Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (18 page)

Either way, conscious or
unconscious, and even though Jonah found such motivations hard to
respect, he had Steph stay the night. It wasn’t that he wanted
anything else from Steph. In fact, after having sex with her once,
he didn’t feel any kind of attraction to her. But the wickedness
had taken a hiatus. Jonah no longer felt like taking, and the
thoughts of possible ramifications stood out in his head. He
remembered that the last girl he had sex with was now dead. He
doubted they would ever trace the dancer to him. But Steph, of
course, was his office manager.

Glad Steph would be there
where he could watch her, but remembering the weirdness of the last
few nights, Jonah thought of a plan. He got out a fan he’d brought
from South Carolina but had had little use for in northern
Michigan, where summer nights were generally pretty cool. He didn’t
point it at he and Steph, but put it close to them, and turned it
on full blast. He told her that it was to drown out the noises that
some of his neighbors made at night. Steph didn’t question
it.

Jonah then shut and locked
the bedroom door. Around 10PM, he lay in bed with Steph. She rubbed
him up and down his upper torso. Jonah didn’t respond, other then
wrapping his arms around her. Eventually, Steph fell asleep on his
chest. Then Jonah slept too.

#

How many times has he done
this? Why is he doing it again? It’s the same thing, the road, the
clinic, eaten alive, every time. He passes the gas station, the
houses, and the church. Up ahead is the tower. It’s a water tower.
The writing on the tower is scrambled. But then letters disappear
until there are only two words. Jonah turns onto the next road. The
street sign says Main Street. It blurs out and changes into
something else. Jonah wakes up, because something is on
him.

#

Jonah felt down his stomach
until he touched the bug. It was narrow but maybe three inches
long. He found three more similar bugs on him. All were
dead.

Would they have gone for
Steph? Yes. Whatever had brought the bugs had wanted Jonah awake.
If Steph would have woken up screaming, he would have woken up from
his dream. In the pitch black room, Jonah could only make out the
silhouette of Steph’s body beside him. He remembered she had worn
one of his T-shirts and her panties to bed.

With four dead bugs grasped
in his left hand, Jonah felt for Steph with his right. She was
sleeping with her back turned to him. Luckily, she was above the
covers. As carefully as he could, he rubbed his hand over her,
using the warmth from her skin to tell that he was very close but
not quite touching her. Steph’s breathing changed a few times, and
Jonah paused, but otherwise she did not move. As far as he could
tell, she had no bugs from the shoulders down. He checked her neck
and found the same thing. Then he checked her hair, actually
touching it, but very gently. Finally, Jonah reached around to
check her face. That’s where he found it. Jonah pulled the
four-inch bug from Steph’s cheek.

He felt more beneath his
feet as he made his way quietly to the bedroom door. He moved
slowly, so as not to make a lot of noise. After leaving the
bedroom, he closed the door behind him. He then went into the
bathroom, where he shut the door and turned on the light. He tossed
several multi-legged bugs into the toilet. He didn’t flush the bugs
yet. He knew he had many more to toss in first. Working quietly and
meticulously, in the dark, Jonah combed every inch of his bedroom,
making sure he picked up every little bug. The highest
concentration was near his bedroom door, which made sense. There
was a vent right above that door, where the narrow bugs could have
fit through.

By 4AM, Jonah thought he
had all of them. He flushed about sixty bugs down his toilet. He
wanted to go back to bed and sleep for a couple more hours before
he and Steph had to go to work. But first he did something. He got
out a notebook and wrote down what he had read on the water tower
and on the street sign.

Chestnut Street. Perryton,
Oklahoma.

#

Jonah got up again at
five-thirty. Steph got up around six. Thinking there might still be
dead bugs on the floor and not wanting her to see them, Jonah made
sure she didn’t see the room with the lights on. He casually stood
in front of the light switch as she walked out of the bedroom. If
she stepped on a bug, she didn’t say anything about it. When Steph
was out, Jonah nonchalantly shut the door. A few minutes later,
Steph kissed him goodbye.

Jonah went to the bedroom
and switched on the light. He’d actually done a good job earlier,
when he had cleaned quietly in the dark. He found only three more
bugs.

Jonah walked out of his
apartment at 7:30AM, Monday morning. He made it to his car, but
didn’t get in. He stood there, right by the door. He wanted so bad
to go back and check his apartment. He wanted to make sure the
faucets were off. He wanted to check the stove, the coffeepot, the
lights, the phone and the door. But it wasn’t just the urge to
check his apartment that fed Jonah’s anxiety. Even more than his
apartment, he worried about his future. He had been lucky that
Steph had not hit him with sexual assault when he first advanced on
her. He had been even luckier that the dancer hadn’t hit him with a
rape charge. And these overwhelming urges to do these wicked acts
didn’t seem to be diminishing. Sooner or later, he wouldn’t be
lucky.

Jonah walked from the door
of his car to the door of his apartment. There he stood. He had
worked so hard to quit checking. Tate had worked so hard for him to
quit checking, and here he was, ready to check. He’d worked even
harder to quit smoking. And what? Would he just give up on that
too? But what did it matter? With the new urges, he would soon be
dead or incarcerated anyway. He might as well check and smoke his
brains out.

Jonah laughed with
exasperation. He then said out loud, “Yeah, Jonah. That’s the
ticket. Use your new urges as an excuse to give into your old
urges.”

Suddenly,
something started to make more sense. Logic formed in his mind. The
things that were threatening him were
new
urges, and they had come about
the time the other urges had been put out. Could it be that this
was a layers thing? Had these new urges always been there, but
suppressed by a mind too busy tending to other urges? Had he, by
smoking and checking, buried his true self, an impulsive
monster?

Tate had talked about such
a possibility one night when they were getting stoned. He had said
something about anxiety masking impulsivity. Was it possible that
he could just change back to the old way? If he let the checking
obsessions take over and started smoking again, would the new urges
be pressed back under? Jonah suspected that would be the case, and
it would be worth it. He’d be miserable, but he’d be
alive.

“But there’s an
alternative,” Jonah said out loud. He had taken care of the urge to
smoke and the urge to check using the meditative techniques. Was it
possible that meditation would work on the new urges? Jonah wasn’t
sure. He smiled. He was going to try. Without going into his
apartment again, or even checking the lock on the door, Jonah went
to work.

Chapter
Seven

Steph was already there
when Jonah arrived at his office. The first client had yet to
arrive. Steph met Jonah in the lobby.

“Hey, boss,” she said in a
near whisper as she came up and pressed her body into his. He could
feel her swollen breasts against his body and could tell she wasn’t
wearing a bra. He could smell her sweet perfume. She planted a soft
kiss on his lips. None of this did anything for Jonah. He did not
feel like ravaging her again. Nor did he feel any connection to
her, negative or positive. He was only left with the thought that
he was done with her. She had fulfilled her purpose. It was
something Jonah didn’t understand. Since he’d moved to Michigan,
he’d had sex twice, both times in the last week. He should have
been starving for a second round with Steph.

“Do you think we could hang out again
tonight?” Steph asked, backing up a little, but still touching
him.

“Maybe?” Jonah said, his voice
intentionally vague.

Steph smiled, then let him
go. “Just let me know,” she said, her voice confidant.

Jonah smiled, letting it go
at that. He didn’t know how he would feel later, and he didn’t know
if he would be able to resist what he felt.

Jonah went to his office to
wait for his first client. His reaction to Steph confused him. It
seemed to be a sign that his wicked urges had relented. But he was
leery on the matter. He decided to withhold judgment until he saw
what the day brought.

At ten minutes after eight,
Steph came in and notified him that his first client had arrived.
That was when the wickedness came back. But it was not that he
craved Steph, who was smiling at him lasciviously. No, his feelings
toward her were still largely indifferent. His emotion, his rage,
was for the client he had yet to meet. He was the gateway to money
that this person wanted, and this person was ten minutes late,
wasting ten minutes of his precious time. This person, this waste
of flesh, who could be nothing more than a burden on her
surroundings, should have been waiting on him, who was so much
more, who deserved so much more.

The client was an obese,
middle-aged woman. She came in and sat down, staring at Jonah like
he was the bane of her life.

No
, Jonah thought.
Your biggest problems are the supersize button at
McDonald’s and the big bag of Doritos you’ll have after dinner
tonight.

“I don’t know why I have to
come here,” the fat woman said. “I’ve been getting the money for
years, and nothing has changed about my condition.”

Yeah
, Jonah thought.
Your condition hasn’t changed. You’re still a fat
waste. They ought to just shoot your fat ass and put you and those
around you out of your misery.

Though Jonah had these
wicked thoughts, he didn’t let them control him. The rage boiling
inside, he made himself calmly say, “It’s just a standard
interview, Miss, and it shouldn’t take too much of your
time.”

The woman nodded, not
happy, but looking like she would cooperate. To Jonah’s feverish
mind, her reaction was not enough. She should have been on her
knees, begging him to forgive her, apologizing for wasting his
time. But to the part of Jonah that was more than his mind’s
reactions, the part Tate had introduced him to, the woman’s
cooperation was enough. Without once displaying his rage for the
woman or his desire to pummel her fat face, Jonah made it through
the interview in a timely manner. That the interviews and the tests
Jonah had to give were highly structured, and that he’d done these
things so many times that they were routine, made it easier for
Jonah to deny his mind’s urges and stick to the protocol. With the
next couple of clients, the urges seemed to scream out their
protest, intensifying, becoming even more wickedly violent. Then,
as the morning went on and the afternoon came, the urges seemed to
lose their grip and started to fade away.

With his 4PM client, Jonah
barely heard the urges at all. He finished early and called the
report in. Afterward, feeling that he was winning, even more
optimistic about the future than he had been when he had conquered
the smoking and checking urges, Jonah strolled casually out into
the hall.

Steph was not in her
office. He moved into the lobby and saw the inside door was open.
Outside that door, standing by the bathroom, was Steph. She was
hunched over and had her hands on her stomach. She smiled at him
with her pale face.

“Steph? Are you
okay?”

“I think so,” she said in a
slightly pained voice. “I just all of the sudden felt nauseated. I
think I must have ate something bad at lunch.”

Steph usually ate lunch
down the street at a small deli. Jonah had been there a few times.
It seemed like a sanitary enough place.

“Do you need anything?”
Jonah asked. “Do you want me to drive you home?”

“Oh no,” Steph said. “I
just threw up. I’ll probably be okay to get home on my
own.”

“Are you sure?”

Steph nodded, smiling, but
with disappointment in her eyes.

“Well, all right,” Jonah
said. “Take tomorrow off if you need to. I won’t dock you for
it.”

“Thanks, boss,” Steph said,
the disappointment still there. Jonah knew she wanted to be with
him tonight. He, unlike her, wasn’t disappointed that it wasn’t
going to happen.

Jonah helped Steph get her
things from the office, then walked her out. After Steph was gone,
Jonah was left with yet another strange feeling. He had not wanted
to have sex with Steph or for her to be around that night. But he
still, somehow, felt like something had been taken away from
him.

#

The violent urges did not
return as Jonah met with his Monday evening clients. But another
urge came. He was tempted to hunt. He wanted to take another woman.
As he had done earlier, Jonah resisted the urge, not allowing it to
take him from his work routines, and just as the earlier urges had
done, this urge faded. Jonah was done with his last client around
8:40PM. He had fallen behind two reports. Feeling good that that
was all he had fallen behind, given the distracters he’d had, but
not wanting to start tomorrow behind, Jonah called in the last two
reports. He had the office closed down by 9:30PM.