Again, James would not ask. He would wait. Before the sun was midway through the sky, they spotted someone in the valley below. It was hard to make out too many details about the person, but James could tell that the person was wearing green and that the person had a gun.
James knew that hunters weren’t supposed to wear green, but some bright color instead. This hunter was a bit of a renegade. The person was in a small clearing for just a few seconds, before going back into the trees. Whatever the person’s reason for being out like that, they came down from the tree and headed in his direction.
The spirit moved in quickly, without hesitation. When they made a sharp cut, James thought he knew what they were doing. They had a gun and could use the element of surprise to take out the hunter easily. But the spirit didn’t want to take that route.
They eventually slowed down. James knew, though they could not see the hunter through the thick trees, that they must be close. The spirit directed his eyes to the ground, where they focused on small broken branches. Then there was the hearing sense. James realized that the spirit was better at using his senses than he was. Because, suddenly, he could hear things like he had never heard them before. It was like he had a filter in his mind, which strained out irrelevant background noise. They were listening to the hunter ahead.
They moved ever so slowly, so as not to be detected. They caught occasional glimpses of the hunter, a middle-aged man of substantial size. They could have taken him out so many times, but instead, they ducked quietly behind trees, moving bent over, at times crawling.
The hunter was obviously skilled. He was quiet too, and like they had been earlier, looking at the ground. The slow stalking of a stalker was the most exhilarating experience of James’s life. He could feel what the spirit was going through. This was a game to it, and the confidence was still there. To the spirit, this was no different from any other sequence in the game. But to James, it was the best part yet. It would get better.
They crept behind trees in the valley, until they maneuvered in so close that they could hide no more. When the hunter looked over his shoulder at them, they were ten feet away.
Around his waistline, the spirit had tied a rope. In that rope were two weapons: a large hunting knife and a small caliber pistol. James would have gone for the pistol. The spirit had another idea. As they rushed the man, they pulled out the knife. The man turned, bringing around his rifle. But in a movement so quick that James barely felt it, they brought the knife diagonally across the man’s body. When the man halted and yelled in pain, they dropped the knife, took hold of his gun and twisted it from his hands.
Every move they made from that point on was not so much to win. No, they could have easily won many times before the fight had begun. Every move seemed a way of prolonging the fight. They discarded their weapons and fought the man barehanded. The man tried to escape, but couldn’t outrun them. He then pulled out a knife of his own, but his movements were slow compared to the movements the spirit could will from James. With his fists and with his feet, they pummeled the man. But the strikes were not hard enough to break the hunter’s bones or knock him unconscious. They were merely enough to toy with him, to prolong the fight. Then, when the man, who was heavier than James, tried to get hold of them, they let him. Even then, the man’s movements were no match for the spirit. They turned until they found position behind their opponent. Then they choked him until he was unconscious.
At that point, the victim on the ground, James wondered what was next. The spirit answered that question verbally.
“I enjoyed the battle. But this man can battle no more.”
They fetched the knife, which they used to slit the man’s throat.
“It is done.”
***
Hauling equipment around had always been an effortful task for Toby. He’d had the strength of a much younger child. But last week he’d begun to notice that it wasn’t as hard to lift and carry the various things onto the practice field, and it was taking him less time. This week he performed his lifting and moving duties with ease. In fact, he enjoyed lifting and moving things. He even helped out more in practice, gathering the tackling dummies, helping to push the blocking sled into position.
He was shocked when his brother didn’t seem to notice this. But Randy was kind of funny this week. Maybe it had something to do with the playoffs. During the regular season, any loss could be shaken off, but one loss now and the season was over. For the first time, Randy was feeling the pressure. He barely seemed to notice that he had a brother.
Toby wondered about what could have been. If Dr. Porter would have given him this treatment sooner, could he have been a player? He’d always liked football, but it was the strategy he liked: How could the players best be placed so that they would have an advantage over the other team? But now he liked the sounds of pads crashing into each other. He liked the way bodies looked as they were forced backward or to the ground. Toby wished he could know what it was like to stop someone in their tracks, to feel a body give into his. But the resentment for having missed out didn’t torment him too much. It might have, had he not been so busy enjoying himself. He seemed to be a contradiction to medical science. The raw meat he was secretly living on should have made him sick. But it didn’t. Instead, it mixed with the heat and caused a fire in him. Everything he did, he did with vigor. He was a better manager for it. He was also a better student for it. He had a seemingly insatiable thirst for knowledge. Unlike his desire for the brutality, Toby could do something about his want to grow intellectually. He stayed up late at night, reading, and learning things.
On Thursday, during practice, Coach sent Toby back a little early to set up the television and VCR. He wanted the team to watch some game tape of tomorrow’s opponent. Toby swiftly set that up, and was left with a little idle time. He went into the weight room. He wasn’t sure of his physical limits. He knew that he was stronger, but that seemed like yet another impossibility. He decided to test it.
The bulk of the weight room was set up for free weights, but there was a small section of Nautilus equipment. Toby went to the bench press machine. He first set the pin in at his old max, fifty pounds, a weight almost every high school girl could do. He lay on the bench, grabbed the handles, and pushed way too hard. The weight went up so easy that Toby nearly fell from the bench with his momentum.
The plates incremented by ten pounds up to one-hundred and then went up by twenty. Toby tried eighty. It didn’t go up nearly as fast, but it still wasn’t very hard. It felt like something he might workout with. He set the pin at one-hundred pounds. This time he felt pain as he pushed the bars, but he kind of liked that pain, and the weight rose.
Toby was ecstatic. One-hundred was still pretty weak for a boy his age. But it was also more than he weighed, and doubling the amount he could bench without a single workout was way more than impressive; it was unbelievable. He moved the pin down one more plate. He didn’t think he could get one-twenty, and he was right. But he was able to move the weight up about halfway. One-twenty wasn’t far away. Who knew what he would be able to do next week?
***
They had killed again. But this time it wasn’t a person. After storing away the hunter, deep within the cavern, they had fashioned a spear using a tree branch and stabbed several fish from a nearby stream. They waited until night and cooked those fish over an open fire within the cavern. James had not been a big fan of fish before. But now, his food in part his kill, he enjoyed taking the flesh into his body, feeling the satisfaction it provided.
The meal done, and the fire fading out, James began to speak. “You didn’t know the hunter, did you?”
“No,” the spirit responded.
James thought before asking his next question. How much did he want to know at this point? “Then you don’t kill for the same reason as the other spirits. You don’t kill for vengeance.”
At that, the spirit laughed. “Initially, I did stay here for that reason. But I took my vengeanc
e long ago. And what I found was that vengeance is not a real thing. It’s as fleeting as a breeze. You can kill a man, but you can’t kill his spirit. Separating the spirit from the body is vengeance only in the moments before, when the body knows it is going to die.”
James liked this information. This spirit was so much more refined than the ones before. James wanted a little more. “Is that why you didn’t torture the hunter after he was unconscious?”
The spirit didn’t hesitate in its answer. “People do not understand their spirit. Some carry out its demands of them in certain symbolic ways, never really knowing they’re doing it. They just feel good when they do certain things. The hunter came into the woods looking for death. Did you sense that in him? Did you notice how he struggled when he knew he could not run? Did you see that he was no longer afraid?”
“Yes,” James answered.
“He sought death. And by prolonging the battle, we allowed him to feel more alive, more in touch with his spirit than ever before. Over and over again, we allowed him the chance to try to kill you. Then, when he couldn’t do it, we killed him. He found death when he found us.”
What the spirit wasn’t saying, but what James knew, was that he too had been more alive than ever before. Every time the spirit did not take an opportunity to end the battle, and then by that another phase of the battle ensued, James had felt the thrill of knowing that death would come, but not knowing exactly how.
For tonight, he had no more questions for the spirit.
***
The cold bit his skin. Total darkness surrounded him. He felt dizzy. Having awoken, James realized that the spirit had left. Feeling helpless, he tried to fall back to sleep. Tomorrow, he could face the fact that he was alone. He could think of that in the light. But James couldn’t sleep. He was simply too miserable. Without the spirit in him, the cold proved overwhelming. The hardness of the cavern floor, which the mere sleeping bag provided little comfort against, was unbearable. He yearned to be home in the warmth of his basement, in the softness of his bed, behind a locked door, away from the wild. But most of all, he yearned for the spirit.
It wasn’t long. In fact, it couldn’t have been five minutes of lying awake, before he felt the spirit reenter him. It sensed immediately that he was awake.
“I’m sorry,” it said. “I had hoped you would remain asleep as I scouted.”
James felt his fear melt away. As the fear left, so did his hate of the cold and the hardness of the floor. More questions arose. “What did you find?” James asked, having already forgiven the spirit for leaving him so helpless.
“I do not know where the hunter came from. But there is no stir in the surrounding area. I don’t think anyone is looking for him.”
James felt a little ashamed for having doubted the spirit. While he was sleeping, the spirit had been acting as an early detection system, protecting him. But James didn’t feel too much shame, for with the spirit, such negative feelings did not last.
“How does it work?” James asked.
The spirit must have been prepared for this question, because it responded immediately. “There are many spirits that stay here after the body dies. But they find themselves trapped by their memories. That is because they have no other way of sensing this world. The energy they now are cannot affect it very well and is not strongly affected by it. Therefore, they do not sense the world, and it does not sense them. Most do not stay long. The exceptions are those who have a strong reason to stay, like the vengeance we discussed earlier.”
In his mind’s eye, James saw a picture of a microprocessor, which was essentially thousands of on off switches that controlled the voltage of a computer. He thought of how a spirit must be like a microprocessor but whose switches had no impact on the voltage it tried to turn on or off.
“Do the spirits sense each other?” James asked.
“Yes, they do from the start. But in the same way a baby senses those around it when it is born. They sense the presence of another, but they don’t know what it is. It takes many years, lifetimes in human terms, to understand the other presences for what they are.”
Again, question arose of how old this spirit was. For how many lifetimes had it roamed the Earth? But James still would not ask that question.
“Are there others like me?” James asked.
“No and yes. In time, many lifetimes, I have seen and possessed others like you. But it is doubtful that there exists another on the earth right now as receptive as you. Some may be influenced by spirits, but none will know the spirit and maintain a dialogue as you do. One like you exists on this Earth once every two or three centuries.”
That didn’t make sense to James’s logic. “But as the population increased, wouldn’t that increase the odds of others like me.”
“Very much,” the spirit responded, to his surprise. “And as time goes on, the energy that provides the connection is inside a higher proportion of people. But as time goes on, the barriers inside people grow.”
James had actually forgotten about the barrier. He had forgotten that, for forty years, he had been controlled by it.
“I have watched you for all of your life, James. Not continuously, because I am still limited by space and cannot be two places at once. But I have checked on you frequently. I am not like the other spirits. I can see inside places that I have never been. It is a power I’ve developed over many centuries as a spirit. You have always had the energy I need inside you. But if I would have come through those walls into your small abode, your fear would have rebuked me. Fear was your barrier. But your Dr. Porter helped you remove that.”
For a little while, James only thought. For years he had feared the outside. But that was just a representation of his limited conscious mind. What he had really feared, all along, deep inside, was the spirits.
“Now rest,” the spirit said. “It will be good for your body, and I also enjoy it. Tiredness is a physical want I am usually deprived of. Satisfying such a want, after not having it for many years, is always a novel and satisfying sensation.”
James, his mind still loaded with questions, would not deprive the spirit. Very warm and comfortable, he fell asleep after a few seconds.
***
Unthinkable events transpired Friday night. The Pious Eagles had entered the postseason undefeated. Their first game of the playoffs was at home against the Brenart Chiefs, who barely made the playoffs with their seven and three record. Intra-conference rivals, the two teams had met earlier this year, with the Eagles prevailing 34-14. The Chiefs had lost their starting tailback to an ankle sprain during their last regular season game. It was a no-brainer. The Eagles were predicted to win the second game by three touchdowns. But they played the game anyway, just to be sure.
Nothing went like it was supposed to, starting with the opening kickoff, which the Eagles fumbled. As things turned out, the second string tailback for the Chiefs, whose grades had kept him ineligible for most of the season, was twice the back as his injured forerunner. He was fast and broke tackles left and right, rushing for over two-hundred yards.
That would have been fine, had the Eagles offence, which had seemed unstoppable the week before and in the preceding nine weeks, showed up. But quarterback Randy Pollard looked like a completely different player. For the first time, he looked like a freshman quarterback was supposed to look. The Chiefs blitzed every play, a strategy Randy had been able to pick apart during the regular season. But on this night, Randy was tight. He reacted to the pressure, not by hitting the wide-open receivers, but by stumbling, fumbling, and many times seeming to throw the ball up for grabs. He was intercepted four times and the Eagles went down 28-0.
After the game, the team was in shock. Nobody, including Randy or Coach Tibbs, seemed to know what to say. In all the possible scenarios of how the postseason would play out, nobody had planned for this one. In the locker room, faces were dazed, especially those of the seniors, who had planned to go out with a bang. It was as if they expected to wake
up at any minute and this not be real. They would awake and play the real game tomorrow, where they would deliver the ass whuppin they were supposed to deliver, instead of taking an ass whuppin from a team that was just a game away from not making it to the playoffs in the first place.
Toby wasn’t sure why he was hanging around the locker room afterward. He usually shied away from places like this, where there was potential for an emotional explosion at any moment. Maybe it was that he was the one person in that locker room with high spirits. He was still winning; his season was still on.
The coaches were upstairs, almost as if they were avoiding the players. The players were not taking off their uniforms, as if by leaving on their gear they could keep their incredible season from ending. One of the seniors finally came out of the haze of denial. It was Matt Craven, the one who had lost his heralded position to Randy at the beginning of the season, the kid who had been a threat to Toby before the season. Matt exploded. He yelled, “Noooooo!” Then he began shaking his head like he couldn’t stop. But he did stop, and when he did, his incensed gaze landed on Randy, who sat nearly motionlessly on a bench, with his head hung in shame.
Randy didn’t even seem to notice that Matt was looking at him, until Matt rushed up and grabbed him by the jersey.
“What were you seeing out there?” Matt yelled. “We were wide the fuck open! Who were you throwing it to?”
Randy looked up, but his expression was blank, nobody home, and when Matt shook him, he moved like a rag doll. Maybe it was that look, that far-away, you-can’t-hurt-me-anymore-than-I-already-hurt look, that caused Matt to let Randy go.
Matt scanned around, seeming to check every face in the room, maybe looking for someone who dared to show a sign of life, any emotion at all, anyone who dared to feel right now. But there were mostly hung heads. Where there weren’t hung heads, there were more blank expressions. Then Matt found Toby.
Toby stood near the door. By that, and by the way Matt glared at him, Toby’s logic told him he should escape. Yes, he was stronger now. Yes, he had vigor like never before. But his one-hundred pounds of bench pressing power, and his still narrow frame, would be no match for the raging senior, and Randy was in no condition to help out. Despite all this, Toby held his own glare on Matt. He didn’t know why. He just seemed to have some strange instinct now. He felt like a small dog who would engage a much bigger animal, just because that was his nature.
Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner Page 41
