Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (73 page)

Chapter 4

Jacob sits alone in the classroom. He
knows this place but doesn’t remember it being so big. On both
sides, the walls extend far beyond the columns of desks. Empty
chalkboards stretch out over the front wall for a distance that
seems too great for any one teacher. Sounds of muffled voices and
feet shuffling come from outside the room. There is the occasional
screech of a locker door opening and the occasional bang of another
being shut.

At the side of his desk is a green
polyester backpack. He looks it over intently and then reaches down
for it. There is a sudden bang on the door and Jacob moves back up
in his desk.

He stares down at first and then looks
up at the door. A few moments pass and nobody has entered the room.
But still, Jacob is afraid to look in the bag. He has visions of
someone walking in the room at just the moment he opens
it.

As he waits, the sounds change. After
a couple of minutes, there are no more lockers opening, and there
are more lockers being shut. For the most part, feet are no longer
shuffling, but there is the sound of an occasional straggler
running in the hall.

Jacob looks down at the bag again,
content to observe it from a distance. But then he begins to notice
its familiarity. “I must have left you here. For all of these years
you’ve been sitting right here.”

Still wary, he watches the door as he
leans over. He undoes the fasteners and opens the bag. Inside are
two objects. He pulls them out. One of the objects is a solid black
book still in its plastic lining. The other is a white folder with
his name printed in the upper left-hand corner.

Jacob
sets the book aside and opens the folder. In it is a stack of
notebook paper on one side and a course description on the other.
At the top of the course description,
Astrology
is printed. There are other
things written on this page but they are written in a language that
he does not understand. He takes the plastic off the book and
begins to look through it. It’s filled with the same foreign
writing. The only thing he understands is on the first page. There,
at the top and in boldface, the word
Astrology
is printed
again.

Again, there is a noise from the door
that startles Jacob. But this time it is the sound of the doorknob
turning. It twists back and forth without the door opening. Jacob
gets up and starts to walk toward it.

Then there is another sound. It’s high
pitched and very annoying. Suddenly, it’s hard to think. Stopping
this sound quickly becomes his first priority.

He looks around but sees nothing that
could be causing it. He places his hands on his ears, but that does
no good. It’s like the sound is in his head.

Suddenly, there is blackness and the
next thing he knows he’s on his side. The noise is still blaring
and all he can think is that, if he cannot move, he won’t be able
to make it go away.

The next thought Jacob has is more
rational. He understands what’s going on. He opens his eyes and is
awake.

#

The pain was real. Jacob thought the
sound of his alarm clock was real too. But when he turned over to
shut it off, it wasn’t there. That made sense. He didn’t remember
setting it the night before. In fact, he didn’t remember taking it
out of his bag.

So, to go with the pain of the
hangover and the alarm ringing in his head, Jacob had fear. He lay
there, frozen, except for his breath, and even that was
restrained.

The romance of it all was gone for the
moment. The anticipation and the inner calm seemed far away. Now he
only wanted to be out of it, to be normal, to be safe. Even what he
had before seemed better than this. Tension that was just there and
that he could not understand was better than the raw fear he felt
now.

The noise seemed to shake his brain
and make the pain of the hangover worse. But he could handle the
pain. The pain was his. It was the noise itself, the meaning behind
it, that Jacob couldn’t handle. The noise was not his.

I’m not
in control of my life
, Jacob
thought.

This thought seemed to reverberate in
his mind, and with this thought, everything changed. The chiming of
the alarm stopped abruptly, like light disappearing when the switch
is turned off. The fear flowed out, slowly but completely. The pain
remained. But it remained in the background only. It was now just
the context and didn't disturb him anymore.

Who is?

He got up
quickly and began pacing about the floor, whispering to himself all
the while.
No. That’s exactly what a
psychotic person would think. I have special powers and someone is
in control of my mind. Madness. Has to be
madness.

He grabbed his shorts and quickly
slipped them on. Intently, with investigation on his mind, he
walked over and opened the bedroom door. There was no one in the
dining room and no one in the living room. Jacob went directly to
the phone nook and snatched up the receiver. With the portable
phone in hand, he reached into the back of his shorts. There, he
found only empty pockets.

“Damn!”

Taking the phone with him, he started
for the back door. Two steps later the memory hit and stopped him
in his tracks.

“Sonnie’s got my car!”

Her face
came to him, the way it looked after he told her to take him home.
That look could have said,
“Go to
Hell!”

But his need to know was powerful. And
that need was telling him that knowledge was printed on a business
card in the back of his wallet. And his wallet was in his
car.

Jacob remembered how she had touched
him again. It had taken a while, as they rode in silence, while he
pretended to sleep. But she had done it twice, briefly caressing
his back and then taking her hand away.

Probably checking for my
breath. Just making sure she wasn’t riding with a corpse. Better
wait for her.

But he couldn’t resist. He had to have
that card.

Jacob turned the face of the phone to
him as he brought the digits to mind. He didn’t know if she still
lived there, but her dad would give him the new number if she
didn’t. He had three digits in before he stopped and hung up the
line.

What do we have
here?

Jacob’s eyes had focused in on
something in the kitchen. He thought of the hangover pain, how it
was in the background.

“Let’s see how good this works,” he
mumbled as he made his way for the counter. He picked up the
plastic sheath and pulled out the knife. With the blade in his
right hand, he looked over his body. He stopped at his
fingertips.

Yeah! That will do just
fine.

At first, he only dabbed at his middle
finger. That produced a slight tingle, but no blood and no
pain.

Come on, Jacob. Do you
want to know or not?

The next time he lowered the knife, it
was with more velocity. It broke the skin. Now there was blood. And
there was pain too. But again, the pain was only in the background,
just like the wall or the ceiling. He could sense it, but it wasn’t
him.

Too
easy
.

With the edge still in his fingertip,
Jacob moved it around a little, widening the gash. With the blood
running down his hand, Jacob pressed down until he felt it touch
and then penetrate the bone. Still, it was all in the
background.

Satisfied, he pulled the blade out. He
made a fist with his left hand to hold the blood in, while he
cleaned the knife in the kitchen sink. Then he rinsed off his
finger and wrapped it in a paper towel.

With the sensation of blood oozing out
of his finger, Jacob went back to his bedroom. His wallet sat on
the floor near his bags. Shaking his head at his own stupidity, he
grabbed it and went back for the phone. He sat his wallet on the
dining room table, and with his good hand, flipped through the
laminations until he found the right card.

“I know who you’re
calling.”

Startled, Jacob turned and saw her
standing in the hallway with a pill bottle in her hand.

“Easy, big brother. Jumping like that
isn’t going to do your head any good.”

“What?”

Tyla tilted her head and smiled. “Your
head. Come on now. You didn’t get in until after two this morning.
And you reek of the fumes.”

“Oh yeah. My head. Hangover.
Right.”

She laughed. “Anyway, Sonnie already
called. She said she would bring your car back around noon. But I
doubt you’ll be needing it for the rest of the day.”

Jacob reached over and shut his
wallet. “You’re probably right.”

“Oh! What happened there?”

Jacob looked at her questioningly and
then looked to where she was staring. The blood was now trickling
down his left arm in two small streams. “I cut myself earlier. No
big deal.”

Tyla had turned around before he got
it all out. She walked into the bathroom. There was the sound of
the facet running for a moment, and then she came back with a wet
washcloth. She handed it to him, and he used it to catch the blood.
Then she sat the bottle of pills down on the table.

“Here. Dad takes these for his knee
sometimes. They work wonders on a hangover. Take two of them, drink
some tomato juice and go back to bed.”

“You got it.”

“Mom said she’ll see you tonight if
you’re home. And she said she wants us all to go into town and
visit Grandma Putman tomorrow.”

“I’ll be there.

Tyla’s lips went straight on her face.
“Yeah. I guess I will too.” She sighed. “Well, bro. I got to work
today. I guess I’ll see you later. Oh! Make sure you put the pills
back on Dad’s dresser when you’re done.”

“Okay.”

Jacob walked past her and into the
bathroom. He got out a tube of antiseptic and some bandages. He
dressed the cut properly, while he waited for her to
leave.

#

Jacob sat
alone in the living room, phone in hand. On his lap sat a business
card flipped upside-down. Printed there in bold letters were seven
digits and the words,
home
phone
.

“Which means it’s all right to call
her on a Saturday.”

Jacob dialed the number. He sat back
and waited, half wanting for there to be no answer. On the eighth
ring, she picked up.

“Hello.”

“Hello, Dr. Ross.”

“Jacob?”

“Yes. You knew it was me.
Wow!”

“Well, I don’t know too many people
with southern accents.”

“I guess not.”

There was silence while Jacob thought
of how to broach it to her.

Luckily, Dr. Ross spoke next. “So
Jacob. Tell me, are you back home in Oklahoma?”

Jacob nodded as if she could see him.
Then, almost laughing, he asked, “Caller ID give me
away?”

“No. I had my caller ID removed two
days after I had it installed. I hated it. It made it too easy not
to think. And, you know, a lot of things make it easy not to think.
Other things make it easy not to feel. I think you may be familiar
with such things Jacob.”

Again, there was silence. Jacob could
picture her, sitting there, her finger and thumb making a V under
her chin.

“So Jacob, do you wonder how I knew
you were at home?”

“Yeah. How did you know? Help me
out.”

“That’s a good question. How did I
know?”

For the next few seconds he grasped
around for something in his mind. His thoughts felt sharp, but he
found nothing useful.

“I don’t know, Dr. Ross. I’m drawing a
blank.”

“Good.”

“Good?’

“Yes, that’s good. In fact, if you
weren’t confused, I might be worried. Because if you weren’t
confused, that would mean that you have already been down this road
before and that we are wasting time. Got me?”

“Kind of.”

“Good. Kind of is enough.”

Thoughts
went wild in Jacob’s head. Connections formed and he didn’t know
just why. There was suddenly a picture. It was he, driving to the
shale pit with the pistol in the seat beside him.
I went down the road
, he
thought.

“Now back to the question, Jacob. If
you want to know how I knew you were in Oklahoma, you merely need
to look at the facts. What are those facts, Jacob?”

Without hesitation, Jacob answered,
“Well, it’s summer. Lot’s of students go home in the
summer.”

“Yes. But not you. You might have
planned one or two weeks to go home, but not the whole summer. Am I
right?”

“Well, yes.”

“So odds are, I would have missed by
using that alone.”

“Then, I don’t understand.”