The Meridians

by Michaelbrent Collings

  But Mr. Gray had not aged any further. That was not to say that he looked the same as he had on the night that he had warned Scott to stay away from Meridian. Quite the opposite, in fact. He had changed, and changed radically. But where Scott had changed by aging, the gray man seemed to have reverted in age to a younger, more vibrant appearance. He looked like he had shed the very years that Scott had gained. Still an old man, but no longer as old as he had been on the night of the move.

  And his nose, earlier a mass of gnarled and broken bone, was straight and unblemished. The wounds on his face were also gone, disappeared as though they had never been. He was old, but unmarked by the scars that had earlier appeared on his face.

  Mr. Gray spun Scott's gun in his grasp like an old-fashioned gunfighter, flicking it in a tight series of circles that ended with the gun pointing at Scott's forehead.

  Scott prepared himself for the end. This was not like any of the other meetings he had had with the assassin. There was only one way that this could end. But Scott was damned if he was going to go out screaming or pleading or crying. If he was to die here, he was going to die on his feet, dignified and tall.

  Mr. Gray laughed contemptuously as Scott drew himself up to his full height.

  "Don't be an idiot, Cowley," he said, and laughed again, a strangely mirthless laugh that brought no warmth, but only left frost behind on Scott's soul. He brought the gun up, but did not pull the trigger.

  At least, not yet.

  "I just wanted to show you what I can do," said the killer. "Last time I don't think I got to show you my power, I don't think you appreciated me properly." Another laugh.

  Scott's eyebrows arched upward in surprise. This man, this monster, had killed his family and was now probably going to kill him, too, and he wanted to make sure that Scott appreciated him? What the hell kind of person was this?

  He's insane, Scott thought. Don't try to make sense of the things he says, or you'll just end up as crazy as he is.

  "You didn't show me your power?" asked Scott, letting his incredulity show in his voice. "You turned into a dog for God's sake."

  Mr. Gray's mad grin faltered for a moment. "A dog?" he said, and Scott saw something unexpected on the man's face. Anger he expected. Even the man's sense of narcissism was not completely unusual in people who chose killing as a life's work. But Scott did not expect to see confusion. And more than that, the gray man looked stunned for a moment, as though it was Scott who had suddenly taken leave of his senses.

  His next words even confirmed that idea. "You're not going crazy on me, are you?" asked Mr. Gray. "Finally killing you won't be nearly as fun if you don't know what's going on."

  "You're the only crazy one, you piece of shit," spat Scott from between clenched teeth.

  "There we go," said Mr. Gray, seemingly appeased out of his confusion by Scott's anger. "That's more like it." He cocked the gun. "Let's not have any more nonsense talk about dogs. You and the bitch and her retard son got away from me last time, but it's not going to happen again."

  He pointed the gun at Scott's face, and Scott saw the man's finger whiten on the trigger. And this time he knew, knew without the least shadow of doubt, that no John Doe would appear to save him. Apparently the universe would allow for only one substitution of John Doe's death for Scott's. Although why shouldn't it? he thought. John Doe wasn't dead anymore, was he? So why couldn't he appear again?

  As if Scott had spoken the words aloud, Mr. Gray smirked and said, "No blue eyed old bastard going to show up this time and save you, either. He used up all his juice on the last one."

  Last one? thought Scott. Mr. Gray knows that John Doe visited me in my office? How much does this guy know?

  He was tempted to actually ask that question, but before he could, Mr. Gray spoke again. "Wait," he said, and lowered the gun ever-so-slightly. "This isn't quite right, is it?"

  And with that, the killer racked off a shot. The sound was hollow-sounding and distant, as though in this universe, this replica of the alley where Scott's family had died, things were not quite right, were not quite following the laws of physics.

  I've been shot in the head, Scott thought instantly. Then, on the heels of that thought came another: So why am I still standing?

  He could not help but look askance at Mr. Gray, who appeared to be distilling perfect pleasure from Scott's obvious confusion and discomfiture.

  "You don't remember? It's been only eight years for you, and you don't remember?" said Mr. Gray in exaggerated shock. "I was going to shoot you in the head. But before I did, I got off three other shots. One that just missed you. One in the stomach. One in the chest." He laughed, and like the sound of the bullet, the laugh was thin and unreal. "So now we've got one down, two more to go." And with that he lowered the gun, aiming it at Scott's stomach. "I've still got enough juice for that, you know," he whispered, as though sharing a great confidence with his enemy.

  Scott thought at that moment that he was on the verge of passing out. Not because of fear; any fear for his own life had long since been burnt away by the all-consuming grief he had endured in the days following his family's death. But darkness was seeping in at the edges of his vision, just as it had on that day so long ago.

  "You shot me out of order, you dumbshit," he said, as though to defy the unconscious state that had to inevitably follow the darkness at the edges of his sight. "You shot me in the stomach first, then you missed, and then you got me in the chest." Scott turned his head and spat. "You are not only a piss poor hitman, you have a memory that's for crap."

  The gunman stopped laughing then, the amusement dying instantly in the face of Scott's derision. "Get on your knees," said Mr. Gray.

  But Scott didn't get on his knees. Indeed, he barely registered that Mr. Gray had said anything at all. Because when he turned his head to spit on the pavement, he had realized something: the darkness he had thought was a byproduct of impending unconsciousness was something else. Something else entirely.

  The edges of his vision, he realized, were not growing darker. Rather, they were shimmering. And it wasn't really the edges of his vision, either. If that had been the case, then when he had turned his head, the shimmering would have moved as well. But it hadn't. It was not pinned to him, but to a specific location in the alley.

  Locations, he realized. Plural. Because as he glanced around, he saw that shimmering lights were appearing throughout the alleyway. He looked at one of them, and saw something even stranger perhaps than the appearance of a Los Angeles alley in downtown Meridian: he saw both an alley in L.A. and a corresponding one in Meridian. As though he was looking through a window painted to look like the Los Angeles alley, and on the other side of the window a slim passage between buildings in Meridian - cleaner and nicer in every way, and without the stench of old urine and rotting trash - could be dimly viewed.

  Mr. Gray apparently noticed that Scott was not paying attention to him, for he, too, looked around.

  "Dammit," muttered the old man. Then he hit Scott in the stomach with the gun. "Get on your knees," he said.

  Scott didn't move, just looking at the old man with unveiled contempt. Mr. Gray hit him again, on the head this time, the pistol whipping out with frightening force and almost knocking Scott senseless.

  He fell to his knees in spite of himself, and saw through a thin veil of red as blood poured from the gash that Mr. Gray had opened on his forehead.

  Mr. Gray moved the gun so that it was pointing directly at Scott's forehead.

  "You just can't do anything right, can you?" said Scott, laughing and then coughing as he inhaled some of the blood that was pouring steadily down his face. "First you take the shots out of order, and now you're going to skip the gut and chest shots completely?"

  He laughed again. The small sane part of him was crying out for him to stop baiting Mr. Gray, but a larger part, the part that had curdled and gone quietly mad within him following the death of Amy and Chad, knew that this was his last chance to inflict a littl
e pain of his own. Sociopathic killers tended to be narcissists, he knew, and Mr. Gray fit the bill perfectly. So even if he died - as it looked like he was going to; as it looked like he must - at least he would die with the satisfaction of knowing that his last words had chipped away at the brittle shell of ego that Mr. Gray had surrounded himself in. "You're a champion screwup, Mr. Gray," he said.

  "Mr. Gray?" said the man in a pleased tone. "I rather like that." Then he said it again, as though trying it on for size. "Mr. Gray."

  "I started out with Mr. Shitforbrains, but it took too long to say," said Scott. He glanced around and saw that the version of the Los Angeles alleyway was growing more translucent, even as the Meridian alley - the real alley - grew darker, heavier, more tangible. Scott wondered what would happen if the Los Angeles alley disappeared entirely. Would the gray man disappear as well? Was there still a hope that he would survive this exchange?

  "No," said the killer. "I've always been Mr. Gray to you, haven't I? Always the man who killed your family. Always the man who was destined to kill you." Mr. Gray looked around as well, clearly seeing the same changes being wrought in the alley - or was it alleys? - that Scott himself was observing.

  The assassin's features tightened. "Not much time left," he muttered. Then he focused his flinty eyes on Scott. "So I guess I won't get to reproduce history exactly after all," he said. Then, with a smile, he said, "But it's the end of a story that people remember anyway, isn't it?"

  And Scott saw the killer's finger whiten as he pulled the trigger of Scott's own gun.

  ***

  32.

  ***

  Lynette just sat for a while after Scott left, thinking. But not about her son's strange abilities or even about Mr. Gray or Robbie.

  No. She thought - pleasantly and unabashedly - of Scott. About his kindness and charm, about his wit and his interest in helping her and Kevin.

  About how he had been the one to figure out how to talk back to Kevin via the computer - something that Lynette could not believe that she had never thought of before, but the very thing that had led to the many revelations of this night.

  Not least of which was the revelation that she was very, very interested in the kind man with the scarred face.

  She sighed, sipping her cocoa in quiet remembrance, and just hoped that she would be able to wind down enough from the events of the evening to be able to get to sleep before too much longer. She wouldn't be surprised if, after all that had happened, she found herself unable to do more than lay in bed, thinking.

  A moment later, however, the question was mooted as a scream came from the back of the house.

  Kevin! she thought. Then echoed the thought with a more visceral scream aloud: "Kevin!"

  The screaming continued. And now it was more than mere screaming, more than the tantrum shrieks that so often accustomed an autistic child who had been overworked or overwhelmed. No, these were shrieks of terror, of anguish.

  Of pain.

  Mr. Gray! thought Lynette, and stood up so fast that the backs of her knees popped against her chair, sending it flying halfway across the kitchen with the force of the blow.

  She was down the hallway an instant later, rushing into her son's room, turning on the light....

  And the instant she did, the screaming stopped.

  Kevin was asleep in his bed. Completely, deeply asleep. No way could he have made the sounds that she had just heard issuing forth from this place. No way at all.

  Yet she had heard the noise, she was sure of it.

  She tousled Kevin's hair. He was sweating, as though he had been running a race in his dream. She wondered briefly what kind of dreams he was having, and whether he could have suffered a nightmare that had led to the screaming she had heard.

  But no. The screaming would have continued past the moment when she turned on the lights if it had been something as simple as a dream.

  She flattened the covers down around her boy, then moved reluctantly back to the door. She closed off the light.

  And the screaming happened again. Worse this time, because she was right on top of it and it was a bone-chilling shriek and how could Kevin not be hearing this? How could he not be affected by it?

  But again, the instant she turned on the light, two things happened: the screaming stopped, and she saw that her son was still asleep, not so much as even twitching under the covers.

  She stood there in the light for a moment, trying to figure out a way to discern what was happening and to find out if it was something that was going to harm her son. Given the recent past experiences with Mr. Gray, she knew it would be dangerous at best and deadly at worst to ignore whatever was going on in her home.

  She tried to wake Kevin, but he stayed asleep no matter how hard she shook him. It was as though he had been drugged. Her shaking grew more and more agitated, but no matter how sharply she pushed against him, Kevin remained boneless-seeming as a rag doll.

  Lynette finally decided that she was going to call an ambulance, though she knew in her heart of hearts that when the ambulance arrived, they would be able to find nothing amiss. Whatever was happening now had no answers so easy that they could be discerned by something as mundane as medical science, any more than the presence of Mr. Gray could have been explained by resorting to everyday criminal psychology.

  But on the way to call for the ambulance, her heart fluttering against her ribcage like a terrified bird, she got an idea. She went to her bedroom and looked around and...there!

  She grabbed the high-powered flashlight from its spot near her bedside table. Born and bred in Los Angeles, she was ever-ready for the advent of "The Big One," an earthquake so severe that all power and utilities would be not only knocked out, but destroyed utterly. So even in Idaho, she was still in the habit of sleeping with the flashlight near to her bed, just in case.

  She rushed back to Kevin's room, where the light was still on, feeling suddenly as though she was being led by some invisible force, by some benign power that was interested in helping her through this night and through the trials that she and Kevin had been facing. She felt like a prophet of old, led by God and not knowing beforehand what he was going to do.

  Kevin was still sleeping peacefully, though once again when she tried to rouse him she met with no success. So she returned to a position near the light switch, and flicked it into the off position.

  The scream began again. This time it was not only terrifyingly loud, but anguishingly familiar. The voice was, without a doubt, that of Kevin.

  But how? Kevin was sleeping. Or was he?

  Lynette flicked the power button on her flashlight, then shone the high-powered beam at her son...and gasped. She literally rubbed her eyes, so unsure of what she was seeing that even a cartoonish denial of what the vision before her seemed to be not only appropriate, but required.

  There were two of Kevin. He was asleep before her, and yet not asleep. Her son had his eyes closed, and yet open. She felt like she was looking at a double exposure of a film negative. On one exposure rested the boy she knew and had seen, her Kevin, sleeping without care or concern.

  But the other exposure, the other image was a vision of pure terror. He had Kevin's eyes, his hair, his facial expressions - he was even wearing the same pajamas. But where "her" Kevin was quietly sleeping, this Kevin was sitting up in his bed, shrieking and screaming so hard that she could hear his voice growing raw with the force of the banshee wails issuing forth from his young mouth.

  "He's dying!" screamed the other Kevin, the ghost-Kevin, and Lynette dropped her flashlight in shock. The light fell to the floor and rolled around, casting strobe-like shadows around the room that disoriented and frightened her as her son/not son did something that he had never done before, never in all his life with Lynette: he looked right at her, right into her eyes, and completed a full sentence. "He's dying, Mom! He's dying, right now, if we don't save him he'll die for sure!"

  Lynette realized that she was crying, though whether at the tho
ught that her boy was speaking or at the terror in the phantom child's voice she could not have said. "Who's dying?" she cried back. "Who's dying, Kevin?"

  And Kevin said the name, the one name that Lynette dreaded more than any other: "Scott, Mom! We have to save him."

  "How?" she shrieked back, her own terror ratcheting up as she saw the agony and fear that was so palpable on this other-Kevin's face. "What's going on?"

  Then the screaming stopped. Utterly, completely, it stopped. The phantom-Kevin looked at her for a long time without moving, so completely still that it was as though he had died and rigor mortis set in instantly. Then he laid down. The two images of Kevin merged, becoming one sleeping boy.

  Then the most terrifying thing of all happened. Her boy - and it was her boy, undeniably her own son, his face marked by the purity of expression and innocence of visage that were one of the signal hallmarks of his autism - sat up.

  He looked at her. He looked straight at her.

  And he spoke. Not with the depth of expression and level of maturity that he had displayed in his other form, his screaming form. No, his words were simpler, delivered more haltingly. But no less frightening for all that. Indeed, the simplicity with which the words were delivered if anything added to the terror that had gripped Lynette's spine and squeezed it like a slithering tentacle that moved between her vertebrae, sending shivers convulsively up and down her body.

  "Gray man's going to kill Scott."

  ***

  33.

  ***

  Lynette did not think she had ever moved so fast in her life. But then, never before - not even when Robbie died - had she been so completely in the thrall of a terror that lent fleetness to her flight.

  She rushed to Kevin and grabbed him, practically swallowed him up in an embrace that lifted him right off his bed. Kevin did not protest, uncharacteristically calm about the intrusion into his personal space, but rather let her propel him into her arms, ratcheting his thin legs around her waist, and then allowing her to move him out of the room with no fuss whatever.