A whimper escaped Lynette. Partly it was the fact that she was seeing Scott - or someone who looked like him - clearly bleeding and dying in front of her eyes. Partly it was the fact that she was seeing visions that could qualify her as completely mentally imbalanced.
But most of it was just hearing Kevin's voice, unimpeded by the autism that had plagued and limited him for his entire life. She was hearing her son, she knew, as he had been meant to be born.
Then, suddenly, a shot rang out. In that second world, that phantom world, she saw a bright flower of red open up on Scott's shirt - the other Scott's shirt.
"The lines of history want to assert themselves in certain patterns," repeated the other Kevin. Then he closed his eyes, and suddenly Lynette found herself back in the room, the single room, holding onto her Kevin and with her Scott - unhurt and without swollen flowers of blood drenching his stomach and chest - nearby.
"Where did you go?" said Scott in a low whisper, his eyes wide.
"What?"
"You were gone. Someone...else...was here," he said, almost stuttering. "Someone that looked like you, but wasn't. Someone who looked like Kevin, but wasn't. You kept phasing in and out like a picture going in and out of focus. Where were you?"
Lynette didn't know how to respond. She wasn't sure herself where she was, or what had happened. And not only that, but she had little time to ponder the import of her vision, because at that moment, Kevin did the unthinkable. He shook himself suddenly loose from her slackened grip and ran out of the room.
"Kevin!" she hissed, hoping that Mr. Gray had not heard it.
Kevin was not running the same way he had run in Albertson's - fleet and sure of foot - but rather was running as he was more wont to do: arms at his sides, rigidly taking the steps in a curiously awkward gate that was speedy but a far cry from what he had done earlier in the supermarket parking lot.
She was keenly aware of Scott's warnings about running: a hundred yards of no cover. If Mr. Gray came out at any point in that time, they would be caught, they would have to be caught.
She saw an image in her mind of Scott, shirt awash with blood, and heard Kevin again saying, "The lines of history want to assert themselves in certain patterns." Was this how it would happen? she wondered. Had the other Kevin been telling her that Scott was doomed to die no matter what, wounded in the stomach and chest, and then dying in front of her as history "asserted itself"? She did not know if she could handle that; did not know if she would be able to survive such a devastating blow to her soul. She had already lost one man she loved; she could not bear to lose another.
It was in that instant, the single instant in time when Kevin bolted for the door of the office, that she realized with stunning clarity that she did, in fact, love Scott. And it was not an infatuation born of lust or of the pulse-pounding terror and excitement of the last few days. It was something more real, fuller, more genuine than that. It was deep as she would have expected it to be if she and Scott had known each other for many years, instead of only a few days.
I love him, she thought. Then, on top of that thought, she had another: And he's destined to die.
No, she thought back at herself. No, I reject that.
It doesn't matter if you reject Truth, she answered. What is True is True, and remains so independent of how many people do or do not believe in it.
Thankfully, all further thoughts along those lines ceased as Kevin raced for the door. Lynette reached out to grab for him, but again as in the parking lot, he danced just out of her reach. Even in his usual, stumbling gait he somehow managed to elude her grasping fingers, as though he knew where she was going to grab at him and managed to move out of that spot just in time to avoid her hands.
He made it out the door before either Lynette or Scott could touch him, and was away in an instant, his head down as though he were pushing his way through a gale that was rapidly gaining strength and becoming a hurricane. He shuffled into the middle of the baseball diamond, past the bleachers that would have offered their only small hope of cover in this moonlit, starlit night, and into the empty space that marked right field before she and Scott caught up to him.
They grabbed him, and he looked lost and terrified, as though he didn't know what he was doing. He pawed at Scott suddenly, poking and prodding him in the chest and stomach.
"What the -" began Scott.
Lynette knew instantly what her son was doing; that he had somehow seen the version of events that she had seen earlier, the version where Scott was shot in stomach and chest. "Let him," she whispered.
"Let him what?" asked Scott.
"Let him make sure he can feel you're okay." Truth be told, she was somewhat jealous of Kevin in that moment. Being autistic gave a person a certain amount of immunity from having to observe the social norms that went along with living in any civilized community. So though Lynette also wanted to check Scott for wounds, she had to settle for allowing Kevin to do it.
Then, suddenly, her son went rigid.
He turned.
She turned as well, following his gaze back to where they had been a moment before.
Back to where a man was coming around the corner.
Mr. Gray.
And he was going to see them at any moment.
***
39.
***
Scott immediately hugged Kevin to him, then threw himself and the boy to the ground, pulling Lynette with them to the ground at the same time.
"Lay flat," he said in a whisper. "Keep your face down."
He was reminded of stories of World War II, where upturned faces would reflect moonlight...and provide a perfect target for enemy fire. He had nothing to blackout his face with, so had to settle for hiding it in the dust. With one hand he held Kevin to him, and with the other he held the boy's head to his chest. He could only hope that Lynette was doing the same thing as he was, hiding her face as well, and then further hope that Mr. Gray was not looking their way. Or that if he was looking, he was not seeing them as more than irregularities in the field. At the distance that they were from one another, it was impossible to guess what he might see them as.
Scott had never been so terrified in his entire life as he was in that instant. Not even in the alley - either of the alleys - when Mr. Gray had gotten the drop on him, not in the Garment District where he had been critically shot. For in all of those instances, he had at least had the ability to look death in the eye as it came for him, though in those instances it had passed him by without taking him.
Now, however, cowering in the dust of the baseball diamond, holding onto Kevin and hoping that the boy did not cry out or throw a tantrum, he couldn't see anything. Mr. Gray could be coming right up to them right this instant.
But no. He didn't think that was the case. In a sudden understanding of what Kevin had just done, he looked up, chancing a glance in the direction of the office that they had just left. He looked up in time to see Mr. Gray disappearing into the office, into the very office that they had just abandoned on account of Kevin.
Scott wondered whether Mr. Gray was just going into that office as part of a random sweep, or if he was somehow tracking them, tracking Kevin. He flashed to the note that he had found in Kevin's empty bedroom upon moving him and his mother into their home in Meridian: "I found you once, Kevin, and I'll find you again." Was it possible that the gray man had some kind of sense about where Kevin was? That he was tracking a sort of psychic residue that the autistic child left behind, invisible to Scott and Lynette but bright as a yellow brick road to the man tracking them?
Somehow Scott guessed that this must be the case. Mr. Gray had found them at every turn - though sometimes it had taken him years to do so - and had especially focused his ill will on Kevin. So there must be some kind of internal compass that the gray man was using to find them, one that oriented on Kevin as its true north. And if that was the case, then the killer would soon be leaving the office of the crotchety old Mr. Randall, and would be followin
g them out to the baseball diamond, where if he came much closer he would be sure to find them with ease.
Scott rose quickly to his feet. Once deciding that they were being tracked, he felt an almost panicked need to flee, his flight instinct nearly overwhelming all his other senses. "Come on," he said, pulling Kevin to his feet and then helping Lynette up as well.
Moving quickly with Kevin proved to be an impossibility when the boy did not want to run. He moved at a gait that was faster than walking, but considerably slower than the running speed that Scott wanted to take. Finally, he picked the boy up and ran with him.
Kevin buried his head in Scott's chest, as though by doing so he could erase the terrors that sought him out even now. Scott wished that could be true; that if only by not looking they could avoid the demon in their wake. But he knew - knew somehow - that the only chance they had to survive lay in movement, in constant motion without rest.
A sudden shout behind them seemed to confirm Scott's premonition. It was Mr. Gray, and it was the shout of someone deeply disappointed, the shout of a man who had gone searching for something, expecting fully to find it, and had then discovered only that it was absent. Mr. Gray was on their trail, he knew.
Move, move, move, he thought.
Behind him, he heard Lynette huffing and puffing, trying to keep up with him as he ran over the grass and dirt, through the baseball field and then through the football field. A part of him wanted to stop when he reached the football bleachers, to go under them and hide in the hopes that Mr. Gray would lose their trail and would overshoot them, leaving them safely behind. But the part of him that had been gripped by the sure knowledge that Mr. Gray would be able to track them no matter where they went vetoed that idea. The only survival lay in continuing to run, at least for now.
So he continued with Kevin and Lynette past the bleachers, then into the main part of the school grounds. There were, of course, no cars in the parking lot at this time of night, but he hoped that they could find some on the nearby street.
Luck was with them, for once. They immediately found four cars parked one after another on the side of the road. Probably friends who had stayed overnight at one of the nearby farmhouses and had decided to park their cars on the road for whatever reason. Scott didn't much care, he just cared about the number of cars there were. He knew that in smaller cities and towns one in three people left their cars open and their keys in the car, so the odds were good that one of these cars was such a vehicle, driven by a trusting soul whose trust was about to be rewarded by the theft of his or her car.
Sure enough, the second pull on a car door yielded an open one, and Scott quickly located the key in the visor a moment later. "Get in," he said to Lynette, at the same time as he pushed Kevin into the backseat and put a seatbelt on him. The boy looked torpid, almost drugged, as though the events of the past twenty four hours had proved too much for him to process. Scott was worried about the boy, but couldn't spare the time to examine him right now. He felt as though time was running out, as though they had little time to escape whatever fate the gray man might have in store for them.
He got in the driver's side as Lynette got in the passenger door, and started the car.
The headlights illuminated a stretch of the street ahead of them. They also illuminated Mr. Gray.
He must have followed them out of the fields, past the school, and caught up to them while they looked for a car to steal. Now he stood directly in front of the car they were in, only feet away from them.
Scott squinted in shock for a moment as the older man threw his hands up to ward off the sudden light. In the instant before he had done so, Scott thought he had seen something impossible - one more impossibility on what was becoming a long list of the events. Though Lynette had hit him hard in the face with the two by four only a few hours ago, and though Scott had seen the man's blood splash and seen his nose shatter, there was now no sign whatever that any such incident had occurred. The gray man looked hearty and whole, and smiled widely as he looked back at the car.
His knife, silvery and gleaming like a bright light in the darkness of the night, flashed in his hands.
Beside Scott, Lynette screamed. He floored the accelerator, but the car didn't move for a moment. Scott wondered what had happened, then realized that in his panic he had failed to put the car in gear.
Now he did so, but it was also too late, for Mr. Gray had had the time to rush in toward them. He threw a fist at the backseat window, trying to claw and scratch his way through the safety glass to reach Kevin. Kevin cried out, worming his way down into the seat, hunching low as he could to stay as safe as possible.
The safety glass crazed, and Scott wondered how long it would take Mr. Gray - with his insane strength and maniacally single-minded purpose - to get through the glass and to the boy beyond. Scott didn't intend to find out, however. He again pushed the gas pedal to the floor, and this time the car - a mid-sized sedan with a decent engine in it - leapt forward with a squeal of rubber on pavement.
He felt something jounce the car, and looked into his rearview mirror. The gray man had jumped onto the back of the car, holding onto the trunk with both hands, making his way slowly up toward the rear window; to Kevin.
"Scott!" screamed Lynette.
"I see it," he responded.
Mr. Gray reached up high in the air with the hand holding the knife, clearly intending to drive the pommel through the safety glass of the rear window and from there continue the deadly arc of the knife until it ended in Kevin's small, quivering body. But before he could complete the movement, Scott dragged the steering wheel hard to one side. There was a satisfying thud as Mr. Gray rolled off the back of the car and landed on the side of the road. Scott watched him roll silently along the road, then the older man was gone from his sight as he continued to give the car all the gas she would take.
They were safe.
Or at least, so it seemed, but then Kevin began screaming. Just as Lynette had told him about, it sounded like there were two Kevins making the horrific noise, as though a chorus of twins were shrieking in agony. Scott glanced in the rearview mirror, and saw the boy pointing off to the right.
Just then he passed a small side street.
"Turn here!" shouted Lynette.
Without thinking, Scott cranked the wheel to one side, feeling the car fishtail beneath him as it transitioned from a paved road to a dirt one. He brought the car under control again, continuing on down the dirt road, then said, "Where are we going?"
"I don't know," admitted Lynette.
"What?"
"I don't know. But this is what happened when we found you, when we saved you from Mr. Gray," she said. "I don't know where we're going, but I know that we have to go there."
Thankfully, Kevin - the Kevins - were no longer screaming, though when Scott looked back he still saw the boys' flickering images staring straight ahead, hands at eye level and pointing straight ahead. Scott wondered how long the boy would stay like that, though he suspected he knew the answer: as long as it took.
The trail rode straight for about a mile, then turned into a private driveway. Scott started to slow, thinking perhaps they were going the wrong way when he saw the driveway, but again Kevin began that terrible screaming, and Scott knew he would get no relief from the sound until he capitulated to the will of the nine year old autistic child in the back of the car. So he continued ahead, driving slowly through the corn stalks that shot up on either side of the car like silent sentinels, and finally stopping when he could go no farther, when he was confronted by a house that stood directly in the path before them.
This time when he stopped, however, Kevin raised no hue nor cry of alarm.
Scott looked at the house in front of them. "What now, Kevin?" he asked.
Kevin looked around the car, typically avoiding the gazes of any and all around him. "Hush little baby, don't say a word," he sang in an oddly endearing voice. But though the tune was beautiful in a strange sort of way, it har
dly answered Scott's question.
"Kevin," he repeated. "What are we doing here?"
"Momma's gonna buy you a mockingbird," sang the boy.
"Do you know what that's about?" Scott asked Lynette.
She shrugged. "No idea," she admitted. "But the last few times he's acted like this, it's been to save someone's life, so I'm inclined to go with it, you know?"
Scott looked at the house in front of them. It was dark and, to all appearances, completely deserted. It was two stories, with a basement door to one side proclaiming the presence of a third level below ground. Like many houses in Idaho, it was modest and clean, though there was something about it, something below the surface of it, that made Scott feel somewhat ill. As though he was looking at a cancer on a friend's X-ray, not knowing really what he was looking at, but knowing that there was something wrong about it.
Scott looked at Lynette. "Stay here," he said finally.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
Scott nodded at the house. "To check it out."
"What?" she asked. "And you want us to just stay here? No way, buster."
"Come on, Lynette," he pleaded. "We don't know what's inside there. It could be anything. But we do know that the last few times have involved danger to the people around you and Kevin. So assuming that this is no exception, I'd like you both well out of harm's way."
"I'm sorry," said Lynette. "But I'm going with you."
There was a scream and a bump from behind them. Kevin was on his side in the backseat, thrashing around mightily, groaning as though he had some kind of internal infection.
"What's going on, Kevin?" asked Scott. He reached back to touch the boy, to see if he could calm him. But before he could, Kevin reached forward and grabbed his laptop from Lynette, who had managed to keep a hold of the computer throughout their flight from the gray man.
The Meridians Page 26
