Shark Beast (8 page)

Well,
he thought with a here-goes-nothing shrug,
only one way to find out.

And with that, he took out his crumpled, handwritten story. And, after a phlegmy clearing of his Ichabod Crane throat, began to read.

"This story, forever known as 'The Gob-Slime,' begins in a typical high school with
two typical teenage males, at their lockers..."

~ ~ TEN ~ ~
A Great Beach Read:
Beck's Scary Story
"The Gob-Slime"

...
two typical teenage males, at their lockers...

"Dude! What...is that?" says one.

"What's what?" says the other.

"I dunno. It looks like like a weather balloon, or something -- just bouncing out in the front of the school!"

"Woop-de-do, a weather balloon," Ryan sighed; shoved his head back deep into his Junior class locker; dug through his Junior class mess.
Gotta find that stupid biology book, hiding in here somewhere, stubbornly, had to be
--

"I dunno, dude. Doesn't look like any weather balloon I've ever seen."

"Oh really? Well, gosh, golly, gee, Einstein, how many weather balloons you seen, 'zactly? Ever?" Ryan's voice was deep with locker-echo. "You don't even watch The Discovery Channel, so--"

Derrik suddenly banged his fist against a nearby locker, setting off an ear-blasting metallic explosion rip-roaring through Ryan's head.

"Heyyyy!" Books and papers and scribbled-on Cliff's Notes tumbled to the hallway floor as Ryan emerged, cross-eyed and disoriented. "What'd you do that for! That seriously popped my ears, jerkoid!"

Derrik, his dilated eyes wide and shock-bright behind thicker-than-thick lenses, stammered: "Did you see
that
? Did you
freakin' see that
--?"

"No, I was too busy going deaf, thanks to--"

"Oh man, it ate that kid!" Derrik shouted, slamming the locker a second time. "It just... ate that kid!"

"Man, I told you, you do that one more time, and --"

"It! ate! that! kid!" Derrik pointed insistently at the glass front doors of Hamilton High. "Out there, the weather balloon -- whatever it is -- rolled over a kid, kid on a skateboard -- dude!-- sucked him in like... like a big freaked-out jellyfish or something!" Impossibly, his eyes widened even further. "That's it -- a jellyfish with no legs! Dude, I'm totally telling you! It... oozed ... over the kid... sucked him up... and... ate him!"

"Are you high?" Ryan asked in a why-am-I-bothering-asking whisper. "You know what's going to happen to you if you get caught again on school grounds with --"

Derrik wasn't listening. He had his face pressed against the glass doors, gasping, breathlessly: "I saw it, man. I saw it. It ate that kid. And --
oooh no
..."

"I'm telling you right now," Ryan said, rolling his eyes as he headed toward the door. "Whatever this is, it better be something, 'cause otherwise I'm going to stick your head into my locker and pound on the door until the --"

And that's when he saw it.

~ ~ ~

At first, he thought it was one of the smudges on the door-glass.

But then it moved.

It was no weather balloon.

What it was, was big, and round, and rubbery and -- man, it did look like the bell of a giant jellyfish -- minus tentacles -- rubbery and blubbery and globular and --

Ryan blinked, then squinted --

And then he saw the boy inside.

The boy floated, inside the quivering, slithering bell-thing. His little boy legs kicked feebly, his fingers curled and clawed, his whole body struggled and spun, as if inside a goopy Hefty-bag aquarium. More struggling, then the very insides of the... creature ... whatever it was... seemed to jell and thicken around the little kid's body until his jerking movements became small quivers... became odd shudders... became tiny twitches... then...

Became not much at all.

The boy hung inside the creature,
completely still.

"Ohhhh... dude."

The boys stood there, at the glass doors, watching, as the ... thing ... quivered slightly...

(as if swallowing, Ryan though, with a queasy shock)

The kid's body faded... and disappeared.

"Ooh dude no my oh dude no..." Derrik turned, looked at Ryan with marble-glass eyes. "He ate that kid, too. He... it... ate...
both of them."

Ryan's mouth blinked. Numb, he reached over and rubbed away some of the smeary fingerprints --
hard
-- then peered through the clean spot. It was still there, in all its shimmering, glimmering, gloopified jellified glory. Right in the middle of the sidewalk. Like it was waiting. Like it was --

"All right, what are you two up to?"

Ryan turned, for a moment looking without seeing.

"All this noise you two perpetrators are making! Why aren't you at the pep rally like the rest of the school? Pep isn't optional, you know!" Ryan's face slackened, as the large, matronly figure of Miss Babcock, secretary to the principal, pigeon-toed her way toward them.

"I --" Ryan started to say, but was immediately interrupted by Derrik.

"Miss Babcock, they -- it ate those kids!" His glasses slipped as he hiccupped her name: "Ba-
hic
-cock! It's going to eat another one --!"

Instantly, she snapped her fingers at Derrik, not breaking stride. "Detention: Sass-mouth." She snapped at Ryan next. "Detention, you, too: Collaborating. Perpetrating."

"But Miss-
hic
-ca-cock --"

"Double-detention. Keep it up. You'll be washing school windows until you're thirty. And whoever's out there, too," she said, pushing past the two boys. "Game over for them, too."

She shoved the doors open and headed out into the schoolyard.

"No! Miss Babcock, it's dangerous,
it's 911 out there
--" Ryan called out, trying to stop her. But Derrik, moving faster than anyone had ever seen him move in his 16 short, slacker-choked years, whipped his skinny arms out, grabbed the bars of both doors, and, yanking with all his 96-and-a-half-pound weight, slammed them shut with a wall-shaking, trophy-case-shuddering BAM.

"Derrik, we can't let her go out there like that!"

"You saw what that thing can do, and how fast it can do it," Derrik hissed. "I ain't letting go-a-this-door!"

His grip tightened.

"Derrik! You're trapping her out there! We have to warn her!"

"Well, warn her then, but you're doing it through this closed door!"

Helpless, Ryan pressed his face against the glass, and saw Miss Babcock making her way down the walkway. She was using her "angry walk," which made her look like even more of an old hen than usual -- elbows flapping about like wings, shoes twisting inward, ever pigeon-toed... her head twisting bird-like side to side, looking for partners-in-crime...

The jelly-thing wobbled across the grass, loping and wriggling -- and then came to a dead stop about 10 yards away from Miss Babcock. It was almost as if it just then noticed she was there, and was...

And then, Derrik said, in a choking voice: "Ohhh nooo... look over there!"

Ryan, taken aback, blinked dumbly for a moment, then pressed his face back against the glass.

Someone else was approaching.

~ ~ ~

Her name was Gina Lancy, and she was without a doubt the sexiest, hottest, most popular, most feared, most lusted over, most hated, most desired, snobbiest, snottiest, heart-taking, heartbreaking, heart-stopping female form to ever wander the hallways of East Hamilton High. She was making her way across the grass in her patented "I know you want me I'm so bored bow beneath my beauty you wish you were me get out of my sight" manner she'd perfected over her 17 years of thorough and intense self-worship. Even now, as Ryan and Derrik peered at her helplessly through the smudges and glassy smears of the high school double-doors, both her undeniable beauty and savage ego throbbed with every flounce and bounce and step.

"Oh no," Derrik croaked. "Sweet Gina's heading
right into it!"

Ryan reached for the door-bar.

"No. Not letting go," Derrik insisted, his fingers tightening around the steel door bar. "Not even for --"

"But it's going to get them. We can't just stand here and watch --"

"I am not... letting go ...
of this door."

Derrik's fingers tightened, his knuckles flashing bone-white. But his voice was wobbling, uncertain.
"Gina,"
Derrik whispered through the glass.
"Turn away.
Run..."

Ryan squinted harder through the smudges.

Outside, Gina kept walking toward the school. Then, suddenly, her head tilted, bored eyes curious -- but when it was obvious she'd noticed Miss Babcock, her expression immediately went slick and jaded --
oh, it's just
you -- and Gina's eyeline corrected itself. She kept walking.

"C'mon, Gina, keep walking, girl, just keep walking," Derrik muttered in a tiny pleading voice. "Keep trucking,
maybe it won't notice you, maybe it
--"

Suddenly, in an odd double-take, Gina turned slightly.

And finally noticed the ... thing.

"Ohh no,"
Derrik choked.

Ryan grunted, frustrated. He knew he should do something, go get help, call out...
something
... but everything was happening so fast. Miss Babcock suddenly noticed Gina, and Gina was staring at the jelly-thing, and there they were standing there... all three of them... staring at each other...

(yes, even the thing, it was staring... it had no eyes, but it was moving, the top of its...
globbiness
... back and forth, "looking" at Gina then Babcock, Babcock then Gina...)

Gina had a scrunched look, appalled and annoyed.
Why are these two
...
creatures
...
in my field of vision
, her expression seemed to complain. It was that same how-dare-other-things-exist attitude Gina whipped out at anything that didn't directly involve her pleasure in some way.

Miss Babcock simply seemed puzzled.

The "thing"... kept looking... back and forth... back and forth...

"Why isn't it... attacking them?" Derrik wondered in a dry, far-away whisper. "What's it waiting for?"

"Maybe it's confused," Ryan offered. "Maybe since there's two of them, it can't decide what to--"

Derrik interrupted by busting open the front doors.

"What are you doing?" Ryan croaked, feeling mountainously exposed.

"GINA! RUN! THAT GOOP'S GOING TO EAT YOU!" Derrik bellowed. He was on his knees, looking like he was proposing -- and, what he said next came close to it: "GINA! I LOVE YOU! I'VE ALWAYS LOVED YOU AND THAT THING IS GOING TO KILL YOU IF YOU DON'T RUN RIGHT NOW --!"

He held the door wide open, a desperate pleading expression wrenching his face. Ryan wanted to hit him, slam the door, but he was frozen -- he couldn't -- move --

Miss Babcock looked over her bony shoulder with an a-
ha!
expression, sure she'd caught the three of them in cahoots --

And Gina, she stood there for a moment, looking at the jelly-thing, then Miss Babcock, then over at Derrik... she looked a little confused, a lot irritated... as if some big prank were being played at her expense...

But then her eyes set upon Ryan, and even from this far away, the look on Ryan's face -- helpless, horrified -- told the slender cheerleader that even if she didn't know what... something was...

... horribly
wrong.

Her eyes took on a panicked quality, and after quickly darting back and forth to all the people, finally ended up on... the thing.

Something -- and the world will never know exactly what -- dawned on her.

In her hand was a cell phone.

With a sharp cheerleader shriek, she threw it at the globular glop.

The phone entered the skin of the creature and came to a rubbery halt, as if it had been dropped into a large gelatin dessert --

And then, suddenly, the cell phone darted and dove in quick jerky circles, like a startled fish...

It took a moment for what he was seeing to sink in, but when it did, Ryan's heart thumped hard against his ribcage as he said in a breathless mumble: "It's...
tasting
... it!"

And the phone swirled and jittered for a second or two, before being spit out quite unceremoniously onto the ground.

That's when all pretense fell from Gina's eyes... leaving only pure, unbridled fear.

"OH MY LOVE MY SWEETHEART OF MY LIFE," Derrik shrieked, as he fell facefirst to the ground, the effort of his pleas sucking all energy from his body, "PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF RUN LOLA RUNNNNNNNNNNNNNN--!"

And that's exactly what Gina did.

Or tried to.

~~~

A few torturous moments later, the thing shivered slightly and effortlessly spit out one of Gina's bright red pumps. Then, with a tiny after-shiver, seemed, calmly, to come to rest.

That, and the slimed-over cell phone, was all that remained of Gina Lancy.

Then, and only then, did Miss Babcock finally scream.

It instantly lunged for Miss Babcock, but somehow, impossibly, it missed. Meanwhile, Miss Babcock, all 292 pounds of her, swivelled around on those pigeon toes of hers, and was mad-running down the cement walkway toward the still-open school front door. It was an impressively grotesque sight -- so much excess human flesh bobbling and wobbling -- she seemed almost like a pink-hued version of the goopy creature that was now slither-bobbing after her. Miss Babcock's mouth was open in the shape of a beyond-terrified scream, but no sound was coming out -- both the boys gaped through the smudge-glass, as if from the insides of their own personal overwhelmed Simpson's Treehouse of Terror--

Then, a switch snapped in Derrik's brain.

He pulled the door closed --
hard.

"But Miss Babcock needs to get --" Ryan started, but was stopped silent as Miss Babcock hit against the door (as if she expected it to open inward), and the whole front of her body went flat against the glass with a sickening, fleshy SLAP.