“But still, people before that and people after that had some of these same teachers.”
“Yeah, but nobody got them all, except your class, the products. The rest of us got some watered down combination of these people.”
“And that’s how people like Shane and Jeff were created.”
“Yeah, but that’s also how the regenerators were created.”
Jacob looked up at Sonnie, who seemed so sure of herself.
“Yeah Jacob. The regenerators, the people who will come back and make the process happen again.”
Jacob shook his head. “How does that work?”
“I don’t know how it works, but I can tell you this. None of the people who came back to Nescata graduated the same year as your grandma.”
“Right.”
“And I’m assuming that your grandma’s process was similar to yours.”
“Okay.”
“So then, the people from your grandma’s class were the products of the process. They, like your class, must have gotten the perfect combination of teachers too. The years prior to and the years after your grandma graduated must have got the watered down version. And that was enough to create, Principal Hogaboom, Coach Shaw, and the rest of the regenerators.”
“Not to mention the people my grandma was responsible for killing.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay. Then right now, there are people out there who graduated before me and who graduated after me that will come back someday and make this whole thing happen again.”
“Yes.”
Jacob looked at Sonnie, who seemed satisfied with her answer.
“But that assumes a lot,” he said.
“You’re right. It does.”
“It assumes my grandma’s process was just like mine.”
“And do you think it was?”
Jacob thought of her question and before long he had an answer. “Yes, I do.”
“How?”
“Because of what the younger version of Mr. Tomsak said in my dream.”
“What?”
“He said that this was not Astrology; this is Chemistry.”
“Which makes it systematic and lawful.”
Jacob nodded. Then he began to feel himself slip away.
“So we got this now. We know what’s going on.”
“Not quite. We still don’t know what the fourth characteristic is.”
Sonnie wasn’t blurry. Nothing was. But the room still had an unreal quality to it. Jacob felt like he was watching it all through a movie screen, while his mind was fading away into something else.
“Jacob, you’re going away aren’t you? It’s happening again.”
“Yes.”
Jacob could not see her, but he heard her voice.
“Then go.”
#
The door that led to the sidewalk outside Sonnie’s apartment leads to a long hallway. There are several doors that line the hallway. They are all white. Each has a small square window in the corner, and each window is lined with wire mesh.
Jacob looks inside several of these windows and sees the same thing inside of each one. Each contains its own male child. And every child is silent and motionless. Jacob stops looking after he checks a few rooms. He waits, knowing that what he needs will come to him. Eventually, one of the doors opens down the hall.
Two men come out of that room and walk in Jacob’s direction. One of the men is black, the other white. Both are wearing white scrub pants and white t-shirts. Each has a plastic badge clipped to his shirt.
“Those are some wacked out pictures,” the white man says.
“Yeah. He drew them without ever saying a word, then he just went back into that trance.”
They continue to walk after they pass Jacob. They walk around a corner and then out of Jacob’s sight. Jacob moves to the room they left. He floats through the door.
The first thing Jacob sees is the human figure on the bed in the corner of the room.
“Pete Stebens.”
Pete’s eyes are wide-open but dull. His face is expressionless. Jacob thinks he looks even further gone than his grandmother usually looks.
“Can you hear me, Pete?”
There is no response.
“Pete can you tell me how this happened?”
Pete suddenly gasps for air and comes to life just a little more. He turns his head slowly. At first he seems to look at Jacob, and then he seems to look past him. Pete lifts a rigid arm up. Then he draws four fingers back, leaving one pointing finger out. Jacob turns around and sees what Pete is pointing at.
He moves in for closer inspection of four pieces of posterboard hanging on the wall. The pictures are drawn fairly well. At least, Jacob is easily able to make out all the details. In the first, there are two boys sitting in front of a TV with what looks like video game pads in their hands. One of the boys is obviously older than the other, but, by the big red smiles drawn on their faces, they look very happy.
The second picture is exactly the same as the first, except behind the boys, coming through an open door, is a green snake. In the third picture the snake has wrapped itself around the smaller boy’s neck.
Then there is the final picture. It saddens Jacob to look at it. He is sad because he understands, or at least he thinks he understands, the purpose of the pictures now. They are merely a wish.
The fourth picture shows the two boys in the background leaping with joy. In front of them, a big black dog is standing up on its hind legs. In the dog’s mouth is what looks like several clothes hangers tied together. On the end of these hangers is the head of a dead snake.
He’s not sure whether it’s the boy behind him that says it or it’s his imagination supplied by the memory. But the last thing Jacob hears before he’s back in Sonnie’s apartment is Pete Stebens’s ecstatic voice.
“Kill the snake, Sam!”
#
Sonnie came into his vision, slowly, and through a fuzzy blur. Jacob could tell by the way she stared at him that she was waiting anxiously for what he had. They were on the floor of her living room.
“How long was I gone?”
“Five minutes, maybe. And you talked.”
“What did I say?”
“I couldn’t make out all the words, but I know it had something to do with Pete Stebens.”
Jacob nodded.
Sonnie paused for a few seconds and than spit out her next question a little nervously. “So, do you know what happened to Tommy Carmichael?”
Jacob smirked. “I didn’t kill him. I had nothing to do with it.”
“So what happened? Who killed him?”
“He did.”
“Pete Stebens?”
Jacob smirked again. Then he noticed Sonnie drawing back and her face changing a little.
“No. Sorry. I don’t mean it like . . .”
“I know.”
Jacob smiled at her. She seemed a little more at ease.
“It wasn’t me or Pete Stebens who killed Tommy. It was him, the man in white.”
“The man in white?”
“Yeah.”
“Why? I mean, why would Tommy Carmichael be different than any of the others?”
“I don’t know.”
Jacob stood up.
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere. I just . . .”
Sonnie stood up with him. “Well, I don’t know how much it matters now.”
“It must matter, Sonnie, or I wouldn’t have seen it. There’s some kind of message for me.”
“So, you’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out. Don’t worry about it.”
Sonnie hugged Jacob, and after a few seconds, began to move on him. Jacob tried to move away. She grabbed the sleeves of his shirt.
“What? I’m safe now. And I’m tired of waiting for you.”
Jacob hesitated, then pulled her to him. This time, when she started to move, he let himself savor her. He put his hand on her back and let it drop slowly down.
She backed off a little and undid his pants.
Sonnie pulled off his shirt and kissed him on the chest. She slowly made her way down, kissing him as she went. When she made it to her knees, she lowered all that was covering him. She stared for just a moment and then pulled her hair back away from her face. Then she took him in her mouth.
Jacob closed his eyes and focused only on his cock. He noticed every movement of her tongue and felt the intense heat of her mouth. He moaned, and she worked harder. He put his hands in her hair and caressed her slowly. He reached down and pulled up on her shirt. Sonnie straightened her body out and put her arms above her head. When the shirt was off, she went back down on him. He removed her bra without her stopping.
Jacob began to want her too much. He wanted to be in her. He thought about pulling her up, moving her to the couch and doing to her what she was doing to him. In his mind, he was ready. In his mind, he was past the point of no return. He started to pull her up by the shoulders.
The monster inside of him rose suddenly, and he took her by the hair instead.
“Ow! Jacob!”
He pulled her to her feet. She struggled, but his grip was too tight. She stopped struggling. He turned her around.
Jacob was about to separate her from her pants, when he glanced into the kitchen and saw the object sitting on the end of the shelf. Suddenly, he knew that was the object. That was what he wanted to use to hurt her. It was a desire he couldn’t quench without performing the act. Jacob looked at the naked skin of her back. He wanted to see it burn. He wanted to watch her skin rise with the steam coming off of it. Jacob wanted to use hot water from that teakettle.
This time it didn’t take a telepathic phone ringing to bring Jacob back. It seemed like it was just enough to know what he wanted. It flowed out of him. Sonnie turned around, and from the terrified look on her face, it had flowed out of her too.
“Jacob!”
“It’s okay, Sonnie. I’m myself again.”
She started to dress. “Jacob? How?”
“I don’t know.”
He stared in at the teakettle. It seemed so ominous now. “There’s something for me to know here.”
“What?”
“There’s something for me to know!”
Now Jacob began to dress. Sonnie was crying.
Jacob pulled his clothes on quickly. “Sonnie, it’s nothing that can’t be fixed.”
He pulled on her hand. She resisted for a second and then came in quickly.
“Okay,” she said.
“I’m going to leave, and I’ll come back when I’m sure that I’m not going to hurt you.”
She let go of him. He looked at her wet face and then turned around.
Chapter 13
There were no aides in the hall when Jacob walked in. On his way to his grandma’s room, he heard one from another one of the resident’s rooms. He thought it might have been Lacey, the one he had talked to the day before. Jacob rushed to avoid talking to her or anyone else. But he did take the time to grab the stethoscope from the front desk.
The door to Oletta Putman’s room was open when Jacob got there. Her roommate, Sara, was out. Jacob found Oletta asleep in her bed. He shut the door. He walked up beside the bed and pulled the curtain, hiding them from anyone whom might come in.
“Grandma, I need your help again.”
Oletta Putman’s eyes opened slightly, then shut again.
“I have to know something, Grandma. I have to know if I’m always going to be this way.”
Jacob placed the stethoscope up to her mouth. His grandma opened her eyes again, but she did not speak.
“You left Dean Carrier. Should I leave Sonnie?”
Her eyes moved open a little more, almost like a gesture of surprise. Then they relaxed again without closing completely. She spoke. “No.”
“I won’t hurt her then? I won’t kill her?”
“Wait.”
“Wait? Wait for what, Grandma?”
Through the stethoscope, Jacob heard crackling. From the sound of it, Oletta was not going to continue much longer. “Lifts.”
“Lifts?” Jacob tried to think of it on his own, and he decided that maybe he knew what that meant. “Okay. I’ll wait.” Jacob leaned over and kissed her on the head. “Thank you, Grandma.”
When he raised back up and started to turn around, he saw the new look in her eyes. Then he saw the veins in her neck rise. Finally, there was the crackling sound she made, so loud he could hear it without the stethoscope.
“What? There’s something more you want to tell me?” He put the stethoscope back up to her mouth. At first, she was only silent. Then she started with the noise again.
“Just a second.”
Jacob got the notepad and the crayon back out. He set the crayon in her fist and placed the notepad on the tray in front of her. Slowly, but immediately, her hand began to trace out the first letter. It took a few minutes, but Oletta got the green letter on the page.
“Okay. That’s an E.”
With only a moment’s pause, his grandmother began the second letter next to the first. This one was also slow, but it didn’t take quite as long.
“N.”
The third letter was next to the second but a little at a diagonal. It was the easiest of the three to write.
“D. End. You want me to end something.”
In a jerking movement, his grandmother moved the crayon down the page. Then she began the next set. The first and second were merely straight lines, one bigger than the other.
“L and I.”
On the next letter, she started to slow down, but Jacob recognized it early, after only a couple of strokes.
“Another N.”
The next letter was the same way. It was slow, but Jacob was quick to see what it was intended to be.
“That’s another E. Line. End Line.”
Her hand moved a little further down the page. This time she was near the bottom. Jacob could tell she was beginning to tighten up more. He tried to be quick.
“D.”
She moved on and drew a circle.
“O.”
The next attempt was a failure. Oletta eventually gave up and started over. Jacob looked up at the clock and saw that they had been at this for nearly half an hour. Finally, Oletta produced yet another N. Then she drew a little line to the side.
“That’s an N and an apostrophe. Don’t. If the word is don’t, just go on.”
Oletta moved her hand down right off the page.
“Just a second, Grandma. Jacob flipped to the next page. Then he moved her hand back up. It was nearly a minute later that she started writing again. It was another five minutes to get the M. Then it took ten more to make the A.
There was a knock at the door. Jacob hid the notepad and crayon, then stuck around while a nurse gave his grandma a cup of pills. The break seemed to do her some good. She was able to make out the tricky K in less than five minutes.
“That’s a K. You’re writing make. If you are, go on to the next word.”
Oletta’s hand went down the page. She made a few last strokes all over the place and then dropped the crayon. Jacob looked up and saw that her eyes were closed.
“Grandma?”
There was another knock at the door. This time it was Lacy. She was carrying three pans stacked together and several towels.
“Hi. Here to clean her up.”
“Can it wait?”
“I guess. Why? Is she not asleep yet?”
“Yeah, she just fell asleep.”
“Oh. You know she’s going to be that way for a few hours?”
“Why?”
“Because she just had her pain meds. She always gets them a little while before her bath. That way she can sleep through it, and it doesn’t hurt her when I move her around.”
Jacob looked back at his grandma. He felt just a little guilty for making her exert herself. But he still wanted to know what her message meant. “All right, just let me say goodbye
, and she’s all yours.”
“You got it.”
Lacy shut the door. Jacob walked over to his grandma. He took the crayon and put it back in the drawer. He took the two notepad pages.
“End line. Don’t make. Don’t make what?” He shoved the two pages in his pocket. His kissed her forehead. “Call me when you wake up, grandma.”
He walked out, never to come back again.
#
Jacob waited the day out at the shale pit. It wasn’t such a special place to him anymore, now that it was just a place that he had done his work. But it was a place of solitude. It was a place to wait. And he stayed there, sweating in the hot sun with little shade, knowing that it was just a matter of time before it all came to an end. He expected the ringing to start at anytime, but he didn’t let it upset him when it didn’t. He expected the man in white, but he didn’t let that bother him either. Instead, he just waited. There was nothing else to do. It wasn’t until after the sun went down and night came that he got into his car.
Jacob pulled out of the pit, thinking of only where he would go next to wait. Sonnie’s apartment was out of the question. At least, not until he was sure that he wouldn’t hurt her. His parents’ house seemed like a good idea, but he didn’t want to put them in danger either. He wasn’t sure what he was capable of. Visions of waking up and finding them slain hit him. He decided to find a hotel.
The 81 Inn was on the highway just outside of Nescata. Jacob didn’t think he knew the owners, and he knew that there was parking in the back. It was a temporary solution, but by what his grandma had said, and by the way he felt, temporary seemed like enough. It would have to be. And if it wasn’t, he would make one last trip to the pit. But this time he would not pull the gun away. He refused to go on killing.
Jacob laughed as he turned onto the blacktop. “Who are you kidding? You’ll do as you’re told.”
He had drove into town on many nights. This far out in the country, all he could usually see was whatever came into his headlights. But on this night there was something in the distance. Light was coming over the horizon.
Jacob drove the first couple of miles, only watching the light. It crept in and out of itself, like it was beckoning him. And then the sounds arose. It was very much like it was in the cave. There was a man’s voice coming through speakers and the occasional ruffling sound of people cheering in the distance. But added to that were the drums, beating a rhythm that excited him, like a warrior being called into battle.
Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner Page 63
