Creature

"I can't, Charlotte," Chuck replied. "I have to go now. Today. There's a chopper waiting for me."

Charlotte sighed with relief. Then it was all right. He was leaving, but she didn't have to. She could stay here and wait until Jeff got better. "M-Maybe I'll go to Boulder," she said. "I could be closer to Jeff then." The fingers of her right hand were working at her left now, the nails-ragged and unkempt from the totally unconscious habit she'd developed over the past few days of biting at them as she sat staring vacantly at nothing-digging into her skin, leaving angry red marks.

But Chuck shook his head. "I'm sorry, Charlotte," he said softly. He couldn't look at her now, couldn't bring himself to watch the pain in her face as he told her what was about to happen to her. "You're going to have to go into the hospital for a while. I've discussed it with Jerry and Marty Ames, and we all agree that you need a good rest. A period of time to adjust to what's happened and get over these paranoid ideas."

Charlotte recoiled from the words as if she'd been struck. "No," she whimpered. "You can't do that to me! I'm your wife, Chuck-"

"Honey, be reasonable," Chuck pleaded, but Charlotte was no longer listening to him. She ducked around him, rushing out of the room and stumbling up the stairs to the second floor, where she ran into the master bedroom, locking the door behind her.

She was in a state of panic now. They were going to take her away and lock her up, just like they'd taken Jeff away. But why? What had she done? All she'd wanted to do was see her son, talk to him, tell him she loved him.

But they wouldn't let her!

Why?

She knew now. It was suddenly clear to her; she should have realized it long ago! They were lying to her, had been lying to her right from the start. Jeff wasn't in a private hospital at all, not in Boulder or anywhere else. They had him locked up somewhere, where neither she nor anyone else could see him. He wasn't sick! He was being held prisoner somewhere!

Help! She had to get help before it was too late. She scrabbled around in the top drawer of her nightstand, where she was certain she'd hidden the scrap of paper on which she'd scribbled Sharon Ta

It was at that moment, while she frantically tried to dial the number, that she might have looked up and glanced out the window; might have seen the ambulance approaching the house and turning into the driveway. But she didn't look, didn't see, didn't have time to flee from the house.

Her fingers finally found the right buttons, and she waited in panic as the phone at the other end rang four times, then five, then six. What if Sharon wasn't home? What would she-

Then, to her relief, she heard a breathless voice at the other end.

"Sharon?" she said. "Sharon, you have to help me. They're going to send me away. They've done something terrible with Jeff, and they don't want me to find-"

"Charlotte?" Sharon Ta

Charlotte forced herself to stop talking and willed her body to stop trembling. She focused her mind, drew a deep breath, and was about to begin again when she heard a banging at the bedroom door. "Charlotte?" It was Chuck's voice. "Charlotte, you have to let me in." Then she heard Chuck speaking to someone else, and her carefully constructed calm shattered like a house of cards.

"Oh, God," she whimpered. "Sharon, they're here! They've come for me, Sharon! What will I do?"

There was a crash, and the bedroom door burst open. Chuck, followed by two attendants, burst into the room, stared bleakly at her for a moment, and while she stood speechlessly watching him, came over, took the phone from her hand and replaced the receiver.

"It's going to be all right, darling," he told her, putting his arms around her and holding her gently as he nodded to the two other men. As one of them disappeared from the room, the other came forward and slipped a needle into her shoulder.

Too stu

Charlotte was already unconscious when they lifted her onto the stretcher.

Sharon gazed dumbly at the phone that had gone dead in her hand, as if she didn't quite understand what had happened. But a moment later she made up her mind, riffled through the pages of the thin Silverdale phone book until she found theLaCo

She broke into a jog, moving through the sharp mountain air completely oblivious to the biting cold. She paused at the corner of Colorado Street, and was about to cross it when an ambulance, its lights flashing but its siren silent, sped through the intersection. It turned left and disappeared around a bend. She swore again, suspecting that Charlotte was in the vehicle, knowing that if she'd had a car, she would have followed it. But there was nothing she could do now, and catching her breath, she trotted across the street then on toward Pueblo Avenue and theLaCo

From the outside it looked no different from the other houses on the block. Set well back from the sidewalk, it was almost an exact copy of the Ta

"Charlotte?" she called out tentatively. "Charlotte, it's Sharon Ta

There was still no answer. Sharon stepped over the threshold, pushing the door closed behind her. She heard a movement upstairs, and a moment later ChuckLaCo

"Sharon," he said. Then his eyes clouded. "That was you Charlotte was talking to on the phone, wasn't it?"

Sharon nodded. "What's happened to her?" she asked. "Is she all right?" Her eyes shifted to the suitcase.

Chuck held it up as if offering it as proof of something. "I'm afraid I'm in a hurry," he said, starting down the stairs.

"Where is she, Chuck?" Sharon asked. "What's going on?"

Chuck said nothing for a moment; then his shoulders slumped and he lowered himself wearily to sit on the stairs, still halfway up. "I guess there's no point in not telling you," he said at last, his voice hollow. "I-Well, I've had to have Charlotte institutionalized."

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?"