Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (20 page)

The scene fades out.

The scene returns, but now
he’s alone in the office. He feels guilt, but even more, he feels
fear, overwhelming fear. It’s as if it has just come home, just set
in. There will be ramifications for what he has done.

He will do no more evil. He
knows this, because whatever it was that made him do his deeds has
finally exited him completely. He must leave. He can’t make it
right, but maybe he can do something to stop it from happening
again. His life as he has planned it is over. But he is still
alive. Maybe he can still do good.

He walks out into an empty
lobby. Office hours are over. Everyone has gone home but him. He
goes to the door. The scene fades.

He is now out in the
parking lot, looking at the door. Only he is not flesh. He is just
a presence, observing, and he is Jonah now, only Jonah, not the
mixture of two people.

In the light of the closed
door, there is a man. At first, Jonah thinks the man is him. But
then he notes the differences. The man is a little smaller. His
hair is lighter. He’s wearing a physician’s white coat. The man
resembles Jonah, but is not Jonah. The man is Jonah’s
father.

Outside the door, flanking
it on both sides, are several dogs. Some are domestic. Some are
coyotes. There are seven of them in all. The man does not see the
dogs. Jonah wants to warn him, but he has no body to move with and
no voice to speak with.

Jonah’s father shuts off
the inside lights. A few seconds later, he steps outside. The first
dog to get him is a pit bull. It bites his thigh and grips on. His
father shouts in pain as he turns. A coyote rips into his back. His
father moves forward, the pit bull still gripping his thigh.
Suddenly, a shadow of a bird flies into his father’s head, then
falls to the cement. His momentum stops, as if stunned by the
collision with the flyer. He is overwhelmed by the dogs and taken
to the ground. For a few seconds, Jonah hears his father’s screams
and watches as several dogs rip into his flesh. Then the scene is
gone.

#

Jonah came to in his bed,
hearing his own screams. He lay there for about a minute, trying to
calm himself, trying to get to the point where he could place this
all in perspective.

Then something in his bed
sat up beside him. Its face was like his, except half gone. On one
side, a little flesh hung on bone, the eye missing.

Jonah could not find the
air to yell out, and he could not move.

It placed a hand on his
chest. It said, “I’m sorry, my son.”

Jonah woke up again. This
time he was alone.

The clock said 4:12AM.
Jonah got out of bed. He turned on all of the lights. He checked
outside but saw no animals. He did not sleep again that
night.

Chapter
Eight

Steph showed up for work on
Wednesday. She came into his office before the first client
arrived. “Hey,” she said as she knelt down over the arm of his
chair. “I’m all better now.” She kissed him twice on his cock.
“What are you going to do about that?”

Jonah didn’t know what to
tell her. It wasn’t that he didn’t want more sex. But Steph didn’t
want it the way he wanted to give it to her. She wanted to be
ravaged, abused, made to feel like a whore, like before, and Jonah
wasn’t sure he could do it that way now. He was afraid it might
trigger the old urges, just as having one drag from a cigarette
might lead to a whole cigarette, then a whole pack, and so forth.
Luckily, Jonah didn’t have to say anything. The front door opened,
and Steph went out to greet the client.

With his lack of sleep,
Jonah felt the tiredness. But now, his mind constantly meditative,
not even tiredness could slow him down. It was just there, in the
background. Jonah was in control, in the front. He met his day’s
work with maximum efficiency, and in the time that bought him, he
thought. He thought of his father. What all had his father done?
Had what Jonah witnessed, and to an extent, experienced, in his
dreams, really happen? Was the man really his father? Or was what
he dreamt bogus, just a side effect of all else that was happening,
otherwise meaningless? What all had his father done? What lay
ahead? Were the urges gone for good? Because that was how it felt.
Or was this just a temporary hiatus for the urges.

Shortly before the end of
the day, Jonah made a decision about Steph. Sex was definitely a
part of his life he’d want to pick up again, but not tonight. So he
told Steph, “Maybe tomorrow.” She assented. Jonah walked her to her
car and kissed her goodbye.

As he drove home, Jonah
thought of how there was just one more day of work to do. Then he
would have more time. Tate was to be home sometime this weekend,
and oh how he looked forward to that. He would tell Tate
everything, and Tate would steer him right. Jonah took some
contentment in that thought. He was beginning to have more faith in
himself all the time, but he had even more faith in Tate. Tate was
untouchable.

Jonah walked from his car
to his apartment, at ease. Then he stuck his key in the door and
twisted it. Instead of clicking, the lock jammed. Jonah wiggled the
key and tried it again. It jammed. It took Jonah a few seconds to
realize what was going on. He said out loud, “The door is already
unlocked.”

Jonah felt a second’s fear,
but then he laughed lightly. He didn’t check locks anymore. It was
quite possible that he’d left it unlocked. But, just in case, Jonah
went to the trunk of his car and got his tire iron. He entered his
apartment with the iron pulled back. With calmness, but a vigilance
to attack, Jonah scanned his house. He checked all the rooms and
all the closets. He found nobody. But in his room, he saw that the
answering machine was blinking. He hit the play button and heard
his mother’s voice.

“I’m going to tell you
this, then I never want you to contact me again.” A sob came to her
voice and she said, “I didn’t know he had killed those people, and
I didn’t know he’d been with those other women.”

His mother began to cry,
hard, then she hung up. But she’d said enough.

#

Awake, and Jonah had not
been dreaming. At least, there were no dreams that he could
remember. And he was wide-awake. He wondered why. Then he felt the
icy stare. He looked and saw the shadow standing near the
door.

There was a rush of fear.
But then Jonah felt that, unlike the night before, he could move.
The fear diminished somewhat, but remained present.

“My son,” the shadow said.
Then it motioned for him to come and left the room.

It was hard to get out of
bed, but it was even harder to lie there. At least on his feet,
moving, Jonah wouldn’t feel defenseless. He got up and moved slowly
through the dark, to the front of the house. As he came into the
living room, he caught a glimpse of the shadow sitting on the other
side of the room, in his swivel rocker, in the corner. Jonah
switched on the lamp that flanked his couch. The shadow was
gone.

Maybe it wanted to show him
something outside. Jonah went out the front door. Outside were the
parking lot and its cars. Jonah thought of where to go next. But
without some kind of hint, he couldn’t possibly find anything in
the expanse. He wasn’t even sure if he was supposed to be looking.
Jonah went back inside, locking the door behind him. Nothing else
to do, he shut off the lamp and started to bed. He was just inside
his room when the memory hit him, and it was more than a memory; it
was a premonition.

Jonah walked into the hall
and into the bathroom, where he turned on the light. He looked in
the mirror, where he saw his father. It was like looking at himself
like he’d never seen himself before. There was power in his
father’s stare, intensity. His father laughed, and that laugh was
very familiar. But it wasn’t like Jonah’s laugh, and he was sure it
wasn’t like his actual father’s laugh either. The high-pitched
laugh was indistinguishably the laugh of Tate.

“There’s something in you,
bro,” Tate’s voice said. He laughed again, then, just like that,
Jonah was looking at his own reflection.

Had it been Tate all along?
After all, Tate’s talents seemed unlikely. Had he tricked Jonah?
Jonah’s mind flashed back. All of the times Tate had known what he
was thinking, all the times Tate seemed to be inside his head. All
the times they’d been high and Tate had fucked with him.

“Oh my God, Tate,” Jonah
said out loud. “What are you?”

#

Thursday was similar to
Wednesday in a lot of ways. Jonah’s efficiency was incredible, and
that bought him the time he needed to think. Tate had said he would
be back from Florida this weekend. But that was vague. Neither of
them saw clients on Friday. So, at times, when they spoke of the
weekend, they meant anytime from Thursday night onward.

Jonah didn’t know what he
would do or say next time he saw Tate. He still didn’t know what
part Tate played in all this madness. That Tate had put things in
his head seemed very possible. Tate had always seemed able to
predict Jonah. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, Jonah wondered
if the reason Tate had been able to predict him so well was because
some of the things that came from Jonah had originated with Tate.
Had Tate been so crafty in his manipulation that he’d been able to
use Jonah’s own subconscious against him, employing subliminal
means to place in Jonah’s mind certain reactions, only to pretend
that he was reading Jonah? It wasn’t an unbelievable hypothesis.
The field of hypnosis was full of research supporting that such
tactics were effective.

Still, even if Tate could
have had that level of control over Jonah, there were extraneous
factors that Tate couldn’t be associated with. Tate didn’t know
Jonah’s parents, and Tate couldn’t have known the three clients.
So, overall, it didn’t seem possible that Tate could have pulled it
off. But Jonah was withholding final judgment. After all, this was
Tate.

Then there was the other
reason Jonah didn’t know how he would react when he next saw Tate.
Tate had seemingly taught Jonah to master his mind, and that Tate
had taught Jonah made Tate way more advanced in a lot of ways. And,
if Tate was so advanced that he’d actually pulled this off,
installing the urges in Jonah’s head, connecting the urges to the
rest of Jonah’s life, then what would Jonah be able to do about it
anyway?

The final client of the day
and the end of the workweek came in at 9PM. It was a clear-cut
case, and Jonah had the woman out in half an hour. He took ten
minutes to call the report in, and he was done. Less than a minute
after he hung up the phone, the urge to take washed over him. For a
few seconds, he was able to think about what had happened. As the
client had said it would, it had welled up. The urge rose fast and
was quickly the strongest urge Jonah had felt in his life. Steph
walked in.

“Lock the fucking doors!”
Jonah said as he stood up from his chair. “Your cunt! Mine! I want
to rip it apart!”

Steph’s face grew afraid,
but, at the same time, enticed and obedient. She went to do as he
said.

Nearly out of his mind, his
body feeling like it was swelling with excitement, wanting only to
take, Jonah removed his clothes and waited. A few seconds later,
Steph came back in the office. Today she had worn a one-piece skirt
outfit. With her two steps in the door, Jonah grabbed the bottom of
that and pulled it roughly over her head. Then he whipped her
panties down. He didn’t bother with her bra.

“Ouch!” Steph said, the look on her
face telling him that she was serious.

“Shut up, cunt!” Jonah
yelled as he put a hand on her throat.

By her throat, Jonah led
Steph to the desk. He let go of her throat, then Steph said,
“Jonah, you’re taking—”

Not letting her finish her
sentence, Jonah said, “That’s right, bitch! I’m taking!”

Jonah turned her around and
pushed her on the desk. He used two fingers and a thumb from his
right hand to spread open her cunt, as, with his left hand, he
straightened his stiffened cock.

It owns me.

Suddenly, Jonah remembered
the snake. He remembered the office in his dreams. This was what it
wanted him to do. This was what he was supposed to do. Though with
his entire body he still wanted inside the woman bent in front of
him, like a starving man wants meat, Jonah pulled back. He gathered
his clothes from the floor.

Steph turned around. She
stared at him in confusion as Jonah got dressed. Then, without
saying a word, she began to dress. When they both were completely
clothed, Jonah forced himself to talk. It was extremely difficult
with his mind still screaming at him.

“Steph. You need
go.”

“What?” Steph asked.

Jonah took two deep
breaths, but it did nothing for him. Then he said, “I need to take
things care of. No can’t be with you, until I take care of bad
things in my head.”

Steph’s look turned to fear
and concern. “Okay, boss,” she said, nearly crying. She walked
out.

Jonah wanted to walk Steph
to her car, but he was afraid to be too close to her, knowing he
might be overwhelmed again. So he just watched her from several
yards back. Standing just outside the door, Jonah observed Steph
get in her car and leave. Jonah went back inside to gather his
things and turn off the lights. He was back in his office, his bag
in his hand, when the urges flowed out of him.