Chapter 6

This was a joke. It had to be a joke. But David had sounded upset, and concerned. He wasn’t that good an actor. He could never pretend anything. He might be moody and possessive, but she always knew how he was feeling.

Abby scooted out the door without saying anything to Carrie. Carrie had her own problems.

There wasn’t time to go down to the Quad Caf to say she was going to be late, or not get there at all. She hoped they had enough help to cover for her. She’d explain later.

Fortunately, no one was in the reception area to ask why she was running, or to stop her and ask what was wrong.

She covered the grassy stretch between the Quad and Devereaux in record time. David and Jerry lived on the second floor, room 213. She had teased them that it was an unlucky choice, but they had refused to buy into that idea.

David stood in the doorway waiting for her. She leaned into him and caught her breath. “This is a joke, isn’t it, David?” she finally said. “Jerry is making this up from all that movie lore he has stored up.”

“See what you think.” David opened their door wider and she dashed to where Jerry lay on his bed. Gina sat beside him looking concerned.

Monster or not, Jerry had tangled with something. One shoe and sock were gone and his leg was all scratched up. His clothing was torn and disheveled and covered with dirt, leaves, and twigs. He was curled into a fetal position, face away from Abby, towards the wall.

“Jerry? Jerry, it’s Abby. What happened?”

Abby and Gina took hold of him and tried to roll him over. He resisted, curling tighter. Abby began to think that maybe he wasn’t pretending. This wasn’t one of his many pranks. She looked at David, who shrugged and shook his head. He moved over and sat on the bed, too.

“Jerry. You’re all right now. Turn over and talk to us. There’s no one here but David, Abby, and me. Do you want me to call the police?” Gina asked.

Jerry groaned but rolled over. David had turned on the overhead light, since the day was gray and overcast and the room dim. Jerry squinted his eyes, trying to focus, but shut out the glare at the same time.

David stepped over and turned off the light. He snapped on the lamp beside Jerry’s bed. “That better?”

Jerry nodded and tried to sit up. He moaned again and held his head.

“Get him something to drink,” Abby suggested. “Something with sugar and caffeine. Do you have any Cokes or a Dr Pepper?”

Jerry and David had a small refrigerator in their room for late night snacks, but mostly drinks. David rummaged through it until he found a Dr Pepper.

“One left. His fav.” He popped the top with a fizzing sound, then handed the cold can to Gina. She held it to Jerry’s mouth until he’d sipped some and took the can himself.

“I’m sorry, Jerry,” Abby apologized, thinking she could get him talking. “I was sure this was a prank you were playing on me, since I wouldn’t listen to your horror stories earlier.”

“This was horror all right. But it was real, Abby. This thing, this beast, is real. I saw it.” Jerry was ready to talk.

“You didn’t have too much pizza at Vinnie’s?” David asked.

“Vinnie’s? When did you go to Vinnie’s?” Abby questioned.

“Last night. I was hungry. I’ll never be hungry again.” Jerry grimaced. “Except that I threw up my pizza after that thing left me for dead. I think it was the light. The dawn saved me. I think it can’t stand the light.”

“Jerry,” Abby suggested. “Start at the beginning. Why weren’t you with him, David? Why did you let him go to Vinnie’s in the middle of the night all alone?”

David frowned. “I wasn’t hungry. I wanted to go to bed. Besides, I may be his roommate, but I’m not his mother.”

Why was David so defensive and grouchy? Abby wondered.

“There was still a crowd at Vinnie’s,” Jerry told them. “I joined them and ordered a pizza. By the time I got my order, it must have been, wow, it must have been two o’clock. Anyway, Vinnie wanted to close. We moved outside to finish eating. And talking. We got talking old movies and you know how —”

“We know, Jerry,” Gina interrupted. “Get to the monster part.”

“It was really late when I started home, but I knew a shortcut back to the dorm. I gave Nightmare Hall a wide berth, but decided to cut through the woods. That’s ironic, isn’t it? I didn’t want to meet the ghost of Giselle McKendrick, so I stumbled across the monster instead.”

“This monster attacked you in the woods?” Abby was getting impatient.

“I heard it first, slobbering, huffing, and puffing.” Jerry was starting to feel better and warmed to his story.

“That’s the wolf in ‘The Three Little Pigs,’ Jerry.” A part of Abby still didn’t believe what Jerry was saying.

“I know you think I’m making this up, guys,” Jerry said, his face serious. “But I’m not, really I’m not. The thing smelled rotten, like dirty socks and garlic and —”

“That’s what Lenny said it smelled like,” Abby added, remembering. “Swear, Jerry, swear on — on —” She looked around. “On your tattered first edition of Stephen King’s The Shining. Swear you aren’t making this up. That you really saw some creature out there.”

Jerry placed his hand on the book. “I swear, Gina, Abby, David. I swear this thing attacked me. I was lucky it was so late. It started to get light, and I think it can’t stand the light. It turned around and left. I could have been killed.”

“You want me to call the police?” David asked, reaching for the phone. “No. Listen, none of you wants to believe me, and you’re my friends. You think the police are going to buy this story? If I hadn’t lived through it, I’d never believe it myself.”

“He’s right,” Gina said. “The police are going to laugh and say it’s another hazing prank, just like Lenny’s was.”

“And I’m not even pledging a frat.” Jerry sipped his drink. “Are there any chips left?” He pointed to a flattened Frito bag on the floor.

“You’re hungry?” Gina sighed and reached for the bag. It was empty except for crumbs, but Jerry took it and dug inside.

“I told you I threw up when it left.”

“If there’s something dangerous out there, guys, we can’t just forget this.” Abby got serious. “We’ve got to do something. We need to warn the whole campus.”

“I think we’d have to catch it before the cops would believe in it.” Jerry looked at the scratches on his feet and legs. “I hope its nails aren’t poisonous.”

Abby shook her head. She was tired, so tired. “Why don’t you shower, change clothes, and come eat breakfast, Jerry? I could still get in part of my work time.”

“That’s probably a good idea. If I hurry, will you guys wait for me?” Jerry swung his feet onto the floor and unbuttoned his shirt.

“Are you afraid to walk to the Quad Caf alone?” David teased.

“Of course not.” Jerry kicked off his second shoe and stood up, wobbling a little.

Gina steadied him. “Maybe you should stay in bed, or shower and come back to bed. I could go get you a tray.”

“No, no. I don’t want to be alone. I’m not scared, just — just — well, try going through what I did and see how you feel. That thing was all covered with fur. I kicked it. I think I landed a pretty good blow. Let’s go look for someone with a black eye or multiple bruises.” Grabbing a towel from the back of a chair, Jerry padded down the hall to the shower.

He was back before Gina, Abby, and David could do much more than review what Jerry had told them and wonder about it.

He came into the room with his clothes wadded in his fist and the towel tucked around his waist. Abby turned her back as he went to get clean clothes. “Get a whiff of these,” he said, tossing his pants and shirt from the night before towards David, Gina, and Abby.

Abby picked up Jerry’s shirt and sniffed it. The cloth did have a foul, musty odor that wasn’t body odor, no matter how much Jerry had sweated fighting off the beast. Dirty socks was a good description. Garlic, too, and a rotten, skunklike odor.

A shower, clean clothes, and the promise of coffee and Saturday’s pancake menu loosened Jerry’s tongue. He was almost back to his normal motor-mouth self, but without the zany joking manner. As they walked on either side of him toward the Quad, he started talking again.

“Several theories came to me while I was showering. If this thing is afraid of the light, it could be a werewolf, or a werebeast. They don’t always have to be wolves. It could be something like Dracula. Dracula melts in the sun. His skin blisters and peels, and literally starts to melt.”

Abby looked at David. David grinned and shrugged again. Neither knew what to think. Had Jerry staged this whole thing to get attention? Was he starved for notoriety?

“Of course, it could also be some supernatural monster. One frozen in the ice like the Thing. Now it’s thawed out and confused and attacking out of fear of the unknown. Or it could be coming from inside someone. Like in Forbidden Planet. The monster in that was coming from the Id. You know, someone’s subconscious. That means it could be anyone on campus. It could be coming from inside you Abby, or David here. It prefers to attack someone it hates or has a quarrel with, but it can also attack at random.”

They entered the Quad and walked down the stairs to the cafeteria with Jerry continuing to rattle on. Maybe it was aftershock. But Abby realized Jerry could talk all day about the different monsters he’d seen on film and television, the ones he’d read about in books and comics. Apparently he’d made a life study of monsters.

Wasn’t it ironic that he had now been attacked by one?

Or said he had …