“Well, yes.”
“So odds are, I would have missed by using that alone.”
“Then, I don’t understand.”
“Because you’re not looking at the facts. You’re looking too far out. Tell me the facts. What’s right in front of you? What are you doing right now?”
“I’m talking to you on the phone.”
“Yes, that’s it! Tell me more.”
“Well, I’m . . . I don’t know.”
“Jacob. You hesitated before you called me, I’m sure.”
“Well, yeah.”
“Why?”
Again, Jacob paused. He was slightly uncomfortable, but he was even more excited. “Because I stopped coming to appointments, without notice. And now, several months later, I’m calling you at your home on a Saturday.”
“Bingo! You never called me once when you were in therapy, not even at the office. Now you call me at home. What does that tell me?”
“That I’m desperate.”
“That you’re desperate.”
She was silent again. He knew the ball was in his court.
“But what does that have to do with me being home?”
“Good! More confusion. But I won’t leave you hanging much longer.”
This time, when the silence came, he pictured her in her office. But the office came and went. Then he was on the road to the shale pit again. But he wasn’t driving. Dr. Ross was driving. She looked at him from the driver seat and said, “Tell me Jacob, why are you so desperate?”
There was a jolt and he was back in his parents’ living room.
“What? Did you ask me something?”
“Yes. Tell me why you are so desperate.”
“Well. I’m desperate because I have gone through some kind of change.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. It’s just that . . . Well, things are kind of strange.”
“That bad, huh. So bad that you’re not sure you want to tell me.”
Again, Jacob couldn’t find the words to say. Do it for me, he thought.
“Well, Jacob. Can you at least tell me how desperate you are?”
“Well, I’m not going to kill myself. If that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Oh, Heavens no. I would never have suspected that. I’m sure you’ve thought of suicide on many occasions. You may have even have made an attempt. But I don’t suspect that’s why you called me today. You would have never called me if that were your intention. On the contrary, you called me because you want to live. I should say, you suddenly want to live. But now there’s something in your way.”
I want to live, he thought. I want to live. The picture was at the shale pit this time. They were outside of the car. But it was no longer Dr. Ross with him. It was a faceless person. And this person was pointing the gun at him.
Again, the awakening jolt hit him.
“So, Jacob, are you seeing things now? Are you seeing things that you know aren’t real?”
“Yes!” he blurted out. She knew. She knew everything. That made it rational. That made it fixable.
“I want you to tell me what you’re seeing, Jacob. But before we get to the what, let’s talk about the how.”
“Okay.”
“With all of this in mind, how did I know you were home?”
Home. It’s here. What’s here? He could not answer her. He could sense something coming up, and knew it was the answer, but the words would not form. Back to the shale pit he went. He was on the ground, shaking. There was blood in his eyes. There was a person over him.
“Dr. Ross, there’s something here. There’s something causing all this. But I don’t know what it is.”
“Jacob, sometimes our mind doesn’t want us to know things about ourselves. And it has many ways of keeping this knowledge from us. Sometimes it has us lose ourselves in alcohol. Sometimes it has us lose ourselves in meaningless relationships. Your mind gave you tension. But not regular tension. Unbound tension, an awful feeling connected to nothing at all. Its purpose was to keep you from learning what you are learning now.”
“But why? Why now?”
“Because the tension had to go.”
“Why did it have to go?”
“Because you wanted it to.”
“I’ve always wanted it to.”
“Have you?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure? I mean, what’s worse, the tension or what you’re going through now?”
Jacob remembered waking up this morning to the alarm clock that wasn’t there. And he thought of the man in white.
“From your silence, Jacob, I’m going to guess the latter. So why would you want to make that trade? What would make it worthwhile?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did the tension cost you? What part of your life did the tension take away?”
Again, his mind took him to the shale pit. The blood was clearing away. The person above him was coming into view. He shook his head, cleared the vision away and got back to what he wanted to know.
“It cost me her.”
“Yes. It cost you her. I believe her name was Sonnie.”
“Yes.”
“You told me once that you cared for her. But you also told me that the tension grew when she was around. What a dilemma that must have been.”
Again, Jacob nodded, but this time he didn’t follow it with a verbal answer.
“So you left her. You left her because you couldn’t get close to another person. You know why you couldn’t?”
“No.”
“Because the closer we move toward another person, the more we find out about ourselves. And finding out about yourself was the very thing you could not do. You left her so you would not know. And does that sound familiar?”
“Yes. It sounds like how I left you. You were coming to understand me. I was starting to understand me. The tension was too intense. So I left.”
For several awkward seconds she said nothing and neither did he. When her voice came back, there was a sigh in it. “So Jacob. How did I know you were in Oklahoma?”
At the pit, his eyes became clear. He could see her now. She had been the one. She had driven him there. Sure, he had seen Dr. Ross, but that was only symbolic. It had been Sonnie who took him there. And it had been Sonnie who pulled the trigger. And now it was Sonnie extending a hand down to him.
“Live. Live,” she was saying.
“Because Sonnie is here.”
“Yes, Sonnie is there. And she is worth it to you. You want her. You want her with your entire being, subconscious and all.”
It all made sense. And now he felt safe. He knew the good doctor would fix him now. “So what now?”
“Now you can tell me what you’re seeing. Tell me about your visions.”
Jacob thought about where to start. It didn’t take long before he was ready. “Well, basically, I . . .”
“Jacob?”
“Yes.”
“Can you hang on the line for just a minute? I have another call.”
Jacob waited in calm anticipation. She was back in a couple of minutes.
“Jacob?”
“Yes.”
“There’s an emergency I have to tend to. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m all right.”
“Good. Listen. I’m going to be gone on vacation for the next couple of weeks. Actually, I was standing at the door with my bags in hand when you called.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.
“No. Don’t worry about that. But listen. I want to continue this conversation. Can you give me a number to reach you at?”
“Yeah, sure. Are you ready?”
“Shoot.”
“It’s 517 . . .”
“Okay. Do you know if you’re going to be home tomorrow night.”
“I can make a point to be.”
“Good. I’ll call at eight o’clock your time.”
“All right. Psychotherapy via phone.”
“You got it. Bu
t I want you to do something for me in the meantime. These things you’re seeing. They’re not real. But it won’t be enough for me to tell you that. You need to search out the evidence yourself. Use your logic. Investigate and prove to yourself that these things you’re seeing cannot be real.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
“Good. And Jacob?”
“Yes?”
“It’s good to hear from you again. You take care of yourself.”
“You got it.”
“Goodbye for now.”
“Bye.”
She was gone.
Jacob got up and moved into the kitchen. He felt he understood now, and he felt free. He could move on. His mind didn’t go back to the pit this time. The pit seemed to come to him.
“Live,” her voice said. He could not see her, but he could feel her hand and he could feel himself rising up to her. He was going toward her, and he thought he could feel her presence more and more. He came into her arms. He held her to him. It felt magical. It changed.
Her body seemed to grow in size and in firmness. Soon, she was bigger than Jacob. Then, she was not holding him. She was suffocating him. He opened his eyes.
The man in white let him go and stepped away. He smiled down on Jacob. “Guess again.”
Jacob backed further away from the towering figure. “Fuck you! You’re not real!”
But the man in white disappeared and so did the shale pit.
“No,” Jacob said out loud to no one. “You’re not real.”
#
It was nearly one o’clock when Jacob heard the car coming down the road. He got up from the kitchen table, leaving the newspapers he had scattered about. He watched his car pull up the driveway and stop. Then he watched Sonnie walk toward the house. After he opened the door, he saw the stone look on her face. He couldn’t quite read it.
“Hi, Sonnie.”
“Hi.”
He hesitated a little. Then he wrapped his arms around her and planted a kiss on her cheek. She moved away, her face unchanged.
“I need to get back to town.”
“Okay.”
Jacob drove and Sonnie sat silently in the passenger seat. They rode that way for a while. Finally, Jacob said, “Sonnie, I know this must all seem very strange to you. But, if it’s any consolation, it’s all pretty strange to me too. I’ve just had some weird things happen to me lately.”
He looked over at her. She was shaking a fist a few inches in front of her face.
“I’m sorry, Sonnie.”
“No! Don’t apologize. Just wait a second. I have to tell you something.”
“Okay.”
She opened her hand and moved it slowly to her lap. Then she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I don’t want you to think I was nosing around. But I found something.”
“Okay. What did you find?”
Sonnie shook her head. “I was driving out of town a while ago. I had actually planned to come out earlier to pick you up. I thought maybe we could have a few hours together before I went to work.”
“Okay.”
“Well, I was going down Main Street when a cat ran out in front of me. I slammed on the brakes and just missed the stupid thing.”
“Are you okay?”
“Oh yeah. I’m fine. But when I stopped so fast, I think it must have caused the notebook to fly out from under the seat.”
Jacob thought for a moment and then the picture of him walking out to his car and placing the notebook there came.
“How much did you read?”
“I read the whole thing.”
Jacob laughed nervously. He had intended to tell her most of the story, but not that part.
“I hadn’t planned on reading it. But when I went to pick it up off the floorboard, I saw some of the words and got the general idea of what it was. I took it home and read it. Then, for the last few hours, I’ve been thinking about what I would say to you.” She gasped. “My God, Jacob, it’s a suicide letter!”
Jacob felt her staring at him, but could not look back.
“Jacob, when did you write this?”
For a few seconds, he could only wish that she wasn’t there. But her eyes were burning a hole in him and he knew he had to talk.
“I . . . um . . . I mean, when I wrote that I was feeling a lot different than what I feel right now. I’m fine now, really. Like I said, I’m going through some strange shit, but it’s nothing like that.” He made himself look into her eyes. “Sonnie, I promise you. I’m not going to kill myself.”
She looked ahead. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
She took his hand and squeezed tightly. They rode in silence for a little while. Jacob started to describe it all to her, just like he had started to the night before. Again, the anxiety rushed in on him and told him to stop, that telling was somehow wrong. But he remembered what he had talked about with Dr. Ross. He had to bring her in.
So with the anxiety welling up, he said, “Sonnie, I want to tell you what’s happening.”
He felt her hand move up on his arm and then felt her fingernails slip slightly into his skin.
“I told you that things have changed since I wrote that letter, and I meant it. They have. You know how I’ve always been a little . . .”
“Tense.”
“Yeah. Tense. Well, that all went away recently. But it was about that time that other things began to happen. It’s kind of like that tension was covering up something.”
“Covering up what?”
“I’m not sure just yet. But I talked to my shrink and she said something that made sense. It’s like the tension left, and now what was under it is coming out.”
“What is it?”
“Well, I think I may be kind of psychotic, you know, crazy.”
“What do you mean?”
The anxiety had still not gone away, but Jacob continued to talk through it. “I’m having these strange visions. I think they’re hallucinations.”
“Is that what happened last night, on the way home?”
“Yeah.”
Sonnie sat up straight in her seat, releasing his arm. “You said you thought you killed Shane Tantenmore and his friend.”
“Yeah, them, and a couple of others too.”
“Who?”
“Well, let’s see. There was Stan Wayne and some kid he was with.”
“You mean Jeff Limerod.”
“Yeah. That was his name.”
The outskirts of Nescata now surrounded them.
“Where am I taking you?”
“Just take me to the bar.”
Jacob turned left on Main Street.
“So what are these hallucinations like?”
“Well, I see them as they were when they died.”
“And then you think you killed them?”
“Yeah. Like with Shane, it was the Candor record. It’s like something about me connects them to their death.”
“Wow!”
“I know. It’s weird.”
Jacob pulled in front of the downtown buildings.
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’m not sure yet. I guess I’m hoping this will run its course and be over.”
“And if not?”
“Well, if not, I’ll have to look into seeing someone about it. You know, they have medications to control this sort of thing.”
Sonnie nodded slowly. “So you know they’re not real then? These things didn’t really happen like that?”
Jacob was not sure how to answer that, but he did anyway. “Well, yeah, I guess.”
Sonnie frowned at him. “You never were a good liar.”
Jacob noticed that he was sweating.“I was looking through some old newspapers earlier. My dad saves them in the back of the house.”
“What were you looking for?”
“I was looking for something to prove to myself that none of this is real. It’s something my shrink told me to do. I thought I could find it in the
obituaries. And I found . . .”
“Go ahead. What was it?”
“Well, what I found made sense. Shane died in a fire out on the Northwest Expressway. And there was an older man with him. The old guy’s name escapes me. Stan Wayne died out near my parents’ house, and Jeff Limerod was with him.”
“So? What does all that have to do with anything?”
“Don’t you see? I was away when all this happened. All I knew was that a bunch of people died, and that some of them I knew.”
“Okay.”
“Well, in the visions, I saw things I don’t think I could have known before.”
“Like how the older guy called Shane the dealer.”
“Exactly. And Jeff Limerod. I didn’t know him. Yet somehow, he was in my vision.”
Sonnie looked deep in thought, and she looked distraught. Jacob wasn’t sure if it was seeing her like this or the anxiety of letting her in on it all that finally got him.
“But you know, Sonnie, I’ve taken a few psychology classes, and I have a few friends that are studying to be shrinks. And from what I understand, a psychotic person’s fantasies usually do make sense.”
“Yeah. You probably heard those things before and just don’t remember.”
“I think you’re probably right.”
Jacob looked at her. She looked like she might believe his lie. And, more importantly, the anxiety was slipping away.
“And you had absolutely no connections with some of the other people who died, like Tommy Carmichael and Larry Confad.”
“That’s true too.”
This felt very right to Jacob. It felt phony, but it felt right.
“And Jacob?”
“Yeah.”
“You can’t control the bees.”
“What?”
“Todd Blacklund, your friend.”
“I don’t get what you’re saying. The obituary said he died in his hotel room of unknown causes.”
“Well yeah. But a few days later an article came out. His autopsy said that he died of an allergic reaction. They think it was a bee sting.”
“Really?”
“Yes. And you really can’t control the bees.”
Jacob laughed. “I guess not.”
With that, she was across the car with her arms around his shoulders. He slipped his hand under her shirt and caressed the small of her back.
“Come in tonight.”
“You mean into the bar?”
Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner Page 52