The Meridians(33)

Scott returned his gaze to the black demon-dog beside him, preferring its unholy presence to the reminders of his past failures.

Only the dog was gone.

Mr. Gray was now sitting there. He smiled, and had the same gnarled teeth as the dog had possessed, the same rotten tongue and acrid breath the hellhound had brought into the truck with it.

"You'd be better off not going to Meridian," said Mr. Gray. Not the Mr. Gray from the alley and the shootout, this was again the old Mr. Gray that had plagued Scott since that date. The Mr. Gray of the ruined face and aged body. Only he didn't seem quite so old this time, and his voice was a shade stronger than it had been, as though the passing of time was for him a healing balm that would lend him greater strength and youth.

"Eat shit," said Scott. Hardly eloquent, but it was the nearest thing he could think of that conveyed his depth of disgust at the man's presence.

"Now, now," said Mr. Gray. "I've come here peacefully, with your best intentions at heart, my boy."

Scott repeated his invitation that Mr. Gray partake of his own bowel movements, then said nothing.

"Fine," said Mr. Gray, and suddenly he was in the form of a dog again, the black canine dark and massive in the passenger seat, staring at Scott with eyes that were as gray as slate, and twice as brittle. "Have it your way, little man, little boy."

And with a bark, the dog threw itself at Scott. Scott threw his arms up to ward off the attack, and felt the truck slide and skid below him as his hands left the wheel.

But the expected attack never came. Scott looked beside him.

Nothing. The cab was empty, save only a few packing boxes with articles he had deemed too fragile to travel in the back with the rest of his possessions.

Dreaming, he thought again. I was dreaming.

He looked forward quickly as he realized he must have been asleep on the road, and wondered if he was about to find himself going over the edge of a cliff or veering into the lane of an oncoming semi.

Neither was the case. He was still firmly on his side of the road, his position as centered as it could have been under the best circumstances. But that did not mean that he was out of danger.

Because Mr. Gray was standing in the road right in front of him.

Scott had no time to crank the wheel to the side, only a split-second in which to decide whether or not to even try to brake.

Bastard killed my family, he thought, and instead of stamping on the brake his foot came heavily down on the accelerator.

Mr. Gray's face, illuminated in the bright lights of the oncoming truck, smiled. Actually, he leered, as though he could see into the darkest portions of Scott's heart...and liked what he saw.

"No!" Scott screamed, and in that single word he packed all the longing and despair that he had felt these long months and years since he had lost his family, his job, his life. "No!" he shrieked again, and his foot was an anvil resting on the accelerator, an immovable object pressing the van to its top speed limit.

"Been seeing you," said the old gray man.

And in the instant before Scott's truck plowed into him, in the fraction of a second before which he should have been converted to nothing more than a smear across Scott's windshield, he once again did what he had done on every encounter before.

The gray man smiled, and disappeared.

Scott was alone, not even the black dogs on the side of the road deigning to accompany him in his travels any more.

Meridian, he thought. The middle, the center, the halfway point. And with the thoughts he shuddered. Because he could not bear the thought of the events of the past months and years continuing on for months and years in the future. He prayed - no, hoped; prayer was a pastime he no longer engaged in - that the name of his destination was not a harbinger of things to come. He did not know what was going on, whether he was going mad or instead suffering from some other malady, at once darker and far harder to explain than mere insanity, or whether perhaps he had in fact died on the day that Mr. Gray had put a gun to his forehead and pulled the trigger.

Perhaps that's it, he thought. Maybe I'm in Hell.

The thought had a certain appeal, mostly because certainly if Hell existed, its very definition would be to cut him off from the people and things he loved most in the world.

But no. Hell had no more meaning to Scott now than did Heaven. There was only madness, and the interminable sanity of what was left of his life.

Perhaps he was going mad.

If he was lucky.

But until then, he kept the truck in gear, and sped down the dark road toward the small town of Meridian. The small town that marked the center of things past and things to come, the middle of all things that had and would happen, the confluence of past and future in a permanent present.

Scott shuddered. The present was something he dreaded. Only in the past could he find solace from the wounds he had suffered. Only in the past could he be with his family again.

Not in the present. Not in Meridian.

But he had nowhere else to go, so he continued on the long stretch of road, making good time, and seeing no more black dogs, no more Mr. Gray. And if he did see the beasts again, he intended to pull out the gun he had kept after leaving the LAPD from its place in the moving truck's glove compartment, to put it under his chin, and to pull the trigger.

And Hell be damned.





***





16.