Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (56 page)

“Hi,” he said.

Celeste turned and recognized him as
one of the people she had teased inside the restaurant. He was
tall, with dark hair, probably college aged. He wasn’t extremely
attractive, but then again, neither had Paul been. She didn’t care.
What she cared about was on the inside, and she could sense a lot
of energy in this one.

“Hi, yourself,” Celeste
responded.

By the look on his face and that he
could come up with no more words, he wasn’t used to talking to
women. Celeste doubted that he would have ever talked to her, but
he knew he had to, because he had never had a woman as attractive
as her look at him as she did inside the restaurant, and he’d never
felt anything like the attraction she had caused.

“Do you live alone?” Celeste
asked.

“No,” the boy said. “I live with two
roommates up by the community college.”

“And are they home?”

Disappointed, the boy
nodded.

Celeste thought of what to do. She
couldn’t take him to her place. She didn’t want a dead body in her
apartment, a body that she would have to dispose of.

“Get in your car and follow
me.”

Celeste drove to a park and the guy
obediently followed. The park was on a large pond that the city
outlawed fishing in. People would come here to see and feed the big
fish. It wasn’t popular this time of year. There were four cars
inside the park, but they were all towards the center of the lake.
Celeste drove to the very end. He pulled in beside her in a small
SUV, the kind mom and dad might buy you if you were a rich kid and
maintained your grades at community college. Celeste motioned that
he should stay inside his vehicle.

She didn’t spend much time seducing
him further. They got into the backseat and she took off his pants
and hers. He got on top of her and she pulled his body to hers,
keeping him low. She felt he would explode, but she wouldn’t let
him.

“No,” he whispered, as he seemed to
realize that he was under her control. But his body disobeyed his
will, and he continued to pump her until he didn’t have the energy
to pump anymore.

Celeste was on fire with the energy
entering her. His body tensed up. It was when the final bit of his
heat came into her, a sort of extra burst in the energy that told
her she had taken his very life, that she felt overwhelmed. She had
taken too much in. She now had the energy, the lifeforce, of two
men inside her. She wasn’t ready for such power. Her muscles jerked
and her breath became spasmodic. She thought she might burst. But
then, after less than a minute of feeling that way, she got it
under control. The energy wasn’t gone, but she was containing it
somehow, keeping it from destroying her.

Celeste left the dead stranger in his
vehicle. As she drove home, she thought she had learned a lesson.
She would, in the future, have more than one inside her, but she
would take it slow, work her way up to it, from now on. She had to
learn how to control it.

Lifeforce
, she thought. It wasn’t
dreams or sexual energy she stole from these men. No, sex was just
the power, the trick she had over them. It was their very lifeforce
she took.

***

Janet Pollard was near tears. She
hadn’t been this disappointed in her family or in life in general
since her first husband died. The Pious Eagles had made it through
the regular season without a single defeat. This weekend, they
would host their first playoff game. That was what her husband and
her youngest son were focused on right now, Sunday night, at the
dinner table. For the first time since he started the last span of
treatment, they were indifferent to Toby’s progress.

Right now, she thought, was when he
might need their attention the most, because apparently, he had
regressed. He had come home from the session yesterday in good
spirits. He had told her that it went well and that he thought he
would be even better this week. But then, this morning, he had
gathered the breakfast meats on his plate, only to stare at
them.

“I’m not hungry,” he finally
said.

Janet had thought little of it at the
time. Maybe he just wasn’t feeling well this morning. His appetite
would come back later. But it hadn’t. He hadn’t eaten at all at
lunch. Then, for dinner, she had made a roast. And for what? The
two insensitive bastards wolfed it down as always, talking about
football, which seemed to be the only thing that mattered right
now, the only thing this whole damn town cared about.

Toby had taken a bite of the roast,
made a funny face and then sat his utensils down. Finally, he got
up and left the table. Janet expected to hear him vomiting in the
other room. But after a few minutes, she still hadn’t heard it. In
fact, she didn’t even think he went to the bathroom at
all.

Janet got up from the table. She found
Toby in his room. He lay on his bed throwing a Nerf football toward
the ceiling and then catching it when it came down.

“Everything okay, sweetie?”

“Yes,” Toby said, without looking at
her. “I know you’re worried that I didn’t eat, but don’t be. I’m
sure it will kick in. It’s just taking a little longer this
time.”

With that, Janet felt better. Maybe
she had jumped the gun. It was only Sunday, one day after the
session. She’d wait a couple of days. Then, if things weren’t
better, she’d call Dr. Porter.

***

They were all asleep. He would have to
be quiet. No one would approve of this. It just wasn’t right to
have such a craving. But maybe the craving was false. Maybe he just
thought he wanted it, but would try it and realize it had just been
some weird trick of his senses.

Around midnight, Toby got out of bed.
He was starving. He had barely eaten on Sunday. The things he had
wanted last week were not desirable to him now. The thought of
vegetables wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. The same was true
for the meats his mother had prepared. They seemed bland to him
now, but in a different way than what most people thought of as
bland. They were missing something, but it wasn’t spices. No, Mom
was a good cook. She spiced the food right. Even if she had not,
there was salt on the table. He didn’t crave spice at all.
Actually, he would rather be without it. What he wanted was as
plain, as unprepared as could be.

Toby crept through the house. He
couldn’t make a sound. Randy and his dad wouldn’t wake up. Even if
they did, they’d just go back to sleep. But his mom was vigilant to
noise, even in her sleep. He suspected that was part of her
maternal instinct.

And what instinct was in him now?
None. It was just silliness. He was just curious. He just wanted
something he’d never had, that was all. He’d try it, become
disgusted and then go back to bed and start again
tomorrow.

But as soon as he opened the
refrigerator, Toby knew that all that was crap. This was no simple
curiosity, nor was it a trick of his senses. He smelled it, and he
felt the heat rising in him, telling him exactly what he
wanted.

There were leftovers there, roast from
earlier, a casserole from last night. But Toby didn’t crave or
otherwise care about these things at all. At the bottom of the
refrigerator were a few different thawed meats: a half empty tube
of sausage, a storage bag of bacon, and about a pound of hamburger.
Toby tried a slice of raw bacon. It filled him with pleasure. He
had another slice. He stopped there with the bacon, though. His
mother wouldn’t notice a little missing, but she would know that
there had been enough there for the next serving. He went next to
the sausage, smearing a little of it on his fingers and plopping it
in his mouth. Delicious. Next, he broke a raw egg over his mouth.
It was slimy, but that didn’t bother him. He swished it around his
mouth, felt it on his tongue. Savory. He had another.

He buried the shells carefully in the
trash. For now, he was satisfied. He went back to bed, but didn’t
sleep. The heat went to work on the food immediately. He felt his
energy rise until it was at an unnatural level, at least, unnatural
for him.

Toby realized that this was going to
be hard to hide. It would be hard, but not impossible. Thank God,
Dad and Randy were focused elsewhere this week. The only person he
really had to fool was Mom. But that was manageable. For the
feeling, the high the raw food gave him, the extra work of sneaking
around would be worth it.

***

His parents had left this morning. It
was one of the things they did now that they were retired. They
liked to take spur of the moment trips. That was even easier now.
They didn’t have to spend time making sure James had everything he
needed before they took off. They had wanted him to go to Florida
with them for the week. But they hadn’t been too insistent when he
refused. He promised that the next trip they went on he would go.
He said being two states away from his home might be a little
overwhelming at this point, a neat little lie of convenience. He
also assured them that he would lock the doors and not go out at
night, since the news had been reporting that a killer was on the
loose and still might be in the area.

The police were saying that the two
cases were connected. The same person who killed the Harolds had
killed the Bremmers. They didn’t say how they connected the two
cases, but James suspected it was by footprints or possibly
fingerprints. They were warning people to be careful.

James was glad for his parents to be
gone. Now he had the whole house to himself, to think in solitude.
He was lucky not to have been caught, and if he hung low, they
might not ever catch him. He’d have to learn to enjoy his life like
a normal person. He had to stop the possessions.

But he wasn’t able to think this way
for much longer. The urge overwhelmed him. That afternoon, he went
to his hill.

***

Toby left the school grounds ten
minutes before everyone else got to go to lunch. He had set it up
with his mom. This morning he had awoken, after about two hours of
sleep, to the scents of breakfast being prepared. He knew his
mother was probably hoping the scents would attract him to the
food. She didn’t know what it really made him feel. To him, she was
ruining the meat. But he played the part.

He went into the kitchen with her,
where she was cooking. “Umm. That smells really good.”

Her face lit up at the
comment.

“But I think I have a new problem,”
Toby said.

As quickly as her face had lit up, it
became concerned. “Oh. What is it?”

Toby bowed his head for effect. “I
don’t know if you’ve noticed or not. But some of the roast was gone
this morning.”

“No, I hadn’t noticed.” She moved from
the stove over to the refrigerator. She opened the door and looked
inside. Toby had stripped off a noticeable hunk the night before,
cutting it from the top to make the missing part stand
out.

His mom lit up again. “Did you do
that?”

Toby looked down to fake
shame.

“Well, that’s all right, hon. It’s
okay for you to get up in the night to eat.”

“Okay,” Toby said and then shook his
head. “I want to eat. In fact, I want to eat more than I did last
week, but for some reason I don’t understand, I get grossed out if
I eat in front of other people. Maybe it’s just that it grosses me
out that they’re eating. I don’t know.”

“Don’t be down on yourself, baby.
You’ve made so much progress in the last few weeks. And at least
you still have your appetite.” She walked over and kissed him on
top of his head. “From the sound of it, your appetite is
increasing.”

“Yeah,” Toby said, as if he felt a
little better. “And I can talk to Dr. Porter about the other-people
thing on Saturday.”

From there, they set it up. Mom
discussed it with Dad, who arranged it so Toby could leave ten
minutes early for lunch to get a head start on the other kids. Mom
gave him some money. Toby left Monday morning with a plastic
storage bag inside his book bag. In that plastic bag was a small
piece of roast, as well as the eggs and bacon he had taken into his
room to pretend he was eating breakfast. He had disposed of the bag
in the trashcan of the boys’ restroom.

Beside the parking lot was the
practice football field. Toby set off quickly across that field. As
a rule, no student could drive a car during school, even during
lunch. Getting out ten minutes early was one thing. It was doubtful
that anyone would complain, especially with the excitement over the
coming playoff game distracting everyone’s attention. But he and
his dad agreed that allowing him to break the driving rules would
be going too far. Accusations of favoritism would arise, and soon
more students would be bringing excuses for why they should be able
to take their cars to get lunch.

Toby was starved. He had not eaten
since he had sneaked food last night. The heat inside him boiled up
and made him able to think of only one thing, taking in more raw
flesh. Toby was well aware that he was probably even more of a
freak now than he had been before Dr. Porter’s new treatment. But
now he didn’t care. His mind was too focused to care. He just had
to eat. He just had to feel the meat in his mouth and then feel the
heat working on it, producing the energy inside him.