Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (4 page)

“Sure,” Jonah said, though
he didn’t really want to sit. He liked to keep moving when he
drank.

They sat down at a small table along
the wall.

“You always drink water at
the bar,” Jonah asked as he looked down at Tate’s cup.

Tate shrugged. “Beer
doesn’t do it for me, bro. Not unless I smoke a little
first.”

Jonah stared at his own
drink for a few seconds before looking up. Tate was staring right
at him, studying him, his eyebrows up, smiling. Then, the laugh. He
reached over the table and slapped Jonah on the shoulder, then
laughed again. “Yeah, bro. You heard me. And I saw you.”

“What?” Jonah asked.

“Fuck you!” Tate said. “You
heard me. Come on, bro.”

“All right, so I heard
you,” Jonah said.

A few minutes later, they
were in Tate’s car.

#

The inside of Tate’s house
was immaculate, not a thing out of place. There were three Pink
Floyd and two Beetles posters. There were two framed displays, one
a drawing of staircases leading to nowhere, one an 8X12 of Tate at
a wedding, standing with the rest of the court at the side of the
bride and groom.

Tate put on psychedelic
music from some band Jonah had never heard of, then got out a small
bag, some rolling papers and a pair of tweezers. As he rolled a
tight joint, he explained to Jonah the benefits of rolling over
using a one-hitter or bong. Jonah nodded but never really heard
him. He hadn’t smoked pot in a few years. He was both excited and
anxious.

They smoked part of the
first joint. Jonah felt nothing at first, and he thought it might
be a dud. A little while later, he felt paranoid. He started to
worry that he was not breathing enough. Then he feared that he
might swallow his tongue. He realized that he was stoned. During
the short paranoid phase, Tate said things. Jonah heard him, but
would be left with a sense that he hadn’t understood. He wasn’t
sure if it was that he wasn’t hearing Tate right in the first place
or if he was just quick to forget what Tate was talking
about.

Tate was laughing, but it
didn’t sound like his usual high-pitched laugh. To Jonah, it
sounded like Tate was coughing. But he wasn’t sure if it was all in
his head. Then there was the thought that Tate was creeping ever
closer to him on the couch. What was he planning to do? Jonah was a
little bigger than Tate, maybe ten or fifteen pounds. They were
both pretty taut. But Tate had had on that martial arts shirt the
other night. Jonah got a picture in his head of Tate making his way
all the way to the other side of the couch and wrapping those thick
arms around him. Tate kind of seemed like the stalker type, knowing
so much about Jonah. And hadn’t he said he saw Jonah around a lot?
Was he gay? And not just likes-to-have-sex-with-guys gay, but
likes-to-force-big-guys-into-sex gay? No, that was crazy; there was
no such thing. Or was there?

Jonah felt Tate reach over
and punch him on the arm. He couldn’t tell how hard it was, though.
He couldn’t decide if it was playful or Tate was actually trying to
hurt him. Whatever it was, Tate kept doing it.

Smack. Smack.
Smack.

Tate was laughing as he did
it. Or maybe he was coughing. Maybe he was choking and trying to
get Jonah’s attention. What if he died? Jonah turned to him. He saw
that Tate was smiling. So Tate was laughing. The next time Tate hit
him, it was on the chest, and Jonah responded by hitting him back.
If it was hard to tell how hard Tate had hit him, it was even
harder to tell how hard he had hit Tate. The shot was to Tate’s
chest, and it knocked him back. Tate didn’t stop laughing. But he
got up off the couch.

He moved away from Jonah
and into the kitchen. A little while later, he came back with two
open bottles. He set one in front of Jonah. “Here’s your beer,
bro.”

For some reason, that
struck Jonah as hilarious. He began to laugh. And he laughed, they
laughed, so long that Jonah forgot what he was laughing for. The
paranoia was gone. And after a while, so were the giggles. They lit
up again. Shortly after, as Jonah was tripping out on some strange
thought, Tate’s voice reverberated in his head.

“Yeah, bro. I don’t like
being around college kids that much. They just aren’t that fun to
watch.”

Jonah, feeling accustomed
to being high now, was able to understand Tate, and it interested
him. Tate spoke again, before Jonah could think of what to
say.

“You ever watch people,
bro?”

Jonah thought about that.
“No, not really.”

“I do, bro. I get a kick
out of people. But not college kids. At least, not the ones you see
in the bars. You see one group like that, and you’ve seen them all.
They all pretty much act according to what the group is doing.
Fucking group think.”

Group
think.
That wasn’t an everyday term. That
was a psychology term.

“I see you’ve taken social
psychology,” Jonah said.

“Yeah, bro. I majored in
psychology.”

“No. Really?”

“Yeah. I got a Ph.D. in
counseling. I work at Thunder Hills Counseling Center, here in
town, and I teach a couple of courses up at the college.

“Wow! Cool!”

Tate smiled. “You don’t
believe me, do you bro?”

“Sure,” Jonah said,
intentionally putting a little bit of doubt in his voice, trying to
be vague. That way, whether Tate was telling the truth or lying,
Jonah wouldn’t feel like an idiot later.

“Fuck you,” Tate said in a
hard to interpret voice. “You don’t fucking believe me.” Tate stood
up.

“No, man, I believe you,” Jonah said,
again with just a hint of disbelief in his voice.

Tate pulled out his wallet
and sat back down. He opened the wallet and flashed a little paper
card under the cellophane. “What’s that say, bro?”

Jonah leaned over, then
said, “Blah, Blah, Blah. Tate Powers, Licensed Professional
Counselor.”

“Yeah, bro. What do ya
think of that? Didn’t believe me. Come into my house and smoke my
pot, then call me a liar.”

Jonah laughed.

“And then he laughs. Ha ha.
Very funny.”

“No, man. Look.” Jonah
pulled out his own wallet. “I just got this a few weeks ago.” He
showed Tate the limited license.

“No shit. My brother Jonah
is a shrink.”

Jonah nodded.

“No shit? What’s your
degree?”

“Ph.D., Tate
boy.”

They both laughed for a
while longer, then Tate said, “A couple of damn doctors, and we
didn’t even know it.”

#

It was 2AM, Saturday
morning. They still hadn’t come down. Tate was in his head
again.

“I bet you hate doing therapy,
bro.”

Tate sat on the couch.
Jonah was moving about the living room. He didn’t really mind Tate
being in his head now. Strangely, Jonah thought Tate was real in a
way. But it wasn’t so much that Tate said what was on his mind. It
was that he so often said what was on Jonah’s mind. It was a fun
little game.

“I’d rather sit through five
consecutive root canals.”

“Why is that?” Tate asked,
the look on his face making Jonah suspect he already knew the
answer.

And in that moment, Jonah
came up with a new answer to the question. Maybe it was that he
knew he couldn’t bullshit Tate, and thus couldn’t bullshit himself,
but suddenly the answer was clear. “Because I suck at
it.”

“Oh yeah. Oh yeah,” Tate
said in a calm, satiated voice. “A good therapist is like a good
dancer; you have to be loose and flow where the rhythm takes
you.”

“Oh?” Jonah said.

“Oh yes, bro. But you can’t
be loose when you do therapy. You can’t be loose, because you do
therapy like you play pool. You try not to lose.”

That hit a little deeper
than Jonah was comfortable with right now. But he still wanted to
play the game. He remembered how Tate had disarmed him earlier.
Jonah shook his head and spoke half-heartedly. “You’re right, Tate.
I’m trying not to lose.”

Tate spoke loud and
abruptly. “In everything, in every way, that’s your dilemma. You
don’t want to lose.”

“Right again. My whole life
is just trying not to lose.”

“I knew it when I introduced myself to
you and the first thing you did was size me up.”

Jonah felt as if his mind
split off in different directions. Part of it went to that night at
Denny’s. Part of it stayed in the game. “That’s what I did,” Jonah
said. “Sized you right up.”

“Sized you right up,” Tate
said, mimicking Jonah’s slow southern accent, mockery Jonah felt
but tried to hide his reaction to. Tate laughed, not the coughing
laugh either, the high-pitched-mocking laugh. It was as if he saw
through Jonah’s façade of indifference. Tate spoke fast again. He
said, “In your head, you wanted to know, if it came right down to
it, would you be able to take me. Not because you wanted to win,
though. Because you didn’t want to lose.”

Jonah laughed. It was a
fake laugh, though, a desperate attempt to hide his
vulnerability.

“You did it at the bar
tonight. I watched you, bro. Every guy that came in, you’d look him
up and down, assess if you could take him. I saw the girls you
looked at.” Tate laughed, and Jonah felt naked. “Don’t look at the
foxes, do ya. No, you don’t dare even fantasize about a chick that
might be out of your league. You look at the ones slightly heavyset
or with a little complexion problem. But you won’t even approach
them. You wait for them to come to you. That way you won’t
lose.”

“You’re—”

“Can’t lose, if you don’t
play.”

“But,” Jonah said.

“But,” Tate said, southern
accent mimicked, eyebrows up, then the laugh.

Jonah tried to find
something to say, but he couldn’t. He tried to stay in the game,
but, even in his stoned head, his thoughts raced too fast. “Fuck
you!” he finally said, then headed for the door.

Tate got up and blocked his
path. “Where you going, bro? Come on, don’t be a bitch.”

“Fuck off!” Jonah said,
then pushed past Tate.

Tate snagged one of Jonah’s
wrists. Jonah whipped it free. “Keep your fucking hands off me!”
Jonah shouted. But he was no longer moving toward the door. He was
looking straight into the eyes of Tate, who now, with his solid
angular face and intense still eyes, looked like a demon to
him.

Jonah
felt it rise up inside. It was powerful, even more intense than the
man in front of him. But it died down fast. Then Jonah
thought,
I’m not in a
corner.

Jonah turned and opened the
door.

“Come on, bro,” Tate said.
“Don’t go yet. Let’s smoke some more.”

Jonah walked out, leaving
Tate yelling.

“What the fuck, bro! Go
then!”

Jonah stopped outside and
listened to Tate ramble on, like he had something inside him that
wouldn’t let him stop. He shook his head. “Crazy bastard.” He
pulled the pack of smokes from one pocket of his jeans and took the
lighter from his other pocket. He fished out a smoke, lit up and
took a drag. That was when he saw the orange cat again. This time
it was about fifteen feet away, standing in the parking lot, its
mouth open, its teeth on display. It stared at Jonah for a few
seconds and then moved away.

#

It was a week before he and
Tate talked again. It wasn’t near as awkward as Jonah thought it
would be, standing outside on the sidewalk, shooting the shit like
nothing had happened. They would talk about the previous Friday
night, though, that very night. But not before they had smoked
their first joint.

C
hapter Two

Jonah had been cold before,
and it had snowed a few times during his lifetime while he lived in
South Carolina. But nothing he had experienced had even begun to
prepare him for his first Michigan winter. Michigan cold didn’t
just chill the skin. It went straight through, into the bone and
deeper. It bit you first when you went outside in the morning and
then stayed with you the rest of the day. Turn your car’s heater on
full blast, drink your hot coffee, and wrap yourself in five
layers. It didn’t matter. Once you were bit, you were destined to
feel the chill inside you for the rest of the day.

And it didn’t end. In South
Carolina, there were cold fronts. That meant a few days or maybe a
week of exceptionally low temperatures. A Michigan winter didn’t
have cold fronts, only colder fronts. Day after day, the chill came
back. No breaks. There were places where snow got pushed and piled
up. From the middle of December to the middle of March, Jonah did
not see the ground under those places. Spring came, but not really.
Then summer was more like Spring was supposed to be. Once, in early
August, the temperature got into the early eighties.
Once.

But all of this Jonah
survived. He might not have survived it, he thought, had he not
spent most of his time inside. In that first year, he saw over
1,500 SSI clients. They just kept coming. Monday through Wednesday,
Jonah was at the office. Fridays, he had supervision in Lansing.
The rest of the time, he was usually at home working on his
reports. Otherwise, he went out to eat, shop, and workout. And, of
course, one night a week, he and Tate got stoned. That one night,
as annoying as Tate sometimes was, made life a little easier for
Jonah to bear.