Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (5 page)

September had rolled around
again, and it was yet another Monday of the same tedious routine.
At 8PM, Jonah saw his last client of the day.

#

His last client had been an
MS/IQ. That meant the regular interview and an IQ test. Luckily,
the client had been very retarded, which made both the MS and IQ
fairly brief. So, before his eight o’clock showed, Jonah had a
little extra time to kill. He walked a block to a little corner
store where he bought a hardy looking deli sandwich and a pint of
milk. He finished this off before he got back, and when he got
back, his eight o’clock client wasn’t there yet, so he got to stand
outside and smoke a cigarette in peace, not having to worry about
anyone waiting.

He was actually, for Jonah,
pretty relaxed, sitting back in his office, his stomach full, his
nicotine craving sated, when he heard the front door open. Jonah
moved out into the lobby, where he met a tall lanky man of about
fifty years. The man was completely bald on top with strands of
gray-speckled black along the sides. He walked bent over with a
metal cane. His clothing was old, but neat, a button-up Oxford and
a pair of slacks. His eyes were covered with small, round, silver
glasses.

“Hello,” the man said as he
smiled warmly. He shifted the cane from his right to his left, then
awkwardly held out his right hand. He said, “You must be Dr.
Meade.”

Jonah gently took the man’s
hand. Clients received a form with this office’s information and
David Meade’s name on it. “No, I’m Jonah, but I work for Dr. Meade.
I’ll be doing your evaluation today.”

At this point, many of the
clients would look at him hesitantly. A couple had even asked to
see his credentials. But this man just said, “Okay.”

Jonah smiled and said, “Are you ready
to get started?”

“Yes, sir, I am”

Jonah led the way back to
the office and waited by the door. He’d scanned the paperwork SSI
had sent about the man. Schizophrenia, paranoid type, was the
referral question. That usually meant one of two things. The client
was faking the disorder and would talk bluntly about his symptoms.
Or, like a true paranoid schizophrenic, he would deny any mental
illness.

When the man walked by,
Jonah noticed one knee was significantly larger than the other,
which probably meant the man had a legitimate physical reason to
receive the benefits, so he wouldn’t need to fake the psychological
reason. The task in this interview would be to get at this man’s
mental symptoms without the man knowing it.

Do you ever feel people
are out to get you? Do you ever see things other people can’t
see?

The man walked to the front
of the desk and sighed. Jonah walked over and pulled one of the
chairs back for him.

“Thanks,” the man said.
“It’ll take me just a minute to sit down.”

“Do you need me to help
you?”

“Oh no. I’ll be fine if I
take my time.”

Remembering a client from a
couple of months ago who had fallen, Jonah was tempted to stay
behind the chair anyway, but the man obviously wanted to do it
himself, and Jonah didn’t want to put a kink in how well they were
getting along. He moved around to the other side of his desk and
sat. He looked down at his clipboard. Yes, the interview form was
there. He lifted the clipboard. Yes, the information release form
was there. Jonah looked up just on time to see the metal cane
coming down on him. He didn’t have time to move.

About half an hour after
coming to on the floor, Jonah had been oriented enough to realize
that he had been attacked. He had been tempted to just lock up and
go home. He’d report the client as a no show and finish out the
week like nothing had ever happened. Then his routine life would
not have to be complicated. The only two people who knew for
certain that it happened were Jonah and the client. On the off
chance that the client said anything, it would be his word against
Jonah’s, and whom would the authorities believe, a man with a
documented history of delusions, or a man with a Ph.D. in his
title? The only problem with this plan was the tell-tale goose egg
on top Jonah’s head. Jonah had reluctantly gotten on the
phone.

But the phone calls had not
actually complicated his life. If anything, the whole situation
bought him a mini vacation. They kept him in the hospital until
Wednesday morning. And they kept him high on Darvocet, making it
impossible to obsess. A vacation from himself. David footed the
bill, and he paid Jonah for the work he missed.

The police came to Jonah’s
house Wednesday afternoon. That also went better than expected.
“Yes, Doctor Singer. No, Dr. Singer. Thank you for your
cooperation, Dr. Singer.”

David had
called later that afternoon. He offered Jonah the next week off,
with pay. Thinking he could sense reluctance in David’s voice,
Jonah declined the extended charity. He knew that coming back after
only one week would score David points with SSI and score him
points with David. David expressed reluctance at Jonah’s quick
return, but this time it seemed much milder, borderline fake.
Again, Jonah played the part. He even took it further than
necessary, assuring David that any part of the wound still visible
on Monday could easily be passed off as a sports injury.
A baseball hit my head.
That would diffuse any wariness in his clients, who, if they
knew the real cause, might suspect that Jonah had done something to
instigate the attack, or suspect that he was bitter toward all of
his clients because of it. David assented to his early
return.

Yes, most everything since
that night had been beautifully simple. But there was one part of
it that was complicated, one conundrum in an otherwise linear
sequence of events. Its name was Tate.

Tate had been supportive,
almost nurturing, in many ways since Monday night. He had brought
Jonah take out from Denny’s and from their favorite Chinese place,
so Jonah wouldn’t have to endure tasteless hospital food. Once
Jonah was out of the hospital, Tate continued to bring him food and
volunteered to run errands. But within the kindness, there were the
usual Tate antics. Sometimes it was hinting. Sometimes it was said
bluntly. As a shrink, Tate knew the numbers. Threats on shrinks
were not uncommon, but actual physical attacks on a shrink by a
client seen on an outpatient basis were extremely rare. Tate was
relentless in reminding Jonah of this. Friday night, four days
after the attack, Jonah went to Tate’s place for their Friday night
ritual. Tate supplied the pot. Jonah supplied the beer. And it was
more of the same.

They were about twenty
minutes removed from their second joint, when Tate got off the
couch. With Jonah watching from where he sat, Tate started into one
of his martial art forms. The movements were fluid and concise and
had the crazy-intense edge Tate brought to them. Tate had black
belts from two different arts he had taken as a kid when he lived
in Florida. He had a little knowledge of several others. Tonight,
it looked as if he were going beyond the usual forms, adding in his
own stuff as he moved around to the old Pink Floyd CD he had put
in.

Sliding his body in Jonah’s
direction, he looked at Jonah and laughed, never breaking the
movements. Then he said, “You’re a wicked looking fuck,
bro.”

The statement sent a small
jolt through Jonah and set his mind to work. It was just the thing
he had been thinking about Tate moments earlier. But, as his mind
worked, Jonah thought that he realized the trick: Tate makes
himself look wicked, then says Jonah looks wicked, so now Tate
looks like a mind reader.

But it was so simple that
it seemed below Tate. Jonah had heard before that he looked
intimidating. He had the affliction of an odd shaped head, so that
the only way he could keep from looking like a freak was to keep
his hair long. His chin was awful too, so he wore a goatee. Because
he was not good about keeping his goatee trimmed and because he
usually had to slick his hair back with a ton of gel to keep his
cowlicks from standing up, he supposed he did look wicked. And now
the goose egg on top of his head exacerbated that.

So Tate had just made a
simple observation. No game intended, Jonah thought. But then Tate
said, “It’s the eyes mostly, bro. I can tell there’s something
there. You could do something really wicked, maybe even kill
someone, bro.”

To this, Jonah laughed, as
confidently as he could possibly laugh when Tate was bringing on
one of his mind games.

Jonah had the data this
time. He said, “No way, Tate. I don’t have the personality of a
violent criminal. Most violent criminals are
disinhibited.”

Tate was still moving.
“You’re right, bro,” he said. “Most violent criminals are
disinhibited. And obsessive compulsives are rarely
violent.”

That Jonah was an obsessive
compulsive was something he had always hidden very well. It had
taken Tate only a couple of weeks into their relationship to figure
it out.

But now, Jonah laughed
smugly. It was rare that he had Tate on the ropes. “So, you’re
wrong,” Jonah said.

Tate didn’t break in his
movements at all. “Am I though?”

Jonah couldn’t believe that
Tate was still pursuing this. Usually, Tate found a weakness and
attacked it. But now he was going to a place where Jonah was an
expert. Jonah confidently said, “The whole time I was in graduate
school, I worked with a professor on using personality traits to
predict violent behavior.”

“That’s nice, bro,” Tate
said, sounding almost sincere.

“There isn’t a study on it
that I haven’t read. Hell, I even did my dissertation on
it.”

“Really, bro,” Tate said,
sounding truly interested. “What did you find?”

“I found the same thing as
everyone else. Violence is predicted by disinhibition and anger.
And obsessive-compulsives are almost never violent.”

“And you’re not generally
an angry person, are you bro?” Tate said.

“No, not at all,” Jonah
responded, wondering if Tate was leading him somewhere. It didn’t
seem likely, since, as far as Jonah could tell, Tate didn’t have
anywhere to go.

“You’re too busy worrying to be
angry.”

There was something in the
last statement, Jonah thought. He couldn’t pinpoint it. Worry, or
anxiety, was the general emotion of an obsessive compulsive, often
to the exclusion of most other feelings. “You got it,” Jonah
said.

“But you’re missing something here,
bro.”

“Oh really? What’s
that?”

Tate got down and sat on
his knees, facing Jonah. He continued with the fluid motions, but
now limited to his upper body. “Did you take the GRE to get into
graduate school?”

“Of course.”

“And you got what, a 1560, 1580
maybe?”

Jonah didn’t respond at
first. There was no way Tate could know that. That Jonah was
intelligent was clear enough. But if he was as intelligent as his
test results indicated, it didn’t show, not that
intelligent.

“I got a 1580,” Jonah finally
said.

Jonah half-expected Tate to
say he had been kidding with his guess, and that there was no way
Jonah had scored 1580, near perfect. But he didn’t. He said,
“That’s probably in the top one percent of the people who took the
test.”

Jonah nodded, still amazed
that Tate had pegged it.

“And the subset of people
who even take that test is way smarter than the general population.
So you’re probably like what, one in ten thousand?”

“Maybe.”

“There’s no maybe to it,
bro,” Tate said, before laughing. Then he said, “Now, take that
with the small percentage of people who meet criteria for OCD, and
you’re more like one in a million.”

Tate had him, and Jonah
knew it. Even stoned, he could do the math. About one in one
hundred people had OCD at any give time. About one in ten thousand
people could score that high on the GRE. The combination of these
two things in one person would be rare to unheard of. Tate’s one in
a million was a reasonable estimate.

Tate stood up, his form
movements done. He moved closer to Jonah, just to the edge of the
coffee table, on the other side. He was no longer smiling, his look
now serious. “Tell me bro, did any of your studies have a million
subjects?”

Jonah didn’t answer. He
just showed his resignation with an exasperated look.

Tate said, “Even if they
did, people like you, rarities, just get lost in the averages. You
can’t describe a rarity, a single, unique individual, utilizing
group data.”

Suddenly, Tate leaped up on
his coffee table. “Most OCDs aren’t violent, but you’re not like
most OCDs. Your symptoms, your obsessing and your compulsive
behaviors, are there for a different reason than for all the
others. Your symptoms don’t come from a hypersensitive brain or
events from your childhood.”

Feeling outwitted but still
looking Tate in his intense eyes, Jonah said, “Tell me then, Tate.
Why do I obsess?”

His eyebrows shot up, and
Tate responded, “Because there’s something wicked in you, bro, and
you obsess to keep it from coming out.”