Jacob looked at her as she dabbed her eyes. He saw her smile with her face up, and then saw that smile disappear when she ducked her head a little.
“All right, Ted,” Adam said, “What do you want to do?”
“I’ll bet a quarter.”
All eyes went to Sonnie. She pushed a quarter to the center of the table.
Jacob put his cards down. “I fold.”
Adam looked at Sonnie and then at Ted, as if he were looking for a sign. “I see your quarter, and I raise the pot fifty cents.”
“Ohh,” Ted said. “We’re talking big money now.” He folded.
“All right, Mr. Masters,” Sonnie said. “I see your fifty cents and raise you a dollar.”
Now it was a staring game between the two of them. Adam smiled, but Sonnie’s look was stern.
Adam laid his cards on the table. “The lady wins.”
Sonnie laughed triumphantly. “I know this is against poker etiquette, but I have to rub this in Master’s face.” She laid her cards face up on the table.
“You beat me with nothing but a high seven!” Adam flipped his cards over. “And I thought I was bluffing.”
“High card nine,” Ted said. “I could have beat you both with my ten.”
“Wow!” Jacob said.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a rare moment of excitement from Jacob Sims,” Adam said in a radio announcer voice.
“What Jake?” Sonnie asked. “Could you have beat a ten?”
“Of course,” Ted said. “He had to have?”
Jacob shook his head. He placed his cards on the table.
“High six!” Ted exclaimed.
“Did anybody have a face card at all?” Sonnie asked. “I mean before the second deal even.”
“Not a one,” Adam said.
“Nope,” Ted said. “Jacob?”
Jacob shook his head.
Adam reached for the deck of undealt cards in front of him. “Let’s see. There are fifty-two cards in the deck. I dealt five initially and then everyone took four. That’s thirty-six cards. So there should be sixteen left over.”
“There are four Jacks, four Queens, four Kings and four Aces,” Sonnie said. “That’s sixteen total.”
Adam flipped the deck over and spread it out.
“No way!” Ted said. “They’re all there, nothing but face cards.”
“Nothing but the best,” Adam said.
“All right,” Sonnie said, “What are you trying to pull, Masters?”
“Nothing. It wasn’t me, I swear. I’m a mathematician, not a magician.”
“But the odds of that happening are virtually nothing,” Ted said. “You’re up to something Masters.”
“I don’t know, Ted,” Jacob said. “I saw him shuffle, and it looked clean to me.”
Ted shook his head. “But it’s not possible. The odds are that it can’t happen.”
Adam smiled, and Jacob thought he might have seen deception in it. He couldn’t believe what Adam said next.
“Well the odds are that seven young people from the same small town won’t die in the same year, but that happened.”
Jacob saw Adam sink back in his chair. He looked at Ted and Sonnie who were both staring at Adam in disbelief.
Jacob thought that maybe he shouldn’t say what was in his head right now, but his curiosity was strong. “I thought it was eight.”
Sonnie turned to him, and now he was the one facing her appalled stare. He was glad when she looked down. “One of the people was not from Nescata,” she said.
“Oh.”
Everyone was quiet for a few seconds. Jacob looked around the table and saw that no one else was looking at another person. It was Ted who finally broke the silence.
“Yeah. There was some guy with Shane that wasn’t from Nescata.” He paused for a second. “They died a few miles from here, out on the Northwest Expressway.”
Everyone was silent again. It was about a minute before Adam finally broke the silence.
“I’m sorry. I haven’t been here half an hour and already I’ve managed to taste my foot.”
“No,” Sonnie said. “It’s kind of nice to actually hear someone make light of it. People are always so serious around town anymore. I hear it every night. It’s the main topic of conversation at the bar.”
Adam gathered the cards. “All right. Let’s make a pact. Tonight we drink beer, play cards and talk a lot of nonsense. But under no circumstances does anyone talk about work, school, or death. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Sonnie said.
“Me too,” Jacob said.
Ted took a big swallow of his beer. “Damn straight!”
They all laughed. Adam smiled as he passed the stack of cards to Ted. “And by the way. You’re right, Ted. It was a trick.”
“I knew it!” Ted said.
Jacob wasn’t sure of what happened in the room for the next few seconds. He wasn’t sure because he knew what he experienced in those seconds couldn’t be real. The room became blurry and the sounds of their voices faded. When everything came back into focus, they were all staring at him. Ted’s and Sonnie’s looks were both serious. Adam’s look was evil.
“You knew it was a trick, didn’t you Jake the Snake?” Adam said in a sharp whispery voice that didn’t sound too much like his voice at all. “You know that when such an improbability occurs, you can assume that there has been intervention from an outside agent.”
The blur came back, and when it went away again, they were still all staring at him.
“Jake, are you okay man?” Ted said.
Sonnie had leaned toward him and her hand was on his shoulder. “Jacob?”
He looked down and saw the five cards in front of him. “I’m fine, really. I just kind of dozed off for a minute.” He saw the disbelief in their faces and couldn’t handle it. “What’s the game?” he asked, kicking in his nickel.
“Three card draw. Fours are wild,” Ted said.
Jacob picked up his cards and tried not to look surprised when he saw what they were. He thought he would just get rid of three of them at the discard. Nobody else would have to know. Outside agent, Jacob thought, as he put three of the four aces facedown on the table.
#
Things lightened up in the next few hours. They held true to their pact. There was no more talk about work, school or death. The three men at the table continued to drink heavily, especially Jacob. It was well after midnight when the game stopped. Adam decided to crash at Ted’s. Sonnie, who had stopped drinking a few hours earlier, volunteered to drive Jacob home in his car. Ted and Adam both smiled at him coyishly as he and Sonnie walked out the front door. Jacob shook his head like they were silly, but in his mind, he was aware of the possibilities. And he wondered what it would be like to have sex with her again.
They rode without speaking for a little while. The music from some good-time-oldies station drowned out the sound of the road. Sonnie tapped her finger on the steering wheel, and Jacob caught occasional glimpses of her face as they passed by the city lights. Once, she was smiling at him. He was starting to think about how he was going to make his move, when she finally spoke.
“I can turn this if you want. I know it’s not your style.”
“No. It’s fine. I like old music sometimes.”
“Really? I never knew that about you.”
Jacob laughed. “I never knew that about me either.”
She reached over and slapped his shoulder. She left her hand there for a moment. Then she dropped it down on his thigh. He took that hand in his and felt very confident.
Again, they were both silent for a little while, then Sonnie said, “It must be exciting for you to come home and see your friends. I mean, you’re all so damn successful.”
Jacob stopped caressing her hand. “You know, I hadn’t really thought about that.” He hadn’t either. And now, that seemed weird. And it seemed important somehow.
“So how much longer are you going to be in school?” Sonnie asked
, distracting him from his thoughts.
“Two more years, if everything goes right.”
Jacob watched as her chest moved up and down slowly in a deep breath. “So do you think you’ll come back after you get out?”
Jacob thought about lying. He had seen the way her chest looked when she had inhaled so deeply, and he liked the way her hand felt on his thigh. But he knew that kind of manipulation would not feel right, not with Sonnie.
“I don’t think I will, Sonnie.”
He felt her hand lift out of his and away from his thigh, but it was only for a moment. Then, when she brought it back down, she started moving it around, caressing the inside of his leg, making him crazy.
She pulled that hand away again, suddenly—which was even more maddening. “I’m sorry. I’m going to make you sick.”
Jacob sat up straight. “No, I’m fine, if you can believe it.”
“I can’t believe it, as much as you drank.”
“Really. It’s the weirdest thing. I don’t feel sick at all.”
“You gave us all a scare back at Ted’s house. One minute you were with us, and the next you wouldn’t respond. It was like you just went somewhere else for a little while.”
“I guess I did.”
“What do you mean?”
Jacob suddenly felt very anxious, like he was having a panic attack. And he felt like this was a premonition somehow, a sign screaming for him not to tell her. “No, I was just messing around. I wanted to scare Masters a little.”
Sonnie laughed. “I guess he had it coming.”
She put her hand back on his thigh. She moved it around again, and after a little while, she moved it over. She gripped him between her thumb and four fingers. The sensation was incredible, a warm fire burning slowly.
He moved his hand to her. He went quickly between her legs. He caressed her slowly with one finger, then two. She began to stir.
She laughed gently, alluringly. “We might not make it back tonight.”
“Oh?”
“You want to find some place?”
“I think we better.”
Jacob stared at her. She giggled.
“This is new,” he said.
“Yeah. I know. It’s exciting. All those times we had to find back roads or wait for your parents to go out of town. Now it’s as simple as finding a hotel down the road.”
Jacob looked ahead and tried to think about what they would do. He had been with girls before her, and he had been with girls since, but none better. It had always been so easy with the two of them, like clockwork. And now that he hadn’t been with her in years, he expected that the time they had spent without each other—and with their imaginations—would make it even better.
A picture of her lying on a bed came to him. He would start down low and work his way up her legs, feeling her soft skin on his lips. After he had kissed every part of that skin, he would move into her.
A jolt came, and Jacob lost the scene. The old song that had been playing was gone, and there was no other sound, not even the road. Sonnie had undone his pants and was now working inside, but he could just barely feel it. His eyes became fixed on the road ahead. It was calling him somehow, inviting him. And all he could want was to keep moving down that road. Once again, he was closing in on something.
After a long pause, a new song came over the radio. And like the road, it grabbed hold and pulled him in. It started with the drums and then a heavy guitar kicked in. The bass and a second guitar joined in seconds later. The song was nearly halfway over when Jacob first began to register that something was out of place. The name of the group playing on the radio was Candor. Jacob had followed them for years. He had listened to them well before radio would play their fast and explicit sound. He took pride in the fact that he liked Candor before liking Candor was cool.
But now Jacob could only think that Candor did not play good time oldies. He thought for a moment that Sonnie might have changed the station without him noticing. But then he looked over at her and saw the way she swayed slowly and knew that she was not hearing the same song as he.
Jacob turned his attention back to the road. He leaned forward, as if doing so would make the car go faster. The road became blurry and started to fade out.
But then there was something, something that changed in the world that was not a part of the anticipation. It was like he was dreaming and some perception outside his sleep had brought him back to reality. The road came back.
Jacob looked down and saw that Sonnie had moved her hand outside of his pants. He looked over and saw the frightened expression on her face. He saw her lips move but could not hear what she said. He knew then that he was between the two places, the familiar world and the magic world that he had just found today.
The thought came that he could pull out of this, completely, that he could hear her if he wanted to. But he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to resist what was coming. Sure of this, he turned away from her.
The road faded out again, then came back. The next thing he saw was a green road sign that said, Northwest Expressway 1 mile. The car moved past it and seemingly into another blur. This time, focus came back very fast, and when it did, Sonnie and all the familiar surroundings of his car were gone.
#
He is now in the backseat of a different car. He feels lower to the ground, but again, he is unattached to anything, floating. The cabin is filled with smoke and the odor of burnt cannabis. The Candor song is still playing, but it's much louder. Two men, one driving the car and one on the passenger side directly in front of Jacob, bang their heads to the rhythm.
Jacob is amazed that this is all happening again, but he is even more caught up in the sensation of floating along at such an incredible speed. The driver handles the car with uncanny precision. The car moves onto and off the exit ramp without slowing. They enter oncoming traffic and cut in and out, passing cars that quickly fade off behind them.
In the lights of a semi they pass, Jacob sees another ghost. This one is the driver of the car. It's Shane Tantenmore. In the light of another vehicle, Jacob catches a glimpse of the passenger, a middle-aged man with long hair. Jacob doesn’t recognize this person, but he thinks he has seen him somewhere before. And there is an ominous feeling that he associates with this man.
The passenger opens the glove box in front of him and a light shines from inside. Jacob looks and sees that inside that glove box are various items, among them a bag filled with small capsules of white powder, another filled with marijuana, a thick money clip, and a black pistol. The passenger pulls out the money clip and then the gun. He sets the gun on his lap and flips his finger through the money clip. Shane’s head shifts toward the gun and back to the road. Shane is still moving to the song but his movements are tighter. After the song ends, the passenger reaches over and shuts off the radio.
“A little light on the sales tonight, weren’t you Shane.” The man’s voice is low and phlegmatic. Jacob thinks he knows this voice, but he still cannot place the man.
Shane’s voice is slow but it sounds like he could explode if provoked enough. “Don’t call me Shane!”
“Well, maybe if you would have made us a fucking ton of money like you usually do, I wouldn’t have to call you Shane.”
“Don’t fuck with me, man! I told you I wanted to see the concert tonight and wasn’t going to be making too many deals.”
“Ohh, forgive me. Candor was at the Meriod tonight, so Shane doesn’t want to do his work.”
Shane rolls his shoulders, but does not respond.
“Personally, I think they’re a bunch of pussies. I mean, I could understand if it were Slayer or Ozzy. But Candor?”
Shane turns his face toward the passenger. Jacob cannot see his expression clearly but it isn’t hard to imagine. Jacob is amazed at the way Shane holds this gaze and is still able to keep the car from swaying. He begins to sense a power in Shane, something much stronger than what helped him lead the stoned Jacob and Ted out of the
dark grain elevator years earlier.
The passenger is looking back at Shane. For several seconds, it’s a staring battle, and then the man speaks. “Well, it looks to me like the pupil wants to take a shot at the teacher. Is that true? Do you want to take a shot at me, Shane?”
The movement is so quick that Jacob does not see it occur. He only hears a quick noise and then sees the end result. The gun that had been sitting in the man’s lap is now in Shane’s hand, pointing at the man’s head.
“Whoa!” Shane shouts. “What’s my name, mother-fucker!”
For the first time, the man laughs, but even that sounds impassive. “I’ve taught you so well.” The man pauses for a moment, and Shane continues to hold the gun to his head. Then, after Shane pulls the hammer back, the man says, “Dealer.”
Shane lowers the gun but continues to look at the passenger. Finally, they both break off into low laughter. Shane turns his head back to the road.
“All right, Dealer, you the man. But you should know by now, concerts are small time. Let the little guys nickel and dime it there. Wholesale is where you belong. That’s where the money is.”
Shane shakes his head. “You don’t get it man. I know there are deals to be made. And you know I’ll take care of that.”
The man nods his head. “Yeah. I suppose you will.”
“And had it been another group, we wouldn’t have even bothered with the concert. But I’ve followed these guys since I was in the fucking seventh grade, ever since I swiped their record off an old buddy of mine.”
“Oh really, a good friend of yours, huh?”
“Nah, not really, just a football dick. But his dad let us hang out in the garage. He had a pool table and a wet bar.”
“Sounds like Heaven to me.”
“Well, it made due till I got my mobility.”
Jacob remembers what Shane is talking about. He begins to picture Ted, Shane, and he out in that garage. Shane and Ted would be playing pool, while Jacob looked through the record collection. Every once in a while, they would go over to the bar and sample one of the many different kinds of whiskey. Ted and Jacob both liked the Cherry Vodka. Shane liked the Everclear.
Jacob’s imagery is disturbed by a bitter odor. The man in the passenger seat sniffs loudly. “Do you smell that, Dealer?”
Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner Page 50
