The Meridians

by Michaelbrent Collings

  Lynette became aware of a sound. The soft tones of a whispered word. She automatically looked beside her, half-expecting to see Robbie, speaking softly in his sleep as he had been wont to do from time to time.

  But Robbie was not there.

  Robbie is gone. Robbie is gone. Robbie is -

  The thought was interrupted by the recurrence of the sound. Unable to convince herself that it was some sort of phantom noise, a memory made audible by her grief-riddled mind, she stood and tried to sense where the low, tumultuous sound was coming from.

  Somewhere outside of her room.

  She followed the sound out into the hall. The force that had previously energized her now made her feel logy, tired, adrift in a sea that she had no power to control. She was a tiny boat in the grasp of a wave that was drawing her inexorably forward. But whether the wave would deposit her safely on a beach or would toss her to be cruelly crushed on nearby rocks, she could not say. She only knew that, for the moment, she was not the pilot of her ship. If ever she had been.

  Pulled by the magnetic force of the sound, she walked slowly down the short hallway in the home that had until recently been shared by her, Robbie, and Kevin. She put a hand out, touching the wall as though to steady herself, and was more than a little surprised to find it solid and whole. She half-expected to find it insubstantial as a cloud, unreal as a dream. Its solidity reassured her, reminded her that she was not insane, that some rules still applied, even in a world so mad that it had seen fit to steal her husband from her.

  She traced figures on the wall as she walked. Gradually she became aware that she was writing the word "Robbie" over and over again, as though her hand was, of and for itself and independent of any of the thoughts of her mind, aching for the need to touch him, to feel him beneath her fingers, to trace her hands upon his broad chest and back.

  She stopped herself from writing the name, holding her hand tightly against her chest. Forget being the captain of her own ship, apparently she could no longer even control the movement of her own body.

  As though to confirm that suspicion, she felt a pressing in her body, and realized that she needed desperately to urinate. But she knew she would not be able to use the bathroom until she found out what the noise was that was still drawing her forth like iron fillings to a magnet.

  The noise grew in volume as she walked down the hall, and gradually she realized where it was coming from.

  Kevin's room.

  She flashed to the image of the gray man who had appeared out of nowhere three days before. She had not confided in anyone what had really happened, sure that if she did so she would immediately be at risk of losing Kevin as well as losing her husband. She could not let that happen. Not for the world. Kevin was all that she had left, and without him she really would be lost, afloat and adrift in an endless sea of solitude and misery.

  So no, she did not tell anyone what she had seen. She merely said that Robbie had slipped. Had fallen in a puddle of water from one of the party-goers and slipped and died in a tragic accident. No mention of the gray man. No mention of the threatening manner in which he loomed over her son. No mention of the last brave lunge that her husband took in what she knew intuitively to be a protective move that had gone horribly awry.

  Doris, the hostess of the fateful party, had been aghast. But in the sick, litigious society that inhabited the southern regions of the state of California, Lynette had been unable to tell if the horror had been at the fact that Robbie had died, or born of a fear that Lynette would sue her because the accident had happened on her property.

  Lynette had no such desires. For one, she believed that Robbie would not have condoned any such action. But more importantly, she knew that it was in no way Doris' fault. Somehow it was the fault of the other man. The intruder.

  The gray man.

  The thought of the interloper who had turned her life so completely inside out gave speed to her feet and quieted her trembling. She moved quickly now, on legs as fleet as those of Hermes, messenger of the gods of old. She ran the few short steps to Kevin's doorway, then turned the handle and was inside his room in an instant.

  Kevin insisted on perfect darkness when he slept. As though, even as a toddler, he had already not only passed through the fear of the dark that troubled most children, but had actually grown contemptuous of it. So when she entered the room, only darkness greeted her.

  Darkness, and the sound.

  She reached for the light switch, found it almost instantly, but something stopped her from flicking it up. She felt a sudden dread, not at finding the source of the sound, but at the prospect of frightening it away before she could examine it more closely. So rather than turn on the light, she froze in place and listened, gradually becoming aware that the sound was coming from Kevin's direction.

  She put a hand in front of her and sightlessly began feeling for the toddler bed that Kevin lay in. She felt it with her shins first, a good sign since a part of her fully expected to feel the rumpled fabric of the gray man's suit with her fingertips before she ever found the bed.

  But no, the gray man apparently was not there. Normally, this would have comforted Lynette immensely. Now, however, it somehow only increased her sense of dread. If not him, what? What other scourge had this unjust creature called God chosen to castigate her with? What else could happen?

  She kept questing sightlessly as a queen termite, feeling with her fingers for something, anything, that would give a clue as to what the sound was.

  Finally, she found it. She felt the thing that was making the noise, and her stomach clenched into a tight knot within her. The feeling of needing to urinate that had seized her before was now so strong as to be almost impossible to withstand. But she had to, she could not afford to leave this room. Not until she had reached the bottom of this mystery whose surface she had just scratched at.

  The noise was coming from Kevin. At first she thought it was just a random jumbling of sounds, the nonsense burbling and babbling that any normal two year old might engage in. But as she listened, she became aware that the sounds were not random. They were precise, though delivered through the soft palate and undeveloped tongue of a young child.

  "Witten was white, witten was white, witten was white," he said. The boy who had previously said only one word - "Gray," the word he had spoken as though in a warning of the imminent appearance of the man who would signal the end of Robbie's life - was now sporting a veritable cornucopia of vocabulary words.

  "Witten was white, witten was white, witten was white...."

  The words repeated over and over, and now that she was acclimating to the complete darkness of the room, her other senses were sharpening to compensate for the loss of her sight and she grew more and more certain that the strange words were, in fact, emanating from her son. She could feel his breath as he exhaled the words, could hear him inhale as he prepared to repeat each phrase in the free-verse poem of his sleep.

  "Witten was white, witten was white, witten was white...."

  Then the words cut off. Suddenly and without explanation, they stopped.

  The silence stretched out forever, an interminable length of quiet that seemed to go on and on and on.

  Then Kevin spoke again. And this time the tremulous chills that gripped her turned to bright light in her breast as Kevin said a new word, the fifth word of his life.

  "Mommy," he said, and Lynette felt a pride and love in her heart that almost managed to push aside the crippling grief that she had been struggling against since Robbie's death.

  In the next moment, however, her feelings spiraled downward again, and the tremors that shook her were no longer the galvanizing sense of movement that had propelled her to this instant, nor were they the loving quivers of a mother whose pride for her son knows no end. This time, they were the shivers of fear, pure and white as icicles in her heart.

  Kevin sat up. She felt rather than saw the movement, but in her mind the vision was as clear as if she had witnessed it in br
oad daylight. He sat, and she could imagine him staring at her, silent eyes staring blindly in the blackness, yet with a gaze that still somehow found its way to her face.

  "Mommy," he whispered again, then, awake this time, and in full sense of what faculties he possessed, he whispered urgently, "Witten was white."

  ***

  15.

  ***

  Scott was very tired.

  He had been driving for almost twelve hours, and still had several hours to go before reaching his new home in Meridian, Idaho. But it wasn't just the drive. The night before he packed all his things in the moving van and began the long haul toward his home town, he didn't sleep a wink. Or rather, he slept, but so fitfully that no real rest was to be had. Just quick dozes punctuated by dreams.

  Nightmares.

  In his dreams, Scott kept seeing the old Mr. Gray, calling to him. Only no, it wasn't him that Mr. Gray was calling, it was someone else. Someone named Kevin.

  Kevin, the same name that had been written on the strange note that Scott had seen in his apartment after returning home from the hospital. "I'm still here, and I'm coming for you and Kevin."

  Just as he had upon finding the note, Scott wondered who this Kevin was, and what his tie to the strange Mr. Gray could be, not to mention what his tie to Scott himself might show itself to be.

  "You've hidden from me for long enough," said Mr. Gray in the dream.

  And Scott spoke back. But it wasn't his voice, it was another voice, a voice that was a half-whisper, making it impossible to guess if the speaker was old or young, man or woman. All that was sure was that it was not his own voice.

  "I haven't been hiding, Adrian," said the voice.

  "Don't lie to me, boy," said Mr. Gray. His face contorted in anger as he said it, those aged, yellowing teeth of his showing in a snarl.

  "I've never lied to you," replied the other voice - Kevin?

  And then the dream ended, each time the same, with Mr. Gray pulling out a switchblade and walking toward Scott/Kevin with murder in his eyes. Each time, Scott awoke with sweat drenching his body and the bare mattress upon which he was sleeping during his last night in the apartment he had shared with Amy and Chad a million years ago in a time and place he still believed was best described as "once upon a time."

  Once upon a time, Scott Cowley was alone, and frightened in the night in a way he had not been since being a very young boy who crept into his parents' room when plagued by nightmares. Only his parents were gone now. Gone, but they had left him their small house in Meridian, a mid-size town just to the southwest of Boise, Idaho's capital city. The house still stood there, and was still in Scott's name. He had put up tenants in the property during the years since his parents' deaths - both had died of natural causes within mere months of one another, as though when his father first traveled through the veil of silence that covered the otherworld of death, his mother could no longer bear to stand alone on this mortal coil, and so had shuffled off to join her spouse in the oblivion Beyond.

  Only it wasn't oblivion, was it? Wasn't it Heaven? That was what his parents had both taught him from an early age, taking him to church and teaching him at home the stories of the Bible, of Cain and Able and Moses and Abraham, of Jesus and Peter and Matthew and Paul. They had been his heroes when young, easily standing alongside such other favorites as Superman and The Flash.

  But no more. They had stepped down from that lofty perch on the day that God had allowed - if not commanded from on high - Amy and Chad to die. Scott had no more longing to be a part of such a Heaven made up of souls stolen before their time. He merely wished to live out the rest of his life in the comfort of his parents' home, the house he had grown up in, the only place he could have a chance of ever perceiving as his home now that Amy and Chad were gone. So just over thirty one days before, Scott had given the required notice to his tenants - a nice family that he had allowed to live at the place nearly rent free in exchange for their promise to do routine maintenance on the place and make sure that it stayed sound and sturdy - and had prepared to move back to the old homestead.

  Now he was on his trip back, but so tired from the nightmares of the night before, and from the laborious work of loading all his possessions into the trailer on his own, that he could barely keep his eyes open.

  He kept seeing phantom shapes in the darkness at the sides of the road. Strange, black blobs that roiled and shifted as though made of darkly dripping wax, candles melted by some otherworldly heat that burned not from without, but from within. The shapes rolled in on themselves, now disappearing into singularities, now appearing from the very Nothing from which Scott had until recently believed that God had shaped the world.

  But this was the real world, the real act of creation. Not some paradisiacal garden, followed by a family being tossed out into the cruel world to fend for themselves. No, the real world was a family already split by death, and black shapes hovering at the edges of reality, ready to consume him from within.

  The shapes turned more tangible, less illusory. They began to take shape and form, looking like great black dogs - like hellhounds spat up from the depths of darkness and despair, from the vast blackness of human frailty and demise. The dogs writhed in his periphery, and then began running alongside the moving truck, their too-white teeth glinting in the inky night.

  Scott turned off the road several times, and as soon as he got out to stretch his legs each time, the dogs retreated back to the Nothing from which they had been spawned. But as soon as he returned to the road, as soon as the gentle whir of the tires on the highways and the monotony of driving through largely unpopulated areas began to lull him back to sleep on this long night, the dogs returned, demons in canine form, to nip at him as he passed, each dark bite stealing not flesh but energy and a sense of self from him.

  Then Scott looked at the empty passenger seat beside him, and nearly drove off the side of the road. That would have been disastrous, for he was passing through a small mountain range, and there was nothing on the side of his car but a flimsy guardrail and empty air. He nearly drove off the side of the road not from fear, but from a sense of his own tenuous grip on reality as he realized that he was not alone in the dark cabin of the truck.

  One of the dogs was there. Dark and bristling, it spoke to him with a voice that was gritty and dark as a chunk of charcoal about to be set alight by the very fires of hell.

  "Don't go home," said the voice.

  And Scott, to his amazement, answered.

  I must be dreaming, he thought. I must be about to crash the truck. I should stop this dream before I'm killed.

  But he didn't stop the dream; made no attempt to wake from the nightmare that held him in its pincer-like grip. Instead, he merely spoke to the form that sat on its haunches in the seat beside him. "I have no home," he said.

  The dog licked its dark fur with a tongue that was yellow and oozing, its breath reeking of sulfur and other, less pleasant smells - decay, rot, desiccation...mortality.

  "Oh, but home is where the heart is, Scott. Home is where you make your life."

  Scott turned his eyes back to the road, and saw that the black dogs that had been running at the edges of his vision now were running in the road directly ahead of him, their black haunches illuminated by the brightness of his headlights. They looked back at him, and in their eyes he saw the lives of the people he had failed to save as a cop. He saw the victims of domestic violence he had seen during his time in Homicide; saw the drug hits gone terribly awry; saw the bodies of the small children, innocent victims in a deadly cross-fire between rival gangs, that he had found at one crime scene, curled in on one another as though hugging would somehow stop the bullets that had been ricocheting all around them.

  He saw Amy and Chad.

  Scott returned his gaze to the black demon-dog beside him, preferring its unholy presence to the reminders of his past failures.

  Only the dog was gone.

  Mr. Gray was now sitting there. He smiled, and
had the same gnarled teeth as the dog had possessed, the same rotten tongue and acrid breath the hellhound had brought into the truck with it.

  "You'd be better off not going to Meridian," said Mr. Gray. Not the Mr. Gray from the alley and the shootout, this was again the old Mr. Gray that had plagued Scott since that date. The Mr. Gray of the ruined face and aged body. Only he didn't seem quite so old this time, and his voice was a shade stronger than it had been, as though the passing of time was for him a healing balm that would lend him greater strength and youth.

  "Eat shit," said Scott. Hardly eloquent, but it was the nearest thing he could think of that conveyed his depth of disgust at the man's presence.

  "Now, now," said Mr. Gray. "I've come here peacefully, with your best intentions at heart, my boy."

  Scott repeated his invitation that Mr. Gray partake of his own bowel movements, then said nothing.

  "Fine," said Mr. Gray, and suddenly he was in the form of a dog again, the black canine dark and massive in the passenger seat, staring at Scott with eyes that were as gray as slate, and twice as brittle. "Have it your way, little man, little boy."

  And with a bark, the dog threw itself at Scott. Scott threw his arms up to ward off the attack, and felt the truck slide and skid below him as his hands left the wheel.

  But the expected attack never came. Scott looked beside him.

  Nothing. The cab was empty, save only a few packing boxes with articles he had deemed too fragile to travel in the back with the rest of his possessions.