Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (81 page)

The outside was beautiful. He stared
out of his window at the open plains. For miles there were nothing
but fields. Then there were the taller buildings and the grain
elevators of the distant towns off in the vista. At first it had
been just enough to notice. Then there was the loose feeling that
came in his legs and beckoned him to stop. He was able to resist it
for a short while. He knew he had somewhere to be.

Jacob was a couple of miles outside of
Nescata when the need to stop took him over. He pulled off the
highway onto a dirt road, drove about a mile to the first
intersection and pulled his car off to the side. Jacob felt like
running.

#

As Jacob stretched, reasons came to
him. It made symbolic sense that he had a psychological need to
escape and was expressing this need physically. It made sense that
he had just ingested a great deal of sugar and caffeine at his
uncle’s house and that these things gave him
restlessness.

But the reasons drifted like smoke,
out of his mind. He marveled at how his thoughts seemed to move
into the background. He got up quickly from the last stretch, red
dirt sticking to his sweaty skin. He started slow and worked up
into a near sprint.

Jacob was pleasantly surprised to feel
the spring in his legs. It was strange, because he knew he couldn’t
be in very good cardiovascular condition. He lifted weights on a
weekly basis and supplemented that with an occasional pickup
basketball game—in which he could only play about three minutes
before he stopped sprinting and started jogging up and down the
court.

By all logic, he should have started
cramping up after about six-hundred yards. But he was sure he must
have had the first mile done in, at most, six minutes, but possibly
as low as five and a half. And he wasn’t done either. He felt as if
he could do equal or better on the second mile. He felt good. He
felt alive. Then he stopped hearing his feet hit the
earth.

#

There are footsteps coming from behind
him, and there is the raspy sound of unconditioned breath. A figure
smaller than his own comes into his peripheral vision. But this
figure is not complete, so Jacob decides to let it develop before
he tries to look at it again.

But he does not need to look at it at
all. It comes into his vision anyway. He is passed on the
left.

The runner turns his head back and
forth as he runs. In his beet-red face and in his oily matted hair,
Jacob sees the ascetic indifference of a young boy. The boy runs
with the force and tightness of inexperience, and he makes a
terrible sound as his wind connects with the loosened phlegm of his
airway. Jacob wishes the boy would stop.

Jacob sees the boy’s bare back and the
way his narrow rib cage moves up so heavily and wonders how the boy
moves at all. His stride is short, and on the back of his legs,
blue veins protrude ominously in glistening sweat. Jacob thinks he
can actually see cramps forming there.

The runner slips and stumbles but
catches himself before he hits the ground. His breath becomes even
worse, and in it is mixed a high-pitched cry. Jacob looks back to
see if there is something that the boy is running from. But nothing
is there.

They near a stop sign and the boy
seems to be trying to speed up. But his own tightness slows him
down even more. Jacob moves up beside him. The runner coughs and
now there is red-dust-stained mucous hanging from his mouth. He
reaches down and holds the left side of his chest. Now he is
swinging his left side as he runs. His high pitched grunts are
violent and painful but very determined.

The runner reaches the stop sign and
falls down on the ground. He rolls over until he is in the grass on
the side of the road. His body is now a mixture of red and green.
His chest moves up and down and looks as if it could explode. There
is something wrong with it, something irregular. The left side
doesn’t just rise up and down. It almost seems to pop.

Jacob sees the runner lift up his
shoulders. He doubts that he will be able to make it all the way
up—at least, not for a while. The runner falls back into the grass
and Jacob thinks that he was right—the boy will not get
up.

But the boy in the grass begins to
roll on his back, first from shoulder to shoulder and then from
shoulders to hips. Soon, the runner is able to throw himself into a
sitting position.

The runner’s legs quiver under him as
he makes his way to his feet. Jacob’s thoughts fly
irrationally.

Maybe I should take him
back to my car. Maybe I should go find someone to come pick him
up.

In a jolting move, the boy moves one
leg forward. Then he turns and does the same with the other
leg.

“My God! You’re done! You can’t go
anymore!”

As if to spite Jacob, the boy leans
forward and is moving again. His hands stay below his waistline. He
is dragging himself, but he is running.

Jacob follows the runner for a few
seconds before he spots the man in white. He is standing off in the
distance, straight ahead, in the middle of the road. Jacob runs
ahead to meet him.

“Well, if it isn’t my old friend,
Jacob Sims.”

“I’m not your friend.”

“Oh yes you are. You don’t have a
choice in that.”

Jacob looks back and sees that the boy
is still coming. “Who is that?”

“Oh. I think it’s a young boy out for
a little trot.”

“Fuck you! Why is he
dying?”

The man in white laughs. He’s looking
past Jacob at the runner. “Oh Jacob. I wouldn’t worry myself too
much about that. Just sit back and enjoy the show for
now.”

Again, Jacob looks at the boy. He
looks as if he could be up to them within the minute.

“Do you remember the chickens,
Jacob?”

“What?”

“The chickens. Do you remember when
your dad used to butcher the chickens?”

“No!”

“Oh. Come on. I think you do,
Jacob.”

Jacob closes his eyes. For a moment,
there is black. But then the world seems to form under his
eyelids.

“Nice try. But we don’t see with our
eyes here.”

Jacob turns around, but the back is as
the front.

The man in white laughs again. “Poor
Jacob. Why do you try to deprive yourself? You know you want it.
And you know you like what you do.”

“Fuck you!”

“No Jacob. Fuck you! I don’t think
anyone ever made you watch those poor chickens. You had a choice,
didn’t you?”

Jacob does not answer.

“Learn the pleasure of your world,
Jacob. Your world is all you have.”

“I don’t want it.”

The man in white still does not look
at him. He is focused on the runner. “Oh yes you do.”

The runner takes the last few strides.
He grabs his chest. His eyes roll back into his head, and he falls
down at their feet. His body twitches as his face turns blue. He
curls and uncurls violently several times. Then his body begins to
flop around.

The man in white claps his large
hands. “Yes, good show! Good show! Just like a chicken, eh
Jacob.”

Urine runs down the boy’s leg. It wets
the ground and the boy rolls in it. His mouth comes open, and
air-deprived screams, barely audible, come out. His movements slow,
and his body starts to relax. Finally, lying on his back, his legs
start to curl up into him.

“Shows over, Jacob. The rest of this
you cannot see. But don’t worry. There is so much more to
come.”

Jacob watches as the runner’s legs
straighten.

“Why can’t I see the rest? You made me
watch that. So why can’t I see the rest?”

The man in white grabs Jacob’s neck.
And like that, Jacob can feel pain, and he's struggling to breathe.
The man in white lifts Jacob, by his throat, into the
air.

“Just because you’re not like other
people, does not mean you’re immortal, Jacob. There are some things
you can’t see. At least, not yet. Not until you reach my level.
Understand?”

Jacob tries to answer. He wants to
appease the larger man. He wants to breathe.

“Answer me, Jacob. Do you
understand?”

In the corner of his eye, Jacob sees
the figure of the boy standing next to them. The man in white’s
face turns from mocking anger to surprise. He looks down at the
boy. Then he throws Jacob violently to the ground. When Jacob
lands, he's alone.

#

Drenched with sweat and shaking with
fear, Jacob drove down the road. Images of the man in white’s
raging eyes flashed in and out of mind. They made him feel weak. He
looked his body over. He tried to think that there was something he
would be able to do the next time it happened.

He looked at his wrists and his arms.
They had seemed all right before. But now they seemed so small and
ineffectual. He felt the tightness in his legs and in his shoulders
and thought about how slowly he would move when the occasion arose
that the man in white was hurting him again.

“He wants me to think these things,”
he whispered. “He wants me to think that I’m weak.”

The whispers felt like blades in his
throat. The coughing they caused felt like fire. There were now
spots of blood on the steering column.

On the outside of Nescata, just before
the last town street, was a small convenience store. Jacob pulled
up in the empty parking lot and stopped abruptly. That’s when he
felt something new in his throat. It felt as if skin was coming
together. He sat there for about a minute. It seemed to heal
completely.

“Testing one, two. Testing one, two,
three.”

He laughed. His throat no longer hurt,
but he was thirsty. He got out. He walked in and caught the grin of
a young boy behind the counter. Jacob nodded to him and then walked
back to the cooler. He opened the glass door and reached randomly
for one of the forty-ounce beer bottles. Then he heard the sound of
a car pulling up outside.

It could be
him.

The thought was irrational, he knew.
Why would the man in white drive a car? Still, Jacob took two steps
forward and ducked behind a shelf. Soon, the front door beeped and
someone walked in. With his heart racing, Jacob peeked between the
shelves. Unable to make out the shape of the person, he ducked down
further. He heard the steps coming his way.

On the floor, Jacob tried to slow his
breathing so as to go undetected, but could not. He set the bottle
of beer behind him, and pressed it against the floor, ready to
attack. But it didn’t matter. When Jacob saw the huge white sneaker
come around the other side of the shelf, all he could do was close
his eyes.

He heard the footsteps and then put
his hands over his ears. There was a sudden rise of heat in his
head, and then it focalized in his eyes. Then sight came to him.
There, from the floor, he looked up and saw the man in white,
towering above him with one large arm pulled back.

Jacob removed his hands from his ears
and raised them above his head. He waited for contact.

Even though the contact was very
tender, there was still a sudden jolt that accompanied it. Jacob
jumped up, and when he did, he sent the bottle of beer across the
floor with the back of his foot.

“Oh my God, Jacob!” Sonnie’s voice
said.

He slowly dropped his arms down the
front of his face. Embarrassed, but at the same time relieved, he
looked at her. “Sonnie. I thought you were him.”

“Who?” She reached and took his
forearms.

“The monster. The man from my
visions.”

She shook her head. “Jacob, we have to
get you to somebody, and we have to do it now!”

“No! No! We can’t do that. He’ll find
me there.”

“Jacob. You’re coming with me. We’re
going to call somebody.”

“No! Just wait. I have to gather
myself.”

This time she nodded. “All right. Take
all the time you need. But I’m not leaving you. We have got to get
you—”

“What was his name?”

“What was whose name?”

“The boy?”

She hesitated. “The boy?”

“Yes. There was a boy. He was running
out in the country. And he died. What was his name?”

“Jacob! Stop it! You didn’t know him.
He didn’t know you. You couldn’t have had anything to do with
it.”

“I know. I just want to know his
name.”

“He had a heart condition,
Jacob.”

“Sonnie.”

“He wasn’t supposed to be running out
there.”

“Sonnie.”

“If his mom would have been home she
would have stopped him, but that had nothing to do with
you.”

“What was his name?”

It wasn’t Sonnie who answered him. The
voice came from behind her.

“Larry Confad.”

Jacob looked past Sonnie and saw the
counter boy standing at the end of the aisle.