He kept the knife in his hand. There were two hall closets, and two closets in each bedroom, six more doors, and six small spaces. One by one, Jonah opened each door and swung the knife inside. Once, he nicked a shelf. Once, he nicked an old coat. Otherwise, he hit nothing, and nothing came out at him.
At last, he stood in his room, every light in the apartment on, every door in the apartment, except the front door, open. Jonah was alone. He had jabbed his own side earlier, and he was alone.
There was a noise. It was some kind of clicking, but it had a human quality to it, like someone smacking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. It was there for a few seconds, long enough that Jonah thought he had localized it, then it was gone. There was someone in the bathroom.
No. It was just the apartment. That was the sane explanation. The apartment made noises all the time. The water heater and the ventilation system both clicked, night and day. The human part was just his imagination’s additive, he thought. He would be a fool to leave right now. First, he had to check. But he had checked, and there had been nothing. No, he had checked and thought there was something, then confirmed that it was his imagination. Jonah walked slowly to the bathroom. Once there, he felt somewhat relieved, because it was still empty. Then he noticed something that he hadn’t noticed before.
One of Jonah’s strongest compulsions was making sure faucets were off, and leaving the shower curtain open when he was not using it made checking the shower faucet easier. He always, without exception, made sure he left the curtain pushed open when he wasn’t in the shower. Now, the curtain was closed.
He wondered if that could have been the out-of-place thing that he had noticed earlier, and he feared that was where the clicking noise had come from. Jonah moved up to the curtain and gripped it in one hand. He tried to work up the courage, but found none there. So he just whipped the curtain open, anyway, and swung the knife. Again, he hit nothing.
“It was just the apartment,” he said with labored breath.
Jonah leaned over, placing his hands on the side of the tub, letting the knife drop down inside the basin. He was exhausted, but he felt a little safer now. Then he heard the clicking noise again, and it wasn’t coming from somewhere in the ceiling or in the wall. It was right behind him. Jonah turned around, swinging an empty fist. Again, he hit nothing. He looked around, at the floor, at the walls, at the ceiling. Nothing. And the noise was gone.
Jonah began to hyperventilate, and he felt faint. He set his feet in motion. He had to get out of there, out of the house, to safety. On his way out of the bathroom, Jonah caught something in his peripheral vision. From the hall, just outside the bathroom, he turned to it. He stared at his reflection in the mirror above the vanity.
Can this be real? was the question in his head. It was far too bright, too much light in that mirror. Jonah stepped slowly up to the vanity, as the reflection seemed to grow slightly brighter. He then stood in front of the vanity, staring at his reflection for a few seconds.
That reflection smiled at him, even though he wasn’t smiling himself. Then the smile in the mirror turned into a look of rage. His own reflection began yelling at him.
“I’m going to kill you! You fucking whore! You’re ruining everything, and now you must die!”
Jonah jumped backward through the bathroom doorway and fell on his back. He sat up on his elbows and saw the reflection get bigger, like it was going to come right through the mirror. Jonah got up and ran to the front of the house, hearing the reflection scream, “Whore! I’ll kill you!”
He didn’t care that he was only wearing his underwear. He opened the front door to leave. But there was someone in the doorway. Reflexively, Jonah swung. But his punch was blocked, and the person in the doorway got a hold of him.
Then Tate’s voice was there. “Bro! Get hold of yourself.” Tate pushed Jonah back into the house, and Jonah let him. Tate turned him and held Jonah by the arm.
“Something in my apartment,” Jonah said, his voice shaking.
“No, bro. It’s just withdrawals.” Tate pulled Jonah back through the hallway. Jonah looked into the bathroom as they went by. The reflection was as it should be, Tate pulling Jonah, the extra light gone.
“I can’t stay,” Jonah said.
Tate’s voice was stern, but that was soothing now. Tate said, “You’re staying here, bro, and I don’t care what you said about doing this alone. I’m staying with you tonight.”
Once in the bedroom, Tate let him go. Then he grabbed the extra pillow from the bed and tossed it on the floor. He turned to the open closet and pulled down a blanket. Then he said, “Get back in your bed, bro. I’ll sleep right here on the floor until morning. We’re going to get through this together.”
Jonah did as Tate said, and he slept.
#
“How did you know?” Jonah asked.
They sat at his kitchen table, playing chess on a wooden board that Tate had brought from his apartment. It was a little after 4PM. Without even asking Jonah if he needed for him to stick around, Tate had called in and had all of his therapy clients for today rescheduled for later this week. He told Jonah that he’d come this far, and he wasn’t about to let him give in now.
The DTs had come and gone a few times. They were very compact and severe. There was nausea, the icy feeling, and the ever-beckoning image of the giant cigarette. At times, the tight feeling in Jonah’s chest made him feel like his heart would give if he didn’t smoke soon.
There was nothing he could do when the DTs came, just sit and endure them, breaking from chess or whatever game they were playing. Within the DTs was a flawed logic. Even though they always passed, each time they came back and worked their way up to nearly unbearable, Jonah was sure that this time they would never end. But they did. And the feeling he was left with was very similar to the feeling left after a spell of vomiting has finally ended. It was relief, glad that it was over, satisfied that it was over. This feeling of satisfaction was better than anything that he'd had the day before, and that gave him hope.
It was very rare that Jonah spent a day with one person, and not since he’d lived in a dormitory his first year of college had he spent much time with another person in his home. Now, Tate was there to observe Jonah and his compulsions at their worst. Like the day before, the compulsions seemed exacerbated. Jonah checked constantly around the house. He’d made two trips to his office, taking Tate with him just in case the temptation to smoke overwhelmed him. To his surprise, Tate didn’t say anything about the compulsions. He didn’t even give his trademark body-language hints to mock Jonah’s behavior. In fact, Tate seemed very mellow, but not like on the day Jonah had come to his apartment after he’d had lunch with David. Tate actually seemed preoccupied with something. Tate never said what it was. Jonah never asked.
Now, in response to Jonah’s question, Tate said, “I just thought you might be having a rough time. So I decided to check on you.”
It was almost always that Tate was in Jonah’s head. But right now, the reverse seemed true. For some reason, Jonah was fairly certain that Tate was lying.
#
Tate spent the night on Jonah’s couch. Jonah went to bed with only mild DTs. But he was terrified by the prospect of a repeat of last night’s horror. He didn’t have a single nightmare. But something strange did happen.
Jonah felt very good when he woke up in the middle of the night, but there was a craving there. He couldn’t figure out what he wanted for sure, but he knew he had to get out of bed and go get it. He walked out of his room and through the hall, feeling a sense of invigoration. He was no longer ill. The DTs weren’t with him. There was so much he could do now, and he wanted something so bad. He was certain that satisfying the craving would satisfy him eternally. Never again would he want. But he didn’t know for sure what he wanted right now.
In the living room, he stopped and looked over the couch where Tate was sleeping. It was when, staring through the dark, able to make out Tate’s eyes staring
back at him, that Jonah came out of his weird state.
“There’s something in you, bro,” Tate said in a whisper. Then he closed his eyes. Jonah went back to bed.
#
The next morning, Jonah woke up early, with another craving. But this time he knew exactly what he craved. He got up and got dressed, expecting any time for the DTs to hit him and take the new craving away. But by the time he was completely cleaned up and ready for the day, they still hadn’t.
It was so very intense. It had been so long since he’d felt this way. For so long, all craving, aside from nicotine, had been secondary craving, fulfillment only good if the nicotine craving was fulfilled first. But this craving, hunger, didn’t have that adulteration. It felt pure. He wanted to eat ravenously.
He found Tate lying awake on the living room couch.
“Hey, man. You hungry? Let’s go to Denny’s. I’ll buy.”
Tate laughed.
Jonah ate a ton of food, and it tasted good, way better than he had remembered food tasting.
Jonah remembered getting up the night before. Evidently, Tate didn’t. Or, at least, Tate didn’t mention it.
There were more DTs to face over the next few days. But, each time, the period between the DTs was longer and the next DTs didn’t last as long and were less intense.
The energy level was incredible. Jonah found himself working out more and wanting to get out of the house more. Wednesday evening, he and Tate went hiking at a nearby state park. Thursday evening, they tossed a Frisbee around, then went bowling. By Friday, amazingly, but just as Tate had said it would be, smoking seemed like a thing from Jonah’s distant past. He had no DTs, and he had no cravings. The thought of smoking actually seemed foreign to him. He was excited to go back to work on Monday, just to see what he could do.
Chapter Five
It was Thursday night, and Jonah had hoped this Thursday night at Denny’s would be a celebration of his newfound freedom. He hoped to walk in and tell Tate about how not smoking had freed up the time between clients so that he had been able to get most of his work done at work. He couldn’t. He left about forty files in his car when he walked into Denny’s.
He found Tate in a booth, a cup of water in front of him and a look of anticipation on his face. Jonah sat down and looked around. Their waitress seemed busy with a few other tables that had just walked in.
“I couldn’t do it,” Jonah said, after giving up hope that the waitress would be over soon.
“Why, bro? What happened?”
Jonah had not seen or spoken to Tate since Sunday, so Tate had not known anything about Jonah’s last four days.
“Well,” Jonah said. “It started Monday morning after my first client. I got done about fifteen minutes before the hour, which should have given me ample time to call in that client’s report. But instead of doing that, I started making sure I had everything ready for the next client.”
Tate shook his head. “And what’s that?”
“A file. A couple of forms with the client’s name.”
“Doesn’t your office manager take care of that?”
“Absolutely. And she does an excellent job. The files were already completely organized for me. But it didn’t matter. I still checked them over and over again.”
“Wow!” Tate said, shaking his head.
“And once I was done with that, I went back to the file of the client I just saw. But instead of calling it in and being done with it, I started checking it, making sure I had each section completely finished, making sure it had all of its right forms and that they were all signed.”
“And this was after knowing that all of that had already been taken care of.”
“Right. Knowing didn’t matter. I knew the files were arranged for the upcoming clients, and I knew there was virtually no chance that I would have missed a section of the report while dealing with the previous client or have forgotten to have him sign the fucking release form. But knowing was not enough. I still checked, over and over again.”
“Did you do it that way all week?”
“Every single time, with every single client. Even when I had a no show, giving me a whole hour which I could have been calling reports in, I just changed my obsessing from fifteen minutes to an hour and fifteen minutes.”
“Bro, you’re fucked,” Tate said, laughing slightly.
Jonah heard Tate’s laugh and knew Tate was bantering him. But it didn’t matter right now. He was too caught up in kicking himself to care if Tate kicked him. “I don’t feel like smoking at all,” Jonah said. “But it seems like the obsessions have gotten twice as bad since I quit. Maybe the smoking was providing some kind of self medication that made the obsessions less intense.”
Tate laughed hard, then spoke mockingly. “Yeah, bro. Nothing alleviates an anxiety disorder like a stimulant.”
Again, Jonah didn’t care about Tate’s teasing. He knew Tate was right. Nicotine was a stimulant, and stimulants were anxiety provoking. But it didn’t matter that he was wrong or that he sounded stupid right now. He was just so pissed at himself.
“You’ve tried medication, bro,” Tate said, his laughter trailing off in his voice.
Jonah oriented himself more to Tate. He realized that Tate was not asking if he’d tried meds, as much he was saying that he knew Jonah had tried meds. “For about six months while I was in grad school,” Jonah said.
Tate nodded, then said, “Failed miserably.”
“Yes. And I took them too. Never missed a pill. But they did nothing for me.”
“And you were glad for that,” Tate said, his voice now toned down quite a bit, confident, but no longer mocking.
Jonah was confused. He was confused about what was going on in his head. Tate’s assertion seemed ridiculous. But at the same time, Jonah thought he could remember a slight sense of relief he’d had when the pills failed.
Tate said, “OCD is biological, to an extent, sometimes.”
“Yeah,” Jonah agreed, knowing the research.
“But, in your case, it’s not,” Tate said. “You need your symptoms, bro. You’re scared to death to get better.”
Jonah had thought of this many times before. He’d had compulsions for longer than he could remember, and they were like a security blanket for him.
Tate said, “You don’t want to get better. Because if you’re better, you’ll stop checking. And if you stop checking, something might sneak up on you. And then you might lose.”
Once again, Jonah knew that Tate had him pegged right. He waited to see what else Tate had for him. The waitress came over and got Jonah’s drink order and handed him a menu. After she left and Tate still hadn’t said anything, Jonah said, “So?”
Tate shrugged and said matter-of-factly, “You’re fucked, bro.”
Jonah sat there shocked for a few seconds. He really didn’t think that Tate had anything that would be of any help, but he was surprised Tate wasn’t trying.
After a few seconds of staring at his menu, the smile crept up on Tate’s face. Then he gave the high-pitched laugh. “No, brother. I’m just messing with you. Come by my place tomorrow after you stop working on your reports.”
That Tate might have something to help was totally beyond comprehension to Jonah. But curiosity would still make him go.
#
“All right,” Tate said in his relaxed tone. “Come back to the room.”
With that, Jonah opened his eyes and began to orientate himself.
Jonah had walked over to Tate’s place about 9PM, too tired to call in any more reports. Tate had told him it best that he not tell Jonah the reasoning for what they were doing, and that Jonah should just go with it for now. Jonah agreed. Tate had him do a series of five-minute exercises. Essentially, Jonah was to close his eyes and watch his own thoughts. He still wasn’t sure what that meant.
They had done five exercises so far. This time, after about a minute of orientation, Jonah said, “It’s so hard. I try to just watch my thoughts, but I get
caught up in them. I get to thinking about something in my life and then get really into it. Then I forget I’m doing the exercise.”
“So you stop observing your thoughts objectively and become entrenched in them.”
“Exactly. Then I get to wondering how I’m doing and if I’m doing the exercise right.”
“And you get so caught up in trying to figure out how to do it right that you actually stop just observing your thoughts and get inside them again.”
“Exactly.”
“That’s good,” Tate said in a calm voice that served as a contrast to the way Jonah felt. “You’re seeing how strong your mind is. You try to keep out of it and just observe it, but your mind just sucks you in anyway. The key word here is try. Now let’s do it again.”
Jonah’s head was spinning, but he really wanted to get this right. So he closed his eyes, and Tate started telling him how to do the next exercise. They went through five more exercises, before Tate said, “All right, now describe to me what’s going on.”
“I still can’t get it,” Jonah said in a slow, frustrated voice.
“And you’re trying harder.”
“Yes.”
“And that’s the problem.”
Jonah shook his head, now even more confused and frustrated.
Tate said, “The harder you try to resist your mind pulling you in, the harder it pulls. Your mind gives you the thought that you’re not doing it right, and you respond by trying to figure out how to do it right. And is trying to figure out something observing?”
“No, it’s not.”
“No. So, for right now, stop trying to deal with the thoughts your mind gives you and just watch them. Let’s begin.”
Again, Jonah did the exercise, trying to watch what his mind gave him without intervening. Afterward, already being asked to stop the exercise and having been given time to orientate, Jonah said, “That was better.”
Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner Page 8
