The Meridians

by Michaelbrent Collings

  Lynette led him inside without another word, only stopping to check that Kevin was still asleep and not likely to wake up and find himself alone. She took him into the master bedroom, and he gently set the boxes on the floor.

  Before they had even left the house, a large man, built like a sleepy oak tree but with a kind and open face, was already inside, holding two more boxes from the back of Lynette's van.

  "I'm Gil, ma'am," he said, and nodded as though he would have preferred to tip his hat at her only his hands were full and plus he didn't have a hat to tip. "Your neighbor." He looked at the boxes in his hands. "Hope you don't mind that I helped myself to a few of your things; figured I'd get started while waiting for the others to arrive."

  "Others?" said Lynette, her voice a surprised whisper.

  "Sure," said Gil. "You don't think I'm going to move you in all by myself do you?" He winked at her to show that he was joking, then moved on past her into the living room, to put his boxes down.

  Lynette swiveled to face Scott, who was watching her with an amused smile on his face.

  "How did you know that everyone would just jump out of bed and rush on over to help?" she asked.

  Scott grinned even more widely. "Because that's pretty much what happened when I moved here myself," he said.

  Then he walked past her out into the night. Lynette followed and watched as he handed Gil two more boxes, then took two more for himself before hurrying past her into the house. She started to follow, but Gil swiveled and stood in her way, blocking her entrance. "Why don't you just go ahead and sit down with that boy of yours and watch over him?" said the big man.

  Lynette started to protest, but something in the man's face stopped her. Nothing threatening, she did not feel in any danger, but at the same time she felt sure just looking at him that he was not about to let her in the house holding any boxes or doing much of any work. And truth be told, she was exhausted, and she didn't want Kevin waking up alone, even for a moment.

  So she turned and moved back to the truck. She reached for the driver's side door, then started as another hand reached out to open it. She spun around, expecting to see Scott, but instead saw another man, one who looked so much like Gil that it was clear the two must be brothers. "I'm Brad," said the man without preamble. "I hear there's a moving job needs doing."

  She nodded, utterly speechless, and pointed at the back of the van. Brad moved off and grabbed some boxes, joining another man who had also pulled up in the intervening time, and both of them grabbed several boxes and moved quickly into the house, working as efficiently as ants on an anthill.

  Where am I? she couldn't help but thinking, feeling as though she had taken a wrong turn and instead of going to Meridian had somehow found her way into a Norman Rockwell painting.

  Scott was at her elbow the next moment, helping her into the truck and, as though he had again heard her thoughts, he said, "Welcome to Idaho." Then he closed the door, pantomimed to her that she should get some sleep, and moved with the other men to the back of the truck to keep moving her things into the house.

  Lynette watched the men - it turned out that fourteen showed up, not just six - move things into her house for a time, but in spite of all her intentions she felt her eyes growing heavier and heavier, and then, at last, she could no longer fight what she was feeling.

  She slept, and dreamed of a pair of light blue eyes, and a scarred face. But in the dream the scars seemed as natural as could be, and she hardly noticed them. She smiled in her sleep, and reached out to hold Kevin's hand without waking.

  ***

  23.

  ***

  Scott kept trembling.

  Kevin. The boy's name was Kevin.

  In the time since the mysterious notes had first appeared; the time since he had first heard the gray man utter Kevin's name, Scott had been on the lookout for someone - anyone - with that name. But not one person so named had come into his life.

  Until now.

  He put down the box he was carrying and pulled something out of his pocket. It was a piece of paper that he had been carrying with him for almost a month now, and it said little:

  1292 McGlinchey

  May 5, 1:30 am

  be there

  They were the four things that the old man - not the gray man, but the blue-eyed visitor with the devastating shoulder lock - had told him. An address, a date, and a time...and instructions to be at the address at that date and time

  Scott almost hadn't followed the old man's instructions, almost hadn't bothered to come. He had gotten in the car and out of it again no fewer than half a dozen times before he finally drove the three or four miles from his house to this one, cursing himself for a fool each and every time.

  But he did it.

  Because of what the old man had said. About Scott no longer loving Amy. About Scott no longer being the kind of person she would love. It was almost more than he could bear, the thought that his wife would have turned a blind eye to him had he met her for the first time on the day he met the old man. And the reason it was so painful a thought was because he knew that the old man was right. He had turned into someone that Amy would not have been attracted to in the slightest.

  So upon waking from whatever sedative the old man had given him - a light one, for he awoke in his own chair only about fifteen minutes later, still in first period - he had written down the date and time and address that were still bouncing around in his head like marbles in some kind of psychic pinball machine. He didn't know then if he was going to go or not, but he did know that something had to change. He could no longer live his life exclusively for the purpose of maintaining the memories of his wife and son, for in so doing he had lost in himself the very qualities that made them love him. He realized that he had turned his life into a mausoleum, a pyramid: into any of a number of tombs that were designed solely to honor the spirits of the dead, but in so doing transformed themselves into places where other humans were vaguely unwelcome to visit.

  So Scott wrote the address, date, and time down...and then, after six or seven false starts, he came.

  And met Lynette.

  The edges of the paper in Scott's hands curled, for he clenched his hands unconsciously into fists upon thinking of the woman. She had affected him as no one else had -

  (since Amy)

  - in eight years, and more. Her eyes had appeared to him as almost luminous in the moonlight, as limpid pools in which he would not drown, but could instead come to drink, and be revitalized. Her smile - when she smiled, for she had been understandably nervous at his appearance - made him feel new inside, in a way that only one other woman had ever been able to accomplish.

  And then there was Kevin.

  The boy had been asleep when Scott finally drove up and saw the moving truck and got out to check the vehicle to see if he could surmise the reason that John Doe had wanted him here, now. But something about the sleeping boy had arrested him, had so utterly stopped him in his tracks that he was still standing there, motionless, staring at the boy when the child's mother had come out of her house and asked what he was doing and who he was.

  He realized a moment after seeing the boy what it was - he was the same age as Chad had been. And not only the same age, but eerily similar in appearance. Though he got the impression from speaking to Lynette that appearance was where the similarities began and ended - that Kevin was a special child, perhaps mentally disabled, certainly operating under special needs that Chad had not been burdened with.

  And then there was the fact of his name. Scott had very nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard the boy's name, and had been hard-pressed to recover from his amazement in such a way as to avoid freaking Lynette out to the point that she would have taken her son inside the new home, locked the door, and gone looking to see if the previous owners had by any chance left some deadly weapon - like a firearm or a thermonuclear warhead - behind.

  Then there was the matter of how he had dealt with helping Lynette. It
was true that Meridian was without doubt one of the friendliest places in the known universe, but even for the inhabitants of this friendly place, knocking on someone's door at one-thirty and asking for moving help was pushing it. In fact, if it hadn't been Gil next door to her, Scott might not have gotten away with it. The fact that Gil was a man whose heart was as big as his bearlike body was the only saving grace that kept the moving party, well, moving.

  But still, the whole time that Scott had been setting up help for Lynette, he had felt strange. Like he was a cock in the hen coop, strutting and preening and generally showing off his plumage. He was showing off Meridian, it was true, but he was aware that he was also showing Lynette that he was someone that could get stuff done. And then he had insisted she wait in the truck, that she rest with her son, like he was not only a guardian angel but a knight-errant from another age, a man of such deep chivalry that the very thought of a woman picking up a moving box was deeply anathema to him. Not that he thought her incapable of moving anything - indeed, the fact that she had arrived alone at one thirty in the morning spoke highly of the fact that she was self-confident enough to pull off the move solo. But he wanted her to know that he was ready, willing, and able to help out in any way necessary.

  He was, quite simply, showing off. And that fact made him uncomfortable as did anything else in that strange night, because he had not shown off in years. And doing so made him feel more than a little guilty, as though he were cheating on Amy in his mind.

  Only the resounding rebuke of the old man that had stung him so strongly that the wound still lay open in his mind had kept him from turning around and avoiding the whole night, avoiding Lynette, avoiding...Kevin.

  The words of the note that Scott had found in his deserted apartment in Los Angeles over seven years ago kept playing over and over in his mind. "I'm still here, and I'm coming for you and Kevin."

  In the intervening years, Scott had not only not encountered anyone named Kevin, but had actually been able to convince himself that the note itself was a figment of his then-overwrought imagination. After all, it had come in the middle of his last days at the LAPD, a time immediately following the deaths of his wife and child and his own hospitalization and subsequent painful recuperation.

  So who could tell if the entire episode when he found the note had really happened. Even the note was gone, having been thrown away by Scott immediately after being found by him.

  And so he was able to relegate the missive and its threatening words to a mostly-unused portion of his memory, like a locked room in the house of his heart, a room that he rarely acknowledged and never visited.

  Until tonight. When he had heard the name of the boy in the van, a thrill had gone through him, as though he had just put his finger in a light socket. The feeling was electric, exciting, and accompanied by a single, frightening thought:

  I've found him.

  And so now here he was, carrying boxes inside the house with a group of other men who had been roused by Gil and his brother and shanghaied into coming in the middle of the night to unload the moving truck of a stranger.

  The boxes under his arm said "K Bedroom," which Scott almost used as an excuse to wake Lynette up, since none of the boxes thus far had said anything like that. They had all been clearly labeled things like "Bathroom" or "Living room" or "Kitchen" in large, easy to understand letters. But none had been yet found labeled "K Bedroom."

  But even so, even though a part of him wanted desperately to wake Lynette and hear her voice again, he knew that it would be pure selfishness on his part, so didn't do it. "K Bedroom" clearly meant "Kevin's Bedroom," and since he already knew which bedroom belonged to Lynette, it was an easy bet that the sole other bedroom in the house belonged to Kevin.

  Besides, there would be time enough to wake Lynette when they got down to the actual furniture and needed her to advise them as to where to put it all.

  So Scott marched into the house, a box under each arm, and headed to the still-empty bedroom that would soon serve as Kevin's bedroom.

  The door was mostly shut, but a crack around its edges told Scott that it was not latched or locked, so he nudged it open with his foot and marched in.

  As soon as he entered the room, the hairs on the back of his neck and on his arms all stood up on end. They stood at attention, prying goosebumps loose from his flesh as they stood straight and tall.

  Scott felt as he had only felt a few times before in his life, and each and every time had brought danger.

  He immediately put down the boxes and kicked the door shut behind him. Not that he didn't think he could use some help from any of the burly men currently swarming in and around Lynette's house, but he did not want to put any of them in danger, if danger there was to be had in this place.

  And something told him that danger was, in fact, very near.

  He again reached for his gun automatically, as had when confronted by John Doe in his office, and once again his fingers touched only empty folds of cloth. He still owned a weapon, it was true, even had a concealed carry license. But that meant only that he could carry it in the glove compartment of his car, not on his person.

  He dropped his hand and looked around, every muscle vibrating and alert for the quietest sound, the merest hint of peril.

  Nothing. The room was empty. Empty and dark.

  He flicked on the light switch, and the recessed light in the middle of the ceiling turned brightly on.

  The room was empty.

  So why was Scott still as jittery as he had been his first night as a rookie cop, feeling like there was danger around every corner, like every person he saw was a potential life-threatening menace.

  He looked around the room again. Still nothing.

  But there was the closet.

  Normally closets did not worry Scott. In spite of the loss of his family, he had not turned into a paranoid lunatic who saw threats in every shadow, terror in the corner of every room. But this closet carried with it a definite air of death. As though a dark shadow had settled around the bright room only in the location of the closet.

  As though someone might be hiding inside.

  Scott thought momentarily about calling for Gil or Gil's brother, Brad, then decided against it. Though both men were famous for their big hearts and generous natures, neither was particularly famous for letting an opportunity to harangue a friend go by, and Scott was in no mood to be constantly joshed for having a case of the silly-willies in the event that the closet should turn out to be harmless and empty.

  Besides, he didn't want Gil or Brad - or anyone else - getting hurt if the closet was in fact a source of some kind of threat.

  So he went to the closet alone.

  He sidled up to it and waved a hand in front of it, half expecting someone inside to see movement through the cracks in the French-style doors and start shooting.

  But nothing happened.

  He reached out a hand to grasp the doorhandle, again tensing as though ready to be shot, or to have a knife slice through the crack between the doors and attempt to cut him wide open.

  Again, nothing happened.

  His fingers curled around the handle.

  He took a deep breath.

  And threw open the door.

  No one was inside.

  But movement did catch his eye.

  A piece of paper fluttered slowly to the floor of the closet, as though it had been sitting on the small shelf and the door opening had created a vacuum that sucked it off its resting spot.

  Scott leaned over to pick up the paper, and as he did the hackles on his neck rose even further, if that were possible. He looked around as he bent down, half expecting some nameless assailant -

  (Mr. Gray)

  - to come rushing at him brandishing an axe or a crowbar or some equally threatening weapon.

  But there was no one. He was still alone.

  So why was his long-dormant cop sense tingling so loudly he felt like Gil would have to come at any moment and ask
what that strange noise was?

  Scott picked up the paper.

  He looked at it. And his heart fell. Down, down, down, plummeting through his ribcage and seeming like it fell right out of him and continued its plunge until it came to rest well beneath the surface of the earth.

  There was writing on the paper.

  Thick, black scrawl. Childish, as though a kid had written it in the midst of a seizure...or a rage so severe that the pen could not even be properly held.

  "I found you once, Kevin," said the paper, "and I'll find you again."

  The paper, the lettering, everything but the words themselves were the exact mirror of the paper that Scott had found in his own apartment in L.A. so many years ago.

  "I'm still here, and I'm coming for you and Kevin," that first note had said.

  And now it had a brother.

  Scott glanced around again, expecting now to see Mr. Gray in the room with him, knife in hand, ready to cut Scott's throat and then to find little Kevin in the cab of the van and do likewise to him.

  There was no one.

  Scott was alone, alone in a room with nothing but two boxes and a note that had been written by a madman determined to kill him, and to kill Kevin.

  "I found you once, Kevin, and I'll find you again."

  Mr. Gray had been here.

  ***

  24.

  ***

  Meridian was all that it had promised to be in those opening hours: warm and inviting and a place where Lynette instantly felt at home. True to Scott's prediction, after the men of the neighborhood moved her boxes in - they then helped her position all her furniture and were done and gone by three in the morning - she was awakened the next morning by the neighborhood "Welcoming Committee." The Welcoming Committee was a group of six women who showed up at her house with a breakfast of donuts and scones and who insisted on coming in to answer any and all questions that Lynette had about Meridian.

  Lynette let them in with some sense of worry. Kevin did not tend to react well to strangers, and especially not to large groups of them. And more than that, she knew that most strangers did not react well to Kevin. So when he ambled out in the morning, looking at the floor and refusing to speak a word, then bolted back into his room when he realized that there were strangers in the house, Lynette was prepared to lose all of her new "friends."