Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (11 page)

This room was already
pretty well lit by the lights from the living room, but he flipped
on the overhead anyway. The extra light didn’t change anything. The
room still contained no monsters. Next was the kitchen. Also safe.
At the end of the kitchen was the door to the pantry. This would be
harder, the pantry so small, no room to maneuver. With no place to
go, whatever might be there would be right on top of him. From the
wooden sheath on the counter, Jonah took a serrated knife. He
opened the pantry with one hand and swung the knife with the other.
He stabbed nothing. He pulled the cord, and that light was on
too.

He kept the knife in his
hand. There were two hall closets, and two closets in each bedroom,
six more doors, and six small spaces. One by one, Jonah opened each
door and swung the knife inside. Once, he nicked a shelf. Once, he
nicked an old coat. Otherwise, he hit nothing, and nothing came out
at him.

At last, he stood in his
room, every light in the apartment on, every door in the apartment,
except the front door, open. Jonah was alone. He had jabbed his own
side earlier, and he was alone.

There was a noise. It was
some kind of clicking, but it had a human quality to it, like
someone smacking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. It was
there for a few seconds, long enough that Jonah thought he had
localized it, then it was gone. There was someone in the
bathroom.

No. It
was just the apartment.
That was the sane
explanation. The apartment made noises all the time. The water
heater and the ventilation system both clicked, night and day. The
human part was just his imagination’s additive, he thought. He
would be a fool to leave right now. First, he had to check. But he
had checked, and there had been nothing. No, he had checked and
thought there was something, then confirmed that it was his
imagination. Jonah walked slowly to the bathroom. Once there, he
felt somewhat relieved, because it was still empty. Then he noticed
something that he hadn’t noticed before.

One of Jonah’s strongest
compulsions was making sure faucets were off, and leaving the
shower curtain open when he was not using it made checking the
shower faucet easier. He always, without exception, made sure he
left the curtain pushed open when he wasn’t in the shower. Now, the
curtain was closed.

He wondered if that could
have been the out-of-place thing that he had noticed earlier, and
he feared that was where the clicking noise had come from. Jonah
moved up to the curtain and gripped it in one hand. He tried to
work up the courage, but found none there. So he just whipped the
curtain open, anyway, and swung the knife. Again, he hit
nothing.

“It was just the apartment,” he said
with labored breath.

Jonah leaned over, placing
his hands on the side of the tub, letting the knife drop down
inside the basin. He was exhausted, but he felt a little safer now.
Then he heard the clicking noise again, and it wasn’t coming from
somewhere in the ceiling or in the wall. It was right behind him.
Jonah turned around, swinging an empty fist. Again, he hit nothing.
He looked around, at the floor, at the walls, at the ceiling.
Nothing. And the noise was gone.

Jonah began to
hyperventilate, and he felt faint. He set his feet in motion. He
had to get out of there, out of the house, to safety. On his way
out of the bathroom, Jonah caught something in his peripheral
vision. From the hall, just outside the bathroom, he turned to it.
He stared at his reflection in the mirror above the
vanity.

Can this
be real?
was the question in his head. It
was far too bright, too much light in that mirror. Jonah stepped
slowly up to the vanity, as the reflection seemed to grow slightly
brighter. He then stood in front of the vanity, staring at his
reflection for a few seconds.

That reflection smiled at
him, even though he wasn’t smiling himself. Then the smile in the
mirror turned into a look of rage. His own reflection began yelling
at him.

“I’m going to kill you! You
fucking whore! You’re ruining everything, and now you must
die!”

Jonah jumped backward
through the bathroom doorway and fell on his back. He sat up on his
elbows and saw the reflection get bigger, like it was going to come
right through the mirror. Jonah got up and ran to the front of the
house, hearing the reflection scream, “Whore! I’ll kill
you!”

He didn’t care that he was
only wearing his underwear. He opened the front door to leave. But
there was someone in the doorway. Reflexively, Jonah swung. But his
punch was blocked, and the person in the doorway got a hold of
him.

Then Tate’s voice was
there. “Bro! Get hold of yourself.” Tate pushed Jonah back into the
house, and Jonah let him. Tate turned him and held Jonah by the
arm.

“Something in my
apartment,” Jonah said, his voice shaking.

“No, bro. It’s just
withdrawals.” Tate pulled Jonah back through the hallway. Jonah
looked into the bathroom as they went by. The reflection was as it
should be, Tate pulling Jonah, the extra light gone.

“I can’t stay,” Jonah said.

Tate’s voice was stern, but
that was soothing now. Tate said, “You’re staying here, bro, and I
don’t care what you said about doing this alone. I’m staying with
you tonight.”

Once in the bedroom, Tate
let him go. Then he grabbed the extra pillow from the bed and
tossed it on the floor. He turned to the open closet and pulled
down a blanket. Then he said, “Get back in your bed, bro. I’ll
sleep right here on the floor until morning. We’re going to get
through this together.”

Jonah did as Tate said, and
he slept.

#

“How did you know?” Jonah
asked.

They sat at his kitchen
table, playing chess on a wooden board that Tate had brought from
his apartment. It was a little after 4PM. Without even asking Jonah
if he needed for him to stick around, Tate had called in and had
all of his therapy clients for today rescheduled for later this
week. He told Jonah that he’d come this far, and he wasn’t about to
let him give in now.

The DTs had come and gone a
few times. They were very compact and severe. There was nausea, the
icy feeling, and the ever-beckoning image of the giant cigarette.
At times, the tight feeling in Jonah’s chest made him feel like his
heart would give if he didn’t smoke soon.

There was nothing he could
do when the DTs came, just sit and endure them, breaking from chess
or whatever game they were playing. Within the DTs was a flawed
logic. Even though they always passed, each time they came back and
worked their way up to nearly unbearable, Jonah was sure that this
time they would never end. But they did. And the feeling he was
left with was very similar to the feeling left after a spell of
vomiting has finally ended. It was relief, glad that it was over,
satisfied that it was over. This feeling of satisfaction was better
than anything that he'd had the day before, and that gave him
hope.

It was very rare that Jonah
spent a day with one person, and not since he’d lived in a
dormitory his first year of college had he spent much time with
another person in his home. Now, Tate was there to observe Jonah
and his compulsions at their worst. Like the day before, the
compulsions seemed exacerbated. Jonah checked constantly around the
house. He’d made two trips to his office, taking Tate with him just
in case the temptation to smoke overwhelmed him. To his surprise,
Tate didn’t say anything about the compulsions. He didn’t even give
his trademark body-language hints to mock Jonah’s behavior. In
fact, Tate seemed very mellow, but not like on the day Jonah had
come to his apartment after he’d had lunch with David. Tate
actually seemed preoccupied with something. Tate never said what it
was. Jonah never asked.

Now, in response to Jonah’s
question, Tate said, “I just thought you might be having a rough
time. So I decided to check on you.”

It was almost always that
Tate was in Jonah’s head. But right now, the reverse seemed true.
For some reason, Jonah was fairly certain that Tate was
lying.

#

Tate spent the night on
Jonah’s couch. Jonah went to bed with only mild DTs. But he was
terrified by the prospect of a repeat of last night’s horror. He
didn’t have a single nightmare. But something strange did
happen.

Jonah felt very good when
he woke up in the middle of the night, but there was a craving
there. He couldn’t figure out what he wanted for sure, but he knew
he had to get out of bed and go get it. He walked out of his room
and through the hall, feeling a sense of invigoration. He was no
longer ill. The DTs weren’t with him. There was so much he could do
now, and he wanted something so bad. He was certain that satisfying
the craving would satisfy him eternally. Never again would he want.
But he didn’t know for sure what he wanted right now.

In the living room, he
stopped and looked over the couch where Tate was sleeping. It was
when, staring through the dark, able to make out Tate’s eyes
staring back at him, that Jonah came out of his weird
state.

“There’s something in you,
bro,” Tate said in a whisper. Then he closed his eyes. Jonah went
back to bed.

#

The next morning, Jonah
woke up early, with another craving. But this time he knew exactly
what he craved. He got up and got dressed, expecting any time for
the DTs to hit him and take the new craving away. But by the time
he was completely cleaned up and ready for the day, they still
hadn’t.

It was so very intense. It
had been so long since he’d felt this way. For so long, all
craving, aside from nicotine, had been secondary craving,
fulfillment only good if the nicotine craving was fulfilled first.
But this craving, hunger, didn’t have that adulteration. It felt
pure. He wanted to eat ravenously.

He found Tate lying awake
on the living room couch.

“Hey, man. You hungry?
Let’s go to Denny’s. I’ll buy.”

Tate laughed.

Jonah ate a ton of food,
and it tasted good, way better than he had remembered food
tasting.

Jonah remembered getting up
the night before. Evidently, Tate didn’t. Or, at least, Tate didn’t
mention it.

There were more DTs to face
over the next few days. But, each time, the period between the DTs
was longer and the next DTs didn’t last as long and were less
intense.

The energy level was
incredible. Jonah found himself working out more and wanting to get
out of the house more. Wednesday evening, he and Tate went hiking
at a nearby state park. Thursday evening, they tossed a Frisbee
around, then went bowling. By Friday, amazingly, but just as Tate
had said it would be, smoking seemed like a thing from Jonah’s
distant past. He had no DTs, and he had no cravings. The thought of
smoking actually seemed foreign to him. He was excited to go back
to work on Monday, just to see what he could do.

Chapter
Five

It was Thursday night, and
Jonah had hoped this Thursday night at Denny’s would be a
celebration of his newfound freedom. He hoped to walk in and tell
Tate about how not smoking had freed up the time between clients so
that he had been able to get most of his work done at work. He
couldn’t. He left about forty files in his car when he walked into
Denny’s.

He found Tate in a booth, a
cup of water in front of him and a look of anticipation on his
face. Jonah sat down and looked around. Their waitress seemed busy
with a few other tables that had just walked in.

“I couldn’t do it,” Jonah said, after
giving up hope that the waitress would be over soon.

“Why, bro? What
happened?”

Jonah had not seen or
spoken to Tate since Sunday, so Tate had not known anything about
Jonah’s last four days.

“Well,” Jonah said. “It
started Monday morning after my first client. I got done about
fifteen minutes before the hour, which should have given me ample
time to call in that client’s report. But instead of doing that, I
started making sure I had everything ready for the next
client.”

Tate shook his head. “And
what’s that?”

“A file. A couple of forms
with the client’s name.”

“Doesn’t your office manager take care
of that?”

“Absolutely. And she does
an excellent job. The files were already completely organized for
me. But it didn’t matter. I still checked them over and over
again.”

“Wow!” Tate said, shaking
his head.

“And once I was done with
that, I went back to the file of the client I just saw. But instead
of calling it in and being done with it, I started checking it,
making sure I had each section completely finished, making sure it
had all of its right forms and that they were all
signed.”

“And this was after knowing that all
of that had already been taken care of.”

“Right. Knowing didn’t
matter. I knew the files were arranged for the upcoming clients,
and I knew there was virtually no chance that I would have missed a
section of the report while dealing with the previous client or
have forgotten to have him sign the fucking release form. But
knowing was not enough. I still checked, over and over
again.”