The Meridians

by Michaelbrent Collings

  And then, without warning, the other man did something completely unexpected.

  ***

  44.

  ***

  Lynette looked around for the source of the voice she had just heard. Mr. Gray was near, she knew. The voice had sounded like it was coming from in the car with them. But there was no one here but Kevin, who was once again typing furiously at his computer. Still, though he might have seemed unaffected to the untrained eye, she could tell he was terrified by the shaking of his hands and the fact that he was typing with his eyes screwed tightly shut.

  "Little lady and her boy. Little bitch and her brat." Again, the voice seemed to come from somewhere in the car, from somewhere right beside her. She thought about running, but decided that running before she knew where the sound was coming from would be futile. What if she ran to it instead of away from it?

  There was a rushing sound in her ears. She thought it was water at first, the sound like a stream scouring through a forest floor. Then she realized that it was the sound of blood rushing to her ears, the sound of her own pulse blasting powerfully through her mind. She realized what was happening: this was the same feeling she had had before, when the gray man appeared on the day Robbie died. And now she did run. She grabbed Kevin from off the seat and pulled him to her, then fumbled for the door handle. But before she could reach it, the locks engaged.

  "Ah, ah, ah," said the voice. The voice of Mr. Gray. It was a whisper, sounding quietly, almost gently, in her ear.

  She looked over, and screamed.

  He was here.

  ***

  45.

  ***

  Scott gaped as Tina's father suddenly turned on his heel...and ran.

  At first, Scott couldn't even process what was happening. Then he realized.

  Tina!

  The madman was running toward the stairs, away from the tougher prey that Scott represented and toward the much easier form of his daughter, still tied and alone downstairs. And still counting on Scott to save her; to save her family. He knew beyond a doubt that the latter was beyond his power. Even if by some miracle everyone still alive made it through the rest of this night, there was no way that the authorities would let Tina's father stay with her, or even probably see her again for a long, long time. But the former - saving the little girl herself - was still in Scott's power. Or at least, it was in his power to try.

  So Scott ran as well. He ran after Tina's father, who was barreling down the short hallway, and now taking the stairs down two and three at a time.

  Scott hurled himself at the madman. He somehow sensed that the stairs were the gate through which Tina's death lay. If her father made it down the steps, Scott knew that he would - somehow - also make it to the little girl.

  And end her.

  The image was almost prescient, as though this world and some future world where the little girl died were pressing against one another, the veil that usually separated them unusually thin in this moment and allowing Scott to glimpse through it. He could see her father, making it down the stairs ahead of him, fighting Scott off in the living room, killing Scott right in front of Tina, right in front of his own daughter, then going to her, tenderly slipping the knife home....

  "No!" Scott roared. He reached out as he threw himself forward, retaining the piece of the child's chair he still held in one hand, and with the other hand managed to snag a piece of Tina's father's shirt. The man roared back, and now there were no men on the stairs, only two animals fighting for life and death, battling for the existence of the child who lay powerless below them.

  Tina's father slashed behind himself with the knife he still held, but this time Scott moved aside before the blade could pierce him. He caught it on the backswing, slamming into the man's wrist with the piece of broken wood in his hand. Tina's father howled, but somehow retained a grip on the knife, rearing back again and slashing once more with his knife, a lightning quick slice that missed Scott's throat by millimeters, it seemed.

  Scott waited for the inevitable backhand cut, stepping outside of range as it came, almost slipping on the steps beneath him, then he stepped inside the man's moving arm, blocking it with an upraised hand and rapping the man on the head with the chair piece in his hand.

  Tina's father jerked back, stunned by the force of the sudden blow, blinking as he was rocked by the hit. His foot came down behind him, only there was no floor to catch him there, only gravity, only the feel of air below him. He plummeted backward with a cry, but before he completely fell, he grabbed Scott's collar with a hand strengthened by rage and madness.

  Scott felt his head snap backward as the force of the pull nearly gave him whiplash. Then he slammed face-first into the man's chest. But instead of resisting he had the wit to simply ride the man down like some kind of twisting, screaming surfboard, both of them riding the wave of madness that had somehow come to visit this home and had engulfed so much of it.

  Tina's father hit the stairs headfirst, with all of Scott's weight on top of his own. There was a crack - it sounded like one or more of the man's ribs broke - and then a dull thud as he cracked his head on the stairs.

  Then he was silent. Unmoving.

  Scott would have suspected a trick of some kind, but he knew that the madness in the man's mind must have cast out the capacity for such rational and far-seeing strategy. No, all that was left for the man was death and killing. Still, Scott didn't move, laying on the man for a long moment before finally rolling off him onto the stairs with a groan.

  The fight was over. The whole thing had probably only lasted ten or twenty seconds. But to Scott it seemed as though he had spent a year or more at hard labor. Every bone and muscle ached, his mind sang as though rather than being involved in brute force he had been working on Kevin's string theory writings once more.

  He rose to look for something to tie up the man, then realized that doing so might take more time than he had. Who knew how long the man would be out for? He had to get Tina and get out with her. He could untie her later, then call the police from the safety of a public phone booth and alert them to the madman at large.

  Madmen, he reminded himself, for there was still the problem of Mr. Gray.

  But that problem would wait, at least for a moment.

  ***

  46.

  ***

  Mr. Gray was fully-formed, a knife already at Kevin's throat.

  "Sixty two years," hissed the old man. "Sixty two goddam years I've been waiting for this!"

  Lynette could not have done what happened next on purpose; not in a thousand years. But her son was in danger, his eyes closed and a knife at his throat.

  She screamed, and threw herself at the old man in the car. His eyes widened as she grabbed his wrist, forcing it away from her son. Mr. Gray screamed and slashed downward, his wrist turning, managing to cut the back of her wrists. The wounds were superficial, but painful.

  Lynette paid them no heed. All that mattered was that her son, her only treasure, was in danger. She screamed again, a voiceless shriek that carried with it the frustration of losing Robbie, of watching her son change into a stranger before her as he became not only autistic, but whatever...else...he had turned to in these last days. She cried out with pain at the losses of her life, giving voice for once and for all to the tragedies that had been wrought upon her.

  Then Mr. Gray twisted expertly, and her slippery hands could not hold onto his wrists. He was free, the knife pulled back where she could not reach. He grinned, his face a mask of madness, his eyes glittering with rage and hatred.

  "Fine," he spat. "I'll kill the bitch first."

  And he slashed with the knife, a glittering arc that Lynette knew she was powerless to stop, an arc that would end with the razor edge slashing deeply into her throat.

  She could do nothing.

  She was going to die.

  ***

  47.

  ***

  "Tina," he whispered. The girl's eyes were screwed tightly shut,
the classic defense of a defenseless child: if I can't see you, you can't hurt me.

  Her eyes opened slowly, and she saw him. He must have looked a fright, with his clothes ripped and askew, and breathing like a spent rhino after the fight, but she smiled in spite of that.

  "Are you okay?" she whispered. His heartstrings rang a tune at her concern: she was tied up, had to be terrified, but the first thing she asked was if he was okay.

  This is a special girl, he thought.

  Then he nodded. "I'm okay," he said. "But we have to go. Right now."

  "What about Mommy and Daddy?" she asked.

  Scott hesitated. Only for a fraction of a second - this was no time to agonize overly, not with a madman unconscious on the stairs down the hall - but still, he did wonder what he could tell her.

  Nothing, he decided. Tell her nothing. Just get her out of here. Get both of you out of here.

  To Tina, he said, "I'm not sure." His stomach churned at the lie, but he knew that it was the only way. To tell her that her mother was dead and her father only intent on killing her would be to tell her more than anyone could be expected to handle, let alone someone so young and innocent.

  She nodded, accepting the falsehood at face value, and Scott scooped the little girl into his arms, tucking her as best he could into a comfortable position, then rushing to the front door.

  "Where are we going?" she asked, her voice bouncing as she jounced in his arms.

  "Outside. Better outside," he said. He didn't elaborate, and she asked nothing further. He was glad, because beyond going outside, he had nothing he could tell her.

  There was a madman behind.

  A madman before.

  They were trapped in the middle of a vise fashioned of evil and madness, a pressure cooker that would burst at any moment and destroy all within it.

  Stop, he thought. Don't think that way.

  He thought of Lynette. Of Kevin. Of Tina. And strangely, the idea of the people relying on him to hold himself together and find a way for them all to survive this series of waking nightmares had the opposite effect that he would have expected. He would have thought that pondering on them would lead him to further panic, would take him further into a black hole of misery from which nothing could escape. Instead, however, he instantly felt better, thinking of Lynette's beautiful smile, of Tina's trusting and loving nature, of Kevin's eyes.

  His eyes.

  Something shivered through Scott when he thought that, but before he could put a finger on the thought, before he could peg it to reality like a pin on a corkboard, it fled to another, more secretive part of his mind and disappeared.

  He shook his head, and continued toward the doorway of the house of madness and death, breathing easier now that he was thinking of the people he loved and needed.

  Was Tina's name included on that list? he wondered abruptly, and realized that yes, it was. Though he knew her only as a captive, though she had not said more than twenty words, the beauty in her soul shone through clearly, endearing her to him - and, he was sure, to most others - instantly.

  She was part of his impromptu family now, just as surely as Kevin and Lynette. Again, the feeling that accompanied this thought was one that held a sentiment of prophecy, a feeling of prescience that he had felt before numerous times now, the feeling that he was not experiencing something in the here and now so much as something that was sure to come. Something future, but still somehow just as real as what was going on in the present.

  He stepped through the door, holding Tina.

  He looked at the car.

  And saw Mr. Gray, holding a knife to Kevin's throat. Then, as he watched in horror, Lynette threw herself at the old assassin, catching him off-guard enough to knock him momentarily away from her son.

  Kevin's eyes.

  The thought intruded on the here and now, another piece of the future that was almost present, but once again he was not able to catch it before it fled. Not from itself this time, no; the thought fled before the onrushing arm of Mr. Gray, who was swinging his knife again. Not at Kevin this time, but at Lynette.

  "No!" shouted Scott.

  But there was nothing he could do. He was too far away to stop anything from happening. Just as he had been on the day his first family had died, he was about to lose his second family to the murderous impulses of the gray man. A Mr. Gray who was older, angrier, teetering closer to the brink of utter madness than before, but still somehow the same man.

  "No!" Scott screamed again.

  Then he felt something behind him.

  He turned, even as Mr. Gray swung the knife at Lynette.

  And saw death coming for him, too.

  Tina's father was standing behind him. Still holding his knife. Still clenching the blade that was even now swinging toward Scott in a downward arc that would end inevitably in a plunge through his chest. He had been slashed earlier in the belly, in the exact place that Mr. Gray had wounded him eight years previous. Now he was about to be stabbed in the chest, once more with the attack hitting the same exact spot where the gray man had shot him those years before.

  There was nothing he could do.

  He was going to die.

  ***

  48.

  ***

  Lynette screamed, a final word, the word that would carry her soul to eternity.

  "Kevin!" she screamed. She hoped that he would know what she was saying in this last instant of her life. Hoped that, even through the sometimes staggeringly heavy blanket of his autism, he was hearing the words "I love you" in the sound of his name.

  Her boy looked at her, his eyes open and clear.

  He was going to see her die. He was going to see his mother's throat cut right in front of him. And then, certainly, Mr. Gray would turn on him as well, and the last thought he would take with him into eternity would not be one of love, of the sound of his mother's voice saying his name. It would be one of fear and death, one of pain and horror. It would be the feeling of a knife sliding into his body, the fading senses as his life's blood poured out of him.

  Her son's eyes looked at her in that last instant.

  Her son's eyes.

  And she realized something. But it was too late. Too late to be of any help.

  Kevin's eyes.

  She heard a sound, a noise, a shout coming from somewhere beyond the narrow confines of the car that had become her entire world in these last moments. Someone shouting "No!" at the top of his lungs.

  Scott. Scott was going to see her die, too.

  Her family was going to watch her die, even as she had watched Robbie die.

  All these thoughts jumbled and bumped and tumbled like ball bearings in a pinball machine, slamming into one another in a confusion of thought and feeling that took place in the instant it took for Mr. Gray to swing his knife.

  Then it bit into her neck.

  Her eyes closed.

  She was gone.

  ***

  49.

  ***

  Scott dropped Tina, half-throwing her down the steps that led from the porch to the ground in front of the house. It was a cruel thing to do, but in his last moments he knew that her only hope of surviving was to be out of sight - and hopefully out of mind - of her father's baleful eye after the man killed Scott.

  The girl fell with a scream.

  The knife flew downward, toward Scott's chest.

  He could not move. He was rooted to the spot as surely as if he had been made a part of the foundations of the house and had stood motionless ever since that time, simply waiting for this inevitable moment when history would repeat itself, this time finishing the job that Mr. Gray had started almost a decade before.

  The knife point entered his chest.

  Kevin's eyes.

  All was dark.

  ***

  50.

  ***

  Kevin is a good boy.

  A good boy who knows what to do. He knows just like he knows that Mr. Witten was right when he wrote about M-theo
ry, about unifying the diverse superstring theories into one cohesive theorem. He knows just like he knows about his mother; that she loves him and would die for him - is dying for him.

  He knows what to do. This is the instant that he has been seeing for days, the moment he has been waiting for.

  He closes his eyes.

  And the world disappears.

  ***

  51.

  ***

  Scott felt the knife enter his chest. Felt the point rip through his clothing and prick against his skin, then break the skin and enter it in a forceful plunge that would shatter his sternum and pierce his heart.

  But it didn't happen.

  He felt the knife go in, but at the next nanosecond, he felt a curious shifting.

  He was no longer standing.

  He was sitting somewhere.

  He was holding something.

  Scott looked down. Tina was, impossibly, back in his arms. And he was no longer outside. He was sitting down inside something. A car?

  His car? Lynette's car? He couldn't remember. He knew it was one of them, knew the other one had been destroyed by the gray man, but he could not remember which car was which, or which he had found himself in.

  He looked at Tina's face. It was white with shock, though he could not be sure if that shock was born of the fact that he had thrown her down a short set of stairs, or if like his it was born of the fact that a moment ago she had been one place, and now was somewhere else.

  He felt something beside him, and realized what it was.

  Kevin's eyes.

  The boy was sitting on the seat beside him. He looked at Scott with clear eyes, and whispered. "Witten was right." Then an instant later, he followed up that statement by saying, "Cover Tina's eyes."

  Scott did so, not knowing what was happening or how he had been spared the vicious death that he had somehow escaped eight years ago but had been doomed to repeat since then, but trusting in what Kevin said implicitly.