Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner

by Joshua Scribner

  All three clients seemed satisfied with this. The bicycle metaphor probably wasn’t the best to use with James, he never having been outside long enough to learn to ride a bike, but James was surely abstract enough to benefit from it.

  “I suspect this treatment will take several weeks. I’ve tried to arrange a time most convenient to all, so if you could, let me know well in advance as to any scheduling conflicts.”

  Dr. Porter doubted that the time would be a problem. It was 1PM on Saturday, which would not conflict with Celeste’s work schedule or Toby’s school schedule. James, of course, was always open, and had the benefit of the location being designed for his comfort.

  “Before we begin, are there any questions?”

  There were no questions, just eager faces. They had all come to expect something with Dr. Porter and that something was a hypnotic experience. He suspected his mere presence signaled to their subconscious minds that a trance was about to occur.

  “Good then,” Dr. Porter said and then reached up to dim the lamp to its lowest level. Minutes later, by his instructions, all three were well under.

  “Now that you are deep within your subconscious mind and completely separated from the outside world except for hearing the sound of my voice, I want you to look at your history. But do not see it as it unfolds. See your entire history, everything you’ve sensed, learned, thought and felt, as one thing. Signal me when you are able to do this.”

  It had taken his wife thirty minutes, and she had way more trance experience than these three. Still, James beat her time. That was not so much a surprise, though, considering James’s heritage. His mother was a professor of writing and a writer, which meant she was likely to be very good at becoming absorbed in her stories and the stories of others. His father was an anthropologist, which meant he was likely to be good at becoming absorbed in the culture of other people. The common theme was the ability to become deeply involved in something to the exclusion of everything else, a characteristic intricate to the ability to enter a trance. James took a mere ten minutes to make his history one entity.

  The other two clients, however, took most of the hour to signal with their fingers. This done, Dr. Porter brought them out of the trance.

  When they were all completely out, Dr. Porter said, “I had expected it would take the better part of the hour for you to do this. It was something your subconscious minds had never done. So, for now, I’m going to have you practice. I have for each of you a taped induction. I would like for you to sit alone without distraction and listen to it three times, spaced out, before we meet next week.”

  Dr. Porter distributed the tapes.

  ***

  Dr. Porter had said practice three times using the tapes. James practiced the first time Monday evening. He wondered, though, if he really needed it. It had been, just as it had been years ago, easy for him to respond to Dr. Porter’s voice. He had skipped his usual Monday ritual of going upstairs. Therapy would be his weekly ritual now, at least for a while.

  It wasn’t so much that he thought the new, or more accurately, the revised, form of therapy would help. James had seen breakthroughs before, both in therapy and in drugs. With the breakthroughs an extra subset of anxious people was always helped, but James had never been in one of those subsets.

  James still liked what Dr. Porter offered. Going inside his mind, making his whole life a single thing: nothing compared to that. James also liked the other people being there. People younger than him didn’t come to his basement often. He enjoyed feeling like a host. James had never feared people. He sometimes wished that he did. At least, that would make sense. Fearing that he would go outside and be hurt or embarrassed by a person would make sense. Maybe that would be something he could get over. Simple exposure to the feared situation would take care of that.

  But, unfortunately, it wasn’t people or anything else in particular that James feared outside. No, it was the outside itself, and exposure did nothing to help.

  He’d had a few different therapists take him outside. Sometimes, it was all at once, flooding. Other times it was gradual exposure. The funny thing about both types of exposure was that he could not remember much about them. The fear had overwhelmed him so much that he had retreated into himself. He’d shut out the outside world in an anxious frenzy, exchanging his basement for the recesses of his mind. Thus, it wasn’t really true exposure. Even when he was taken outside, he was just hiding.

  Still, this would be fun. James was excited for Saturday to roll around again.

  ***

  Wednesday, an hour before she had to be at work, Celeste had just undergone a trance, via audio-tape, for the second time. It was hard to gauge time within the trance, especially after the fact, but Celeste felt like she was getting better. Her whole history had felt more solid, like one thing, than it had before. She felt almost as if she would be able to maneuver it.

  She thought about it a lot at work. What did it mean to have her history be one thing? What did it mean that she might be able to maneuver it? Was Dr. Porter going to maneuver it on Saturday? That seemed to make sense. If he could move it, then maybe he could change it. Maybe he could put things there that she was missing.

  As she thought about that more, it seemed ridiculous. He couldn’t place in her something that just wasn’t there. That’s what physicians had tried to do. Through their medications, they’d tried to alter her biology, to cause a sex drive. But that had only made her sick, not to mention bring hair to places she didn’t want hair.

  Still, she felt there had to be something to what Dr. Porter offered.

  That night, she came home alone and took a shower. She allowed herself to dream a little bit. She imagined what it would be like to get out of that shower and have someone waiting in her bed. She made Scott that person. But that didn’t feel right. Scott was gone, and he wouldn’t be coming back around. She hadn’t been able to give him something that would make him want to come back around. So instead of using Scott in her fantasy, she made up someone who was kind of like Scott.

  The appearance was hard to imagine, but that was fine. She wouldn’t care about appearances anyway. It would be the way that person talked to her, the way that person listened to her, that she would be interested in. But mostly, she would just like the way he was always there.

  Celeste left the shower, hopeful. She went into her room, but didn’t get dressed right away. She had a standing mirror in the corner of the room. She looked into it. Her breasts were big and round. They didn’t sag and there were no imperfections, like stretch marks or growths. Her stomach was flat, not muscular, but still flat. Her skin had a slight cocoa butter tint to it. She touched it. It felt smooth and soft, silky. She turned around and looked at her back, so slender, but no bones protruding. Her butt was round but didn’t sag at all.

  How many times had men looked at her? How often, when she went out in public, especially to the places where people didn’t know her, had man after man turned to get a second glance?

  This body made her feel sad. In ways, she was powerful. She was so desirable. But the fact that she couldn’t use that power made it no power at all.

  “No, Celeste,” she said, looking at her face in the mirror. “Have hope again.”

  She looked at her body differently. It was now something she would have to offer that special person who was waiting in the bed. She would blow his mind, night after night, and he would give back to her. She would not be alone. Maybe someday, they could make . . .

  No. It was too much to hope for now. It was okay to be hopeful, since she was in treatment again, and since something had happened with the practice tapes, but to want too much would make the fall all the more hard. She would not think of a family, something that, even as a child, she’d not had, not a real one anyway, being raised by her aunt.

  Celeste was satisfied for tonight to fall asleep with just the fantasy of having someone there.

  ***

  It was Friday night, and the Pious Eagl
es had just won another game, making them 3-0. Janet Pollard, whose youngest son had thrown three touchdown passes that night, felt less interested in that than what was going on with her oldest son.

  Toby had told them earlier in the week that he had to practice something in a trance and would need privacy and quiet. And, of course, they had all made those two things available. Randy seemed more interested in what his brother was doing than in his own situation. Janet could see how he struggled not to bombard Toby with questions. It had been a struggle for Janet herself to refrain. She so wondered what was going on with Toby, who seemed kind of in a zone, deeply involved with what was going on in his head.

  The first time Toby had worked with Dr. Porter had been similar. He had, during that time, more than during any other treatment, seemed into what he was doing. That was when they had been most hopeful that Toby would get better. But in the end, Dr. Porter had reported that there was nothing he could do.

  Still, Janet would not stop hoping for her son. She picked up where she had left off last time, right before Dr. Porter had given them the disappointing news. She allowed herself to believe that Toby’s quiet was a sign that he was busy with something in his head that would cure him.

  ***

  Dr. Porter awoke from the repeating dream. He left his wife sleeping in bed and went to the living room to reflect. He’d been having it all week. He would be in the tunnel, the same one he had found in the trance. Except there was something in the tunnel now. A sign. There were no letters, but the shape and color were clear. It was a stop sign. He hoped this dream was only a symbol of his own anxiety over exploring new territory. But he was fairly certain there was more to it than that.

  Chapter 5

  “Now that your entire history is one thing, I want you to separate from it. Make your history one separate thing and your current experience another separate thing.”

  After giving the instructions, Dr. Porter waited. They had all practiced during the week and thus were all ready to go quickly as far as they had gone last week. Within minutes of going under, all three had been able to see their history as one thing. Again, James was very fast to do the new trick. Again, the others took the better part of the hour before signaling that they too had achieved the necessary separation.

  After bringing them from the trance, Dr. Porter turned first to Celeste. “Tell me what you saw right before you started to come out of the trance.”

  Celeste looked first at Dr. Porter and then at the other two people in the room. Then she said, “All I really remember was a kind of nothing. Then as I came from the trance I was able to put words to it. It was just dark.”

  Dr. Porter looked at the other two participants. Both nodded.

  “I saw the same thing,” James said.

  “Me too,” Toby said.

  “Good,” Dr. Porter commented. “Today you have learned to go to another place. And, like last week, you will need to practice. I have new tapes.”

  ***

  Celeste listened to the tape on Monday afternoon and entered a trance. It took her to this place that she could not think from within. She didn’t know what this place was or what she was. She couldn’t think, just exist. Then, upon coming up, she was able to put some meaning to it, to find the words to describe it. It was black, darkness.

  She took a little time to debrief from the experience, to return to a world that was more than Dr. Porter’s voice, and then she went into work. It was dead. There was absolutely nothing to do.

  Kendra approached her. “So. How’s this new therapy thing going?”

  Celeste shrugged. “I don’t really know right now.”

  She didn’t know either. Last week, using the practice tapes, she had derived meaning from the experiences. But this she did not understand. This, she really couldn’t even guess about. Why was Dr. Porter taking them to this dark place?

  Though things didn’t pick up, and she was for the most part unoccupied by her work, Celeste found distraction from the dark place for a while. She thought more about her friend, and not one of them at the pub either, but the one she had created with her hope, the one she thought of more and more, but was afraid to overembellish until she had something firmer to base her hope on. Maybe that would be provided in the next session.

  That night, she woke up from a terrible nightmare. She had been in the darkness, but this time it wasn’t vague. She was a person with a particular history. Heat grew steadily in the darkness. She felt pain from that heat, but could not escape it. She awoke in a panic. She sat up for a while, horrified to go back to sleep. She got up and went into the living room. There, she watched television, but really ignored it, as her fear combined with her self-pity. If she had someone, she’d be able to go back to sleep. People who had a person to sleep with also had someone to comfort them when they woke up terrified in the night. And what did she have? She had a shrink on Saturday. She had to wait for her comforting.

  Still, she couldn’t wait to discuss the nightmare with Dr. Porter. He would have the explanation that dissolved her anxiety. With that thought, she went back to bed.

  ***

  James had the dream again. Each time it seemed more intense, the heat actually burning like a fire the last time. He would have to mention it to Dr. Porter on Saturday.

  Like on the previous nights this week, he got out of bed to calm down for a little while. He used his headphones to listen to his music. It wasn’t hard for him to find tranquility. He supposed that was because he woke up in the place that he was used to calming himself in, his basement. He quickly became focused on the music and away from his fear.

  Of all the therapists that James had seen, one had come up with the idea to use his strongest characteristic against his biggest weakness. She had said it was a new style of therapy. It made logical sense. She thought that if James focused elsewhere as he went outside, he’d become so absorbed in what he focused on that he wouldn’t notice his fear. It made so much logical sense that James had actually been optimistic that it would work. He tried it for several weeks. One time he focused on nature. Another time, he focused on a math problem in his head. He took a Walkman out yet another time. But no matter what he tried, he found the same result. His ability to focus dwindled as soon as he left his basement. It was as if he was trying to focus on something else as he stood in a fire. Like all therapies, the modern, strength-focused therapy failed him miserably.

  James was even more intrigued about the treatment he was receiving now. He was amazed that he could be separated from everything he had ever learned and knew and could become an unthinking being in the darkness. He thought someone could probably transfer his body upstairs and outside while he was in this state. Of course, he’d be in trouble when he came out of the trance.

  He wondered where Dr. Porter would go next. Logically, there was no telling, so James just let himself be intrigued, without dwelling on it too much.

  ***

  “Help!” rang out. Janet jumped out of bed. It had been many years since she had last awoken to the sound of one of her children calling out in the night. But that didn’t change the fact that no other signal could bring her faster from the depths of sleep. It was an instinct she was fairly certain only mothers had, and she was sure it was stronger in her than in most other mothers, because it had failed her once. Of course, then, it had not been one of her children. But she had still learned that bad things could happen in the night. Loved ones could be taken in the night. So now she was more vigilant.

  From the doorway, she saw Toby sitting up in bed and rushed to his side.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Toby said through labored breath. “Just a nightmare. Just a nightmare.”

  She was surprised at how easy his body came into hers when she pulled him. There was none of that natural resistance to affection from Mom that came with teenage years. Her son was horrified.

  “Just a nightmare,” Toby repeated. “Dr. Porter can fix it on Saturday.”r />
  Janet sat there with her son for nearly half an hour, before he was finally able to sleep again. Then she sat with him some more.

  Chapter 6

  When they told him about the dreams of heat and darkness, Dr. Porter said that he had expected that. Of course, that was a lie. He was quick to explain it away as the subconscious’s way of telling them that they were entering a powerful place in their mind.

  He had no idea what the dreams meant, and he knew that slowing down, probably completely stopping, would be the ethical thing to do right now. But he could not resist. He pressed on.

  His repetitive stop sign dream had gone away. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe his resolve to go forward had made the dream leave.

  With his clients now used to going to the dark place, Dr. Porter spent the better part of the session training them to bring little things from their history there. They were all very adept at doing this, especially James, whose reactions to Dr. Porter’s requests were nearly instantaneous.

  It was near the end of the session, that Dr. Porter had them bring light to the dark place. After they were all able to do it, he had them float around. Finally, he brought them up. He turned first to Celeste.

  “What did you see?” he asked her.

  “A tunnel,” Celeste said, the tone of her voice revealing her astonishment with the experience she’d just had.

  “Tell me about the tunnel,” Dr. Porter said.

  After a few seconds of thought, Celeste responded, “It was big, and it was the same on all sides, just simple black walls.”

  “That’s like what I saw,” Toby said.

  Dr. Porter looked at James, who nodded and said, “Yeah. Same here.”

  Dr. Porter was very disappointed. He’d expected them to see something different than what he and his wife had seen, cueing him into why they weren’t like everyone else, why he had not been able to heal them with hypnosis.