Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner

by Joshua Scribner

  “You know, Jonah, after you send one of your reports in, it goes in the client's file. That file also contains reports from the client’s physician and his or her current therapist, any professional that deals with him or her. These records sometimes go back ten or fifteen years. Each time the client comes up for review, one of our examiners reviews all of this information and makes a determination.”

  Cushing stopped to laugh. “The examiners love it when your reports come in. Hell, half of them know they can pretty much disregard anything else from the other mental health reports, because yours will be the most accurate.”

  Cushing stopped, and Jonah got the cue that he should say something now. “Oh,” he said. Then he said, “Wow!”

  “Now, David tells me you’ll be fully licensed in a few months.”

  Jonah started to contest this. He still had nearly a year. But the look on David’s face, which Cushing could not see, was telling Jonah that he should hold off.

  “The examiner position starts out at sixty grand a year, and benefits.”

  Had Cushing said forty grand, Jonah still would have seen the dollar signs. Sixty was way more than he had been told he could expect to make starting out.

  “If you’re interested, you should go ahead and get your resume in. But consider it more of a technicality than anything. With the reputation you’ve established, just having your name at the top will make you a shoe in.” Cushing winked. “It’s just something to consider.” Cushing turned to David. “I guess I’ve used enough of your supervision time for my recruitment purposes.” Cushing stood up. “I’ll wait outside while you finish up.”

  “Oh. We won’t be long,” David said as Cushing walked out.

  With Cushing out of the room, David looked a lot less like a boss and a lot more like a buddy. He said in a lowered voice, “I knew about the reports.” David shook his head and laughed quietly. “I didn’t know he was going to offer you a job.”

  Jonah heard David, but his mind was still on the sixty grand. And to do what? Review the records supplied by other people. Never see a client again. Spend most of his time looking at paper.

  “The sneaky bastard,” David said, not angrily, but with a bantering admiration. “I just told him that you were my best and that I intended on making you a good offer when you got your license.”

  Jonah made eye contact. The gesture was just a reflex brought on by being surprised at David’s words, but by David’s reaction, he took it as meaning, “Tell me more.”

  “Fifty percent of what you bring in,” David said, then stared at Jonah with waiting eyes.

  Jonah did the math in his head. Thirty hours a week at ninety dollars a pop was $2,700. Subtract David’s share, and Jonah got $1,350 a week. Times fifty weeks was $67,500. That was a little more than what Cushing had offered, but David wouldn’t offer benefits, and David would make him deal with actual people. No chance.

  After a few seconds of Jonah giving him no sign, David, who probably had not done the math in his head that Jonah had done, said, “Well, you got a few months to think about it, anyway.”

  A few months? Now both Cushing and David were saying it. Jonah suspected that David was just confused on when Jonah had started. Jonah said, “By a few, you mean twelve.”

  David shook his head. He held Jonah in suspense for a few seconds, then said, “You’re thinking two years.”

  Jonah nodded. It was two years in Michigan, he thought. Once you got your doctorate, you got a limited license. But you had to have two years of supervised experience before they removed “limited” from your title.

  “It’s not really two years,” David said. “It’s 4,000 hours, and that’s supposed to take about two years.”

  Jonah nodded.

  “Half that time has to be direct client hours. The rest can be paperwork, supervision, client prep and things of that nature. Most people don’t see thirty clients a week like you do.” David smiled. “And I’m sure you spend at least another thirty on the other stuff,” he said, then winked.

  Jonah put on a fake smile of his own. David was intimating that he pretend he spent sixty hours a week tending to thirty hours of clients. David didn’t realize that it was probably more like seventy.

  David said, “You do the math.”

  Jonah did do the math. It would be about three and a half months.

  #

  “Wow, bro!” Tate said in his ingratiating voice. “What an opportunity this is for you.”

  They were sitting on Tate’s couch, the room not yet filled with music, the beer still in the refrigerator, Tate rolling joint number one. Jonah couldn’t wait for him to finish. He had forgone going to lunch with everyone, saying he had a few things to take care of. His thoughts had been tormenting him ever since he’d left the Lansing office. The joint would give him the perspective he needed.

  Tate didn’t wait for the joint. He got right inside Jonah’s head. “But you’re not sure about it, are you, bro?”

  “Sure I am,” Jonah replied, doubting he could fool Tate, but trying anyway. “Sixty-thousand, plus benefits.”

  Ignoring Jonah’s bullshit, Tate said, “You don’t trust that it’s real.”

  This time, Jonah didn’t try. He just waited for Tate, who now had the rolled joint between the thumb and index finger of his left hand. After a few seconds, Tate smiled and said, “You’re wondering why David is encouraging you to get your license so fast.”

  Jonah sighed, then held his hand out to Tate.

  “Sorry, bro, by all means,” Tate said, passing over the joint.

  Jonah pulled his lighter from his pocket and lit the joint. Seconds later, he passed it to Tate.

  “Yeah,” Jonah said. “Of course I’m wondering why. If it’s true what he said about paying me half, then the sooner I’m licensed, the sooner he starts making less money. Or, if I take the job Cushing offered, the sooner he loses me.”

  Tate finished sucking in his hit, then held up a finger for Jonah to wait. After about ten seconds, he exhaled the smoke and handed over the joint. He threw his hands to the side and said, “Bro! Bro! Bro! You’re overlooking the obvious.”

  “What’s that?” Jonah asked before bringing the joint to his mouth. Soon he would be loose, and discussing this would be purely intellectual, not anxiety provoking.

  Before telling Jonah what the obvious was, Tate picked at Jonah’s brain a little more. “You think David is just in a hurry to get rid of you. Maybe it has to do with the attack. Maybe David put the whole job idea in Cushing’s head. Then he used the fifty-percent-of-what-you-make offer just as a way to make it look like he wanted to keep you, all the while knowing you would decline and he would be rid of you. You’re worried that what he said about getting your license faster was all bullshit and in the end will come back to bite you in the ass.”

  Having said this, Tate took the joint from Jonah.

  Tate hadn’t missed on one point. “Yeah,” Jonah said. “But what’s the obvious?”

  Tate made him wait until he was done with his hit, then said, “That he needs you. He’s finally got someone who does the evaluations right. He doesn’t have to spend time worrying about the Stanton office, because he knows you’ll be fine. He appreciates that, so he’s trying to throw you a bone. But you would never consider this explanation, because it’s positive. There’s nothing negative about it for you to keep from losing against, so there’s no need to consider it.”

  Tate laughed mockingly as Jonah took a hit. But being mocked didn’t annoy Jonah. Tate’s explanation was positive, and it sounded logical enough.

  After exhaling the smoke, Jonah said, “Yes, you’re probably right.”

  Tate took one last hit before putting the joint out. He then gave Jonah his intense look.

  “What?” Jonah asked.

  Tate laughed mockingly again, then said, “No, bro. I said it was the obvious explanation, not the right one.”

  Jonah shook his head. “Do you want to elaborate on that?”


  Tate smiled, a bit mischievously. Then he got up and left without saying another word.

  In the little while that Tate was gone, Jonah pondered what he thought was the current game. Tate had been right on about Jonah’s angst, and then he had come up with an explanation for David’s behavior that relieved that angst somewhat. He lured me in, Jonah thought. And why did Tate lure you in? Why did he bring you close, with your defenses down? So he could strike. By the time Tate was back, Jonah had prepared himself for the bullshit he expected Tate to put forth.

  Tate set an open beer in front of Jonah, then took one of his own back to his seat on the couch. Building tension was an integral piece in many of Tate’s games. So Jonah was prepared for it when Tate didn’t speak immediately. It was a few minutes later, the high setting in, that Tate resumed play.

  Tate said, “Our boy, David, has something to protect.”

  Getting stoned with Tate every week for the last year, Jonah had become practiced with the physical sensations. He no longer became paranoid when the initial high set in, just excited. And now, he was pumped up for the mental challenge of Tate’s mind games.

  Tate said, “David is protecting something he does on a daily basis, a way of life.” Tate paused, staring at Jonah with the frozen look that Jonah almost believed was Tate’s way of looking right inside him. Jonah tried to show no reaction at all, but in his mind, he saw all the young women at the meeting today, David’s staff. Why had David surrounded himself with attractive women?

  Tate prolonged the wait, looking straight ahead, very casually. Jonah suspected Tate wanted him to try and drag it out of him. But he wouldn’t. If Tate had a weakness in his games, it was that he couldn’t hold what was inside him for very long.

  Tate finally said, “Yes, David Meade has got it made. He’s got a ton of money and a handful of drones to run his business for him. But a man like David is never satisfied with economic abundance. He needs much more than that. David’s got him a little action on the side.” Though Tate had not outright said it, he thrust his elbows back and his pelvis forward several times, showing Jonah that he knew what the action was. After Tate stopped the motion, he said, “So tell me, bro, does David have a lot of attractive women working for him?”

  Jonah didn’t answer. He just assumed that Tate already knew the answer to his own question, and focused on trying to figure out how Tate could know this when Jonah hadn’t even known before the meeting.

  “Yeah, David has it made,” Tate repeated, taking Jonah from the pondering of his stoned mind. “But enter Jonah.”

  Jonah didn’t say anything in response, but it didn't matter, because Tate proceeded as if he had.

  Tate laughed. “Come on, bro. Think about it. You come into the picture, all quiet and calm looking.”

  Tate was right about that. The amazing thing about his OCD was that it caused him to give off a false impression. Around people who intimidated him, women he was attracted to, professors, bosses, Jonah’s obsessions would begin firing. Then, trying to think of how to act and what to say while being bombarded by a thousand thoughts, all Jonah could do was sit there frozen or make brief statements. To others, at least from what he had been told, the impression he gave off in this state was coolness, his quietness being interpreted as calm and his brief statements interpreted as genius with a concise nature.

  “Quiet and calm,” Tate repeated. Then he said, “This kind of makes you mysterious. But all the while, in the back of David’s head, he’s got this personification of you as the strong silent type, the classic Clint Eastwood character, sit-back-until-the-shit-hits-the-fan-then-come-up-firing personification. And low and behold, all of the sudden the mastermind he has suspected comes to the foreground. It’s not David’s reports that are being used as examples, but Jonah’s.”

  To Jonah, Tate was doing no more than taking the obvious, Jonah’s false persona, something they’d discussed before, and using it to credit an otherwise weak hypothesis. But Jonah wanted to see where Tate would go next, so he said, “So you’re saying I intimidate him.”

  “Not just that, bro,” Tate responded. “You threaten him.”

  “Threaten?”

  “Sure, he’s been doing his thing for years, loving it, the dominant male amongst desirable women. And then it finally happens. Someone comes into the picture more dominant than him. And more than that, this person is as cool as a cucumber and won’t crack when David pressures him.”

  “So he thinks I might take what he has?”

  Tate threw his hands to the side and shrugged. “Kind of, bro. But he doesn’t really think that. Most of this is going on at a subconscious level.”

  “Oh really?” Jonah said. To him, there was a surefire way to determine if a shrink didn’t have faith in his or her own arguments. They used the term “subconscious.”

  Tate continued. “On a conscious level, he just thinks that he’s got a really bright employee who he doesn’t have to worry about and who makes his clinic look good. But there’s something about this employee that eats at him, and he can’t put his finger on it. That’s because, on a subconscious level, he sees a more powerful male figure who could potentially thwart his sexual fantasies.”

  Jonah was surprised that Tate would go Freudian on him, with so few psychologists doing that in this day and age. “Oedipal Complex, Tate?” Jonah said in disbelief. “Really?”

  Tate nodded.

  “So I’m Dad,” Jonah said, laughing.

  “Absolutely, bro. It’s just like I said. David is good. He’s probably gone most of his life being around contemporaries he could dominate. He’s probably been a winner most of his life. So when, finally, a more powerful male figure comes into the picture, it’s only natural that it will touch off the one conflict in his subconscious that it resembles. In some symbolic way, he’s going to treat you as he treated his father.”

  Jonah laughed hard. That was the beauty of Freud. You could explain away anything at all with his theory. “Fuck you!” Jonah said. “He’s going to treat me like he treated his father in a symbolic way. What the fuck is that?” Jonah laughed again, feeling the urge to continue laughing that comes with a good high.

  Tate spoke softly. “It’s just the way I see it, bro.”

  “Yeah, whatever. You’re just intentionally being vague.”

  “What do you mean, bro?” Tate asked innocently.

  “You know what I mean. You say he’ll behave in a way that is symbolic of the way he treated his father. But you don’t say how he treated his father. And we both know that symbolically can mean just about anything. You’ll wait until David does something else extraordinary in the future, then you’ll relate that symbolically to David’s past actions toward his father.”

  Tate smiled. Jonah supposed it was because he had just called Tate’s bluff. Then Tate said, “All right, bro.” He paused for a few seconds and had a thoughtful look on his face. Finally, he said, “David is a very successful business man.”

  Tate was right about that. David’s Ph.D. was in clinical psychology, but he hadn’t made his fortune by being an extraordinarily insightful shrink, so much as he had made it by being a shrewd entrepreneur.

  Tate said, “And in psychology, you don’t get in his position unless you can get contracts. And you get contracts by endearing yourself to the right people.”

  “All right, I’m listening,” Jonah said, wondering if Tate would have the balls to make a specific prediction.

  Tate said, “So that tells me that David is extraordinarily good with identification.”

  “All right,” Jonah said again. Identification was basically a defense mechanism where a person identified with a threat, befriended it. So if David had reacted to the Alpha male, his father, by trying to befriend him, and was successful, then it was feasible that he had actually learned that befriending the right people was a way to get ahead in life. But there was still a problem.

  “All right, Tate,” Jonah said. “But David has already done something to
befriend me. So you’re just taking something that already happened and making it fit your bullshit theory. How scientific is that?”

  Tate threw his hands to the side. “Come on, bro. Let me finish.”

  “By all means.”

  “Now, bro,” Tate said calmly. “You have to remember that what he’ll do will come in part from his subconscious, so he won’t know exactly why he does it, and it might not be in his best interest.”

  Tate was getting braver, Jonah thought, and now Tate was thinking again, his eyes like they were looking inward, but as intense as always. He said, “You know I can’t tell you exactly what he’ll do, bro.”

  “Fair enough,” Jonah responded.

  “But I’ll tell you this. Subconsciously, he’s going to need to resolve the conflict in a way that will both endear the threat to him and take away the threat.”

  Jonah was shocked. He had called Tate’s bluff, and Tate was showing his cards. Tate wasn’t done. “Mark my words,” he said. “He’s going to give you something really big, bro. And it’s going to be something that won’t make a lot of sense. That’s the unconscious part. On a conscious level, it won’t behoove him to give it to you.”

  “All right,” Jonah said, satisfied that Tate had just laid out a testable hypothesis.

  “And, at the same time, what he gives you is going to get you out of his life.”

  #

  It was two nights after Tate made his bold prediction that Jonah awoke from the dream, having cummed himself.

  The dream had taken place at David’s Lansing office. Jonah found himself alone in the lobby, the office mysteriously vacant. Jonah’s skin burned with electricity, as he anticipated something was about to happen. David and Cushing finally walked up, apparently out of nowhere. They both waved their arms, motioning for him to come back to the meeting room.

  “There’s a problem,” Cushing said, his voice reverberating. “It seems you haven’t been doing it quite right.”

  “You haven’t given the right measure,” David said.

  That was when Jonah felt it. He looked down at his pants, where he sensed the movement. It was on his thigh, beneath his slacks, throbbing, and moving around. And it felt good. But it felt intense, wanting to be sated, an irresistible urge screaming at him for fulfillment. When Jonah looked up again, the two men were gone. He got up from the chair, knowing what he had to do. He walked back to the office, where the meeting was held. He opened the door slowly, and then saw her standing there, turned away. Even though he couldn’t see her face, he knew who it was, her hair curly but cropped short. Her green dress pants were pulled up stupidly to her waist. Attractive, but stupid looking. Very suitable for the boss to prey upon. Without looking at him, she dropped those pants, revealing white cotton panties, which she dropped also, then bent over.