Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (17 page)

The fear rose in Jonah for
a little while. But then, after having these thoughts, not trying
to deny them, not trying to deal with them, just having them, the
fear naturally began to dwindle, and he became more interested in
the movie. He actually laughed a couple of times.

Then there was the
scratching, and it was right at the front door.

Fear came back. Jonah was
frozen.

Please, just go
away.

Again, there was the
scratching.

Jonah wondered if what was
at the door was here to punish him. He remembered the cats from the
night before. Last night, they had been a threat. They had been a
warning for him not to do what he went ahead and did anyway, and
now he would be punished. Regardless of the dancer’s reaction,
Jonah had forced her, and now he was going to be
punished.

The scratching sounded
again, and Jonah got quietly off the couch. He started to creep
back to his bedroom, then heard it again. But this time, another
noise followed. A desperate whine.

Jonah froze, standing in
the hall. He waited there, confused and afraid, but also curious.
What was at the door hadn’t sounded threatening.

The scratching sounded
again. Whatever was at his door was persistent. Jonah still just
stood in the hallway. He didn’t know what to do. Would it go away
if he kept ignoring it? Or would it continue to beckon him all
night?

A minute passed without the
noise coming back. Jonah continued to wait, but then a couple of
more minutes passed. Jonah finally felt safe enough to check it out
further. He crept slowly toward the front door. He was halfway
there, when he thought he heard something. It wasn’t the scratching
sound, though, and it wasn’t the whine. It was the sound of
whatever was out there moving away. Jonah gave it plenty of time to
clear out.

With baby steps, Jonah
moved the rest of the way to the door. He looked through the
peephole and made out a part of his small porch, the sidewalk and
the parking lot beyond. He could see a couple of the cars in that
lot, but nothing else.

Jonah unbolted the door,
then he unlocked it. He opened the door just enough to peep
outside. That was enough for Jonah to see what had been delivered
to him.

Jonah opened the wooden
door the rest of the way, then inspected the screen. He had left
its storm window up. Whatever had been out there had torn off the
wire mesh that had been left. There were several slight scratches
on the wooden door. But what interested Jonah the most was the
piece of clothing between the screen and wooden doors. He picked it
up and looked closer at it. He recognized it immediately as the
dancer’s teddy.

#

The morning came, and Jonah
still had the dancer’s teddy. It was in his bedroom on his dresser.
He had not felt so much like he had fallen asleep after finding the
teddy, so much as sleep just came and got him. He had dreamt all
night. Over and over, he had been in his office, having sex with
some woman. But he could never see her face. He knew by the feel of
her body and the feel of being inside her that the woman changed
into a different woman each time he had the dream. But each time,
when he went to look at the face, it and the surrounding room would
blur out. The scene would then seem to be shifting into some new
place, and he seemed to be becoming some other person, only to
switch back to his office, his body, and some new woman without a
face.

When Jonah finally awoke,
it was like he was being let out of sleep, released by a captor in
his brain.

He questioned the teddy.
Why was it here? Who or what had brought it to him? It was stained
with blood, so should he call the police? Was it possible that he
was a killer? Had he gone mad, and this was just his mind’s crazy
representation of his wicked deed? Had he killed her, then set the
whole scene up for himself?

Jonah found the answers. At
least, he thought he found the answers, when he turned on the
television. It was just a news flash, but it was enough.

They would not release the
identity of the victim as of yet, but they did show a picture of
the club, Mama’s Place. Otherwise, the reporter said a young dancer
had been attacked and killed by a wolf as she left the club around
2:30AM that morning.

Jonah turned off the
television. He felt a sense of relief, because he now knew he had
not killed the woman. Then there was confusion. Jonah had no idea
what was going on. Then, finally, after it sat with him for a few
minutes, the strangest feeling of all occurred. Jonah liked
it.

#

To hell with the dead girl.
He was alive, and he would live. He would take.

He’d had slight concerns
during the course of Sunday. He’d struggled a little with the guilt
of what he knew he had done and the things he hadn’t done but
thought he might be otherwise responsible for. But, for the most
part, these feelings were overwhelmed by his urge. Take.

It was a little after four
when Jonah got back in his car. He wasn’t sure what he wanted. So
he just drove around aimlessly for a while. Then he wanted food. It
wasn’t so much that he was hungry, though. He just wanted to eat,
to destroy the substance of flesh.

Jonah stopped at Northern
Steakhouse, there in Stanton. But he didn’t get out of his car,
because he knew they would not give it to him like he wanted
it.

Jonah drove to the grocery
store. Inside were many people. But he didn’t look directly at
them. They were all below him, incapable of knowing what he could
know, unable to do what he could do. The many faces could offer
nothing for him. What he wanted, he would take.

Jonah wasted no time. He
went directly to the meat. He grabbed two packages of steak at
random. The quality didn’t matter. It need only be flesh. He went
to checkout.

He had to wait in line,
which seemed wrong to him. Why should he, with all he was, have to
wait for these insignificant bodies? After about three minutes of
waiting, it was finally his turn. Jonah sat his two packages on the
conveyer belt.

“How are you today?” a female voice
said from behind the counter.

Jonah did not respond.

“Don’t feel like talking, huh,” the
girl said as she scanned his items.

Jonah glared at her. She
was familiar. He didn’t care. “Must you speak?” he asked in a loud
voice.

The girl’s face looked
angry at first. But then, in a matter of two seconds of looking
into Jonah’s eyes, she was afraid.

“Now, there’s no need to be
rude,” a male voice said.

Jonah turned toward that
voice and saw the next customer in line, a big, middle-aged
male.

“And there’s no need to be
stupid, either,” Jonah said. “But that doesn’t seem to stop
you.”

The man pivoted his hips
back. He looked as if he might strike. But then, staring at Jonah’s
face, the man wilted, stepping backward. “I don’t want any
trouble,” the man said.

Jonah turned away from him
and handed the girl his debit card. Nobody said another word to him
inside the store.

Jonah, his steaks in a bag
under his arm, walked toward his car. But he did not intend to
leave. He wanted to wait for the man to come out. But Jonah got in
his car anyway. As much as tearing into the man, making him cry and
beg, appealed to Jonah, there was another urge that appealed to him
more. He had an idea.

He found the number on his
cell phone and hit the send key. She picked up on the third
ring.

“Hello,” Steph said.

“Hello, Steph. It’s
Jonah.”

“Oh. Hi boss. Is everything
okay?”

“Things could not be
better, my dear.”

Steph laughed, kind of
coyly.

“I want you to have dinner
with me tonight,” Jonah blurted out. “Can you come to my
place?”

After a few seconds, Steph
said, “Well, sure. When do you want me to come over?”

“As soon as you can.”

“All right,” Steph said,
surprise in her tone, but no apparent hesitancy. “I just need to
get cleaned up a bit. I’ll be there in about an hour.”

“Good,” Jonah said, then hung
up.

#

Ripping through the meat.
Feeling its nearly raw texture, so natural. Tasting the blood.
Wishing he had not cooked it at all.

Jonah had timed it so that
the steak would be done about the time Steph got there. But then,
as soon as it began to sizzle, the brutality of it, the flesh
burning, got to him. He liked it. But it only increased the
craving. He wanted to taste it raw, to taste the blood, to taste it
as close as he could to tasting it while it was still alive, as if
he were taking its life himself as he took the flesh in his
body.

Jonah was finishing the
last of the four rare steaks, when he heard Steph knock on the
door. Standing in the kitchen, right above the pan on the stove,
where he’d eaten the meat from, a box of pasta mix still sitting
off on the counter, Jonah smiled. His hands still sticky, the taste
of blood still in his mouth, Jonah went to answer the
door.

Steph wore a pair of white
shorts and a red T-shirt, as casual as Jonah had ever seen her. She
didn’t say anything while she stood in the doorway. She just looked
at him with an amused expression. Jonah was a little confused, but
mostly indifferent to her amusement. She need only come in the door
at this point. No, not even that. He would force her in, if
necessary.

Steph brushed her chin with
a finger, and Jonah got the hint. He touched his goatee, which was
wet with the blood from the steak. Jonah didn’t bother to clean it,
though. He moved out of the way, and Steph kind of strolled in, the
amused look on her face all the while. Jonah shut the door, then
walked right up to where she stood in the middle of the living
room.

“It looks like you already had
dinner,” Steph said.

Jonah didn’t care about her
comment. He took her head between his hands. He pulled her face to
his. She offered no resistance. Jonah kissed her hard, their teeth
actually gnashing together. Steph moaned. Jonah couldn’t tell
whether it was because of the pain or because of her arousal. But,
either way, he didn’t care too much, and Steph still offered no
resistance.

Jonah reached inside her
arms, behind her back, and down her body. He groped the back of her
thighs and her ass even harder than he was kissing her. He lifted
her about a foot into the air, raising her shorts up her ass,
feeling the bare skin underneath, firm but smooth. He sat her back
down on the floor, and in one swoop, took down both her shorts and
her panties.

She made a soft but
high-pitched sound, which Jonah all but ignored. He dropped to his
knees, running his fingernails down her thighs as he went. She
squealed, this time in obvious pain, but, again, he did not care.
On his knees, with his face a few inches from her little bush,
Jonah spread her legs out, and Steph stepped the rest of the way
out of her shorts and panties. First, Jonah caressed the soft hair
as she squirmed a little. Then he placed two fingers between her
legs to pull the lips up. Jonah licked those lips and her clit,
softly, several times.

“Oh yes!” Steph said out
loud, as if she had been anticipating this. She was a whore, and
Jonah liked that.

What he tasted was salty,
but good, even better than the rare steak, but it was not enough.
It was not enough because he knew he could have more. Jonah put his
entire head between her legs and stuck his tongue way up inside
her. He licked her and sucked her hard, Steph squirming, moaning,
and begging him for more the whole time. After less than a minute,
she had an orgasm.

Not sick of tasting way up
inside her, but anticipating fucking her, Jonah came up. He lifted
Steph off the floor again, but this time placed her on the
couch.

Jonah began to undress, and
Steph removed her shirt and bra. Both of them naked, Jonah standing
above her, Steph asked, “Do you have protection?”

“Shut the fuck up!” Jonah said as he
got on top of her.

“Jonah, I’m . . .”

Jonah shoved himself into
her, and Steph shut up. She didn’t speak again, until Jonah started
to move faster. Then she began to yell.

“Yes, Jonah! Fuck me! Oh my
God! Fuck me hard! Give it to me!”

When Jonah’s breath picked
up, Steph seemed to cue into that he was about to climax. She
started to pull away. All of the sudden, Jonah knew he couldn’t let
her do that. He held himself in and came way up inside
her.

#

Though Jonah had been
surprised about how receptive Steph had been to his sexual advances
and then to his aggressive sex, he thought he understood it. Steph
was his office manager, so she knew how much money he made, and if
she were indeed the evolutionarily designed gold digger he
suspected, then she would pretty much do whatever he wanted in the
early stages of her plan. Of course, by evolutionary theory,
Steph’s looseness for him was not necessarily consciously designed.
No, her need to secure a powerful male—in modern times,
economically proficient male—had been programmed by years of
evolution, which was pressed into the unconscious mind. At the
surface, she might have just found herself extremely attracted to
Jonah.