Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (22 page)

“I became more fascinated
with the sense than afraid of it. I even researched it. I read
stories of others like me. Most go mad. You’ve met a few of the mad
ones. In your position, where you see hundreds of psychotics, you
were bound to.”

Tate was one of them. He
was a more refined version of the client who had attacked Jonah and
the two that had run away.

“I read a lot on the
paranormal while in college. But that was mostly just academic
knowledge. It was when I was in graduate school that I truly came
to understand the paranormal experientially. I took a hypnosis
course, and I blended what I learned about hypnosis with what
meditation had taught me. I began hypnotizing myself, and I opened
up a part of me that I had not had access to. It showed up in my
dreams. I met a man there. He told me his name and showed me what
he had done. I researched him and found out that he was real, not
just a figure in my dreams. The man showed me this place, Stanton,
Michigan. I came here and waited.”

Tate smiled and began to
speak louder. “I was here for two years. I was beginning to think
that I had made a mistake. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to come here.
Then, one day I was sitting in my apartment when I was suddenly hit
by the sense. What I heard was a hundred times louder than what I’d
ever heard before, and the sense was a hundred times stronger. I
looked out the window and saw what I thought was the man who had
intruded my dreams, but it wasn’t the man at all, Jonah. It was the
man’s son.”

Tate stood up, and Jonah
felt his heart pick up. It would soon be over.

“I know what your father
did, Jonah, and I’m not about to let you do the same or worse.”
Tate looked at the table, and Jonah did too. What would it be, the
gun or the syringes? Tate looked back at Jonah. Then he laughed.
“Oh shit, bro! You thought . . .” Tate laughed again. “No, bro. The
gun's not for you. It’s for the animals, in case one of them should
somehow get in. And the syringes are your breakfast. One’s coffee.
The other two are food. The white one’s a dietary supplement,
packed with all kinds of vitamins and shit. You’re going to need
your energy, at least at first. The other one is soup.”

Tate laughed again, and
said, “Come on, bro. Give me some credit. Killing you would be way
too easy. I wouldn’t have spent all this time working with you,
just to kill you.” Tate picked up the syringe he claimed had coffee
in it. He brought it over to Jonah. “I’m sorry I had to restrain
you so much, bro. I’m afraid that what is in you would kill me
otherwise. And if I took off the tape it would make you yell out
until someone came and stopped me. It has to be this
way.”

Tate adeptly stabbed the
needle through the tape and into Jonah’s mouth without cutting him.
“Now, you’re going to have to trust me and take this in,
bro.”

Jonah didn’t completely
trust Tate, but he didn’t see where he had another option. He let
Tate feed him breakfast.

#

Tate left Jonah shortly
after feeding him. Jonah sat alone as his breakfast sat in. Before,
he had not noticed all of the discomforts of being tied. He had
been too tired and too afraid to dwell on such things. But now,
with the food in his stomach, he had to go to the bathroom. And,
awake enough to attend to himself, his skin was beginning to
itch.

Jonah wasn’t sure his sense
of time was accurate right now, but he thought Tate must have been
gone for at least an hour. Finally, Tate came back and sat in the
same chair he had sat in before. He had a thick roll of tape in his
hand.

“I’ve been listening to
what’s inside you, bro. It’s been quiet since you woke
up.”

Jonah thought Tate was
probably right. He hadn’t felt any of the urges since he had come
to the last time.

“It was active last night,
while you were out, though. Not like it’s active when it’s sending
out its messages. More like it was just toying with your
head.”

Yeah, something had been
toying with his head last night. But was that something
Tate?

“I’m going to keep you
bound, bro. The reason is that I think it will be good for
you.”

Yeah
right
, Jonah thought. This was sounding
more like a hoax.

“If I keep you tied, it
will force you to deal with a lot of the sensations your body gives
you. You’ll have to do the work that we have to do with them there.
And proceeding without being able to satisfy even the most basic of
urges is something you’ll have to learn how to do. You’re going to
have to learn how to watch what’s in your head at all times, no
matter the state of your body and mind.”

That made sense. He’d had
to learn to not satisfy the smoking urge no matter how much his
mind and body were screaming at him. But, even though it made
sense, he was still wary of Tate.

“Now, I take it from watching you that
the meditation worked and you’ve learned how to resist
it.”

Jonah nodded.

“So, if I take the tape off your mouth
for a little while, and it rises up, you’ll be able to resist
it?”

Again, Jonah nodded.

Tate got up, the roll of
tape still in his hand, no doubt wanting to be prepared for an
emergency. He reached out, and in a quick swipe that took out
facial hair, removed the tape.

For a few seconds, they
just stared at each other. Then Tate said, “I’m going to put that
back on in a little while. I want you completely focused on your
experience, and talking may prevent that. But I wanted to give you
a chance to air out anything you needed to before we get
started.”

Jonah wondered if Tate knew
he was wary of him. But then he thought Tate probably did know
that. This was Tate, after all.

That was what he wanted to
satisfy now. Could he trust Tate? Could he trust Tate after what he
saw last night?

“The bird,” Jonah said, his voice
rough.

“What?” Tate
asked.

“The bird that was trapped between the
doors,” Jonah said.

Tate looked briefly at the
door, then back to Jonah. He smiled. “I had to strangle it, bro. It
was making too much noise. I couldn’t let it out. I wasn’t about to
open that door, because who knows what I would have let in.
Besides, after what was in it, with its small brain, it never would
have made it anyway.”

“Where is it?” Jonah
demanded.

“It’s in the trash, bro.”

“Show it to me?”

“Why?” Tate asked. He
looked truly surprised. Of course, Tate could do that, act naïve
when he knew exactly what you were talking about.

Jonah didn’t say why, but
he didn’t have to. Tate walked into the kitchen. A few seconds
later, he came out with the trashcan. He tilted it so Jonah could
see inside. The crow’s head was twisted around backward, but it was
still attached.

Jonah said, “Okay.”

Tate looked at him oddly,
then went to put the trashcan away. He came out and put another
piece of tape over Jonah’s mouth. “Now, bro. You need to sit here
in the discomfort. I want you to practice noticing any sensation
that comes into your body and any thought that comes inside your
head. Just like when we were meditating.”

Tate left the
room.

#

Jonah was deprived of
pretty much everything. There was the view of the table and the
wall. Turning his head, he could make out the edge of his
entertainment center and the wall on one side. On the other side,
he could see into his kitchen and a bookshelf against the wall. He
could also see down his body and the floor below.

It didn’t take long for all
that to seem like nothing. Then it was just the miserable
sensations. His body went from itching to burning, as he sweated
beneath the rope and his clothing. His bladder seemed to swell more
and more, begging for relief.

At first, Jonah tried to
ignore the sensations, distracting himself with thoughts, running
songs through his head, thinking of clients he’d seen, books he’d
read. All of these distracters were temporary solutions that faded
into the same things, the nagging sensations. Soon, Jonah couldn’t
think of the distracters at all, his urge to piss and his urge to
scratch too strong. He gave up on trying to ignore these urges. He
suffered for a while. Then he remembered what Tate had taught him.
Instead of denying the sensations, Jonah reversed directions. He
had the sensations, feeling them to their full extent, observing
them.

The sensations intensified
at first, but then they all seemed to blend together. Instead of
the separate burnings in his bladder and on his skin, Jonah sensed
one giant burning, not localized anywhere. Then that burning, that
longing, seemed to exit him. Merely observing it made the sensation
become separate from him, something in his environment, and it no
longer bothered him.

#

Tate came back to his
chair. He didn’t look at Jonah. He just started right in. “There
are demons all around, bro. And they possess people. They try to
attack in a couple of different ways. They either try to make the
organism they harbor act out or they try to use the mechanisms of
the organism’s consciousness to send out their telepathic messages.
The impact of most demons is very limited. They possess quickly and
try to act quickly, because demons are generally very impulsive.
The end result is usually that they try to make an impact on a
consciousness they have not been in long enough to comprehend.
Their effect is stronger on lower life forms, which have a less
complex consciousness. But there are problems there too. Lower
organisms lack the necessary biological material to harbor a demon.
Bugs, snakes, other lower life forms, all die quickly upon being
possessed.”

Jonah remembered all the
bugs that had woken him. He’d found them all dead or near
death.

“More advanced demons can
enter higher consciousnesses, like dogs or cats, and they can have
a stronger impact there, without killing the animal right away. But
that is only the most advanced of demons.” Tate stopped for a
little while, as if consolidating what was in his head.

“Advanced demons are rare.
The very nature of a demon is impulsivity. They need to take, and
they need to take immediately. They end up having very little
impact and jumping from life form to life form, trying to get some
kind of reaction. They will only stay in a human consciousness for
an extended period of time if they are trapped there by an outside
source.”

Again, Tate paused. Jonah
found it hard to wait for him to talk again. But he had to wait
anyway. Tate finally continued.

“It takes a long time for a
demon to become refined within a human consciousness. But it has
happened before, I believe. In the most extreme cases, the demon
learns not only how to control the person it harbors, but also to
use the social mechanisms of that person plus telepathy to control
the people around it.”

Jonah got a picture of
Hitler in his mind. Not only had this man been hideous, almost
beyond what seemed possible for a human; he had been able to
illicit his wicked agendas from the others around him. Jonah
wondered if Hitler’s generals and the people who ran the
concentration camps had been under the telepathic
influence.

“Such control can only be
developed over many, many years. It takes more than a lifetime. It
takes lifetimes, centuries.”

With that, Jonah’s mind put
together the puzzle. He began moving his head around, trying to
signal Tate that he wanted to communicate. Tate understood. He got
up and removed Jonah’s tape.

Jonah rushed out, “That’s
what happened with my father! Holy shit! He passed it on to me, and
then—”

“And then he was dead. He
passed his seed on and then was executed. The demon was allowed to
grow further inside his offspring.”

Jonah thought of the wicked
urges he’d had. The strongest had been sex. He had been tempted to
pass on his seed. No, he had passed on his seed,
possibly.

“Fuck! Tate! I came inside
my secretary. She might be—”

“No, bro. I took care of
it. Do you remember her being sick earlier this week?”

“Yes.”

“That’s because I waited
for her to go out without you. It was Monday afternoon. She was
having lunch. I waited until she wasn’t looking and dropped
something in her drink. You may have heard of it. It’s called ECP.
It’s basically a strong shot of hormones. It makes it impossible
for a fertilized egg to implant against the wall of the uterus.
Sometimes it causes the woman nausea and vomiting.”

Jonah shook his head, not believing
that he had dragged his employee into this.

“That’s why the animals
didn’t kill you last night. That’s why you got crows instead of
dogs or some other big animal.”

And a fucking cat. Don’t
forget the cat.

“It can’t kill you yet. Not
until you successfully pass its seed. It just wanted to scare you
into cooperating.”

Scare him
into cooperating. Yeah, Jonah had started to figure it out. Maybe
he would have seen the bargain.
Rape and
pillage, and I won’t kill you now. Oh, but what I won’t tell you is
that once you rape enough to sustain my life I’ll have you torn
into little pieces.