Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (69 page)

“Hey, Eric. You want to hurry. It’s
cold out here.”

Cold
, Jacob thinks. Then he notices
that he feels no temperature at all.

“Don’t worry, Stan the man,” the other
voice says. “I’m sure your little friends are just
fine.”

“Stan,” Jacob says. “No. It can’t
be.”

The man beside him opens the car door
and the interior light shines on him. Jacob begins to wonder if he
was wrong. He thinks that maybe he didn’t pull the gun away before
he shot himself. He thinks this, because the man beside him has to
be a ghost.

The second man gets up to the car and
walks over to the passenger side. “Okay. Let’s get this done, so we
can get back to the party.”

Jacob realizes what’s going on and
where they are going.

“No, Stan. Don’t go!” Jacob says. But
it’s futile. They get in the car anyway. Jacob tries the handle on
the back door, but his hand slips through without grasping
anything. He stands there shocked by this for a few seconds. He
touches his hands to each other. They feel real. He tries to touch
the door handle again. Again, his hand goes right through. There is
the sound of the Nova’s large engine roaring to life. Jacob jumps
through the door and lands in the backseat.

Jacob is in a sitting position, but
his body does not touch the upholstery. When the car takes off
quickly and fishtails, his body is not pulled and swayed like the
other two bodies in the car. He floats along with them.

Jacob recognizes the man driving the
car as Stan Wayne. He knows that Stan has been dead for almost five
months now. The man in the passenger seat is Eric Hower. Jacob is
not sure what happened to him.

Stan focuses on the road, but the car
still sways a little. Eric lights a cigarette.

“Don’t smoke right now,” Stan
says.

“Why not?”

“Just don’t, all right!”

Eric rolls down the window and tosses
the cigarette, then he laughs a little under his breath. “Stan the
man, I just don’t get you. If you’re too damn drunk to drive, why
would you want to come out here.” Eric looks at Stan, who does not
answer him. “Damn it, Stan, you’re just too sweet for your own
good.”

Stan makes the first turn and nearly
ditches his car. He recovers, but he does not slow down.

“Hey, man. Take it easy. I don’t think
those kids are going anywhere.”

“I said I would be there at two
o’clock. It’s five till now.”

“Of course.” Eric is hunched over in
his seat. He shakes his head. “So, Stan, make me understand this.
Nobody was ever this nice to us when we were in high school. Hell,
nobody is ever this nice to high-school kids, especially guys like
you and I who haven’t been out of school so long
ourselves.”

Stan comes to the next stop. Jacob is
sure that he must have cleared the previous three miles in less
than two minutes. He thinks about jumping back out of the car but
doesn’t. He is fascinated with all this and wants to see its
conclusion.

Stan puts the car in park, then turns
to Eric, who moves closer to the passenger door. “All right, Hower.
I’ll explain it to you. You’re wrong. Not everyone was mean to us.
But I admit most were. And before we had cars, we missed most the
action. That was just the way it was. But that doesn’t mean it has
to be that way now. You don’t got to keep being a jerk to the kids,
just because the older guys were jerks to you. You don’t need it,
and the kids don’t need it either. Understand?”

“Yeah, man. I understand. I think it’s
a lot of horse shit, but I understand.”

“Fuck you, Hower!” Stan puts the car
back in drive and turns. A little later, they arrive at the shale
pit. There are empty beer cans scattered everywhere, but the place
looks deserted.

“Look, Stan. Those little punks left
without cleaning up. They have no respect for this place, not like
we did. We got to stop bringing them out here.”

Stan turns the car, and his headlights
shine on a body lying face down over by the hill of
shale.

“Oh fuck!” Stan says. “Is that Robert
Phillups?”

“Yeah, I think so. I hope he’s all
right, because you brought him out here.”

Stan looks at Eric. “You better shut
up!”

Again, Eric moves closer to the door.
Stan opens his door at almost the same time two kids come from
behind the hill. One is a boy. He’s wearing an unbuttoned shirt. A
girl follows him. She has on a letter jacket, which she holds shut
with both hands. She seems to be trying to use the boy’s body to
shield her from view.

“It’s Jay,” Stan says, and then gets
out of the car.

Jacob jumps through the door and
stands amongst them.

“What’s the matter with Rob?” Stan
asks.

The boy he called Jay looks confused.
Then he looks over at the hill, where the other boy lies. “Oh, he’s
all right. Passed out about a half an hour ago. But man, some major
shit happened out here tonight.”

“What?”

“Oh man. I’ll tell you. But do you
have a couple of smokes we can bum?”

Stan turns back to the car. “Hey,
Eric!”

“What?”

“Give me a couple of
Marlboros.”

“You ain’t given my cigarettes to
those kids.”

“Just do it!”

Eric sits there for a few seconds.
Then he comes out. He walks up to the kids and extends a hand with
two cigarettes. Jay takes them both. He hands one to the
girl.

“Got a light?”

Eric holds his lighter out in a fist
and flicks out the flame. Jay lights his, then passes it back to
the girl, who uses it to light her own.

“Thanks,” Jay says.

“Whatever,” Eric responds, then goes
to the car and sits on the hood. He stares at the girl who looks
away, obviously nervous.

Jay takes a puff of the cigarette.
“You know Jeff Limerod?”

“Yeah,” Stan responds. “I think I’ve
seen him around town a few times. He’s kind of a different looking
kid, right?”

“Different my ass!” Eric says from the
car. “He’s a faggot if I ever saw one.”

“Thank you, Eric!” Stan says
loudly.

Eric looks away and smirks.

“Yeah. Jeff’s kind of different
looking,” Jay says. “Anyway, he brought some kind of bombs out
here. He set one off over behind the hill. Some people cheered, but
I think he made a lot more people nervous, because a bunch of them
left. Well, then Adrian Cooper told him to cut that shit out and
Limerod told him to fuck off. Cooper hammered him one and knocked
him on his back. Limerod got up and tried to fight, but Cooper just
laughed and tossed him around. Limerod started crying, real pissed
off like. Then he took the other contraption out of his stomach
pack and said he’d blow everyone up. Man, people got outta here
quick as hell.”

“Where did Limerod go?”

“Well, he just sat over by Phillups
for a little while. We tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t talk
back. He just sat there mumbling under his breath. He finally got
up and took off walking across that field.” Jay points off to the
west.

“I wonder why he didn’t go towards
town.”

“I don’t know, man. He’s strange. I
would have tried to stop him, but I was afraid he’d blow me
up.”

Stan looks at the field Jay pointed
to. “All right, how long ago did he leave?”

“Not long ago. And he was walking
slow. I doubt he’s made it across the field yet.”

“Okay,” Stan says. “You two hop in,
and we’ll head him off. Then we’ll come back for
Robert.”

The two kids get into the back seat of
the car. Eric walks up to Stan. “All right, Stan. Helping these
kids I can tolerate. But now you want to go help out some freak you
hardly even know.”

“I don’t have time for this right now,
Eric. You stay here and look after Robert. We’ll come back for
you.”

Eric starts to say something but then
throws his hands in the air. He walks over to the hill of shale,
sits down, and lights up another cigarette.

Stan gets into his car and Jacob gets
in beside him. The two kids are silent during the trip to the other
side of the field. Jacob thinks it’s because Stan’s driving is
scaring them. Stan drives fast and slows very little at the
turns.

On the other side of the field, they
find the shadow of a young person. He’s standing on the side of the
road. Jay opens the back door and the kid gets in. Like Jay said,
he’s mumbling something under his breath.

Stan turns the car around, and they
head back the way they came. At first, everyone is silent, except
for the new passenger, Jeff Limerod. He mumbles louder and louder.
Jacob thinks that he is trying to be heard over the Nova’s
engine.

“What’s he saying?” Stan
asks.

“I don’t know for sure,” Jay answers.
“All I can make out is redemption and Nescata.”

Stan makes the first turn. Then he
leans an ear toward the backseat. Jacob wants to tell him to keep
his eyes on the road, but he knows he can’t. Jeff Limerod continues
to mumble, but now it sounds more like he is chanting. Jacob can
also make out “redemption” and “Nescata,” but he doesn’t really
care. He is too interested in what lies ahead.

The last time Jeff Limerod says the
words, they are loud and clear. He screams, “The day of redemption
draws near, Nescata!”

Stan laughs lightly as he turns back
around. But he’s too late. Up ahead, there are two men in front of
a pickup truck parked in the middle of the road. They jump up and
down and wave their arms.

Jacob hears the girl gasp. He sees
Stan jerk the wheel to the left. Jacob jumps from the car. He
braces himself to hit the ground. But he does not hit the ground at
all. Instead, he’s left standing. He opens his eyes on time to see
the Nova fly into the ditch.

Lights seem to go everywhere when the
car flips. There is the sound of metal ripping through metal and
Jacob thinks the car has hit a barbwire fence. The lights on the
car go out.

The two people who had been in front
of the truck now move toward the crash. Jacob follows. He stops
before he gets there. It’s only shadows that he sees now. But he
can see that the car is upside down. He hears their
voices.

“Somebody’s moving in the
back!”

“Pull them out!”

The two men remove one of the people
from the backseat. The person moans loudly, then he says, “Get the
girl. Get my girlfriend out.”

The two men take Jay away from the car
and then go back. Next, they pull out the girl, who screams. She
gets to her feet and pulls away from them. She runs toward where
Jacob is standing and past him. The men run after her. Jacob moves
toward the car. He thinks he can hear somebody inside. When he gets
beside the car, he hears Jeff Limerod clearly.

“Fuck you! Fuck you!”

Jacob looks in the front seat first.
Stan is in the windshield. He’s not moving. In the back, Jeff
Limerod chants, “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”

Only Limerod’s upper body is visible.
His legs seem to be caught under the backseat, and he is hanging
upside down. His arms are scrabbling madly around his stomach. With
one hand, he pulls a small object above him. With the other, he
holds up a lighter. Jacob starts to move but is too
late.

There is a loud ringing in his ears.
Flames suddenly surround him. But they do not burn, and he is not
thrown by the blast. He moves out of the flames and sees that the
Nova is engulfed.

“Fuck!” one of the men screams as they
come running toward the fire.

“Help the kid!” the other
screams.

Jacob looks down the road, where Jay
is trying frantically to crawl on his arms away from the fire. The
men get to him and pull him further away.

When Jacob turns back to the car he
sees yet another man. He’s tall, dressed in white, and completely
bald. He’s standing at the edge of the flame. Like Jacob, he's not
burned.

Jacob turns back to the road, where
Jay and the men who pulled him away from the fire stare at the mess
with dazed looks on their faces. But they are not looking at the
man in white.

Jacob turns back to the fire. The man
in white looks at him and smiles. “I come to take away,” the man
says.

#

Jacob came to in the daylight, the
anticipation gone again. He was still in his car, and he was still
at the side of the road. He sat for a few minutes and wondered if
he had gone crazy.

“I don’t know,” he finally
said.

He turned the key, and his Escort
started right up. He moved toward his parents’ home. Driving down
that road, he still felt calm, which was something he didn’t
understand. He thought the things he had seen were horrid,
especially the man in white that nobody else could see and who
seemed to be the only one that could see Jacob. Yet the memories of
these things circled in his head without bringing
emotion.