Creature (34 page)

He wondered if they had killed her, too.

* * *

The driver stood well away from the truck until the small pump had overinflated the tire to the point where it blew out, then quickly returned the pump to its storage place under the front seat. He glanced only once at the wide black lines his skidding tires had left as he’d slewed the truck into the Audi, already well aware that they were an almost perfect imitation of the marks he’d have left trying to regain control of the big semi after a tire had blown.

Satisfied, he snapped on the C.B. radio mounted on the dash of the truck and tuned it to Channel 9. Only after he’d reported the accident on the emergency band did he at last move back toward the burning car, so that when the police arrived, it would be clearly seen that he was doing his best to rescue the man he’d just killed.

21

“Mom?” Kelly said. When her mother didn’t turn around, she repeated the word, louder this time.
“Mom!”
Sharon was sitting at the kitchen table, staring out the window but not really aware of what was happening outside. As had been the case ever since her meeting in the park with Mac MacCallum, she was considering what to do next. She’d already come to one decision: as soon as Mark came home, she would tell him that he was to spend no more time at the sports center.

Blake wouldn’t like it—she knew that—and she still wasn’t sure what she would tell him when he demanded an explanation. What could she tell him? That she was almost certain the sports center was nothing less than a laboratory using the Silverdale children for experimentation? The least he’d do was laugh at her, and she wouldn’t really blame him if he accused her of falling victim to the same kind of paranoia Chuck LaConner insisted had overcome Charlotte.

“Mom!”
Kelly said once again, and this time the little girl’s voice penetrated Sharon’s consciousness. She turned and managed a smile.

“I’m sorry, honey. I was just thinking about something.”

Kelly was standing by the back door, her brows knit in a
frown. “When are we going to have dinner?” she demanded. “I’m hungry!”

Sharon glanced up at the clock. It was almost six-thirty, and she realized that she’d been sitting at the table for almost two hours. Hurriedly, she stood and went to the freezer, making a mental inventory of its contents.

“Did Mark come home yet?” she asked.

Kelly shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t see him.”

Sharon headed toward the kitchen door to call up the stairwell, then noticed Chivas curled up by the stove, his chin resting on his forepaws, his large eyes staring dolefully up at her. The dog’s presence was enough to tell her that her son wasn’t in the house—if he had been, Chivas would long ago have disappeared from the kitchen to trail along after Mark, whatever he might be doing.

The front door slammed, and a moment later Mark himself appeared in the kitchen. Chivas instantly scrambled to his feet and skidded across the slick vinyl floor, his tail wagging madly.

“Hey! Get down, you big idiot.” Mark pushed the dog aside, his face lit by an oddly triumphant grin that Sharon had never seen before. “Is Dad home yet?”

Sharon shook her head. “And where have you been?” she countered, nodding pointedly toward the clock. “Look what time it is.”

Mark’s smile faded only slightly. “At the center,” he replied. “I didn’t get there till almost four.”

Sharon frowned, but when she spoke, she tried to keep her voice neutral. “What on earth did you do out there for two hours?” she asked.

Mark shrugged, and idly picked an apple from a basket on the counter. “Just the usual stuff. Marty checked me over and then I did some exercises.”

Sharon’s lips tightened. “What kind of exercises?” she asked.

Mark’s smile faded away. “What does it matter?” he challenged her. “You don’t like what I’m doing anyway.”

“Can’t a mother be curious?” Sharon said lightly, ignoring the faintly contemptuous tone his words had carried.

“Aw, Jeez, Mom,” Mark replied, his eyes rolling with impatience. “What do you care what I do out there?”

Now Sharon allowed her tone to harden. “I’m your mother. And is it some kind of big secret? Is something going on out there you don’t want me to know about?”

Mark stared at her for a moment, then his mouth twisted into an insolent grin. “Yeah,” he said. “Marty’s gay, and we’re all getting it on together. Is that what you want to hear?”

“Mark!” Sharon exclaimed, her eyes instantly going to Kelly, who was now staring curiously at her brother. “What on earth would make you even think of a thing like that?” she asked before her daughter could get a word in.

Mark shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seems like you have this thing about the center, that’s all.”

“It’s not a ‘thing,’ as you put it,” Sharon said tightly. “I just want to know what you were doing, that’s all. And if you don’t want me to keep asking you questions, you can start giving me some answers.”

Mark’s eyes flashed with anger now. “All right!” he flared. “If it’s so damned important to you, here’s what happened. I went out there and stripped down, and they took my pulse and my blood pressure, and my measurements. Okay?” His eyes bored into her, but he didn’t give her a chance to say anything. “And then I did twenty minutes on the rowing machine. Okay? And then that was all, and I came home. Is that all right with you?”

Sharon shrank back slightly, dazed by the intensity of the anger in Mark’s voice. Then her own temper flared. “Don’t speak to me in that tone of voice, young man,” she snapped. “And no,” she plunged on, suddenly deciding to get it all out right now, “it is
not
all right with me! It doesn’t take two hours for the simple examination you keep describing and then twenty minutes on a rowing machine.”

Mark’s eyes narrowed. Why was she picking on him? He
hadn’t done anything. But that’s what she was always doing. Always watching him, like he was doing something wrong, and staring at him over meals, as if he was some kind of freak! A tight knot of anger burned in his stomach, and his fists clenched at his sides. “What do you care what I’m doing out there?” he demanded, his voice harsh. “You just want me to quit going out there, don’t you? You want me to go back to being a wimp!”

Sharon glared at her son, her whole body trembling. This wasn’t what she’d envisioned at all. She’d wanted to sit down with Mark and talk this thing out, explain her worries and listen to his explanations of what was happening to him at Rocky Mountain High. But now they were facing each other down, and Sharon realized that if she backed off, she would lose whatever control she had over her son. “You’re right,” she said. “I do want you to stop going out there. I don’t know what Ames is doing to you, but you’re not the same boy you were a month ago. And I don’t like what I’m seeing.”

“You don’t like what you’re seeing,” Mark mimicked, his voice rising and falling in an abrasive singsong. His vision clouded slightly and he seemed to be seeing his mother through a reddish haze.

A nearly uncontrollable urge to strike out at her rose up from somewhere in the depths of his subconscious, and he took a half step toward her.

At his feet, Chivas growled softly, his hackles rising as his body stiffened. His eyes fastened on Mark, and his tail, held high a moment ago, dropped toward the floor.

“That’s it!” Sharon exclaimed. “You can go up to your room and stay there until you’ve decided to apologize to me!” She paused for a moment, but Mark didn’t move. “Did you hear me?” she demanded.

Mark felt a quick surge in the tension within his body. Every one of his muscles seemed to be tingling, and in his mind he heard a tiny voice whispering to him, demanding that he release the pent-up energy inside him.

With a strangled sound rasping in his throat, he took a step forward. But before Mark could move any closer to his mother, Chivas sprang at him. With an angry snarl, his lips drawn back to expose his fangs, the big dog hurled himself at his master’s chest. Mark stumbled backward, staggered by the weight of the big retriever. His arms flew up to protect himself, and his hands closed around the dog’s throat.

Sharon froze, her eyes wide as she stared at the spectacle before her. Mark’s eyes seemed to have glazed over, and his jaw was clenched so tight, the tendons in his neck stood out. His fingers, trembling with fury, tightened around the dog’s throat. Chivas, held now a foot above the floor, was struggling to loose himself from his master’s grasp.

“Mommy,” Kelly cried out. “Mommy, what’s Mark doing? Make him stop!”

But there was nothing Sharon could do. It felt as if her feet were rooted to the floor. Still, she reached out toward Mark. “Stop it!” she shouted. “For God’s sake, Mark—you’re killing him!”

Mark felt his fingers tighten around the dog’s throat, and as if from far away he could barely make out a voice calling to him to stop. But his entire concentration was focused on the dog now. He felt it wriggling in his grip, felt its forepaws clawing weakly at his chest. Then, as he continued to squeeze tighter, the clawing stopped and all he felt were a few faltering twitches.

Then nothing.

His vision began to clear. Suddenly he was staring into Chivas’s face. The dog’s eyes, bulging in their sockets, seemed to be staring at him, and its tongue lolled limply from the side of its slackened jaw.

“Ch-Chivas?” he asked, his voice choking with emotion. His eyes left the dog, then, and fixed on his mother, who was staring at him, her face ashen, her eyes reflecting shock.

In the corner, near the back door, Kelly was huddled on the floor, crying.

Then Mark’s tears overflowed as he stared helplessly at
the lifeless body he still clutched in his hands. The strength drained from his fingers, and Chivas slid to the floor, sprawling out almost as if he were only asleep.

“I—I’m sorry,” Mark wailed. “I didn’t mean it!” Turning away, unable to face his mother or his sister, he shambled out of the kitchen and stumbled up the stairs to his room. He slammed the door behind him, then stood still, leaning his weight against the closed door, his breath coming in rough, choking gasps.

It wasn’t possible—he couldn’t have killed Chivas. He couldn’t have!

But he knew he had.

The dog had attacked him, so he’d killed it. But that wasn’t true, either, not really. Chivas had only been trying to protect his mother.

His mother!

He could remember the rage now, remember the blinding fury that had risen inside him, overwhelming him, driving him on to want to hurl his fist at her, smashing it into her face.

His mother!

It wasn’t possible.

Choking back a sob, he stumbled toward his bed, then paused as he caught sight of himself in the mirror on his closet door.

His hair, limp with sweat and matted down against his scalp, framed a face he could barely recognize.

His eyes seemed to have sunk deep within their sockets, peering out suspiciously from beneath the ridges of his brow.

His jaw seemed thicker and his lips were twisted slightly, giving him a sullen look.

“Nooo …” he wailed softly. “That’s not me. That can’t be me.”

And suddenly the rage was on him again. His fist clenched, and he pulled his arm back then smashed it into the mirror with all the force he could muster. The mirror shattered, jagged lines flashing out in every direction from the point of
impact. “Nooo,” he sobbed once again. He staggered back and for a moment was unable to tear his eyes from the distorted image in the broken mirror. But at last he turned away, lurched toward the bed. He tore at the bedclothes, stripping them away with a single furious wrench, then grabbing the thick coverlet with both his hands and ripping it a quarter of its length before throwing it aside.

His eyes, glittering with rage, darted around the room, searching for something else to destroy.

When he finally collapsed on the bed half an hour later, his anger at last spent, the room was a shambles.

Feathers from an exploded pillow covered everything and still floated in the air. His clothes, hurled mindlessly from the closet and the bureau, were scattered over the floor. The clock was smashed, and a lamp, its shade crushed, lay in one corner.

But the rage within him at last was quiet.

   The tension in the house was almost palpable. Finally, Sharon threw aside the magazine she’d been holding in her lap, unread, for the last twenty minutes. “We have to talk about this,” she said, her eyes fixing on Blake, whom she was certain was no more involved in his television show than she had been in her magazine.

“I’m not sure how we can talk about it, when you won’t even let me talk to Mark,” he replied. Though his voice was even, there was an edge to it that made Sharon wince.

“You weren’t there,” she said. “You can’t possibly understand what happened.”

“He killed Chivas,” Blake told her. “He looked like he was going to take a punch at you, and when Chivas went after him, he killed him. Isn’t that about it?”

Sharon knew he was right, and yet even as he spoke the words, she wanted to cry out to him that it was something
else entirely, that Mark hadn’t been himself, that it was as if some furious stranger had taken over Mark’s body.

But she’d already tried to explain that to him.

He’d come home from the office a few minutes after Mark had disappeared into his room, listened in shock as Sharon had brokenly explained what had happened, then buried Chivas in the backyard, with Kelly looking on, her body shaking as she tried to control the sobbing that had overcome her when she realized Chivas was dead.

He’d already started up the stairs to deal with Mark when Sharon had stopped him. “Leave him alone,” she pleaded. “He’s as horrified about what happened as you are.”

Blake had stared at her in bewilderment. “He tried to take a swing at you, and killed his own dog, and you say he’s horrified? I say he needs a good talking-to, if not a whipping!”