Monster

by Christopher Pike

  “No.”

  “Come on.”

  Angela sharpened her tone. “You come on. The last time I was here you gave me all this crap about you killing those two because they were aliens.”

  “I never said they were aliens. You said that.”

  “Monsters, whatever. Now I'm tired of it. You tell me the truth. Why did you come to that party with that shotgun?”

  Mary regarded her closely. “What's happened, Angie? What’s got you scared?”

  Angela hesitated. “A boy broke his neck at the game last night.”

  Mary was interested. “Give me all the details.”

  “His name's Fred Keith. He plays for Balton – he used to play for Balton. Larry Zurer tackled him in the fourth quarter, and now Fred will probably be paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of his life.”

  Mary sucked in a breath. “I knew Larry was one of those bastards.” She drummed her fingers on the table-top. “What else?”

  “When are you getting out?” Angela asked.

  “I don't know. What else?”

  “I hear you might be out tomorrow. You should stay here. I went to the funerals. Todd and Kathy's families are no fans of yours.”

  “Who cares?” Mary got up and began to pace. “If Larry's gone over, Carol's gone as well.” She spoke to the wall. “How many more are there by now?”

  “Are you figuring out how much ammunition you'll need?”

  “Shut up,” Mary snapped.

  Angela jumped out of her chair. “You don't fool me one bit – your first hour out of here and you'll be after them.”

  Mary glared at her. “The minute I'm out of here they’ll be after me. Look at yourself, Angie, and tell me who’s fooling who. Is Jim suddenly head over heels in love with you? Did he tell you he had to dump me so that he could have you?”

  Angela froze. “He did.”

  Mary pounded her knee with her good hand. “I knew it! What else? Are you going out with him?”

  Angela's legs felt weak. She had to sit back down. “I went out with him last night.”

  Mary stared down at her. “Are you out of your goddamn mind?”

  Angela peered up at her. “Most people think you are, Mary.”

  Mary stepped back around the table and plopped down in her chair. She chuckled bitterly. “My friend, Angela Warner. So hard up for male attention that she chooses one of the few human animals in the country to lust after.”

  “He chose me,” Angela said.

  “He chose you because he’s worried about what I told you. Admit it, he asked you, didn't he? Maybe a few times?”

  “Didn't you talk to her on Saturday?” “Didn’t she tell you anything?” “Like what?” “What did she tell you?”

  “They were normal questions,” Angela said flatly.

  “What did the happy couple do on their first date?”

  “We ate together. In a restaurant. We didn't eat anybody.”

  “Then what did you do?” Mary asked.

  “We went back to my place and screwed.”

  “I believe it. You're probably one of them by now.”

  Angela pounded the table. “Listen to me! What am I supposed to do? You tell me that Jim's walking death on the loose, and I'm just supposed to sit back and see if he kills somebody? You should be happy I went out with him. I'm carrying on your research.”

  Mary considered. “Did you sleep with him?”

  “No.”

  “Did you kiss him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bitch,” Mary said.

  “You tried to kill Jim last week. I can't believe you're jealous that I went out with him.”

  Mary opened her mouth to snap at her friend again but thought better of it. She briefly closed her eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. When she reopened them she reached across the table and took Angela's hand. Angela had thought Mary had bloodshot eyes the last time. Now they were more red than any other colour.

  “Jim is not in love with you,” Mary said calmly. “He is not interested in forming a relationship with you. He warns to use you to get to me. He's worried about what you know. He will probably kill you eventually. He might do worse.”

  “He might turn me into someone like himself?”Angela asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What is he, Mary?”

  “I told you, I don't know.”

  “Did you know Point Lake was formed by a meteor millions of years ago?”

  Mary scowled. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Why did you bring it up?” Mary asked.

  “It’s a concern of mine that I drink pure, healthy water.”

  “I'm serious.”

  “It's hard to take you seriously, Mary. You tell me about a warehouse but can't remember where it's located. You talk about people disappearing inside this warehouse who are never reported missing. You tell me to watch out for Jim, that he's evil, even though he seems like such a fun-loving guy. And every psychologist in the country is branding you a certifiable lunatic after what you did last week. Now I think it's time you gave me something concrete to go on, or else I'm going to have to conclude once and for all that you are what you appear to be: a young woman who committed murder in a jealous rage.”

  Mary sat back. She stared at the floor for a full minute and then sighed. “Chicken crates.”

  “Yes.”

  “I hid behind crates that had held chickens while I watched them drag the two couples into the warehouse.”

  “And this warehouse is in Balton?” Angela asked.

  “I think so.”

  “You think so? You were sure last week.”

  “Where Balton joins Kally,” Mary said patiently. “It’s hard to tell where one city ends and the other begins. The warehouse may have been in Kally. It was at the edge of town, I remember that much.”

  “How do you know the crates had contained chickens?”

  “I could tell by the smell.”

  Angela stood. “Good.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I'm going to find all the warehouses where chickens are stored in both Balton and Kally. Then I'm going to these places to search for an abandoned warehouse nearby. If I find such a warehouse, I’m going to break in and search for bloodstains on the floor.”

  “I told you I went back to the warehouse. They had been there already and washed away what was left of the blood.”

  “They couldn't have washed it all away. If it was there to begin with, I should be able to find traces of it.” Angela stopped. “Or would you rather I didn't look?”

  Mary was tough. “I’m curious why you're looking at all. What did you do after eating at the restaurant, Angie?”

  “We went for a walk along the lake. We kissed.”

  “Don't rub my face in it. Is that all?”

  “Jim cut his arm while he was chasing me,” Angela said.

  “Did he bleed?”

  “A tremendous amount. Like a normal human being.”

  Mary frowned. “Blood,” she whispered.

  “It wasn't green or anything like that.”

  Mary snorted. “You still haven't answered my original question. Why are you here? Why didn't you just write me off as a basket case?”

  “I told you what happened to Fred Keith.”

  “That wasn't what brought you back here. You're scared. What scared you? Jim?”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  Angela put her hand to her head. For a moment the felt dizzy; the room spun. She had that peculiar pounding in her head again, like when she woke up. It had gone away when she had eaten. God, she was hungry again. She felt as if she could eat a cow whole.

  “I had a dream,” she said finally. “That's what scared me.”

  “What happened in this dream?”

  Angela turned for the door. “I was eaten alive. That's all. I remember. I'll talk to you later, Mary. Stay healthy.”


  “Stay alive, Angie,” Mary said.

  Nguyen hardly questioned Angela when she stopped by in his office after talking to Mary. She fed him the same lies she had the previous week and doubted he believed her for a moment. She briefly wondered if he had been eavesdropping on their conversations, but decided it would have been against the law.

  Kevin joined her in the waiting room and walked her out to her car.

  “How did it go?” he asked.

  “It’s hard to say. We have to find a warehouse around here that stores chickens.”

  “Sounds like my kind of Saturday afternoon,” Kevin said.

  Of course Lieutenant Nguyen didn't believe Angela, because once more he'd both eavesdropped on and recorded the conversation she'd had with Mary. Officer Martin, one of the men who'd helped Nguyen capture Mary the night of the party, went into Nguyen's office carrying the tape. The two men listened to the conversation twice before speaking.

  “We made a mistake searching for the warehouse in Balton alone,” Nguyen said. “That may be why we didn’t find it.”

  “It was my mistake,” Officer Martin said. He was a short squat man with a serious attitude towards life. His wife said they slept together with their guard dog. If Martin had a first name, he had forgotten it. Nguyen liked him. “Where’s that other girl coming from?” Martin asked.

  “Angela Warner? I don't know. Obviously she doesn’t believe Mary's story – who would? – but there are elements in it that disturb her.” Nguyen removed the tape from the player and fingered it uneasily. There was something about Angela's state of mind that was different from that of the previous week. Last Saturday Nguyen wouldn't have imagined Angela going out with Mary's boyfriend – a clear act of disloyalty. But perhaps Jim had some kind of power over girls. He was an extremely handsome kid.

  Maybe he was more than that.

  Jim reminded Nguyen of a young soldier he'd had under his command in Vietnam. The man's name had been Tran Quan; he was the best killer Nguyen had ever seen. On sorties into the jungle Tran Quan always killed more VC than the rest of his squad combined. He hunted like a snake, though, not like a human. He wouldn't stop at shooting or stabbing a victim in the back. Nguyen hated him and needed him at the same time.

  But that need had been superseded the night he had found Tran Quan raping a village girl whom he had just shot in the head. He had smiled when he was caught in the beam of Nguyen's flashlight. Nguyen had killed him on the spot and never regretted it.

  What did nice, clean-cut Jim Kline have in common with Tran Quan that Nguyen should link them together? He didn't know. But he was afraid what would happen if he didn't find out.

  “I'd like to follow all three of these kids,” Nguyen said finally. “Angela, Jim, and especially Mary. Would you help me?”

  “Yes,” Martin said. “I’d like to take Mary. It sounds like she won’t be out on bail too long with that kind of attitude.”

  “She's seventeen, but you know how dangerous she is?”

  “I saw proof at that party last week.”

  “Don't forget what you saw.” Nguyen stood. “Let's look over our list of warehouses once more and concentrate on Kally. I'm sure Angela is doing the same thing right now. If there is a warehouse like the one Mary's described, I can probably pick up Angela's trail there.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Angela and Kevin found a food wholesaler's warehouse listed in the local Yellow Pages. It had a Kally address, not a Balton one. Kevin said he knew where it was. It took them only twenty minutes to find. Of course, they more interested in what was across the street from it.

  Which just happened to be an abandoned warehouse.

  It was right where Mary said it should be. Not far from a stack of smelly chicken crates. Angela parked beside them and climbed out. Since it was a Saturday, the industrial part of town was deserted. The smell of the nearby crates, though repulsive, just increased her hunger. She was going to have to ditch Kevin soon and go eat the contents of a supermarket. She pointed across the alley at the boarded-up back door of what had been a foam rubber warehouse.

  “Could there be the blood of four dead bodies in there?” she asked hypothetically.

  “Didn't Mary say the monsters wiped up all the mess?” Kevin asked.

  Angela shrugged. “You know how sloppy monsters are. Let's go see what we can find. But let's get my nut wrench from the trunk. We can use it in place of a crowbar to yank the boards off.”

  “All right,” Kevin said. “We may want to bring a flashlight too.”

  Angela didn't like the look of the building, the feeling that surrounded it. Maybe it was haunted by ghosts that had not left the world happy. Or maybe that was another illusion.

  “Yeah,” she answered Kevin. “And try to get a shotgun.”

  They broke into the building with remarkable ease, leaving the door wide open behind them. They were quickly happy for the flashlight, though. The warehouse was huge. The door receded behind them to a tiny rectangle of light, their only connection to the real world. If she had thought the place creepy on the outside, inside she thought it was in dire need of an exorcism. Their steps echoed away from them like the footfalls of stalking phantoms. The air was stale. A taint smell of foam rubber permeated it, along with the odour of something she couldn't pinpoint. The rancid stench of decay, maybe?

  “Is this a scary place or what?” she whispered.

  “I wouldn't want to come here after dark,” Kevin agreed, “I wonder if there's a light switch.”

  They searched but could find no switch. Angela suspected the electricity had been disconnected long ago, anyway. The owners were obviously not concerned about keeping up appearances in order to show the place to potential renters or buyers. A film of dust covered everything – the hard grey floor, the dark brown walls. But their search for the washed-away blood would have been hopeless if it hadn't been for the dust. For the absence of it, in one dark corner, drew the beam of their flashlight like a magnet. Only a few minutes inside the building and they were hurrying to the clean patch of concrete. It was remarkably circular, as if it had been drawn as an altar of sacrifice. Angela went down on her knees as Kevin held the light above her head. She touched the cold floor and peered closely.

  “See anything?” Kevin asked.

  She crawled forward, straining her eyes. And then, in a jagged crack that had probably been created by the settling building, she saw dried dark red stuff. She motioned Kevin to kneel beside her. They pressed the beam of the flashlight close to the crack. Kevin reached out and scraped some of the dark stuff with his nail.

  “What is it?” Angela asked, her heart pounding.

  “Looks like dried blood.”

  “Christ.”

  “I don’t think it's his blood.”

  “Kevin.”

  “I know, this is bad. Good for Mary, maybe. Bad for the rest of the planet.”

  She stared at him. “Does this make you believe Mary’s story?”

  “I was joking,” Kevin said. “I’m more inclined to believe that Todd and Kathy and Jim killed four people here. That makes them monsters, certainly. But not the supernatural sort.”

  “Yeah.” Angela took the flashlight and followed the crack further. It stretched maybe fifteen feet across the dust-free circle, and it was choked with the dried blood. How much had they spilled, she wondered, that it covered so much of the floor? “Mary didn't see this when she came back,” she said.

  “If it had been real bloody to begin with,” Kevin said, “she might not have gone down on her hands and knees when she came back. I guess you know what we have to do now?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I think it's pretty obvious. We have to tell the police what we've found. It adds credibility to Mary’s story.”

  “But Mary hasn't told the police her story.”

  “She might want to now,” Kevin said. “A modified version of it.”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean �
� no?”

  “I don't want to go to the police with this just yet.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  Angela looked back towards the lighted doorway, an easy two hundred yards away. She was having trouble breathing. The air had no life in it.

  Did the people scream as they died, and did they suck all the life out of the air?

  “I went out with Jim Kline last night,” she said.

  Kevin plopped down on the floor beside her. “Why?”

  “He asked me. I said yes.” She shrugged. “We went out after the game. We ate and then went for a walk along the lake.”

  He was hurt. “Why didn't you tell me?”

  “I didn't want to hurt your feelings.”

  Kevin's face crumpled. In the harsh shadows cast by the flashlight it was particularly pathetic. “It hurts my feelings more that you’d lie to me about it.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She wanted to touch him, to hold him, but couldn't in this hellish place. They had to get out into the air soon. She didn't know why she had chosen now in to tell him about Jim.

  “Do you like him?” Kevin asked.

  “I don't know. Maybe.”

  Kevin snorted. “What about what Mary says? What about this dried blood? Are we just performing character research here? If we are, I'd say the guy gets a lousy rating.”

  “Kevin.”

  “What's wrong with me?” he asked.

  That hurt – the worst of all questions. I love you. Why don’t you love me? She honestly believed that she would have preferred to ask it than to answer it.

  “There's nothing wrong with you, Kevin,” she said as gently as she could. “There's something wrong with me.”

  “Yeah, right. A body overflowing with hormones.”

  She began to cry. It surprised her. The tears just sprang out. “I'm serious,” she said. “I don't feel right.”

  Kevin quietened. He put his arm around her. “What's wrong with you?” he asked.

  I’m hungry. I need another couple of Big Macs. I don't even care if they serve me the meat raw. I might even prefer it.

  She sniffed. “I had a bad dream last night.”

  “Was I in it?”

  She had to laugh, even though she continued to cry. “No. I was alone. I was far from home, in a horrible world. But I can’t talk about that right now. And the reason I went out with Jim – I can't talk about that, either. I just want to tell you that I do care about you. You're my friend. That's all I can say right now.”