Celeste stared across the relatively quiet tavern at two men. She had yet to send out telepathy to them. She was having a little fun without the mental power right now. She had her legs up on a chair, her miniskirt coming up her leg slightly. Occasionally, she opened her legs and showed them the bareness underneath. They glanced as nonchalantly as possible without losing the good views.
She had been careful to take only one victim a day, not wanting to overwhelm herself with the energy. But now she was ready to try for two. After toying with them for a while, she turned on the telepathy. She made them bend to her will, made them want what she wanted. The two upscale looking men drove her down the road a few miles. She made one of them watch from the corner of the room as his friend entered her and she took his lifeforce. The live man stood and cried for an hour as Celeste looked out over the ocean. But he didn’t leave. He wanted her too much to leave. Even knowing that he would die to have her, he would not try to escape. Celeste took him too.
It didn’t overwhelm her. In fact, it was the best and most refined high she’d had yet.
***
Janet Pollard came to with a jolt. Something had disturbed her sleep, and she didn’t know what it was. She just knew that there had been a terrible sound and that it had come from outside. She thought it might have been some kind of scream.
It might have come from inside, within her sleeping mind. But that didn’t seem right. It wasn’t like her dreams to be bad. In her dreams, she was usually solving some kind of dilemma that involved her family. She was always successful, helping whatever member of her family had the problem, or at least, fixing the problem to the extent that it could be solved. Her dreams, in essence, though symbolic and odd at times, mirrored her real life.
Janet got out of bed. Whether it had been a dream or real, she had sensed that the noise had come from outside of her house, which meant her family was fine. But still, the noise had been terrible, and it made her want to know that what she loved was safe. She went into the main parts of the house and looked around. Everything seemed in place. She checked the front and back doors and the door that went to the garage. They were all locked. She checked the windows and found them locked too.
The only places she would not check were her sons’ rooms. She had found that when boys reached a certain age, namely the age of puberty, they didn’t appreciate their mom coming into their room at night, not unless summoned. She respected that.
But it was hard to respect it on this night. She stood outside their bedroom doors and listened inside. She spent an extra long time at Toby’s room. She was far more protective of Toby, whom needed more protection. It was hard not to go in. Her nurturing sense warred with her logical sense of wanting to be a good mom who didn’t let her own fears cause her to violate her sons’ privacy. The logical sense won out, and Janet went to bed.
She fell back asleep and didn’t hear when Toby crawled back in his bedroom window.
Chapter 14
School had been a strange continuance of Friday night. Students and teachers walked around like somebody had died and they weren’t supposed to talk about it. The zoned state was especially pronounced in the senior football players.
They split the football players on Monday. A few went to the basketball court to prepare for that season. Most went to the weight room, where they would spend the last hour of every school day until the end of the year, except for those who ran track in the spring. A school board from years ago had decided that three sports, football, basketball and track were enough, that a school the size of Pious should focus its efforts on three sports, lest it be spread too thin, and that decision had stuck through the years. Pious didn’t have a wrestling or baseball team.
Toby also managed the basketball team, which wasn’t nearly as hard, since they used far less equipment. He mainly sat off on a bench or in the bleachers and studied, until he was needed. He watched the basketball team a little on Tuesday. He was quickly able to size up the situation, at least the situation of the players he was interested in. Randy looked terrible. Like in football, he was probably good enough to make the basketball team and probably be its star player, but on this day, he was sluggish, seemingly hungover from a football season that had been so perfect up until its last few hours. Toby was even more interested in Matt, who also played basketball. Matt was pushing his teammates on, trying to get them to practice harder, to focus more. But he was downright cruel. His desperation was shining through. He was a senior and not good enough to play college ball. This was his last chance.
Toby doubted the team would do well with Matt acting this way. Basketball was a game of finesse, unlike football, which required more raw physical attributes like speed and muscle. If Matt was allowed to push like this into the season, it would harm the team. How well the team would do was all a matter of if and when Randy would step up again.
Toby hated Matt more and more. He hated him for his arrogance. He loathed his stupidity. All he really had going for him was size. Size shouldn’t have been a reason to lead, or in Matt’s case, push people around.
Toby suspected Randy would eventually overcome his grief. He would get over the fact that the football team had went as he went, and when he had sucked Friday night, they had sucked too. He would eventually be willing to take up the role of playmaker again, and he would get over this sluggishness.
But Toby had something bigger on his mind than the basketball team. He needed to test himself again. But he couldn’t do it now, not with all these people around. Luckily, one of his duties as manager was keeper of the keys. After practice was finished upstairs and all the weightlifters were finished downstairs, it was his duty to shut off the lights and lock up. Around 4:30, the entire building was his. He went to the weight room. He set the pin in the bench press machine. He tried first what he had failed to do last week. One-twenty went up like it wasn’t even there. He skipped up the one-sixty, which he got with ease. He got all the way up to two-hundred pounds before he maxed out.
Was it enough? No. But it was still good. Power, the speed at which work could be done on an outside object, depended on mass. His mass was increasing, but very slowly. He was still very skinny compared to most kids of his age and height.
Luckily, power was more dependent on velocity than mass. Small people who were strong could move with great velocity. He went up on the gymnasium floor, where the basketball players had been earlier. He ran sprints from one end of the court to the other. His velocity proved incredible. His stronger muscles could really make his little body move. But he knew he could get even stronger and even faster. He wasn’t limited like before. His barrier had broken, and he didn’t have to wait for next week for his appetite to increase. He would feed more.
***
Again, Janet Pollard awoke in the night. This time the sounds were clearer and had come from inside the house. There had been the creaking of a door opening, then the sound of feet moving, then the sound of a door shutting, then the sound of a door shutting again. She got up fast and made her way through the house. Her head hadn’t been clear enough to distinguish what doors had been moved. So she first checked the front and back doors. To her relief, she found them both locked. That still left the question as to what was going on. She went to the hallway that contained both of her sons’ rooms. Both of those doors were shut too. Was it all in her head? She didn’t think so. Maybe one of the boys had gotten up to use the bathroom. That would explain why she had heard two doors being shut. She had merely heard one of them returning from the bathroom.
That explanation had its holes. The feet she had heard moving had been a little too quick for simply returning from the bathroom. Their timing was such that the person had moved in response to the sound of the door. The person feared detection.
But why?
It was hard to gauge her family right now. One son, Randy, seemed to be in a depressive funk. At the dinner table, his father wanted to talk about the upcoming basketball season. Randy definitely wasn’
t ready for that. His father didn’t realize that by trying to hasten the recovery process, he was actually hindering it. Randy just needed time. Sooner or later, his natural tendency to take command, that tendency that had failed him last Friday night, would return. Until then, he was just a little unpredictable.
And Toby. He was taking even larger portions of food now. But he still ate in the privacy of his room, and he was private in more ways than that. He seemed standoffish. He wasn’t saying anything about the big family news, that a big game had been lost and his brother was now in peril. Janet suspected that was due to his own semi-failure. He was focused inward, on his own problem, trying to understand why he couldn’t eat in the presence of others, why was he getting better without getting better if others were around. Until he could correct that, he was unpredictable.
Then there was the final consideration. Janet herself. She wasn’t used to her family being this much out of her control. She had two sons who had failed and a husband who was failing because he didn’t know how to react. There wasn’t much she could do to correct anybody’s situation. Toby’s situation was in the hands of Dr. Porter. Randy’s situation was in the hands of time and himself. Robert’s situation, sadly, was in the hands of Randy’s success. All she could do was be supportive and wait. That didn’t seem like enough.
So maybe she hadn’t heard anything. Maybe she was unpredictable too. Maybe her anxiety was feeding into her dreams, causing her to hear things that she interpreted as real as she came awake, causing her to search for ways to protect her family in the night, because she couldn’t do it during the day. With that thought, Janet returned to bed.
***
James awoke in the night. He realized that he hadn’t awoken naturally, but because the spirit had moved. Tonight, before dawn, they would leave.
In its scouting, the spirit had found that they were safe. There was no connection found between James and any of the murders he had committed. The police were scrambling, looking for anything to help them solve the cases. They were taking their usual routes, talking to the people they usually talked to, other outlaws who usually could point them in a certain direction, but finding nothing of use, only taking false leads to dead ends. They had even arrested seemingly likely suspects, only to find solid alibis. They assumed the person they were looking for had to be a sound criminal mind. That assumption was what killed them. They weren’t looking for a man whose forty years of isolation should have made it impossible for him to perform these crimes.
The last couple of days had been the best James had ever spent with his parents. They went to various places: movies, restaurants, plays. They were home only at night. James knew that the last two days didn’t make up for the first forty years, and that they wouldn’t make up for the remainder of his life, during which his parents would probably not see or hear from him again. But he didn’t let that bother him. Being with his parents could never compare to what he had felt in the woods, taking down the solitary hunter and then the three hunters together.
Now James and the spirit were to leave in the night. But first, the spirit spoke.
“When the body dies, the spirit is free to leave this world. It is no longer subject to its limitations. This world, this realm in which humans live, is established by laws. The body senses this realm and so this realm is. In order for the spirit to stay here after the death of the body it must have a reason. For most, that reason is closure, revenge or completion in another way. But there is another way to stay. A spirit can stay in this realm by falling in love with it. You must learn to want the laws of this place. You must love the sensations it can provide.”
“And that is why you stay?” James asked.
“Yes,” the spirit agreed. “I love the limits of your body. I love to push them. I love what it gives you, and thus me. I will help you to have all the best of sensations in this world. You will learn how to sense them as I do. After many years, you’ll be able to do it without me guiding you. Then you will truly love it. And when your body dies, that love will make you stay.”
James got out of bed. He left his basement, his prison of forty years, for the last time. They headed south.
***
Dr. Porter usually did all of his investigating in his office. That had always been sufficient. Everything he had needed to know about his clients was within their subconscious minds. But now his clients weren’t being up front with him, and at least one of their subconscious minds had denied his request. So he had to leave his office.
He had started the investigation Wednesday morning. He called Janet Pollard and asked how she thought Toby was doing and if she had noticed anything strange about him. She said he seemed to be doing well. The only odd thing was that for the past couple of weeks he couldn’t eat in front of people. That threw up a red flag, but what was more was that something seemed to be eating at Janet herself.
She was probably being honest with him about Toby, but by her tone, something else bothered her, something in particular to her. Did she even know what it was?
That afternoon, with an opening in clients, Dr. Porter drove to Morgan’s Pub. It was closed. A sign on the door announced that it would not be open for the rest of the week due to the death of one of its workers. Dr. Porter drove by Celeste’s apartment. Her car was there. He actually went up to the door and knocked. He planned to say he had been worried when she hadn’t returned his call, but she didn’t come to the door.
Dr. Porter had read in the paper about a rash of heart attacks, all occurring within the span of three days. One of them had been the worker at Morgan’s Pub. One had been an attorney who worked downtown, near the pub. One had been a young man, whose body had been found at a park. He had no idea how Celeste was connected to these seemingly natural deaths, but he suspected that she was.
He was supposed to meet with James at six tonight. He was not surprised, though, when James didn’t show. He called his house. After several rings, James didn’t answer, so Dr. Porter hung up and called his parents’ line.
“Hello.” It was James’s mother.
“Hello, Mrs. Kisner, this is Dr. Porter. I’m sorry to bother you, but is James available?”
“No,” she said, her voice a little panicked. “He didn’t come up this morning. Then this afternoon, I knocked on the door and he didn’t answer. Finally, I got so worried that I went downstairs to check on him, but he was gone. He must have left before I got up.”
Dr. Porter had found other odd things in the paper. There had been a couple of different murders around Arabuke. Then there had been more up in the mountains. The mountain murders had occurred while James’s parents were gone, a time when James could have been away from his home without anyone noticing. He wasn’t sure that James was involved, but it seemed like a good possibility.
What was going on with his clients? It was a question Dr. Porter would have to wait to think on. Right now, he had a panicked mother on the line.
“I wouldn’t worry much about it, Mrs. Kisner. You have to remember that James has been cooped up for a long time now. He’s likely to experiment with freedom in many ways.”
There was a sigh of relief. “You know, James’s father said something similar. But it helps to hear it from you. I guess the best thing to do is just continue to allow him his space.”
“Absolutely,” Dr. Porter said, not knowing if that were true, just glad the woman was pacified.
After hanging up, he had time to sit and think. What he had opened up in his clients was beyond what was natural. He had removed a barrier, and now what they experienced was probably beyond what most humans could. What did that mean for the barrier inside everybody? What did that mean for the tunnel walls? If he could break through, what limits that he’d always had as a human would he be able to overcome? What knowledge would he be exposed to?
Seemingly, part of what he had turned them into involved murder. That meant they would eventually be traced, and through his connection to them, he would also be traced. He c
ould not know how much time he had. He had to start the next phase immediately, tonight.
***
“Tell me what you remember,” Dr. Porter said.
Tabitha lay on the bed, a pleasantly astonished smile on her Barbie Doll face. She had been cooking when he came home. He’d had her turn off the burners and put the food away. She protested a little, but he told her not to worry about the waste, that what he needed to do was much more important. A little while later, he had put her under.
“There was a tunnel,” she responded. She was speaking as if it were the first time she were there. That was because he had cleared her memory of it before. It was still readily available, though, just waiting for him to turn her attention back to it. “I had a hammer,” she continued. “I was striking at the floor of the tunnel.”
That was where Dr. Porter had told her to strike. He doubted it mattered what part of the tunnel was broken. He suspected it was all the same on the other side.
“Did it break?” he asked.
For a little while, she thought. She then said, “It didn’t break completely, but I know I made progress.”
“How?” Dr. Porter asked.
“Because there was dust.”
“Dust?”
“Yes, just a little. But it was there.”
Dr. Porter had what he needed. The tunnel would break. And he had all that he needed from Tabitha, ever again.
“Now,” he said. “I’m going to take you back under.”
***
Toby sat alone on the bench late Thursday afternoon. Basketball practice was over and all the weight lifters had gone home. Now he was a little disappointed. He had tested himself on the bench, only to find that his strength had not increased since Tuesday. He would have to do more. He was about to get up to leave when he heard the large metal door open above. He had yet to lock the doors, a precaution he knew he should have taken, lest someone come in and catch him testing himself. Nobody would be able to understand why the little weakling was suddenly able to bench over twice his weight or move at speeds that were alarmingly unnatural. He was lucky that that back door to the gymnasium was so large and so loud.
Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner Page 43
