The Meridians(31)

She put a hand in front of her and sightlessly began feeling for the toddler bed that Kevin lay in. She felt it with her shins first, a good sign since a part of her fully expected to feel the rumpled fabric of the gray man's suit with her fingertips before she ever found the bed.

But no, the gray man apparently was not there. Normally, this would have comforted Lynette immensely. Now, however, it somehow only increased her sense of dread. If not him, what? What other scourge had this unjust creature called God chosen to castigate her with? What else could happen?

She kept questing sightlessly as a queen termite, feeling with her fingers for something, anything, that would give a clue as to what the sound was.

Finally, she found it. She felt the thing that was making the noise, and her stomach clenched into a tight knot within her. The feeling of needing to urinate that had seized her before was now so strong as to be almost impossible to withstand. But she had to, she could not afford to leave this room. Not until she had reached the bottom of this mystery whose surface she had just scratched at.

The noise was coming from Kevin. At first she thought it was just a random jumbling of sounds, the nonsense burbling and babbling that any normal two year old might engage in. But as she listened, she became aware that the sounds were not random. They were precise, though delivered through the soft palate and undeveloped tongue of a young child.

"Witten was white, witten was white, witten was white," he said. The boy who had previously said only one word - "Gray," the word he had spoken as though in a warning of the imminent appearance of the man who would signal the end of Robbie's life - was now sporting a veritable cornucopia of vocabulary words.

"Witten was white, witten was white, witten was white...."

The words repeated over and over, and now that she was acclimating to the complete darkness of the room, her other senses were sharpening to compensate for the loss of her sight and she grew more and more certain that the strange words were, in fact, emanating from her son. She could feel his breath as he exhaled the words, could hear him inhale as he prepared to repeat each phrase in the free-verse poem of his sleep.

"Witten was white, witten was white, witten was white...."

Then the words cut off. Suddenly and without explanation, they stopped.

The silence stretched out forever, an interminable length of quiet that seemed to go on and on and on.

Then Kevin spoke again. And this time the tremulous chills that gripped her turned to bright light in her breast as Kevin said a new word, the fifth word of his life.

"Mommy," he said, and Lynette felt a pride and love in her heart that almost managed to push aside the crippling grief that she had been struggling against since Robbie's death.

In the next moment, however, her feelings spiraled downward again, and the tremors that shook her were no longer the galvanizing sense of movement that had propelled her to this instant, nor were they the loving quivers of a mother whose pride for her son knows no end. This time, they were the shivers of fear, pure and white as icicles in her heart.

Kevin sat up. She felt rather than saw the movement, but in her mind the vision was as clear as if she had witnessed it in broad daylight. He sat, and she could imagine him staring at her, silent eyes staring blindly in the blackness, yet with a gaze that still somehow found its way to her face.

"Mommy," he whispered again, then, awake this time, and in full sense of what faculties he possessed, he whispered urgently, "Witten was white."





***





15.

***

Scott was very tired.

He had been driving for almost twelve hours, and still had several hours to go before reaching his new home in Meridian, Idaho. But it wasn't just the drive. The night before he packed all his things in the moving van and began the long haul toward his home town, he didn't sleep a wink. Or rather, he slept, but so fitfully that no real rest was to be had. Just quick dozes punctuated by dreams.

Nightmares.

In his dreams, Scott kept seeing the old Mr. Gray, calling to him. Only no, it wasn't him that Mr. Gray was calling, it was someone else. Someone named Kevin.

Kevin, the same name that had been written on the strange note that Scott had seen in his apartment after returning home from the hospital. "I'm still here, and I'm coming for you and Kevin."

Just as he had upon finding the note, Scott wondered who this Kevin was, and what his tie to the strange Mr. Gray could be, not to mention what his tie to Scott himself might show itself to be.

"You've hidden from me for long enough," said Mr. Gray in the dream.

And Scott spoke back. But it wasn't his voice, it was another voice, a voice that was a half-whisper, making it impossible to guess if the speaker was old or young, man or woman. All that was sure was that it was not his own voice.

"I haven't been hiding, Adrian," said the voice.

"Don't lie to me, boy," said Mr. Gray. His face contorted in anger as he said it, those aged, yellowing teeth of his showing in a snarl.

"I've never lied to you," replied the other voice - Kevin?

And then the dream ended, each time the same, with Mr. Gray pulling out a switchblade and walking toward Scott/Kevin with murder in his eyes. Each time, Scott awoke with sweat drenching his body and the bare mattress upon which he was sleeping during his last night in the apartment he had shared with Amy and Chad a million years ago in a time and place he still believed was best described as "once upon a time."