while for it to sink in, but now Chuck straightened in his chair. “But you said nothing could go wrong,” he protested. “When I agreed to put Jeff into the program, you promised me—”

“I didn’t promise you,” Ames interjected. “I told you we were ninety-nine percent certain we had the compound perfected, but that there was always the chance there might
be some side effects. And you understood that there were still some”—he hesitated, casting around for the right words—“some, shall we say, experimental aspects to the treatment.”

Chuck rested his head in his hands. It was true, of course. He could remember the day three years ago when he’d first talked to Ames, and Ames had told him there was a good chance that Jeff could overcome the congenital deficiency that had plagued him almost from birth. It wasn’t that Jeff was small—his size was perfectly normal, and always had been. But there was a brittleness to his bones that came close to turning him into an invalid, and almost from the day he’d learned to walk—and broke a leg in his very first tumble—he had been wearing a cast on one or another part of his body practically every day of his life. None of the doctors the LaConners had taken him to held out any hope at all. So when Jerry Harris had told him about Ames’s program—a new process of combining vitamins with a hormone that could stimulate calcium production, Chuck had instantly agreed to try it. The worst that could happen would be that it would fail.

But it hadn’t failed. Within a month Jeff’s bones had almost miraculously begun strengthening. He’d shot up that summer when he was fourteen, and even during the awkward period while he was adjusting to his full stature, he’d broken no bones. Indeed, his skeleton—always looking so frail in the X rays Chuck had been shown from the very beginning—had taken on a solid look, the long bones thickening visibly, giving Jeff added weight and a degree of toughness he’d never before possessed. His shoulders, always so narrow when he was a little boy, had broadened, and along with the vitamin/hormone program, Ames had put him on an exercise regimen.

Until a few weeks ago there had been no reason to suspect that the treatment was anything but totally successful. But now …

Chuck rose to his feet, struggling to control his emotions. “Can I see him?” he asked.

Ames hesitated for a moment, then he, too, stood up. “Of course,” he said. “But I want you to prepare yourself. He’s under sedation right now and probably won’t be conscious. Even if he is, he might not recognize you.”

As they moved through the maze of corridors that made up the sports center, Chuck tried to prepare himself. But when at last they entered the clinic and Marty Ames opened the door to the room in which Jeff was still lying strapped to the metal table, Chuck felt a wave of nausea rise up in him.

His son was naked, his arms and legs still strapped tightly to the table. Every part of his body seemed to have sprouted wires, and there were I.V. tubes in both his forearms. But it wasn’t the mass of equipment, nor even the straps securing him to the table, that staggered Chuck LaConner.

It was Jeff himself.

He’d changed in the past hours, changed so much that Chuck hardly recognized him.

His hands appeared to have grown.

His fingers were longer, and his knuckles stood out like twisted knots of wood. Even in sleep Jeff’s hands were working spasmodically, as if trying to free themselves from the bonds that held them.

His face, too, had changed. His eyes had sunk deeper into their sockets and his brow jutted out sharply, giving him a faintly simian look. His jaw, always strong, seemed to be too big for his face, and now it hung slack, exposing his teeth and tongue.

His breathing was coming in strange rasps.

“My God,” Chuck breathed. “What’s happening to him?”

“His bones are growing again,” Ames said. “Only this time it seems to be out of control. It’s starting with his extremities—his fingers and toes, and his jaw. If we can’t get it under control, it will spread to the rest of his body.”

Chuck LaConner stared at the doctor, fear naked in his eyes. “And then what will happen to him?” he asked.

Ames fell silent for a moment, then decided there was no point in keeping the truth from Jeff’s father. When he spoke, his voice was clinically cool.

“And then he’ll die.”

A silence fell in the room, disturbed only by the dank rasping of Jeff’s labored breath. As Chuck stared hopelessly down at his son’s distorted face, Jeff’s eyes suddenly opened.

They were wild eyes, the eyes of an animal.

And they glinted with a rage Chuck LaConner had never seen before. His face ashen, his whole body suddenly seized by an icy chill, Chuck LaConner shrank away from his own son.

13

Mark Tanner’s eyes flickered, then came open. For a moment he wasn’t certain where he was. Sunlight was pouring in a window, and he instinctively raised his right hand to shield his eyes from the glare.

A spasm of pain wracked his body, and he dropped his hand back to the bed, closing his eyes once more. Slowly, his mind began to clear, and in bits and pieces the events of the previous night came back to him.

He was in the hospital. He remembered it now—remembered the fight with Jeff that really hadn’t been a fight at all. Remembered the ride in the ambulance with his mother crouched on the floor next to him, acting like he was going to die or something.

Remembered the doctor—what was his name? Mac … MacSomething, working on his face. He winced at the memory of the sharp pain when the needle pierced his skin. Then they’d X-rayed him, and finally, mercifully, he’d been put to bed and allowed to go to sleep.

His eyes still closed against the brilliance of the sun, he began experimentally moving his limbs. It wasn’t too bad, really. His chest hurt whenever he moved his arms, but not
too badly, and if he was careful not to take really deep breaths, he could hardly feel his cracked ribs at all.

His jaw was sore, and he touched it gingerly, then moved it. That, too, wasn’t so bad. Just sort of like a toothache. Finally, steeling himself against the pain in his ribcage, he raised his hand once more and brushed his fingers over the bandage on his forehead. Then, at last, he opened his eyes again.

Or, anyway, he opened his left eye. His right eye would hardly open at all, and when he saw nothing but a red haze through it, he let it close again. Finally he turned his head and looked around.

His mother, her head nodding on her chest, was slumped in a chair next to his bed, but even in her sleep she seemed to feel his eyes on her. Abruptly, she came awake and quickly straightened up.

“You’re awake,” she declared in a surprised voice that made Mark wonder if she hadn’t expected him ever to wake up at all.

“I guess I am,” he admitted. “You been here all night?” She nodded. “I didn’t want you to wake up and be frightened.”

Mark groaned inwardly. Did she think he was still a baby? He tried to raise himself up, but fell back as a sharp pain shot through his chest.

“Try this,” Sharon said, handing him the controls for the bed.

Mark experimented for a moment, then the head of the bed rose slowly until he was half sitting up. The pain in his chest eased and he managed a weak grin. “I guess I didn’t come off very well last night, did I?”

“Don’t you worry about that,” she told him. “And if Jeff LaConner thinks he’s going to get away with this—” She broke off her sentence as the door opened. Mac MacCallum strode in, picked up the chart suspended from the end of Mark’s bed, scanned it quickly, then shifted his attention to the boy himself.

“How are you doing this morning?” he asked as he picked up Mark’s wrist and took his pulse. “Sleep okay?”

“Never woke up at all,” Mark replied. “How long do I have to stay here?”

MacCallum’s brows arched. “Already got a taste of the food here, did you?” he inquired dryly. When Mark only looked faintly confused, his tone turned more serious. “I’d say until tomorrow, just offhand. It doesn’t look like any-thing’s seriously the matter with you, but it won’t hurt to keep you around for a day, just so I can keep an eye on you.” He nodded toward the television suspended from the wall opposite Mark’s bed. “How’s a day off from school with TV thrown in for nothing extra sound?”

Mark shrugged. “Okay, I guess. What happened to me? I mean, what’s wrong with me?”

Briefly, MacCallum summarized the list of injuries. “From what I understand,” he finished, “you got off lucky. Jeff LaConner’s a big fellow, but he seems to have messed up your looks more than your innards.” He turned to face Sharon. “I’ve already gone over his X rays and other tests, and unless something shows up today, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t go home tomorrow. Maybe even this evening.”

“What sort of something could show up today?” Sharon immediately asked.

“Nothing terribly serious,” MacCallum assured her. “But if there happens to be kidney damage—which I don’t think there is—blood could show up in his urine. Frankly, I’m not expecting anything. And if I were you,” he added, “I’d be thinking about going home and getting some sleep myself. Mark’s going to be dozing on and off until noon, and there’s no use your sitting here any longer.”