Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (90 page)

“Not to mention the people my grandma
was responsible for killing.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay. Then right now, there are
people out there who graduated before me and who graduated after me
that will come back someday and make this whole thing happen
again.”

“Yes.”

Jacob looked at Sonnie, who seemed
satisfied with her answer.

“But that assumes a lot,” he
said.

“You’re right. It does.”

“It assumes my grandma’s process was
just like mine.”

“And do you think it was?”

Jacob thought of her question and
before long he had an answer. “Yes, I do.”

“How?”

“Because of what the younger version
of Mr. Tomsak said in my dream.”

“What?”

“He said that this was not Astrology;
this is Chemistry.”

“Which makes it systematic and
lawful.”

Jacob nodded. Then he began to feel
himself slip away.

“So we got this now. We know what’s
going on.”

“Not quite. We still don’t know what
the fourth characteristic is.”

Sonnie wasn’t blurry. Nothing was. But
the room still had an unreal quality to it. Jacob felt like he was
watching it all through a movie screen, while his mind was fading
away into something else.

“Jacob, you’re going away aren’t you?
It’s happening again.”

“Yes.”

Jacob could not see her, but he heard
her voice.

“Then go.”

#

The door that led to the sidewalk
outside Sonnie’s apartment leads to a long hallway. There are
several doors that line the hallway. They are all white. Each has a
small square window in the corner, and each window is lined with
wire mesh.

Jacob looks inside several of these
windows and sees the same thing inside of each one. Each contains
its own male child. And every child is silent and motionless. Jacob
stops looking after he checks a few rooms. He waits, knowing that
what he needs will come to him. Eventually, one of the doors opens
down the hall.

Two men come out of that room and walk
in Jacob’s direction. One of the men is black, the other white.
Both are wearing white scrub pants and white t-shirts. Each has a
plastic badge clipped to his shirt.

“Those are some wacked out pictures,”
the white man says.

“Yeah. He drew them without ever
saying a word, then he just went back into that trance.”

They continue to walk after they pass
Jacob. They walk around a corner and then out of Jacob’s sight.
Jacob moves to the room they left. He floats through the
door.

The first thing Jacob sees is the
human figure on the bed in the corner of the room.

“Pete Stebens.”

Pete’s eyes are wide-open but dull.
His face is expressionless. Jacob thinks he looks even further gone
than his grandmother usually looks.

“Can you hear me, Pete?”

There is no response.

“Pete can you tell me how this
happened?”

Pete suddenly gasps for air and comes
to life just a little more. He turns his head slowly. At first he
seems to look at Jacob, and then he seems to look past him. Pete
lifts a rigid arm up. Then he draws four fingers back, leaving one
pointing finger out. Jacob turns around and sees what Pete is
pointing at.

He moves in for closer inspection of
four pieces of posterboard hanging on the wall. The pictures are
drawn fairly well. At least, Jacob is easily able to make out all
the details. In the first, there are two boys sitting in front of a
TV with what looks like video game pads in their hands. One of the
boys is obviously older than the other, but, by the big red smiles
drawn on their faces, they look very happy.

The second picture is exactly the same
as the first, except behind the boys, coming through an open door,
is a green snake. In the third picture the snake has wrapped itself
around the smaller boy’s neck.

Then there is the final picture. It
saddens Jacob to look at it. He is sad because he understands, or
at least he thinks he understands, the purpose of the pictures now.
They are merely a wish.

The fourth picture shows the two boys
in the background leaping with joy. In front of them, a big black
dog is standing up on its hind legs. In the dog’s mouth is what
looks like several clothes hangers tied together. On the end of
these hangers is the head of a dead snake.

He’s not sure whether it’s the boy
behind him that says it or it’s his imagination supplied by the
memory. But the last thing Jacob hears before he’s back in Sonnie’s
apartment is Pete Stebens’s ecstatic voice.

“Kill the snake, Sam!”

#

Sonnie came into his vision, slowly,
and through a fuzzy blur. Jacob could tell by the way she stared at
him that she was waiting anxiously for what he had. They were on
the floor of her living room.

“How long was I gone?”

“Five minutes, maybe. And you
talked.”

“What did I say?”

“I couldn’t make out all the words,
but I know it had something to do with Pete Stebens.”

Jacob nodded.

Sonnie paused for a few seconds and
than spit out her next question a little nervously. “So, do you
know what happened to Tommy Carmichael?”

Jacob smirked. “I didn’t kill him. I
had nothing to do with it.”

“So what happened? Who killed
him?”

“He did.”

“Pete Stebens?”

Jacob smirked again. Then he noticed
Sonnie drawing back and her face changing a little.

“No. Sorry. I don’t mean it like . .
.”

“I know.”

Jacob smiled at her. She seemed a
little more at ease.

“It wasn’t me or Pete Stebens who
killed Tommy. It was him, the man in white.”

“The man in white?”

“Yeah.”

“Why? I mean, why would Tommy
Carmichael be different than any of the others?”

“I don’t know.”

Jacob stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“Nowhere. I just . . .”

Sonnie stood up with him. “Well, I
don’t know how much it matters now.”

“It must matter, Sonnie, or I wouldn’t
have seen it. There’s some kind of message for me.”

“So, you’ll figure it out. We’ll
figure it out. Don’t worry about it.”

Sonnie hugged Jacob, and after a few
seconds, began to move on him. Jacob tried to move away. She
grabbed the sleeves of his shirt.

“What? I’m safe now. And I’m tired of
waiting for you.”

Jacob hesitated, then pulled her to
him. This time, when she started to move, he let himself savor her.
He put his hand on her back and let it drop slowly down. She backed
off a little and undid his pants.

Sonnie pulled off his shirt and kissed
him on the chest. She slowly made her way down, kissing him as she
went. When she made it to her knees, she lowered all that was
covering him. She stared for just a moment and then pulled her hair
back away from her face. Then she took him in her mouth.

Jacob closed his eyes and focused only
on his cock. He noticed every movement of her tongue and felt the
intense heat of her mouth. He moaned, and she worked harder. He put
his hands in her hair and caressed her slowly. He reached down and
pulled up on her shirt. Sonnie straightened her body out and put
her arms above her head. When the shirt was off, she went back down
on him. He removed her bra without her stopping.

Jacob began to want her too much. He
wanted to be in her. He thought about pulling her up, moving her to
the couch and doing to her what she was doing to him. In his mind,
he was ready. In his mind, he was past the point of no return. He
started to pull her up by the shoulders.

The monster inside of him rose
suddenly, and he took her by the hair instead.

“Ow! Jacob!”

He pulled her to her feet. She
struggled, but his grip was too tight. She stopped struggling. He
turned her around.

Jacob was about to separate her from
her pants, when he glanced into the kitchen and saw the object
sitting on the end of the shelf. Suddenly, he knew that was the
object. That was what he wanted to use to hurt her. It was a desire
he couldn’t quench without performing the act. Jacob looked at the
naked skin of her back. He wanted to see it burn. He wanted to
watch her skin rise with the steam coming off of it. Jacob wanted
to use hot water from that teakettle.

This time it didn’t take a telepathic
phone ringing to bring Jacob back. It seemed like it was just
enough to know what he wanted. It flowed out of him. Sonnie turned
around, and from the terrified look on her face, it had flowed out
of her too.

“Jacob!”

“It’s okay, Sonnie. I’m myself
again.”

She started to dress. “Jacob?
How?”

“I don’t know.”

He stared in at the teakettle. It
seemed so ominous now. “There’s something for me to know
here.”

“What?”

“There’s something for me to
know!”

Now Jacob began to dress. Sonnie was
crying.

Jacob pulled his clothes on quickly.
“Sonnie, it’s nothing that can’t be fixed.”

He pulled on her hand. She resisted
for a second and then came in quickly.

“Okay,” she said.

“I’m going to leave, and I’ll come
back when I’m sure that I’m not going to hurt you.”

She let go of him. He looked at her
wet face and then turned around.

Chapter 13

There were no aides in the hall when
Jacob walked in. On his way to his grandma’s room, he heard one
from another one of the resident’s rooms. He thought it might have
been Lacey, the one he had talked to the day before. Jacob rushed
to avoid talking to her or anyone else. But he did take the time to
grab the stethoscope from the front desk.

The door to Oletta Putman’s room was
open when Jacob got there. Her roommate, Sara, was out. Jacob found
Oletta asleep in her bed. He shut the door. He walked up beside the
bed and pulled the curtain, hiding them from anyone whom might come
in.

“Grandma, I need your help
again.”

Oletta Putman’s eyes opened slightly,
then shut again.

“I have to know something, Grandma. I
have to know if I’m always going to be this way.”

Jacob placed the stethoscope up to her
mouth. His grandma opened her eyes again, but she did not
speak.

“You left Dean Carrier. Should I leave
Sonnie?”

Her eyes moved open a little more,
almost like a gesture of surprise. Then they relaxed again without
closing completely. She spoke. “No.”

“I won’t hurt her then? I won’t kill
her?”

“Wait.”

“Wait? Wait for what,
Grandma?”

Through the stethoscope, Jacob heard
crackling. From the sound of it, Oletta was not going to continue
much longer. “Lifts.”

“Lifts?” Jacob tried to think of it on
his own, and he decided that maybe he knew what that meant. “Okay.
I’ll wait.” Jacob leaned over and kissed her on the head. “Thank
you, Grandma.”

When he raised back up and started to
turn around, he saw the new look in her eyes. Then he saw the veins
in her neck rise. Finally, there was the crackling sound she made,
so loud he could hear it without the stethoscope.

“What? There’s something more you want
to tell me?” He put the stethoscope back up to her mouth. At first,
she was only silent. Then she started with the noise
again.

“Just a second.”

Jacob got the notepad and the crayon
back out. He set the crayon in her fist and placed the notepad on
the tray in front of her. Slowly, but immediately, her hand began
to trace out the first letter. It took a few minutes, but Oletta
got the green letter on the page.

“Okay. That’s an E.”

With only a moment’s pause, his
grandmother began the second letter next to the first. This one was
also slow, but it didn’t take quite as long.

“N.”

The third letter was next to the
second but a little at a diagonal. It was the easiest of the three
to write.

“D. End. You want me to end
something.”

In a jerking movement, his grandmother
moved the crayon down the page. Then she began the next set. The
first and second were merely straight lines, one bigger than the
other.

“L and I.”

On the next letter, she started to
slow down, but Jacob recognized it early, after only a couple of
strokes.

“Another N.”

The next letter was the same way. It
was slow, but Jacob was quick to see what it was intended to
be.