The Meridians (36 page)

"He's not here," whispered Scott, guessing her thoughts and fears. "The voice is coming through the shared vents," he added, pointing to a nearby ceiling vent. Sure enough, as soon as he pointed it out, she could orient herself aurally and could instantly tell that the sounds of the gray man were, in fact, issuing from the vent.

"I can feel you, Kevin. I can feel the nexus...." The old man in the office next to theirs giggled suddenly, and the madness that sought them was audible in that crackling laughter. "I'm so close to home," whispered Mr. Gray. "So close to home."

Then there was the sound of things being thrown violently about the next room, as though the man in the office nearby was having a breakdown of some kind, his grip on reality so tenuous that he had to seek destruction in order to assure himself that the world existed. She shuddered, and tensed again in spite of herself.

"No," whispered Scott, again seeming to sense her thoughts. "We've got to wait him out. If we leave, we're in the middle of the sports fields, and there's nowhere to hide for a hundred yards. If he came out right then, we'd be spotted for sure."

"So we just have to wait here and hope that nut doesn't come around and search us out again?" she whispered back, keeping her voice so low that she wasn't even sure that Scott could hear it: she didn't want to take any chances tipping off the gray man by talking so loudly that
he
heard
her
just as she could hear him.

"I don't have any better ideas," Scott whispered back to her, shrugging in a helpless gesture. "It's not like we can outrun the guy," he said, and nodded toward Kevin.

Lynette knew that he was right. Kevin was many things, many
good
and wonderful things, but he was not a strong runner. With the exception of the single race through Albertson's, the race that had resulted in the salvation of Ruth and her baby, he had never managed more than a shambling run that was typical of many autistic people: head down, shuffling forward at a quick but hardly unbeatable pace. Certainly that kind of running would doom them. Nor could she or Scott carry Kevin for any kind of extended distance and hope to maintain a speed that would keep them ahead of the relentless gray man. No, Scott was right: their only hope lay in remaining silent and still, hoping that Mr. Gray passed them by like a hurricane - surely leaving devastation behind, but leaving them their lives at the same time.

The violent racket next door stopped abruptly. "I can feel you," said the voice again.

Lynette was holding Kevin's hand, and could feel it trembling in her grasp. For the first time in her life she was grateful that he primarily spoke through his laptop: should he give voice to the fear she knew he was feeling, he would doom them all. The merest whimper could bring Mr. Gray down on their heads like a grim reaper in a threadbare suit.

Then, suddenly, the feeling of Kevin's hand in hers changed. It had been trembling, but now it began jerking violently back and forth, as though he were trying to escape her grasp. She looked down at her son, and there was just enough light in the dim office for her to make out that he was, as he had several times now, shifting between two similar appearances. The two Kevins that she had seen before various times were now both
holding hands with her
.

The sensation was strange, like being plugged into a low voltage wire. It was an electrical sensation that thrummed through her, powerful but not entirely unpleasant. The feeling ran up her arm and to her chest, spreading throughout her in a bloom of heat that reached forth tendrils and vines until it had run its course throughout her entire body. The feeling crept up her neck, to her face, and then she felt it encircle her brain, her eyes.

Her vision split suddenly. Not as though she were seeing double, but more like she imagined a chameleon, with its independently rotating eyes, could see: not in anything approximating stereoscopic vision, but rather two different views of the same world. Only in her case, she was seeing two different views of a pair of worlds that were almost the same, but not quite. In one world, she was holding
her
Kevin's hand, she was holding the hand of a boy who was leaning to one side, his head cocked intently as though he were listening to a symphony that no one else could hear. It was a normal stance for him when he was feeling overwhelmed, as he must be now.

In the other world, the other vision that she was having simultaneously, she was holding the hand of the other Kevin, the boy who had told her and Scott to run, who had spoken of "the nexus" and "preserving symmetry." In that second world, the other Kevin was also holding hands with Scott.

Only no, it wasn't Scott. It was someone who
looked
like Scott, who appeared almost exactly like him, only this Scott had a bullet wound in his stomach. He was gasping, bleeding, dying.

The other Kevin looked at her. "History is seeking to repeat itself," he said cryptically. "The lines of history want to assert themselves in certain patterns. In this pattern, Scott will die. Unless you can save Kevin in
your
pattern."

A whimper escaped Lynette. Partly it was the fact that she was seeing Scott - or someone who looked like him - clearly bleeding and dying in front of her eyes. Partly it was the fact that she was seeing visions that could qualify her as completely mentally imbalanced.

But most of it was just hearing Kevin's voice, unimpeded by the autism that had plagued and limited him for his entire life. She was hearing her son, she knew, as he had been meant to be born.

Then, suddenly, a shot rang out. In that second world, that phantom world, she saw a bright flower of red open up on Scott's shirt - the
other
Scott's shirt.

"The lines of history want to assert themselves in certain patterns," repeated the other Kevin. Then he closed his eyes, and suddenly Lynette found herself back in the room, the
single
room, holding onto
her
Kevin and with
her
Scott - unhurt and without swollen flowers of blood drenching his stomach and chest - nearby.

"Where did you go?" said Scott in a low whisper, his eyes wide.

"What?"

"You were gone. Someone...else...was here," he said, almost stuttering. "Someone that looked like you, but wasn't. Someone who looked like Kevin, but wasn't. You kept phasing in and out like a picture going in and out of focus. Where were you?"

Lynette didn't know how to respond. She wasn't sure herself where she was, or what had happened. And not only that, but she had little time to ponder the import of her vision, because at that moment, Kevin did the unthinkable. He shook himself suddenly loose from her slackened grip and ran out of the room.

"Kevin!" she hissed, hoping that Mr. Gray had not heard it.

Kevin was not running the same way he had run in Albertson's - fleet and sure of foot - but rather was running as he was more wont to do: arms at his sides, rigidly taking the steps in a curiously awkward gate that was speedy but a far cry from what he had done earlier in the supermarket parking lot.

She was keenly aware of Scott's warnings about running: a hundred yards of no cover. If Mr. Gray came out at any point in that time, they would be caught, they would have to be caught.

She saw an image in her mind of Scott, shirt awash with blood, and heard Kevin again saying, "The lines of history want to assert themselves in certain patterns." Was this how it would happen? she wondered. Had the other Kevin been telling her that Scott was doomed to die no matter what, wounded in the stomach and chest, and then dying in front of her as history "asserted itself"? She did not know if she could handle that; did not know if she would be able to survive such a devastating blow to her soul. She had already lost one man she loved; she could not bear to lose another.

It was in that instant, the single instant in time when Kevin bolted for the door of the office, that she realized with stunning clarity that she did, in fact, love Scott. And it was not an infatuation born of lust or of the pulse-pounding terror and excitement of the last few days. It was something more real, fuller, more genuine than that. It was deep as she would have expected it to be if she and Scott had known each other for many years, instead of only a few days.

I love him, she thought. Then, on top of that thought, she had another: And he's destined to die.

No, she thought back at herself. No, I reject that.

It doesn't matter if you reject Truth, she answered. What is True is True, and remains so independent of how many people do or do not believe in it.

Thankfully, all further thoughts along those lines ceased as Kevin raced for the door. Lynette reached out to grab for him, but again as in the parking lot, he danced just out of her reach. Even in his usual, stumbling gait he somehow managed to elude her grasping fingers, as though he knew where she was going to grab at him and managed to move out of that spot just in time to avoid her hands.

He made it out the door before either Lynette or Scott could touch him, and was away in an instant, his head down as though he were pushing his way through a gale that was rapidly gaining strength and becoming a hurricane. He shuffled into the middle of the baseball diamond, past the bleachers that would have offered their only small hope of cover in this moonlit, starlit night, and into the empty space that marked right field before she and Scott caught up to him.

They grabbed him, and he looked lost and terrified, as though he didn't know what he was doing. He pawed at Scott suddenly, poking and prodding him in the chest and stomach.

"What the -" began Scott.

Lynette knew instantly what her son was doing; that he had somehow seen the version of events that she had seen earlier, the version where Scott was shot in stomach and chest. "Let him," she whispered.

"Let him what?" asked Scott.

"Let him make sure he can feel you're okay." Truth be told, she was somewhat jealous of Kevin in that moment. Being autistic gave a person a certain amount of immunity from having to observe the social norms that went along with living in any civilized community. So though Lynette also wanted to check Scott for wounds, she had to settle for allowing Kevin to do it.

Then, suddenly, her son went rigid.

He turned.

She turned as well, following his gaze back to where they had been a moment before.

Back to where a man was coming around the corner.

Mr. Gray.

And he was going to see them at any moment.

***

39.

***

Scott immediately hugged Kevin to him, then threw himself and the boy to the ground, pulling Lynette with them to the ground at the same time.

"Lay flat," he said in a whisper. "Keep your face down."

He was reminded of stories of World War II, where upturned faces would reflect moonlight...and provide a perfect target for enemy fire. He had nothing to blackout his face with, so had to settle for hiding it in the dust. With one hand he held Kevin to him, and with the other he held the boy's head to his chest. He could only hope that Lynette was doing the same thing as he was, hiding her face as well, and then further hope that Mr. Gray was not looking their way. Or that if he was looking, he was not seeing them as more than irregularities in the field. At the distance that they were from one another, it was impossible to guess what he might see them as.

Scott had never been so terrified in his entire life as he was in that instant. Not even in the alley - either of the alleys - when Mr. Gray had gotten the drop on him, not in the Garment District where he had been critically shot. For in all of those instances, he had at least had the ability to look death in the eye as it came for him, though in those instances it had passed him by without taking him.

Now, however, cowering in the dust of the baseball diamond, holding onto Kevin and hoping that the boy did not cry out or throw a tantrum, he couldn't see anything. Mr. Gray could be coming right up to them right this instant.

But no. He didn't think that was the case. In a sudden understanding of what Kevin had just done, he looked up, chancing a glance in the direction of the office that they had just left. He looked up in time to see Mr. Gray disappearing into the office, into the very office that they had just abandoned on account of Kevin.

Scott wondered whether Mr. Gray was just going into that office as part of a random sweep, or if he was somehow tracking them, tracking Kevin. He flashed to the note that he had found in Kevin's empty bedroom upon moving him and his mother into their home in Meridian: "I found you once, Kevin, and I'll find you again." Was it possible that the gray man had some kind of sense about where Kevin was? That he was tracking a sort of psychic residue that the autistic child left behind, invisible to Scott and Lynette but bright as a yellow brick road to the man tracking them?

Somehow Scott guessed that this must be the case. Mr. Gray had found them at every turn - though sometimes it had taken him years to do so - and had especially focused his ill will on Kevin. So there must be some kind of internal compass that the gray man was using to find them, one that oriented on Kevin as its true north. And if that was the case, then the killer would soon be leaving the office of the crotchety old Mr. Randall, and would be following them out to the baseball diamond, where if he came much closer he would be sure to find them with ease.