Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (29 page)

“Okay.”

“Well, in most cases, I would think
the spirit world would be the obvious choice.”

Sully nodded. Then he smiled. “But not
in the case of our tomato woman. She has unfinished business, so
she enters a seed and becomes a poison tomato.”

Anna, across the table, pulled her
shirt over her head. Sully’s mind split between the pink brazier
and the discussion at hand.

“So do you think it’s possible that if
a person died, he or she could enter the body of a
baby?”

Anna reached around and undid her bra,
leaving the cups hanging from her swollen breasts. “Yeah, but that
would be possession, not reincarnation. A baby already has a
spirit. To reincarnate as a person is very hard, because you have
to go to the very basic level of an organism, which has not yet
been invested with a spirit.”

Sully watched the cups, waiting for
them to slide. It wasn’t so much to see, though, so much as that
when they came down he would be that much closer to what Anna had
planned for him.

“You see, sweet Sully, a sperm or an
egg is not a life but a lifeforce. It is when they become one that
they are invested with a spirit.”

Anna’s bra came down. She arched her
back and held her breasts out, as Sully savored his anticipation.
He liked being lustful and thoughtful at the same time. But he
wondered how long it could last. Something would have to
give.

“That must be why people don’t often
reincarnate as people. Because most zygotes don’t become
babies.”

“Right,” Anna said, as she slid her
bottoms off right there in her chair.

Sully felt like the luckiest person
alive, like a child given carte blanche in a candy store, but he
was still fascinated by the conversation. “So, when we die, it is
because our bodies have lost this lifeforce that you speak
of.”

Anna nodded. Then she got up on the
table.

“But the spirit still remains,” Sully
said.

Anna, now on all fours, nodded her
head one more time. Then she crawled toward him, and Sully didn’t
want to talk anymore.

He would think a little more, though,
as she came across the table. Then, before she took him to the back
and blew his mind, he considered how Anna had merely been speaking
of possibilities. But he wondered if at least a part of her truly
believed that what she was saying was true.

Death happens, but life
goes on.

#

Had he been dreaming? Yes, he thought
so. The coma men had been there, watching him as he suffocated. But
that had been a while ago. He had slept more since then. But there
was something wrong now. He could sense something. He was afraid to
open his eyes. He knew it was madness. But what he knew didn’t seem
to matter at all. What he felt was that something was with them.
What if it were the thing that had come out of the sky? He felt the
talons. No, just the memory. He was doing this to himself. He had
to stop. But then he heard something. Breathing. Near them. And
something else. Something was moving around in the
house.

Stop
it!
he told himself. He was making himself
crazy. He had to find a way to stop.

Anna. She would make him feel better.
Just to know that she was there would make him feel better, to know
that he wasn’t alone. Sully reached out for her but felt only air.
He realized that he was facing away from her. He rolled, then with
his arm, felt her body, which was turned away. She nestled her back
into his body. So warm, delicate but strong. But he still did not
feel safe. All wasn’t safe. Monica was out there with it. Sully
opened his eyes and saw the human figure a few feet
away.

He gasped at the sight of it, standing
beside the bed, looking over them. Anna awoke and sat up. She took
only a couple of seconds to orient herself.

“Monica,” she said.

In that instant, Sully felt two things
at once. He was still anxious, the shock of awakening to something
staring at him not worn off. But he also felt guilty, because that
something had been his daughter.

“What’s wrong, baby?” Anna asked in a
tender voice.

“I heard something,” Monica responded,
after a few seconds of hesitation.

“Come here,” Anna said, extending an
arm.

Sully got up, as Monica crawled into
the bed beside Anna.

“Where are you going?” Anna
asked.

“I’m sure it was nothing,” Sully said.
“But I’m going to check it out anyway.”

Sully, clad in his boxers, left the
room. Was it nothing? No, it was something. At least, that was what
his intuitive sense was telling him. It couldn’t have been just his
daughter that he had sensed, that had scared him.

He checked the insides of the house
first, going from room to room, looking in closets and under
things. He grabbed a flashlight from the foyer, intending to do a
visual sweep around the house. But as soon as he got outside, he
just stood on the small porch there. He couldn’t leave them alone.
If there was something to fear, then all that he really needed to
protect was in the bedroom. And in the bedroom there were
guns.

Sully went back inside. He crawled
into bed and wrapped an arm around his two girls.

#

It was a rare day that Sully didn’t
like his job. Whether it was the simple tricks of solving an
equation or the complexity of fractals, he loved opening young
minds to things they hadn’t known they could understand. But on
Monday, the day seemed to drag on, his mind on home, where there
was his girlfriend, and his daughter, who had been gone last
week.

He rushed home after school. Anna was
sitting on the front porch, leaning against the house, her legs out
in front of her. Sully was glad to see that she was reading the
book of another writer. She did that a lot. Like in any field, a
writer needed to keep up with contemporaries. Sully was just glad
she wasn’t in her writing place. They could all play together
tonight.

Anna sat the book on her lap as he
walked up. “You have returned, my sweet Sully. I knew that you
would.”

“Why? Because I do every
night.”

Anna gave him an inquisitive look and
then said, “Pretty much.”

Sully leaned down and kissed her. Her
cold lips told him that she had been outside for a while. November
was a fickle month in Oklahoma. It could act like winter and it
could act like fall. Today, it was somewhere in between.

“Where’s Monica?” Sully
asked.

Anna half smiled and answered, “Last I
saw, she was patrolling.”

“What?”

Anna pointed behind her. “I think you
better go check it out yourself.”

“All right,” Sully said. “But
afterward, do you think you could join us for a drive? I thought we
could all go to Dairy Queen in Erick.”

“Sounds delicious,” Anna said. “But
your mommy called and said she wanted us to come out for
dinner.”

Sully shook his head. “Mommy misses
her granddaughter. But she’s going to have to wait until tomorrow,
because I plan on hogging you two tonight.”

Anna gave an exaggerated nod. “Maybe
she can pick up Monica from school tomorrow.”

“Maybe,” Sully said, knowing Anna was
just offering an alternative to the three of them going to his
parents’ house tomorrow, trying to get out of having to put up with
his mom, something he could sympathize with.

Anna rolled her eyes and said, “Go
talk to your daughter.”

Sully left her sitting there. He went
around the side of the house and found Monica in the backyard. She
was standing still, a broken tree branch, half as long as she was
tall, in her hand. She didn’t seem to notice when Sully walked up,
her face serious and intent on looking up at the roof of the
house.

“Hi, baby,” Sully said, as he knelt
down beside her.

“Hi, Daddy,” Monica said, her gaze not
wavering from the roof.

Sully looked up at the tiles. “What
are we looking at, hon?”

“I’m waiting for it,” Monica
responded.

Sully thought of the night before. How
terrifying was this child’s world right now? He made up his mind,
then and there. He would take her into his room tonight.

“What, Mon? What are you waiting
for?”

It took her a few seconds to answer.
Then she whispered, “It’s the sand monster.”

“The sand monster?”

“Yeah,” Monica said, still whispering.
“The sand monster comes into my room sometimes.”

Sully thought for a few seconds. Then
it occurred to him what she might be talking about. “Does the sand
monster make you sleep?”

Monica finally looked at him, but only
for an instant, then she turned her attention back to the roof.
“Yeah. I try to cry, but she makes me sleepy.”

Monica paused. Sully couldn’t remember
ever seeing her so focused on something. She almost seemed
mesmerized by this task she had given herself.

“I see her come out of my closet,” she
said after a long silence.

“Your closet?” Sully said. “So why are
you watching the roof?”

“Because I look in my closet before I
go to bed, but she’s never there. She comes through the ceiling.
Then she comes out of my closet.”

It was impressive logic for a child
her age. But he hated to see her so serious. Sully pulled her to
him and hugged her tight. “There aren’t any monsters that come
through the ceiling, baby. And you don’t have to worry. Daddy and
Anna wouldn’t ever let anything hurt you.”

Sully put her out in front of him.
Then she whispered, “She doesn’t want to hurt me, Daddy. She wants
to hurt you.”

Sully stroked her hair. “Well, Anna
will protect me,” he said.

#

The Jacobson’s had not been able to
have a child on their own. That had made Sully all the more of a
gift for them. His childhood had been a special place: birthday
parties, bountiful Christmases, trips every summer to places like
Silver Dollar City and Disney World. That may have been why, even
before the accident, Sully had never felt the urge to move away
from Little Axe, the small town tickle, get as far away from here
as you can, that so many intelligent people from little places
feel. Ironically, many of his students felt that urge, and as their
prep class teacher, he was the one to help them satisfy
it.

Monica’s childhood, to the Jacobson’s,
had been a continuation of Sully’s. And now they had even more time
and wealth. His dad had sold off most of his farmland and invested
the money. Most of what he didn’t sell was leased for generous
stipends to oil contractors. What was left were the few acres that
surrounded the house. None of the animals were for economics now.
There were a few ducks on the pond, two dogs, five cats and two
horses. In the backyard were a jungle gym and a tire swing. There
was an above ground pool for the summers, and they were thinking
about an in-ground pool in a few years for when Monica would be old
enough to host swim parties.

Inside, Monica had her own room,
complete with television, DVD player, and the latest video game
system. There were toys in that room that Sully doubted had even
been played with, though Monica did try to play with them
all.

But the room had yet to be Monica’s
favorite place, not with Grandma and Grandpa with the time, energy
and desire to play outside with her. Sully’s dad regularly sat her
on a horse that he would walk around the pasture. Monica loved to
participate in feeding the animals, especially the kitties, which
were kin to the one she had at home. There was always someone to
push her on the swings or play whatever game suited her fancy at
the moment.

His mom had picked Monica up from
daycare earlier Tuesday afternoon. When Sully and Anna came out for
dinner at eight, they found the three of them exhausted, sitting in
the living room, watching Cartoon Network. They had already eaten,
but had saved food for Sully and Anna. For Sully, it was pot roast
and vegetables. For Anna, it was a wrapped Salad.

Sully watched as Monica started to
drift off on the couch between her grandparents, eyes slowly
closing and opening, her head bobbing occasionally.

“Mom, you want to just keep her
tonight,” Sully said from his place on the loveseat next to
Anna.

“Of course I do,” his mom said,
delighted, and then got up. “But I think I better get her in the
bathtub.”

Sully looked at Monica’s dirty face
and laughed. “I think you’re right.”

“Come on, little one,” his mom
said.

Monica seemed to find new energy.
“No,” she whined. “I don’t want to take a bath yet.”

“Mon, do as your grandma says,” Sully
interjected, knowing he would be the only one willing to give her
the stern words that would get her up.

“Okay,” Monica said,
disheartened.

Sully’s dad laughed. He turned and
tickled Monica and said, “You have to go get cleaned up before the
Sandman comes.”