Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (43 page)

Matt reached over and patted Toby
across his narrow back. The pat was hard enough to hurt, but not so
hard that Matt couldn’t deny that offence was intended.

“Toby Pollard,” Matt repeated and then
patted Toby again, this time nearly knocking him off the
bench.

At this point, Toby wanted to run, but
he doubted he would get away if Matt didn’t want him to.

“Toby fucking Pollard,” Matt said and
then laughed wickedly. “Our manager. Got his job because his step
dad is the superintendent.”

Matt paused as if waiting for
reaction, but Toby had no reaction for him. Then Matt said, “Just
like his brother got to be starting quarterback because his real
dad is the superintendent.”

Toby knew that only part of what Matt
said was untrue. He was right about Toby. Their dad had asked the
coach personally if Toby could work for the team. But Matt was the
only person who would claim Superintendent Pollard had anything to
do with Randy being quarterback. The proof was in the pudding.
Randy had shown up to two-a-days throwing further and more
accurately than Matt. Randy was faster and an all-round better
athlete, and the team seemed to respect his leadership more than
Matt’s. Players and onlookers had been saying it should happen
before Couch Tibbs decided to move Randy into the starting
position.

Anger mixed in with Toby’s fear. Matt
didn’t have the guts to say this to Randy, so he was saying it to
Randy’s weakling brother. But what could Toby do? The only thing he
could threaten Matt with was politics. His brother was the starting
quarterback and quickly becoming the most popular kid in school.
His dad was the superintendent and possibly the most respected
member of the community. Toby could have used those things to his
advantage, but he wouldn’t. He just hoped Matt would leave him
alone soon.

But then a hero appeared in the
doorway. Randy walked in and right up to them. He looked down at
Matt. “Saw you leave, Matt. Didn’t come down here to mess with my
brother, did you?”

Matt responded by standing up. Randy
made no buts about what he was willing to do. He pulled his hips
back and fists up. They were squared off, Randy taller but Matt
with at least thirty pounds on him.

Their dad had boxed while in the
Marines. He had passed his knowledge of the sport on to Randy. Toby
didn’t doubt that Randy could throttle the older kid. But Toby
didn’t want that to happen, not with the season about to start, not
because of him. He stood up between the two boys, facing his
brother.

“No, Randy. It’s not like that. We
were just talking.”

By the expression on his face, Randy
knew he had just heard a lie, but he still put his hands
down.

“Yeah,” Matt said, his voice a little
provocative, but a little shaken too. “We were just
talking.”

After a few seconds, Randy said, “Fine
then.”

“All right,” Matt said and then
left.

Toby stood alone with his brother. In
a few minutes, the rest of the team would come down and start to
load up.

As if sensing Toby didn’t want to talk
about what just happened, Randy said, “They say it might rain
tonight. You might want to pack extra hand towels.”

“Taken care of,” Toby
replied.

Randy smiled. “What would we do
without you?”

***

“I can’t believe it,” Richard Powell
said from the couch. “For the first time in over thirty years, I
feel good.”

Richard Powell was a 52-year-old
veteran of the Vietnam War. He was also a veteran of an arm
amputation, post-traumatic stress disorder and concomitant
depression, all products of that war. Dr. Porter had done
everything but bring the arm back.

“A few months ago, when you said what
we were going to do, I didn’t think it had the slightest chance of
working. Do you know how many people I’ve seen and how many
medications I’ve taken to overcome this?”

Dr. Porter didn’t answer the
rhetorical question. But he did know how much treatment Richard had
received. He had a thick file on the man. PTSD in war veterans was
often resistant to conventional treatments. But, of course, Dr.
Porter did not use conventional treatments. And now he spoke to
this.

“Sometimes when something terrible
happens to us, something that destroys our subconscious assumption
that the world is a safe and harmonious place, our mind locks us in
that time.”

“I know,” Richard politely
interrupted. “That’s why I had the dreams. That’s why so many
things I saw and heard took me back to that time and made me have
flashbacks.”

Dr. Porter didn’t mind the
interruption. He wasn’t trying to teach Richard anything now. As he
did with all of his clients, he’d educated Richard on the
subconscious’s role in his disorder. That was why Richard could
speak intelligently about it now. At this point, with Richard’s
treatment finished and this a rap up session, Dr. Porter was merely
thinking out loud.

“Yes, Richard. In an attempt at
self-preservation, your subconscious was reminding you of the
traumas you faced, so you would avoid them. But sometimes our
subconscious is overzealous and causes us to freeze up.”

Richard laughed. “It’s funny how fear
can be both a healthy and unhealthy thing. But you taught my
subconscious to focus on the time before the war, when people
weren’t dying all around me, when I wasn’t killing people, and
people weren’t trying to kill me.”

“That’s right, Richard,” Dr. Porter
calmly said. In many cases of PTSD, something less could have been
done. People could be cured without hypnosis. In many treatments
the client was simply asked to imagine the time of his or her
trauma over and over again. Soon, when the imagined reliving of the
events didn’t bring about the trauma itself, the subconscious was
satisfied of its safety and moved on, confident the horrors would
not recur.

These treatments were very effective
with many trauma victims. With veterans, on the other hand, PTSD
was more complex, because, in their case, the symptoms didn’t arise
from a single event. They arose from many horrific events faced day
after day and night after night in combat situations. And the many
traumas fed upon each other, forming a barrier that could not be
cracked. That barrier stood in a particular time, which the
client’s subconscious continuously returned to.

What Dr. Porter did was train the
subconscious to remember a time before the war and focus there,
where the barrier did not exist. Soon, the subconscious was
satisfied that the person’s current life need not be focused on
protecting from the events that occurred in those months or years
when the person was at war and allowed the person to move
on.

But, sitting there on this Friday
night, with a client whom conventional wisdom had no means of
curing, but whom Dr. Porter’s methods had cured, Dr. Porter could
not help but go back to his obsession, the few clients he had tried
with and not helped. In their entire lives, he was not able to find
a place to take them where their dilemmas could be solved. He did
not understand the barriers that stood in their way. He thought he
soon would.

***

Saturday at Morgan’s Pub was as
hopping as always. The usual upper crest stopped in to get carried
away and tip well. Because blue laws made it illegal to sell
alcohol on Sunday, the pub closed at midnight.

With the customers cleared out, the
staff enjoyed a few drinks as they cleaned up and got the place
ready for when it would reopen Monday afternoon. At 1:30, a
half-baked crew decided on whose house they would retreat to for
the rest of the night. This week they decided on the home of
Tiffany, who managed the pub.

Seven of them went to Tiffany’s, where
they drank more and got high. Celeste loved these after-work
parties. She felt very comfortable around this group, made up of
her coworkers, who were also about her only friends. Everybody here
knew and understood a lot about Celeste, except for Scott, who if
he stuck around, would probably come to understand Celeste as well
as the others. As a rule, those who didn’t accept the rest of the
staff would not fit in and end up leaving within a few weeks of
starting.

Around 3AM, the party became
temporarily segregated by gender. Paul, the bartender, sat on the
couch having a discussion with Scott. The five women stood a few
feet away in a circle, gossiping about one of the regular
customers.

Kendra got the circle’s attention.
“Look at them over there. They look kind of serious.”

Loud music drowned out the
conversation of the two guys, but Kendra was right; they did look
kind of serious.

“We should do something about that,”
said Tiffany, who at thirty-five, was the oldest person in the
place. “On three.”

Kendra nodded.

Tiffany counted, “One. Two. Three.”
Then she, Kendra, and Chelsea, a college student and part-time
server, lifted up their shirts so that their bras
showed.

It took a few seconds for the guys on
the couch to notice they were being flashed. Scott, who had worked
in the pub scene before coming to Morgan’s a few weeks ago, didn’t
look overly shocked by the exhibition.

“That’s enough to distract me,” Paul
shouted. “But not enough to hold my attention.”

“Attend to this,” Kendra yelled as she
flipped the cups of her bra up. Scott still didn’t seem surprised
or embarrassed. Paul, as usual, went for more.

“That’s a little better.”

Tiffany brought up her bra and so did
Chelsea. Julie, another college student and part timer at the pub,
only stood by and laughed, probably because she was starting to get
serious with the guy she was dating and wasn’t sure he would
appreciate her tities on display.

Paul looked pleased. Scott looked
mildly amused, but not overly excited. It was Celeste who was able
to shock him. In one swoop, she whipped her shirt and DD bra
up.

Four male eyes focused on her revealed
breasts. Paul, who had seen her breasts before, still stared at
what were obviously his favorites in the group, the two he knew
he’d never be able to touch, but still salivated over. Scott’s eyes
grew and his mouth dropped open a little. Celeste shook her
beautiful breasts for the pleasantly disturbed men and then put
them away.

About an hour later, the rest of the
group outside, Celeste sat alone on Tiffany’s couch with the new
guy.

“You really surprised me a while ago,”
Scott said.

“Oh,” Celeste said, pretending to be
naive. “Did you not know I had tits?”

“Well, yeah. It’s just. .
.”

Celeste finished for him. “It’s just
that you heard I hate sex.”

“Well, yeah.”

“And I do. But that doesn’t mean I’m
ashamed of my body.”

Scott nodded, but Celeste saw
disbelief in his expression. She decided that since the others had
broken him in on her condition, she could fill in the gaps of his
understanding. “Look, I’m not like your run-of-the-mill prude. I’m
not shy or embarrassed about my appearance. It’s just that once the
touching starts, I start feeling a little grossed out.”

Scott’s face looked a little less
confused. He started to speak but then stopped.

“It’s all right,” Celeste said.
“Ask.”

“Well, isn’t that something you could
get help with?”

“Yes,” Celeste responded. She didn’t
feel defensive. Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe it was Scott. He
was patient and respectful, not going anywhere
uninvited.

“I’ve taken meds, seen a sex
therapist, even went to a hypnotist.”

“A hypnotist. That sounds
interesting.”

“Oh yeah. It was. And it was helpful,
in a way. It didn’t cure my problem, but the hypnotist said
something that put it in a little better perspective.”

“What was that?” Scott asked, looking
truly interested. Celeste liked that, and she thought he might fit
into the group.

“Well, he said that he used hypnotism
to take people into their past. There they could find the source of
their problem and kind of uproot it, or they could find a better
time to go to, when they had what they lack now, and just sort of
bring it back.”

Celeste paused to look at Scott,
trying to gauge if he was following her. He was either a really
good faker or he was attending. She finished. “He said he couldn’t
find anything in my subconscious to help me.”

Scott appeared to ponder that. Then he
finally said, “Which makes it easier for you to accept. Because if
there isn’t a part of you that has ever been interested in sex,
then you don’t have to spend your life fretting about recovering
something that was never there in the first place.”

Awe washed over her. He had nailed it.
That probably meant a lot of things about him. Most important, it
meant he had been listening, and not just listening with his ears,
but truly taking in what she said, feeling what she conveyed, so he
could understand it enough to understand her. That was a lot of
work for a guy to put into a girl he knew he didn’t have a chance
of scoring with.