Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (58 page)

“We have plenty for now,” the spirit
said. “I know more places where we can get supplies if we run
out.”

“Where are we?” James
asked.

“The Smoky Mountains,” the spirit
replied. “Not too many people know about this cavern. Even fewer
care about it. But it’s perfect for us. We can play here for a
while.”

James felt the spirit’s excitement at
saying they would play here. He couldn’t wait to see what play
meant.

“This cavern winds around and has lots
of places to hide. There’s another opening. If you didn’t know how
to get there, it would take you a few hours to figure it out. But
we could do it in a matter of minutes. So if anyone traces us here,
we’ll get a good head start.”

James thought about what was implied.
“So you’re planning on keeping us here for a while?”

The spirit laughed. “That’s completely
up to you. You can get rid of me at anytime.”

Now James laughed. “I guess that’s
true. But we’ll see if I want to get rid of you.”

They said nothing else. A little while
later, they put out the fire and went to sleep.

***

They had come out of the cavern
Wednesday morning. They’d gone part way up the mountain, then
climbed a tall tree. From there they sat and watched an adjacent
mountain and the valley below. As they waited, wet from the dew of
the morning, James thought of what the spirit was doing. But he
would not question the spirit, just await the outcome. This was his
favorite spirit of all. It had a constant excitement in it, not
like the other spirits, who seemed to need a certain set of
circumstance. This spirit liked all that it did. Building a fire in
the night, stealing from someone’s garage, climbing a tree to watch
the terrain below, was all exciting.

On Wednesday, there was nothing. In
darkness, they returned to the cavern and repeated many of the
actions of the night before. James thought he could sense the
spirit was willing to talk to him, but the spirit also sensed him
and knew James would like the unspoken way of communication better,
at least for now.

Thursday morning, they returned to the
tree. James took the body, but just for a little while. He called
his voice mail. To his relief, his parents hadn’t called. He
thought that must be his father’s doing. They had both sensed his
desire for independence. His father was able to respect that more.
Dad would be encouraging Mom not to call. Cold and miserable, James
returned the body to the spirit, and he became enthused and
comfortable again.

“Natives used to come to this area.
They used the cavern below and trees like this one to spy on the
white man who was encroaching upon them. That’s how I learned of
the effectiveness of this plan.”

James was amazed by the strategy the
spirit spoke of. But he was even more amazed by the implication. It
was possible that the spirit had learned of this through some
obscure book. But it seemed more likely that the spirit had been
around at that time, centuries ago, when the Indians sometimes used
guerilla warfare against settlers who were stealing their home from
them. Had the spirit actually seen the Indians do this?

Again, James would not ask. He would
wait. Before the sun was midway through the sky, they spotted
someone in the valley below. It was hard to make out too many
details about the person, but James could tell that the person was
wearing green and that the person had a gun.

James knew that hunters weren’t
supposed to wear green, but some bright color instead. This hunter
was a bit of a renegade. The person was in a small clearing for
just a few seconds, before going back into the trees. Whatever the
person’s reason for being out like that, they came down from the
tree and headed in his direction.

The spirit moved in quickly, without
hesitation. When they made a sharp cut, James thought he knew what
they were doing. They had a gun and could use the element of
surprise to take out the hunter easily. But the spirit didn’t want
to take that route.

They eventually slowed down. James
knew, though they could not see the hunter through the thick trees,
that they must be close. The spirit directed his eyes to the
ground, where they focused on small broken branches. Then there was
the hearing sense. James realized that the spirit was better at
using his senses than he was. Because, suddenly, he could hear
things like he had never heard them before. It was like he had a
filter in his mind, which strained out irrelevant background noise.
They were listening to the hunter ahead.

They moved ever so slowly, so as not
to be detected. They caught occasional glimpses of the hunter, a
middle-aged man of substantial size. They could have taken him out
so many times, but instead, they ducked quietly behind trees,
moving bent over, at times crawling.

The hunter was obviously skilled. He
was quiet too, and like they had been earlier, looking at the
ground. The slow stalking of a stalker was the most exhilarating
experience of James’s life. He could feel what the spirit was going
through. This was a game to it, and the confidence was still there.
To the spirit, this was no different from any other sequence in the
game. But to James, it was the best part yet. It would get
better.

They crept behind trees in the valley,
until they maneuvered in so close that they could hide no more.
When the hunter looked over his shoulder at them, they were ten
feet away.

Around his waistline, the spirit had
tied a rope. In that rope were two weapons: a large hunting knife
and a small caliber pistol. James would have gone for the pistol.
The spirit had another idea. As they rushed the man, they pulled
out the knife. The man turned, bringing around his rifle. But in a
movement so quick that James barely felt it, they brought the knife
diagonally across the man’s body. When the man halted and yelled in
pain, they dropped the knife, took hold of his gun and twisted it
from his hands.

Every move they made from that point
on was not so much to win. No, they could have easily won many
times before the fight had begun. Every move seemed a way of
prolonging the fight. They discarded their weapons and fought the
man barehanded. The man tried to escape, but couldn’t outrun them.
He then pulled out a knife of his own, but his movements were slow
compared to the movements the spirit could will from James. With
his fists and with his feet, they pummeled the man. But the strikes
were not hard enough to break the hunter’s bones or knock him
unconscious. They were merely enough to toy with him, to prolong
the fight. Then, when the man, who was heavier than James, tried to
get hold of them, they let him. Even then, the man’s movements were
no match for the spirit. They turned until they found position
behind their opponent. Then they choked him until he was
unconscious.

At that point, the victim on the
ground, James wondered what was next. The spirit answered that
question verbally.

“I enjoyed the battle. But this man
can battle no more.”

They fetched the knife, which they
used to slit the man’s throat.

“It is done.”

***

Hauling equipment around had always
been an effortful task for Toby. He’d had the strength of a much
younger child. But last week he’d begun to notice that it wasn’t as
hard to lift and carry the various things onto the practice field,
and it was taking him less time. This week he performed his lifting
and moving duties with ease. In fact, he enjoyed lifting and moving
things. He even helped out more in practice, gathering the tackling
dummies, helping to push the blocking sled into
position.

He was shocked when his brother didn’t
seem to notice this. But Randy was kind of funny this week. Maybe
it had something to do with the playoffs. During the regular
season, any loss could be shaken off, but one loss now and the
season was over. For the first time, Randy was feeling the
pressure. He barely seemed to notice that he had a
brother.

Toby wondered about what could have
been. If Dr. Porter would have given him this treatment sooner,
could he have been a player? He’d always liked football, but it was
the strategy he liked: How could the players best be placed so that
they would have an advantage over the other team? But now he liked
the sounds of pads crashing into each other. He liked the way
bodies looked as they were forced backward or to the ground. Toby
wished he could know what it was like to stop someone in their
tracks, to feel a body give into his. But the resentment for having
missed out didn’t torment him too much. It might have, had he not
been so busy enjoying himself. He seemed to be a contradiction to
medical science. The raw meat he was secretly living on should have
made him sick. But it didn’t. Instead, it mixed with the heat and
caused a fire in him. Everything he did, he did with vigor. He was
a better manager for it. He was also a better student for it. He
had a seemingly insatiable thirst for knowledge. Unlike his desire
for the brutality, Toby could do something about his want to grow
intellectually. He stayed up late at night, reading, and learning
things.

On Thursday, during practice, Coach
sent Toby back a little early to set up the television and VCR. He
wanted the team to watch some game tape of tomorrow’s opponent.
Toby swiftly set that up, and was left with a little idle time. He
went into the weight room. He wasn’t sure of his physical limits.
He knew that he was stronger, but that seemed like yet another
impossibility. He decided to test it.

The bulk of the weight room was set up
for free weights, but there was a small section of Nautilus
equipment. Toby went to the bench press machine. He first set the
pin in at his old max, fifty pounds, a weight almost every high
school girl could do. He lay on the bench, grabbed the handles, and
pushed way too hard. The weight went up so easy that Toby nearly
fell from the bench with his momentum.

The plates incremented by ten pounds
up to one-hundred and then went up by twenty. Toby tried eighty. It
didn’t go up nearly as fast, but it still wasn’t very hard. It felt
like something he might workout with. He set the pin at one-hundred
pounds. This time he felt pain as he pushed the bars, but he kind
of liked that pain, and the weight rose.

Toby was ecstatic. One-hundred was
still pretty weak for a boy his age. But it was also more than he
weighed, and doubling the amount he could bench without a single
workout was way more than impressive; it was unbelievable. He moved
the pin down one more plate. He didn’t think he could get
one-twenty, and he was right. But he was able to move the weight up
about halfway. One-twenty wasn’t far away. Who knew what he would
be able to do next week?

***

They had killed again. But this time
it wasn’t a person. After storing away the hunter, deep within the
cavern, they had fashioned a spear using a tree branch and stabbed
several fish from a nearby stream. They waited until night and
cooked those fish over an open fire within the cavern. James had
not been a big fan of fish before. But now, his food in part his
kill, he enjoyed taking the flesh into his body, feeling the
satisfaction it provided.

The meal done, and the fire fading
out, James began to speak. “You didn’t know the hunter, did
you?”

“No,” the spirit responded.

James thought before asking his next
question. How much did he want to know at this point? “Then you
don’t kill for the same reason as the other spirits. You don’t kill
for vengeance.”

At that, the spirit laughed.
“Initially, I did stay here for that reason. But I took my
vengeance long ago. And what I found was that vengeance is not a
real thing. It’s as fleeting as a breeze. You can kill a man, but
you can’t kill his spirit. Separating the spirit from the body is
vengeance only in the moments before, when the body knows it is
going to die.”

James liked this information. This
spirit was so much more refined than the ones before. James wanted
a little more. “Is that why you didn’t torture the hunter after he
was unconscious?”

The spirit didn’t hesitate in its
answer. “People do not understand their spirit. Some carry out its
demands of them in certain symbolic ways, never really knowing
they’re doing it. They just feel good when they do certain things.
The hunter came into the woods looking for death. Did you sense
that in him? Did you notice how he struggled when he knew he could
not run? Did you see that he was no longer afraid?”

“Yes,” James answered.

“He sought death. And by prolonging
the battle, we allowed him to feel more alive, more in touch with
his spirit than ever before. Over and over again, we allowed him
the chance to try to kill you. Then, when he couldn’t do it, we
killed him. He found death when he found us.”

What the spirit wasn’t saying, but
what James knew, was that he too had been more alive than ever
before. Every time the spirit did not take an opportunity to end
the battle, and then by that another phase of the battle ensued,
James had felt the thrill of knowing that death would come, but not
knowing exactly how.

For tonight, he had no more questions
for the spirit.

***