It Was Unlike Anything
Jennifer Had Ever Known.
It was as tall as a man, walked on two legs, yet its shape and the fur that covered it gave it the appearance of a gigantic wolf. But it was the eyes that were the most terrifying—slanted and green, almost aglow in the starlight. And though there was intelligence behind those eyes, it was unlike anything Jennifer had ever known. This creature was cold, distant. It was impossible to read anything from its eyes save the clear intention to destroy its enemies. A low satisfied growl rumbled from deep in its throat.
It charged straight at Jennifer….
Books in the PRIVATE SCHOOL™ Series
#1 NIGHTMARE SESSION
#2 ACADEMY OF TERROR
#3 WITCH’S EYE
#4 SKELETON KEY
#5 THE ENEMY WITHIN
#6 THE LAST ALIEN
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Manhanset House
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Text and illustrations copyright © 1991
by General Licensing Company, Inc.
ISBN: 978-1-59687-565-4
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SPECIAL THANKS TO RON BUEHL,
PAT MACDONALD, MARJORIE HANLON,
AND DAVID M. HARRIS.
EDITOR—RUTH ASHBY
PRIVATE SCHOOL™ #4
SKELETON KEY
—The aliens' power was growing. And Jennifer's days were numbered...
Steven Charles
Table of Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
One
EVENING CAME EARLY WHEN THE CLOUDS SCUDDED in, swallowing the setting sun and filling the gaps between the hills with slow-growing shadows. The air remained dry, but the breeze that slipped down the slope of Ballad Hill touched the campus of Thaler Academy with a vague threat of winter. Many leaves were still at the height of their autumn colors; others were brittle husks that whispered quietly. The tops of the pines dipped slightly, the lowest boughs trembling, and every so often there was the soft rattle of a pine cone falling to the ground.
A truck rumbled past the pillars that marked the academy’s main entrance.
A rabbit followed the brick wall that separated the campus from the highway, found its burrow, and popped in just ahead of a nightbird swooping down for its evening meal.
There was no thunder announcing the approach of a storm.
There were only the clouds, slowly shading to black.
The seven main buildings that formed a crescent at the top of the circular drive were lighted here and there, and for the most part they were silent. The library on the second floor of the Student Union was filled with students cramming for examinations, a few classrooms were occupied with after-dinner tutorials, and though the dormitories still had their share of music and laughter, the sounds were muted and short-lived.
In the student and faculty parking lots only a few cars were missing.
Behind the crescent and down a gentle slope, the squat red-brick gymnasium was lighted as well. It was, at night, the best place on campus for letting off steam, and a few girls were on the basketball court playing a frantic game without rules. A few more jogged around the track that circled the floor, and more were settled in the gymnastics room.
In the central locker room locker doors slammed. There were raucous shouts from the showers.
Beyond the locker room at the back of the building, however, in an addition much newer than the rest of the complex, the Olympic-sized swimming pool was empty. Jennifer Field hesitated for just a moment before walking into the pool area, a thick white towel slung around her neck.
Maybe, she thought as the door hissed shut behind her, this isn’t a good idea.
The system that kept the vast room and pool heated made the area feel too warm, uncomfortably humid; yet the white- and green-checkered tiles on the floor and walls were damp and cool to the touch. And where the tiles ended, the domed ceiling began—squares of clear glass speckled with droplets of condensation, not thick enough to keep the night sky from peering in.
Jennifer took a step toward the pool and shivered.
It was silent.
With the locker room door closed, the shouts from the others were cut off, sealed off, and all she could hear were the faint drips of water, the sound of her own breathing, and the light slap of water as the filtration system switched on and off and created wavelets that ran along the sides of the pool.
When she coughed, more for the noise than because she had to, there were echoes.
She swallowed, then padded to the steps leading into the pool at the near corner, slipped the towel off, and dropped it to the floor. She wished there was more light, but once the dinner hour was over and classes were done for the day, there remained only four large bulbs burning in each of the high corners, aimed at the pool itself and leaving deep pools of shadow along the walls. Underwater, evenly spaced and protected by wire mesh, were other lights whose beams were distorted, feeble lights that barely illuminated the checkerboard pattern on the pool’s bottom.
The odor of chlorine.
The smell of damp wood from the benches around the walls.
Jennifer breathed deeply and took hold of the aluminum railing that curved down with the steps. The water was slightly chilly, comfortable, and she moved down until it was up to her waist. She stood staring down toward the diving board at the other end.
With one hand she tucked a few stray strands of auburn hair under her bathing cap, hating the rule that required such confinement, then pulled down at the sides of her one-piece maroon swimsuit. She looked over her shoulder at the double doors that led back into the locker room, hoping that someone would join her and at the same time hoping she’d be left alone for a while.
She needed to think.
Her studying was done, and the noise in the dorm had suddenly grown too loud, too intrusive. This was the only place she could think to flee to for peace and a few minutes of undisturbed solace.
She turned to face the wall, backed away slowly, and lowered herself beneath the surface. She came up sputtering and grinning and launched herself backward. No Australian crawl or butterfly stroke that night—just a lazy overhand reach and a fluttery kick of her feet, and she felt the water slip over her shoulders and chest and watched the dome drift along with her as if she were on a slow-moving boat, floating along a tropical river.
She floated then, without moving.
Staring at the faint, rippling reflection of the water on the walls. Stick figures shadow dancing just for her.
Moving again until she reached the far end at last and turned around, still on her back and still concentrating on using just enough energy to keep herself from slipping under.
And once back at her starting point at the shallow end, she stood and rubbed her arms, shook them, shook her legs, and took off a second time.
Stroke and kick, sensing rather than seeing the light abov
e and below her, feeling her tension drain away with the exercise.
For a moment Jennifer was distracted when the under side of the diving board slipped into view. She reached for and found the lip of the pool behind her. She rested, her arms out to either side, taking her weight while her legs fluttered just enough to keep them from drifting downward, not missing a beat when she thought she heard the opening and closing of the door leading directly to the outside.
Though she was in the shadow of the board, the lights above her prevented her from seeing if anyone had come in, and, though she waited, no one came to the pool’s edge, no one called out to see who she was.
“Hello!” she called then and blinked at the echoes that filled the room. “Over here!”
When the echoes died, there was nothing.
Oh, no, she thought, and a sudden chill rushed across her bare shoulders to settle in her stomach.
She pulled up the sides of her cap to free her ears, and she listened again. It was possible she had been mistaken, that the noise was just a trick of the muffling effect of the water, her light splashing, and the sound of her heart and rushing blood.
“Hello?”
Echo.
She squinted but could see nothing but the wavering image of water on the tiles and the extra shadows it created.
And she knew then, without seeing a thing, without hearing a thing, that she wasn’t alone.
Someone was in there with her.
A brief moment when she thought it might be Marysue or Monica playing a trick on her. Both of her friends knew she was going for a swim. All three of them shared a secret that none of them wanted to keep, yet none was able to tell anyone else. She thought then—she hoped—one of her friends was trying to scare her into thinking that one of them had entered the pool building, one of—
Something moved.
Over there, on her right, along the wall by a bench.
She turned slowly and thought she saw a shadow drifting along the wall toward her end of the pool.
“Hey, Beauford!” she said and waited for Marysue to answer.
Again the slight movement, though it might have been one of the ripples.
“Holt?” And she dared Monica to try to hide from her then.
As she backed slowly out from under the diving board, she knew it wasn’t either of them.
Her friends wouldn’t try to scare her, not then. Neither of them would pretend she was one of them, one of the aliens they had discovered, living with the human population of Staines Valley, working on a project that would transform the earth’s atmosphere into one they would be able to breathe.
And in so doing would destroy every living thing on the planet.
Something moved.
Quickly she pushed away from the side and side-stroked toward the center of the pool, where she treaded water, turning slowly left, then right, cursing the dim light and cursing the water that slapped at her face, finally reaching up and tearing the cap free from her head and tossing it aside.
The splash the cap made was quiet, but it sounded like a gunshot.
“Hey,” she said flatly. “Tell me, who is it?”
A bench scraped on the tiles when someone bumped into it, and Jennifer moved a little closer to the shallow end, fear and anger struggling within her.
Fear because she didn’t want to be trapped in there with one of the aliens. They were deadly. They were killers. And they knew she and the others understood their secret purpose.
And anger because she was tired of being scared, tired of jumping at her own shadow, tired of being threatened and unable to do anything about it. When Borden Overbrook and Pauline Klopher, the instructor and the widowed librarian, disappeared mysteriously after finding the aliens’ hideaway in the forest, Jennifer’s friends had been ready to surrender, to give in, but she had told them she’d had enough.
“Fight,” she had said. Even if she had to do it alone, she was going to fight.
The lights went out.
Suddenly there was only the night sky overhead, and below her the dim glow of the underwater bulbs. The reflecting shadows on the walls took on sharper edges, shifting more wildly as her hands stirred up the water.
The diving board creaked.
Jennifer continued to sidestroke toward the shallow end, knowing that if she let herself settle the bottom would be only a few inches below her feet.
The diving board creaked, and when her vision adjusted to the dark, she saw a long, dark shadow climb to the board’s center, low and hunched over, its form blending with the dark of the wall behind it.
“Jennifer,” it said quietly.
She gasped and continued to move away. The voice was rasping, deep, saying her name and growling at the same time.
“Jennifer.”
She swallowed, turned her head from side to side, and realized she was standing up, the water just at her waist. It wasn’t coming after her. It was playing with her, and she knew it.
“Jennifer, I see you.”
“What—what do you want?” she asked, annoyed that her voice was trembling.
“You,” it said.
Back another foot, angling toward the steps in the corner. “What?”
“You, Jennifer,” it said, its words barely audible above the splashes she made.
Her right heel struck the bottom step.
Through the closed doors behind her, she could hear the sound of muffled laughter.
The creature remained on the diving board, still deep in shadow.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
A small sound, a sound like the scrape of rough metal over metal. It was laughing.
Then it raised its head, and Jennifer moved up the steps quickly. In the light from below, she saw its wolflike form, the gleam of its fangs and the faint glow of its gray fur, and finally the intense green glow from its evil, slanted eyes.
“You, Jennifer,” it said. “I want you.”
Two
BLINDLY, JENNIFER SNATCHED UP HER TOWEL AND raced for the exit, her shoulders and spine rigid as she expected the creature to leap snarling onto her back to tear out her throat, leaving her body to be discovered in the morning. Her hands fumbled with the crossbar, slipped off, refusing to take hold.
The creature laughed softly.
A wild look over her shoulder, and she fell against the bar, cursing when it didn’t move, sobbing when it finally gave way under her weight. Then, nearly falling, she was through the door and into the locker room, gasping for air, stumbling along the wall, constantly looking back over her shoulder.
The door swung closed behind her.
There were a few voices, loud and laughing, some in the shower area that divided the locker room in half down its center, some in the aisles between banks of red and blue lockers. As Jennifer hurried toward her own, a couple of girls called her name in greeting and asked her how the water was. She smiled stiffly, unable to answer. She looked back, looked ahead, and ducked into her aisle where, suddenly, her legs weakened, forcing her to drop onto the worn wooden bench that stretched down the aisle’s center.
To her left were the showers, wide areas of white tile through which one could walk to the lockers on the other side. Steam drifted over the top of the dividing wall, sliding down the tiles, coiling on the tiled floor.
No one was in her section, and she whimpered softly as she gave herself over to the violent chills that struck her in waves. Her teeth chattered, her arms and legs broke out in gooseflesh, and she wrapped the towel tightly around her as if it were a shawl.
It isn’t coming, she told herself. It’s playing with me.
How do you know?
It isn’t. It could have killed me in there, and it didn’t.
When the chills subsided, she stood, swayed for a moment, then yanked her locker open and pulled out her clothes. She stripped off her swimsuit, dressed as fast as she could, and slammed the door shut. A spin on the lock until she felt it catch. Her hair was still wet,
but she didn’t care. All she wanted to do was get out of there and back to her room to contact the others.
They had to know.
They had to know that she had just been warned again—maybe for the last time.
“Hey, Field!”
Her hand slapped her mouth, stifling a scream, and she turned to see a red-haired, slightly chubby girl in a sweatshirt and jogging shorts step through the showers to her side of the room. Barbara O’Malley’s freckled face was gleaming with perspiration.
“Sorry,” Barbara said, opening her locker and pulling out a towel. “Did I scare you?”
“Just a heart attack, that’s all,” Jennifer said with a forced grin. “I didn’t hear you coming.”
The girl pulled the sweatshirt over her head and stuffed it into the locker. “I know what you mean. Everybody’s been nervous since Overbrook and Klopher disappeared.” She wrinkled her nose in mock disgust, the perspiration sliding down her fair skin. “Everyone thinks they’ve been kidnapped and there’s a kidnapper in every corner. Can you believe it?”
Jennifer nodded as she backed slowly toward the outer aisle. “Armed guards next, right?”
“I hope not. But the dean says we shouldn’t go anywhere alone for a while.” Barbara laughed. “In packs. Like wolves.”
“That’s—great,” Jennifer said.
“Hey, if you hang around a minute until I shower, I’ll walk back with you. We can protect each other from the mad murderer.”
“No, that’s okay,” Jennifer said. “I’ve got—it’s all right; there’s someone—”
She hurried away, the sound of O’Malley’s high-pitched laughter following her to the exit. With one hand on the crossbar of the heavy metal door, she paused and looked down the length of the room. At the entrance to the pool. The door was still closed.
“You, Jennifer. I want you.”
Then she was outside and running up the narrow walk toward the main buildings and dorms. She shivered as much from the cold as from fright and ordered herself not to look to either side as she ran. There were only shadows around her. Only shadows. Nothing to see. Look straight ahead and keep running.
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