by John Saul
He hadn’t betrayed his certainty that someone was watching him with even the briefest of glances out the window.
Now, he felt a chill of apprehension—had he been too careful?
Had he been acting abnormally normal?
No! Of course not! He rarely looked out the window at all.
Or did he?
Suddenly he had the horrible feeling that he usually unconsciously glanced out the window dozens of times in the course of a normal evening.
His body tensed as he wondered if he’d already given himself away to the unseen watcher.
Then another thought occurred to him:
Had he been in the darkened kitchen too long?
Of course! He should have gone through the house, turning out all the lights on the first floor, as if he were going to bed. Only then, when all the windows were dark, should he have made a second circuit, peering out to try to get a look at the hidden watcher.
But it wasn’t too late. It couldn’t be!
Carl moved quickly then, striding from room to room, turning out the lamps on the tables in the living room and parlor, and the chandelier in the dining room. Finally, when all the lights were off, he began his second patrol, peering out from the darkened rooms, gazing into the shadows of the yard.
And still he saw nothing.
But he could wait no longer, and finally he picked up his briefcase from the table in the entry and slipped through the door under the stairs. Pulling the door shut behind him, not daring even to turn on the light over the stairs, he felt his way down the steep flight through the suffocating blackness.
Even when he was safely in the cellar, he turned on only a single light over his worktable.
Taking the vial he had pilfered from Ellen Filmore’s office out of his briefcase, he used a hypodermic needle to draw a few drops of its contents through the rubber seal he himself had applied to the vial only a few days ago.
He moved to the far end of the counter, where one of the rats he kept for experimentation—and to feed to the most carnivorous of his specimens—was eyeing him warily from the confines of its cage. Opening the cage, he carefully removed the rat, holding it gently as he slid the hypodermic needle into its skin. He pressed the plunger of the hypodermic needle, and instantly felt the rat begin to squirm in his hand. Dropping the rat back into the cage, he closed the lid, then stepped back to watch.
The rat backed into a corner of the cage, where it crouched, trembling, its nose twitching as it sniffed the air, its tiny eyes darting around as if seeking some unseen enemy.
Carl Henderson’s eyes narrowed. Had he given it too much of the serum in the vial? Was it going to die?
Suddenly the rat began furiously scratching itself, and Carl’s frown deepened.
An allergic reaction?
He tried to remember how Julie had looked and behaved after she’d been given her shot.
She had gone to the bathroom, he could remember that.
And when she came out to the waiting room, she’d looked strange.
Had she been itching? Or had the shot affected her differently from the way it seemed to be affecting the rat?
He didn’t know.
As he watched, the rat seemed to calm down, and Carl Henderson’s fear that it was going to die right then began to abate.
But what would happen to it in the morning?
He was tempted to stay up all night, to keep watch over the rat, so that he could take careful notes on everything that happened to it. But if he didn’t sleep at all, the strain of staying up all night would show in his face.
No, better to go to bed, better to keep to his normal routine.
He turned away from the rat, then remembered something else he’d heard that day.
About Jeff Larkin.
Something Vic Costas had told him.
“He didn’t look right this morning,” the old Greek farmer had said. “Like that girl, Julie. He looked this morning the way she looked yesterday. Just not quite right, you know? Just not right. I guess maybe he caught whatever she had.” His brow had furrowed into a deep scowl. “Kids these days,” Costas had added. “You just can’t keep ’em away from each other.”
Carl turned and gazed at the rat once more. If what he’d just injected it with was contagious …
He glanced around the room, then spotted exactly what he needed. On one of the shelves above the counter there was a Plexiglas box that he’d constructed himself when he’d experimented with breeding spiders a year ago. Sealed nearly perfectly, the only thing that could get in or out was air.
And even the air had to pass through a filter that was fine enough to meet hospital standards. Indeed, it was at a hospital supply house that he’d bought the air filtration system.
Carl Henderson picked up the rat—still in its cage—and placed it inside the Plexiglas box, sealed the box’s top, then turned on the ventilation fan.
The hum of the fan’s motor seemed to make the rat even more nervous than it had been before, and Carl watched it for a few more minutes. Then, deciding that the little creature would settle down as soon as it got used to the sound of the whirring fan, he turned off the light and went back upstairs.
Within the rat, responding to the vibrations emanating from the ventilating fan, the organism Carl had injected into its bloodstream began to reproduce. And the rat began going rapidly insane.
Long before morning, the rat would batter itself to death trying to escape from the colony growing within it.
Kevin bumped slowly along the rutted dirt road that skirted the western boundary of the farm, the headlights of the Chevy turned off, his speed never exceeding ten miles an hour. But no matter how slow he went, the car bottomed out every time he hit a chuckhole, its shock absorbers no longer able to take the jolts the road was giving it. Yet it was still better than the county road, where the humming from the power lines had become unbearable, finally forcing him to turn off even before he came to Vic Costas’s farm.
At last, though, just after ten-thirty, he turned down the narrow track that would bring him almost to the back door of his house, and he finally shut the engine off, coasting the last few yards in the hope that perhaps no one would hear him coming in. Right now, the last thing he wanted to do was try to talk to anyone.
For a while, after he’d been with Sara in the park, Kevin had felt better. The chills that had gripped him all through the morning had finally eased, and when he drove back down from the park, even the terrible throbbing the power lines caused in his head had been almost bearable.
The thing was, he didn’t really know exactly what had happened when he’d been with Sara. All he could remember was that he’d been feeling worse and worse, and that on the way up to the park he felt like he was going to die. But then he and Sara had gone into the clearing in the thicket where everyone went to neck, and she’d spread out a blanket.
He’d lain down, and she dropped down next to him.
Then she bent over, about to kiss him.
And something had happened to him. His lungs had suddenly felt as if they’d filled up with cotton. He hadn’t been able to breathe, and a horrible wave of panic came over him. Suddenly he’d felt something almost like an explosion in his chest, and for a single terrible moment he thought maybe he was having a heart attack. But it hadn’t been a heart attack at all, for a second later a great gasp burst from his throat—almost as if he’d been holding his breath beyond his own endurance, and then …
And then he felt a great sense of relief.
The sickness he’d been feeling all day suddenly left him, and for a while he simply lay on his back, staring up into the sky.
He had a vague memory of Sara leaving, but he’d fallen asleep, not waking up until the sun was already dropping in the western sky. And then, as the afternoon began to turn into evening, the sickness began to come back, and with it the terrible fear that he was losing his mind.
Now, getting out of the car, Kevin circled the house, his eyes sca
nning the dimly lit rooms for any sign that his family was waiting up for him. But the curtains were drawn, and only a few lights glowed softly in the downstairs rooms.
Kevin slipped into the house through the kitchen door. On the refrigerator was a note telling him to help himself to a piece of the apple pie left over from dinner, and Kevin wolfed it down, then took a second piece, and finally a third.
The terrible hunger that had left him for a few hours after he’d been with Sara was back again, and now it seemed to be growing worse by the minute. After he finished the pie, Kevin opened the refrigerator and began looking for something else to eat. It was while he was unwrapping the remains of a meat loaf that he felt someone watching him.
Turning, he saw Molly standing in the door to the dining room, the afghan from the living room sofa wrapped around her shoulders. Her eyes, large and serious, gazed worriedly at him.
“Did you find Julie?” she asked, her voice quavering.
Kevin hesitated, then shook his head. As yet a new urge began to rise within him, an urge that this time was somehow connected to Molly, he took a step backward.
Sensing nothing of what was happening to her stepbrother, Molly dropped the afghan and ran to him, throwing her arms around him as a great sob wracked her body.
Kevin stiffened. The urge within him grew stronger, and he wanted to pick Molly up—hold her—bring her face close to his own.…
“Hey,” he said, his voice strangling in his throat as he struggled against the danger he felt growing inside him. “Just because I didn’t find her today doesn’t mean I won’t.”
“B-But what if something’s happened to her?” Molly sobbed. “What if she’s sick, or what if she got hurt or something!”
Kevin steeled himself, but the force within him strengthened. Picking Molly up, he carried her through the dining room. He was about to start up to the second floor when he saw his father asleep in the big brown leather chair in the living room.
There was no sign of his stepmother.
“Where’s your mom?” he asked, his voice trembling as he struggled against the steadily growing urge to press his face close to Molly’s and …
What?
Hurt her? Hurt Molly? But he loved Molly!
“I guess Mommy went to bed,” Molly said, still not sensing the danger in Kevin. “When I woke up, she wasn’t in the living room anymore.”
Kevin said nothing, but moved silently up the stairs, carrying Molly into her room and laying her gently on the bed. He gazed down at her, the force inside him still growing. He wanted to bend down, to kiss her, as he had kissed Sara McLaughlin.…
Molly looked up at him, then reached out, stretching her arms toward him. “Hug,” she said.
Kevin hesitated for a split second, the being within him nearly overwhelming him, then suddenly he jerked away, turning from Molly, certain that if he even looked at her again, he would lose the battle raging within him.
Molly, finally sensing something different about her stepbrother, shrank back. “I’m … scared,” she whispered.
Kevin started toward the door. “Don’t be,” he breathed, his words rasping in his constricting throat. “You’re going to be all right. I’m not going to let anything hurt you.”
“Promise?” Molly asked, her voice quavering.
For a long moment Kevin said nothing at all, but then, as he hurried out of the room, he uttered one more word: “Promise.” Then he was gone, but as he went into his own room, closing and locking the door, he knew he’d lied to Molly.
He wouldn’t be able to keep the promise he’d just made.
CHAPTER 23
Kevin Owen woke up as the sun was beginning to rise. Instantly, he knew he was sick—sicker than he’d ever felt in his life.
Sicker even than when he’d been up in the hills with Jeff yesterday morning, and suddenly …
What?
What was it that had spewed out of Jeff’s mouth? All that remained in his mind was a vague image of a dark mist—like black smoke—that had boiled around his head for an instant.
For a fleeting second he had imagined his skin was actually on fire, and then—as now—he felt violently ill.
He lay in bed, held in the icy grip of a feverish chill, his skin covered with a cold sweat. Yet despite the terrible fever that raged in his body, he felt hungry.
Ravenously hungry.
But he was almost certain that if he ate anything—anything at all—he would simply vomit it up again, for suddenly his belly was churning with nausea.
He lay shuddering under the quilt, praying for the fever to ease, but as the seconds ticked slowly by, not only did the chill tighten its grip on him, but the hunger grew steadily worse, until even his teeth began to ache with it.
He had to eat—if he didn’t eat, he would die!
Flinging the quilt back, he pulled on his clothes, then went down to the kitchen and began ravaging the contents of the refrigerator, devouring first the leftovers from the supper Karen had made last night, then whatever else came to hand.
Opening a package of thick bacon, he began cramming the raw strips of fat into his mouth, chewing them only briefly before forcing them down his throat.
His gorge rose in protest against the stringy, greasy mass, but in the end his stomach accepted it, and Kevin kept eating, devouring whatever he could find until at last the terrible hunger began to feel sated.
But as stabbing pangs of hunger eased, another urge began building within him.
The same urge he’d fought yesterday.
Now it was back, more powerful than ever, and this morning he knew he would be helpless to resist it.
It was the urge to return to the hills, to the cave he’d never seen before yesterday.
Return to Julie.
But why? What force was it that was drawing him to her?
Though he had no understanding of what the force was or how it might work, he knew there would be no way for him to fight it.
He started toward the back door, then hesitated.
When the rest of the family woke up, when Molly came down …
The promise he’d made to the little girl last night echoed in his head.
The urge to leave the house and go back up into the hills growing stronger by the second, he quickly went to the counter and scrawled a note on the pad that always sat by the telephone:
Dad-
Had an idea—went to look for Julie.
Back by lunchtime.
He reread the note, then pinned it to the refrigerator with a magnet. He left the house, pausing when he was fifty yards away to look back.
Despite what he’d written in the note, he had a strong feeling that he wouldn’t be back by lunchtime.
Indeed, he had a very strong feeling that he wouldn’t be coming back, for as he’d started away and seen the golden brown hills ahead of him, a peculiar sensation had come over him.
A sensation that he was going home.
But why?
Where had the feeling come from?
Home wasn’t up in the hills. And it had nothing to do with the cave he’d seen yesterday, where Julie, her body enormously swollen, stood with a cloud of insects swarming around her.
Yet even as that vision of Julie came into his mind—a vision whose reality had terrified him when he’d first seen it yesterday—he felt himself being drawn to her all the more strongly.
Something inside him wanted to be close to her, to bask in her presence.
As he moved up into the hills, his step quickened.
Mark Shannon rolled over, groped for the alarm clock next to his bed, and jabbed groggily at the button that would silence the alarm.
A second later the insistent ringing sounded again, and he finally opened his eyes to glare balefully at the telephone, his mind still fogged from the extra hours he’d put in last night, first cruising around the town, then going out to the motel to check out the register and the rooms, then finally settling in at the Silo, where he’d per
ched on a bar stool until closing time, lubricating the voices of every customer who came in with drinks he would charge to the county.
No one, of course, had known anything about the missing kids.
As the telephone jangled one more time, Shannon reached out and picked it up. “This better be important,” he growled.
“I think you better get down here,” Manny Gomez told him. “I got a whole office full of people, and they all want to know the same thing—how come we haven’t found any of those kids yet.”
Mark Shannon groaned. “What time is it?” he asked.
“Six-thirty,” Manny replied, then began to list all the people who were crowded into their small office around the corner from the city hall.
The name that finally goaded Mark out of the comfort of his bed was that of Marge Larkin’s boss, Jim Chapman, if the editor of the paper was there, then everyone else in town soon would be as well. “Okay,” he sighed. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” Hauling himself out of bed, he stumbled into the bathroom, turned the shower on cold, then stepped under the icy spray. Instantly, his head cleared and most of the hangover was driven out of his body.
Obviously, the department regulations were going out the window on this one, he thought as he shaved, and he was going to have to organize a search party. He’d been skeptical at first, but it was now clear that three kids were missing. There was something very strange about Andy Bennett having taken off the same morning that Julie Spellman and Jeff Larkin had disappeared. Two kids—one boy and one girl—was one thing. In fact, it was pretty obviously explainable to anyone except the parents involved, who never wanted to think their adolescent children might just want to take oft and spend a night together.
Andy Bennett, though, added a twist that didn’t make any sense. According to Marian and Chuck, he hadn’t even talked to either Jeff or Julie since the night they’d all gone to the movies together.
Shannon put on the cleanest of his four uniform shirts, pulled on the same pants he’d worn yesterday, then added his belt, holster, gun, and badge. Ten minutes after the phone had jarred him out of sleep, he was in his squad car and on his way.
