Creature

by John Saul

  The sharp intake of Sharon’s breath made a gasping sound, but Chuck shrugged helplessly. “There was nothing more I could do,” he said. “You saw how she was on Saturday, and since then it only got worse. This morning she seemed a little better, so I went to work. And then an hour ago she called me. She was making all kinds of wild accusations, claiming the telephone was tapped and there were people watching the house.” He shook his head sadly. “It didn’t make any sense, of course, and finally I called a friend down in Canon City.”

  Sharon frowned. “Canon City?”

  “It’s over on the other side of the mountains, near Pueblo.” His eyes met Sharon’s. “There’s a state mental hospital there,” he said. “My friend is on the staff.”

  “I see,” Sharon breathed, licking her lips.

  “Anyway,” Chuck went on, “he told me I’d better have Charlotte sent over there. So I called an ambulance, then came home.” His lips tightened. He glanced at his watch, then stood up. “Come on up,” he said. “You won’t believe it.”

  Silently, Sharon followed Chuck to the master suite. The door, hanging crookedly from a single hinge, was pushed back against the wall, and the room itself was in chaos.

  Chuck’s clothes were strewn all over the floor, and even the drawers had been pulled from the dresser by the wall. “She had the door locked,” he explained. “She told me she was throwing me out, that I was part of some plot she’d dreamed up. She wasn’t anything like rational, and finally, well …” Again, he shrugged then glanced at his watch. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’ve got some of Charlotte’s things here, and I have to take them over to Canon City.”

  “I see,” Sharon whispered. She gazed around the ruined room once more, then followed Chuck back down the stairs and out of the house. “It—It must have been terrible for you,” she said at last as Chuck tossed the suitcase into the backseat of the LaConners’ Buick.

  “It hasn’t been easy,” Chuck agreed as he slid in behind the wheel. His eyes met Sharon’s gaze, and he hastily looked away. “But it’s been a lot worse for her,” he said. “I—I guess I just don’t know what we’re going to do now.”

  “If there’s anything I can do,” Sharon began, but Chuck waved her words away.

  “I wish there were,” he said sadly. “But I’m afraid there isn’t. Not right now, anyway.”

  He started the car, then offered Sharon a lift, but she refused, and a moment later he drove away.

  Sharon stood on the sidewalk, watching the Buick until it disappeared, then turned to look at the house once again.

  In her memory she heard once more the disjointed telephone call in which Charlotte had pleaded for her help, and once more saw the look that had been in Charlotte’s eyes on Saturday, just before Chuck had led her out of the Tanners’ home.

  Don’t believe him, that look had said. Please don’t believe him!

  Then she pictured the chaos of the master bedroom. Though Chuck’s clothes had been scattered everywhere, she hadn’t seen so much as a trace of Charlotte’s own clothing.

  Charlotte’s closet hadn’t even been opened.

  And yet Chuck had said he was packing Charlotte’s things to take them to the hospital.

  “Don’t worry,” Sharon said now, speaking out loud even though there was no one to hear her. “I don’t believe him. I don’t believe a single word he said!”

  18

  Sharon gazed uneasily at the TarrenTech building. She’d seen it before, of course, even admired it. It had been so perfectly designed for its environment that it almost looked like an outgrowth of the landscape itself. But now it seemed to have changed, taking on the appearance of an animal crouching in the undergrowth, awaiting its prey. But that was ridiculous, of course—it was nothing but a building, and nothing about it had changed. It was she herself who had changed, and even as she’d walked the half mile from the town out to the low building set amidst landscaped acreage, she’d felt the difference in herself. She’d tried to walk slowly, as if out for nothing more than a leisurely stroll, just in case someone happened to be watching her.

  And that, too, was silly, she reminded herself now as she approached the front doors. She’d done nothing except respond to a call for help from an acquaintance. Why should people be watching her? Yet as she drew close to the entrance, she found herself glancing around uneasily, searching for the hidden cameras she knew were trained on her. But the cameras had no personal interest in her; they were nothing more than inanimate objects, continuously scanning the area around the building, alert for nothing in particular, but nevertheless recording everything that crossed their paths.

  It was Charlotte LaConner’s words that had put Sharon’s nerves on edge, and they still echoed in her mind: “They’re going to send me away. They’ve done something terrible with Jeff, and they don’t want me to find out.”

  Had she meant TarrenTech, or had she meant the sports center?

  Sharon had turned the words over in her mind, looking at them from every direction, and finally come to the conclusion that it didn’t matter exactly what Charlotte had meant, for she was certain that one way or another the sports center, like nearly everything else in Silverdale, was totally dependent on TarrenTech for its survival. An operation like Marty Ames’s couldn’t possibly survive on the fees it could collect as a summer training camp for high school kids.

  Unconsciously straightening her posture, Sharon pushed through the door and stepped up to the information desk, where she was met by a smiling receptionist.

  “May I help you, Mrs. Tanner?”

  Sharon frowned, then glanced instinctively at the girl’s lapel, searching for the identification badge that all TarrenTech employees wore.

  This girl wore none.

  The girl’s smile broadened as she realized Sharon’s dilemma. “I’m Sandy Davis,” she said. “And you don’t know me. The security system did a photo comparison on you, so I knew who you were even before you came into the building.”

  Sharon’s body stiffened. A photo check of her? But why? And how? She’d never given the company a picture of herself—they’d never even asked for one. But of course the answer was obvious: the cameras in San Marcos had recorded her comings and goings, and no doubt images of her had been transmitted to Silverdale along with the personnel files on Blake. Still, there was something eerie about it all, something creepy about knowing that she’d been spotted and identified even before she’d entered the building. She returned Sandy Davis’s smile, hoping her nervousness wasn’t showing.

  “If you’ll just tell me where my husband’s office is?”

  “Just down the hall to the left, turn right, and it’s in the far corner, near Mr. Harris’s.”

  Sharon started walking down the long corridor, but now that she was inside the building, the strange sensation of being watched was even stronger. She felt the hairs on the nape of her neck standing on end. Her step instinctively quickened, and she had to remind herself to appear as though nothing was wrong. By the time she reached Blake’s suite, she was walking at a normal pace again. As soon as she stepped into the outer office, his secretary—another woman whom Sharon had never met—offered her a warm smile that was almost an exact copy of Sandy Davis’s. “He’s on the phone right now, but I slipped him a message that you’re here,” she said, after introducing herself with a firm handshake. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  Sharon shook her head, and almost immediately the inner door opened and Blake stepped out. “This is a pleasant surprise,” he said, smiling a welcome. “What are you doing all the way out here?”

  Sharon quickly blurted out the first thing that came into her mind. “The car,” she said. “I wanted to do some shopping, and the list was too long for my cart.” Then she glanced at the secretary out of the corner of her eye. “Could we go inside?”

  Blake looked puzzled, but he nodded and held the door open for her. It was Sharon herself who closed it when they were both in his office. He cocked his head, “Wh
at’s going on that you don’t want Ellen to hear?”

  “It’s Charlotte LaConner,” she said, automatically lowering her voice. Carefully trying not to betray the emotions churning inside her, she explained to Blake what had happened. When she was finished, Blake looked at her, bewildered.

  “You came all the way out here to tell me that?” he asked. “That Charlotte’s had a breakdown? Honey, we both saw that coming a couple of days ago.”

  “It’s not that,” Sharon said nervously. “At least not quite. It’s what she said. That ‘they’ had done something to Jeff. I think she must have been referring to the sports center.”

  “Or the great communist conspiracy,” Blake observed archly. At the hurt he saw in Sharon’s eyes, he tried to soften his words. “I didn’t mean that,” he said apologetically. “But we know Charlotte was getting paranoid, and with paranoia—”

  “Was she?” Sharon interrupted. “I don’t think we know that at all. We know she was upset, and she had every right to be. After what happened with Jeff, why wouldn’t she be?”

  Blake took a deep breath, then lowered himself into the chair behind his desk. “All right,” he said. “What’s on your mind? It’s not just Charlotte, is it?”

  Sharon hesitated, then shook her head. “I guess not,” she said. “It’s all kinds of things—things that wouldn’t have bothered me at all if it were only one or two of them. But I keep getting the feeling that something’s wrong out here, Blake.” She made an expansive gesture, her trembling hands betraying her worry. “It’s the whole thing—the town, the school, even the kids. Everything is too perfect.”

  Blake smiled wryly. “Apparently Jeff LaConner isn’t perfect,” he interjected. Then his expression turned serious. “The Ramirez boy died this morning,” he went on. “I understand his mother is still trying to blame Jeff.”

  Sharon’s eyes clouded with tears as she remembered the sad form of Rick Ramirez, but then her thoughts shifted back to Jeff LaConner. “But Jeff’s gone, isn’t he?” she asked. “And Charlotte started making a fuss about Jeff, and now she’s gone, too.”

  “Now wait a minute,” Blake began. “It’s starting to sound like you’re buying into—”

  Sharon didn’t let him finish. “I’m saying I’m not sure we did the right thing in coming here,” she said. “At first, everything was fine. But now even Mark is starting to change. And it’s happened since he started going to Dr. Ames.”

  “He’s doing some exercises, and building himself up.”

  But again Sharon cut him off. “Yesterday he got into a fight with Robb Harris. That’s not like Mark—he’s never fought with anyone in his life.”

  Blake’s jaw tightened and his arms folded over his chest. “What is it you want?” he asked. “You want me to pull Mark out of the sports center? Maybe we shouldn’t stop there. Maybe I should quit TarrenTech and we should move back to California.”

  “Maybe we should,” Sharon heard herself blurt out. Was that what she’d really been thinking all along? She wasn’t sure.

  Suddenly she thought she saw Blake’s eyes flick nervously around the room, almost as if he were afraid that even in the privacy of his own office they were being observed. He fumbled in his pocket a moment and tossed her his key ring. “Look,” he said. “I know you’re upset right now, and maybe you even have a right to be. But this is something we can discuss later, when we’re at home. Okay? Take the car—I’ll either walk or hitch a ride with Jerry this evening.”

  It was a dismissal. For a moment Sharon was tempted to argue with him, to demand that they talk it out right now. But the expression on his face—and the strange flicker of nervousness in his eyes—made her keep silent. “All right,” she said at last. She went over to kiss him, and for a fraction of a second thought he started to duck away from the gesture. “But I’m not kidding,” she whispered into his ear. “Something’s going on around here, Blake. I don’t know what it is, but I’m going to find out.”

  A moment later Blake walked her to the door and kissed her good-bye. Even as she left the office, she had the strange feeling that he hadn’t really meant the kiss, that it had been given more for the benefit of some unseen audience than as a gesture of affection for her.

  In his office next to Blake Tanner’s, Jerry Harris switched off the tiny machine that had been recording every word spoken in the office next door. He leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head as he thought over what he’d just heard. Finally coming to a decision, he leaned forward and picked up the phone, dialing a series of digits from memory. A moment later Marty Ames came on the line.

  “We may have another problem on our hands,” he said, neither speaking Ames’s name nor identifying himself. “I’ll be out there within the hour. We can talk about it then.”

  “I’ve got a couple of things scheduled—” Ames began, but Harris cut him off abruptly.

  “Change them.” Harris hung up the phone, then removed the tiny microcassette from the recorder in the bottom drawer of his desk and slipped it into his pocket.

  Charlotte LaConner had been dealt with.

  And if it came to that, Sharon Tanner could be dealt with, too.

  Sharon wasn’t certain if she’d deliberately turned the wrong way when she left Blake’s office, but she suspected she had. Nor did she know exactly why it was that she wanted to explore the offices of TarrenTech. Was she really looking for something specific, expecting to find some clue that would trigger the answers to all the vague and indefinable questions churning in her mind?

  Of course not.

  The building, like any other office complex, was just that: a maze of corridors with doors leading off them, some of them open, most of them closed. But still she moved on, wandering in the halls until even she was no longer certain where she was.

  Then, in the distance, she heard a sound, as if some kind of an animal were in pain.

  She hurried her step, moving toward it. A few seconds later it was repeated. She was in a wide corridor now, and ahead of her was a closed door with a wire-meshed window mounted in it at eye level; a few feet from the door was an elevator. Sharon paused for a moment, waiting for the sound to come again. While she was waiting, the elevator doors opened and a man dressed in what looked like a lab coat stepped out.

  He was carrying a cardboard box—no more than a foot square—but even from where she stood, Sharon could clearly read a single word printed on its side in large red letters:

  INCINERATE

  As she watched, the eerie sound came again. The man frowned, then glanced toward the door with the reinforced window in it. When the sound came again, he set the box down on the floor, used a key to unlock the door, and pushed his way through.

  Barely even considering her action before carrying it out, Sharon hurried to the box and picked it up. Lifting the lid, she peered inside, then nearly dropped the box as a gasp of surprise burst from her lungs.

  She hesitated a split-second, her eyes flicking toward the ceiling as she searched for security cameras.

  She saw none.

  Making up her mind, she rummaged in her purse for the packet of Kleenex she always carried with her. Taking a deep breath, she reached into the box with trembling fingers, removed two of the objects it contained, and carefully wrapped them in a wad of tissue. Finally she gingerly placed the two wrapped objects in her purse. Putting the lid back on the box, she carefully replaced it on the exact spot from which she had picked it up a few seconds before, and hurried down the corridor.

  She had just disappeared around the corner when the door near the elevator opened again and the lab technician emerged, picked up the box, and continued on his errand to the incinerator at the rear of the building.

  Sharon had turned two more corners when she saw a man in a guard’s uniform coming toward her. Her first instinct was to duck through the nearest door, but she thought better of it.

  “Excuse me,” she said, only slightly too loudly, as the guard came near.
/>   He eyed her suspiciously, then seemed to figure out what her problem was. “Lost?”

  Sharon called forth an embarrassed smile. “I feel like a fool,” she said. “I’m Mrs. Tanner. I stopped in to speak to my husband, and I must have turned the wrong way.…” She shrugged helplessly, and the guard’s expression softened into an amused grin.

  “Happens all the time,” he told her. “One wrong turn around here and you can wander for twenty minutes before you find the lobby. Come on—I’ll show you.”

  He walked along beside her, made a left turn then a right, and a moment later they were back in the main lobby. “Thank you,” Sharon said as the guard held the door open for her. His fingers touched his hat politely and he turned away. Her heart pounding, Sharon stepped out into the chilly fall afternoon and scanned the parking lot for the station wagon.

  It wasn’t until she was well out of sight of TarrenTech that she pulled the car over to the side of the road, left the engine idling, and reached for the purse she’d dropped on the floor in front of the passenger seat.

  Her fingers trembled as she opened the bag and pulled out the first of the two objects she’d removed from the box by the elevator.

  It was a tiny white mouse, weighing no more than a couple of ounces.

  It was dead, its body stiff with rigor mortis.

  Sharon gazed at the tiny corpse for a moment, then carefully laid it on the car seat next to her.

  The other object was larger, weighing nearly half a pound. It looked very much like the mouse, except that its feet and claws seemed abnormally large and its whole body had an oddly deformed look to it. Sharon’s hands trembled even more violently as she held it, as if her hands themselves sensed something wrong.

  The white rat—if that indeed was what it was—was also stiff with the rigor of death, but there was one other difference between it and the mouse.