The Meridians(28)

He closed his eyes. Waited.

Waited.

Nothing happened.

"Shit," said the visitor under his breath. Then, as though speaking to himself, the gray man's voice said, "Do I kill you or him? You or Kevin?" He giggled, a high-pitched, hysterical giggle, and Scott felt a chill go through him. Kevin. The name from the note he had found in his home soon after returning home from the hospital.

"Too tired to re-form like this," continued Mr. Gray. "How can I do it?" Another laugh, then: "Water. Water on the floor. That's what'll do it. That's what I see."

And suddenly the breath was gone from Scott's cheek. The rancid smell that had accompanied the gray man dissipated.

He opened his eyes.

The gray man...was gone.





***





13.

***

The screaming continued until Lynette and Robbie took Kevin from the party. Until they did that, all the autistic children in the birthday crowd continued screaming at Kevin as though he were a warlock that they were going to stone. It was only when Robbie and Lynette took their son to the kitchen of Doris' house that the screaming subsided, like a wave leaving the beach with the tide.

There was a window that provided a view into the backyard, and Robbie watched the children as Lynette dealt with Kevin. Kevin had not seemed to be aware of the tumult all around him, but had pitched an absolute fit when they tried to take him inside. It was only after they grabbed all his cars - and the two balls that had appeared as if by magic - that he consented to move from his space on the lawn into the house.

The other autistic children were milling around aimlessly, as though their reasons and purposes in life had suddenly been stolen. It creeped Robbie out how fully and completely they had oriented on his child, acting almost as though they were puppets whose limbs and vocal cords were all tied to the same strings, moving as one without any visible or aural difference in the timing of their pointing and their screams.

"It's okay, Kevin, it's okay," Lynette was whispering beside him, though Robbie felt it was more likely she was saying the words for her own benefit than for Kevin's. The young boy was playing on the floor, cherubic face twisted in concentration as he lined up his cars, then put the two balls at the end of the line, then mixed them up, then replaced them in their earlier positions.

"Kevin, honey," said Lynette. "What happened out there?"

Robbie wanted to point out that their son had never spoken a word at all, let alone discussed the intricacies of autistic group behavior, but before he could a miracle happened.

Kevin spoke.

"Gray," he said.

Robbie looked at Lynette with a look that, if it appeared anything like hers, included widened eyes and a mouth open wide enough that it was in danger of becoming the center of a newly formed black hole.

"Did you hear that?" she asked. Then before she waited for his reply, she knelt down and touched Kevin lightly on the arm. "Honey," she said, removing her hand when Kevin started to shy away from her, "what did you say?"

Kevin said nothing. He said nothing for long enough that Robbie started to wonder if he had really heard what he had heard. Lynette looked at him again. "Did you hear that?" she repeated.

"Gray," Robbie said, his head starting to throb for some reason. "He said 'gray.'"

"What does that mean?" asked Lynette.

Robbie shook his head. "How should I know?" he said. He said it in a sharper tone than he intended, but he was suddenly very tired. Tired of the difficulties entailed with being the parent of a special needs child, tired of being a parent in general, and most of all tired of being expected to have answers to questions he didn't understand. It was all too much in that instant, too much work, too much loss, too much heartbreak. But then the moment passed. He suddenly felt a headache coming on, deep in his sinuses, like the mother of all hay fever attacks coming on in an instant.

And Lynette screamed.

Robbie turned in time to see the man bending down over Kevin.

"Hello, little one," said the man. He was very old, and wearing a gray outfit, a suit that had once no doubt been quite costly but had been reduced in value by the muck and blood that spattered it and by the ruined shoulder that it sported. "Hello."

The man's face was a latticework of old scars and ruined bones.

The man reached out a hand and, almost tenderly, touched Kevin's head.

Robbie was reeling inside, completely incapable of understanding what was going on. Where had the old man come from? What was he doing there?

Lynette apparently was not gripped by any of the quasi-paralysis that afflicted Robbie, for she screamed once, loudly, "Kevin!" and darted toward her son.

"Kevin?" said the man. He sounded amused. "Little Kevin," he repeated, even as Lynette moved toward him with the speed of a cheetah.

Kevin did nothing, just continued playing with his cars and his two new balls in his usual stolid, focused manner.

Lynette knelt down to scoop her son off the floor, and Robbie finally broke his paralysis. He, too, moved toward his son and wife.

Before he could do more than take a half-step, however, the old man moved. He furrowed his brow in concentration, and said a few words that Robbie did not understand.

"I can't kill the boy, but I can hurt him. I can hurt him forever."