Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner (93 page)

“And with the rest of them, to stay
hidden, you used me.”

“Yes, I think you helped.”

Jacob shrugged. The man in white’s
voice grew as he spoke the next words.

“I can make a truck stall in the
middle of the road, and nobody ever knows I was there. I can make a
gas line break, and nobody expects me. I can control the
bees.”

“But you can’t put people in the
places you need them to be.”

The man in white lifted a hand to his
bare chin and began to rub there. “No. I don’t do that. At least,
not anymore.”

“Not anymore?”

The man in white smiled. Jacob wanted
to change the subject.

“So why Tommy Carmichael? And why does
the process end now?”

“I believe you know where you’ll get
those answers.”

“When the class comes together
again?”

“Yes. Look for the history man. He’ll
tell you what you want to know.”

“But . . .” Jacob let it go. There
were other things he wanted to know now, before this man was gone.
“So why did you make me wicked?”

The man in white laughed again. “We,
Jacob, are not wicked by nature. What we do is not wicked. We,
Jacob, have helped make the world keep turning.”

“Yes, I understand that.”

“Wickedness makes our understanding
more palatable.”

“But why must we understand at all? I
could have done all this and never known.”

“Because, our kind transforms. We are
shown little pieces of what we were. We must understand at least
some of what we were if we are to be able to deal with what we
become.”

Jacob was becoming more and more
sickened by this. There were too many “we’s” for his taste. “And
what will I become?”

“I’m not sure. Time will
tell.”

“But I do go on?”

“Yes.”

“And you leave me?”

“Yes. I leave you, and I leave this
world.”

“So, go then.”

The man in white stood up. He walked
past the three tables and turned around. “I have always been what I
am now, Jacob. But I have been trapped inside of a human
consciousness, just like you are. That consciousness had
compassion. That consciousness had pity. Recently, I was invited to
leave that consciousness, and in this form I feel only for the
process. But I kept my old decrepit body alive.”

“Why?”

“So I would have a place to go where I
would have the compassion to warn you.”

“Warn me of what?”

“I have one more deed to perform
before I go.”

“What?”

“You were warned Jacob!”

“No!” Now Jacob stood up.

“And by your reaction, I think you
know what you were warned of.”

“She won’t tell anyone! I
promise!”

“No, she won’t. She won’t because I
helped you understand that she should not.”

“You didn’t help me. My
grandma—”

“And I warned you of more Jacob. I let
you know that it all must end.”

“And it will. Just don’t!”

“End the line, Jacob. I told you to
end the line.”

“No! You didn’t! You’re not my
grandmother!”

“End the line. Don’t make a
child.”

“No!”

“I tried to call you right before. I
tried to make you stop! But you put your seed in her. You put our
seed in her, and it can never be.”

“Don’t kill, Sonnie!”

The man in white smiled very big. “I
didn’t kill her. I only filled in the hole on the spout, and
blended the steel under the cap so it wouldn’t pop off from the
pressure.”

Jacob saw the teakettle in his
mind.

“You wanted the coffee, Jacob.” The
man in white looked away and toward the wall, like he was looking
through it. “And I think it’s just about ready.”

“Grandma! No!” Jacob jumped over one
table. He landed hard on the floor but got up quickly. He jumped
over the second, but the man in white lifted a hand, causing Jacob
to stop in midair.

“The process is efficient. I come to
take away.”

#

Jacob falls onto the table and bounces
to the floor. He runs out of the dining area and into the church.
He sees his mother’s surprised face as he runs past her and out of
the building.

Before he makes it to the street, he
hears the popping sound. He runs faster and faster and then stops
suddenly.

“There’s nothing there. It wasn’t
real.”

Jacob thinks about going up into
Sonnie’s apartment and waiting with her until the funeral starts.
He thinks maybe he will leave for Connecticut tonight, and he will
beg her to come along. Then he thinks that maybe they’ll skip the
funeral and just leave now.

Jacob thinks these and similar
thoughts for the next few minutes. He thinks these things because
it’s just easier that way. Anything to keep his mind off what he
really sees. It will be months before he acknowledges what lies in
the middle of the road with the broken glass and the old teakettle
with a hole blown through its side. It will take time for him to
realize that Sonnie was there, her long hair sticking to the
blackened skin on her face, the half-crisped towel still wrapped
around her.

Chapter 16

Jacob didn’t want to return to Nescata,
ever, and for a long time, he did not. Against the will of his
protesting family, he returned to Connecticut soon after the
funerals were over. Jacob didn’t remember being at Sonnie’s. It was
just an empty space in his mind when he looked back on it. He did
remember his granduncle’s ceremony. He died within a week of
Jacob’s grandmother. They said it was a heart attack. Jacob knew
different. Then there was Clay Tandros, the counter boy who had
confronted Jacob about Larry Confad’s death. He was standing behind
the counter, when he was shot by a passer through, not even half an
hour before Sonnie was killed. Those were the last three deaths to
occur in the wake of the process.

Jacob didn't return to law school. He
left Connecticut soon after returning. He got in his car with what
little he had and just headed North. He scraped buy for a while,
working as a busboy in a little resort town in northern Michigan.
Then he took a test and was hired on as a tollbooth operator at the
Mackinac Bridge. The job suited him perfectly. He had minimal
interaction with people—he took their money and gave them their
change. And it was far away from Nescata.

Jacob didn’t like his life, but he
didn’t hate it either. He was isolated, and that felt safe. For a
long time, he only waited, getting up each day and doing his job,
doing very little at night other than reading and sleeping. Jacob
knew all the while that his life would change again someday. He
didn’t know what he would be, but he knew he would be used again.
But first, there was one more piece of business to take care of in
Nescata. There was just a little more he needed to know.

The invitation came in the mail one
spring. It was nearly four years since he had last been to Nescata,
but Jacob knew he had to go back now. He booked a flight
home.

#

Twenty-eight people had graduated from
Jacob’s class. All but two made it to the ten-year reunion. One was
doing missionary work in Africa. The other worked for the CIA and
could not comment much on what she was doing.

People greeted Jacob as he moved about
the gymnasium. Many asked where he’d been. Jacob tried to be
polite, but he didn’t think he did too well. He was very out of
practice with social interaction. After a while, people seemed to
ignore him, and he was able to walk around, hanging out in the
background, hearing their stories. He was there for nearly two
hours before he spotted another person doing the same
thing.

“Kevin Rach?”

Kevin looked at Jacob like he was
looking at someone he had never seen before. By the way he tilted
his glass forward a little and his slow movements, Jacob could tell
that Kevin was working on a pretty good buzz. Then, suddenly,
Kevin’s eyes lit up.

“Jacob Sims?”

“Yeah. How are you?”

“Can’t complain.”

Jacob turned to the crowd of people in
front of them. He couldn’t handle the inquisitive way Kevin was
looking at him. But even looking away, Jacob could feel his stare.
He stared at Jacob as if he were some rare piece of art that he had
been searching his whole life for.

“So Jacob, what do you think of all
this?” Kevin eventually asked.

“Oh, I don’t know, some surprises,
some not.”

“Yeah, I guess you could say that. But
step back and look at the whole thing, and tell me what you
see.”

Jacob thought for a moment, not about
what he saw, but about how to describe it. “I see a
lot.”

Now Kevin had a look of satisfaction
on his face. “Yeah, I think so, or more accurately, I thought so a
while back.”

“What do you mean, Kevin?”

“What I mean is, I thought it odd that
so much came from a little town in Oklahoma."

“Go on.”

“You know, Jacob, I graduated from
here without making too many friends. I guess most people probably
saw me as a bit of an eccentric. Or better yet, as a rambunctious
little twerp. But that’s okay, because I was. In many ways, I still
am.”

Jacob wondered why Kevin was telling
him all this. But, even more, he wondered why he was somehow
interested in knowing what Kevin had to say.

“
Anyway, I sort of left
without telling anyone where I was going. I went to California,
where I found this nice little liberal arts college where I could
split my time between studying and checking out tan line contests
at the beach. After I left there, I went to another small college
to work on my Masters. Now, I’m at Benton College, where I teach
history.”

“History!”

“Yeah, you know, stuff that has
already happened, those classes they make everybody take but hardly
anybody really uses.”

Jacob could only nod. It had been a
long time since he felt the magic of this place, and now he could
feel it again. He realized that he was with the history
man.

“
Anyway, it doesn't pay
much, but I’m a happy man. I’m happy because I’ve found something
that fascinates me more than money. I do what I like to call
dynamic historical research. I study historical patterns of certain
geographical areas.”

“Really? Ever publish?”

“Every once in a while, but nothing
big. But now I think I’ve found something huge.”

Kevin looked at Jacob as if to ask if
he really wanted to hear this.

“Go on. What did you find?”

Kevin looked at Jacob inquisitively
again. He looked into his eyes, staring away, like he was trying to
find something there.

“Anyway, a few years ago, I began to
study the historical patterns of Nescata. I found a bit of a
pattern, a spasmodic pattern, but still a pattern. It seems that,
every so often, our little town produces a senior class not unlike
our own. The classes that graduate within a couple of years before
it and after it are also extraordinarily well to do, but it’s
mainly the one class that really stands out.”

Kevin motioned with his
hand.

Jacob looked around. There were two
crowds. One was formed around Tim Lester, who was sporting a Super
Bowl ring. Then there was Kris Macabe, whose latest record had gone
platinum.

“You mean like those two?”

“Those two, yes, but it’s not just
them. There are much more in the background. And if the pattern
repeats itself in the same way, those in the background will do
very important things and receive very little
notoriety.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes. Take your friend Adam Masters.
He developed a statistical technique called Ecological Sampling
Analysis. Basically, it uses big samples made up of people all over
the world to identify rare characteristics. Right now, that
technique is being used in labs all over the world. It’s used to
identify patterns of disease spread.”

“That’s impressive.”

“I’d say. Do you know they’ve
identified a very small group of people who are not susceptible to
the HIV virus? That would not have been possible without our
friend.”

“And you don’t think he’ll receive
notoriety?”

“Oh, he might get his name on a few
thank-you lists, but he’ll never win the Nobel. That type of fame
will go to the researchers, not the statisticians. And he’ll never
be another Tim Lester.”

“I think you’re right.”

“And there’s more here, Jacob. And
there’s a lot more from the past classes. I’ve connected people
from Nescata with people ranging from Martin Luther King to Albert
Einstein. And like Adam, they’re always in the
background.”

Jacob thought about that. He thought
about the way Nescata was. It was Sonnie who had noticed it. People
in Nescata had a way of not knowing things. He wondered if people
in the world had a way of not knowing things. Stars were who were
known. Those who kept the world turning, those in labs, those under
the figureheads who make the speeches, they rarely received
notoriety.