Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (34 page)

Sully was amazed by the look on his
dad’s face and the way the old man described the scene. He didn’t
sound like a man talking about his son being mutilated. He sounded
more like a man describing the best bar fight he had ever
seen.

“I was afraid to move you, just then.
Your neck was tilted over like the bone had been snapped in two.
Then, after looking at you a little while longer, I was fairly sure
you were dead. But I didn’t want to believe that. I wanted to hold
on. So I reached down and took your little wrist between my thumb
and forefinger. Sure as can be, there was a pulse there. It was
faint, but it was there. But you wasn’t going to last long. There
was no denying that.”

His dad stopped. And for the first
time in a while, Sully saw traces that he was saddened by this.
There were tears in his eyes. The next time he spoke, there was a
slight croak in his voice.

“I knew I shouldn’t move a person who
was hurt like that. But I knew there was no saving you. And if you
were going to die, I didn’t want it to be out there in that field
with all those stupid, fucking cows.”

His dad had to take a little while to
gather himself. He finished off the beer in his mug before he
continued. “I scooped you up off the ground. And right then, as
soon as I got you up, what was left of your little mouth opened.
You sucked in one last breath. Then you let it out hard, like the
life was flowing out of you. And I knew you had just died, right in
my arms.” Tears came down his dad’s face. “I took you inside. I
laid you on the kitchen table. Then I went and got a sheet to wrap
you up in. When I was done covering you, I went and got my shotgun
and sat in the living room. I suppose I was just going to wait for
your mom to get home. We both loved you more than life. Still do.
And I didn’t really see any point in either of us going on after
that.”

Sully was stunned. If this story were
true, then this man in front of him, the man he had always trusted,
had once thought of killing Sully’s mother. He had sat one night in
the living room of Sully’s childhood, with a loaded gun, having
basically gone mad, waiting to shoot down the woman he loved, then
train the gun on himself. It seemed impossible. Not his
dad.

“I sat in that chair for about ten
minutes, kind of numb like. I guess I didn’t really want to feel a
thing at that point. But I got to thinking how terrible it was just
to leave you sitting on the table like that. I guess I intended on
washing you up a bit. Maybe laying you in your bed.” His dad smiled
again. “But when I walked back into that kitchen, that sheet was
moving around.”

His dad nodded, enthusiastically, but
kind of like he was asking if Sully bought what he was saying.
Sully, not sure what to believe, humored the old man with a nod of
his own. His dad continued.

“At first, I thought it was just my
mind playing tricks on me. Maybe I’d gone crazy. But it seemed like
it would stop if that were the case. But that sheet just kept
moving. So I walked over there and uncovered you. And under that
sheet was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. I jumped back at
the sight of it.” His dad laughed at the memory, and then he shook
his head. “Your body was twitching, kind of like nerves when you
cut off a chicken’s head. But I knew immediately that it wasn’t
nerves. Because your chest was bobbing up and down, real spastic.
And your neck looked as if it might have straightened itself out.
Even your face looked better. It was still beat up, but it looked
more like a face now."

His dad laughed again, this time
triumphantly, as he poured more beer into his mug. “Now, I started
to get on the phone. At that point, I thought there might be
something a doctor could do for you. But then I stopped. I realized
this wasn’t about anything a doctor would know. You’d died, and
from the looks of it, you were coming back. So I pulled up a chair
and watched.”

Sully looked around the bar. No one
seemed to be paying attention to them, which was itself amazing,
with the commotion his dad was making.

“I tell you, Son, those next few
minutes were like the best dream I ever had. I half expected to
wake up at any time. Find myself still in that chair, still holding
the gun. But I never did. I just sat there and watched as those
nasty cuts faded away and your breath became normal. I watched you
come alive again.”

His dad’s fist came down on the table
again, and then he was the one to look around the bar, as if he had
shocked himself. He calmed down a little. But he continued with his
story. “You opened your eyes and looked at me. Then you started
looking around and sat up. I reached out my arms and you came to
me. I tell you, I didn’t ever want to put you down. There ain’t no
better feeling in this world than what I felt holding you
then.”

The old man laughed, this time
affectionately. “I don’t even think you knew anything was strange.
You thought you’d just woke up from a nap. I took you to the
bathroom and washed you up. I took you outside with me, and we put
that sheet and your clothes in the barrel. I lit it up, and we
watched it burn together, you, my living child, back from the dead,
still wet from the bathtub, in my arms. By the time your mom got
home, all that was left was a little nick on the side of your
forehead.”

His dad was nearly in hysterics with
laughter. “She was so mad. And I had to stand there and act like I
was bothered by her scolding. I frowned as I told her how sorry I
was and that it would never happen again. But all the while, I was
overjoyed on the inside. I actually liked her nagging for once. I
realized that she was nagging because she loved you. She loved the
son she didn’t know that she’d lost for a short while. The son that
came back.”

Sully sat there for a little while, to
let the story sink in. Reflexively, he rubbed his forehead where he
remembered the cow’s hoof hitting him. His dad just sat there with
a look of satisfaction on his face, this memory, delusion, or
whatever it was, having set him completely at ease. In silence,
Sully finished one more beer.

He went home, planning to pick up
where he had left off on Anna’s book, going into that world for a
little while, to forget the madness he had just heard in this
world. But no sooner did he walk in the door than did the
exhaustion rush over him. Sully went to bed.

#

It was dark when Anna pulled into the
driveway the next night. Sully heard her car outside and looked up
from the page he was reading. The stack of papers he had left to
read was small compared to the stack he had already read. That was
more of a disappointment than anything. He didn’t feel the
excitement that usually came with completion of a task. He didn’t
want this story to end at all. He knew he would have to fight hard
to resist the urge to ask Anna to continue beyond the end. He had
done that before and she had hated it.

“The story that came to me is over,”
she had said.

Sully went back into the book, wanting
to greet Anna, but not wanting to be away from where he was. A
little while later, he heard her open the door to the bedroom. He
looked up and saw her looking around, checking out the situation.
Seeming to understand where he was, she smiled and walked out. He
got right back in the story. About an hour later, he was finished
with her book.

Sully found Anna in the study. She was
actually watching television, a rarity for her. She used the remote
to shut it off. Sully sat down beside her on the couch.

“Wow!” he said.

Anna laughed. “I guess you liked
it.”

“Anna, I can honestly say it’s the
most intense thing I’ve ever read. And I don’t even like horror
that much.”

He saw the glow on Anna’s face. He
loved that he had put it there.

“You know. Usually, when I try to read
horror, I don’t make it through the book. I can never get past all
the impossibilities. But your stuff is different. The way you show
things, it’s almost like they’re possible.”

Anna’s eyebrows shot up. The glow was
still there, but it had diminished. Sully realized he had said
something wrong.

Anna said, “These things are not
possible, because of the physical laws we have. Would you
agree?”

“Sure,” Sully said. “Things obey
physical laws. There is no documented proof otherwise.” Sully felt
almost like a hypocrite, given his recent life, where the normal
laws didn’t always seem to apply. But Anna nodded her
agreement.

Anna said, “What if experience was one
dimensional? Could the picture on the wall be?”

Sully reflexively looked around,
looking at the pictures in the room. Then he thought of how stupid
he was being, Anna’s question abstract. He finally said, “No, the
pictures have two dimensions, height and width.”

“All right,” Anna said. “You add a
dimension and experience changes. You get more stuff.”

Sully nodded his head, not knowing
where this would go but his curiosity invoked.

“So, what happens when you add another
dimension?” Anna asked.

“You get depth,” Sully
replied.

“Right, my dear Sully, you get depth.
You add a dimension, and you get more stuff. Your experience
changes. But tell me this. Is that all your experience is? Do you
only have the same three-dimensional scene all the
time?”

“No. It changes. Because we have a
fourth dimension, time.”

Anna nodded, the look on her face
growing wicked. “Again, the added dimension brings more stuff that
changes experience.”

It was as philosophical as he had ever
heard Anna. And Sully liked it.

“Now, Sully. This is our daily
experience. We see three dimensions, height, width, and depth.
These three dimensions change through the fourth dimension we call
time.”

“Agreed. That sums up the
review.”

Anna smirked at his smart-ass comment.
“Now these are the four dimensions of our experience. But consider
this. If there are more dimensions, would we be able to see them
from our perspective.”

Sully shrugged. “No.”

“But think of this. What do you think
happens when you add another dimension?”

Sully did think about it for a few
seconds, and then he said, “You get more stuff and experience
changes.”

Anna leaped on him. She kissed him
hard, then right up in his face, said, “All is possible, Sully. All
happens. You just have to add more dimensions to see
it.”

#

The following Sunday came, and it was
time for someone to go pick up Monica. It had been decided that
Anna would go. But when the actual day arrived, Sully changed his
mind. He could not handle the madness anymore. He didn’t want to
believe his world was so different from the world he had always
thought it was. And if he could go and make it back, without event,
then he would be satisfied that it was a rational world. He would
have his proof.

Shockingly, Anna didn’t offer
resistance. It might have been that there was still work to do on
the book, Sully thought. But that couldn’t be it, as Anna had told
him she probably wouldn’t start proofreading for a couple of weeks,
in the past having found such a break beneficial. Maybe she was
just tired. Either way, Sully didn’t push the issue.

So, Sunday morning, Sully drove five
hours to pick up his daughter. On the way there, nothing happened,
no beast from the sky in tornado or shadow form, no killer semis.
But that didn’t prove anything, as it had always been on the trip
back that the madness began.

But even the trip home was without
crazed event. Sully drove past all the places where he had slipped
away before. They stopped for a late lunch at McDonald’s in OKC.
They drove past the place that had been the setting for the semi
vision. They made it home. There was no phone call from his mom.
There was no phone call from his dad. At school the next day, he
heard nothing of anybody dying. Sully was satisfied. He had his
proof. Monday night, he went to bed early.

#

When Sully came to, feeling the
pressure on top of him, he thought it was Anna. He went to wrap an
arm around her, and though he was able to move it around her waist,
that arm was heavy. No, it wasn’t that his arm was heavy. It was
that he didn’t have much energy. His arm was slung away with an
incredible force. Animalistic force. Sully opened his eyes to see
the white face, inches away, staring at him. Then he felt the
clammy hand cover his eyes. He could not resist. He slipped
away.

#

Sully awoke with hard breaths, the
coma men having just been with him, and sat up in bed. He felt
Anna’s hand on his back, and then heard her voice.

“It’s all right, baby. It’s just a
dream.”

Sully was comforted, but not for long,
because a question popped into his head. “Why didn’t you wake up
before?” he struggled to ask with his increased
respiration.

After a few seconds, Anna replied, “I
don’t know. I guess I didn’t hear you.”

Anna pulled him down. She rubbed his
chest, and that soothed him more.

“Go back to sleep, baby,” she
said.

Chapter Six