“In what sense?”
Jonah tried to figure out how to answer Tate’s question, but he couldn’t. He didn’t know how it was better. He just knew it was, somehow.
Tate said, “You have a sense now, brother. You feel like something is about to click in your head, but it just won’t click as of yet.”
“Yeah.”
“Good. That means it’s time to stop for tonight. I encourage you not to try to figure this out for now. Just go with it. Go about your life as you normally would until tomorrow night when we do this again.”
“But—”
“No arguments, bro. Arguing this won’t get you anywhere right now. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Jonah stared at Tate for a few seconds, frustrated that he had made progress and now Tate was telling him it had to halt. But still, he was fascinated by what he had just been through, which took the edge off the frustration. He got up and nodded his goodbye.
Jonah was just getting ready to enter his apartment when something smacked him on the face. Stunned, but not injured, he looked to where he thought he might have heard the object fall. There, on the ground, in the light of one of the building’s lamps, was a large cricket. Jonah was fairly familiar with bugs of its size. Having grown up in the warm climate of South Carolina, he had seen hundreds of crickets and other bugs like this and had even had other experiences of them smacking into him. Usually, the bugs would hit you once, land, then scurry or jump off in another direction. But this bug was lying on its back motionlessly. Jonah nudged it gently with his foot. It didn’t move.
#
So many thoughts are in his head. None make sense. For what I’ve done . . . I don’t know why it’s so bad. . . I wonder if she’ll . . . I have forty-two on the schedule next week. . . It doesn’t matter; I have to do . . .
It’s all just a jumbled mess. What makes sense is that he’s in a car, moving down a road. He passes a gas station, a block of houses, a church, no people. Up ahead is a vista with some kind of tower. There is writing on the tower, but its scrambled: tompmorowerirmeaytotn,woiklthahommae. He comes to the end of the road and turns. He notices the road sign of the street he’s turning onto. He sees it in a flash, not enough time to read it before the noise wakes him.
#
At first, coming from the dream and into reality, Jonah thought it was just his alarm clock going off. Shortly after the high-pitched noise stopped, Jonah was oriented enough to realize that he hadn’t even set his alarm clock. He opened his eyes and sat up. His mind went to the night of hallucinations he’d had when he was suffering from withdrawals. A little frightened, Jonah told himself that he was never going to have to go through that again. There would be no more withdrawals. But what had made the noise? Had it just started in his dreaming mind and faded as he came awake? Jonah knew better than to try to just go back to sleep. His mind would never let him do that. If at all possible, he had to confirm what the noise was.
Through the dark room, he looked to the alarm clock on the dresser. The little red light that showed when the alarm was on was not there. It was 3:14AM. Jonah got out of bed to switch on the overhead light. Just on the other side of the bed, he felt something crunch beneath his bare foot. Disgusted, Jonah jumped the rest of the way across the room and switched on the light. There, on the floor, in a broken circle, were five large crickets. Four, including the one that he had stepped on, were motionless. One struggled for a few seconds, its legs sputtering weakly, then died right before his eyes.
Jonah went and got a broom and dustpan.
#
Saturday went like Friday. There were more of the five-minute meditative sessions, and Jonah didn’t really feel like he was getting it.
“Give up the struggle,” was about all Tate would say each time.
After about the tenth session, Jonah said, “I don’t think I can do it tonight. I just got too much on my mind.”
“Oh, tell me about it,” Tate said, an eager look on his face.
Jonah kind of laughed. Even after all the weirdness they’d been through, and the vulnerable states Tate had seen him in, this seemed almost too strange to tell another person. But he still wanted to let Tate in, because he thought Tate might help him make sense of it.
“Do you ever have problems with bugs getting into your place?”
Tate looked a little amused by the question. “No. Why?”
After a little more hesitation, Jonah told Tate about the crickets from the night before. Tate listened, without saying anything, but the amused look still on his face.
When Jonah was finished, Tate laughed, then said, “Don’t worry too much about it, bro. Meditation is powerful stuff. Your mind is going through major changes, most of them out of your conscious awareness.”
“Yeah. I can buy that. But how does that explain the crickets?”
“It’s simple, bro. The first incident, where the cricket hit your face, was probably real enough. It’s odd, but would you agree that it’s possible?”
“Sure,” Jonah said, though he was still very skeptical.
“And the other instance, with the crickets on the floor, was probably just a dream.”
“No,” Jonah said. “There’s no way. I was awake.”
“But you said you were just waking up. And we’ve all had dreams where we thought we got out of bed, only to wake up in bed a little later.”
“But this was so vivid. So real like.”
“That’s not unusual, bro,” Tate said confidently. “You’ve been watching your thoughts. That’s not a practice most people engage in.”
Jonah believed that part. Meditating, actually watching his thoughts come, was so different from the usual practice of experiencing himself as actually being his thoughts.
Tate said, “And with just a little practice, you become better at doing this. And in ways, especially subconscious ways, you become better at it almost immediately. You start to actually pay more attention to your dreams. And, initially, that makes them more memorable and vivid.”
Jonah was not sure if what Tate had just said made logical sense. But, by Tate’s amused look, Jonah thought it would be very difficult to convince him otherwise. He wished he hadn’t flushed the crickets. Then he could have at least confirmed their reality to himself, if not to Tate.
“All right, bro,” Tate said. “That’s as far as we can go tonight. You need to just live your life now. But I’ll tell you this. You’re going to start noticing yourself engaging in meditation naturally. You’ll just be going through your routines and notice that you actually reflect on what you’re thinking. It will be powerful, but not nearly enough. Next Thursday, after you’ve seen all your clients, we’ll work some more.”
#
Earlier in the week, Tate had hinted that he was bitter about having to give up their Thursday night dinner at Denny’s. When Jonah had called him on it by offering to go ahead with dinner and put meditation off until Friday, Tate had laughed and said, “No, bro. I’m just fucking with you.”
Tate was very relaxed when Jonah came over Thursday night, and he didn’t say a thing about Jonah being so late, although, Jonah thought, Tate would know that he was late because of the usual OCD crap. Jonah surmised from Tate’s calmness that Tate must have been meditating before Jonah got there.
After they situated themselves on the couch, Tate said, “So tell me about it, brother.”
“Well, you were right,” Jonah responded. I found myself paying more attention to my thoughts. I actually watched myself obsessing.”
“And?” Tate asked, when Jonah paused.
“And I tried to convince myself that my thoughts were ridiculous. And I was actually able to do that.”
“And that didn’t help.”
Jonah shook his head. “The more I tried to convince myself not to obsess, the more anxious I became.”
“So you lost that battle?”
Jonah sighed. Now that he no longer smoked, he had more energy and he wasn’t near as ill after a l
ong day’s work. But now, considering this mess was starting to make his head feel decimated. He nodded in response to Tate’s question, hoping the conversation wouldn’t get too complicated.
“So, although you were able to see your obsessions as they occurred and were able to argue against them, you still lost.”
“Yes,” Jonah said.
“You lost the battle in your head.”
“Yes,” Jonah repeated, this time louder.
“So, despite knowing what your mind was doing, it still ruled you anyway, and you lost?”
Jonah didn’t respond this time.
Tate waited a few seconds, then said, “So, if you can’t win the battle in your head, maybe you should consider fighting some place else.”
Jonah considered what Tate had just said. After about a minute, he had no idea what it meant, so he just shook his head.
“Remember,” Tate said. “I told you to give up the struggle.”
Jonah nodded.
“The struggle in your head is the struggle you have to give up.”
To Jonah, Tate sounded like he was basically telling him it was hopeless, but that couldn’t be right.
“You remember when you quit smoking?” Tate asked.
Jonah smirked. “Yeah. How could I forget that?”
“Did you do that in your head?”
After a few seconds of considering the question, then giving up, Jonah said, “I don’t know.”
“Were you able to convince yourself that you didn’t want to smoke? I mean, when you really wanted a cigarette, were you able to just make your mind stop believing that?”
Jonah remembered the tricks he had used when he was trying to fight the urge. They had taken the edge off of the DTs for a little while. But, by and large, they had failed and he had suffered. “Hell no!” Jonah said.
“So you lost the battle in your head?”
Jonah, now starting to cue into what Tate was getting at, said, “Yeah. I did lose the battle in my head. But I still didn’t smoke.”
Tate smiled softly. “Give up the struggle in your head, bro.”
It all seemed simple to Jonah now. He could fight his mind with all he had, and it would only get stronger. He couldn’t control his mind. But he could control how he reacted to it.
“Thanks,” Jonah said. “I know what to do.”
#
There is a thump, and it comes from somewhere nearby. Then there is pain. First, it is a single pain on his thigh, sharp, extreme. Then there is a similar pain in his back. He struggles. Something hits the top of his head very hard. Then there are multiple pains, and he realizes two things: He is being overwhelmed. He is helpless.
He feels the flesh being torn from his body. There is another thump, and it’s over.
#
Jonah came to from the horrible dream. The afterthought of the pain was still there. He was afraid to go back to sleep, but, at the same time, he was very tired. After about half an hour, he dozed off.
#
He is in his clinic, in the interview room. On his desk is a woman spread out, and Jonah is on top of her, giving her the measure. The room fades, like a poor television reception, and his thoughts fade too, going into something weird. All of the sudden he is different. He doesn’t do exactly what he does. He isn’t who exactly who he is. The room is changing too. It’s changing within the bad reception. But that reception is growing clearer and so are his thoughts.
There is a thump, and the reception is bad again. The process seems to start over. He is Jonah, in his clinic, having sex with some woman. It fades into the bad reception and starts to become something else.
There is a thump. This time, when he goes back to his clinic, he realizes that this is all not real, because the thump was from outside, and Jonah wakes up.
#
The feeling Jonah was left with was mainly fascination. He was a little afraid, because he didn’t know what had made the noise and woke him up, but that fear was overwhelmed by his memory of the sense from the dream, what it felt like to be changing into someone or something else. After a few minutes, he slept again.
#
There are many thoughts in his head. They are jumbled. But there is a sense that they may become clear. Just a sense.
He’s back in the car. The gas station. The block of houses. The church. Then the vista with the tower. tompmorowerirmeaytotn,woiklthahommae, is written on that tower. But then the letters start jumping around, and some of the letters begin to fall away.
There is a thump. The letters stop scrambling and then fade all together. Jonah turns onto the next road. He notices the street sign. Main Street it says. But that disappears. Jonah is pulling into the parking lot of his clinic, and that begins to change, first fading into the bad reception, then it begins to become clearer.
There is the thump and a slight crack. Jonah wakes up. For the rest of the night, he has no dreams that he can remember.
#
When Jonah got up that morning, he had coffee and a bagel. He then got his files out and prepared to call them in. That was when his mind started in on him. The first obsession was his office. His mind kept telling him that he should take a few minutes to ride up there and make sure everything was okay. Steph, like he, was there Monday through Thursday. So he would have been the last one out this week. His mind gave him the usual images: the lights, the coffeepot, the locks, the phones. But this time he didn’t take time to try to remember every step he had taken last night, didn’t bother with mentally retracing his steps in a futile attempt to see if he’d taken care of all these things.
After a few minutes of screaming at him, Jonah’s mind offered a compromise. He could just call his office. Then, when the answering machine picked up, he would at least know the building hadn’t burned down. But Jonah would not take the compromise. He was fairly certain this was going to have to be like when he quit smoking. No weaning himself off of his compulsions. He had to go cold turkey.
Letting go of the compulsive behaviors wasn’t as physically bad as giving up the smokes. Jonah didn’t feel like he couldn’t breathe or feel disconnected from himself. Giving up on compulsions was more mental. It made it hard to concentrate with his mind protesting so much. Initially, doing the reports, Jonah made a lot of mistakes, and these were real mistakes, not the imagined mistakes his mind had always warded against.
Eventually, his mind gave up on the office obsession and went on to something else. This time, it was the rewind function of the teledictation service. Hitting the five on his phone’s keypad would allow him to listen to the last ten seconds of what he had just read in. Hitting the six would take him back a minute. Jonah was able to resist the urge to use the rewind keys, but he found himself slowing down to compensate for not allowing himself the review privilege. Thinking this cheating and, in a way, another form of obsessing, Jonah sped up. The actual mistakes increased, but that was fine. In the past he had not gone forward until positive that he had not made a mistake. Now, on this day, he only went backward if he were sure that he had made a mistake. The new way was faster. But, of course, it aggravated the hell out of his obsessive mind, and it screamed all the louder at him.
Around three in the afternoon, Jonah had several reports finished. He didn’t know the exact number, but he refused to go back and count, having to know the exact number being one of his obsessions. There was a function on the teledication system that would allow him to go back and listen to one of his reports after he had finished it. His mind begged him to do this. When he refused, it bargained, telling him that he didn’t have to listen to the whole report, so long as he fast-forwarded to the parts where he thought mistakes were most costly, like the patient’s social security number or the diagnosis. On top of this, the office obsession had started up again. But still, he was resisting, not giving in to his obsessive mind’s demands. But the fight did take a toll on him. He was exhausted.
Jonah, feeling too weary to do even one more report, decided to take a nap. He
had been doing his reports in the living room, with the files spread out in front of him on the coffee table. He got up from the sofa and naturally went to the door to check the locks.
No, he thought, backing away from the door like it was lined with disease. Going to bed, even just to take a little nap, had always involved a regular obsessive routine. Everything that could be turned off had to be off, all that could be shut had to be shut, and his car had to be checked. Jonah did none of these. He even forwent his usual cup of water that he kept beside the bed just in case he got thirsty. His mind screamed at him for a little while, before he fell asleep.
#
It was strange to wake up and feel wide-awake immediately. Even stranger was the realization in his head. Jonah knew, somehow, that the realization, with its message too logical for a dream state, had been what pushed him into consciousness. He got off the bed and pulled up the blinds of his bedroom window. What he saw there confirmed what he thought. Last night, there had been thumping sounds in his dreams. But it had sounded like they were coming from somewhere else, somewhere outside of where his experience was, somewhere that was outside of the dream and in reality.
There were several little smears in the dust of his bedroom window, some of them overlapping, and there was one single crack, about eight inches long.
For a little while, Jonah wondered what could have been hitting his window the night before. Then Jonah got up to go work on his reports.
#
Around 5PM, Saturday, Jonah sat on his couch in a state of amazement and invigoration. For years he had smoked, and now that was gone. For years he had obsessed and reacted to his obsessions with compulsions. But, as Saturday had gone by with him refusing to give in to the obsessions, they had faded away.
That was when Jonah found a new obsession. But he was glad to give into this one. This obsession was speed. Without the usual obsessions there to distract him, he had begun to read each report in faster. At first, it was about four reports an hour, then he got it up to five and finally peaked out at six. Now he was done. He had the rest of tonight, and then all of tomorrow to do whatever the hell he wanted. Yes, speed was addicting, and Jonah was obsessive compulsive no more. He couldn’t wait to see what the future held.
Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner Page 9