The Meridians(37)
"Hello, Kevin," said the old gray man. "Happy birthday."
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17.
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It was words. Just words. No blade materialized, no gun was wielded. Yet the mere sound of those words was enough to galvanize Lynette to action.
The instant the gray man said those words, the second that he wished Kevin a happy birthday, Lynette was already in motion. She leapt forward and swept her son off his chair, moving faster than she would have thought possible.
The movement seemed prescient, as the instant after she did so she felt a swish in the air and saw that the gray man had slammed something into the back of Kevin's chair, just about the height where the boy's neck would have been had he remained there.
It was a razor. Long and thin, its blade gleaming wickedly in the light of the living room, it had slammed into the back of the chair, embedding itself deeply.
The gray man cursed, his withered hands clearly jarred by the impact of his blade on the chair, and yanked the razor free.
His eyes sparked within the mask of scars that she had seen during the last visitation, years before at Robbie's death. Only now the scars were angrier, brighter. His face was still misshapen and broken, but again the wounds at the base of it seemed newer, as though somehow he was still recovering from them.
Kevin said nothing, but buried his head in her arms and hid from the world. It was his only defense from what was happening.
"I've waited sixty-two years for this moment, bitch," shouted the old gray man, words that made no sense to her and that she doubted would make sense to anyone other than the man saying them. "Sixty-two years! Do you understand how long a time that is when you're nothing but a ghost?"
Lynette did not understand what that would be like. Nor did she care to. All that she cared about in this moment was putting as much distance as possible between her and the fiend who had come into their life as he had five years before.
But no. He had not come into her life exactly the same as he had those years ago. Even in her panic, even as she turned and ran from the man while he was fumbling with the blade he had embedded in the chair, a part of her registered something odd: the old gray man no longer seemed quite so old. When he had appeared on the day of Robbie's death he had looked to be in his seventies or perhaps even eighties, but now the man looked younger, heartier. As though he had lost in age what the rest of the world had gained in the intervening time between his appearances.
But then observations ceased as she turned and ran from the man, rushing toward her front door as fast as she could.
The old man was faster. He grinned at her as he blocked the doorway, standing between her and Kevin and the freedom that they so desperately needed. He twirled his knife in his fingers, the silvery blade seeming to dance in his grasp as he flipped it around and around in a dizzying spectacle of expertise.
"Looks cool, doesn't it?" asked the gray man. He smiled even wider, though Lynette noted with distress that the smile did not reach his dark gray eyes, did not touch his cheeks. It was a smile bereft of warmth or human feeling, the smile of a hyena that has chanced upon big game brought low by infirmity.
The smile of a killer about to feast.
"I've been practicing with this thing for almost thirty years, you know, just waiting for this one single moment." Then the grin disappeared from his face completely, leaving behind only rage and madness as the killer lunged forward with his knife.
Lynette danced to the side, more fleet of foot than she had ever before been, her body seeming to amplify its own natural abilities and strengths as though it knew that not only her life, but Kevin's depended on its quick and decisive action. Still, though she moved quickly, the gray man moved faster still, and she felt the razor slice through her clothing and knick her on the side.
Wetness immediately saturated the waist of her pants, and she wondered how badly she had been cut, and how long she had until blood loss brought her down.
At the same time, a cruelly rational part of her pointed out that she was unlikely to bleed to death from such a minor wound since the gray man appeared intent on killing her quickly with his blade.
Then something happened that was almost as unexpected as the very appearance of the gray man in the first place. Kevin moved. He kicked out with his little foot, and with the precision of a karate expert he knocked the blade out of the gray man's hand.
The gray man cursed, holding the hand that Kevin had just kicked, and turned to scoop up the knife that had fallen to the floor some feet behind him.
It was all the opening Lynette needed. She ran like liquid lightning to the front of the apartment. Kevin had a tendency to wander, so she had installed a chain latch on the front door, and precious microseconds were lost during which she fumbled with the chain and then turned the deadlock below it.
"No!" screamed the old man behind her, his rage both beyond what she would have expected any human being capable of and at the same time strangely perfect due to the fact that whatever he was, she seriously doubted that the gray man was human.
Still clutching her son to her body so tightly she thought it likely that he would have bruises on his neck and back when - if - they got through this, she yanked open the front door. Heavy thuds behind told her that the gray man had regained his weapon and was giving chase. She dared not look back. Instinct told her that even the time spent in turning her head would be too much to give her pursuer. If she stopped to look, she would die.