“Smell what?”
“That smell. I think it’s gas.”
“I don’t smell anything at all.”
“Well maybe your nose is fucked up from sucking up too much shit. I smell gas.”
There are four beeps that come from the dashboard. Jacob looks and sees that there is a radar detector there and that it has lit up. He looks at Shane’s speedometer and sees that the needle is past one hundred. He sees Shane begin to shuffle. He sees the man in the passenger seat move toward Shane.
“No!” the man shouts. “Don’t hit the . . .”
The man is too late. Shane steps down on the brake. The front of the car dips and sparks fly. Flames rise on the outside, blanketing the car.
The man in the passenger seat is no longer calm. He is making the most terrified screaming sound Jacob has ever heard. Shane somehow brings the car to a stop.
Jacob inspects the situation, like he is inspecting the board of a chess game that he is not playing. He thinks of what he would do if it were his game, and if the consequences were his.
All that can be seen outside the car is orange fire. He feels no heat but knows that it will soon be like an oven to the other men. That is, if the car doesn’t explode first. Jacob thinks that there is no way out for them. He looks at Shane, who also seems to be inspecting the situation. Shane turns around and looks out the back window. Jacob sees his face and his eyes, and is amazed at the coolness there, like it is no more Shane’s game than it is his.
Shane turns back around and starts to scan the floorboard. He seems indifferent to the other man who bounces in his seat and continues to scream. He turns around again, but this time he actually comes over the seat and lands next to Jacob. After he situates himself, he reaches down for something.
Jacob watches as Shane comes back up with a thick jacket. Shane pulls the jacket over his head and holds it tight. He moves up in his seat and gets his legs under him. Jacob sees what he is going to do and forgets that he already knows the outcome. He thinks it might actually work.
“Jump and roll.”
It is the man who called himself Shane’s teacher who makes the final mistake. Just before Shane is able to jump, the man opens his door.
There's a swooshing sound. Then there are flames all around him, and he can no longer see the two men in the car. But he can hear them scream.
Jacob jumps from the car. He stands on the outside and watches it burn. Other cars begin to stop, and people begin to run up. They run past Jacob, some of them shouting. There is one who moves slowly.
Jacob sees him walking up from the distance. The tall man in white is not in the light of the flame, but he glows anyway. As the man approaches, Jacob becomes oblivious to all else around him. The man comes close enough that Jacob can see his pale blue eyes. Jacob brings his hands up. The man, who Jacob thinks must be well over six and a half feet tall, stops and grins. He looks down at Jacob. He brings a finger to his face and moves it from side to side.
“I come to take away,” the man says.
#
Her voice was distant. “Jacob! Jacob! What’s wrong? Please answer me!”
When he came to, he saw Sonnie’s face close to his. He pulled her to him. At first, her body was stiff and resistant. Then she became soft.
“Jacob, what’s wrong?”
He let her go, and she moved back. He looked down and away from her. “I killed them.”
“What?”
Jacob shook his head, trying to shake off the effects of what he had just been through, trying to forget the man in white. He looked around. They were in a parking lot. “Where are we?”
“I took an exit. You stopped moving and you wouldn’t say anything. I got so scared. Jacob, what’s going on?”
“I don’t know for sure.”
Sonnie reached for him, and he took her. He felt her head shake on his shoulder. “Jacob, I was so scared. I thought you were dead.”
“No, I was fine.” He held her to him while he thought. Then he began to talk, like he was thinking out loud. “We used to all hang out over at Ted’s house. It was Ted, Shane and me.”
“Yeah, I remember,” Sonnie said. “It was back before we dated.”
“We went out in the garage. We found the Candor record in Ted’s dad’s collection. I was the only one who liked it at first. Then I wrote down the lyrics. I thought I could make them like it too. I showed them. Ted didn’t care. But Shane liked them. I think he understood the meaning too. I think that’s why he liked them so much. That’s why he went to their concert. He went to their concert because I showed him the lyrics.”
Sonnie pulled her body away, but moved her hand to his face. “Jacob, no! That was so long ago. So much happened between those two times.”
Jacob looked at her. “Maybe you’re right.”
“Yes. They play Candor on the radio all the time now. He would have heard them anyway. You didn’t cause him to do anything.”
Jacob nodded. He wanted to believe her. And he did, just a little. But then he remembered something.
“Sonnie, did Shane ever come into the bar?”
“Yeah, he used to, from time to time. Why do you ask?”
“Did he used to come in with an older guy?”
“Yeah. He generally did. The guy was kind of creepy looking and there was something weird about the way he talked. It was kind of like he didn’t have feelings.”
“Did you hear them talk a lot?”
“Yeah. I tend bar. I hear a lot of things.”
Jacob took her hand from his face and held it tight in his own. “Back at Ted’s house tonight, you were upset by something Adam said.”
“Yes.”
“It was because he called himself the dealer, wasn’t it? That’s what the older guy called Shane.”
Sonnie’s eyes lit up. “How did you know that? Jacob, please tell me what's going on.”
He started to. He started to tell her about everything. He wanted to tell her that he had seen both of the car accidents. But he couldn’t. It felt wrong.
“Sonnie, take me home.”
Chapter 4
Jacob sits alone in the classroom. He knows this place but doesn’t remember it being so big. On both sides, the walls extend far beyond the columns of desks. Empty chalkboards stretch out over the front wall for a distance that seems too great for any one teacher. Sounds of muffled voices and feet shuffling come from outside the room. There is the occasional screech of a locker door opening and the occasional bang of another being shut.
At the side of his desk is a green polyester backpack. He looks it over intently and then reaches down for it. There is a sudden bang on the door and Jacob moves back up in his desk.
He stares down at first and then looks up at the door. A few moments pass and nobody has entered the room. But still, Jacob is afraid to look in the bag. He has visions of someone walking in the room at just the moment he opens it.
As he waits, the sounds change. After a couple of minutes, there are no more lockers opening, and there are more lockers being shut. For the most part, feet are no longer shuffling, but there is the sound of an occasional straggler running in the hall.
Jacob looks down at the bag again, content to observe it from a distance. But then he begins to notice its familiarity. “I must have left you here. For all of these years you’ve been sitting right here.”
Still wary, he watches the door as he leans over. He undoes the fasteners and opens the bag. Inside are two objects. He pulls them out. One of the objects is a solid black book still in its plastic lining. The other is a white folder with his name printed in the upper left-hand corner.
Jacob sets the book aside and opens the folder. In it is a stack of notebook paper on one side and a course description on the other. At the top of the course description, Astrology is printed. There are other things written on this page but they are written in a language that he does not understand. He takes the plastic off the book and begins to look through it. It’s
filled with the same foreign writing. The only thing he understands is on the first page. There, at the top and in boldface, the word Astrology is printed again.
Again, there is a noise from the door that startles Jacob. But this time it is the sound of the doorknob turning. It twists back and forth without the door opening. Jacob gets up and starts to walk toward it.
Then there is another sound. It’s high pitched and very annoying. Suddenly, it’s hard to think. Stopping this sound quickly becomes his first priority.
He looks around but sees nothing that could be causing it. He places his hands on his ears, but that does no good. It’s like the sound is in his head.
Suddenly, there is blackness and the next thing he knows he’s on his side. The noise is still blaring and all he can think is that, if he cannot move, he won’t be able to make it go away.
The next thought Jacob has is more rational. He understands what’s going on. He opens his eyes and is awake.
#
The pain was real. Jacob thought the sound of his alarm clock was real too. But when he turned over to shut it off, it wasn’t there. That made sense. He didn’t remember setting it the night before. In fact, he didn’t remember taking it out of his bag.
So, to go with the pain of the hangover and the alarm ringing in his head, Jacob had fear. He lay there, frozen, except for his breath, and even that was restrained.
The romance of it all was gone for the moment. The anticipation and the inner calm seemed far away. Now he only wanted to be out of it, to be normal, to be safe. Even what he had before seemed better than this. Tension that was just there and that he could not understand was better than the raw fear he felt now.
The noise seemed to shake his brain and make the pain of the hangover worse. But he could handle the pain. The pain was his. It was the noise itself, the meaning behind it, that Jacob couldn’t handle. The noise was not his.
I’m not in control of my life, Jacob thought.
This thought seemed to reverberate in his mind, and with this thought, everything changed. The chiming of the alarm stopped abruptly, like light disappearing when the switch is turned off. The fear flowed out, slowly but completely. The pain remained. But it remained in the background only. It was now just the context and didn't disturb him anymore.
Who is?
He got up quickly and began pacing about the floor, whispering to himself all the while. No. That’s exactly what a psychotic person would think. I have special powers and someone is in control of my mind. Madness. Has to be madness.
He grabbed his shorts and quickly slipped them on. Intently, with investigation on his mind, he walked over and opened the bedroom door. There was no one in the dining room and no one in the living room. Jacob went directly to the phone nook and snatched up the receiver. With the portable phone in hand, he reached into the back of his shorts. There, he found only empty pockets.
“Damn!”
Taking the phone with him, he started for the back door. Two steps later the memory hit and stopped him in his tracks.
“Sonnie’s got my car!”
Her face came to him, the way it looked after he told her to take him home. That look could have said, “Go to Hell!”
But his need to know was powerful. And that need was telling him that knowledge was printed on a business card in the back of his wallet. And his wallet was in his car.
Jacob remembered how she had touched him again. It had taken a while, as they rode in silence, while he pretended to sleep. But she had done it twice, briefly caressing his back and then taking her hand away.
Probably checking for my breath. Just making sure she wasn’t riding with a corpse. Better wait for her.
But he couldn’t resist. He had to have that card.
Jacob turned the face of the phone to him as he brought the digits to mind. He didn’t know if she still lived there, but her dad would give him the new number if she didn’t. He had three digits in before he stopped and hung up the line.
What do we have here?
Jacob’s eyes had focused in on something in the kitchen. He thought of the hangover pain, how it was in the background.
“Let’s see how good this works,” he mumbled as he made his way for the counter. He picked up the plastic sheath and pulled out the knife. With the blade in his right hand, he looked over his body. He stopped at his fingertips.
Yeah! That will do just fine.
At first, he only dabbed at his middle finger. That produced a slight tingle, but no blood and no pain.
Come on, Jacob. Do you want to know or not?
The next time he lowered the knife, it was with more velocity. It broke the skin. Now there was blood. And there was pain too. But again, the pain was only in the background, just like the wall or the ceiling. He could sense it, but it wasn’t him.
Too easy.
With the edge still in his fingertip, Jacob moved it around a little, widening the gash. With the blood running down his hand, Jacob pressed down until he felt it touch and then penetrate the bone. Still, it was all in the background.
Satisfied, he pulled the blade out. He made a fist with his left hand to hold the blood in, while he cleaned the knife in the kitchen sink. Then he rinsed off his finger and wrapped it in a paper towel.
With the sensation of blood oozing out of his finger, Jacob went back to his bedroom. His wallet sat on the floor near his bags. Shaking his head at his own stupidity, he grabbed it and went back for the phone. He sat his wallet on the dining room table, and with his good hand, flipped through the laminations until he found the right card.
“I know who you’re calling.”
Startled, Jacob turned and saw her standing in the hallway with a pill bottle in her hand.
“Easy, big brother. Jumping like that isn’t going to do your head any good.”
“What?”
Tyla tilted her head and smiled. “Your head. Come on now. You didn’t get in until after two this morning. And you reek of the fumes.”
“Oh yeah. My head. Hangover. Right.”
She laughed. “Anyway, Sonnie already called. She said she would bring your car back around noon. But I doubt you’ll be needing it for the rest of the day.”
Jacob reached over and shut his wallet. “You’re probably right.”
“Oh! What happened there?”
Jacob looked at her questioningly and then looked to where she was staring. The blood was now trickling down his left arm in two small streams. “I cut myself earlier. No big deal.”
Tyla had turned around before he got it all out. She walked into the bathroom. There was the sound of the facet running for a moment, and then she came back with a wet washcloth. She handed it to him, and he used it to catch the blood. Then she sat the bottle of pills down on the table.
“Here. Dad takes these for his knee sometimes. They work wonders on a hangover. Take two of them, drink some tomato juice and go back to bed.”
“You got it.”
“Mom said she’ll see you tonight if you’re home. And she said she wants us all to go into town and visit Grandma Putman tomorrow.”
“I’ll be there.
Tyla’s lips went straight on her face. “Yeah. I guess I will too.” She sighed. “Well, bro. I got to work today. I guess I’ll see you later. Oh! Make sure you put the pills back on Dad’s dresser when you’re done.”
“Okay.”
Jacob walked past her and into the bathroom. He got out a tube of antiseptic and some bandages. He dressed the cut properly, while he waited for her to leave.
#
Jacob sat alone in the living room, phone in hand. On his lap sat a business card flipped upside-down. Printed there in bold letters were seven digits and the words, home phone.
“Which means it’s all right to call her on a Saturday.”
Jacob dialed the number. He sat back and waited, half wanting for there to be no answer. On the eighth ring, she picked up.
“Hello.”
“Hello, D
r. Ross.”
“Jacob?”
“Yes. You knew it was me. Wow!”
“Well, I don’t know too many people with southern accents.”
“I guess not.”
There was silence while Jacob thought of how to broach it to her.
Luckily, Dr. Ross spoke next. “So Jacob. Tell me, are you back home in Oklahoma?”
Jacob nodded as if she could see him. Then, almost laughing, he asked, “Caller ID give me away?”
“No. I had my caller ID removed two days after I had it installed. I hated it. It made it too easy not to think. And, you know, a lot of things make it easy not to think. Other things make it easy not to feel. I think you may be familiar with such things Jacob.”
Again, there was silence. Jacob could picture her, sitting there, her finger and thumb making a V under her chin.
“So Jacob, do you wonder how I knew you were at home?”
“Yeah. How did you know? Help me out.”
“That’s a good question. How did I know?”
For the next few seconds he grasped around for something in his mind. His thoughts felt sharp, but he found nothing useful.
“I don’t know, Dr. Ross. I’m drawing a blank.”
“Good.”
“Good?’
“Yes, that’s good. In fact, if you weren’t confused, I might be worried. Because if you weren’t confused, that would mean that you have already been down this road before and that we are wasting time. Got me?”
“Kind of.”
“Good. Kind of is enough.”
Thoughts went wild in Jacob’s head. Connections formed and he didn’t know just why. There was suddenly a picture. It was he, driving to the shale pit with the pistol in the seat beside him. I went down the road, he thought.
“Now back to the question, Jacob. If you want to know how I knew you were in Oklahoma, you merely need to look at the facts. What are those facts, Jacob?”
Without hesitation, Jacob answered, “Well, it’s summer. Lot’s of students go home in the summer.”
“Yes. But not you. You might have planned one or two weeks to go home, but not the whole summer. Am I right?”
Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner Page 51
