Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (64 page)

Now, it was midway through the
afternoon in the world outside his tunnel. But he was not in that
world. He stood inside a hole, its depth to the bottom of his
knees, and he was continuously bombarding it with the pickaxe. His
progress was faster now, but he had no way of knowing how long it
would take to break through. He didn’t know the thickness of the
tunnel walls.

There had been no more visions like
he’d had last night, and that scared him. Why wasn’t the presence
trying to slow him more? Of course, he was assuming that the
presence had caused the vision in the first place, when maybe it
hadn’t. It was yet another thing he couldn’t be sure of right now.
He would know when he got to the other side.

The ever-approaching presence still
scared him, but at the same time, he was high on the thought of
what he was doing. He was deep inside himself, completely aware,
moving toward knowledge that would dwarf the knowledge he’d had
before.

Once again, the progress halted. Dr.
Porter brought himself up.

***

Janet Pollard was afraid to go the bed
Friday night. She didn’t want the anxiety nightmares of the night
before, and she dreaded waking up with the sense. But she knew
sleep was something she couldn’t avoid. The broken sleep of last
night and the worrying as she slept seemed to have drained
her.

Things were not well right now. Robert
had informed her that Matt Craven, a senior at Pious, hadn’t shown
up at school today. Robert hadn’t thought too much of it, until he
was informed that Matt hadn’t come home last night either. Even
then, Robert wrote it off. He told the worried faculty and even
suggested to Matt’s parents that Matt had probably just taken off
for a while. Of all the seniors, Matt had taken last Friday night’s
loss the worst. Leaving, Robert thought, was probably just his way
of dealing with it. He was probably just off somewhere nearby and
would return before the weekend ended. Robert thought this
explanation brought some calm to the situation. Janet thought
Robert even believed it. She, though she didn’t say as much, didn’t
believe it.

Janet told herself she was crazy, but
it didn’t matter. She couldn’t help but think that the missing
teenager had something to do with what she sensed last night.
Intuitively, she connected the two seemingly separate
events.

Randy, who had not been himself since
last Friday night, seemed to worsen with the news about Matt. He
barely spoke when he came home after practice. He didn’t even eat
that much. Then, when friends called on the phone, seeing if he
wanted to hang out, Randy turned them down. Janet knew he felt
responsible for Matt. He felt responsible for the whole damn high
school. He would take no comfort right now. That might have been
for the best, because Janet had little to offer. Even Toby, the one
she was most inclined to protect, didn’t elicit her nurturing
sense. She was too tired and too caught up in what was going on
with her. All three of them went to bed before ten. Janet stayed up
as late as she could, which was not much later, then went to bed
too.

***

A light had come. It was more than the
light he had brought in to work by in his tunnel. It was just the
rays right now. The source was further down. Dr. Porter knew that
the light contained the presence. He was running out of time. His
only hope was that he was near the edge of the tunnel. There was no
way of knowing that. The tunnel’s strength didn’t seem to yield any
as he made his way through. Thus, the edge, the other side, might
have been a few strikes away or it might have been miles
away.

He might have turned back at this
point, but he didn’t think that he could. He was an intelligent
man, but he had never focused that intelligence on survival. He
wouldn’t last on the run. Even if he did, he would always come back
here. This place was natural to him now. He couldn’t deny its
existence. He could come here easily, and he would not be able to
resist it. Eventually, he would come back and the presence would be
waiting. His only chance, if he had a chance at all, was to break
through. So he continued to break the floor, as the light coming at
him continued to grow.

***

There was the sense, and she was
awake. This time, she didn’t remember what she had been dreaming.
She didn’t remember, because there was no time to sit and reflect.
Whatever she had sensed, she could still sense, and she knew it was
looking at her.

Janet opened her eyes and raised her
head. It was there, but just for an instant, and then before she
had time to consider what was in the doorway, it was
gone.

She gasped. She tried to gather her
senses. That could not have been real. Nothing could move that
fast, to be there one instant and gone the next. Maybe she hadn’t
awakened, and it was just a dream.

But that was just fear. She wanted to
believe that it was not real, because if the alternative was true,
if it was real, there was nothing she could do about it anyway. She
was too late.

She tried to go back to sleep, but
couldn’t relax. It was out there. And yes, there was nothing she
could do. Or was there? She could save herself. She could escape.
If she tried to help her family, she would fail. It was too fast.
But there was a chance she could make it on her own. But she
couldn’t do that. It wasn’t even an option. The only thing to do
was to make it not real, to tell herself it was a dream, and just
believe that was true. But she couldn’t believe that for very long,
because lying there, with her eyes shut, she could feel it looking
at her again. She opened her eyes and leaned forward, but this
time, it was even faster. She didn’t even see it, before it moved
away.

She heard something. It was very
light. Just something being moved around, not even loud enough to
tell what that something was. She looked over at her sleeping
husband. She considered waking him. But that was crazy, wasn’t it?
Hadn’t he just been dealing, the day before, with the anxieties of
others? Should she make him have to do that in the night
too?

No, she would not. She would just have
to confirm this for herself. She’d go out there and check, and
then, once she was satisfied that nothing was there, she would just
sit up. She’d sit up the rest of the night if she had to. There
would be no more sleeping this time, not as worked up as she
was.

She checked the alarm clock. It was
3:07. She’d lain down around 10:30. That was a little more than
four and a half hours of sleep. That would be plenty to get her to
morning. She got out of bed. She began to do what were now her
routine searches. Again, she found all the doors to the house
locked. All the windows she checked were also locked. She went to
the hall that contained both of her sons’ rooms. Toby’s door was
open. She looked inside that room and made out the shadow of him
sleeping there. But as crazy as she was now, she was not satisfied
with that. She actually crept inside his room and got up close
enough that she could make out his face protruding from the top of
the covers.

Back in the hall, she found that
Randy’s door wasn’t open. She wondered if she could get inside
without waking him. Maybe if she moved the door slowly, she
thought.

This was beyond how crazy she wanted
to let her self become. She’d taken pride in not being so
overprotective that she violated the privacy of her sons. And it
wasn’t like it was with Toby. Toby had left his door open, almost
inviting her to come it. At least, that was what she was telling
herself for now. Randy’s door was shut. It was a demand for her to
allow him this private time.

Just once, she told herself. Just this
once she would do this. She would disconfirm her fear and then
never let it take her over like this again. Janet slowly turned the
knob. She crept the door open a few inches. The sweet but terrible
smell came to her. It was not unlike the smell of a fresh slab of
meat, just after it had been defrosted. It was the scent of fresh
death.

Janet thrust the door the rest of the
way open. She could make out the shadow of her younger son lying on
the bed. Had it not been for the smell, she might have been
satisfied with that. But the scent told her that she should take
note of the shape of his shadow. Randy was not just lying on that
bed, contorted to the natural state sleep would take him. He had
been laid out. Janet flipped on the light.

Dream? Oh yes, she thought it was. No
doubt this was a nightmare she would soon wake up from. She hadn’t
acted too late. She wasn’t at fault for disregarding the sense. She
would soon open her eyes to the morning light. Toby had to go see
Dr. Porter. When he got home, they would all go to the video store
and rent a couple of flicks. She’d make popcorn. If Toby was healed
by then, maybe he’d eat the popcorn with them. If not, no big deal.
They’d still enjoy the movie, as a family. All she had to do was
wake up.

Randy, or, as she wanted to think him,
her dream Randy, was laid out and naked. His legs were spread open.
His arms were above his head. His eyes were closed, and he wasn’t
breathing. There was blood all over the place. Most of that blood
had probably come from his chest, which was mostly gone. There were
other places on his body where he had been ravaged, or at least
bitten. Big chunks were missing from both of his thighs.

It was too much. Janet closed her
eyes.

Something moved. She’d heard it. It
wasn’t in this room. It had started in the hall and moved quickly.
But Janet would not open her eyes. The noise was just part of the
dream, and so were the next noises. A swoosh set off her husband’s
screams. The sound of his agony was cut of abruptly. Then she heard
movement again, fast, faster than human. It was behind
her.

“Randy’s dead now, Mother,” Toby’s
voice said. “I won’t feed on him anymore.”

Janet started to open her eyes but
didn’t. No sense looking now. She just had to wait.

“It started after the barrier came
down. I feed on living things. I’ve been sneaking out at night and
catching animals: cats and dogs, rabbits and birds. And I found
that they only tasted good while they were alive. And when I ate
them they made me stronger. But my appetite increases.”

It made sense. At least, her waking up
earlier this week made sense. It had been him, going out. But this
didn’t matter. It was still just a dream.

“I fed on Matt Craven last night. I
fed on Randy tonight. But, as I said, my appetite increases. I
think I’m ready for some more.”

She felt her son’s finger run across
her back. “And Dad’s already dead.”

The dream got worse. And she didn’t
wake up.

Chapter 16

Daylight seeped through the blinds. Dr.
Porter sat in his chair. Something very strange had happened. The
light had grown until it filled his tunnel. He hadn’t been finished
digging. His progress had not yet halted. But he had come out of
the trance anyway, by no power of his own.

Dr. Porter tried to go back into the
trance but could not. He was able to relax completely. He gave
himself the suggestions, but for some reason, they had no impact.
Confused, and a little tired, he decided to take a catnap. But when
he stood up, he felt a burst of energy inside him that sat him back
down.

The energy was strong, and he had come
down hard, but there had been no pain. His mouth moved without him
willing it.

“We have time before we leave,” he
said out loud. “What questions do you have for me?”

At first, his shock wouldn’t let him
speak. He didn’t feel anything inside him, yet something had forced
him to sit down and something had made him talk. It made him talk
again.

“I can read your thoughts. And I can
answer by making you think. But such communication would only
confuse you. You, as a human, are not used to communicating with an
outside entity in such a manner.”

With that, as afraid of he was, Dr.
Porter spoke his first question. “Then you are not possessing
me?”

“No,” the entity made him respond.
“Possession does occur. One of those you have interfered with,
James, is possessed right now. It is lawful for a spirit like the
one in him to do that. I am also a spirit. I exist in the place
outside the tunnel, in a realm of all things. It is not lawful for
me to experience human life. I am simply commanding your body from
afar. I do not feel it. In what you must now do, as I command it,
your body will suffer great damage. I will tell your body not to
sense that damage as pain. You will not suffer, physically, until I
am gone.”

Dr. Porter was fascinated at what this
entity could do. “Then you must have a great understanding of how
my body works.”

“No, such knowledge is not necessary
for me. My rules are different from your laws of physics. I simply
command your body to do something and it happens.”

There were now many questions in Dr.
Porter’s head. He tried to answer on his own. He said, “Then you
obey no laws. That would make you God.”

“No, I am not God as you know God. I
am what humans have called an angel. And I do have my laws. They
are much simpler than yours. You would find existence under my laws
very boring.”