Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (46 page)

No. It was too much to hope for now.
It was okay to be hopeful, since she was in treatment again, and
since something had happened with the practice tapes, but to want
too much would make the fall all the more hard. She would not think
of a family, something that, even as a child, she’d not had, not a
real one anyway, being raised by her aunt.

Celeste was satisfied for tonight to
fall asleep with just the fantasy of having someone
there.

***

It was Friday night, and the Pious
Eagles had just won another game, making them 3-0. Janet Pollard,
whose youngest son had thrown three touchdown passes that night,
felt less interested in that than what was going on with her oldest
son.

Toby had told them earlier in the week
that he had to practice something in a trance and would need
privacy and quiet. And, of course, they had all made those two
things available. Randy seemed more interested in what his brother
was doing than in his own situation. Janet could see how he
struggled not to bombard Toby with questions. It had been a
struggle for Janet herself to refrain. She so wondered what was
going on with Toby, who seemed kind of in a zone, deeply involved
with what was going on in his head.

The first time Toby had worked with
Dr. Porter had been similar. He had, during that time, more than
during any other treatment, seemed into what he was doing. That was
when they had been most hopeful that Toby would get better. But in
the end, Dr. Porter had reported that there was nothing he could
do.

Still, Janet would not stop hoping for
her son. She picked up where she had left off last time, right
before Dr. Porter had given them the disappointing news. She
allowed herself to believe that Toby’s quiet was a sign that he was
busy with something in his head that would cure him.

***

Dr. Porter awoke from the repeating
dream. He left his wife sleeping in bed and went to the living room
to reflect. He’d been having it all week. He would be in the
tunnel, the same one he had found in the trance. Except there was
something in the tunnel now. A sign. There were no letters, but the
shape and color were clear. It was a stop sign. He hoped this dream
was only a symbol of his own anxiety over exploring new territory.
But he was fairly certain there was more to it than
that.

Chapter 5

“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.”

After giving the instructions, Dr.
Porter waited. They had all practiced during the week and thus were
all ready to go quickly as far as they had gone last week. Within
minutes of going under, all three had been able to see their
history as one thing. Again, James was very fast to do the new
trick. Again, the others took the better part of the hour before
signaling that they too had achieved the necessary
separation.

After bringing them from the trance,
Dr. Porter turned first to Celeste. “Tell me what you saw right
before you started to come out of the trance.”

Celeste looked first at Dr. Porter and
then at the other two people in the room. Then she said, “All I
really remember was a kind of nothing. Then as I came from the
trance I was able to put words to it. It was just dark.”

Dr. Porter looked at the other two
participants. Both nodded.

“I saw the same thing,” James
said.

“Me too,” Toby said.

“Good,” Dr. Porter commented. “Today
you have learned to go to another place. And, like last week, you
will need to practice. I have new tapes.”

***

Celeste listened to the tape on Monday
afternoon and entered a trance. It took her to this place that she
could not think from within. She didn’t know what this place was or
what she was. She couldn’t think, just exist. Then, upon coming up,
she was able to put some meaning to it, to find the words to
describe it. It was black, darkness.

She took a little time to debrief from
the experience, to return to a world that was more than Dr.
Porter’s voice, and then she went into work. It was dead. There was
absolutely nothing to do.

Kendra approached her. “So. How’s this
new therapy thing going?”

Celeste shrugged. “I don’t really know
right now.”

She didn’t know either. Last week,
using the practice tapes, she had derived meaning from the
experiences. But this she did not understand. This, she really
couldn’t even guess about. Why was Dr. Porter taking them to this
dark place?

Though things didn’t pick up, and she
was for the most part unoccupied by her work, Celeste found
distraction from the dark place for a while. She thought more about
her friend, and not one of them at the pub either, but the one she
had created with her hope, the one she thought of more and more,
but was afraid to overembellish until she had something firmer to
base her hope on. Maybe that would be provided in the next
session.

That night, she woke up from a
terrible nightmare. She had been in the darkness, but this time it
wasn’t vague. She was a person with a particular history. Heat grew
steadily in the darkness. She felt pain from that heat, but could
not escape it. She awoke in a panic. She sat up for a while,
horrified to go back to sleep. She got up and went into the living
room. There, she watched television, but really ignored it, as her
fear combined with her self-pity. If she had someone, she’d be able
to go back to sleep. People who had a person to sleep with also had
someone to comfort them when they woke up terrified in the night.
And what did she have? She had a shrink on Saturday. She had to
wait for her comforting.

Still, she couldn’t wait to discuss
the nightmare with Dr. Porter. He would have the explanation that
dissolved her anxiety. With that thought, she went back to
bed.

***

James had the dream again. Each time
it seemed more intense, the heat actually burning like a fire the
last time. He would have to mention it to Dr. Porter on
Saturday.

Like on the previous nights this week,
he got out of bed to calm down for a little while. He used his
headphones to listen to his music. It wasn’t hard for him to find
tranquility. He supposed that was because he woke up in the place
that he was used to calming himself in, his basement. He quickly
became focused on the music and away from his fear.

Of all the therapists that James had
seen, one had come up with the idea to use his strongest
characteristic against his biggest weakness. She had said it was a
new style of therapy. It made logical sense. She thought that if
James focused elsewhere as he went outside, he’d become so absorbed
in what he focused on that he wouldn’t notice his fear. It made so
much logical sense that James had actually been optimistic that it
would work. He tried it for several weeks. One time he focused on
nature. Another time, he focused on a math problem in his head. He
took a Walkman out yet another time. But no matter what he tried,
he found the same result. His ability to focus dwindled as soon as
he left his basement. It was as if he was trying to focus on
something else as he stood in a fire. Like all therapies, the
modern, strength-focused therapy failed him miserably.

James was even more intrigued about
the treatment he was receiving now. He was amazed that he could be
separated from everything he had ever learned and knew and could
become an unthinking being in the darkness. He thought someone
could probably transfer his body upstairs and outside while he was
in this state. Of course, he’d be in trouble when he came out of
the trance.

He wondered where Dr. Porter would go
next. Logically, there was no telling, so James just let himself be
intrigued, without dwelling on it too much.

***

“Help!” rang out. Janet jumped out of
bed. It had been many years since she had last awoken to the sound
of one of her children calling out in the night. But that didn’t
change the fact that no other signal could bring her faster from
the depths of sleep. It was an instinct she was fairly certain only
mothers had, and she was sure it was stronger in her than in most
other mothers, because it had failed her once. Of course, then, it
had not been one of her children. But she had still learned that
bad things could happen in the night. Loved ones could be taken in
the night. So now she was more vigilant.

From the doorway, she saw Toby sitting
up in bed and rushed to his side.

“Are you all right?” she
asked.

“Yes,” Toby said through labored
breath. “Just a nightmare. Just a nightmare.”

She was surprised at how easy his body
came into hers when she pulled him. There was none of that natural
resistance to affection from Mom that came with teenage years. Her
son was horrified.

“Just a nightmare,” Toby repeated.
“Dr. Porter can fix it on Saturday.”

Janet sat there with her son for
nearly half an hour, before he was finally able to sleep again.
Then she sat with him some more.

Chapter 6

When they told him about the dreams of
heat and darkness, Dr. Porter said that he had expected that. Of
course, that was a lie. He was quick to explain it away as the
subconscious’s way of telling them that they were entering a
powerful place in their mind.

He had no idea what the dreams meant,
and he knew that slowing down, probably completely stopping, would
be the ethical thing to do right now. But he could not resist. He
pressed on.

His repetitive stop sign dream had
gone away. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe his resolve to go forward had
made the dream leave.

With his clients now used to going to
the dark place, Dr. Porter spent the better part of the session
training them to bring little things from their history there. They
were all very adept at doing this, especially James, whose
reactions to Dr. Porter’s requests were nearly
instantaneous.

It was near the end of the session,
that Dr. Porter had them bring light to the dark place. After they
were all able to do it, he had them float around. Finally, he
brought them up. He turned first to Celeste.

“What did you see?” he asked
her.

“A tunnel,” Celeste said, the tone of
her voice revealing her astonishment with the experience she’d just
had.

“Tell me about the tunnel,” Dr. Porter
said.

After a few seconds of thought,
Celeste responded, “It was big, and it was the same on all sides,
just simple black walls.”

“That’s like what I saw,” Toby
said.

Dr. Porter looked at James, who nodded
and said, “Yeah. Same here.”

Dr. Porter was very disappointed. He’d
expected them to see something different than what he and his wife
had seen, cueing him into why they weren’t like everyone else, why
he had not been able to heal them with hypnosis.

Toby said, “Nothing really made sense
while I was there. But then, when you brought me back, being in the
tunnel was like a really good memory. The best part was floating
around.”

“Yeah, that was really something
else,” Celeste added.

“Except for the barrier,” James said,
which really got Dr. Porter’s attention.

“A barrier?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Celeste answered the question
directed to James. “Something was blocking the way. I couldn’t
reach the sides.”

“It was totally blocked off,” Toby
added.

“Blocked off?” Dr. Porter asked.
“Blocked off by what? What was this barrier?”

“It was all around, keeping me from
the sides,” James said. “It was like a tunnel within the tunnel,
except it was clear.”

Dr.
Porter looked at the other two, who nodded their agreement.
A barrier
, he
thought.
And a clear one at that.

The three of them had been deprived of
a part of the tunnel. The three of them had been deprived of part
of their lives. It was no wonder he had not been able to help them.
Their cures were not within the tunnel their subconscious minds
dwelled in, but in the part they didn’t have access to.

Dr. Porter looked at the faces, which
were still excited but a little confused. “I have nothing more for
you this week,” he said. “But I assure you that next week your
healing process will truly begin.”

“Do you have tapes for us?” Toby
asked.

“No,” Dr. Porter said. He had not
known what would happen this week, so he had not known what they
would need to practice for next week. “But I will leave you with
this. If you should have anymore strange dreams, or if you have
anything else strange happen, do not hesitate to call
me.”

On his way home, Dr. Porter began
planning the next session.

***

Toby had come home after school on
Friday complaining of a stomachache. Janet was pretty sure that her
son was faking. There was something very exciting going on in his
life, something much more fullfilling than living vicariously
through his brother’s success.