“You were flat on your back, and you weren’t moving. One of those cows had done a real number on you. Your face was covered with blood. You had kind of a crescent shaped indention in one place, just like the edge of a hoof would make. The rest was just destroyed, like it wasn’t enough for that cow to just kick you once. It had to stomp you good.”
Sully was amazed by the look on his dad’s face and the way the old man described the scene. He didn’t sound like a man talking about his son being mutilated. He sounded more like a man describing the best bar fight he had ever seen.
“I was afraid to move you, just then. Your neck was tilted over like the bone had been snapped in two. Then, after looking at you a little while longer, I was fairly sure you were dead. But I didn’t want to believe that. I wanted to hold on. So I reached down and took your little wrist between my thumb and forefinger. Sure as can be, there was a pulse there. It was faint, but it was there. But you wasn’t going to last long. There was no denying that.”
His dad stopped. And for the first time in a while, Sully saw traces that he was saddened by this. There were tears in his eyes. The next time he spoke, there was a slight croak in his voice.
“I knew I shouldn’t move a person who was hurt like that. But I knew there was no saving you. And if you were going to die, I didn’t want it to be out there in that field with all those stupid, fucking cows.”
His dad had to take a little while to gather himself. He finished off the beer in his mug before he continued. “I scooped you up off the ground. And right then, as soon as I got you up, what was left of your little mouth opened. You sucked in one last breath. Then you let it out hard, like the life was flowing out of you. And I knew you had just died, right in my arms.” Tears came down his dad’s face. “I took you inside. I laid you on the kitchen table. Then I went and got a sheet to wrap you up in. When I was done covering you, I went and got my shotgun and sat in the living room. I suppose I was just going to wait for your mom to get home. We both loved you more than life. Still do. And I didn’t really see any point in either of us going on after that.”
Sully was stunned. If this story were true, then this man in front of him, the man he had always trusted, had once thought of killing Sully’s mother. He had sat one night in the living room of Sully’s childhood, with a loaded gun, having basically gone mad, waiting to shoot down the woman he loved, then train the gun on himself. It seemed impossible. Not his dad.
“I sat in that chair for about ten minutes, kind of numb like. I guess I didn’t really want to feel a thing at that point. But I got to thinking how terrible it was just to leave you sitting on the table like that. I guess I intended on washing you up a bit. Maybe laying you in your bed.” His dad smiled again. “But when I walked back into that kitchen, that sheet was moving around.”
His dad nodded, enthusiastically, but kind of like he was asking if Sully bought what he was saying. Sully, not sure what to believe, humored the old man with a nod of his own. His dad continued.
“At first, I thought it was just my mind playing tricks on me. Maybe I’d gone crazy. But it seemed like it would stop if that were the case. But that sheet just kept moving. So I walked over there and uncovered you. And under that sheet was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. I jumped back at the sight of it.” His dad laughed at the memory, and then he shook his head. “Your body was twitching, kind of like nerves when you cut off a chicken’s head. But I knew immediately that it wasn’t nerves. Because your chest was bobbing up and down, real spastic. And your neck looked as if it might have straightened itself out. Even your face looked better. It was still beat up, but it looked more like a face now."
His dad laughed again, this time triumphantly, as he poured more beer into his mug. “Now, I started to get on the phone. At that point, I thought there might be something a doctor could do for you. But then I stopped. I realized this wasn’t about anything a doctor would know. You’d died, and from the looks of it, you were coming back. So I pulled up a chair and watched.”
Sully looked around the bar. No one seemed to be paying attention to them, which was itself amazing, with the commotion his dad was making.
“I tell you, Son, those next few minutes were like the best dream I ever had. I half expected to wake up at any time. Find myself still in that chair, still holding the gun. But I never did. I just sat there and watched as those nasty cuts faded away and your breath became normal. I watched you come alive again.”
His dad’s fist came down on the table again, and then he was the one to look around the bar, as if he had shocked himself. He calmed down a little. But he continued with his story. “You opened your eyes and looked at me. Then you started looking around and sat up. I reached out my arms and you came to me. I tell you, I didn’t ever want to put you down. There ain’t no better feeling in this world than what I felt holding you then.”
The old man laughed, this time affectionately. “I don’t even think you knew anything was strange. You thought you’d just woke up from a nap. I took you to the bathroom and washed you up. I took you outside with me, and we put that sheet and your clothes in the barrel. I lit it up, and we watched it burn together, you, my living child, back from the dead, still wet from the bathtub, in my arms. By the time your mom got home, all that was left was a little nick on the side of your forehead.”
His dad was nearly in hysterics with laughter. “She was so mad. And I had to stand there and act like I was bothered by her scolding. I frowned as I told her how sorry I was and that it would never happen again. But all the while, I was overjoyed on the inside. I actually liked her nagging for once. I realized that she was nagging because she loved you. She loved the son she didn’t know that she’d lost for a short while. The son that came back.”
Sully sat there for a little while, to let the story sink in. Reflexively, he rubbed his forehead where he remembered the cow’s hoof hitting him. His dad just sat there with a look of satisfaction on his face, this memory, delusion, or whatever it was, having set him completely at ease. In silence, Sully finished one more beer.
He went home, planning to pick up where he had left off on Anna’s book, going into that world for a little while, to forget the madness he had just heard in this world. But no sooner did he walk in the door than did the exhaustion rush over him. Sully went to bed.
#
It was dark when Anna pulled into the driveway the next night. Sully heard her car outside and looked up from the page he was reading. The stack of papers he had left to read was small compared to the stack he had already read. That was more of a disappointment than anything. He didn’t feel the excitement that usually came with completion of a task. He didn’t want this story to end at all. He knew he would have to fight hard to resist the urge to ask Anna to continue beyond the end. He had done that before and she had hated it.
“The story that came to me is over,” she had said.
Sully went back into the book, wanting to greet Anna, but not wanting to be away from where he was. A little while later, he heard her open the door to the bedroom. He looked up and saw her looking around, checking out the situation. Seeming to understand where he was, she smiled and walked out. He got right back in the story. About an hour later, he was finished with her book.
Sully found Anna in the study. She was actually watching television, a rarity for her. She used the remote to shut it off. Sully sat down beside her on the couch.
“Wow!” he said.
Anna laughed. “I guess you liked it.”
“Anna, I can honestly say it’s the most intense thing I’ve ever read. And I don’t even like horror that much.”
He saw the glow on Anna’s face. He loved that he had put it there.
“You know. Usually, when I try to read horror, I don’t make it through the book. I can never get past all the impossibilities. But your stuff is different. The way you show things, it’s almost like they’re possible.”
Anna’s eyebrows shot up. The glow was still ther
e, but it had diminished. Sully realized he had said something wrong.
Anna said, “These things are not possible, because of the physical laws we have. Would you agree?”
“Sure,” Sully said. “Things obey physical laws. There is no documented proof otherwise.” Sully felt almost like a hypocrite, given his recent life, where the normal laws didn’t always seem to apply. But Anna nodded her agreement.
Anna said, “What if experience was one dimensional? Could the picture on the wall be?”
Sully reflexively looked around, looking at the pictures in the room. Then he thought of how stupid he was being, Anna’s question abstract. He finally said, “No, the pictures have two dimensions, height and width.”
“All right,” Anna said. “You add a dimension and experience changes. You get more stuff.”
Sully nodded his head, not knowing where this would go but his curiosity invoked.
“So, what happens when you add another dimension?” Anna asked.
“You get depth,” Sully replied.
“Right, my dear Sully, you get depth. You add a dimension, and you get more stuff. Your experience changes. But tell me this. Is that all your experience is? Do you only have the same three-dimensional scene all the time?”
“No. It changes. Because we have a fourth dimension, time.”
Anna nodded, the look on her face growing wicked. “Again, the added dimension brings more stuff that changes experience.”
It was as philosophical as he had ever heard Anna. And Sully liked it.
“Now, Sully. This is our daily experience. We see three dimensions, height, width, and depth. These three dimensions change through the fourth dimension we call time.”
“Agreed. That sums up the review.”
Anna smirked at his smart-ass comment. “Now these are the four dimensions of our experience. But consider this. If there are more dimensions, would we be able to see them from our perspective.”
Sully shrugged. “No.”
“But think of this. What do you think happens when you add another dimension?”
Sully did think about it for a few seconds, and then he said, “You get more stuff and experience changes.”
Anna leaped on him. She kissed him hard, then right up in his face, said, “All is possible, Sully. All happens. You just have to add more dimensions to see it.”
#
The following Sunday came, and it was time for someone to go pick up Monica. It had been decided that Anna would go. But when the actual day arrived, Sully changed his mind. He could not handle the madness anymore. He didn’t want to believe his world was so different from the world he had always thought it was. And if he could go and make it back, without event, then he would be satisfied that it was a rational world. He would have his proof.
Shockingly, Anna didn’t offer resistance. It might have been that there was still work to do on the book, Sully thought. But that couldn’t be it, as Anna had told him she probably wouldn’t start proofreading for a couple of weeks, in the past having found such a break beneficial. Maybe she was just tired. Either way, Sully didn’t push the issue.
So, Sunday morning, Sully drove five hours to pick up his daughter. On the way there, nothing happened, no beast from the sky in tornado or shadow form, no killer semis. But that didn’t prove anything, as it had always been on the trip back that the madness began.
But even the trip home was without crazed event. Sully drove past all the places where he had slipped away before. They stopped for a late lunch at McDonald’s in OKC. They drove past the place that had been the setting for the semi vision. They made it home. There was no phone call from his mom. There was no phone call from his dad. At school the next day, he heard nothing of anybody dying. Sully was satisfied. He had his proof. Monday night, he went to bed early.
#
When Sully came to, feeling the pressure on top of him, he thought it was Anna. He went to wrap an arm around her, and though he was able to move it around her waist, that arm was heavy. No, it wasn’t that his arm was heavy. It was that he didn’t have much energy. His arm was slung away with an incredible force. Animalistic force. Sully opened his eyes to see the white face, inches away, staring at him. Then he felt the clammy hand cover his eyes. He could not resist. He slipped away.
#
Sully awoke with hard breaths, the coma men having just been with him, and sat up in bed. He felt Anna’s hand on his back, and then heard her voice.
“It’s all right, baby. It’s just a dream.”
Sully was comforted, but not for long, because a question popped into his head. “Why didn’t you wake up before?” he struggled to ask with his increased respiration.
After a few seconds, Anna replied, “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t hear you.”
Anna pulled him down. She rubbed his chest, and that soothed him more.
“Go back to sleep, baby,” she said.
Chapter Six
Anna didn’t attend barbecues. She had grown accustomed to meat being prepared around her. She could sit in the next room and handle the scents of meat cooking in the kitchen. But the strong smell of meat over an open flame was too much. And it seemed too ceremonial to her, gathering in the name of burning the murdered flesh.
Sully was a little surprised when his dad invited them over for a cookout. The old man knew how Anna reacted to them. Sully would have boycotted it, but Anna insisted that he and Monica go, saying she didn’t think it right that her system of beliefs interfere with their lives.
So, on a Tuesday night of the last week in April, Sully sat at a picnic table in his parents’ backyard, while Monica and her grandma fed the animals and his dad grilled steaks over charcoal.
Sully wished Anna was there to enjoy the warm April evening. But he didn’t feel sorry for her. It was an exciting time for Anna. Her book was off to publishers now, and any day, everyday, she expected to hear back from them. She was writing more short stories, ever trying to get her penname to a wider audience.
It was an exciting time for Sully too. He knew her book would be a success, and he couldn’t wait for it to be out there, thousands of eyes being awed by the words of the woman he was closest to. He got to read each and every short story, as soon as it was finished.
School was better than ever. One student, Kim Hamaker, who had been the best friend of Caitlin Barr, had been placed at Yale. Harold Wisk, the best math student in the group, got MIT. Stephanie Tibers, a cheerleader interested in psychology, was going to Stanford. Two others were on the alternate list at Harvard. All twenty-four were going to college somewhere, most with scholarships.
Yes, his life was exciting. But right now, Sully was bored. He got up from the table and joined his dad at the grill. He watched for a little while, as the veteran grill man flipped the steaks over and over, keeping the flame from charring them.
It had been a while since he and his dad were alone. In fact, the last time had been that strange night at the bar. It was a night he thought of over and over. He couldn’t bring sense to it. He couldn’t believe that the long held memory in his head was false. Just a nick. Nor could he accept that he had a special ability to return from death. But the only other alternative was that his dad was crazy, and he couldn’t accept that either. He wanted to talk it over with Anna. She would make sense out of it. But he couldn’t. The same vague fear that had kept him from telling her about the rest of the madness prevented him from talking about the story his father had told. His dad’s voice brought him from his thoughts.
“So, you taking Monica this weekend?” his dad asked.
“Yeah,” Sully replied.
His dad nodded his head a few times and then said, “Going back to the old pattern, huh?”
A little confused, Sully said, “I don’t know what you mean, Dad.”
His dad left the steaks to get two hot dogs for Monica. He got the dogs settled in the flame and then said, “Usually, you take her and Anna picks her up, but last time you reversed that.”<
br />
Sully smirked. Anna had brought up the same thing. And now, she insisted that she take the Friday trip every time. She didn’t want him to have to drive at night anymore. But night was the time Sully really wanted to drive. Last time, he had made the trip straight through, but during the day. Now he felt confident that he could take one more trip and handle the night driving, straight though, no hotel.
Sully’s dad grimaced before he spoke his next words. He repeated, “The old pattern.”
That was enough to set Sully’s fear to work again.
#
For the next few days, Sully struggled with what to do. He knew he couldn’t go. He wanted to talk more to his dad. He wanted to tell Anna why he didn’t want to go. But he couldn’t do either of these two things, because the fear would not let him. Fear still said he couldn’t let anyone in, even if his dad seemed to have found a way in himself.
So, Friday afternoon, when school let out, Sully drove home, where he was to pick up Monica. Then, as well as he could, he feigned illness. He went straight to the bedroom and lay down, placing an arm over his head.
A little while later, Anna came in and saw him that way. “Are you okay, Sully?”
“No,” he said. “My head's spinning.”
Anna came and stood beside the bed. She put a hand on his head, then, just as he had done, lied. “Oh, you’re hot, babe. There’s no way you can make this trip.”
“But,” was all Sully got out before Anna interrupted.
“No arguments. You’re sick. You can’t go.”
Sully didn’t think Anna that good of an actress. She couldn’t hide the satisfaction in her voice.
“You just lie there, babe. I’ll get you some aspirin and some water.”
Anna left and was gone for less than a minute before she returned with the two items. Sully took the aspirin and drank some water.
“Thanks, babe.”
Anna felt his forehead again. Then she said, “Do you want me to call your mom and let her know you’re sick?”
Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner Page 24
