Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (66 page)

They slept in a different place every
night. The first two nights they’d spent on the ground. On the
second night, James had awoken to see the shadow of a figure
approaching him. It had taken a little while to realize that just
because the shadow was low to the ground didn’t make its source
small. He knew they usually attacked from water, but this one had
decided to take advantage of a sleeping prey. Once again, it was a
hunter that James and the spirit did battle with. The alligator did
not fight well out of water.

Though they wouldn’t kill people
inside the marsh, they did kill animals. Besides the alligator,
they had killed snakes and fish. Then they feasted on the flesh. It
all tasted pretty much the same, like the swamp. Still, the meat
was delicious. The meat was delicious because they’d had to kill it
to eat it.

The kills they made in the city were
awesome. One night they had stalked gang members. They had walked
right into the squalor of the city and seen the intimidating
figures. The men had moved fast, but the spirit had moved faster.
They took on as many as four at a time, brushing with death, only
to kill them with bare hands or with the weapons they took from
them. Each time they went hunting for people, the victims were
harder to kill. James wondered how far they would take it. He
wondered about attacking the police, or attacking soldiers, right
where they were stationed, bringing it to them.

James got up and moved around. His
body was definitely weaker without the spirit, but it wasn’t as bad
as it had been before. He was learning to be a better physical
being, as the spirit said he would. The spirit’s movements were
more natural to him now. Soon, he would will some of the fast
movements on his own.

The cabin had been abandoned for a
long time. It was not livable by most peoples’ standards. The sink
and stove didn’t work. Everything was rusted and falling apart. It
was basically just a few walls to sleep under. James actually
preferred sleeping outside. Waking to the alligator had been one of
the most exhilarating experiences yet, even though it had been easy
to whip the creature once they awoke. But the spirit didn’t want
him out in the open when it was out scouting, and the best time for
it to scout was while he slept.

James went to the front door, which
was nearly off its hinges by now. He pushed it open, only to shut
it quickly.

There had been a man in the distance,
walking in the tall weeds of the marsh.

Fear washed over him. He was stronger,
but he wasn’t ready to do battle without the spirit. Maybe the man
would just walk by. He peeped out the door again. By the man’s
path, he was coming right toward the cabin. James ducked. Something
had been familiar about the approaching man, but he couldn’t place
it. He peeped out again and watched the figure approach for a while
longer. The man came at a steady rate. He was walking very fast.
The closer he got, the more familiar he was. Then James began to
recognize him. But it couldn’t be right.

“Dr. Porter?”

James looked again. He thought he had
to be wrong. The man just resembled Dr. Porter. But why would a man
where a suit in the swamplands?

A little while later, the person was
close enough for James to confirm that it was definitely Dr.
Porter. He stopped, maybe ten yards away. He looked right at
James.

This could not be real. It had to be a
dream. But it really didn’t seem like a dream. Everything else, all
aside from the shrink standing out front, seemed real
enough.

Dr. Porter reached inside his suit and
pulled out a large knife. He stood there with it, looking at James,
like he was inviting him to come out. But James wouldn’t dare go
out. Not without the spirit.

Finally, he felt the spirit come in.
Confidence pushed out his fear. But the spirit didn’t move him. In
fact, aside from his voice, the spirit wasn’t taking him over at
all.

“I’m sorry,” the spirit said. “I had
not foreseen this. I have to go.”

“What? Why? No man can beat us. No man
can beat you. Let’s go kill him!”

“No man can defeat me. But that is
more than a man out there. I cannot fight it. I must
go.”

Just like that, the spirit was
gone.

“What? No! This is not how it was
supposed to be! I’m not ready!”

James looked outside, where Dr. Porter
was now moving slowly toward him.

“No!” James screamed as he backed away
from the door. Then, in the moments he waited for Dr. Porter to
enter, he tried to calm himself. He was better now. He could
fight.

The door swung open as James scanned
the floor for something to use as a weapon. But his search didn’t
matter. Dr. Porter was close enough that James would not get to a
weapon on time. He charged the shrink.

James was almost to him when the knife
moved. It was so fast that, for an instant, James wasn’t even sure
if he’d been cut. Then he felt the terrible sharp pain in his neck
and felt the blood coming from his throat. The next cut was
merciful, and James was spared anymore pain.

He was now in the tunnel, and there
was light.

***

“It was that his parents were both so
able to observe and take in their environment.”

Dr. Porter said it out loud and out of
the blue. The angel didn’t respond. He took that as meaning he was
right.

They were now back in the car, moving
north, towards Tampa. He thought of how the mental capacities of
two parents must combine. A parent high in an attribute paired with
one low in the attribute might result in a leveling off in their
offspring, depending on the relative contribution of each parents’
genetic makeup. Two parents high in an attribute could create a
child higher than both of them if the cards fell right, if both
contributed that to the DNA.

“His mother was a professor and a
writer. His father was an anthropologist. Both had to be very
capable of absorbing their environment. They found that such
absorption made their world more understandable and more
interesting. Their combined effects were passed to James. He was
able to absorb at even higher levels, double what either of them
could, maybe more. He was even able to absorb the will of a
spirit.”

Again, the angel didn’t respond. Dr.
Porter went back to pondering the tunnel wall. He thought he came
to another realization. “The tunnel is nothing more than the limits
imposed on this universe. It’s part God and part what man has made
it over many generations.”

At that, the angel actually
nodded.

Ancient records reported many acts
that would be seen as supernatural and impossible by today’s
standards. The acts themselves had not ceased. With each successive
generation, people became more scientific. That was passed on to
the next generation. Just as it was the baby’s instinct to suck
because that was what many generations of his ancestors had done,
each generation better than the next, so was it instinct to believe
in a set of rules for how the world worked, because the preceding
generations had successively stamped out more and more of the other
possibilities. Magic had not left the world. The human being’s
ability to perceive magic had left the world.

“The tunnel walls grow stronger with
each generation.”

Again, the angel nodded.

***

The southern part of California had
been one of Celeste’s favorite places. But that was as much due to
the set of circumstances of the days before she entered the region
than to the region itself. She had loved her ocean, and for a few
days, a country, Mexico, had been in her way, and the population
had been sparse.

She had been so excited to see the
ocean again, and the city, that she took four men on a beach her
first night in San Diego. It was that night that she learned that
she didn’t have to wait between them anymore; at least, she could
take two, one right after another.

She was more careful now. She took men
down the road before killing them. Sometimes it was in a hotel
room; sometimes it was in the trees or on a secluded beach. Then
she would get two more from two different locations. But before she
killed them, she had them return the corpses of the previous two to
places near their original locations.

Her last romp of the night was always
just one man, the only one she’d leave in the place where she
killed him. All this made it look as if there were five scattered
deaths during the night, seemingly due to natural
causes.

All of this kept her busy. So she
didn’t travel as fast. She was still in California, which was fine.
Its coastline was perfect for her. It harbored big cities, where
her exploits wouldn’t standout, especially since she could hop from
one city to another. And always the ocean. She knew it would be a
long time before she tired of California.

The level of energy increase with the
extra men was incredible. So she didn’t mind the extra work. In
fact, she enjoyed it, thinking constantly of the logistics, getting
better at it all the time. She required very little
sleep.

Tonight Celeste had decided to escape
the city scene. She was in a nice little resort town somewhere
between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. She had taken one man about
ten miles down the coast. He was now waiting for her near a patch
of palm trees. She was at a hotel bar selecting her next victim.
She wanted to try taking from two men simultaneously, one entering
her from behind while another was in her mouth.

An amazing sense caught her
attention.

She could feel the heat of her victims
before she took them, and she could select the ones with more
lifeforce inside them. Suddenly, sitting right at the bar, she
could sense a lifeforce that was nearly triple that of any she had
sensed before.

But it wasn’t there in the bar. She
got up from the stool, drawing glances from about every man in the
place. She looked around, trying to understand where the energy
came from. She went out to the patio, where five people sat, three
of them men who turned their attention to her. But not one of them
was the source of the energy. She stared past them.

Outside the bar were two large
sections of palm trees. The trees were divided, giving a partial
view of the ocean. In the moonlight that came down and reflected
from the ocean up to the shore Celeste could see the beach but not
see the source of the energy she detected. She left the patio and
moved toward the trees, feeling that the source was closer as she
moved. She slowed as she came to the path in the trees, realizing
that the lifeforce that she’d sensed was even stronger than she had
thought. Possibly more than she could take. But she kept moving on
the path anyway, not able to resist.

On the other side of the trail, she
still did not see the source. But she could feel it creeping closer
and closer to her. She was soon able to localize it. It was in the
palms. She closed her eyes, so as to block out more sensation, so
she could focus more on the lifeforce. She waited as it crept
toward her. It got so close that she could not only sense its heat;
she could hear it moving. Then it stopped.

Celeste was confused. She wanted for
it, for him, to come to her. But it wasn’t moving. It was more
drawing her to it than she was drawing it to her. And she couldn’t
resist. She had to have that lifeforce. Not only did she sense it
was more than what most men have. She could feel that it was
qualitatively different, more beautiful. She opened her eyes. She
moved into the palm trees.

She didn’t see him before she felt his
touch. Immediately, she felt heat, but it was mostly her own,
connecting to the heat in him, wanting to take it. He pulled her
close, so that she could not see his face. Then he pushed her back
against a tree. He pulled her skirt up, but not over her head, just
enough to uncover the necessary parts. She felt the roughness of
the palm tree against her bare skin, but didn’t care. She only
cared to take from this man. She could feel that he was already
naked. Then she felt him push inside her. He didn’t have to be
inside for her to take his heat. It was just a thousand times
faster this way and way more invigorating. She felt his lifeforce
rush into her, and she pulled. It was something she didn’t know how
she did, but something she could do, nonetheless.

And then, before she could even take
much from him, with most of the lifeforce still his own, the man
pulled away from her.

“No, come back,” she said. But he
didn’t obey her. She could not control his will. She tried to look
at him, but he moved away too fast, deeper into the trees. She
started to give chase, but as soon as she leaned from the tree, she
felt it. Her heart was picking up very fast.

This had happened before. It had
happened early on, when she had taken too much, before her new body
was ready to handle it. She stopped and sat down, right on the
ground, waiting for it to pass.

But it didn’t pass. Her heart
continued to speed up. It became like a machine gun firing in her
chest. Soon, it was all she felt and all she heard. The night
seemed to grow darker, and she realized that she was dying. Her
heart continued to pick up speed.