Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (45 page)

The rain had come down steady for most
of the game. Both offences had sputtered, with ball carriers unable
to find traction. The Pious Eagles had prevailed in the low scoring
affair, 14-0. What little offence there was came from the Eagles,
and in particular, from quarterback, Randy Pollard, and his
favorite target, tight end, Matt Craven. The paper said Matt, who
caught 12 passes, carried the Eagle’s offence. Toby knew it was
more than that. What had really happened was that Randy, by
prejudicially selecting his receivers, had carried his older
brother. On Monday, a high-spirited Matt apologized to Toby for the
things he’d said.

Toby struggled not to say anything
about it. It was wrong, he thought, for him, a mere manager, to
indirectly play a major role in the game. But it had ended well,
and Randy seemed excited about winning the first game. So Toby, not
wanting to spoil the jubilation, said nothing.

But he did worry. What would it be
like for him next year, living in a dorm, with other
eighteen-year-olds, none of which cared who his dad was, none of
which his brother could appease by throwing a football to? For the
first time in his life, Toby, the skinny freak, would be
alone.

Tuesday night, alone in his room, he
dwelled on that thought. Then his mother came in and sat at the
side of the bed. She ran her fingers through his hair and asked,
“Do you remember Dr. Porter?”

Toby nodded. Of course he remembered
the hypnotist. Of all the therapies he’d received, Dr. Porter’s was
the only one he’d liked. It was fun to see where his mind could go,
and it was nice to know that level of relaxation, even if, like
everything else, it didn’t work.

“I just got off the phone with him,”
Mom said. “He’s got this new experimental therapy he says might
help you.”

***

Celeste had Monday off. Then, when she
arrived at work Tuesday afternoon, Tiffany was working the
grill.

“Scott’s day off?” Celeste
asked.

“Nope,” Tiffany said abruptly.
“Quit.”

And that was that. Scott was gone. As
she worked Tuesday night, Celeste tried to pretend it didn’t bother
her. What could she possibly have been hoping for anyway? But it
did bother her. It bothered her even more when no one wanted to
hang out after work that night. They were not as desperate as she
was. Companionship was easier to come by for the sex-having, normal
people.

Celeste craved that. She didn’t crave
sex, because she just couldn’t. But she wanted the things that
seemed to come with it. Everyone else at the pub, whether they were
with someone right now or not, at least shacked up with someone
from time to time, or had the occasional bed buddy. Celeste was
left to wonder what that was like. What was it like to wake up and
not be alone? What was it like to know, or at least have the
freedom to know, that you would go home every night and someone
would be there? What was it like to not have to wait for the
weekend when everybody else had enough spare time to hang out, just
so you could get your little bit of companionship before the next
week of loneliness began?

Celeste had lied to Kendra. She had
not accepted that she would die alone. She had, in a way, lied to
Scott. She didn’t want to give up the search. She still wanted to
find something to explain what was wrong with her, something wrong
that could be fixed. She wanted to want sex.

Despondent, Celeste went home alone
Tuesday night. There was a message on her answering machine. It was
Dr. Porter.

Chapter 4

The basement that James Kisner lived in
lent itself well to a hypnotic session. A single three-way lamp
provided Dr. Porter with control of the light. James’s parents were
very accommodating, providing extra chairs, volunteering to leave
while the session was on so their footsteps wouldn’t make noise
above. People coming to their house to provide treatment to their
son was something the Kisners were used to.

Toby’s mom, who’d dropped him off, was
very pleasant. Dr. Porter told her when to return, and she agreed
to wait outside in her car.

Celeste Sheever, like Dr. Porter, had
driven twenty miles from Green Pastures to Arabuke. Toby lived in
Pious, a small town halfway between the two cities. They all seemed
comfortable right now, which was not a surprise. None were social
phobic, and all were used to feeling like freaks, so this situation
wasn’t near as awkward as the many awkward situations each had
faced.

Dr. Porter had them sit in an arc in
front of him. They all relaxed in big reclining chairs, not his
couch, but adequate for comfort purposes. To his left was Celeste,
a stunningly attractive woman, repulsed by sex. To his right was
Toby, an intelligent young man repulsed by food, especially meat.
In the center was James, whose aversion to the outside world was
the most debilitating of all.

“Good evening,” Dr. Porter said, which
led to three quiet greetings. “I’ve already spoken to you all on
the phone, but I want to repeat a few things before we get started.
First of all, I’ve worked with all three of you in the past and am
completely aware of your conditions. Thus, we need not spend a lot
of time getting familiar with one another. Second, even though it
has been a long time since your last trance, I trust it will not be
difficult for you to go under. It will be similar to as if you had
gotten on a bike after a few years of not riding. Once you get
started, you’ll find your skills quickly return.”

All three clients seemed satisfied
with this. The bicycle metaphor probably wasn’t the best to use
with James, he never having been outside long enough to learn to
ride a bike, but James was surely abstract enough to benefit from
it.

“I suspect this treatment will take
several weeks. I’ve tried to arrange a time most convenient to all,
so if you could, let me know well in advance as to any scheduling
conflicts.”

Dr. Porter doubted that the time would
be a problem. It was 1PM on Saturday, which would not conflict with
Celeste’s work schedule or Toby’s school schedule. James, of
course, was always open, and had the benefit of the location being
designed for his comfort.

“Before we begin, are there any
questions?”

There were no questions, just eager
faces. They had all come to expect something with Dr. Porter and
that something was a hypnotic experience. He suspected his mere
presence signaled to their subconscious minds that a trance was
about to occur.

“Good then,” Dr. Porter said and then
reached up to dim the lamp to its lowest level. Minutes later, by
his instructions, all three were well under.

“Now that you are deep within your
subconscious mind and 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.”

It had taken his wife thirty minutes,
and she had way more trance experience than these three. Still,
James beat her time. That was not so much a surprise, though,
considering James’s heritage. His mother was a professor of writing
and a writer, which meant she was likely to be very good at
becoming absorbed in her stories and the stories of others. His
father was an anthropologist, which meant he was likely to be good
at becoming absorbed in the culture of other people. The common
theme was the ability to become deeply involved in something to the
exclusion of everything else, a characteristic intricate to the
ability to enter a trance. James took a mere ten minutes to make
his history one entity.

The other two clients, however, took
most of the hour to signal with their fingers. This done, Dr.
Porter brought them out of the trance.

When they were all completely out, Dr.
Porter said, “I had expected it would take the better part of the
hour for you to do this. It was something your subconscious minds
had never done. So, for now, I’m going to have you practice. I have
for each of you a taped induction. I would like for you to sit
alone without distraction and listen to it three times, spaced out,
before we meet next week.”

Dr. Porter distributed the
tapes.

***

Dr. Porter had said practice three
times using the tapes. James practiced the first time Monday
evening. He wondered, though, if he really needed it. It had been,
just as it had been years ago, easy for him to respond to Dr.
Porter’s voice. He had skipped his usual Monday ritual of going
upstairs. Therapy would be his weekly ritual now, at least for a
while.

It wasn’t so much that he thought the
new, or more accurately, the revised, form of therapy would help.
James had seen breakthroughs before, both in therapy and in drugs.
With the breakthroughs an extra subset of anxious people was always
helped, but James had never been in one of those
subsets.

James still liked what Dr. Porter
offered. Going inside his mind, making his whole life a single
thing: nothing compared to that. James also liked the other people
being there. People younger than him didn’t come to his basement
often. He enjoyed feeling like a host. James had never feared
people. He sometimes wished that he did. At least, that would make
sense. Fearing that he would go outside and be hurt or embarrassed
by a person would make sense. Maybe that would be something he
could get over. Simple exposure to the feared situation would take
care of that.

But, unfortunately, it wasn’t people
or anything else in particular that James feared outside. No, it
was the outside itself, and exposure did nothing to
help.

He’d had a few different therapists
take him outside. Sometimes, it was all at once, flooding. Other
times it was gradual exposure. The funny thing about both types of
exposure was that he could not remember much about them. The fear
had overwhelmed him so much that he had retreated into himself.
He’d shut out the outside world in an anxious frenzy, exchanging
his basement for the recesses of his mind. Thus, it wasn’t really
true exposure. Even when he was taken outside, he was just
hiding.

Still, this would be fun. James was
excited for Saturday to roll around again.

***

Wednesday, an hour before she had to
be at work, Celeste had just undergone a trance, via audio-tape,
for the second time. It was hard to gauge time within the trance,
especially after the fact, but Celeste felt like she was getting
better. Her whole history had felt more solid, like one thing, than
it had before. She felt almost as if she would be able to maneuver
it.

She thought about it a lot at work.
What did it mean to have her history be one thing? What did it mean
that she might be able to maneuver it? Was Dr. Porter going to
maneuver it on Saturday? That seemed to make sense. If he could
move it, then maybe he could change it. Maybe he could put things
there that she was missing.

As she thought about that more, it
seemed ridiculous. He couldn’t place in her something that just
wasn’t there. That’s what physicians had tried to do. Through their
medications, they’d tried to alter her biology, to cause a sex
drive. But that had only made her sick, not to mention bring hair
to places she didn’t want hair.

Still, she felt there had to be
something to what Dr. Porter offered.

That night, she came home alone and
took a shower. She allowed herself to dream a little bit. She
imagined what it would be like to get out of that shower and have
someone waiting in her bed. She made Scott that person. But that
didn’t feel right. Scott was gone, and he wouldn’t be coming back
around. She hadn’t been able to give him something that would make
him want to come back around. So instead of using Scott in her
fantasy, she made up someone who was kind of like Scott.

The appearance was hard to imagine,
but that was fine. She wouldn’t care about appearances anyway. It
would be the way that person talked to her, the way that person
listened to her, that she would be interested in. But mostly, she
would just like the way he was always there.

Celeste left the shower, hopeful. She
went into her room, but didn’t get dressed right away. She had a
standing mirror in the corner of the room. She looked into it. Her
breasts were big and round. They didn’t sag and there were no
imperfections, like stretch marks or growths. Her stomach was flat,
not muscular, but still flat. Her skin had a slight cocoa butter
tint to it. She touched it. It felt smooth and soft, silky. She
turned around and looked at her back, so slender, but no bones
protruding. Her butt was round but didn’t sag at all.

How many times had men looked at her?
How often, when she went out in public, especially to the places
where people didn’t know her, had man after man turned to get a
second glance?

This body made her feel sad. In ways,
she was powerful. She was so desirable. But the fact that she
couldn’t use that power made it no power at all.

“No, Celeste,” she said, looking at
her face in the mirror. “Have hope again.”

She looked at her body differently. It
was now something she would have to offer that special person who
was waiting in the bed. She would blow his mind, night after night,
and he would give back to her. She would not be alone. Maybe
someday, they could make . . .