Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (68 page)

“No, it’s not here.”

Jacob returned to his car and placed
the pistol in the passenger seat. He barely noticed the heat as he
settled into the driver’s side. Red dust flew into the air as he
backed the car up. His car swiveled as he sped to the exit. There,
he stopped. He looked back through his dust-clouded rear window
then to the gun in the seat beside him.

“It’s not this place, Jacob,” he
whispered. “The tension isn’t going to come back.”

But still, his eyes were on the gun.
Jacob slowly let off the brake without pressing on the accelerator.
His car crawled through the exit. On the other side, he stopped and
waited for the tension to return. He placed his hand on the pistol.
Only a taste and he would be satisfied. Just a tickle of the old
stuff and he would know what to do. He wouldn’t even bother hiding
again. And he’d put it in his mouth, so there wouldn’t be time to
pull it away.

Seconds turned into minutes. Still,
there was only the calm and the urge. But he remembered moments of
fleeting happiness from the past and how the tension always rushed
back in to take things over.

“Forever a pessimist, Jacob. Just a
little while longer.”

More minutes passed. In his mind, he
searched for the tension. He even tried to make it come. His mind
remained calm and his thoughts crisp. The urge grew. Again, he
tried to know what he urged for. But he couldn’t place it. Slowly,
he loosened his grip, until he didn’t feel the gun anymore. It
seemed far away. He placed his hand back on the steering wheel,
satisfied.

Jacob drove toward his parents’ house.
As the urge grew, Jacob felt it come into focus. He realized that
he didn’t need to look for anything. What he longed for would find
him. What he felt was anticipation. And what he wanted was close
now. It had to be, because the feeling was strong.

It wasn’t until he was most of the way
back that he saw something that scared him and killed the
anticipation. There was a big cloud of dirt up ahead, and he
wondered if it was possible that his mom could be coming home
already. He knew it couldn’t be his dad, who never came home early
on a weekday. And his sister, Tyla, had said she had to work late.
But visitors were rare down this road. He thought of the suicide
letter he left sitting in the middle of the kitchen
table.

By the time he reached the driveway,
Jacob could see that it was a white car coming toward him. Both his
mom and Tyla drove white cars, his mom a new Bonneville and Tyla an
old Caprice. He couldn’t quite make out the shape, but he didn’t
think there was time to wait.

Trying to rush up the driveway, Jacob
spun the tires of his Escort. Seconds later, he looked down at the
road as he got out of the car.

Tyla
, he thought.
She must have gotten off early
.

Jacob knew Tyla might think it strange
that he saw her and didn’t wait until she came up the driveway to
go inside, but he figured that could be dealt with later. He
whipped the screen door open and picked up the galosh to get the
key, only to find nothing but the dirty back porch
floor.

Panic set in as he wondered where he
had left the key. He looked under other boots and some shoes too,
examined the pocket of his jean shorts, even flipped through his
wallet.

Jacob heard the white rocks popping
into each other and the low rumbling of the car’s motor. He tried
to calm himself. A few seconds later, the memory of throwing the
key into the dirt came. Then there was the sound of a car door
slamming. Jacob turned and saw his little sister, clad in her work
uniform. She pulled the screen door open.

“Hit anything?” Tyla asks.

“Huh. What?” Jacob
answered.

“I saw the pistol in the front seat of
your car.” She smiled. Yet it wasn’t an accusatory or mischievous
smile. It took Jacob a few seconds to put it together.

“Yeah, not much to shoot in the yard.
Thought maybe I’d find something at the dump.”

“I like to shoot the rifle, myself. I
can’t hit the broad side of a barn with that damn pistol.” She
laughed.

“I don’t know what I did with the
key.”

His little sister laughed again. “All
those brains and you still can’t keep track of anything. I got a
key.” Tyla fiddled with the keys in her hand until she found the
right one. She reached past him and unlocked the door. Then she
walked ahead into the living room. Jacob followed her as close as
he could without being too obvious. Tyla glanced down at the
notebook on the table, but Jacob casually picked it up before she
got a good look at it.

“Just something I’ve been working
on.”

“Oh,” Tyla says, and then headed into
the next room.

Jacob hurried back to his car and
shoved the notebook under the driver’s seat. He grabbed the gun,
then went back inside. With the sound of the running shower coming
from the bathroom, Jacob put the gun up. He went to his car and
drove back to the shale pit.

Chapter 2

Jacob stood by the hill of shale,
smiling, with the key to his parents’ house in his hand.

“You’re not what I came for, but I
guess you’ll have to do for now.”

Jacob was disappointed that the
anticipation he had felt earlier had not returned. But he was glad
that the old tension hadn’t returned either. He got back in his
car, wondering how long the calm would last. It felt like it could
last forever. He wanted to believe that. He didn’t want there to be
a rational explanation for it all. He didn’t want there to be a way
to explain away his new found feelings or that he had actually
experienced himself rising into the sky and falling to the ground.
Bringing sense to all this would mean that none of it was real, and
if none of it was real, then it was all temporary and he would have
to return to how he was.

Driving along, Jacob tried to envision
what his future could be like. He tried to see himself approaching
things anew, without the tension that had always haunted him.
First, he tried to think of being a student. Then he tried to think
of practicing law. But he couldn't see these things.

Then there was the girl. He thought of
why he had left her and why he hadn’t contacted her again. That was
something he had discussed with his therapist. He wondered what she
was doing and what her life was like. Was she with
anybody?

“I’ll just call her up. Yeah that’s
it. Hey, Sonnie, how’s it going? Sorry I haven’t called you for
five years.” Jacob laughed. “She’s probably long gone by now
anyway.”

But Jacob allowed himself to engage in
the fantasy that she wasn’t gone. He allowed himself to think that
she hadn’t changed. She was still beautiful. Sonnie continued to
occupy his mind right up to when he made the last turn toward his
destination. That was when the anticipation started to take over
again. It rose faster this time, and it grew even stronger than it
had been before.

Up ahead, something seemed to appear
out of the blue. It was a yellow Chevy Nova, pulled off to the side
of the road. Jacob stared at the car in fascination as he
approached. Then, when he pulled up beside it, his own car’s engine
died.

Boiling over with excitement now,
Jacob looked down at the steering column. He reached down and
turned the key. There was no sound. He got out of the car, knowing
this was it. What he anticipated was here. There was no one in the
Nova, but there were voices coming from below, by the creek. Jacob
made his way toward them, thinking that whomever was down there was
connected to it all. He would see them and know what the incredible
anticipation was all about.

As he came over the hill, his ankle
buckled under him and he fell forward. He grabbed two handfuls of
grass and his body swung around. Feeling the pain but indifferent
to it, he got to his feet. Turning his head from side to side, he
scanned what was in front of him. But he only saw the creek. The
voices were gone.

“What in the . . .”

He shook his head then rubbed his
eyes. Still, there was nothing. A little disheartened, he started
to turn around.

“No. I heard them. They were
there.”

He waited there for a couple of
minutes, hearing an occasional bird and the constant sound of the
creek trickling along, but nothing else. So he moved back up the
hill. Maybe he would wait by his car for a little while. The owner
of the Nova would have to come back sooner or later. But, when he
got back up the hill, the Nova was gone.

Jacob stood there for a moment,
confused about what to do. Then he walked over to where the Nova
had been. He looked for tracks back to the road. But the grass
wasn’t disturbed at all.

“I would have heard it leave
anyway.”

Jacob got back in his car. He didn’t
want to leave. The anticipation, though dwindled somewhat, was
still present and still enough to keep him interested. But he
didn’t know what else to do. His hand was on the key, ready to
turn. Then the anticipation began to pick up again, as if in
protest to what he was doing. He turned the key slowly. There was
the electric buzz announcing that the car was coming alive. The
engine turned over slowly. It became louder and Jacob knew that it
was going to start. Then, in what couldn’t have been more then a
couple of seconds, the engine faded off into nothing.

Without thinking much about it, he
twisted the key all the way down twice. Both times, there was only
the sound of metal. The third time he tried, the switch wouldn’t
budge. He tried harder, but it was stuck. He leaned up on the
steering wheel to get more leverage. That was when he saw something
outside of his car that made him stop moving all
together.

The Nova was there again. But this
time it wasn’t all there. It was transparent and it faded in and
out, like it was trying to come into focus. It did this several
times before it finally materialized completely.

Jacob opened his door and listened.
The sounds of the voices were still not there. Leaving the door
open, he got out and ran back down to the side of the hill. Again,
it was just the creek.

“Fuck you!” he shouted, dropping down
to a sitting position. There, he sat and waited. Minutes ran by and
still nothing happened. Then Jacob thought he heard a noise up
above, and he turned his attention from the creek for a moment.
When he turned back again, there was a blur and the creek went out
of focus. When focus came back, so did the creek. The voices were
there again, but they were so faint that Jacob wondered if they
were real or if he was just hearing what he wanted to hear. A dim
image began to appear, but only for an instant of a
second.

“Hey! I saw you! Come on! You were
there! You were real!”

He looked down at the creek and tried
to make the image come up again. But the more he tried to bring it
back, the more the creek seemed to be nothing but the creek. So, he
relaxed. He closed his eyes and let the anticipation rise. The more
it was there, the more he wanted to open his eyes. But, at the same
time, it was very soothing, so it was possible to just let it grow.
He waited for it to peak again, for it to get to the level it had
just before he saw the Nova the first time. Finally, he felt the
anticipation level off. He opened his eyes.

The image faded in and out several
times, as the Nova had done earlier. But after a few seconds, they
were there, solid and real. It took him just a few seconds to
figure out what they were doing. There were two men standing in
front of the water with their backs turned to him. They were
pissing in Bull Creek. That was all Jacob saw before light
disappeared and it was suddenly night.

#

“Holly shit!” Jacob says, as he jumps
to his feet. The voices are still there. They are young, Jacob
thinks. But they are not much younger than he is. He can’t make out
what they are saying, but he hears one of their drunken laughs. One
of them has a flashlight and is moving the beam all around in the
trees.

The beam shifts toward
Jacob.

Jacob shouts, “Hey! What’s going
on?”

They don’t respond. They don’t even
seem to notice him. Their voices are getting closer. After a few
moments, Jacob is able to make out what they are saying.

“I just don’t understand it, man. Why
are we out here? We’re at a party. There’s plenty of beer and
girls, and you want to come out here? Help me out.”

“Well, first off. Your dumb, ugly ass
ain’t going to get laid anyway. Second, the reason you don’t
understand why we’re out here is because you’re an
asshole.”

The voices are familiar to Jacob, but
he does not recognize them.

“Hey guys,” Jacob says. This time they
are close enough that they have to hear him. But again, they don’t
respond. Jacob steps toward them. He stops when he notices that his
feet do not make a sound when he steps.

One of them comes up even with him.
Jacob turns and walks next to him.

“You can’t hear me, can you?” Jacob
says.

The man turns, but it’s not to Jacob
he speaks.