He covered the girl's eyes.
***
52.
***
Lynette felt the knife bite into her, felt blood sluice down her neck in a thin trickle as the blade passed through the outer layers of her skin.
But when the end came, it did not come as she expected it. She expected to feel the warmth of her blood, followed by a widening coldness that would overtake her and fly her soul on wings of sleet into the heavens. But neither happened. She felt blood, but not as much as she expected. And then she felt...nothing.
There was a popping noise, a pressure in her ears that she recognized.
She opened her eyes -
(God, how can I even be opening my eyes?)
- and looked beside her.
Her son was still there. But he was not looking at her any more. He was looking at something else. A dark figure in the darkness, black on black in the inky shadows of the car where she should be bleeding to death but somehow was not.
The figure was not that of the gray man.
It was someone holding something. A squirming bundle of white-faced fear.
A girl. A little girl.
Her son spoke. "Witten was right," he said, for the first time pronouncing the "r" round as it should have been spoken. Then he added, "Cover Tina's eyes."
The darkness that sat beside her moved, and suddenly the little girl's face disappeared, covered by a hand. A hand that she recognized, for she had memorized its every curve and feature in the hours before this last race against death had begun. She had pondered it, looked at it, burned it into her cerebrum with indelible memory. It was the hand that had held hers during the preceding evening.
It was Scott's hand.
What's going on? she wondered. What's happening?
Then there was a sound.
She looked outside the car, through the glass, and gasped.
***
53.
***
Scott heard the gasp beside him, but did not move. Not until Kevin did, not until the boy moved, and then he followed the boy's gaze with his own, looking outside the car.
And saw unreality made real.
Two forms teetered on the edge of the porch of the nearby house. They swayed, locked in an embrace as close as that of any pair of lovers.
But they were not lovers. They were strangers, they were nightmares made flesh, they were impossibilities and unrealities that had found themselves somehow made real in this most impossible of nights.
The gray man.
Tina's father.
The two men clutched at each other. No, not at each other, Scott suddenly realized. They held the knives. Mr. Gray held the knife that he had been about to slash open Lynette's neck with, and Tina's father was gripping the haft of the knife he had been about to plunge into Scott's chest and heart.
Only instead of plunging it into Scott's heart, the knife had somehow ended up in the chest of Mr. Gray.
And instead of slashing through Lynette's throat, Tina's father now wore an extra smile, one that curved up and gushed blood in a gaping, gasping wound right below the man's chin.
Scott's breath caught in his throat. Somehow the gray man had been transported from his place in the car and had taken Scott's own place. But he had been moved in the middle of his deadly attack, and somehow that attack had still continued, ending in the imminent death of Tina's father rather than in the demise of Lynette.
And Tina's father's own attack had continued unabated by the change, the only difference being that it was Mr. Gray who was now gasping his last breath instead of Scott.
Scott's mouth opened wide. He couldn't understand -
(Kevin's eyes.)
- what was going on. He shook his head as though clearing it of water, of the thick membrane of unreality that seemed to be coating his mind, his body, his very existence.
Outside the car, the two men fell, still holding each other in a grim, grisly, gruesome embrace of death.
"What's going on?" asked Tina.
Scott had no answer for her.
Then there was another sound.
He looked in the other direction, in the direction of the noise, the opposite side of the car from the horrific tableau in the dust beside the house.
It was a tapping. A rapping. A knock-knock-knocking.
It was John Doe.
***
54.
***
The man was still rapping on Scott's window.
Only it's not my window, thought Scott. I should be outside, I should be dead in the dirt and Lynette should be dead in here. What the hell is happening?
John Doe knocked again. The old man looked unhappy for the first time that Scott had seen him.
"What's going on?" said someone beside him. Lynette. She sounded as shocked and strangely calm as he felt. Something was wrong, but more than that, something was right.
He looked at John Doe again. Looked the old man in the eyes.
Kevin's eyes.
"Hello, Kevin," said Scott.
John Doe smiled. He opened the door and gestured for Scott to get out. "You've figured it out, eh?" he said. "I'd forgotten."
Scott's world was spinning. How could this be Kevin? Kevin was sitting next to him in the car.
He shook his head again. Cobwebs, cobwebs everywhere, he thought, and not a drop to drink.
He felt like he'd blown a critical fuse somewhere. But he knew he had to go with Kevin - with this older version of the young boy beside him.
He carefully put Tina down on the seat beside Lynette and the little boy Kevin. "Untie her," he said softly. "Don't let her look out the window."
Lynette said nothing, merely nodded and began working on the knots that tied the young girl. She would have time now. They would all have time.
Scott got out of the car and the old Kevin closed it.
"What's happening?" he asked the old man.
"What do you think is happening?" responded Kevin, and there was a trace of the mirth in his eyes again, though it was still mostly masked by uncharacteristic seriousness.
"I think you have Kevin's eyes," said Scott. "I think Mr. Gray is dead. More than that, I don't know."
Kevin nodded. "I'm Kevin, all right, you have that much at least."
"From the future?"
Kevin shook his head. "No, from the other-now."
"Other-now?"
Kevin looked through the window at the occupants of the car. "So young," he sighed to himself. "Mother and me, we're so young. And Tina. So beautiful." He knuckled a tear away from his eye, then laughed at himself. "Look at me, getting all maudlin." He looked at Scott again. "I'm Kevin, but Kevin from a different dimension."
"String theory," said Scott.
Kevin nodded. "I'm from a place where time flows opposite to time here. I'm what's called a meridian: I live in a timeflow that perfectly overlaps the timeflow of my other-dimensional counterpart," he said, nodding at the boy in the car.
"Overlaps?"
"On the day Kevin is born here, that's the day I die. On the day he dies, I will be born. Exact overlaps of the same experiences, only moving in a different direction. As your universe cools and grows dim in its final days, ours will be birthing new planets in exactly the same sequence as yours has done."
"But how -" began Scott. He closed his mouth with an almost audible snap. How could Kevin grow up to be a man like this? How could the autistic boy speak so fluidly and fluently?
"How come I'm not autistic?" asked Kevin. Scott nodded. Kevin pointed into the car. "That's why Tina was so important," he said. "That's why you had to save her. Because she grows up to cure autism. She saves me."
Scott felt anger stir in his breast. "She saves you? Are you saying that all of this - my wife, my son dying, Lynette's husband being killed - all that was so that we could get you and Tina together and cure your autism?"
Kevin shook his head. "No. If that were all there was to it, I would never have meddled. Hell, I wouldn't have b
een able to meddle." He smiled again. "I'm a bit more than just an autistic kid all growed up. I was born with something of an unusual talent."
"What?" said Scott. He felt anger growing and growling within him. He knew that Kevin was a good kid, knew that he'd be willing to do almost anything for him. But only almost anything. And losing his wife to make the man's life a bit more romantic was definitely beyond the "almost."
"I'll show you," said Kevin.
He grabbed Scott's hand. He winked.
And the world, once again, disappeared.
***
55.
***
The worlds fly by. They are color and sound and fury and love.
In one of them, Scott is paralyzed, growing old and alone.
In another, he sees himself working as a garbage man. He has no family. He is alone and comes home every night and drinks until he sleeps.
In another, there is nothing of him. He is gone.
World after world, vision after vision.
In another world, the people move backwards. They are as ghosts, people moving in strange, jerky movements as they run in reverse, as they speak in reverse, as they eat and drink and copulate and love and hate - all in reverse.
"My world," says Kevin. The old man. He does something, and the worlds stop flying by. "An exact duplicate of yours, but with one difference: the timeflow. I'm moving forward according to my timeflow, but that means I'm moving backward according to your perceptions. So every time I come to you, you perceive an earlier version of me." He smiles, jolly again. "That's why I get prettier and dumber each time."
"What about Mr. Gray?"
Kevin sobers. "Mr. Gray was an accident. I was trying to save you, Scott. You're critically important, and you had to live."
Again, Scott grows angry. "I had to live? What about my family, you sonofabitch?"
Kevin shakes his head. "There was no universe where your family survives, Scott. They die no matter what. And it's always a horrible, painful death. If I had saved them in the alley, they would have gone on to die of wasting diseases only a few years later. Same with Tina's father. There's not a single universe where he makes it past this night in his timeflow. He either dies by killing himself after killing you and Tina, or I save you and Tina by making you and Mr. Gray switch places at the instant he was also about to kill my mother."
Scott tries to understand the words that John Doe - that Kevin, the other-Kevin - is saying. He shakes his head. "But...couldn't you do your time travel thing and find some way to save all of us?"
Kevin chuckles, though the sound is devoid of happiness. It is the chuckle of a man who has had to make too many harsh decisions for one lifetime. "I don't travel through time. I travel through the dimensions of space and matter. Time doesn't alter its flow. I couldn't just zap ahead and find a way to save you...I had to follow time's normal movements until a moment when I could move to save you by simply changing the positions of certain material objects in your universe."
"You mean switching me and Mr. Gray."
Kevin nods. He puts a hand into his pocket and withdraws something. Two very old, faded, red foam rubber balls. "These were some of the first things I ever moved as a child, discovering my talents. The first thing was a bullet, which I reached out and grabbed while still in the womb. Moving people is harder, but still doable."
"And what about Mr. Gray?" asks Scott, returning to his original question. "How was he able to do what he did...disappear and reappear? And what about his aging?"
Kevin frowns. Another world winks by as he does so. In this world, Scott is a quadriplegic. Shot in the chest and arm. History seeks to reassert itself. "Mr. Gray was an accident," says Kevin. "His name's Adrian, actually. He was a hitman, as you've figured out already. But I tried - will try, as far as I perceive it - to save you." Kevin grimaces again. "Something will go wrong. Apparently I die, and Adrian - Mr. Gray - will be pulled into my timeflow. He'll be catapulted to the moment of my birth, and exist backward for sixty two years."
Scott feels confusion welling inside, replacing the anger he felt before. "But, if Mr. Gray is sent to your time, then why is there a Mr. Gray here and now?"
Kevin chuckles again. "Plays with the mind, don't it. Remember: my dimension is the same as yours, only in reverse. So there's a Mr. Gray there as well. Who is catapulted to your dimension at the time of your Kevin's death. He resides here, living backwards in time, for sixty-two years living - if you can call it that - as a ghost. Existing, aging, but unable to touch anything."
"That's why he grows younger and younger."
Kevin nods. "And why his wounds disappear. Because to him, they haven't happened."
"But if he can't touch anything, how did he try to kill us?"
"Remember how earlier he would just appear? Then as time moved on for you he grew younger and more powerful?" Scott nods. "Best I can figure is that he grows in power when he's close to the nexus himself, especially when near to Kevin. So he gears up for a huge attack - his first, which you perceive as what happened tonight. Then, after tonight, he's blown his power, and has less and less ability. He can appear, but can't remain solid. He can write a note, but can't interact with you. He can knock over a glass of water, but can't touch Lynette's husband. Weaker and weaker, until he finally fizzles out and disappears forever."
"But he's dead now. How can that be undone?"
"He's not dead. He survives this night. Just like he survived the car crash, the board across the face, all the other things. Something about being catapulted through the dimensions has changed him. But he gets weaker and weaker after this. So what you perceived as his first cautious attacks were really his last gasps, his final attempts at destroying you, me, and my mother. He's a meridian, too. Just that he's an artificial one. By his actions and interventions over the years, he's made a loop of events, a sort of nowhere that he can exist in. It only overlaps you for a few years, and that's when he tries to kill you as something like a ghost. Other than that, Mr. Gray doesn't exist anymore."
Scott feels his head furrow in confusion. "Don't think of it too hard," says Kevin. "It's confusing as hell, and I barely understand it myself."
"It all comes down to that, doesn't it," says Scott. "You. What's your role in all of this?"
Kevin laughs quietly. "I'm the man who figures out how to travel between dimensions. It happens about twenty-five years from now, as you perceive things. Tina solves the problem of my autism, and it turns that autistics in our two worlds are special."
"Special how?"
"We perceive more than we should. It's why we're autistic. We withdraw because of too much information. We live in a constant state of bombardment."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that autistics perceive more than their own dimension. They perceive all of them. It scares the hell out of them, so by the time they're about three years old they have to withdraw from reality...or go nuts."
Scott snaps his fingers. "Lynette told me when Kevin made the magic trick go wrong, all the autistics got angry, started screaming."
Kevin nods. He looks at the ratty foam balls in his hand. "I reached across a small hole in the dimensions to take these, and the other kids, well, they sensed something wrong had just happened. Made them quite upset."
"Can you still perceive the dimensions?" says Scott.
Kevin nods. "After Tina brings me out of my autism, it turns out I've been figuring out a few things. First thing I do is disappear. Go on a bit of a trip between some of the alternate dimensions."
"So that's why you're so important? Because you can do that?"
"Because I'm the only one that can do it," says Kevin, nodding. "Other autistics can sense or even see the other dimensions, but I'm the only one who can move between them. No one else, just me."
Scott shakes his head, thinking of the other-Kevins, the ones he and Lynette have seen overlapping their Kevin, the ones who have delivered important messages in this long night. He opens his mouth to ask ab
out them, but before he speaks Kevin does. "You want to know about the other versions of me?"
Scott nods. "If you are the only one who can travel the dimensions, how come they appeared to us?"
"They weren't doing that. I was. Or rather, your Kevin was. Using his power to bring across other versions of himself, versions who had seen things in the other dimensions that they - not being autistic in their timeflows - could tell you about. So they could lead Lynette to save you, could tell you Mr. Gray was coming. The nexus between worlds is very thin around Kevin, so it's possible for things to be communicated like that. Even," he adds, laughing a bit, "a bit of my karate knowledge goes through to Kevin on occasion."
Scott is silent, thinking about the perfect kicks that Kevin has placed from time to time. His mind is reeling. "All so...what?" asks Scott. "Why all the work, the suffering? Just so you can survive? Is that why my wife and child had to die? Just so I could be in the right place and time to protect you?"
Kevin shakes his head. "I've told you. They die no matter what. All that I did - will do? - was alter things so that you survive, and can protect me. And believe it or not, that's a pretty important item. Not just because I'm rather attached to living, but because it turns out that it's critical that I survive. The world is in pretty bad shape in fifty years or so, and the only thing that keeps it from completely melting down is my ability to bring back certain things - technologies, mostly - from other dimensions that help us to survive. The survival of the entire world in my dimension - and in yours - literally depends on my being alive, and being cured of autism, and being able to travel the dimensions."
Scott begins to weep. It is more than he can stand. His family is gone, and will never be back. And perhaps they had died for a good cause, perhaps they had gone so that billions could live, but still....
"I hate you, Kevin," he says.
Kevin reaches out and touches him lightly on the shoulder. "I know. But you won't forever. Not even for very long, in fact."
The Meridians Page 30
