Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner

by Joshua Scribner

  Jonah said, “Okay.”

  Tate looked at him oddly, then went to put the trashcan away. He came out and put another piece of tape over Jonah’s mouth. “Now, bro. You need to sit here in the discomfort. I want you to practice noticing any sensation that comes into your body and any thought that comes inside your head. Just like when we were meditating.”

  Tate left the room.

  #

  Jonah was deprived of pretty much everything. There was the view of the table and the wall. Turning his head, he could make out the edge of his entertainment center and the wall on one side. On the other side, he could see into his kitchen and a bookshelf against the wall. He could also see down his body and the floor below.

  It didn’t take long for all that to seem like nothing. Then it was just the miserable sensations. His body went from itching to burning, as he sweated beneath the rope and his clothing. His bladder seemed to swell more and more, begging for relief.

  At first, Jonah tried to ignore the sensations, distracting himself with thoughts, running songs through his head, thinking of clients he’d seen, books he’d read. All of these distracters were temporary solutions that faded into the same things, the nagging sensations. Soon, Jonah couldn’t think of the distracters at all, his urge to piss and his urge to scratch too strong. He gave up on trying to ignore these urges. He suffered for a while. Then he remembered what Tate had taught him. Instead of denying the sensations, Jonah reversed directions. He had the sensations, feeling them to their full extent, observing them.

  The sensations intensified at first, but then they all seemed to blend together. Instead of the separate burnings in his bladder and on his skin, Jonah sensed one giant burning, not localized anywhere. Then that burning, that longing, seemed to exit him. Merely observing it made the sensation become separate from him, something in his environment, and it no longer bothered him.

  #

  Tate came back to his chair. He didn’t look at Jonah. He just started right in. “There are demons all around, bro. And they possess people. They try to attack in a couple of different ways. They either try to make the organism they harbor act out or they try to use the mechanisms of the organism’s consciousness to send out their telepathic messages. The impact of most demons is very limited. They possess quickly and try to act quickly, because demons are generally very impulsive. The end result is usually that they try to make an impact on a consciousness they have not been in long enough to comprehend. Their effect is stronger on lower life forms, which have a less complex consciousness. But there are problems there too. Lower organisms lack the necessary biological material to harbor a demon. Bugs, snakes, other lower life forms, all die quickly upon being possessed.”

  Jonah remembered all the bugs that had woken him. He’d found them all dead or near death.

  “More advanced demons can enter higher consciousnesses, like dogs or cats, and they can have a stronger impact there, without killing the animal right away. But that is only the most advanced of demons.” Tate stopped for a little while, as if consolidating what was in his head.

  “Advanced demons are rare. The very nature of a demon is impulsivity. They need to take, and they need to take immediately. They end up having very little impact and jumping from life form to life form, trying to get some kind of reaction. They will only stay in a human consciousness for an extended period of time if they are trapped there by an outside source.”

  Again, Tate paused. Jonah found it hard to wait for him to talk again. But he had to wait anyway. Tate finally continued.

  “It takes a long time for a demon to become refined within a human consciousness. But it has happened before, I believe. In the most extreme cases, the demon learns not only how to control the person it harbors, but also to use the social mechanisms of that person plus telepathy to control the people around it.”

  Jonah got a picture of Hitler in his mind. Not only had this man been hideous, almost beyond what seemed possible for a human; he had been able to illicit his wicked agendas from the others around him. Jonah wondered if Hitler’s generals and the people who ran the concentration camps had been under the telepathic influence.

  “Such control can only be developed over many, many years. It takes more than a lifetime. It takes lifetimes, centuries.”

  With that, Jonah’s mind put together the puzzle. He began moving his head around, trying to signal Tate that he wanted to communicate. Tate understood. He got up and removed Jonah’s tape.

  Jonah rushed out, “That’s what happened with my father! Holy shit! He passed it on to me, and then—”

  “And then he was dead. He passed his seed on and then was executed. The demon was allowed to grow further inside his offspring.”

  Jonah thought of the wicked urges he’d had. The strongest had been sex. He had been tempted to pass on his seed. No, he had passed on his seed, possibly.

  “Fuck! Tate! I came inside my secretary. She might be—”

  “No, bro. I took care of it. Do you remember her being sick earlier this week?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s because I waited for her to go out without you. It was Monday afternoon. She was having lunch. I waited until she wasn’t looking and dropped something in her drink. You may have heard of it. It’s called ECP. It’s basically a strong shot of hormones. It makes it impossible for a fertilized egg to implant against the wall of the uterus. Sometimes it causes the woman nausea and vomiting.”

  Jonah shook his head, not believing that he had dragged his employee into this.

  “That’s why the animals didn’t kill you last night. That’s why you got crows instead of dogs or some other big animal.”

  And a fucking cat. Don’t forget the cat.

  “It can’t kill you yet. Not until you successfully pass its seed. It just wanted to scare you into cooperating.”

  Scare him into cooperating. Yeah, Jonah had started to figure it out. Maybe he would have seen the bargain. Rape and pillage, and I won’t kill you now. Oh, but what I won’t tell you is that once you rape enough to sustain my life I’ll have you torn into little pieces.

  “I tried to do the same for the stripper that I did for your secretary. But the wolf got to her first. Your sperm must not have taken for some reason. That angered it.”

  Tate must have been there to see him go back with the stripper but not seen what happened in the booth. Otherwise, he would have known Jonah’s sperm hadn’t gotten in. Jonah thought of the stripper’s fate and what else that could mean. He said, “Do you think it will kill Steph?”

  “I can’t say for sure, bro,” Tate said matter-of-factly, almost indifferent. Then Tate got up and taped Jonah’s mouth. “I’ll bring you water from time to time. Otherwise, I’m not allowing you anything.”

  Tate left.

  #

  Hunger came. It crept up slowly. Then it grew fast. But before it became too bad, Jonah was able to put the hunger outside of him. Tate came with the water for a while. But then, about the time the daylight on the wall disappeared, Tate stopped with the water too. He turned off the lights. Jonah was fasting.

  #

  Tate had not come back. There was darkness. There was thirst and tiredness too. Jonah put the thirst and tiredness outside of him, and he was alone with his thoughts. Then he placed the thoughts outside of him. On the exterior, the thoughts were different. They moved around with ease, took shape without confusion.

  It had been the OCD and the smoking that had kept the demon hidden from him. With the busyness of his mind, he had not been able to sense it there, and he had not been able to hear it talking to him, trying to get him to do its wicked deeds.

  And what had put the OCD there? Was it the outside source Tate had referred to that had made him check? No, the OCD had been natural. It found a man centuries ago with OCD. This man was also extremely intelligent, a rarity. It trapped the demon inside his consciousness. Then it made sure, in the same way it made sure the demon was passed on through the man’s DNA, t
hat the OCD and high intelligence predispositions were passed on.

  Jonah had conquered his obsessions, allowing the demon out too early. It was not supposed to come out until ten or twenty years down the road, more developed. The plan of the outside source had been disrupted.

  What was the outside source? That was relative. Different cultures called it by different names. Jonah’s culture called it Satan. But the name, and the religious beliefs concerning its origins, didn’t matter. It was simply a soul. It was simply evil. It was Take.

  #

  Nothing but thoughts out in front of him. Then his thoughts blended into one consciousness, and in his consciousness, which was all spread in front of him, there was something that was not him.

  Jonah watched that part, the foreign part, until he could manipulate it. He told it to grow smaller. He told it to be contained. Then he was the source who trapped it. He told it to be silent.

  #

  The foreign part of his consciousness was there. But it would no longer be a threat. It would no longer be able to hide, or to be hidden, from him. It would never be able to make another sound.

  There was something else. It was something coming from the outside into his consciousness. Jonah didn’t try to bring it into focus. Instead, he merely watched it, let it form on its own, got out of its way. The vision came.

  #

  There is a parade. Soldiers walking down the street, in time, step for step. There is a band, but no horns in this band, only drums. On both sides of the street are throngs of people, cheering on the parade, shouting, praising, but vacant in a way. They feel, but they don’t realize that their feelings aren’t totally their own. Their feelings are manipulated.

  At the end of the parade is the one they worship. He rides a float lined with the colors of camouflage. Above him is a ceiling made of net. To his sides are artificial plants. The man is not protected from the crowd. He doesn’t need to be. He need not fear assassination from his people. They worship him.

  Jonah cannot get a clear view of the man. He’s moving around too much for Jonah to see his face. The one constant is that the man’s arms are held above his head, wrists bent down at an angle, fingers pinched together. To Jonah, the man’s gesture looks like that of a puppeteer.

  Jonah waits for the man’s face to come into view, and he is not worried, because he knows it will eventually happen. But then there is something that comes and takes it all away.

  #

  When Jonah came to, it was to the sound of Tate’s elated voice.

  “You did it, bro! I can’t sense it anymore. You silenced the fucker.”

  Tate ripped the tape off of Jonah’s mouth. Then he started untying Jonah.

  Yes, he had silenced it. He could sense it now, and he could control it with ease. Never again would it be able to whisper to him. Never again would it be able to whisper to other organisms from him. But there had been something else, something very important. Jonah had not seen what he needed to see.

  He felt dazed, listening to Tate shout out his celebrations. Untied, Jonah stood up. Then he fell. Tate caught him and dragged him to the couch.

  “Easy, bro. You haven’t had anything to eat or drink for almost two days.”

  Two days. That was how long Jonah had been out. That was how long it took for him to find the demon, isolate it, and own it.

  Epilogue

  The true test of Jonah’s control came shortly after he harnessed the demon. He underwent a nonreversible vasectomy, ending the possibility of passing the demon on. There was no retaliation. Tate never heard the demon inside Jonah again.

  Jonah bought the building that housed his office. Tate moved into the office Jonah had been using for storage. Jonah started doing therapy, and he eventually stopped doing the evaluations. He and Tate both flourished as therapists, with methods that focused on the meditative practices of the East. Eventually, people were being referred from many miles away.

  Steph stuck around for a while. She and Jonah continued their sexual relationship for a few months. But, when no romantic feelings developed, it slowly dwindled away and became merely friendship. A couple of years later, Steph became engaged to a man she had met. She left shortly afterward.

  Tate and Jonah started collaborating on writing projects. Their methods were published in several different journals; then they published a couple of books. The books received national acclaim. They even did promotional tours, speaking on talk shows, appearing at book signings. All they spoke of was their methods, though. They never discussed the paranormal.

  It was fifteen years after they had met that Tate and Jonah parted. Tate decided to take a faculty position at the University of Florida. Jonah opted to stay in Stanton. He hated for Tate to leave but knew it was probably for the best. The good they could do together was substantially less than what they could do apart. Besides, Jonah was three years into a relationship with a woman who had roots in northern Michigan. She was a lawyer there in town. She had two kids from a previous relationship and was not interested in having more. Jonah felt they would grow old well together.

  It was five years later that Jonah got an E-mail from Tate. All that was written was, “What do we do about this?” But there was an attachment.

  The attachment contained an article about a dark horse candidate for one of the Mississippi seats in the United States Senate. The man’s name was Abraham Pendle. There was a picture. Pendle was standing on an outside stage, behind a microphone. His hands were raised above his head, wrists bent down at an angle, fingers pinched together, like a puppeteer.

  Though the characteristics differed in a few ways, the resemblance was undeniable. Pendle was Jonah’s brother.

  The Coma Lights

  A Novel

  Copyright 2011 Joshua Scribner

  Originally published by Double Dragon 2007

  Smashwords Edition

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the author.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Chapter One

  The coma men are there. They stand in the distant mist. But that mist is thin, so they must see him lying on the ground. They have to know that he is suffocating. He wonders why they won’t help. He longs for air.

  Finally, it no longer hurts to suffocate. A sense of complete tranquility rushes over him. He feels light, like he can float away. His vision begins to blur, but he thinks he can see one of the coma men moving his way. Now he is floating.

  Everything goes black.

  #

  Air. He needed it again, because something had pulled him back. He was no longer in the mist. The coveted air rushed in on Sully Jacobson, like a dam breaking. Disorientated, he sat up in the dark and hyperventilated.

  “It’s okay!” a voice said. “It was only a dream.”

  A sense of familiarity arose. He was supposed to recognize that voice. Where had he heard it before?

  He felt the fingernails sting his back and heard her voice again. “You’re okay now, Sully.”

  It came to him. Anna was his girlfriend now. Anna, who was strong. Anna, who was conscientious. Anna, who at times seemed to know what he needed more than he knew, who had dug her fingernails into his back, knowing the sharp pain would hasten his recovery from oblivion and fear.

  Anna removed her claws. “Slow down. Get
your breath under control.”

  Yes, he could slow down. Air was abundant and not going away. No need to rush it in. Another minute and it was under control. “That’s the third time this week,” he said, though he knew it might have been more, the other dreams forgotten.

  “You’re probably just nervous about the trip,” Anna said.

  Yes. The trip. That was the last piece of the orientation puzzle, the latest change in his life, the final part of time catching up with him. His ex-wife, Faith, had moved further away, out of state, three months ago. When the phone calls didn't come immediately, Sully thought she was gone for good, having given up a part of her life, the four-year-old daughter they had together. Then, about a month ago, she had called. And though it was within his rights to shut her out completely, he being the parent with full custody, he would not do that to his daughter. So for one week, every two months, little Monica would go stay with her mother.

  Next year, when Monica was in kindergarten, the system would have to change. But that could be worked out later. Right now, there was tomorrow’s trip to think of.

  “Let me do it for you,” Anna said, reading his mind.

  “No,” Sully replied, though the word didn’t feel right, wanting to let Anna take care of him. “You can pick her up, but I have to drop her off. I have to face this.”

  And he did have to face it. For so long, after returning from his state of near death, he had just avoided it. He had only to travel one mile to town, where he taught his classes. Most everything he needed, his family, groceries, entertainment, was right there in Little Axe, Oklahoma. And he could handle going a little further, so long as he was home at a reasonable hour and someone was with him. If what he needed was even further away and could not be taken care of by phone, Internet, or mail, then Mom or Anna would always take care of it.