The Meridians (44 page)

But sure enough, within ten minutes of opening the back of the U-haul, there were a pack of neighbors, passers-by, and even two sheriff's deputies that were all buzzing like ants in and out of the house, each of them summoned not by a phone call or a plea for aid, but merely by the fact that there was someone new in the neighborhood, and that someone needed help. Amy-Lynn found herself being coddled in her own home as the wives in the area descended on her as well, each bearing not just friendship, but also foodstuffs for the pantry - nothing frozen, they all knew from experience that the movers wouldn't want or be prepared to deal with frozen items just yet - and advice for the new mother.

She felt like she had somehow managed to get to heaven without the burdensome and occasionally messy process of dying getting in the way.

Now eight years after moving to Rising, the view was of the same idyllic small town that it had been eight years ago.

Main road.

A schoolhouse, for grades K through twelve, a small brick building that somehow managed to convey both an inviting air and one of permanence, as though the building could speak and was even now telling all that it had gone through many long winters...and expected to go through many more.

Behind the schoolhouse was a small football field, the pride of the town, where each Friday night almost everyone for twenty square miles could be found.

A few children were out riding their bikes in the waning light of day, a few honest-to-goodness Bicycle playing cards in their bike spokes. Amy-Lynn smiled at that for a moment, then shuddered as the sound of the playing cards carried to her ears: it sounded like the flap-crack of splintering bones.

She cast her eyes around for something else to focus on, gripped by a sudden feeling of dread that she had not experienced in almost a decade, not since leaving Los Angeles.

She looked up, and saw the mist-shrouded Olympic Mountains, the huge range casting long shadows over the town in the last pale gasps of day. Usually the view comforted Amy-Lynn: the mountains exuded permanence, lending a sense of stability to an otherwise oft-changing world. Today, however, at the end of this long day, at the end of a short trip through memory that played host to darkness as much as light, the mountains seemed less like the ponderous guardians that they usually were, and more like an omen of coming doom. The mist that hung on them seemed to Amy-Lynn like the darkness that hung at the edges of so many pleasant dreams: a constant reminder that what was light could be made dim at a moment's notice; that what was lovely could be rendered vile and horrifying in an instant.

Amy-Lynn heard a creak and looked over.

The porch swing.

It was swaying gently in the evening breeze. And again the usually-charming view was one that seemed less a reminder of a pleasant afternoon sipping lemonade and more as though the ghosts of past residents were still present, still swinging in eternity, still searching for rest.

The remains of the day's lemonade still sat in glasses on the porch rail, condensation dripping from them like nervous sweat.

"Mommy!" came a youthful, high-pitched voice from inside the house, and Amy-Lynn shuddered then turned gratefully away from the view of the town, and returned her attention to her treasure, her all: her reason for life and continued reason for living.

Sean Rand was a tow-headed child of eight, bright eyes gleefully alight as he shot a marble across the kitchen floor. It rolled across the linoleum tile with a dry, brittle noise, then hit another marble with pinpoint accuracy. Crack! went the two glass orbs, and one suddenly halted as if by magic, its momentum stolen by the second marble, which rolled away rapidly.

Amy-Lynn watched the second marble roll away, and rolled her eyes. "You got me again, Sean," she said.

Sean grinned, his perfect smile leaning a bit to one side, marred by an accident that had happened less than a year before. He had been learning to ride on a two-wheel bike, leaving behind the training wheels in favor of a much cooler dirt bike that Ron had given their son for Christmas. But though he had been a quick learner, overconfidence had come with practice, and Amy-Lynn still shuddered every time she remembered the crash: her son smashing through their oh-so-perfect white picket fence, and one of the resulting splinters leaping up as if by dark magic to spear through her son's cheek. She could still see the blood in her dreams, the dripping red that splashed - so much,
too
much - on the white of the fence, staining it forever.

It had turned out to be almost nothing. Just a head wound, and everyone knew - or so the old ladies on the block said with mellow sagacity - how much head wounds bled, even little ones. Still, the blood that had come out before she had managed to staunch the bleeding and get stitches - only two, head wounds really
did
bleed, even the little ones - had been so bright and so frightening that it still made feature appearances in her dreams, and she couldn't help but shudder whenever Sean's little cheek, still slightly scarred from the mishap, pulled to one side due to a muscle that had been torn in the accident.

The grin, even pulled to one side, however, was highly infectious, and Amy-Lynn couldn't help but smile herself as Sean clasped his hands over his head in victory and shouted, "I...am..."

And then Amy-Lynn joined in with him to finish: "...The Greatest!"

And then, as she always did when she and Sean did this victory shout, she attacked him with a flurry of hugs and tickles, stopping only when Sean started to say, "Stop it...stop it! Can't breathe!"

So she paused, just long enough for him to get his breath back, then said, "Better?" Sean nodded as he always did, and then Amy-Lynn redoubled her attack as
she
always did.

It was happiness. A moment of bliss that was almost -
almost
- enough to chase away the fearful thoughts from her mind.

Until Sean kicked out. His foot hit his marble, still sitting in a red glow on the ground. The marble rolled...

..."Oh no!" shouted Sean...

...and then it disappeared through a large, dark gap below the door that led from the kitchen down into the basement.

"Oops, there goes your marble," said Amy-Lynn, still smiling.

Sean was still smiling, too. Until he saw where the marble had gone to hide.

He stopped laughing.

Stopped smiling.

Almost, she thought, he stopped
breathing
.

Amy-Lynn's brow softened, and she touched Sean gently on the shoulder. "It's okay, kiddo," she said. "It's just the basement."

She moved to the door. Swung it open.

Darkness beyond. Death-black. Funeral-black. To an eight-year-old, she supposed, this may as well have been the doorway to Hell.

Sean wasn't moving. Still and silent, like a deer that knew it was only inches away from a predator; from death. He stared, terrified, into the darkness that lay beyond the basement door.

"Go on, Sean," coaxed Amy-Lynn. "There's nothing to worry about. Nothing to fear."

Sean whispered something.

"What?" said Amy-Lynn.

The boy turned to her, and she was shocked to see that his face was now streaked with tears, mere seconds after he had been laughing his bell-tone little boy's laugh.

"The monster," whispered Sean.

Amy-Lynn pursed her lips. This obsession with a monster in the basement was a new thing, almost as new as her own sudden fear of the mountains that until today had always provided peace and serenity to her. She and Ron had both tried to coax their son on numerous occasions into the basement, but in the last week or so the child had utterly refused to go, no matter what the provocation or the possible reward.

Amy-Lynn was, she thought, a patient and loving mother. But she also knew that patience and love had to be tempered with firmness and encouragement in the face of fear.

No time like the present, she thought, and gestured to her son. "Here," she said. She reached into the basement, and was almost disturbed herself to see how completely her hand disappeared into the murky blackness that began only inches beyond the doorjamb.

Has it always been this dark in the basement? she thought. And on the heels of that thought came another, unbidden and strange: What if something
does
pull me in?

But she cast that thought out of her mind. Pushed it to the back, to the dark spaces in her brain where misty mountains and bone-cracking cards cast long shadows in the dim and threatened to become monsters in the basement of her own heart.

She flicked on the basement light. She moved urgently, quickly, as though speed of limb would cast out unease of mind.

"Look," she said, and gently drew the nearly struggling Sean with her partway into the basement.

Light flooded the place. Laundry. Food storage. Tools hanging neatly from racks.

And Sean's marble, clearly visible in the dead center of the clean basement floor.

Dead center, she thought, and shuddered within herself. The monsters in the dim parts of her mind rasped and writhed.

Again, however, she pushed them out of her thoughts, feeling a bit silly about the irrational fear that was suddenly beleaguering her. There was no place to hide in the basement. No shadows, nothing remotely creepy about the place.

She pulled her son back with her into the kitchen, feeling him relax, until....

Click. She turned off the light again, then gestured for her son to try. "Now you," she said. Sean tensed immediately, his small muscles going rigid under the lightweight cotton of his T-shirt. "Go ahead," she urged. "There's nothing down there, honey."

He looked at her, and she was dismayed to again see tears shimmering at the corners of his eyes. But she steeled herself and continued. No son of hers would be driven by fear the way she had been for so much of her adult life. No boy of hers was going to have to be beholden to his own terrors, was going to walk in the shadow of anguish, unable to break into the sunlight that came once you exhibited courage in the face of fear.

She guided his hand forward, forward, forward. She let go, and was relieved to see that, though his lip trembled and his arm shook, he kept reaching, reaching, reaching for the light switch.

She could see him feeling along the wall. She was proud of him.

The monster must be asleep
.

She pushed the thought down, where it joined with the other unbidden and unwelcome thoughts in her mind.

Sean looked at her for encouragement.

She smiled.

And then screamed as her son fell

(
no pulled, he was pulled, oh God and Jesus something
pulled
him)

into the basement.

Amy-Lynn reacted instinctively, barreling into the doorway before the first scream came, but as fast as she was the door was faster, moving on well-oiled hinges and slamming shut in front of her.

She heard her son, screaming on the other side of the suddenly closed door. She heard the click of a latch engaging, and shook the door handle even though she knew it would be a futile gesture. When it was locked, as she had somehow known it would be, she barreled into the door, pounding at it maniacally with all the force she could muster, listening to her baby boy screaming on the other side.

She attacked the door, clawing at it like a feral beast. Screaming sounded on both sides of the door now: the panicked shrieks of a boy in terror, and the blood-curdling mews of a mother trying to get to her child.

Mother-screams, child-screams, and the door was buckling and shaking, incredible violence causing it to quiver on its hinges, and Amy-Lynn could not be sure if the shaking was because of her or because of some other terrifying, unknown force on the other side of the door.

She kept clawing at the door, at the door jamb, at the doorknob, frantic, the movements sending shocks of sound through the house as her panic-soaked muscles worked frenzied music on the wood and metal.

Then she slowed as she became aware of another noise, one underneath the sounds she was making. Low, guttural, growling. The sound of damnation come to visit.

And at the sound, the doorway
splintered
as something hit it from the basement side. Something powerful. Deadly.

Sean stopped screaming. Suddenly. Forever.

Amy-Lynn redoubled her efforts, trying to get in, to break in, to find her way in to her boy, to her baby.

She couldn't do it.

But still she tried, until exhaustion drove her inexorably to her knees in front of the door, a weeping mass of threadbare muscle and pain-ridden mind.

Then....

Click.

The door...

...swung...

...open.

Amy-Lynn looked into the basement. Only a few moments before it had been clean and inviting, full of light and the easy order of a house well kept. Now, it was dark. Dim. Frightening.