The Meridians

by Michaelbrent Collings

  His vision blurred, and when it cleared, he was no longer alone in the room with the gray man.

  There was another man present. Very old, but still radiating vigor and energy as much as any newborn that Benjamin had ever met.

  The newcomer looked at Benjamin with eyes that were blue, bluer than the deepest ocean, bluer than the clearest sky, and - incredibly - winked at him. As though two geezers appearing out of thin air in the middle of the NICU was not only an everyday event, but a highly desirable one.

  Apparently the old man in the gray suit lacked the sense of humor of his counterpart. "You can't keep doing this to me!" shouted the gray man.

  "I will as long as I have to," responded Blue Eyes.

  "We both know how this ends," retorted Gray.

  "Yes, we do. But it doesn't end today."

  And with that, the gray man rushed at Blue Eyes with a bestial roar.

  That was when Benjamin decided he was definitely in over his head, and no amount of fatherly protective nature could help in this insane moment featuring two old men who thought they were professional fighters in some geriatric mixed martial arts league.

  He turned to the nearest wall phone and picked it up, intending to call security. But when he glanced over his shoulder to make sure the stranger was not hurting the babies, he dropped the phone.

  The men were gone.

  Benjamin was a rational man. A man who had put a great deal of his life into science and rationality. So nothing could have prepared him for that. The men could not have gone through the door to the NICU - it was a good twenty five feet away, and no way could they have gone so far so fast.

  Then again, there was no way they could have gotten into the locked NICU in the first place.

  Benjamin toyed for a moment with the idea of just hanging up the phone; of not calling security. After all, how would that conversation go? Benjamin: "Hello, security, there were two old guys in the NICU." Security: "Where are they now?" Benjamin: "They disappeared, so I don't know. But one of them winked at me and the other one did mention something about Hell." Security: "Why don't you just lay down on the floor in a spread-eagle position and we'll have someone right down to lock you up."

  But after less than a moment's debate, he decided that he was morally obliged to call in what he had just seen - or at least, to call in the fact that there had been a mentally unstable intruder in the NICU.

  As expected, the conversation that Benjamin had with security was less than enthusiastic. Things were even cloudier when the hospital's chief of security suggested that the closed-circuit monitors be checked for any men looking like the two that Benjamin described, specifically looking in the hall outside the NICU.

  There were none. No one even remotely looking like the two aged fighters passed by the NICU in any of the twenty-four preceding hours.

  Benjamin managed to hold onto his job, though he had a helluva time explaining what he saw - or rather not explaining it, since the reality seemed to defy all description - and then ended up taking the rest of the day off "for rest and needed rejuvenation time," as the head nurse very politely put it. The message behind her words was very clear to him, however: get your act together or don't come back.

  Benjamin returned in two days, and never again mentioned either of the old men. His one concession to what he believed had happened was that he asked to be taken off the NICU shift.

  He pondered whether being a nurse was worth it, and finally decided it was.

  He just couldn't give up the healthcare benefits.

  But if one more person appeared or disappeared during his shift...he was going to take his mother's advice and get a real estate license.

  ***

  9.

  ***

  At least they waited for him to get well - or rather, get better, he still wasn't back up to what he had been, and probably never would be again - before they put him on trial.

  A number of the cops that Scott worked with were up in arms over the inquiry. After all, they told him, it wasn't enough that he had lost his wife and child in the same day that he had left his spleen and a good portion of his intestines in a hospital operating room. It wasn't enough that he had spent four months in a hospital room and another four learning how to walk once more - though even now he still couldn't get around without the aid of crutches. It wasn't enough that he had survived a shootout with one of the strangest endings anyone in the department could ever recall.

  They had to have their trial.

  Not that Scott could blame them. After all, there had been a very public murder, followed by an even more public shootout, followed by...nothing.

  No prints.

  No shooter.

  No evidence, other than the spent casings and three dead bodies: two family members, and the blue eyed John Doe.

  Of course the journalists got a hold of the story and ran with it, running exposé after exposé on Scott Cowley, asking the question of whether he was a good cop, but asking it in such a way that it was never really in doubt what the answer was: no, he was not a good cop.

  For those journalists who ran the pieces, after all, there was no such thing as a good cop. It didn't matter to them that Scott and people like him were the reason that they could write their drivel without having to look over their shoulders at night for fear they'd be attacked. It didn't matter to them that freedom of the press existed because of the blood of men and women who kept the peace and who provided a community safe enough that such freedoms were even possible.

  It just mattered to them that there was a shooting, and that there was a cop involved. So it was only a short leap from "Cop Involved in Shooting" to "No Suspects Found" to "Cop Under Investigation."

  So no, Scott couldn't blame his superiors on the force, who were under pressure from the mayor's office, which was under pressure from the voters, who were being spoon-fed a load of crap about Scott being an irresponsible and perhaps irrational, gun-toting lunatic.

  The trial itself wasn't termed a trial, of course. It was an "inquiry." He told his story over and over, to police commissions, to civilian oversight committees, to Internal Affairs, and to anyone and everyone else who asked. Even though he knew it was going to end up as a public flogging sooner or later, he answered the questions, and answered them truthfully.

  But yes, eventually it became clear that though there was no real dirt on Scott - he had a record as spotless as the floors that Amy had kept in their home - even so, there was also no real evidence to support his story. Just bullets and casings and some "friends" who had come upon a scene where, ultimately, there was no suspect to be found.

  Eventually, he was reprimanded and demoted several levels. His career as a cop - at least, as a cop who had a chance at any serious vertical movement in the department - was over.

  And Scott didn't mind.

  In fact, on the day that the letter was delivered to him at his home, he was almost relieved. It was over. The people had their scapegoat for a crime that had "likely never occurred except in the mind of an overstressed officer." Indeed, he was aware that it could have been much worse; that there were those in the department and in the journalism sector who quietly whispered about the possibility that Scott had staged the whole event for the sole purpose of covering up the real crime: his murder of his own wife and child.

  The day that he was demoted, he came home early from work, feeling like hell. What were they going to do, demote him again? he reasoned. So he said goodbye to the few remaining friends he had on the force and came home, reasoning that he might take a nap.

  Or he might kill himself.

  It was a tossup. On one hand, a nap sounded damn fine.

  On the other hand, you had to wake up from a nap, and Scott didn't know that that sounded so very good to him these days. What did he have to wake up to? An empty apartment. A room full of toys that would never be played with again. Presents that had not quite been unwrapped for his child's last birthday, and never would be unwrapped, for the c
hild for whom they were intended was gone forever.

  So Scott walked through the place, looking at the rooms, at the evidence that once he had been alive, and wondered if he wouldn't be better off just ending it all. It wouldn't be hard, he knew. He could cut his wrists in the tub and sink into a warm oblivion, leaving the world as he had come into it: in blood and water and pain. Or he could just throw back a couple dozen of the OxyContins that he had been prescribed in the aftermath of his ordeal, to help him cope with the almost daily pain he now suffered.

  Either way, it would be easy, quick, and final.

  All good things.

  He actually got as far as filling up the tub for a final bath when it happened.

  There was a sound.

  Immediately, Scott was transported back to the alley, to the sound he had heard when the hitter - the man Scott called Mr. Gray, a man who had never been identified, though Scott had spent countless hours and even entire days looking through various photo files of criminals and killers - had crept up behind him with the intention to end his life.

  Scott froze. He turned off the water, which dripped for a moment and then was silent.

  He listened. Waited.

  He watched the doorway to the bathroom, wondering if what he had heard had been real, or simply some post-traumatic hallucination dredged up from his subconscious to torment him.

  The sound did not repeat.

  Even so, Scott went from room to room in the small apartment, clearing the area with the precision of a Delta Force member sweeping for hostiles.

  Nothing. The apartment was empty, save only him.

  Even so, there had been a sound. He was sure of it. It was the sound of a shoe scuffing on the floor, the sound of someone trying hard to be stealthy and not quite succeeding.

  The sound of a killer, of a predator, laying in wait for its prey.

  Scott went through the apartment one more time, this time more carefully. He looked not only in each room, but in each possible hiding place in each room. He opened every closet. He looked under every bed and table. He even opened the cabinets under the kitchen sink on the off chance that a very small intruder might be hiding there.

  Nothing. Still nothing.

  But then the sound came again. The soft scrape of leather on wood, the murmur of a shoe on the floor.

  Scott ran to the front room, the area he thought he had heard the sound.

  But again, there was no one there. Just him. Just him and....

  Scott turned in shock. It hadn't been the sound of a shoe on the floor. It hadn't been anything as easily explained as that. Instead, Scott watched as a paper fluttered off the small writing desk where he wrote checks and paid his bills each month. The sound had been the movement of the paper.

  Scott stared at the paper. How had it fallen? He was always very meticulous about his stationary, placing it in the exact center of the desk where it could be easily reached when necessary, but where it was out of the way whenever not needed. There was no way a page could have fallen from the pile of papers on the desk.

  Scott looked at the nearest air conditioning vent. It was a good fifteen feet away. Besides, even if a breeze might have explained the movement of the paper at a different time, there was no fan or air conditioning or heater active right now. The air in the apartment was inert; stagnant.

  Scott hobbled over to the paper where it sat on the floor. A strange foreboding gripped him, as though he knew in some portion of his mind what he was going to find, and dreaded the discovery.

  He reached out, surprised to see that he was actually shaking, and took the paper by the corner, holding it as gingerly as he would a dangerous pit viper. The side that had been face up was blank, but Scott knew as he turned it over that he would see...something.

  But he was wrong. There was only another side of white, empty paper looking at him.

  So why were the hackles on the back of his neck standing on end? Why were his arms awash in gooseflesh?

  Telling himself not to be foolish, chiding himself for falling prey to fear of something as mundane as a falling piece of paper, Scott moved to put the page back on the pile of similar stationary on his desk.

  And froze.

  Because the second page, the page under the one he was holding, had also moved. One moment before, it had been perfectly stacked on its companions, an exact rectangle of paper ready for use. Scott was sure of it. But now, the page that had been below the one Scott now held was slightly askew, as though someone had been fingering through the papers, looking for evidence. What kind of evidence could be found in a pile of empty paper, Scott did not know. But he drew his gun, feeling both silly and reassured by the action.

  He pulled the paper aside.

  And dropped his gun.

  He backed up, moving as far from the papers on his desk as possible, moving in reverse until he was backed up against the wall opposite to the writing desk. His mouth was open in a round "O" of shock and terror.

  The page below, the third page down in the pile, had writing on it.

  "I'm still here" it read, in writing that was thick and awkward, as though it had been written by an epileptic in the midst of a seizure.

  Scott scooped up his gun and moved as quickly as he could through the apartment once more, making sure that every window was sealed, every door locked. The short hairs on the back of his neck were still standing straight up, and he knew - he knew - that someone was in the apartment with him. Someone unseen, someone well-hidden.

  But someone.

  He moved back to the pad, intending to call the precinct and ask one of the two or three guys who weren't treating him like a pariah to come over and give him a second set of eyeballs. But when he returned to the writing desk, all thoughts of calling a friend fled from his mind.

  Because there was more writing. More words on the piece of paper that still sat in the middle of his desk.

  "I'm still here, and I'm coming for you and Kevin."

  Scott swept the house one more time, but he found nothing. No more notes, no evidence that anyone other than him had ever been there.

  Just a note. And he knew - knew somehow - that if he turned it into the department for testing, they would find no prints, no clues that might lead them to the invisible author of the short missive. It would be just one more reminder to those who had it in for him that Scott was not to be trusted; that his life and his career were over and might very well be more of a liability than they were worth.

  So Scott balled the paper up and threw it in the trash. He went to bed that night and dreamed of phantom notes, and old men holding babies, and most of all he dreamt of a question:

  Who is Kevin?

  ***

  10.

  ***

  They were a family.

  Kevin Angel Randall had stayed in the hospital for nearly three months, enduring problem after problem, treatment after treatment, operation after operation to deal with the seemingly unending set of challenges he had to endure. It felt sometimes to Robbie as though some higher power had intentionally shoved up roadblock after roadblock to get in the way of Kevin's ability to live. After one problem came another. And after that problem came another. And after that problem came still more, until even Doctor Cody was forced to remark that he had never before heard of a child who had suffered so much in its fight for survival.

  When he said that, Robbie remembered shivering, because he got the distinct impression that the doctor was leaving something out. Specifically, that he was leaving out the words "and lived." But then, on second thought, Robbie was actually glad in a way that Kevin had had such a rough road of it. Because surely things couldn't go any worse now. Surely things would look up. Surely things would go well.

  That was why the first Christmas was so optimistic. Kevin was eight months old, and grappling with the motor control needed to stand. Robbie loved that his son was - against all apparent indicators and predictions - developing so well, but he also knew that he was going to miss som
e things. Like the Army Crawl.

  The Army Crawl was what he called his son's primary mode of transport back in that first year. At first, Kevin had just lay there like a human pudding, not doing much more than eating, burping (and making other noises), and pooping, and Robbie began to realize that one of the reasons that having a baby was so hard was that they were simply boring. Not that he didn't love the kid - he did, and would gladly have sacrificed his own life at any time if it had meant the difference between life and death for Kevin. But that didn't change the fact that it was hard to have any kind of intimate relationship with a person so small you could put them in the palm of your hand, yet with an inside so impossibly big that it was capable of pushing out enough poop that Robbie was seriously considering looking into the cost of shovels and pitchforks for dealing with the problem.

  Sleeping was good. Robbie loved it when Kevin slept in his arms. Unfortunately, Kevin didn't do that terribly often, but was instead determined to stay awake night and day, taking approximately six hundred short naps in a twenty four hour stretch, which meant that consequently someone had to help him wake up and deal with the fact that he was no longer inside the comfortable space of his mother's womb every four to six seconds. It was hard, and Robbie remembered that one night the baby monitor had gone out because its batteries had died. He tried to replace the batteries, but was so exhausted from a constant series of wakeups and cranky crying jags that had lasted for what felt like the last sixteen to eighteen millenia that he kept dropping them. And then when he finally did manage to put them in, the monitor still didn't work, and he realized that he had put the batteries in backwards.

  Lynette woke then, because Robbie, in a totally uncharacteristic fit of pique, threw the monitor so hard against the wall that it dented the drywall and the monitor exploded into its molecular components. He was terribly embarrassed that his wife had caught him in such a fit of rage, but more than that he was tired, and cranky, and determined to let the universe know it.