Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (85 page)

“Wow! It’s a snake!”

Pete rushes forward and so does Sam
the dog. The old man catches the dog but spills his whiskey bottle
in the process. For the first time since it started across the
yard, the rattler seems to notice its audience. It curls up
quickly, draws back its head, and sets its hissing tail end in
motion.

“Now Petie, you get back here,” the
old man says. “That thing will strike you deader than a
rock.”

Pete stops a couple of yards from the
snake. It opens its mouth, revealing deadly fangs. Pete looks back
at the porch, smiling from ear to ear, seemingly indifferent to the
notion of being dead.

“Come on now. You done made Grandpa
spill his drink.”

Pete takes a few steps back and sits
on the first step of the porch. He folds his hands in his lap and
twists his fingers into each other as he watches the snake watch
him.

The old man shakes his head. “Kid
ain’t got the sense God gave a mule, but we’re going to give him a
show anyway. Ain’t we Sam?”

Sam shakes and whines at the mention
of her name. She looks back and forth from the old man to the
snake.

“All right, girl. You
ready?”

Sam gives out a loud bark. The rattler
turns and heads back toward the bush.

“There she goes! Go get her
girl!”

After being released, Sam darts
forward. She catches the rattler by the tail and slings it across
the yard. It lands and rolls as it curls up helplessly. Then it
gathers itself and resumes fighting position. Sam comes up and
meets the snake eye to eye. They hold that position, the only
movement the snake’s forked tongue.

“Kill the snake, Sam!” the old man
shouts, causing Pete to laugh.

The snake darts forward, and Sam moves
to the side, then behind the creature. Sam grabs its tail again and
flings. This time, the snake lands near Pete and turns toward him.
It rears back to strike again, before Sam comes back up from
behind. Sam resets the snake back to the middle of the
yard.

“Kill the snake, Sam!” the old man
shouts.

“Yeah Sam. Kill the snake!” Pete
shouts.

The basic process is repeated several
times. The snake instinctively darts forward, and Sam moves to the
side and behind. Every time the snake lands, it seems to roll and
reset a little slower. Its movements seem more and more just
nervous reactions. The killing is near over when Jacob hears a
phone ring from inside the house.

The two people on the porch with Jacob
seem indifferent to the ringing. Jacob walks through the screen
door and into the house. Inside the house is a mess of empty tin
cans and whiskey bottles. Old furniture is covered with stains that
Jacob doesn't want to know about. Red ants, cockroaches and dozens
of swarming black flies compete for the bounty of spills and
leftovers scattered about the place. Somewhere, a phone rings
louder and louder.

Jacob looks from room to room, finding
nothing but the same old neglected mess. Once all the rooms are
covered, he passes through the back wall of the house. The ringing
is even louder now. Jacob covers his ears but it doesn't seem to
help. He notices that it’s not his ears that the ringing hurts. But
he can’t identify what it is exactly. All he knows is that he wants
the ringing to stop.

In the backyard is a brown shed. Jacob
walks to it, and then he walks through the door. On the inside,
Jacob looks into the stream of light that comes in through a hole
in the back wall. It flows down to his body. Jacob sees that one of
his feet has gone through a gas can and rests on the inside.
Without knowing how, but knowing that he does, Jacob pulls himself
from the vision.

#

Jacob came to surrounded by busy
Oklahoma City traffic. With the ringing still in his ears, he hit
the first exit he saw. At the edge of the exit ramp he turned right
and drove to a gas station. He parked his car and looked around. On
the other side of a newspaper rack, right out in front of the
station, a large woman in a tank top was smoking a brown cigarette
and talking on the pay phone.

Jacob stared at her intently until she
caught his gaze. She made eye contact once and then looked away.
She turned back toward him a few seconds later and then held her
stare as she moved her lips quickly. She hung up the phone and
picked up a grocery bag. She turned and looked at him one last time
as she moved hastily away. When he opened his car door, she moved
even faster.

Jacob went over to the phone and
picked up the receiver. The ringing stopped. This time the voice
was there immediately.

“Ya . . . Ya . . . Ya . .
.”

It was so labored and so pathetic
sounding that Jacob could barely stand it. It was just a little
more bearable than the ringing. The voice continued for just a
little while, constantly losing volume until it faded into a
crackling sound. Jacob hung up the line.

Jacob got into his car and started
back to Nescata. There was still so much he wanted to
know.

Chapter 10

Jacob was able to ride in peace, but
only for a little while. The ringing started up again. It was
distant. It grew in intensity, but it grew slowly, guiding him. It
led him to Nescata, then it led him straight out of town. It led
him down the same old dirt road and then up the driveway to his
parents’ home. Sitting in his car, he could tell that it was coming
from inside the house. He waited in his car for a few more minutes,
just to see what would happen. The ringing only grew louder. Jacob
went inside.

The phone sat in the little nook in
the dining room. Jacob looked at the little light that flashed when
the phone rang. It was still. He picked up the line.

Jacob heard two things. He heard the
dial tone from the phone in his ear. And he heard the ringing that
had not stopped. The ringing had only moved. It was quieter, more
distant. It was now coming from the back of the house. He followed
the sound back into his parents’ room. There, on the other side of
the bed, was another phone. That was where the ringing had moved.
Jacob crossed the room and picked up the line.

This time there was somebody there
with the dial tone, but it was only breath and an occasional gasp.
After a few seconds, the person went away and Jacob hung up the
line. He stood there for just a moment, something vague inside of
him. It was like the urge he had just before the visions, but
different. It was weaker and less binding. It was from a different
source.

He stood there and tried to convince
himself it was real. But he wasn't sure, and he didn’t think he
should try to force it.

There was a sense of disappointment,
of leaving something behind, as Jacob walked out of the room, but
there was also hope. If what he had just experienced was real, then
there was more than one force. And maybe these forces were against
each other.

#

The two women are there again. The
body that had been spraying blood has slowed down now. Jacob can
hear her heart fading out. But the other’s heart is loud. It has
much more life. This is the one Jacob stands above.

He wants to touch her. He wants to rub
his fingers up her blood-covered skin. He wants to feel between her
splayed legs. He wants to feel her die.

Jacob moves in, feeling the wicked
fire absorb his mind. He reaches down and watches his hand flow
through her. He steps back and tries to make himself satisfied with
just seeing.

The woman quivers and Jacob laughs
like a monster. She moves her head a little to the side, and Jacob
can almost see her face. For a moment, he wants to know her, to see
who she is, but this desire fades with the blood rushing through
him.

Jacob notices that the part of him
sensing his own touch, the part of him feeling the contracting
muscles, the part that senses the blood flowing through his veins
like electricity, is somewhere else. Only his vision and an
ethereal sense of his own being are there with him now.

When Jacob speaks, he hears his voice
off in the distance, like a radio announcer on a stormy day. “I’m a
monster! I love it! I want it! I want to see you bleed! I want it!
I want it!”

Jacob feels himself start to flow back
into the person who is standing in the bathroom. There is a blur
that comes with the street fading away. He allows himself to flow
back, the throb and the fire down low telling him that he will soon
be done anyway. The vision is most of the way out. It becomes a
mixture of the bathroom and the street.

There is a mirror and a transparent
wall with the street on the other side. The street is pulling away.
Jacob is nearly satisfied, ready to explode, when he sees the white
figure standing in the street.

He is in the bathroom now. He feels
whole again, like one thing. But now the street is in the mirror in
front of him. Jacob stands, eyes glued to that mirror, as the man
in white approaches. Jacob is pulled back in, body and all. He is
standing with the man in white, who looks back at him, his lips
pulled tight. His arrogance is not there.

The man in white turns to the woman
whom, earlier, Jacob stood over. In a quick motion, he waves a hand
in the woman’s direction. Her body flips with it. Her arms make a T
with the rest of her body. Her face is still recognizable through
the bloody mess of hair and ripped skin.

Jacob drops to his knees. “Oh my God.
She didn’t see me doing that. Dr. Ross didn’t see me doing that.”
He turns to the man in white. “You killed, Dr. Ross. Why would you
do that? She’s not even a part of Nescata.”

The man in white still won’t speak.
His eyes look tired as they stare at Jacob. He moves his hand
again. This time the movement causes the woman to open her eyes.
Her lips move, but they move unnaturally, like they are unconnected
to the muscles of her face.

“I’m going to be gone on vacation for
the next couple of weeks. Actually, I was standing at the door with
my bags in hand when you called.”

“I’m sorry,” Jacob says.

Jacob catches the man in white’s
movement in his peripheral vision. Dr. Ross closes her eyes again
and then she flips back over. Seeing her this way again, Jacob’s
stomach begins to turn. He looks up at the man in white.

“I killed her.”

The man in white stands tall above
him, a blank expression on his face. Suddenly, he turns his head.
Then, seconds later, there is the sound. Jacob reflexively turns
his head, then he moves in a circle. He finally looks back at the
man in white.

“You hear it too.”

The man in white fades away. Jacob is
aware of being taken back.

#

Jacob ran out of the bathroom to
answer the phone. Again, the ringing came from his parents’ room.
He darted through the door and jumped across the bed.

Nothing.

“Hello. Come on. Say
something.”

Still, there was nothing. Jacob hung
up the line and got off the bed. He was turned around, ready to
leave, when the ringing came back. This time he walked slowly
around the bed, but the phone stopped ringing when he stuck a hand
out to pick it up.

He took a couple of steps backwards
and then turned around. Again, the ringing started.

He threw his hands up to his ears.
“Stop! Please, stop!”

The phone continued to ring. Stepping
forward was enough to make it stop this time. Jacob grabbed the
phone and ripped it from the wall. He threw it to a chair in the
corner of the room.

He stood there, panting in
frustration. “Come on! Fuck with me!”

He turned again. This time when the
phone rang, he continued to move. It didn't go away, but it grew
fainter. He continued to move and it grew quieter with each step.
Less frustrated and more intrigued, Jacob turned back toward the
ringing. With each step, it became louder, as he moved very slowly
to it. By the time he was halfway there, the phone was more than
ringing. It was screaming to him. He moved closer to it. The
ringing went down. By the time he was standing within reaching
distance, the ringing was barely noticeable.

“All right then.”

He backed away as slowly as he had
come. Again, the ringing seemed to respond. With each creeping
step, it became a little louder. Again, it peaked in the middle of
the room. That was where Jacob stopped.

Just as it did with his steps, the
intensity of the ringing ebbed and flowed inside the circle he
made. It was loudest when he turned to the foot of the bed. He
dropped down to the floor. He reached under the bed and began
pulling things out at random, the loudness telling him he was going
in the right direction. Soon there were many things on the floor:
his mom’s shoes, an old pair of nylons, a pair of gloves. He
stretched out as far as he could, until he felt leather. He pulled
out a photo album. It was a faded brown thing with scratches all
over the cover. He flipped through the pages, not even noticing the
old pictures inside. He only attended to the ever-increasing
ringing. Finally, when it seemed as if it could get no louder, it
stopped. Jacob looked down at the page in front of him.