The Meridians(19)

Scott ran to the front room, the area he thought he had heard the sound.

But again, there was no one there. Just him. Just him and....

Scott turned in shock. It hadn't been the sound of a shoe on the floor. It hadn't been anything as easily explained as that. Instead, Scott watched as a paper fluttered off the small writing desk where he wrote checks and paid his bills each month. The sound had been the movement of the paper.

Scott stared at the paper. How had it fallen? He was always very meticulous about his stationary, placing it in the exact center of the desk where it could be easily reached when necessary, but where it was out of the way whenever not needed. There was no way a page could have fallen from the pile of papers on the desk.

Scott looked at the nearest air conditioning vent. It was a good fifteen feet away. Besides, even if a breeze might have explained the movement of the paper at a different time, there was no fan or air conditioning or heater active right now. The air in the apartment was inert; stagnant.

Scott hobbled over to the paper where it sat on the floor. A strange foreboding gripped him, as though he knew in some portion of his mind what he was going to find, and dreaded the discovery.

He reached out, surprised to see that he was actually shaking, and took the paper by the corner, holding it as gingerly as he would a dangerous pit viper. The side that had been face up was blank, but Scott knew as he turned it over that he would see...something.

But he was wrong. There was only another side of white, empty paper looking at him.

So why were the hackles on the back of his neck standing on end? Why were his arms awash in gooseflesh?

Telling himself not to be foolish, chiding himself for falling prey to fear of something as mundane as a falling piece of paper, Scott moved to put the page back on the pile of similar stationary on his desk.

And froze.

Because the second page, the page under the one he was holding, had also moved. One moment before, it had been perfectly stacked on its companions, an exact rectangle of paper ready for use. Scott was sure of it. But now, the page that had been below the one Scott now held was slightly askew, as though someone had been fingering through the papers, looking for evidence. What kind of evidence could be found in a pile of empty paper, Scott did not know. But he drew his gun, feeling both silly and reassured by the action.

He pulled the paper aside.

And dropped his gun.

He backed up, moving as far from the papers on his desk as possible, moving in reverse until he was backed up against the wall opposite to the writing desk. His mouth was open in a round "O" of shock and terror.

The page below, the third page down in the pile, had writing on it.

"I'm still here" it read, in writing that was thick and awkward, as though it had been written by an epileptic in the midst of a seizure.

Scott scooped up his gun and moved as quickly as he could through the apartment once more, making sure that every window was sealed, every door locked. The short hairs on the back of his neck were still standing straight up, and he knew - he knew - that someone was in the apartment with him. Someone unseen, someone well-hidden.

But someone.

He moved back to the pad, intending to call the precinct and ask one of the two or three guys who weren't treating him like a pariah to come over and give him a second set of eyeballs. But when he returned to the writing desk, all thoughts of calling a friend fled from his mind.

Because there was more writing. More words on the piece of paper that still sat in the middle of his desk.

"I'm still here, and I'm coming for you and Kevin."

Scott swept the house one more time, but he found nothing. No more notes, no evidence that anyone other than him had ever been there.

Just a note. And he knew - knew somehow - that if he turned it into the department for testing, they would find no prints, no clues that might lead them to the invisible author of the short missive. It would be just one more reminder to those who had it in for him that Scott was not to be trusted; that his life and his career were over and might very well be more of a liability than they were worth.

So Scott balled the paper up and threw it in the trash. He went to bed that night and dreamed of phantom notes, and old men holding babies, and most of all he dreamt of a question:

Who is Kevin?





***





10.

***

They were a family.

Kevin Angel Randall had stayed in the hospital for nearly three months, enduring problem after problem, treatment after treatment, operation after operation to deal with the seemingly unending set of challenges he had to endure. It felt sometimes to Robbie as though some higher power had intentionally shoved up roadblock after roadblock to get in the way of Kevin's ability to live. After one problem came another. And after that problem came another. And after that problem came still more, until even Doctor Cody was forced to remark that he had never before heard of a child who had suffered so much in its fight for survival.

When he said that, Robbie remembered shivering, because he got the distinct impression that the doctor was leaving something out. Specifically, that he was leaving out the words "and lived." But then, on second thought, Robbie was actually glad in a way that Kevin had had such a rough road of it. Because surely things couldn't go any worse now. Surely things would look up. Surely things would go well.

That was why the first Christmas was so optimistic. Kevin was eight months old, and grappling with the motor control needed to stand. Robbie loved that his son was - against all apparent indicators and predictions - developing so well, but he also knew that he was going to miss some things. Like the Army Crawl.