He moved back out into the hall, his eyes flicking to glance at the staircase.
Nothing.
He moved to the next door.
Opened it.
Bathroom. No shower or bath, just a toilet and sink. Nowhere to hide.
Scott turned. Time to go upstairs.
The first step on the stairs was electrifying, and Scott realized that the last time he had taken a step like this was when he followed Mr. Gray in the Garment District shop, going up the steps and getting shot in the chest.
This was a bit different, at least: he could see that there were three doors at the top of the stairs. Two rooms and a bathroom, probably. He could see most of the hall even from the bottom of the stairs, so was less worried about getting shot this time. Still, he took the stairs as quickly as he could while still remaining silent, going two at a time until he stood on top.
One door to his right.
Two to his left.
The right would be the master bedroom, probably. It was also the location of the thumps Scott had heard while speaking to Tina downstairs. And as much as it made his skin crawl, he knew that he would - again - have to check the other two rooms before he went into that haven of fear and ill-doings. Though he still sensed that he would be wasting precious time, in this instance intellect was too strong to be ignored. He had to clear his back before taking on whatever wickedness had invaded this home.
He opened the first door, trying as best he could to keep an eye on the door to the master bedroom behind him.
Like all the doors in the house, this one was well-oiled, and swung open silently. The doorknob rattled slightly in its housing as he twisted it, however, and Scott froze in his paces as it did so. Certainly someone must have heard that noise.
But, again, no one jumped out at him from any side. His imagination coupled with the grim circumstances was making him overly jumpy. But he didn't mind. Overly jumpy was preferable in this circumstance to underprepared...and dead.
He swung the door open. And saw instantly that this was Tina's bedroom. A little girl's room, complete with a tiny vanity with a variety of hair care products suitable for a young girl who was just learning to take care of herself. Posters of kittens and ponies adorned the walls, as well as a complete collection of posters featuring all the Disney princesses. It was the space of a little girl who was well taken care of and well loved.
Scott hoped that the love that had been provided to her would suffice to help her get through the horrors of this night. That it would have provided her with an indefatigable supply of strength and courage from which she could draw on during this dreadful time.
He looked around the room. The bed was flush with the floor; no place there to hide. There was a small door to the left. Had to be a closet. Likely no one was in there, but again, he had to be sure. Elementary procedure.
He turned his body so he could see movement in the hall with his peripheral vision, then edged toward the door. It had slats on it, which was a nightmare: anyone inside could see him coming, but he could not see inside. That meant that if there was someone in the closet - or bathroom, or whatever lay on the other side of the door - the person would be prepared for him.
He edged up beside the door, out of sight of anyone inside. Then, moving slowly as he could, so slowly he felt certain that dawn must arrive before he finished, he twisted the doorknob.
And it refused to budge.
For a moment he feared that it was locked, and he would have to break it down - surely alerting whoever else was in the house. Then he realized that the doorknob was probably not connected to any latch or moving parts; that it was simply an immobile handle to pull open what was most likely a closet door.
Again, moving slowly, he pulled at the door.
It popped open an inch.
No movement.
His skin felt like it was trying to turn inside out. He held the knife close to him, trying to remain as calm as possible while knowing that he could be opening the door to a deadly assault of some kind. Then he threw the door open and simultaneously glanced inside.
Nothing. Only clothing and toys scattered about the dark space. The room was clear.
He moved back to the hallway. One more room to go before bracing the master bedroom.
The next room turned out to be a bathroom. Open and airy, with a bathtub whose shower curtain was pulled back to reveal nothing but porcelain and tile beyond.
It was time to face the last room. The room where the thumps had come from.
He sidled up to it, put his hand to the doorknob, and turned it. Slowly. Careful not to let the knob jiggle in its housing as the knob on Tina's door had done. Absolute silence had to be maintained.
He opened the door, swinging it with only the slightest murmur of displaced air as it moved inward. He stood to the side as he did so, bracing himself for the inevitable attack. But it didn't come. Instead, he was immediately treated to the origin of the mysterious thumps.
He also revised his previous assumptions of what had been happening. Until now, he had believed that a person or persons unknown had entered the house - not difficult, considering that many of the people in this place did not even lock their doors when they slept - and had then overcome Tina's family by force, killing Tina's mother and tying Tina up for some nefarious purpose.
Now he saw the truth.
Whether Tina's father had gone insane all at once, or whether it had been building over time could not be extrapolated from the vision that greeted Scott when he opened the door. But what was immediately apparent was the fact of the man's madness. He was bloody, holding a serrated knife that was clearly the thing he had used on his wife, and was in the process of running straight at the wall when Scott opened the door.
THUD.
The entire house shook with the force of the impact when the man hit. Scott could tell it was Tina's father because there were numerous photos all throughout the comfortable room that featured a smiling trio - Tina, the dead woman downstairs, and the madman before him. All this Scott took in at a glance, but little else. Because immediately upon rebounding off the wall, the man looked at Scott with a gaze that seemed to hover in the air a few inches in front of him, and then charged.
***
42.
***
Lynette agonized.
She didn't want to leave her son in the car alone. But neither did she feel good about the fact that Scott had gone alone into the dark house that stood before them. It had been several minutes, and he had neither come out to signal all clear nor to give any other clue what was going on in the place.
The house simply stood dark and empty-seeming, a vast monster that might as well have swallowed Scott whole in the night, like the whale that had emerged from the depths to swallow Pinnochio. Only she knew that in this case, there would be no joyful reunion with a long-lost father deep in the belly of the beast. Rather, there was bound to be only death and danger.
He was alone. Scott was alone.
She could not help but feel that she ought to be inside helping out somehow. But then, again, there was Kevin. Under normal circumstances, she might have chanced leaving him alone for a few moments, as long as he had his laptop to keep him company.
But then, under normal circumstances she would not have followed her autistic son's directions to an apparently abandoned house into which only Scott had to go. Normal circumstances would have found her peacefully in bed right now, not in a car in the middle of a field waiting hopefully for the return of a man she had inexplicably come to admire, respect, and even love in the past hours. Normal circumstances would not have included Mr. Gray, or the fact that her son was currently acting as though he had some kind of strange pipeline into future events.
How was that happening? she wondered. How was he seeing what he was seeing?
Kevin was typing on his laptop, his fingers flying frenziedly across the keyboard, typing what she now knew to be mathematical phrases and theorems that were so far beyond
the norm that the average college professor would have been baffled by them.
"Kevin," she said on a whim. He kept typing, but she knew that that did not necessarily mean he was not hearing her. Indeed, it was likely that he was hearing her, though he would not show it. "Kevin, I'd like to talk to you. Can I have your keyboard?"
He did not answer, but his fingers stopped moving across the keys. He sat back, expectant.
She slowly moved the laptop into her own lap. "Where is Scott going?" she typed, then handed it back to him.
"Into the mouth of darkness," he typed back. She shuddered at the uniquely adult phrasing he was falling into when "talking" on his computer. Not only was he typing mathematics at an advanced level, but apparently he was also able to communicate in an advanced though oblique manner when doing so through the medium of his computer.
"What does that mean?" she typed.
"It means that everything matters. Everything counts. Everything is critical. The timing has to be perfect," he wrote back.
"What happens if it isn't perfect?" she typed.
"The world we know will never end. The world that must be will never come to pass."
She sighed. This wasn't helping her understand anything that was going on with Scott, or with herself for that matter. She tried another track. "Who am I talking to right now?"
"Kevin."
"Why do you sound different on the computer?"
"Because I'm different on the computer. I'm a different Kevin."
She felt a thrill of fear, remembering the dual children she had seen in Kevin's bed and then again in the car.
"What kind of different Kevin? How different?" she wrote.
He paused for a moment before typing. "I'm older. I'm an older variant."
"Variant?"
"Dimensional variant."
"What does that mean?"
This time he did not reply, either in word or on the computer. He merely sat, limp, as though the words he had already typed had taken a heavy toll on him. She tried typing several more things, but apparently he was done talking - or writing - for the time being.
She reached out a hand, and slowly took his. Usually even that level of personal interaction was too much for him to handle, and would signal a withdrawal both physical and mental. But this time he did not pull away. Indeed, he actually curled his small fingers around hers, holding them tightly. She sighed in happiness, for in that instant it felt as though all would be right with the world. As though things could be fixed. As though whatever was happening would come to an end, and they would be happy again. Her, and Kevin, and Scott. Happy. A family.
Then a voice spoke.
"Aww, ain't that sweet."
Lynette grew instantly cold. She looked all around for the source of the voice, but saw nothing. Even though no one was apparent, though, she knew the voice. Knew who it was.
Mr. Gray.
He was here.
***
43.
***
"Stop!" Scott shouted.
Tina's father paid him no heed. Scott might as well have been speaking to a deaf-mute for all the response he got. The man continued his charge, and Scott barely managed to jump around the doorjamb and out into the hallway again before the man waved his knife through the air where Scott's stomach had been just moments before.
Scott felt his guts clench. He had a knife himself - a bigger one - but he didn't know if he had the courage or will to engage in a knife fight. He knew that knife fights almost always ended with both parties in a hospital, if not a morgue, and he had no desire to find himself in such a place - or to put Tina's father there.
"Save my family" she had said. The words took on a new and ominous meaning. Scott had assumed that she was imploring him to protect her family from some intruder, some beast that had entered their house and taken her captive. But now he knew the truth: he had to save her family...from itself. From the madness that had crept in more silently than any sneak-thief ever could, from the insanity that had gripped her father in its iron fingers and squeezed him until he could no longer stand the pressure; until he fused with the grip and became madness himself.
The knife that Tina's father wielded swung to the right, following Scott like a living being, a beast that thirsted for his blood. Scott again moved out of the way with only millimeters to spare, and the knife bit deeply into the wood of the doorjamb. Tina's father looked strangely surprised at the fact, as though it had never occurred to him that the wall was real.
Scott wheeled back, and found himself smashing backward through the half-open door into Tina's room. He looked around for some way to end this conflict before it resulted in loss of life to either him or to the little girl's father. He saw only one thing: the small chair that sat in front of the little girl's vanity. It was clearly hand-made, solid wood construction, the kind of thing a loving and kind father might have made - before that person disappeared into whatever it was that was now chasing Scott. It would be unruly, but not so bulky as to render it useless as a club. And it had the advantage of not being a bladed weapon that would result in critical injury or death. Scott could use it with clearer conscience than he could the knife he currently held.
He swung around and scooped up the chair, then wheeled back to face the open doorway to the room just as Tina's father came through it, eyes wild and knife leading like a single-toothed viper. The man swung the knife at Scott, who just barely managed to bat it away with the chair. He felt a satisfying thud as the chair connected, the feeling reassuring him that he had been correct as to its solid construction, and Tina's father howled. The sound was bestial, an animal cry of pain totally bereft of all humanity or capacity for rational thought. It chilled Scott, making his gut clench and at the same time making his insides feel watery and loose. He worried that he might actually lose control of his bowels because of the intensity of the sound that now assailed him like a sonic jackhammer - not just an inconvenience or embarrassment, but possibly a fatal problem should it slow him down or make his movements in any way more difficult.
But no. He managed to control himself. He gritted his teeth and again swung the chair as Tina's father once more attacked him. This time the knife managed to penetrate his defense, and he felt the blade sink an inch into his stomach. Luckily for Scott, it only punched into the thick pad of gristle and scar tissue that still remained from his gutshot by Mr. Gray eight years ago. The knife twisted in his stomach as it bounced off the rock hard tissue, and he screamed in pain as old nerves ignited in flame and agony for the first time in years. But even as he screamed, he could feel that the blade had done little damage. The scars he had earned on the day his family died had saved him.
Tina's father yanked the blade loose, and Scott screamed again as the blade left his body. But again, even in his agony he could tell that any damage was minor, though the pain remained frighteningly intense.
Scott reared back as Tina's father withdrew the knife, using the momentary pause in the man's attack to bring the chair around in a short arc that ended on the side of the other man's head. Even in his agony, he tried to avoid hitting the man's temple. The human skull is only a twelfth of an inch thick in that area, and he had no desire to end the battle by fracturing his attacker's skull and causing brain damage. He hoped to end this fight with incapacity, not maiming or death. He didn't want to face Tina as her father's killer.
His aim was true, and he felt another satisfying thud as the chair fetched up against the back of Tina's father's head. The man reeled, stunned for a moment, and Scott went on the offensive. He batted the chair again, this time aiming for the other man's knife hand in the hopes of breaking it and disarming him in one move. But the madman was too fast, twisting aside and moving his hand away at the last second, and the chair glanced off his hip. He howled in pain, but clearly was not more than inconvenienced by the hit.
Unfortunately, Scott was more than inconvenienced as the chair broke in his hands. Solid construction notwithstanding, there was
only so much punishment that a child's chair could take before becoming nothing more than kindling. He was left holding a single long piece of wood with a shattered crosspiece attached to it. Still an effective enough club, but no longer nearly as useful as a shield or defensive weapon.
Scott pulled back at the same time as Tina's father again swiped the knife at him, but moved too slowly. The knife again slashed at his stomach, again ground against the scars of old wounds. Scott felt almost as though history was guiding the knife, trying to finish the job that Mr. Gray had begun, trying to reopen the wounds of the past and finish the job that had been started in the alley all those years ago.
Scott howled and struck with his makeshift club, but was far too slow. Tina's father danced out of range with a convulsive movement. The man giggled, a high-pitched, almost childlike sound that chilled Scott to the quick. It was far worse than the howling, animal sounds the man had been making until now, because it showed the depths of the man's insanity in a way that those noises had failed to do. Scott suddenly had the feeling that this battle could only end in the death of one or both of them.
Following his instincts, he punched out with his other hand, and the almost-forgotten knife he had been holding in that hand managed to penetrate Tina's father's own defenses, ripping a shallow furrow in the man's chest and grinding against his ribcage with a bounce that pulled the knife from Scott's hands.
The other man could have ended the fight then, could have stabbed Scott in the chest in a more fatal blow that would have resolved the struggle in his permanent favor. But rather than reply to Scott's blow with one of his own, he screamed again and threw himself against the nearby wall as he had been doing when Scott had entered the master bedroom. It was as though the man was punishing himself for killing his wife, for hogtieing his child.
Whatever the reason for the movement, it gave Scott precious seconds to move out of knife range, pulling back with the makeshift club in one hand.
The Meridians Page 28
