“Shhh.”
The girl sitting next to Jason turned to look at him. He waved her off and tried to smile.
No, no. Not you.
The girl shifted her weight to the side, inching away from him.
“GET IN THERE AND HIT SOMEONE!” Fourth grade now. Division playoffs. Jason began shaking his head back and forth. He needed to get back to the memory of Lea’s tutorial. Lea had told him he was smart. That he could do it. He loved that memory.
“ACADEMICS AREN’T YOUR STRONG SUIT.” Back on the phone. No, anything but this. “WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITHOUT HOCKEY? HOW–?”
“Oh, will you please shut UP!” Jason shouted.
Professor Braden stopped in the middle of writing and turned around. He didn’t look mad anymore. Now he just looked disappointed. “Okay,” he said, pointing at the door. “That’s enough. Out.”
“Right, right.” Jason got up and grabbed his backpack with one hand. He kept the other hand over his ear. “I’m a little distracted, that’s all. See you tomorrow.”
“Out,” said the professor, pointing again.
Jason kept talking as he left. It helped to drown out his mother. “I’ll get the homework off the website, okay? And, uh… six pages on the report. Got it. But that’s for the end of the semester. Great. Okay…”
As soon as he stepped out of the building, his mother’s yelling stopped. Jason lifted his head and sighed with relief. A lone German Shepherd, trotting across the green on its way to a frat or a lunch hall, glanced at him without slowing down.
“This has got to stop,” Jason said, to no one.
Garrett was not concerned with classes. After his encounter with Amy Till on the way to breakfast, he decided to make it a skip day. He couldn’t afford to be wasting his time listening to lectures. Not when he was feeling like this. There were serious matters that needed his attention.
Serious matters like Allyson Morrone.
He quickened his pace to the dining hall. When he arrived, Allyson was already there. So was Naomi. And, yes, so was the rest of the swim team.
Athletic schedules are so beautifully predictable, Garrett thought.
They looked at him cautiously when he brought his breakfast tray over to their table. Many of them remembered the strange things he had said a few days ago. And the strange way he had acted.
He was acting like a dork, they thought collectively.
But as Garrett sat down he made a vague reference to some bad meth a friend had given him, and that covered it. He was just a fun-loving guy who had been partying a little too hard, that’s all. They had caught him on the tail end of a long trip on crystal.
Oh, of course.
They laughed about it with him.
He pretended to look at them critically, then told them they all looked strong. That they were going to be fast in the water this year. “You’re like a pack of lady sharks, right?”
They smiled and looked back at him shyly. As a group. Told him that he looked strong. That he must have been working out over the summer.
He smiled confidently and shrugged. It was probably just the shirt he was wearing, he said. And managed to imply with his tone of voice that it was not the shirt. That he had been working out. Allyson Morrone still hadn’t said anything so far. But Garrett saw her watching. The conversation began to accelerate, moving from summers to weekend plans to upcoming swim meets. Then the wisecracks about senior year, the blasé references to jobs, and the inevitable panic over the idea of post-college life. He sympathized with their anxieties. They laughed at his jokes. Then, slowly, the pack began to thin out. One by one, they began to clear their trays. They thought they were deciding to go, but it wasn’t up to them. Not really. Garrett could feel himself letting them go. Choosing the ones who would stay. Every few minutes, he would narrow his focus a little more.
Now eight left. Now five. Now three.
He held on to Allyson until the end. And then it was only the two of them sitting there, she and Garrett, as if they had planned to meet up in the cafeteria. Yes, well. He had planned it, anyway.
The thing about sex: it was always a good thing, and Garrett had never struggled with convincing women to go to bed with him. They usually broke down in the end, with enough cajoling and flattery. Not just any women, either. Teresa had been beautiful. And April, before her. And Wendy, before her. They were beautiful, and they made him glad to be a man. Plus, they always seemed to enjoy themselves. Teresa had maybe started to go overboard with the whole relationship thing, but that was another story. Whether his girlfriends liked him as a person or not, they all clearly appreciated his performance.
But it had never been like this.
They had left the dining hall together, and now he was walking back to Zimmerman with Allyson at his side. She was sticking close to him. Close. Several times she almost tripped over his legs as she leaned her head into his shoulder. He was reminded of a cat asking to be fed.
Garrett took her by the waist as soon as they were inside the common room, but she was already ahead of him. Her hands moved to his belt, to his chest, then back again. As if she couldn’t decide where to touch him.
They barely made it to his room. She pawed at his clothes, tearing off his shirt and pants with a carnal urgency. Garrett worked to get her naked as well, but she was so fixated on rubbing her body up against him that he almost couldn’t manage it. She began kissing him, tasting him, and Garrett was struck again by how much she seemed like a hungry animal. As though he were food to her. Or a drug.
He finally succeeded in taking her clothes off, and the reward was worth the effort. Allyson’s body was soft in all the right places, firm everywhere else. She was smooth, and warm. He smiled, lay back, and enjoyed the view. He let her do most of the work, which seemed to be what she wanted anyway. He had a great time.
But Jesus, not as great a time as she seemed to have.
When they were done – and he had to physically push her away, because he was done, even if she still seemed eager for more – he lay there and thought about it. This in itself was odd. He usually went to sleep afterwards.
He didn’t feel sleepy. He felt like taking a run. Or playing some lacrosse. He felt competitive. Aggressive, and relentless. Like a machine.
A machine. Someone had told him…
He would be a sexual machine.
The memory was faint, but it was worming its way back into his head. Something about yesterday. The psych professor. Professor… Carlisle.
Yes, Carlisle. He had brought them to his office. And then he had asked them questions. Personal questions. Garrett’s eyebrows drew together as he waited for the details of their conversation to become clearer. But they didn’t. The memory was stuck in a permanent fog.
He did remember the room, however. Carlisle had taken him into a little white room with special chairs. And then he had put that antenna thing behind Garrett’s head. All of this had seemed fine at the time. Thinking about it now, he wondered why it had seemed fine.
The memory ended there. He woke up in his bed the next morning – this morning – feeling better than he had in months. Headache gone, energy to burn, and sexual prowess fully restored. More than fully restored, in fact. And something told him it was all thanks to Carlisle. He loved that man. And he would thank him, just as soon as he –
A hand moved across Garrett’s stomach. A soft, pleading voice: “Baby?”
Garrett glanced at the sophomore girl next to him. The look in her eyes was unsettling. If he didn’t give her some more attention, that look said, she might start howling like a dog.
He was about to roll away – there simply hadn’t been enough time yet – but he paused to be sure. She was gloriously naked next to him, and he found himself staring at the rise of her hip where it joined the downward-sloping curve of her waist. That naked hip and waist were rocking gently, moving with anticipation. Anticipation of him.
So he rolled towards her.
And still she was hun
gry. As if she were in estrus, and he, Garrett, simply one of the herd necessary to satisfy her. He was tireless today. He began thinking about trying for number three, but then something got in the way. Something horrible. Way, way deep inside his head, he felt the beginnings…
It was just a tingle at first. No one else would have noticed it. Garrett, however, had become an expert. The start of another headache. Carlisle’s trick with the television antenna hadn’t cured him after all. Not all the way. He guessed that he would be needing another treatment.
And soon.
Complications
1
The body of Professor Frederick Carlisle was found the next morning at approximately 7:15 AM in his office. The student who made the discovery, a freshman girl enrolled in Carlisle’s Intro Psychology course, arrived at his office seeking extra help on a homework assignment. She knocked twice before trying the door. It opened a few feet before she felt it hitch up against something heavy and soft, and she poked her head in to see what was causing the obstruction.
The next thing the freshman saw was difficult for her to identify, though the dental examiner did later make a positive ID based on a four-point match with Carlisle’s wisdom teeth, which had never been removed.
The sight of the professor’s fresh corpse was so disturbing that the student fainted briefly. When she revived a moment later, she found herself on the floor, staring at what looked like the remains of a face. She tried frantically to get up, but was unable to move, either because of the shock at being so close to a dead body, or because of the residual effects of having fainted.
Lacking any other recourse, she screamed. The mangled thing in front of her seemed to scream right back, and this made her scream louder. Her ability to move her arms and legs returned, but she was by this time too panicked to raise herself back up to a standing position. Instead, she began thrashing around on the floor like a drowning fish. Remarkably, she did not injure her head on the edges of the door or doorframe.
At the sustained sound of screaming, orderlies and nurses came scampering from the adjacent ward. The girl was duly rescued from her prone position, though not before a certain amount of cajoling from the staff members. “Please, dear,” they said. “We need you to be calm. Please try to lie still.”
Ultimately, they were forced to give her a sedative. There were several hypodermic needles handy.
“It was a monster’s face,” the shaken freshman told her mother over the phone that night. She said the phrase again and again: “A monster’s face.”
Her mother whispered kind, supportive words, but nothing seemed to calm the girl. She withdrew from the college a month later. In her exit interview with the school psychiatrist, she cited an inability to sleep through the night.
“Do you have dreams?” asked the psychiatrist.
The girl nodded. “Of monsters,” she said, sounding like a very young child.
The psychiatrist made a note, and said nothing. He had access to the pictures from the crime scene, after all. He didn’t blame her.
The first person on the scene of Frederick Carlisle’s murder – the first official person, anyway – was Officer Jim Watts. One of the orderlies at the ward put in a call right after they had finished sedating that screaming freshman girl, and Watts was there in minutes. He didn’t have to break the speed limit, either. His electric-powered cart happened to be near the Hitchcock Medical Center already.
When he saw the body on the floor of the office, Watts put in a call of his own. Because before too long, someone would say it: “Shouldn’t there be some real police here?”
And even though Jim Watts was licensed to carry a gun; even though he had a crisp green uniform and a sparkling badge issued by the college; even though he was in better shape than any of those Hanover cops…
He was still only campus security. Yes, some people called him “Officer.” But no, he wasn’t one. Not really.
That semantic detail had never stopped him from taking a look around, however. He had made his call, and the Hanover Dispatch would do the rest. So now he had five minutes before the boys in blue would crowd in here and push him out. He hoped it would be enough time to get what he needed.
ID was first, and that was easy. You checked the name on the door. Then you asked a nearby nurse if the body on the floor was Carlisle.
“His face is gone,” the nurse said with a nervous shrug. “How should I know?” Her voice shook.
Watts nodded. “Right. But are those the clothes he usually wore?”
“Oh.” The nurse looked again. “I suppose.”
ID, done. And no fingerprint lab necessary. Next came the time-of-death stuff, which was harder.
“You see him yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“Morning, afternoon, night?”
“Once in the afternoon. Around four.”
Watts raised his voice so that others could hear. “Anyone here see Professor Carlisle after 4 PM yesterday?”
An orderly in the back looked up. “He came in after we had finished serving dinner.”
“He was visiting a patient?” Watts was speaking quickly. No one had asked about the “real police” thing yet. He could keep peppering these people with questions as long as he didn’t let them think too hard. “Was that a regular routine?”
The orderly shook his head. “Wasn’t usual, but yeah, he was visiting patients.”
“Know which ones?”
“No.”
“See him leave?”
“About nine. Just before lights out.”
Watts turned to the freshman girl. She was sitting in a chair, quiet now, calmed by the tranquilizers they had given her.
“Young lady?”
Something flickered in her eyes, but she didn’t look up at him.
“What time did you come to the professor’s office?”
She answered immediately, in a flat, expressionless tone. It surprised him. “Seven o’clock,” she said. “For extra help on the homework.”
“Good, thank you.”
“It was a monster,” she added.
Watts nodded. “I know.”
So: time of death sometime between nine last night and seven this morning. Not a very small window, but better than nothing. So far, so good. The cops would be there any minute. Watts turned back to the nurse. He needed one more thing. “Anybody have a problem with this guy?” he asked her. “Anyone bearing a grudge? Have it in for him?”
The nurse glanced at him quickly. She looked puzzled by the question.
“Not that anyone would dislike him,” Watts said, back-peddling. “All I mean is, was there anyone who – ”
“I know what you mean,” the nurse said. “Give me a second, okay?”
Watts put up his hands. Of course. No rush.
The nurse took a breath and steadied herself. Then she smiled. Her teeth were surprisingly white. “Everyone had a problem with Dr. Carlisle, Officer.”
That was nice. She called him Officer.
“Check around,” the nurse said. “Ask any of the staff here. Ask his coworkers. His students.”
Watts nodded. He would, if he got the chance. Or if the Hanover Police didn’t beat him to it.
“People hated that man,” the nurse said. “He was a slime.”
Security Officer Jim Watts ran a hand through his hair. “I guess that doesn’t narrow the field much, does it?”
“You know, he used to have a partner,” the nurse added.
Watts perked up. “Used to?”
“Dr. Kline was his name,” she said, and smiled again.
Such a pretty smile, Watts thought happily. And good information, to boot.
So now he just needed to get some information on this Dr. Kline.
2
On his way out of Concord, Dr. Kline made one final stop at the hardware store, where a man in a bright red smock directed him to the gardening aisle. The lady at the register offered to give him a bag for the extra-large pruning shears he
purchased, but Kline preferred to carry them in the open.
Ready for use.
He had never actually visited the prototyping facility on route 89. Not in person. He knew the address from memory, and he had seen pictures. The cab driver raised an eyebrow when Kline told him where he wanted to go, but then three twenties came fluttering over the front seat. That settled the matter. For sixty bucks, the driver would have been willing to go twice as far.
Kline would have been willing to pay twice as much.
The Kinetech building lay in a sparsely settled area just north of Concord, NH, with great stretches of untended land on all sides. Kline had the cabbie drop him off at exit seven, a half-mile away, and he began making his way through the rough, un-mowed crab grass. A minute later he found himself in the middle of a huge, featureless expanse of meadow, with no idea where he was or how he had arrived there. One building – a small, squat, cinderblock structure – was visible in the distance, but he could see no other evidence of human settlement. He stopped walking and listened carefully. There were sounds of a highway somewhere behind him.
Kline sat down in the grass and tried to think. The sun was out, which calmed him somewhat. But why on earth – ?
And who on earth – ?
The amnesia phase settled over him like a huge, heavy blanket. He decided to stay sitting. He would wait.
A little more than an hour later, it occurred to him that his name was Nathan Kline, and that the cinderblock building in the distance reminded him of the pictures he had seen of the Kinetech prototype center. That got him thinking about the Patton brothers, Jerald and Brian, who had obviously fucked up something when they built the first version of his TMS Isolator device.
Those Patton brothers, Kline thought. They’re next on the list.
And look at this: he was holding a pair of extra large pruning sheers. Exactly what he would need for this type of errand.
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