The Meridians
Page 12
"Robbie," Kevin typed.
Lynette felt tears begin to flow down her cheeks. "Yes, honey," she answered. "Just like Robbie."
"No," he typed.
This stopped her; puzzled her. No, he was not like Robbie? No, he did not accept that Robbie was his father? The sudden negative did not seem to make any sense in the context of their conversation.
"What do you mean, honey?" she asked.
"No," he wrote again. And suddenly Lynette smelled something: the pungent, ammoniac smell of urine. She looked down and saw that Kevin had wet himself, something he had not done in years.
"No," he typed once more. Then, "No no no nonononononononono." He began rocking back and forth as he typed, the motions rolling more and more exaggeratedly, until it seemed like he would end up unseating himself and falling to the floor.
"Nononononononono...."
Lynette's tears disappeared in an instant, the grief she had felt for her husband swallowed instantly up in concern for her son.
"Kevin, what's going on?"
"Nonononononononono...."
And then Lynette became aware of something. There was a sound, a rushing noise as of air blowing all around them, and she was transported back to the gale that she had felt on the day that Robbie died, on the day that her entire life changed.
Papers began flying all around the room as though ghostly hands were playing with them, whipping around in tiny cyclones of wood pulp and ink before finally tearing themselves to shreds in the ferocity of the storm that had found its way once more into their lives.
Lynette began looking around in as many directions at once as she could, trying to spot any danger or sources of distress before they could harm her or - more importantly - Kevin. But when it came, it came from behind.
There was a rancid smell, an odor so unpleasant that it was almost palpable; so thick that it literally carried a taste that made her mouth pucker in disgust. Then the hairs on the back of her neck stood up as the air around her electrified and became charged with static electricity.
She heard a voice, and froze. So did Kevin, stopping his rocking back and forth and becoming so still he might as well have been a graven image of her son. He was looking at something, looking right over her shoulder, and even though she could not see it, she knew what it was. For that voice was burnt into her mind and soul like a brand, a red-hot scar that forever burned her, that forever left her empty and alone because it signaled the loss of her husband.
"Hello, Kevin," said the old gray man. "Happy birthday."
***
17.
***
It was words. Just words. No blade materialized, no gun was wielded. Yet the mere sound of those words was enough to galvanize Lynette to action.
The instant the gray man said those words, the second that he wished Kevin a happy birthday, Lynette was already in motion. She leapt forward and swept her son off his chair, moving faster than she would have thought possible.
The movement seemed prescient, as the instant after she did so she felt a swish in the air and saw that the gray man had slammed something into the back of Kevin's chair, just about the height where the boy's neck would have been had he remained there.
It was a razor. Long and thin, its blade gleaming wickedly in the light of the living room, it had slammed into the back of the chair, embedding itself deeply.
The gray man cursed, his withered hands clearly jarred by the impact of his blade on the chair, and yanked the razor free.
His eyes sparked within the mask of scars that she had seen during the last visitation, years before at Robbie's death. Only now the scars were angrier, brighter. His face was still misshapen and broken, but again the wounds at the base of it seemed newer, as though somehow he was still recovering from them.
Kevin said nothing, but buried his head in her arms and hid from the world. It was his only defense from what was happening.
"I've waited sixty-two years for this moment, bitch," shouted the old gray man, words that made no sense to her and that she doubted would make sense to anyone other than the man saying them. "Sixty-two years! Do you understand how long a time that is when you're nothing but a ghost?"
Lynette did not understand what that would be like. Nor did she care to. All that she cared about in this moment was putting as much distance as possible between her and the fiend who had come into their life as he had five years before.
But no. He had not come into her life exactly the same as he had those years ago. Even in her panic, even as she turned and ran from the man while he was fumbling with the blade he had embedded in the chair, a part of her registered something odd: the old gray man no longer seemed quite so old. When he had appeared on the day of Robbie's death he had looked to be in his seventies or perhaps even eighties, but now the man looked younger, heartier. As though he had lost in age what the rest of the world had gained in the intervening time between his appearances.
But then observations ceased as she turned and ran from the man, rushing toward her front door as fast as she could.
The old man was faster. He grinned at her as he blocked the doorway, standing between her and Kevin and the freedom that they so desperately needed. He twirled his knife in his fingers, the silvery blade seeming to dance in his grasp as he flipped it around and around in a dizzying spectacle of expertise.
"Looks cool, doesn't it?" asked the gray man. He smiled even wider, though Lynette noted with distress that the smile did not reach his dark gray eyes, did not touch his cheeks. It was a smile bereft of warmth or human feeling, the smile of a hyena that has chanced upon big game brought low by infirmity.
The smile of a killer about to feast.
"I've been practicing with this thing for almost thirty years, you know, just waiting for this one single moment." Then the grin disappeared from his face completely, leaving behind only rage and madness as the killer lunged forward with his knife.
Lynette danced to the side, more fleet of foot than she had ever before been, her body seeming to amplify its own natural abilities and strengths as though it knew that not only her life, but Kevin's depended on its quick and decisive action. Still, though she moved quickly, the gray man moved faster still, and she felt the razor slice through her clothing and knick her on the side.
Wetness immediately saturated the waist of her pants, and she wondered how badly she had been cut, and how long she had until blood loss brought her down.
At the same time, a cruelly rational part of her pointed out that she was unlikely to bleed to death from such a minor wound since the gray man appeared intent on killing her quickly with his blade.
Then something happened that was almost as unexpected as the very appearance of the gray man in the first place. Kevin moved. He kicked out with his little foot, and with the precision of a karate expert he knocked the blade out of the gray man's hand.
The gray man cursed, holding the hand that Kevin had just kicked, and turned to scoop up the knife that had fallen to the floor some feet behind him.
It was all the opening Lynette needed. She ran like liquid lightning to the front of the apartment. Kevin had a tendency to wander, so she had installed a chain latch on the front door, and precious microseconds were lost during which she fumbled with the chain and then turned the deadlock below it.
"No!" screamed the old man behind her, his rage both beyond what she would have expected any human being capable of and at the same time strangely perfect due to the fact that whatever he was, she seriously doubted that the gray man was human.
Still clutching her son to her body so tightly she thought it likely that he would have bruises on his neck and back when - if - they got through this, she yanked open the front door. Heavy thuds behind told her that the gray man had regained his weapon and was giving chase. She dared not look back. Instinct told her that even the time spent in turning her head would be too much to give her pursuer. If she stopped to look, she would die.
So she did not look. She ran. She
ran through the apartment complex, screaming with all her might as she tore down the third floor corridor that led to her and Kevin's apartment.
Breaching all Los Angeles rules of conduct, one of the neighbors actually opened his door and stuck his head out, clearly wondering what was going on, though whether he was looking because he wanted to help or because he was intent on finding the source of the ruckus so that he could tell he/she/it off was not nearly so clear.
"Help!" shrieked Lynette. But here the neighbor - a short, middle-aged man with thinning hair and a sense of compassion that was even thinner - comported more fully with the rules of neighborly living in the city of angels: he slammed the door as quickly as possible, leaving Lynette once again alone with a madman.
She continued running, heading as quickly as she could to the elevator, aware that the man had to be only a few paces behind her, aware that there was no way she would be able to call for the elevator, board it, and get away before he was on her, gutting both her and Kevin like so many bony fish. But then she slammed into the elevator door, jamming the call button so hard she thought she might have broken her thumb, and looked back to see that she had overestimated her pursuer's speed. He was close, but not nearly as close as her panic-driven mind had imagined.
The elevator dinged. Dinged again. Going down.
"No you won't, bitch!" screamed the man.
The door opened.
He wielded the knife again, passing it from hand to hand as he ran toward them.
She got into the elevator.
He was going to get them. He was going to kill them.
She pressed the button for the first floor, then hit the "close door" button, breaking her resolve never to pray again, asking God to please help her and Kevin - or just Kevin, to just help her son. The gray man was almost on them.
The door began to slide shut.
And before it could, his arm jammed into the diminishing opening, brightly shining knife jabbing toward them in a blur of gleaming menace.
The elevator was one of the type that was equipped both with an electric eye rig in the door and a pressure plate that would cause the door to slide back open if anything either got in the range of the electric eye or so much as brushed against the pressure plate. Lynette hurried to the back of the elevator, but knew that she and her son were doomed. The second the elevator sensed the presence of the gray man's arm, it would swing open wide, and there would be no further place for them to run.
She had run straight into a carpeted coffin, one just big enough for her and her son to die in.
The knife slashed in through the opening.
The door swung toward the gray man's arm.
"Don't look, sweetie," she whispered to Kevin, though the words must have been for her more than for him, since he had had his eyes clenched tightly shut for the entire time following his life-saving kick to the gray man's hand. "Don't look, don't look."
The door touched the gray man's arm...and kept swinging shut.
"No!" screamed the angry man from the other side of the closing door. "No, no, no, I have to do this!" Then, to Lynette's shock and horror, she watched as the elevator door completed its sliding movement, cutting them off from the gray man, but leaving his arm waving inside the compartment with them. It appeared as though the limb had been severed at the shoulder, and Lynette was reminded of any of a number of cheesy ghost stories from her youth, before CGI effects became the standard, and directors had to rely on hand-spliced reels of film to provide the effect of a ghost passing through a door or other solid object.
Still, ghost or not, the knife in the monster's still-moving hand still seemed real enough, and Lynette was careful to keep herself and Kevin well away from the waving implement of death, pressing herself into the back of the elevator.
With a click and a whir, the elevator began descending. The hand did not, passing through the ceiling of the elevator and disappearing as the elevator dropped below the level where the gray man had been - and apparently still was - standing. Lynette could still hear him, screaming obscenities, as they fell away from his rabid attack.
Then the elevator hitched to a stop, and the doors opened...to reveal the gray man, standing impossibly before them. He was panting as though he had run down stairs at great speeds to reach them, but Lynette knew that such was impossible: the nearest stairs to the elevator were at the opposite end of the apartment hall, and there was no way he could have found the stairs, run to them, run down them, then run back up the first floor corridor to reach the elevator before it reached its present location.
Still, impossible or not, there he was, smiling as before, holding the knife as before.
"You're lucky I ran out of bullets the last time, bitch," he said.
Lynette's mind reeled. Last time? What last time? When Robbie had died there had been no bullets, only spilled water and blood on the floor. Then all thoughts were ejected from her mind as the gray man once again slashed with his weapon, and this time Lynette knew there would be no salvation, only death in this lonely hallway on the first floor of an apartment complex in Los Angeles.
"Please," she whispered, and for some reason the gray man halted his slicing motion mid-arc. She wondered why he would do such a thing, and then realized the reason: he was enjoying this moment. The bastard was enjoying her debasement as she begged for her life and - more important - for the life of her son. "Please, we've never done anything to you, please let us go. Let my son go, at least."
"Never done anything?" repeated the gray man, an amused smile playing across lips that had been pressed into a thin line by the prospect of the violence to come. "Never done anything?" He laughed, a laugh that was without mirth or warmth, a laugh that was like icicles stabbing into Lynette's heart.
Kevin groaned and began rocking in her arms. She held his head and cooed to him, determined that if they were to die, she would at least make his transition into eternity as painless and fear-free as possible.
The old gray man leaned in close to her, and again she smelled and tasted the stink of death come to roost, of a soul damned and condemned to rot alive. "You've done everything," he almost spat. "You and your bastard boy."
Then he leaned away, inhaling deeply as though savoring the most amazing moment of his existence.
"Sixty two years," he whispered, and then struck with the blade. The silvered object moved with the speed and precision of a cobra striking its prey, finding its target, slashing down and through the back of Kevin's neck.
Lynette screamed, because she knew in that instant that her son was dead.
***
18.
***
She heard a low, rhythmical sound, like the bass beat of the world's softest and simplest rock song. Someone was whispering something. Someone was saying something. Someone was saying the same thing over and over and over.
"Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy...."
The sound continued and only gradually did Lynette come to realize that it was the sound of her son saying her name.
Kevin!
She opened her eyes, which had been squinched tightly shut against the vision of blood and death that she knew she had been about to witness. She had seen Robbie die, and the sight had very nearly killed her. To see her son die, she knew, would be tantamount to instant death. Not that she would have a heart attack or anything so benign, but rather she knew that if her son died she herself would have her soul ripped apart like cobwebs in a Category Five hurricane.
"Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy...."
The sound continued, but Lynette still did not open her eyes. She was too busy saying something of her own.
"Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed by Thy name...."
"Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy...."
"Thy kingdom come...."
"Mommy Mommy Mommy...."
"Thy will be done...."
"Mommy Mommy Mommy...."
"On earth as it is in -"
"Goddammit!"
The last voice had been that of the gray man, who was still swinging his gleaming blade back and forth.
Right through Kevin's neck and back.
And then right through her own neck with a savage swipe that should have left her bleeding, dying, if not outright decapitated.
She blinked and cringed away, but to no avail: the razor went right through her.
And had no effect.
The gray man cursed again, and again swung his deadly weapon...and the same thing happened. It passed right through her and Kevin.
For a moment Lynette was convinced that the man standing before her was a ghost. Either that or she was insane, but strange as it seemed the prospect of having a ghost standing before her was actually less frightening than the thought of being insane. A ghost merely meant that she and Kevin were in mortal - and perhaps immortal - danger. But the shadow of insanity was more terrible, for that story ended inevitably with her son being removed from her care. So a ghost was by far the preferable of the two.
Regardless, however, even as she posited that she and Kevin were under some kind of supernatural influence, she discarded the thought. The being that stood before her was no ghost. It was more vibrant, more present, more alive than any ghost could possibly be. Rather, it was as though the thing that stood before her was a living, breathing being - she could see him breathing, in fact, could smell the rotten fumes he was exhaling after each inhale - but one composed of some different kind of matter, a matter that resonated on a different frequency from her own, so that though they could interact visually, they could not actually touch.
Then how could he have hit the chair? she thought, remembering the vivid gash that had been cleaved in her son's chair in the instant after she pulled him away. And why was the gray man talking about bullets and about shooting if there was no chance for him to use such implements to destroy her?