Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (74 page)

“Because you’re not looking at the
facts. You’re looking too far out. Tell me the facts. What’s right
in front of you? What are you doing right now?”

“I’m talking to you on the
phone.”

“Yes, that’s it! Tell me
more.”

“Well, I’m . . . I don’t
know.”

“Jacob. You hesitated before you
called me, I’m sure.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Why?”

Again, Jacob paused. He was slightly
uncomfortable, but he was even more excited. “Because I stopped
coming to appointments, without notice. And now, several months
later, I’m calling you at your home on a Saturday.”

“Bingo! You never called me once when
you were in therapy, not even at the office. Now you call me at
home. What does that tell me?”

“That I’m desperate.”

“That you’re desperate.”

She was silent again. He knew the ball
was in his court.

“But what does that have to do with me
being home?”

“Good! More confusion. But I won’t
leave you hanging much longer.”

This time, when the silence came, he
pictured her in her office. But the office came and went. Then he
was on the road to the shale pit again. But he wasn’t driving. Dr.
Ross was driving. She looked at him from the driver seat and said,
“Tell me Jacob, why are you so desperate?”

There was a jolt and he was back in
his parents’ living room.

“What? Did you ask me
something?”

“Yes. Tell me why you are so
desperate.”

“Well. I’m desperate because I have
gone through some kind of change.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. It’s just that . . . Well,
things are kind of strange.”

“That bad, huh. So bad that you’re not
sure you want to tell me.”

Again,
Jacob couldn’t find the words to say.
Do
it for me
, he thought.

“Well, Jacob. Can you at least tell me
how desperate you are?”

“Well, I’m not going to kill myself.
If that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Oh, Heavens no. I would never have
suspected that. I’m sure you’ve thought of suicide on many
occasions. You may have even have made an attempt. But I don’t
suspect that’s why you called me today. You would have never called
me if that were your intention. On the contrary, you called me
because you want to live. I should say, you suddenly want to live.
But now there’s something in your way.”

I want
to live
, he thought.
I want to live
. The picture was at
the shale pit this time. They were outside of the car. But it was
no longer Dr. Ross with him. It was a faceless person. And this
person was pointing the gun at him.

Again, the awakening jolt hit
him.

“So, Jacob, are you seeing things now?
Are you seeing things that you know aren’t real?”

“Yes!” he blurted out. She knew. She
knew everything. That made it rational. That made it
fixable.

“I want you to tell me what you’re
seeing, Jacob. But before we get to the what, let’s talk about the
how.”

“Okay.”

“With all of this in mind, how did I
know you were home?”

Home.
It’s here. What’s here?
He could not answer
her. He could sense something coming up, and knew it was the
answer, but the words would not form. Back to the shale pit he
went. He was on the ground, shaking. There was blood in his eyes.
There was a person over him.

“Dr. Ross, there’s something here.
There’s something causing all this. But I don’t know what it
is.”

“Jacob, sometimes our mind doesn’t
want us to know things about ourselves. And it has many ways of
keeping this knowledge from us. Sometimes it has us lose ourselves
in alcohol. Sometimes it has us lose ourselves in meaningless
relationships. Your mind gave you tension. But not regular tension.
Unbound tension, an awful feeling connected to nothing at all. Its
purpose was to keep you from learning what you are learning
now.”

“But why? Why now?”

“Because the tension had to
go.”

“Why did it have to go?”

“Because you wanted it to.”

“I’ve always wanted it to.”

“Have you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure? I mean, what’s worse,
the tension or what you’re going through now?”

Jacob remembered waking up this
morning to the alarm clock that wasn’t there. And he thought of the
man in white.

“From your silence, Jacob, I’m going
to guess the latter. So why would you want to make that trade? What
would make it worthwhile?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did the tension cost you? What
part of your life did the tension take away?”

Again, his mind took him to the shale
pit. The blood was clearing away. The person above him was coming
into view. He shook his head, cleared the vision away and got back
to what he wanted to know.

“It cost me her.”

“Yes. It cost you her. I believe her
name was Sonnie.”

“Yes.”

“You told me once that you cared for
her. But you also told me that the tension grew when she was
around. What a dilemma that must have been.”

Again, Jacob nodded, but this time he
didn’t follow it with a verbal answer.

“So you left her. You left her because
you couldn’t get close to another person. You know why you
couldn’t?”

“No.”

“Because the closer we move toward
another person, the more we find out about ourselves. And finding
out about yourself was the very thing you could not do. You left
her so you would not know. And does that sound
familiar?”

“Yes. It sounds like how I left you.
You were coming to understand me. I was starting to understand me.
The tension was too intense. So I left.”

For several awkward seconds she said
nothing and neither did he. When her voice came back, there was a
sigh in it. “So Jacob. How did I know you were in
Oklahoma?”

At the pit, his eyes became clear. He
could see her now. She had been the one. She had driven him there.
Sure, he had seen Dr. Ross, but that was only symbolic. It had been
Sonnie who took him there. And it had been Sonnie who pulled the
trigger. And now it was Sonnie extending a hand down to
him.

“Live. Live,” she was
saying.

“Because Sonnie is here.”

“Yes, Sonnie is there. And she is
worth it to you. You want her. You want her with your entire being,
subconscious and all.”

It all made sense. And now he felt
safe. He knew the good doctor would fix him now. “So what
now?”

“Now you can tell me what you’re
seeing. Tell me about your visions.”

Jacob thought about where to start. It
didn’t take long before he was ready. “Well, basically, I . .
.”

“Jacob?”

“Yes.”

“Can you hang on the line for just a
minute? I have another call.”

Jacob waited in calm anticipation. She
was back in a couple of minutes.

“Jacob?”

“Yes.”

“There’s an emergency I have to tend
to. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m all right.”

“Good. Listen. I’m going to be gone on
vacation for the next couple of weeks. Actually, I was standing at
the door with my bags in hand when you called.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.

“No. Don’t worry about that. But
listen. I want to continue this conversation. Can you give me a
number to reach you at?”

“Yeah, sure. Are you
ready?”

“Shoot.”

“It’s 517 . . .”

“Okay. Do you know if you’re going to
be home tomorrow night.”

“I can make a point to be.”

“Good. I’ll call at eight o’clock your
time.”

“All right. Psychotherapy via
phone.”

“You got it. But I want you to do
something for me in the meantime. These things you’re seeing.
They’re not real. But it won’t be enough for me to tell you that.
You need to search out the evidence yourself. Use your logic.
Investigate and prove to yourself that these things you’re seeing
cannot be real.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“Good. And Jacob?”

“Yes?”

“It’s good to hear from you again. You
take care of yourself.”

“You got it.”

“Goodbye for now.”

“Bye.”

She was gone.

Jacob got up and moved into the
kitchen. He felt he understood now, and he felt free. He could move
on. His mind didn’t go back to the pit this time. The pit seemed to
come to him.

“Live,” her voice said. He could not
see her, but he could feel her hand and he could feel himself
rising up to her. He was going toward her, and he thought he could
feel her presence more and more. He came into her arms. He held her
to him. It felt magical. It changed.

Her body seemed to grow in size and in
firmness. Soon, she was bigger than Jacob. Then, she was not
holding him. She was suffocating him. He opened his
eyes.

The man in white let him go and
stepped away. He smiled down on Jacob. “Guess again.”

Jacob backed further away from the
towering figure. “Fuck you! You’re not real!”

But the man in white disappeared and
so did the shale pit.

“No,” Jacob said out loud to no one.
“You’re not real.”

#

It was nearly one o’clock when Jacob
heard the car coming down the road. He got up from the kitchen
table, leaving the newspapers he had scattered about. He watched
his car pull up the driveway and stop. Then he watched Sonnie walk
toward the house. After he opened the door, he saw the stone look
on her face. He couldn’t quite read it.

“Hi, Sonnie.”

“Hi.”

He hesitated a little. Then he wrapped
his arms around her and planted a kiss on her cheek. She moved
away, her face unchanged.

“I need to get back to
town.”

“Okay.”

Jacob drove and Sonnie sat silently in
the passenger seat. They rode that way for a while. Finally, Jacob
said, “Sonnie, I know this must all seem very strange to you. But,
if it’s any consolation, it’s all pretty strange to me too. I’ve
just had some weird things happen to me lately.”

He looked over at her. She was shaking
a fist a few inches in front of her face.

“I’m sorry, Sonnie.”

“No! Don’t apologize. Just wait a
second. I have to tell you something.”

“Okay.”

She opened her hand and moved it
slowly to her lap. Then she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“I don’t want you to think I was nosing around. But I found
something.”

“Okay. What did you find?”

Sonnie shook her head. “I was driving
out of town a while ago. I had actually planned to come out earlier
to pick you up. I thought maybe we could have a few hours together
before I went to work.”

“Okay.”

“Well, I was going down Main Street
when a cat ran out in front of me. I slammed on the brakes and just
missed the stupid thing.”

“Are you okay?”

“Oh yeah. I’m fine. But when I stopped
so fast, I think it must have caused the notebook to fly out from
under the seat.”

Jacob thought for a moment and then
the picture of him walking out to his car and placing the notebook
there came.

“How much did you read?”

“I read the whole thing.”

Jacob laughed nervously. He had
intended to tell her most of the story, but not that
part.

“I hadn’t planned on reading it. But
when I went to pick it up off the floorboard, I saw some of the
words and got the general idea of what it was. I took it home and
read it. Then, for the last few hours, I’ve been thinking about
what I would say to you.” She gasped. “My God, Jacob, it’s a
suicide letter!”

Jacob felt her staring at him, but
could not look back.

“Jacob, when did you write
this?”

For a few seconds, he could only wish
that she wasn’t there. But her eyes were burning a hole in him and
he knew he had to talk.

“I . . . um . . . I mean, when I wrote
that I was feeling a lot different than what I feel right now. I’m
fine now, really. Like I said, I’m going through some strange shit,
but it’s nothing like that.” He made himself look into her eyes.
“Sonnie, I promise you. I’m not going to kill myself.”

She looked ahead. “Are you
sure?”

“Positive.”

She took his hand and squeezed
tightly. They rode in silence for a little while. Jacob started to
describe it all to her, just like he had started to the night
before. Again, the anxiety rushed in on him and told him to stop,
that telling was somehow wrong. But he remembered what he had
talked about with Dr. Ross. He had to bring her in.