Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (24 page)

Sully thought of arguing with her, of
telling her that she was making it worse for him. But then she
placed her naked breasts against his back and tasted his neck with
her tongue. Chills ran down his spine and his whole body seemed to
swell with anticipation. She then moved in front of him and laid
him down. She went down low and used her tongue on his thighs. As
she moved up slowly, covering him with her hot, wet mouth, Sully
forgot about his arguments. Tomorrow, he would make the trip
himself. Tonight, he would let Anna take care of him.

#

Sully arrived at Little Axe High
School around 7AM the next morning. After grabbing a cup of coffee
from the teachers’ lounge, he went to his classroom, where he
studied his lesson plans for the day. It was easy for him to get
lost in his work and thus forget about the trip that he would have
to make after school today.

It was September now, the beginning
and most difficult part of the school year. There were thirty in
the entering freshman class. They were about evenly split between
farm kids and town kids. Some acted cool, but he doubted a single
one of them wasn’t intimidated. Whether a football player for the
first time suiting up with guys three years older and forty to a
hundred pounds bigger, a princess being eyed for the first time by
older guys and resented by older girls, an academically minded kid
for the first time being in a place where GPA really mattered, or
just an average kid trying to avoid being noticed and singled out
for cruelty, it felt like somebody was out to get you. Sully didn’t
want them to feel the same about their math teacher.

The freshman came in at eight. There
was no remedial math at Little Axe. All entering freshmen took
Algebra 1. The challenge for Sully was figuring out how each
student best learned math. Some were abstract and would learn by
studying written concepts. Some were visual and could understand
through charts and diagrams. Then there were the practical, who had
to know how the square root of X divided by Y squared would ever
apply to their lives. Sully accommodated them all. By the end of
the year, all would be through the first Algebra section, about
half would be through the second section, and a few would be onto
Geometry.

The rest of the day he would be with
students he knew and who knew him. He taught all four years of
math. Then, at two o’clock, the end of the day, he taught a college
prep class. Sully considered the prep class his reward. He had
already taught these kids for three years, and, in the prep class,
he got to see the fruits of his efforts. The first part of the year
was focused on preparing for the entrance exams: word lists,
extensive reviews, timed practice tests. But today being Friday,
Sully took it easy on them. They went to the computer lab and got
on the Internet. Some, as they were supposed to, looked at college
websites. Some played games, checked their E-mail, or whatever
computer activity suited them, as long as they thought they could
get away with it, as long as they thought Mr. Jacobson would
maintain his façade of indifference. It was Friday.

He loved the prep class. Last year,
they had actually placed a student at MIT and another at Stanford.
There were twenty-eight seniors scheduled to graduate in the
spring. Of them, twenty-five were in the college prep class. Sully
fully expected to place all twenty-five at four-year
colleges.

He was wrong. Because on Tuesday, he
would see one placed in the ground. Then there would only be
twenty-four.

#

At 3PM, Sully was walking through the
parking lot. He barely noticed the students moving around him,
heading to their cars, walking off campus, loading on the buses.
The sounds of their laughter and shouts, their car stereos blaring,
all seemed distant.

This was it. He had packed Monica’s
things this morning. No need to go by home first. He would just
pick her up at daycare and then hit that long stretch of
interstate, just he and a helpless child. A helpless child and a
helpless adult.

He felt a strange energy. Part of it
was anticipation, excitement over the prospect of recovering, the
closed avenues this would reopen in his life. Another part was
fear, not knowing what lay ahead, the possibility of failure. It
was hard to tell how much each emotion contributed to the energy.
But he thought he would soon find out, when he was driving and one
or the other came to the front.

Sully had just started his Ford Taurus
when he was startled by the high-pitched chime and brought from his
head. He laughed at himself, realizing that it was just his cell
phone. He pulled it from his pocket.

“Hello.”

“Hi, Sully. What are you doing?” It
was Anna. Her voice revealed a mixture of sadness and
anger.

“I just got out of work. I’m on my way
to pick up Monica at daycare.”

“She’s not at daycare.”

Sully hesitated. She was playing some
kind of game with him. “Oh. Why not?”

Anna’s voice was suddenly aloof.
“Because I decided not to take her today. I’m used to seeing her
everyday, and now she’s going to be gone for a whole
week.”

Anna had not always played games. This
addition to her personality had come when Sully started talking
about making the trip. Sully tried to think of how to avoid being
drawn into this little emotional sparing match, what words to use.
He finally went with, “Sounds nice. You two have fun?”

“Of course,” Anna said, the anger
creeping back up.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, despite
knowing the answer, not wanting to sound presumptuous.

There were a few seconds of pause,
then Anna said, “Don’t go.”

Sully sighed. “I have to.”

“No, you don’t!”

“We’ve been through this. I have to
get over my fear. You traveled before you met me. You’re going to
want to travel again.”

“I traveled because I’m a writer, and
I didn’t have any reason to stay in one particular place. Now I
have two, and they’re both getting in a car when—”

“
Anna. Come on. We’ve
already done this.”

“I don’t care, Sully. If you want to
travel, then we can all travel. I can go with you. I can go with
you tonight.”

Again, Sully sighed. He knew this was
not an argument that logic would win. Anna was brilliant. He had no
doubt of that, but when it came to this particular issue, she
seemed to tune out the entire logical part of her mind and listen
solely to the emotional centers.

“Anna. It’s only a five-hour trip.
I’ll stop at a hotel if I get overwhelmed.”

“No. It’s ten hours there and back.
And that’s too much for your first time alone.”

That actually made sense. Ten hours
did seem like a lot. But he didn’t want to take it slow. He would
rather jump right in than prolong his misery by taking this in ever
so slightly increasing increments.

“Anna. I’m coming home. I’ll be there
in a couple of minutes.”

“You don’t have to,” Anna said, right
when Sully was about to hang up.

After a few seconds, it occurred to
him what she might mean. He got out of the car and looked around
the lot. Over the tops of several cars, he saw her. He hung up the
phone. Even in the distance, he thought he could make out her
sad-angry expression, her red pouty lips standing out in contrast
to her light face. That face also contrasted with her night-black
hair. Though he was sure that to many people of this rural
community in nowhere Oklahoma this woman looked like a freak, he
was equally sure that in other places in this huge world, her
eccentric style was beautiful, just as it was to him.

They both moved to the back of their
respective cars. Now across the way, he could see both of his
girls, Anna in her casual pullover skirt outfit, Monica, her hair
as blonde as the sun, in her pink shorts and white T-shirt. They
walked hand in hand and converged with him in the middle of the
parking lot.

Sully lifted Monica up to his chest
and hugged her tight. “How’s my little girl?” he asked.

“I’m okay,” she said in a subdued
tone.

Sully put his daughter out in front of
him and inspected her to see if he could figure out what was wrong.
Was she sad or just tired? Seeing her droopy eyes and subdued
breath, he knew immediately. He looked at Anna and said, “No
nap?”

Anna, who now had tears in her eyes
and her arms wrapped on her chest, shook her head.

Sully looked around. He was relieved
to see that none of the remaining students in the lot seemed
interested in them. Then he remembered that it was Friday for them
too. They had more important things to focus on.

Sully placed Monica back on the
ground, and then the three of them walked to his car. Monica got
into the backseat and Sully fastened her into her booster chair.
Her eyes went to the various books and games he had placed in the
car this morning. He kissed the back of her head and then stood up.
He shut the door and then turned on time to feel Anna rush into
him. He had to take a step back to keep from falling over. She
gripped him tight, so strong for a little woman.

“I love you,” she said, sobs in her
voice.

“I love you too,” he returned,
wrapping his arms around her, lifting her slightly off the ground.
Though he didn’t like how upset she was, he loved the way she felt
in his arms. Clinging to him. So light.

A few seconds later, he sat her down.
Nearly a minute passed, and he realized that she did not intend to
let him go. He gently pushed her out in front of him. “Hey. That
new book you’ve been outlining isn't going to write
itself.”

Anna started to say something, but
stopped. She then nodded her head in resignation.

He looked hard at her, tried to
decipher why this scared her so much. There just seemed to be more
to it than what she was saying. But after a few seconds of trying
to read her face like he was reading one of her stories, he thought
of how ridiculous he was being. She was probably just worried for
the same reasons as he, the same reasons she had told
him.

Sully kissed her on lips that barely
moved and then left her standing beside the car. A little while
later, he was backing his car out. He caught a glimpse of Anna, who
was still standing where he had left her, a dejected look etched on
her face. He hated to leave her this way, but he knew that it was
going to be leaving her this way or not leaving her at all. And he
knew she would eventually put it to her own logic. She valued
freedom and autonomy. She would be able to respect his decision.
After he made it back okay, they would both be glad he had made the
trip.

After pulling out of the lot, Sully
looked at Monica in the rearview mirror. It looked like she had
gotten into her playthings, but now she ignored them.

“Are you exited to see your
Mommy?”

Monica nodded her little head. Then
she said, “I’m tired.” Five minutes later, she was
asleep.

Chapter Two

It was a twenty-mile drop from Little
Axe to I-40. And that was where Sully and Monica would spend the
majority of the trip, driving from the west side of Oklahoma all
the way to the eastern border, about 315 miles.

Shockingly, the first couple of hours
went by without a hitch. Sully had expected the fear to grip him.
After all, fear was what had kept him from trying this before. But
any fear he had started out with faded quickly. Maybe it was the
resolution, he thought. Just telling himself that he was going to
recover was enough to push the fear away. He wondered why he had
waited so long to try. He started to feel a little regret for what
he had missed out on, needlessly. But he pushed that regret away,
not wanting to spoil his optimistic mood.

The weather was nice. Traffic was
light. Sully put a CCR CD in, and in no time he was into his
thoughts, thinking about the future, thinking about his life now,
liking what he saw. As a teacher, he pretty much had the summers
off. He pictured the three of them traveling together. Maybe they
could drive clear to the ocean. Monica was about to the age where
she would form lifelong memories, good memories, like the ones from
his childhood. He thought of how he would love to show her some of
the places he had been. And Anna. She had traveled all around. He
tried to imagine seeing some of the places she had been, hearing
her stories about them, trying to figure out which places inspired
scenes in her fiction.

Monica woke up about the time they hit
Oklahoma City. The traffic picked up in the city, but even that
didn’t bother him. He talked to his daughter for a little while,
and then she opted to play her Leap Frog board.

On the other side of OKC, they stopped
at McDonald’s. Sully ate, while Monica climbed around in the
PlayPlace. He watched her climb to the top, where she hesitated at
the slide. After considering it for a few seconds, she came down.
Then, having learned that the long slide wasn’t nearly as scary as
it had looked, Monica played fearlessly.

Sully laughed, his daughter having
just reinforced what the road was showing him. Things sometimes
looked a lot scarier than they were.