Creature (46 page)

Collins hesitated.

Something was wrong. His big German shepherd, who was invariably waiting for him by the door, was nowhere to be seen.

“Sparks?” he called out. “Where are you, boy?”

He heard a quick bark, followed by an eager whimpering, but the dog still didn’t appear. Frowning deeply and with an odd prickling sensation running over the back of his neck, Collins moved through the living room into the small kitchen.

Sparks was crouched down by the door to the cellar, his muzzle pressed to the crack between the door and the floor.
He looked up as Collins came into the room and his tail wagged, but then he went back to his eager snuffling of the gap below the door.

Collins’s frown deepened. There couldn’t be anyone down there. He’d trained Sparks as a watchdog himself, and he knew the animal wouldn’t let anyone into the house without his permission. He’d even had some complaints from the neighbors about the dog’s fierceness; complaints he’d totally ignored.

“What is it, boy?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

The animal got to his feet, his tail wagging, and scratched eagerly at the closed door.

“Okay,” Collins said, pulling the door open. “Go on down and get it, whatever it is.”

The dog dashed down the steep flight of stairs and disappeared into the darkness.

Collins waited for a moment, listening. He could hear the shepherd whimpering eagerly, but there were no other sounds. Finally he reached for the light switch by the door and flipped it.

Nothing happened.

Cursing softly, Collins rummaged in the top drawer by the kitchen sink and found a flashlight. Its batteries were weak, but it glowed dimly when he pressed the switch. From another drawer he took a large butcher knife.

With the light held firmly in his left hand and the knife in his right, he started down the stairs.

When he came to the bottom, he stood in the darkness for a moment, listening. He could still hear Sparks, off to the right, making the eager whimpering noises that always emerged from his throat when Collins scratched him behind the ears.

But why?

There was no one there—there couldn’t be.

He played the light in the direction of the sounds and suddenly froze. Reflected in the light, glowing strangely, were a pair of eyes.

Not the eyes of an animal.

But not the eyes of a human being, either.

They were something else, something Phil Collins had never seen before. And as he stared at them an icy finger of terror moved slowly down his spine.

He took a step forward, his fingers tightening on the knife. He knew he had to strike first, plunge the knife into the creature in the basement before it could attack him.

He had to kill it while it was still blinded by the glare of the flashlight.

Then, without warning, there was a sudden howl and Sparks lunged out of the darkness toward him. The knife clattered to the floor as Collins dropped it in shocked surprise. He raised his arms to fend off the animal, but it was too late.

Spark’s jaws closed on his throat, and he felt razor-sharp teeth ripping into his flesh, felt his windpipe puncture, then felt a warm sticky gush as the animal’s fangs ripped into his jugular vein. He sank to his knees. A scream rose in his throat as he groped wildly for the knife, but it was already too late, for his vocal cords had collapsed under the dog’s furious attack and the knife was far out of his reach. He dropped sideways, sprawling, to the floor, then rolled over, facedown on the concrete.

Sparks, snarling furiously, tore at the fallen body, ripping away large pieces of flesh and tossing them aside, then leaping to the attack once more.

At last a strange guttural voice spoke in the darkness, and it was over. The dog stopped its attack, whimpered once, then turned and trotted up the stairs.

Mark Tanner waited a moment, then stepped over the body of the football coach and started up the stairs himself.

Sparks was waiting for him by the back door.

Together the two of them slipped out into the night, moving silently through the darkness, away from the village and up into the foothills above the valley.

* * *

Mark had no idea what time it was when he reached the cave ten miles away from the valley. He’d lost all sense of time days ago and was now aware only of daytime and nighttime.

He slept in the daytime, curled up at the back of the cave he’d discovered on his third day in the mountains, always having carefully banked his small fire—the fire he never allowed to go entirely out—so that it would still have a few coals left when he awakened just before sunset and began preparing for the night’s hunting.

His eyes had changed quickly, and now the glare of sunlight nearly blinded him. But at night his large pupils gathered in every trace of light and he could see clearly; watch the owls and bats flitting through the darkness, see the other creatures of the night as they crept about in the constant search for food.

He was one of the hunters now, too, and though he had survived those first few days on little more than water from the streams and a few fungi he’d risked sampling, he was quickly shifting over to a carnivorous diet.

He’d captured his first rabbit on the fourth day, but it had been crippled—nearly dead when he’d stumbled upon it. Nevertheless, he skinned it clumsily with a broken knife he’d scavenged from an empty campground, then cooked it on a skewer over the fire he’d spent hours trying to light the day before, when he first discovered the cave. For a while he’d been afraid someone would see the smoke of the fire and come looking for him, but he never let the flame burn too high, and the smoke was nothing more than a faint wisp that quickly dispersed in the constant breezes of the mountains.

Almost every night he’d found himself drawn back to the hills overlooking Silverdale. Tonight he’d known he was going down into the village itself almost as soon as he left the cave. It hadn’t taken him long to make the trip, for his body had hardened and he could move tirelessly all night long.

He’d stopped twice on the way to the little valley where the town lay, the first time for only a few minutes. He’d
heard a sound in the brush and paused, listening. But when he heard it again, he knew it was only the rustling of a mouse and went on.

A few miles later he’d smelled a rabbit and stopped instantly, his nostrils sniffing the wind eagerly. He located the rabbit after a few minutes, nibbling at a small patch of dried grass beneath a clump of aspens. He stalked it carefully and patiently, keeping himself downwind of the creature, moving silently until he was only a few yards from it.

When he finally pounced, the rabbit had no time even to react. It had simply paused in its eating, its ears pricking up before Mark’s hands had closed around its throat, killing it with a fast twist that snapped its neck.

He tucked the rabbit under the piece of rope he’d found somewhere and now used as a belt, then gone on. Mark was almost certain the creatures he killed felt nothing at all, just as he was certain Martin Ames had felt nothing when his car had hurtled off the road a little while ago.

It had been odd, watching the car race toward him, and knowing that he wasn’t going to move out of its path. It had been a strange experience, staring into the headlights, blinded by them, for the first time truly feeling like the wild animal he had become.

And when he’d paused for a moment to gaze at the body of Martin Ames, he’d realized once again just how much he’d changed. For as he stared at the body of the man who had taken his very life from him, he’d felt nothing.

No rage, and no remorse.

And yet he knew, even then, that although part of him was now truly feral, there was another part of him that was still human and always would be.

When he’d come within sight of the village, he sat for a while, oblivious of the cold, staring down into the town. He knew there were things he needed, some things he hadn’t been able to scavenge in the campgrounds, or even in the dump he’d discovered forty miles away, on the edges of another village.

He might have stolen from anywhere, but he knew he wouldn’t. It was Silverdale that had made him what he had become, so it would be Silverdale that supplied him with what he needed.

And only certain people in Silverdale.

He’d known Collins’s house was empty from the moment he’d seen it. All his instincts told him that it would be safe for him to go inside. Even when the dog had begun barking before he’d managed to force the back door open, he hadn’t been afraid.

His instincts told him the dog wouldn’t hurt him.

And he’d been right, for as the door had finally given way under the strength of his arms, the barking stopped abruptly, and the dog’s head had lowered. Then the dog came forward, sniffing curiously, and finally licked tentatively at his hand.

Mark had spoken to it in the strange guttural half-language that was all his deformed jaw allowed him now, then reached down to pet him. As his hand touched the animal’s fur and he whispered softly to it, the dog had become his.

He’d gone quickly through the house, taking only the things he needed most—a pair of heavy denim pants and a thick flannel shirt from the closet in the bedroom.

In the cellar he found a set of camping pans and a Swiss army knife.

He’d been about to leave when he heard the front door open, and he moved swiftly up the stairs to close the cellar door. He would wait until the house was silent, then slip away.

But the dog had unwittingly betrayed him, and then, when he recognized the voice of the man who came down the stairs a few minutes later, he’d felt a pang of fear, a pang the dog understood.

He had let the dog kill Collins—he knew that. He could have stopped him, but he hadn’t.

After it was all over, he found that the last of the rage that had plagued him was gone, and that at least a part of what had been done to him was over. There was no more anger left
in him. Still, as he loped back to the cave with the dog trotting along beside him, he knew that he would return to Silverdale one more time that night.

But not yet.

Not until the darkest hour of the night, when the moon was low, and the people of the village were asleep.

   Kelly wasn’t certain what woke her. One moment she had been sound asleep, and the next wide awake, sitting up in bed, her senses tingling with anticipation.

Mark
.

He was here, somewhere very close to her.

She slipped out of bed, crept to the window, and peered out into the blackness beyond.

The moon was low, almost ready to disappear behind the mountain ridges, and deep shadows lay across the Harrises’ backyard. Although she could see nothing, she could still sense that there was something outside in the night.

She backed away from the window, then slipped through the door of her room and let herself into Linda’s room next door.

Linda, too, was wide awake.

“He’s here,” Kelly whispered. She moved across the room to Linda’s window and moved the curtain aside. A moment later Linda, pulling a robe around her shoulders, joined her, and together they gazed out into the darkness that shrouded the house. It was as if a shadow had slipped over the fence—a presence so silent, so nearly formless that for a moment neither of them was sure she had seen it at all. And then, very suddenly, a face appeared at the window.

Though it was an ugly face, a twisted, grotesque mask that was barely human anymore, neither Linda nor Kelly flinched or turned away.

For it was Mark’s face, and from beneath his lowering brows, it was Mark’s own gentle eyes that looked out at them.

His hand came up and gently touched the windowpane, and Linda knew immediately what he wanted.

She unlocked the window and slid it silently upward.

For a long moment nothing happened at all, and then, his gnarled, misshapen fingers trembling, Mark reached out and touched Linda’s cheek.

The fingers of his other hand gently brushed a lock of hair away from Kelly’s brow.

He leaned forward and slipped his arms around them, pressing the two girls close to his chest.

A slight sound, almost like a sob, rose in his throat.

Then he released them and turned away, disappearing into the night as silently and as swiftly as he’d come.

Kelly and Linda stayed where they were for a long time, neither of them saying a word. Finally, Linda slid the window closed again and gently guided Kelly back to bed.

“Will he come back again?” Kelly asked as Linda tucked her in.

Linda bent down and kissed the little girl on the brow.

“Of course he will,” she said. “He’ll always come back, because he’ll always love us.”

Kelly gazed up at her, her brows knit into a worried frown. “But will we always love him?” she asked.

Linda was silent for a moment, then nodded.

“Why would we stop loving him?” she asked. “It doesn’t matter what he looks like, or what’s happened to him. He’s still Mark, and inside he isn’t any different than he ever was.”

That night, for the first time since the funeral, both Linda Harris and Kelly Tanner slept soundly, undisturbed by dreams.

For on a hillside, far up in the mountains above the town, Mark Tanner sat alone, watching over them.

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