Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (42 page)

There were two servers Monday through
Thursday. One side of the pub was sunk down below the bar and one
side was slightly elevated. This strange architecture added to
pub’s charm and provided a natural dividing point for the tables.
Tonight, Celeste had the sunken section.

The other server was Celeste’s best
friend and the person she second most wanted to avoid. She wished
it were Friday night, when the staff would be too busy to
chat.

As Celeste tended to her few
customers, she tried to avoid Kendra, who she knew would be
brimming with the inevitable questions. In the little bit of time
Celeste had to interact with Scott, the new cook, the one she most
wanted to avoid, she tried to pretend there was no weirdness
between them.

She was extra friendly with the
regular customers tonight, striking up and maintaining long
conversations, not giving Kendra the opening she needed. It worked
until midnight, when the pub closed.

Celeste was wiping down a table when
Kendra came down to her section.

“Wouldn’t it have been better to be
vacuuming?” Kendra said. “Then you wouldn’t have been able to hear
my questions.”

“Damn!” Celeste replied. “Why didn’t I
think of that?” Celeste stood up straight and looked at her friend,
who smiled impishly. Kendra was short and small on top. She was
cute, but in a pixie sort of way.

Ironically, Kendra, who savored all
the male attention she could get, was not the first one the men
looked at. The first one they looked at was Celeste, who, in what
seemed like a cruel joke from God, was blessed with the assets men
generally looked for. She was slender, but with an ample chest and
round hips. Her fiery red hair and rich brown eyes gave her a
misleading wild look. She got way more male attention than she
could ever want. At least, she got a lot of attention from the new
ones, staff and customers, who hadn’t learned the rules.

And how did they learn the rules? Not
by what Celeste said. She didn’t like to have to explain it to
people. It was easier to let the grapevine do that.

“Well, you know we’re going to have to
talk about this at some time,” Kendra said.

“Oh really?” Celeste replied, though
she knew Kendra was right. Now that no one else was around, she was
secretly glad to talk about it. That way, the rules, the way things
just were, would get back to Scott, and he wouldn’t have to take
things personal. Through the other staff members, he would
understand that it wasn’t about him; it was about
Celeste.

Kendra nodded confidently.

Celeste said matter-of-factly, “Scott
asked me out.”

Kendra laughed and shook her head. “I
knew it. Rumor was going around that he would.”

Celeste gave her friend a wicked look.
“And nobody was kind enough to tell the poor guy about me before he
asked me out?”

“Hell no,” Kendra replied. “Where’s
the fun in that?”

At that, Celeste shook her head. It
was fun and games to her coworkers. Celeste didn’t mind that,
though. Having had her repulsion for so long, she herself had
learned to make light of it. Making it a joke kept her from going
crazy.

Celeste went back to cleaning her
tables. Kendra didn’t leave.

“So what did you tell him?”

Celeste laughed at the
question.

“What?” Kendra asked.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Kendra. I forgot that
we just met yesterday. What do you think I told him?”

Kendra, who Celeste had actually known
for four years, put her hands up. “Okay. Okay. Don’t get your
panties in a wad. I just thought you might be ready to try
again.”

“No, Kendra. I’m not ready to try
again. I’ve given up on trying. It’s just the way I am. I’m
repulsed by sex.”

Even having to say the word grossed
Celeste out a little. Kendra seemed to sense this was going beyond
their usual bantering. She walked up and put a supportive hand on
Celeste’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” Kendra said. “It’s just
that he seems really nice. And he’s mega-gorgeous. I just thought
maybe he was the right one.”

Celeste sighed, looking down at her
friend. “Yeah, he’s great. But it isn’t about the right one. There
is no right one. No perfect guy is going to come riding in and make
me forget what I am. And no guy is going to want anything to do
with a serious relationship that is completely celibate. I’m coming
to accept that I’m destined to spend my life alone.”

Kendra shook her head. “You’ll never
be alone. You’ll always have me.”

Celeste thought she could see just a
bit of humor in Kendra’s expression. She was serious in that she
would always be a friend to Celeste. But Celeste thought Kendra was
thinking of something else at the same time.

About two years ago, Kendra had
approached Celeste with the idea. It was just an experiment. They
would try it and see what happened. Celeste had ended up going
further with Kendra than she’d ever gone with a man. And that
wasn’t far. Though Celeste had tried to like it and then just tried
not to be disgusted by it, they hadn’t even gotten their clothes
off before Celeste realized that she wasn’t a lesbian and had to
stop. For several weeks, she’d barely been able to look at her
friend without wanting to vomit.

“I know you’ll always be there,”
Celeste said. “And that makes it all the more scary.”

“Well!” Kendra said playfully, as she
put her hands on her hips. She then smiled and said, “So you told
him no?”

Celeste half-growled and then said,
“Yes, you twit! I told him no!”

Kendra ran away laughing.

***

Dr. Porter had a break in clients
after one o’clock on Friday. He had one more client to go for the
week, later that evening. So at one, he went home, where Tabitha
waited. They went into the bedroom, Tabitha’s favorite place, the
place she was most able to relax. She lay on the baby blue spread
on their king-sized bed. He sat off in an oak rocking
chair.

Tabitha’s favorite obsession, dolls,
surrounded them. Little girls in petticoat dresses lined one shelf.
Little girls in more casual play outfits filled another. On top of
a long dresser sat sleeping babies wrapped in blankets, some in
bassinets, a few in baskets.

To Tabitha, the dolls were a simple
hobby. To Dr. Porter, they represented so much more. They were
Tabitha’s subconscious wish to always be a child and to be
surrounded by a world of innocence.

Many times, Dr. Porter had been inside
his wife’s subconscious. He had changed things there, but always
changed them back, keeping her a clean slate to work from. Of
course, even after he changed things back, there were always traces
of what he had done, but the subconscious would only access those
traces if he told it to.

Tabitha, her head propped on two
pillows, listened as he talked soothingly to her. Going into a
trance was like anything in that a person got better with practice.
Tabitha, a trance veteran, was under in a matter of
seconds.

Dr. Porter said, “Now that you are
deep within your subconscious mind, completely separated from the
outside world except for hearing the sound of my voice, I want you
to look at your history. But do not see it as it unfolds. See your
entire history, everything you’ve sensed, learned, thought and
felt, as one thing. Signal me when you are able to do
this.”

As expected, Tabitha did not respond
to this immediately. It was a tall order, even for the
subconscious. Dr. Porter repeated his command, periodically spaced,
several times. Thirty minutes elapsed before Tabitha raised her
“yes” finger.

Now her entire history was not a
sequence of events in her subconscious, but a single entity. Aside
from himself, she was the first person he had done this with, and
he was certain he was the first to try it with anybody.

Dr. Porter said, “Now that your entire
history is one thing, I want you to separate from it. Make your
history one separate thing and your current experience another
separate thing.”

Again, this was no small task for the
subconscious. It took Tabitha another thirty minutes. When she
finally did signal that it was done, Dr. Porter thought of how she
wasn’t even aware that she had signaled. In fact, had he been
talking to just her, where her experience was, she wouldn’t have
had access to the learning that told her how to signal with her
finger or even what a finger was. But he was talking to her
subconscious, where that learning was still intact, just separated
from her experience.

Tabitha was now three separate things.
She was the physical being, relaxed on the bed beside him, all of
her history, and her current experience. And where was Tabitha’s
current experience? It was in a place completely uncontaminated by
anything in her environment or history, completely separate from
knowledge. She was at the very base of her subconscious.

He let her stay there for about
fifteen minutes, before he said, “Now I want the subconscious to
tell me what Tabitha sees.” Again, it wasn’t the part that Tabitha
was experiencing that he was talking to. That part would not be
able to answer. But, from her subconscious, she said,
“Dark.”

With that, Dr. Porter was satisfied
for now. He wouldn’t take her as far as he’d gone yet. He wanted
her to practice going to where she was at for right now. He had the
weekend to do that. He brought her up.

***

The drum roll echoed from the
gymnasium above. A voice of someone, probably one of the senior
players, shouted something to the crowd of students, bringing back
cheers. Down below, in the locker room, Toby Pollard sat on a
bench, choking down the least repulsive part of his diet, a Vanilla
Ensure.

All food tasted bad to him. Meat made
him puke. Some vegetables stayed down if he didn’t eat them too
fast or in too big of doses. Ensure was gross, but, requiring no
chewing, was quick and easy to swallow.

Because the season opener was a
non-conference road game, way downstate, and the team had to leave
right after school, Toby had to skip the pep rally in order to get
things ready. This being his fourth year as manager, he knew what
needed to go and how to pack it, so it hadn’t taken long. Now he
could take time to force down his Ensure alone, with no one
commenting on the disgusted looks he gave, or asking how “that
shit” tasted.

Toby didn’t really feel like he was
missing the pep rally. He could feel its energy, which excited him.
He would have rather been a player. He would rather have been a lot
of things. But he’d take what he could get. This would be his most
exciting year as manager. His brother was starting at quarterback,
which made the team, and his job, all the more personal.

The pep rally was almost over, and he
was almost finished with his Ensure, when someone else came down
into the locker room, the worst possible person.

Matt Craven appeared in the doorway.
The big senior had a look on his face that was half disgust and
half mischief. Randy had lied to their dad about Matt. He had said
that Matt liked the end position, but it was clear to a lot of
people that Matt was bitter.

Matt had been second-string
quarterback the year before. He had assumed he would start at
quarterback this year. He hadn’t so much as voiced his irritation
at losing his position to Randy, but that irritation revealed
itself in his new sulking manner. He had further made it clear at
practice the day before, when he took it out on an easier target
than Randy Pollard, Randy’s older, but much smaller,
brother.

The team had been near the end zone,
practicing extra points. Toby had been retrieving the kicked balls.
Matt pointed out to the team how Toby disappeared when he went
behind the goal post, bringing out smatterings of laughter every
time Toby crossed it.

Randy hadn’t said anything, but by the
look on his face, had wanted to. Toby knew his brother had resisted
because he didn’t want to bring strife to the team the day before
the first game, and Toby was glad to be spared the further shame of
having his younger brother defend him.

Now Toby was alone with Matt, who,
since he’d come to Pious four years ago, had been indifferent to
his thin classmate. But Matt would ignore Toby no more, because now
he had a reason to notice the skinny freak.

Matt strolled in slowly, whistling a
slow, unfamiliar tune. He didn’t make eye contact as he walked by
Toby to the water fountain. Toby hoped Matt would just get a drink
and leave, but he wasn’t so lucky. After his drink, Matt came over
and sat next to Toby on the bench.

Toby stiffened with fear. Though he
was occasionally made fun of, his frail appearance also brought
pity. No one had ever wanted the inevitable soiled reputation that
would come with whipping up on a harmless weakling. But Matt’s
reputation was already somewhat tarnished, being a senior who had
lost his prized position to a freshman. Would Matt really care if
his reputation got worse?

“Toby Pollard,” Matt said out loud, as
if beginning some kind of biographical speech.

Toby nodded as casually as he could,
trying to act as if there was no friction between Matt and him. He
even tried to think of something to say, but with his frightened
mind, nothing would come.