Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (55 page)

Mark didn’t have time to scream. The
blow, which by the audible snap had broken his jaw, sent him
spinning to the floor. They jumped on his back. They brought the
knife down into his spine. The spirit must have had some knowledge
of human physiology, because after that, Mark Bremmer was
paralyzed. They lugged him around at will, positioning him in a
wooden chair, where he had a clear view of his wife.

“Hey, Mark,” James’s voice said. “It’s
me, your brother.”

Mark, with his jaw hanging slack and
the rest of his body rendered useless, could only respond with his
eyes, which grew large.

“You shouldn’t have done that to my
Tammy. I watched on while you made her suffering worse. Now you can
watch on as the love of your life suffers.”

They went to the side of the bed to
get the last of the items they had gathered. They doused Mrs.
Bremmer with lighter fluid. They took a pack of matches from
James’s pocket and then turned to Mark, who had tears flowing down
his pale face.

“I could stop her suffering, Mark. I
could ease her pain right now.”

They lit a match. “But I’m not going
to.” They threw the match at the woman.

Mrs. Bremmer lit up, and her body
jerked under the intense heat. Mark Bremmer found enough momentum
to lift an arm up a few inches, and then he fell from the
chair.

The fire ignited the bed below Mrs.
Bremmer. James realized that the last set of keystrokes the spirit
had used had been to turn off the fire alarm and sprinkler system.
Before they left, they hefted Mark Bremmer into the blaze with his
wife.

Less than a minute later, they were on
a trail behind the house. The spirit had said this would make for a
clean escape, and he hadn’t lied. James easily made it home, before
the second spirit left him.

Chapter 12

Something was amiss. At least two of
his clients were keeping something from him. Dr. Porter had first
suspected it this morning, when he had talked to a tired James on
the phone.

“Everything is just fine, Doctor. I’ve
just been hanging out, leading a relatively ordinary
life.”

But it was clear that James didn’t
really want to speak with him. His answers had been simple and
rushed. There was a shake in his tone. James was anxious, and he
didn’t want to share with Dr. Porter what he was anxious about. Dr.
Porter would have expected that now, after he’d had time to settle
in, James would have been more loquacious with him. Of the three,
James should have been the most fascinated with the process. It
shouldn’t have been enough for the process to work. James, with his
intellectual proclivity, should have wanted to discuss the ins and
outs. But instead, he just wanted to get off the phone.

“I’m eating meat,” Toby had said. “But
I can’t eat much before it grosses me out.”

Toby had been blunt enough. He had not
wanted to talk much about his situation either. But Dr. Porter
didn’t sense anything strange about that. Toby wasn’t avoiding
anything. Toby was just in a hurry to move on.

Celeste was avoiding something. By the
way her speech didn’t match the slight changes of expression in her
face, she was having an argument with herself. There was something
she both wanted to and didn’t want to tell him. Overall, she just
wanted to move on, to end her inner dilemma. What was that dilemma?
There had to be some side effect. Something was happening as a
result of her getting better, but at the same time, she loved
getting better. She didn’t want to halt her progress for anything.
She didn’t want to slow down long enough to explore the
problem.

Dr. Porter was left with a decision.
Once again, he would fall on the side of progress. He put the two
of them under. Toby was done after about ten minutes. Celeste
wasn’t finished. She continued, and Dr. Porter knew what was going
on. This had been how it was with James, in the last session he’d
attended. When Celeste finally signaled that she was finished, Dr.
Porter brought them up. Toby came up pretty quietly. He nodded and
kind of looked around. No big deal. A little progress on the
barrier maybe.

Celeste was elated. “I’m finished!”
she said.

A little while later, Dr. Porter ended
the session.

***

Celeste was always a little tired
after the sessions. The improvements never began until the next
day. She thought that was because her mind had to go through
something while she slept, reroute the circuitry of her brain so
her personality could change. She had been going straight home
after work ever since she made the first crack in her barrier,
forgoing the usual post-work Saturday night partying. She would
rather not have worked Saturday nights while going through
treatment. But she couldn’t turn down the tip money Saturday nights
always brought. But now, with the barrier broken completely, she
couldn’t possibly work. So she called in sick.

Tiffany wasn’t happy. Calling in on
weekend nights was usually unacceptable. With everybody available
already scheduled to work, there was no one who could be called in
to replace her. But Celeste had never called in on a weekend
before, so Tiffany let it go. Celeste went to bed at 6PM, tired,
but excited, curious as to what she would wake up to. She woke up
around 2AM, knowing exactly what she wanted. She took time to clean
up. That was when she got a pleasant surprise. Celeste had started
her period yesterday. She had gone to bed with a fresh tampon
inside her. That tampon was clean, and she didn’t feel the cramps
or slight melancholy she was supposed to feel. It was a part of the
new change, she thought. It wasn’t natural. She didn’t
care.

Celeste pulled on a one-piece skirt
outfit. It wasn’t something to wear this time of year, but she
didn’t care about that either. Cold couldn’t hurt her right now.
She craved heat but not from the air. She left her apartment. Less
than ten minutes later, she went through the back door of someone
else’s house. His place wasn’t bad for a bachelor, especially one
who liked to party a lot. It was pretty clean, a reflection of
working in a restaurant probably, and it was neat. It wasn’t a
house of expensive things, with exception. He had a pretty high
tech entertainment system, and he had a nice collection of DVDs,
mostly horror and sci-fi flicks.

Celeste
went into his bedroom and waited. It was still early for him to
come home. A little before five, she heard his car pull up. She had
parked her car in the alley, so he wouldn’t suspect anything at
this point. She sat up on his bed and waited for him to find her.
He took time to clean up before coming in the room, a matter of
indifference to Celeste right now.
Clean.
Dirty. Whatever. Get in here and give it to me!

Paul saw her immediately when he came
into the room. He jolted with shock, which was not so surprising.
What was more foreboding was the way he looked at her after the
initial shock wore off. His face went slightly pale and his jaw
grew slack. He stood there for a few seconds as if not knowing what
to say, or maybe if he should say anything at all. Maybe he should
turn and run like hell.

“Come here,” Celeste said, opening her
arms out in front of her.

Paul shook his head. Then he was
finally able to speak a few words. “I thought you were sick,” he
said in a near whisper.

Celeste was growing impatient. It had
been hard to wait for him to come home. But that was bearable. Now
that he was in sight, she thought she could actually sense his
heat.

“Shut up, Paul,” she said, alluringly.
“Come over here and let me have you.”

Paul shook his head. “No way. I
wouldn’t touch you.” But he wasn’t leaving, and there was something
coming over him. His whole body seemed to be growing limp. Celeste
thought she could feel him being drawn to her.

“Come on, baby. You know you want
it.”

Paul moved a step backward, but then
stopped. She knew part of him wanted to leave. Deep down, at a
level where she could think it, but not feel it, Celeste wanted him
to leave. But at a level she could feel, the level that was in
control, she wouldn’t let him.

Celeste lay back. She spread her legs,
opening the skirt, revealing herself. With that, he inched forward.
“No,” he said. “I won’t do it.” He kept moving toward her anyway.
He fought like that for a while, nearly a minute, coming toward her
ever so slowly. Then, all at once, it seemed to overwhelm him. He
dropped to his knees, on the floor in front of her. He used his
tongue. She could feel heat from that. As he ate her out, she could
feel energy slipping from him and into her. She could also feel him
slowing down. She got off the bed and pushed him flat on his back,
on the floor. She then removed his pants. She got on top and took
him in. He was only semierect, but that quickly changed inside her.
She felt the heat rushing from him now. Quickly, he started to pass
out. She suddenly knew that she could stop that. She ran a hand in
front of his face and that held his eyes open. He was obeying her
will completely now. Though his body was too tired for it, he
remained conscious. She felt his penis grow slightly and realized
he was about to explode. With her will, she stopped that too. She
didn’t want his semen in her. She wanted his heat.

Paul’s eyes bulged as if they would
pop out of his head. The horror on his face was unbelievable. She
liked it. His muscles tensed as she pulled on the heat inside him,
emptying it, until he was completely solid, his body not yielding
at all under her. She pulled until she felt the very last of the
warmth leave him. Then he collapsed.

Celeste got off of him. She reached
down and felt an artery in his neck. There was no blood being
pumped through him. She didn’t care. She was too high right now.
Her thoughts came with speed and clarity. She felt strong, stronger
than a man. She pulled Paul’s pants back on him. She lifted him off
the floor and placed him on the bed. She thought it would look more
natural when they found him like this. He just died in
bed.

She wasn’t worried. Intellectually,
she knew there were steps she needed to take to protect herself.
But that didn’t bother her. She was confident. She had fed, and she
wouldn’t have to feed again for a while.

***

Celeste had killed, and she had killed
in a way different than any way she’d ever heard of. She had taken
a life, removed it from a body, so that her body would be so much
more.

Paul had not deserved to die. She was
acutely aware of this. She knew that if she allowed herself to come
down, she would feel guilt. She would have to stay high.

Celeste went home after leaving Paul’s
house, taking some of his books with her. With her energy, she
read. She read first a book about vampires. She was able to finish
it in a couple of hours. She loved the way they fed on life to
maintain their own immortality. Was she immortal?

The vampire book had made references
to something called a succubus. That sounded more like what she had
become. She researched it further on the Internet. There were
various definitions. Some claimed that the succubus fed on male
sexual energy. Some claimed it stole dreams in the
night.

Celeste had once heard that fiction
fed upon reality. The book and the websites had both been based on
fiction and legend. She thought maybe there had been others like
her, and regular humans had tried to understand them, but lost
something in the translation.

None of the books she had taken from
Paul’s house told stories about the succubus. So she read another
vampire book. It was about noon when she noticed something. The
energy from Paul had not yet worn down. She was still reading as
fast as before, and in the moments when she moved about her
apartment, she could feel swiftness in her nerves and in her
muscles. She knew she was so much stronger now. But it wasn’t like
it had been last week and the weeks before, where after taking in a
certain amount of energy, she was ready to stop. She wanted
more.

It had to be the barrier breaking
down. No longer would she be satisfied, ever. There was no set
limit to how much she could take in. At least, that was what she
thought. So, on Sunday, only hours from the time she had taken
Paul, she went out again. She laughed at the thought of the
vampires. They fed only at night. She could move in the sunlight
without repercussion.

Most of the stores didn’t open until
one on Sunday. So she sat in a couple of different restaurants. She
didn’t eat. She felt no need for food. She could take energy in
directly, and she used it efficiently. She didn’t have to derive
energy from food, which her body would have to process, only to
waste a good part of. She only drank, juices and coffee.

As she sat in the restaurants, she
tested her powers over men. She willed them to look at her, and
they turned in their seats, as if confused, like they were sensing
something but didn’t know what it was. Once they found her, they
seemed infatuated. Some stared at her almost constantly. Those
accompanied by females stared at her as nonchalantly as they
possibly could. She knew that she’d caused a few girlfriends and
wives to become angry. But she didn’t care.

She had planned on finding her next
victim in the stores. There would be a shopping rush when they
opened, Christmas not too far away. She wouldn’t stand out unless
she wanted to. But after she left the second restaurant, in the
parking lot, a young man approached her.