Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner

Scribner Horror Bundle

Four Horror Novels by Joshua
Scribner

Seed

The Coma Lights

Fear and
Repulsion

Nescata

Seed

By Joshua Scribner

Originally titled Bone Song

Originally published by
Terminus Books 2003

Copyright 2010 Joshua
Scribner

Smashwords Edition

No part of this book may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any
information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in
writing from the author.

This ebook is licensed for
your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or
given away to other people. If you would like to share this book
with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each
recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or
it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to
Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting
the hard work of this author.

This novel is a work of fiction. Any
resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, is purely
coincidental.

C
hapter One

Two weeks after receiving
his Ph.D., at the age of twenty-seven, Jonah Singer traveled across
the country to a state he’d never been to, to take his first real
job as a clinical psychologist. He’d seen the position advertised
in the American Psychological Association’s newsletter. It was a
two-year post-doctorate internship, leading to licensure in the
state of Michigan. That meant after he finished his two years he
could get a license to practice in Michigan and probably anywhere
else in the country.

The job description was
simple. He would do nothing but psychological evaluations of the
severely mentally ill for Social Security Insurance. The job
appealed to him for several reasons. Foremost, he wouldn’t have to
do psychotherapy. He had found already, in his short career as a
student-psychologist, that he didn’t have what it took to help
people. Therapy required a sort of calmness in order to deal with
the weekly chaos brought in by clients. Jonah had always found
himself obsessing on every detail and essentially, “missing the
forest for the trees,” as more than one supervisor had told him.
Therapy also required an interest in the wellbeing of people, and
though Jonah didn’t wish ill will on anyone, he couldn’t bring
himself to care about anyone either. Evaluations for SSI didn’t
seem like something that would require him to care.

Then
there was the extreme factor. Jonah had learned that severe mental
illness was less complicated than the gray area of mild to moderate
neurosis. If you were truly messed up, to the point that you were
seeing things, couldn’t get out of bed in the morning, or needed
money from SSI in order to survive, then the prognosis was
simple:
Patient is fucked.
You could take some pills and experience some
sense of normalcy, but the prognosis didn’t
change.

So dealing with the
severely mentally ill would be simple, always. At least, that was
what Jonah thought. After a successful phone interview, Jonah had
packed his bags and drove from South Carolina to Michigan. That was
where the simple became complicated. That was where Jonah met the
demon.

#

It was mid September, a
Monday morning, about three weeks into the job, when the chaos
began. Jonah pulled up to the Meade Center a few minutes before
8AM. It was a small office building a few blocks from downtown
Stanton, a city of about 19,000 in northern Michigan.

Jonah had gotten up early
this morning, hoping to come in at least half an hour before his
first client, giving him time to set up, to make sure all his files
were organized and contained the right forms, to help the day go
smooth. But it didn’t matter. His home rituals kept him away until
the last minute he could possibly wait. Now he knew he would
pay.

Clients were scheduled back
to back, one hour each, or two if testing was needed, until eight
or nine each night. There was little room for even the slightest of
errors, a missing form here, a misplaced test there.

A small lot ran along the
west side of the building. A really old Subaru that looked like it
had come straight from a salvage yard, faded navy blue, silver tape
and cardboard where a window used to be, was in one of the parking
spaces right up next to the building. Seeing it there, Jonah felt
the irritation rise, as hopes of having time to set coffee brewing
and have one last peaceful smoke dwindled from his head.

Jonah parked his Dodge Neon
two spaces away from the Subaru. There was no one in the other car,
meaning the client had probably walked around to the front door.
Knowing he should hurry, but not able to resist the anxiety that
directed him, Jonah unzipped his bag and checked it one last time.
There was a spiral notebook, two pens, a pack of smokes, and the
eight packs of snack crackers he would be shoving into his mouth
between clients. Jonah got out and locked the door, then checked
all the other doors to make sure they were locked, pulling up on
each handle, not satisfied to just see that the little knob was
down.

The air was cool, actually
a refreshing change from a South Carolina September, where summer
would still be kicking ass and taking names. But the cool air
reminded him that a winter was coming that would be like none he’d
ever experienced. It would be a winter he would have to adapt to
and make jive with his rituals, and that thought made him even more
anxious.

Great. First work hour of
the week, and I already want a nice rock to crawl under.

Jonah thought about peeking
around the front of the building, just to say, “Hi. I’ll be right
there.”

But what
if the client wanted to talk immediately? And they often
did.
Let’s get started right here, outside
on the parking lot.
He didn’t have
time.

Jonah dug out his keys and
opened the side door. Inside, he saw that the bathroom door at the
end of the hall hung wide open. Did he have to pee? Yes, a little.
He knew he should just hold it, his client waiting and all, but he
might not get another chance for a while. He rushed into the
bathroom, flicked the switch on, and pulled it out, his bag still
strapped to his shoulder. The floor was filthy with the dried mud
of people’s shoes. Stray toilet paper was scattered in a couple of
places. But at least it was only paper and earth on the floor this
time, and at least the toilet wasn’t backed up, this
time.

Jonah couldn’t squeeze a
drop. He put it away, washed his hands and left the bathroom. He
got out his keys and opened the door to the lobby. He was
pleasantly surprised when he didn’t see someone standing outside
the glass of the front door. He went straight back to the room he
usually worked out of. He sat his bag behind the desk and was out.
He took out yet another key and opened the secretary’s
office.

The secretary, Steph, would
be in at nine. Steph was the one thing about the Meade Center that
was well kept. She was younger than Jonah, twenty or twenty-one, a
part-time community college student, short brown hair, small but
not too small, cute. Already, on several occasions, Jonah had
gotten the quick little glimpses of her that women often give men:
Down her shirt at a bright colored brazier and the upper part of a
tit, down her pants at the rim of her matching panties. Steph had
worn a dangerously high skirt one day and bent down in front of him
to pick up a conveniently dropped file. Before he had looked
nervously away, Jonah had made out the outline of her crotch
underneath a pair of red panties. And Steph touched him frequently,
usually on a shoulder or bicep. She had leaned into him a few
times.

Jonah had wondered if she
were coming onto him, and at home he had fanaticized about it, but
he’d not done anything else, and he doubted that he ever would.
Three times in his life he had been with a girl. Two were
relationships, and one had flat out said, “I want to have sex with
you.” Never had he made the first move. There were just too many
thoughts involved in that. It was easier to wait and to use his
hand in the meantime.

Aside from Steph, Jonah,
the clients, and hopefully a maintenance person, no one would be
there this week. On Friday, Jonah would drive down to David Meade’s
main office in Lansing for supervision. David, according to Steph,
only visited the Stanton office a few times a year.

It hadn’t taken Jonah long
to figure out that David had brought him in as a money making arm
for a town far away from his main office. SSI paid ninety dollars
per hour of evaluation. Jonah got eighteen of that. David got the
rest. With more than thirty hours a week, Jonah was sure he made
David enough to cover the little bit of overhead from the Stanton
site.

In Steph’s office, on top
of a metal filing cabinet, sat all of the files for today. Jonah
grabbed those and took them to his desk. He opened a drawer and
took out the release forms that allowed them to communicate about
clients with SSI and sat them on the desk. He went back out into
the lobby. He saw the client through the front door, but the man
was facing away, smoking a cigarette.

Time.

But what for? Jonah knew he
should check the files, make sure all the forms were there. Or he
could make coffee. The forms would make the day go smoother. He’d
had two cups of coffee at home already. The choice was simple. But
then the thoughts hit him: Steph didn’t always make coffee when she
came in, and he couldn’t bring himself to ask her to. He might not
have time to make it between clients, especially since he would
have to smoke. What if he got tired? What if he couldn’t
concentrate while he was with a client?

Jonah grabbed the decanter
and went to the bathroom facet for water. He got the coffee brewing
before the man was done with his cigarette.

Catching the client’s
glimpse, Jonah smiled and opened the door. “How are you?” Jonah
said to him.

He was a
small man, early forties, but still boyish looking. He wore baggy,
ripped jeans and a green jacket far too big for his body. He gave
Jonah an inquisitive look, which didn’t catch Jonah off guard.
Around here, it had been the southern accent that got
people.
Yes, I’m from the South. No, I
don’t own a rebel flag, grits are not a staple of my diet, and I
don’t consider Hank Williams a God.

After a couple of seconds,
the man nodded at Jonah, then walked quickly passed him into the
building. Inside, he turned toward Jonah, and then Jonah realized
that the stare was more than “You talk funny.”

Here we
go
, Jonah thought. The evaluations were
done for SSI, who contracted with David Meade. Not always, but a
great deal of the time, what went into the report was used to make
the final determination about whether the client would receive a
monthly check from SSI. Hence, the crazy act. Even clients who
really had problems sometimes overdid it, doing themselves more
harm than anything.
Patient seemed to
represent symptoms in an exaggerated manner.

“You want to come back with me, and we
can get started?” Jonah asked.

The man didn’t respond, so
Jonah just nodded and walked by, assuming he would follow him back
to the office. He did. Jonah went behind the large desk and waited
as the client walked in.

“You want to get the door,” Jonah said
before the man could sit in one of the chairs in front of the
desk.

The client stopped his slow
walk and did just that. That was when Jonah noticed that the man
was shaking profusely. He wished now even more that he’d been
early. Then he could have taken time to check the file, known what
to expect. Maybe this was PTSD, which would have explained the
anxiety and vigilance. Or maybe there would be several past reports
in the file with several different diagnoses, pointing to
malingering.

Moving slowly, the man
seemed to take forever to get seated. By the time he was ready,
Jonah had retrieved the SSI interview form—thank God it was
there—from the file, placed it on his clipboard, and shoved an
information-release form across the desk.