Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (57 page)

After the practice field was the
playing field and then a grassy lot. On the other side of that lot
was a quick shop. Except for the students who lived nearby the
school, the quick shop was the only alternative to having lunch
outside the school cafeteria. The little store catered to that,
with a grill and a deep fryer. Toby made it inside before the bell
rang to release the other students.

“Well hello, Toby,” said Mr. Phil, the
clerk. Mr. Phil was an old man, who had owned this store for years.
Toby wished the store was owned by strangers, who wouldn’t be able
to talk to his parents about what Toby bought, and then this would
be a lot simpler.

“Hello, Mr. Phil,” Toby
replied.

Besides Mr. Phil, there was a heavyset
woman, who was in the food prep area, getting ready for the lunch
rush. Toby made his way to the large cooler doors at the back of
the store. Once there, he nonchalantly checked behind
him.

Normally, Mr. Phil would be watchful
when there was a kid Toby’s age in the store. But Toby was the son
of the superintendent of schools. So Mr. Phil would never suspect
him. He went to work with the woman in the food prep
area.

It wasn’t really cold today, about as
cold as most days in a South Carolina November. Toby’s jacket,
which was little heavy, might have tipped off suspicion. But most
people associated being small with having a lower body temperature.
Today, that worked for him. He was just the extra cold skinny
boy.

Toby made his way to the end, where
the meats were kept. He checked behind him once more. The coast was
clear. He opened the cooler door and then reached down and grabbed
a half-pound of hamburger meat. He placed it in one of the inner
pockets of his jacket. Before going up to the counter, he grabbed a
bottled water. For appearances, he bought one of the deep fried
burritos to take with him. Outside, Toby dropped the burrito in a
trashcan. Then, leaving the lot, he heard the distant sound of the
bell ringing. He walked a little further before stopping and
pulling out the pack of meat. He ripped off the cellophane and ate
the raw hamburger right there, outside.

The half-pound was delicious and
perfectly adequate. He could feel the heat working on it
immediately. He wouldn’t need to feed again for several
hours.

Toby placed the hamburger packaging
back in his coat to be discarded at the nearest convenient
trashcan. He looked toward the school, where students were coming
his way. Toby started back toward the school again, drinking his
water as he walked.

It wouldn’t always be this simple. He
didn’t think he should go on stealing like this. He would have to
think of a better plan. By the time he made it past the students
moving in the opposite direction, to where he had just come from,
Toby thought he knew what to do. He would continue to fake like he
was eating normal food, for his mother’s sake. But tonight, he
would take his car out, under the guise of wanting to go into Green
Pastures to take care of an irresistible urge to try Chinese food.
But what he would really do was buy a couple of coolers, good ones
that could store food for over twenty-four hours without the ice
melting. He’d fill them with raw meats and stash one somewhere
between the quick shop and the high school. He’d stash the other
somewhere near the house, in the garage maybe.

Was this all crazy? Yes, he thought it
was. But he could live with that for right now. Because it was also
very fun.

***

Celeste had expected to receive a
call, at anytime, probably from Kendra, announcing Paul was dead,
possibly murdered. But what would they say, that his lifeforce
seemed to have been sucked from him? What did the coroners say when
they found somebody in Paul’s condition?

She didn’t get the call, immediately.
But she did get a question answered anyway. They had found the boy
she had taken at the park. It was in the Monday paper. The report
said the boy was believed to have had a heart attack. That made
sense enough. When you had no lifeforce, your heart would probably
be the first thing to give.

Celeste had lifeforce in abundance.
With it, she had learned even more. Yesterday, not long after
taking the boy, she had begun to see things as she’d never seen
them before. The very simplest of things became fascinating.
Unfortunately, the public library had been closed on Sunday. So
she’d gone to the bookstore. There she took books from the shelves
and read by the benches in front of the magazine racks. Even in
reading, she could see things she hadn’t before. Not only could she
follow the author’s words with ease; she thought she could almost
feel what the author was feeling when he or she wrote their
words.

And the people around her, moving
about the bookstore. She could read them better too. Now that she
wasn’t hungry for their lifeforces, she could study them. She saw
their movements and the looks on their faces and she knew more
about them. She knew what the looks meant. She couldn’t read minds.
No, her understanding of the people around her was highly
emotional. She could tell the feelings that person had, even if he
or she was trying to hide it, and she could tell the depth of that
feeling.

She knew this would only get stronger.
When she could handle more lifeforce inside her, it would get
stronger. But she did not feed again on Sunday.

Celeste went into work Monday. Tiffany
said that Paul hadn’t shown and that he hadn’t called either.
Celeste volunteered to run the bar, along with her section. She
comforted Tiffany, saying Paul was probably just hungover and
avoiding the phone. He’d come into work tomorrow, she
said.

Celeste ran her section and the bar
with the greatest of ease. But she could feel the lifeforce
starting to dwindle. Tonight, she would have to feed again. Around
five that afternoon, she figured out whom she would feed on. Parker
Swinson came in for an early dinner.

“Where’s Paul?” he asked Celeste after
she took his order.

“Out sick, I guess,” Celeste replied,
not nervous at all. “Or maybe a monster ate him.”

Parker laughed, but Celeste could
sense his fear. She couldn’t sense it well, deeply, because the
lifeforce in her was too low. She wondered if he had talked to
Paul. How much did he know about what she could do?

That night, she went straight from
work to his house. She paged him on the intercom outside the
door.

“Go away,” he said from
inside.

Celeste knew she had to get in. He
knew something. He would know what had really happened to Paul,
when someone finally found him and the coroner declared it a heart
attack. As she stood outside, deciding what to do, she was
surprised to hear the lawyer speak again.

“I know what you can do. And I think I
know what happened to that bartender. If you go, I won’t ever tell
anyone. But please, just go.”

Celeste thought she could hear
something inside his voice, besides his plea for her to leave. A
part of him could not resist her. She pressed the button and said,
“Open the door, Paul. I’ll give you what you want.”

A few seconds passed before the door
came unlocked. Celeste went inside and took her third
victim.

***

The new spirit showed up early
Tuesday, not long after James arrived at his hill. Having collected
it, James got up and began his pilgrimage home. As he started down,
he felt the spirit move. It, unlike the others, wasn’t trying to
hide from him. It wanted to get started immediately. James stopped
where he was and sat down on the side of the hill. He gave the
spirit control.

“I’ve been watching you,” the spirit
said.

“Oh. How long?” James
asked.

“Long enough to see two others enter
you. Long enough to know what you did.”

James hesitated. Was the spirit
leading him, like a clever lawyer, trying to get James to confess
his deeds?

“What did I do?” James
asked.

After James returned control to the
spirit, it laughed. It was incredible to feel the humored emotion
of the spirit and to laugh without willing it.

“You’re a clever man, Mr.
Kisner.”

The spirit knew his name, which
suggested it probably knew more.

“Call me James. And tell me what you
know.”

This time the spirit didn’t laugh, but
James still felt its amusement. “You, while being possessed by two
spirits, committed a total of five murders. The first three were
with a gun. The second two were with fire.”

James was impressed, and he was
excited to have such a knowledgeable being inside him. “You are
obviously able to move about more than the first two
spirits.”

“I’ve been around a lot longer than
they have. I’ve been around a lot longer than your parents, even
longer than the town they live in.”

James was curious as to exactly how
long, but other things tempted his curiosity more. “So why did you
wait? Why didn’t you come to me sooner?”

There was calmness to this spirit. It
didn’t mind answering James’s questions.

“Because my methods are not as simple
as theirs. I needed more time to scout and plan.”

“Plan for what?” James
blurted.

Again, the spirit laughed at him. “Do
you really want to know that in advance?”

James wondered how much this spirit
could sense in him. How well did it know his desires? “No. Surprise
me.” He would spare this spirit the speech about protecting James
from culpability. It was no doubt sophisticated enough to
understand that already.

“That I will,” the spirit said. “Are
you ready to begin?”

James thought for a few seconds.
“Shouldn’t we wait until night?”

“We can start preparing now. You don’t
even have to go home. I’ll supply us with everything we might
need.”

James considered all he had with him.
His main concern was communication with his parents, who, if they
called repeatedly and he didn’t answer, would become worried, and
possibly contact the police. But he did have the cell phone with
him. He could use it to check his messages.

“All right, let’s begin,” James said,
then gave over control.

***

The call came Tuesday, a little after
noon. It was Kendra.

“Celeste,” she said to the answering
machine, with Celeste sitting off on the couch listening. “Can you
come to the pub? I know it’s your day off, but come anyway.
Something terrible has happened. Hurry, please.”

Celeste didn’t go to the pub. She
actually never went there again. She thought it would be a while
and many victims later before someone would put it together. But
someone would figure out that Celeste was associated with the rash
of male heart attacks going around. So she was leaving. It was no
big deal to her. She wouldn’t need much, since she could always get
men to do what she wanted. She would take things from them, money
and shelter, as she went along.

Guilt. She could feel none. She was
now a creature of taking. Celeste left Green Pastures and never
returned.

***

The spirit had scouted well. They were
able to travel without being seen and by untraceable conveyances.
First, it was in the back of a cigarette delivery truck they had
stowed away in. They exited the truck in a small town north of
Arabuke and quickly made their way into the back of a cluttered van
parked outside of a bar. They waited there, hidden away behind the
backseat, for about an hour. After riding for a little while, they
exited the van, which was now parked in the driveway of a shoddy
looking house. By the terrain, they had traveled across the border
of South Carolina into a mountainous area of North
Carolina.

They didn’t move far from the van,
just around to the backyard and then into the back door of an old
man’s house. From there, they entered a dusty cluttered room that
looked like it was being used for storage. They waited there in
silence until well after nightfall. Then they broke into a few
different places, mostly cars and garages. Without a single glitch,
without once being detected by a person or even a dog, they made
their way out of these places with various items. When they were
done, a large backpack stuffed with supplies was strapped to
James’s back.

Then they sneaked out of town and into
the forest. They traveled for several hours, mostly uphill. James
didn’t become tired by all of this. Somehow, with the heat that
allowed the spirit to bond with him, James was given extraordinary
energy. Besides that, the spirit was the one willing all the
movement, with James patiently going where his body and the spirit
took him. Not even the cold that came with the added elevation
bothered him.

Soon, they were traveling downhill,
still through the trees, but making much faster progress. The
ground leveled off and they waded their way through branches and
brush until they came to an opening at the bottom of a mountain.
They went inside, where they sat the supplies down. They then went
outside to gather wood, which they brought in and used to build a
fire. Now with light, they got into the backpack. They first laid
out the stolen sleeping bag. They then used a knife to open a can
of beans, which they ate with a bottle of water.