Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (80 page)

Again, everything seemed to draw out
as he hit the red lights and church traffic. Inside the nursing
home, he felt the stares of everyone he passed and had to wonder if
they somehow suspected that he was up to something. But he moved
past them and toward the only thing he could think of at the
moment.

Sara came to from her nap as he walked
into the room without knocking first. She said something incoherent
and then closed her eyes again. Jacob walked right into the eyes of
his grandmother. They were now half-closed and dull with exertion.
On the lunch tray sat her inflected hand. The crayon was snapped in
two against her now purple pinky. Jacob gently removed that crayon.
He fetched a pillow from her bed and rested her hand on it. He
looked down at the notepad.

Most of the page was covered with
indiscernible scribbles. In between those scribbles were choppy
strokes that came together to form the letters. The letters were
spread about the page, but Jacob thought he could discern some
order. He took the page under that one and began to write with one
broken half of the crayon.

“J and A. Those two go together.
That’s for Jacob, right Grandma?”

Oletta Putman’s eyes did not give him
the answer. They were starting to fade even more. Jacob wondered if
she was awake.

“M and Y. That’s probably
my.”

The last letter was written in the
bottom left hand corner of the page. It was difficult to tell but
Jacob thought it could be a W.

“Jacob my W.”

He looked again at his grandmother.
Her chest had picked up speed, and he could hear the strain of her
breath.

“Grandma. I don’t know what this
means.”

At first the movement was slow and
slight. Oletta Putman’s hand began to edge down the pillow. Then it
slid a little faster with the decline, until her two hands were
touching. Jacob watched her sit motionlessly for a
minute.

Finally, her eyes closed all the
way.

“That’s fine for now. Maybe you can
tell me more later.”

He stripped the colored page from the
notepad and threw it, along with the crayon, in the garbage. He
tried to open the door quietly, but Sara still awoke and made eye
contact again.

“Sorry.”

He saw Sara close her eyes and then he
heard the blood curdling sound of his grandmother’s voice. It
sounded like a scream muffled through several thick walls. Jacob
turned around.

His grandmother’s eyes were wide open
again, but they were still dull. Her right arm brushed against her
left, like it had done earlier that morning, but this time the
movement was weak and the thud not near as loud. Her mouth was
slightly open, releasing the terrible sound.

“What is it Grandma?”

She stopped moving and screaming for a
few moments and only stared at him. Then she started making a new
sound. It was very quiet. He moved his ear right up to her
mouth.

“Yaaahob. Yaahob. Yaahob.
Yaahob.”

“Yes, Grandma. I can hear you. What is
it?”

“Ruuu. Ruuu. Ruuu.” She stopped. Then,
after a few seconds, she said it clear in a whisper. “Jayacob.
Wrisss ban.”

Jacob looked down at her right hand on
top of her left. He remembered the movements. And now it all made
sense. Carefully, he removed her right hand and replaced it on the
pillow. Slowly, he lifted her other hand and then moved the pink
wristband up to the bottom of her hand. There, on her left wrist,
about two inches long, was skin folded over skin.

“That’s why you always wore the bands.
You slit yourself.”

A memory of an old photo album came to
Jacob. His mother had shown it to him at one time or another. He
couldn’t remember exactly when. He just remembered seeing the old
black and white photograph of a young woman and knowing immediately
who it was.

“You’ve always wore these things. You
cut yourself a long time ago.” Jacob remembered the gun he had held
to his head. “Grandma. What’s happening to me, happened to you,
didn’t it?”

Jacob looked at her and saw that her
eyes were half shut again. Then he saw the lids fall the rest of
the way down. As quietly as he could, he dug the paper out of the
trash and left the two old women to their slumber.

#

Jacob pulled up the driveway of his
granduncle’s farm a little after five o’clock. After an afternoon
of limbo, knowing he needed to do something but knowing that he
couldn’t until after this step, he was drained of mental
energy.

The old man met him on the porch with
his forever-fixed smile. Jacob didn’t feel his usual annoyance upon
meeting him. Instead, he felt the energy rise back into the
anticipation and knew that he was in the right place.

“Jacob, my boy, it’s so nice of you to
come. I got desert and coffee inside.”

They walked into an immaculate house.
After being asked to have a seat, Jacob moved onto a large
comfortable sofa. In front of him sat a metal tray with two
matching cups and a decanter. To the side of this were two plates
with two forks. Uncle Luke soon returned with a round covered tray.
He lifted the cover revealing the perfect cherry pie.

Jacob was satisfied to sit and answer
his uncle’s superficial questions for a little while. The taste of
the desert combined the increasing anticipation electrified him
inside while he faked normalcy on the outside. Most of the pie and
most of the coffee were gone, when Jacob started to look for an
inroad to the necessary conversation. He didn’t have to wait
long.

“You know, Jacob, it has always pained
me that you didn’t get to meet your grandfather. He was such a good
man.”

“Oh really.”

“An incredible man, and quite well
off.” The old man’s neck wiggled as he laughed. “I suppose he had
to be with Oletta.”

“Why’s that? I mean I never really
thought Grandma was materialistic.”

“Oh no. Not a bit. But she was
different. She was different for a woman at that time.”

“How?”

“Well, you just wasn’t going to catch
your grandma doing the things that a woman was expected to do. She
never was much of the housewife type. She wasn’t that much of the
mothering type either. She was just always kind of in her own
little world. Kind of like she is right now.”

“How did she get away with
that?”

His uncle smiled affectionately.
“Well, I suppose when we were kids, it was me. Our dad, your great
granddaddy, didn’t much understand the way she was. I think he sort
of expected her to take household things over when our mother
passed on. He and Oletta didn’t get along too well.” Uncle Luke
laughed again. “But the damndess thing was that he never hit her.
He had no problem taking a switch to the rest of us, but for some
reason he wouldn’t do that to her. I don’t really understand that,
but I think it was just because of how she was. There was something
about the girl.”

“Yeah. I think I know what you
mean.”

“Anyway, they would fight. At least,
he would fight. He would yell at her for a little while and then
give up. I think it irritated him that he just couldn’t get under
her skin. Oletta just didn’t care. And I don’t mean in a
happy-go-lucky way either.”

“Do you mean she was
depressed?”

“You know, it’s funny, but I can’t
really say. She was never one to smile much. But she was never one
to tell you what she was frowning about.”

Jacob laughed before he could stop
himself. “Yeah, I think I can relate to that.”

His uncle was still smiling at him.
But Jacob thought he could see just a little bit of inquisitiveness
there.

“So how did that come back to you,
Uncle Luke?”

“Well, I was the one who took over for
mama. I did my stuff and her stuff too. Being the oldest boy, I
helped dad with the farm. Then I would help take care of the house
and the other kids.”

“Sounds like a lot of
work.”

“Oh it was. I suppose that’s why I
never finished school. But you know, I never really minded it a
bit. I always thought it was just my place.”

The next thing that happened was Uncle
Luke’s voice changing. And with it, so did his mannerisms. But most
of all, it was the smile. It was not the same old
please-everybody-and-keep-the-peace smile. All together, Uncle Luke
was very scary for a few seconds.

“And we all have our place, don’t we
Jacob. I have my place and you have yours. And it all works out in
the end.”

Jacob struggled not to change his
expression. And he struggled not to run out of the house. He waited
for the man in white to leave the room.

And soon he did. Uncle Luke regained
his usual appearance and continued his story. “Your grandpa
eventually came along. He was a rich fella, and he loved your
grandma. Spoiled her. Just like anybody who loved her did. Oletta
Putman was the only woman in the county with a live-in maid. Then,
when your mother came along, she was the only person with a live-in
nanny.”

“Mom never said anything about these
people. I mean, you would think that since she lived with them and
all—”

“Your mom wouldn’t have been old
enough when they left. She was just barely walking about time your
grandpa died.”

“So Grandma couldn’t afford the house
help anymore?”

“No. She could have, easily. Your
grandpa left her with a tidy sum.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You’d never know it by the way
she lived her life, but your grandma was and still is a wealthy
woman.”

“Then why did the help have to
go?”

Uncle Luke sighed. “I don’t know
really. Maybe it was because she took your grandpa’s death bad. I
don’t know for sure. But after that point, Oletta became the
biggest hermit you ever met. For years, your mother and I were
about her only social contacts.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It was kind of like she
had some deadly disease, and she was afraid she would contaminate
everybody with it.”

Jacob felt a sudden rush of heat. Then
it was like a breeze came through the room and cooled him down
quickly. “Uncle Luke?”

“Yes, Jacob.”

“When did grandma try to kill
herself?”

He shook his head. “I
don’t—”

“I saw her wrist. I asked her about it
and she wrote this.” Jacob fished the colored paper out of his
pocket and handed it to his uncle. “You see the way the letters
come together?”

“Q. U. I. E.”

Jacob
snatched the paper from his uncle’s grip. Then he silently read the
rest of what was on the backside of that paper, mixed in with the
red scribbles.
Quiet to
all
.

“No. The other side.”

His uncle looked at him with a
bewildered and somewhat frightened face. Then he eyed the paper
again. When he was done, he hesitantly handed it back to
Jacob.

“This is something that is known only
to Oletta, your mother, and myself. Oletta always wanted it that
way. But now it looks like she wants you to know.” He took a deep
breath. He frowned and looked very old. “She was seventeen years
old. She walked down into the woods by herself one day. She came
back up later, blood running down her hand and spilling all over
her clothes. But she looked just fine for all the blood she had
lost. She didn’t look like herself at all. She looked—”

“Invigorated?”

Uncle Luke looked at looked at him
inquisitively. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

Jacob only nodded at him.

“They put her in a mental hospital
after that. She was gone for almost a full year. A doctor there
told Daddy that she had some kind of psychosis or something. That
she was seeing things. But they must have cured whatever it was,
because after she got out, she never spoke of such a thing
again.”

His uncle looked deeply dejected.
Jacob decided he had all he needed from the old man. After a little
while, he commented on a painting hanging there in the living room.
They talked for a little while until Jacob thought things had
lightened up enough. Then he made an excuse to leave.

On his
way out the door Jacob could only think about the flipside of the
letter. He hadn't seen it at the hospital.
Quiet to all
.

Chapter 7

The sun was just beginning to show that
it planned to set sometime in the near future, and Jacob was
driving on the quiet highway. He had left his uncle’s house riding
on an emotional roller coaster. The high part came from the
knowledge he was gaining. The low was from something he could not
identify. He was doing something terribly wrong. And he wasn’t even
sure he wanted to know what that was.

Then the lows dwindled. Soon, they
were gone completely. The high remained, but it had changed too.
Jacob became indifferent to knowledge. It became a meaningless game
to him.