It’s mostly sharp pain that he feels, but a couple of the blows hit his head and make him dizzy. Jacob finally gets his arms above him, only to feel more pressure against his ribs, where the large piece of metal is driving in.
“Stop!” Jacob says with what little bit of air he can produce. This only makes the kicks come faster. But, at least, for the time being, they aren’t as hard.
Jacob feels the feet move away and hears the heavy breathing of the person who kicked him. Jacob lies with his pain, afraid to move and afraid to make another sound. It’s hard for him to breathe, not only because of the pain, but also because there is limited air in this place. The next thing he hears are the pleas of the person that is with him.
“Please don’t hurt me anymore! I’ll get you your money! I don’t want to die!”
Jacob is kicked again as the man yells.
“Raymond! Help me, Raymond!”
Jacob shifts what he now knows is a jagged blade out of his ribs. Then he lifts his hands above him and grasps until he has one hand on each of the man’s feet. The kicks continue, but now Jacob guides them away. The man struggles to escape his grip, but Jacob does not relent. He is still in pain, but with the blows coming with less velocity and the pressure out of his ribs, he is able to regain some sense of reorientation.
“You’re asking for Raymond Mann. He’s your big brother. You’re Gary Mann, aren’t you? You . . .”
Jacob refrains from telling this man his fate, not wanting to panic him anymore than he already is.
“Jacob Sims,” Gary says in a whiney voice, so different from the confident voice Jacob used to know. “Is that you?”
Jacob hesitates before answering. “Yes, it’s me Gary.”
“Why are you here? Are they going to . . . Did they take you too?”
“Did who take me? Who’s doing this to you, Gary?”
“No! I can’t tell, or they’ll hurt me more.”
“Gary, it’s all right. I won’t let them hurt you. But you have to tell me who they are.” Jacob feels the putrid sense of guilt that comes with lying, but when Gary is silent for a little while, Jacob thinks he might tell him what he wants to know.
“No! No! No!” Gary finally whines. “I can’t. You’ll tell them.”
“No, Gary. I won’t tell them. I’m your friend, remember? We were on the same team. We played in the state championship game together. We won. I’m your friend.”
Again, Gary is silent. Jacob lets go of his feet and waits. Gary whimpers some more, then finally speaks again.
“You’re with them, Jacob. I remember now.”
“No, Gary. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
A shot to the head and Jacob is busy defending himself again.
“You took me over there. I didn’t want to go, but you said it would be fun.”
“Gary, no!”
There is another shot. Gary’s voice is angry now.
“I did it for you. You’re the one who needed to try something new.”
The memory slowly rises up until it is clear in Jacob’s mind. He is shocked that this had not connected before. They had been at Gary’s house. It was a Friday night, and Gary wanted to go into town. Jacob talked him out of it. Jacob had been talking earlier that week with Shane Tantenmore. Shane had told him about this new guy in town that he was buying pot off of. Shane told him that the guy had other stuff too and that Jacob should come over with him. Jacob did, and he brought Gary. They met the older guy that Friday night. He gave them some rocks to try. Jacob didn’t. Gary did. The older guy’s name was Scar.
Jacob feels a few more of Gary’s angry kicks before he feels his body fade away. There is the sound of a key turning in the lock. The metal ceiling rises, and there is moonlight. In that moonlight stand Shane and Scar.
“Pull that piece of dog shit out of there!”
Jacob floats from the trunk of the car and is standing behind them. Gary is screaming.
“No! Help me! Please!”
Jacob moves at their backs. He swings at Shane. But his arms fly through the body without connecting. He backs off helplessly.
“Please, I’ll give you the money! Please don’t hurt me anymore!”
Scar holds Gary’s arms, and Shane punches him hard across the face.
“We got the money, dick. That’s not the issue now. Now it’s time to make you pay!”
Shane hits Gary again.
“Help me,” Gary whimpers.
“No one’s gonna help you, dick!” Shane says as he comes up close to Gary’s face. Gary screams again.
“Somebody help me! Raymond, help me! Ja—”
Shane thrusts his fist into Gary’s stomach. Gary hunches over, and Scar lets him fall to the ground.
“So Dealer, what do you have in mind for your little friend?”
Shane is quickly in Scar’s face. “He’s no friend of mine, and you’ll see soon enough what I have planned for him!”
Shane reaches into the trunk. There is the sound of something hitting the ground and then Shane slams the lid down.
“Get that dick up against the car!”
Jacob moves in closer as Scar lifts Gary and places him face down against the back of the car. Jacob feels his distant body become nauseous, and he knows it’s because the position Gary is now in reminds him of the position he, himself, had Sonnie in, earlier that day.
Shane reaches down and grabs a plastic bag. He places it tightly over Gary’s head.
Gary squirms and screams through the bag. Shane drills him twice in the back of the head.
“Take your medicine, dick! You don’t fuck with The Dealer!” Shane turns to Scar. “Hold him down!”
Scar presses Gary tighter against the car. Shane picks up the hacksaw—the same one that was in Jacob’s ribs earlier.
Again, Jacob cannot close his eyes. Again, he cannot turn away. He is forced to watch it all. Gary Mann twists and kicks, as he is slowly decapitated by Shane Tantenmore.
#
The world came back, and Jacob could feel the swelling in his skin. With each pulse, he could feel the afterthought of being kicked and the sensation of blood trickling from his ribcage. His head was spinning, and Jacob was glad for it, because it distracted him from the memory of what he had just witnessed.
It occurred to Jacob that he didn’t know where he was. He opened his eyes and saw red dirt right beside him and yellow-green grass a little further away. He stood up, feeling each wound stabbing at him, as if they were all just now being inflicted.
Jacob could see the skin under his eyes swelled out in front of him. The side of his shirt was soaked with blood. Around him were fields of plowed dirt. Off in the distance was Nescata. Jacob recognized where he was. He had walked straight down Main Street and right out of town.
Jacob moved into the ditch, feeling his wounds protest, but not caring. He recklessly ducked between the barbed wires of the fence, tearing open more skin on his back and on his stomach. At the end of the field was a small cluster of trees. Jacob moved toward them, knowing that his physical wounds would heal soon enough. He just wanted to be unconscious and out of sight.
Chapter 11
His classmates are now as they were. They are young, like Jacob. And they sit in the science room and wait. The bell rings and the door swings open.
There are five of them that enter the room. Three are girls. Two are boys. They are all young, the oldest maybe just out of high school, the youngest just in high school. Their color stands out against all else in the room. They are black and white, like they came out of an old movie.
One by one, they line up behind the podiums at the front of the room. Jacob’s attention goes to the person in the middle. She is the tallest and seems to be the leader of this group. The kids on either side of her begin to sort through notebooks that are on their respective podiums. When they are finished, the one in the middle nods her head ceremoniously to the class.
Jacob watches as every other student in the cl
ass reaches down beside his or her desk. Each one takes out a book and a notebook. All of their books are red. Jacob looks at his own, which is black.
After the shuffling is done, the person at the middle podium looks around the room for a second. She smiles as if satisfied. Then, she turns and nods to the boy on her right. The boy nods back and then turns to the class. He begins to address the class. His voice is not his own. It’s much older and very familiar to Jacob.
“Who among you can tell me one of the three characteristics of the perfect process?”
All around Jacob, hands fly into the air and eager students lean forward in their desks. Jacob ducks down.
“Young Adam Masters.”
Adam stands up and says, “Thank you, sir. The first characteristic of the perfect process is the products it is designed to create.”
“Yes, Mr. Masters. That is correct. Who can tell me the second characteristic?”
Again, there are many hands raised around the classroom. Then there are a few seconds while the boy behind the podium selects among them.
“Irwin Check. Please stand and enlighten us.”
Near the front of the room, Irwin Check stands. “The second characteristic of the perfect process is that it has a built in mechanism to cancel out its own unwanted byproducts.”
“Very good, Mr. Check. I would expect nothing less from you. But now, who will tell me the third characteristic?”
The boy looks right at Jacob. Jacob looks away, but still feels his stare.
“Well then, Ilene Johnson, can you tell us the third characteristic?”
Ilene Johnson stands. All eyes turn to her, but not like they used to. These eyes are fascinated, not covetous.
“The third characteristic of the perfect process is that it regenerates itself.”
“Excellent. All of you have done a wonderful job. But we are not through yet.”
The students in the classroom begin to look around at each other. Several are going through their notebooks.
“You will not find it in your notes. It is something that we have not reviewed yet. But there is one last characteristic to the perfect process.”
Now all eyes are fixed up front again.
“I would like for one of you to try to reason, and tell me what that characteristic could be.”
Not all are eager this time. But there are a few hands that rise hesitantly.
“No, there is no need for any of you to guess. I have a particular person in mind.”
Jacob looks down, directly at his desk. He can almost feel it happening before it happens. He thinks of leaving, but does not dare move.
“Young Jacob Sims, would you please stand?”
Jacob slowly moves to his feet. He feels naked with everybody looking at him.
“Mr. Sims, please do not feel ashamed that you have not brought your clothes.”
Jacob looks down and sees himself dangling there for all to see. He cups his hands down low.
“Now, Mr. Sims, think for a moment, and then tell us all the fourth characteristic of the perfect process.”
Jacob looks around and confirms that they are all looking at him. Then he looks up front. “I don’t know.”
“Oh, Mr. Sims. I think you do know. You just need to put it all together. Now tell us the fourth and final characteristic.”
Jacob’s mind is blank. He just wants them to stop looking at him. “I really don’t know.”
“But Mr. Sims. It is imperative that you do know.”
The look on the young boy’s face is very stern. For the moment, Jacob forgets his nakedness. He somehow knows the boy is right. He does need to know.
“Tell me! I don’t know!”
“I cannot tell you, Mr. Sims. You must find out on your own.”
“But I can’t. I have no way of knowing.”
“And why not?”
Jacob lifts the black book off his desk. “Because I can’t understand this. I don’t understand Astrology.”
The boy smiles and then begins to laugh. The other people at the podium start to laugh too. Then the students join in.
“What’s so funny?” Jacob yells, ending the laughter.
The boy at the front looks at him, still smiling. The last thing he says before Jacob wakes up in the trees is, “Why Jacob, this is not Astrology at all. It’s simple Chemistry.”
#
Jacob found Sonnie’s door open. He walked in and found her wide-awake on the couch.
She started to speak but then just got up and left the room. Jacob stood in the living room and waited. After a little while, he heard the shower running. Then Sonnie came back out.
“Come on.”
Jacob walked into the bathroom with her.
“You’re filthy.”
Jacob lifted his shirt off and saw that the wound on his side had healed completely. So had all the other wounds on his body. His skin itched, but it was in the background. He stripped the rest of the way down and stepped into the shower.
“Where have you been, Jacob? You left your car parked right outside.”
Jacob laughed. He talked loud, over the shower. “What time is it?”
“Around 2:30.”
“Wow! I’ve already had a full night’s sleep.”
“You’ve been sleeping?”
“Yeah. I walked out of town, out by the Quiggly farm. I’ve been asleep in the trees out there.”
“Why?”
Jacob laughed again. “Because they were there.”
Sonnie was silent now. Jacob was satisfied for a while just to shampoo his hair and take in the sweet, clean scent. Then he began to let her in on it all.
“I know what happened to Gary Mann.”
“What?”
“Shane Tantenmore killed him.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. He and the Scar guy took him out to Canton Lake and killed him.”
Sonnie was quiet for a few seconds. “I guess that makes sense. Gary was getting into some stuff he probably shouldn’t have been involved with.” She paused. Jacob knew what was coming. “And do you think you were involved?”
“Yes, I was. I took Gary over in my own car the first time he met Scar.”
“Oh.”
Jacob gave only a moment of pause. “Sonnie, do you remember the dream I told you about?”
“The one with all your classmates?”
“Yeah.”
“You had it again, when you were sleeping out there?”
“Yeah, but there was more to it. All my classmates were the same age as me. We were all back in high school again. Then this other group of kids came in and stood at the front of the room. One of them was asking the class questions.”
“What kind of questions?”
“Well, he wanted to know about the perfect process.”
“What’s the perfect process?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I know a few of its characteristics now. I mean, from the dream.”
“Okay, what were they?”
Jacob thought. It was hard to bring the details to mind, but, little by little, he was able to. He thought about what Adam said. “Well, the first one had to do with products.”
“Products?”
“Yeah, products. I don’t exactly get it, but I think it’s important.”
“Yeah, I think so too, go on.”
Jacob poked his head outside the shower curtain. “Are you on to something, Sonnie?”
She was leaning against the bathroom sink, with her index finger poised against her lips. Then the seriousness of her look left when she looked at Jacob. “You look like a drowned rat. And you’re dripping on my floor.”
“Sorry.”
Jacob went back in the shower. Sonnie laughed louder than he had heard her laugh for a few days.
“I think I might be on to something. But go on anyway. What else did you learn about this perfect process?”
Jacob thought out loud.
“Let me see. Who was it that
spoke up next?” Jacob bought the picture to mind. “It was somebody really smart.”
“Irwin Check, maybe?”
“Bingo! Now what did he say? He said something about the process destroying its byproducts. No, his exact words were that the process has a built in mechanism to cancel out its own unwanted byproducts.”
“That makes total sense.”
Jacob poked his head out again. This time Sonnie only smiled when she looked at him.
“Well, think about it Jacob. Think about industry.”
“Okay.”
“Why do we have industry?”
“To make products.”
“And what do you get when you make a product?”
Jacob thought for a second.
“I don’t know.”
“You get the product and byproducts. If you make widgets, you get widgets, but you also get the industrial waste that goes with making that product. Water pollution, landfills, a big hole in the O-zone layer. You know, byproducts.”
“Got you so far.”
“But a perfect process does not have byproducts, because it eliminates them.”
“And what does that have to do with me?”
Sonnie’s index finger went back to her lips. She was silent for a minute and then answered. “Jacob, you’re the built in mechanism that cancels out unwanted byproducts.”
“I’m what?”
“You’re part of this perfect process. The perfect process is Nescata. Or, at least, Nescata is where the perfect process happened.”
“Okay.”
“The products are your classmates.”
“How?”
“I don’t know how, but I do know that there’s no way Hickville, Oklahoma could produce so much without there being something to guide it. And what guides it is the process.”
“Okay.” Jacob went back in the shower.
“Now there are several years of people around your class. They must have been touched by this process too, but they were not meant to be like your classmates.”
“You mean they were like byproducts?”
“Exactly. The process was strong enough to make your successful class, but it was also so strong that it made people like Shane, Todd, and Jeff: people who could destroy the world. They were Nescata’s byproducts.”
Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner Page 61