The other girls ran into the locker room and stopped and stared at that they found there. In front of them was Wendy, still gasping in shock. And there in front of Wendy ...
"What IS it?" asked another girl.
"It's Coach O'Dare," said Wendy in a trembling voice. "I recognize the sweat shirt she was wearing. And her whistle!"
"But -- what happened to her?"
No one answered the question. They all just stared at what had been the woman who had been their coach.
Above the waist, her skin had turned to glistening gray-silver, with some black blotches on it. The glistening came from something moist that covered her. She still had arms, hands, and fingers, but they moved like a squid tentacles. They moved -- as if there were no bones under the skin.
Her mouth opened, but what came out was long and pinkish, but smooth, and curling as much as the arms, much more than a tongue could twist. Instead of words, a horrible sucking/slurping sound was heard.
And, instead of eyes, there were stalks! Two long stalks that looked like strange, soft horns that grew out of what should've been eye-sockets! There were nothing that look like eyes on the ends. But the girls shuddered to realize their Coach WAS looking at them through these ghastly sensors.
There was no hair, just the Coach's baseball cap on her head. Altogether, her shape was vaguely human, including two mounds that were where her breasts should be. But the girls suspected there were no nipples there, nothing for providing human nourishment.
But, eeriest of all, dominating everything else, was that, below her waist, her body extended first to a large undercarriage, and then into a huge shell! A shell that could only be described as that of ...
"A snail!" cried Wendy. "She's been turned into a snail!"
"How'd it happen?" wondered another girl out loud.
Meg had a sick feeling that she knew. She remembered how the coach had called her part-snail -- exactly what the coach herself was now. Meg prayed no one noticed her reaction.
Definitely going unnoticed was Tracy Hill, who had opened her locker and taken out her cell phone. She hit a number programmed into the phone's memory. A second later, she heard a voice say "WGPO-TV."
"This is Tracy Hill. I need to talk to my mom, Gina Hill, right away! I've got a BIG story for her!"
