The Meridians(38)

So she did not look. She ran. She ran through the apartment complex, screaming with all her might as she tore down the third floor corridor that led to her and Kevin's apartment.

Breaching all Los Angeles rules of conduct, one of the neighbors actually opened his door and stuck his head out, clearly wondering what was going on, though whether he was looking because he wanted to help or because he was intent on finding the source of the ruckus so that he could tell he/she/it off was not nearly so clear.

"Help!" shrieked Lynette. But here the neighbor - a short, middle-aged man with thinning hair and a sense of compassion that was even thinner - comported more fully with the rules of neighborly living in the city of angels: he slammed the door as quickly as possible, leaving Lynette once again alone with a madman.

She continued running, heading as quickly as she could to the elevator, aware that the man had to be only a few paces behind her, aware that there was no way she would be able to call for the elevator, board it, and get away before he was on her, gutting both her and Kevin like so many bony fish. But then she slammed into the elevator door, jamming the call button so hard she thought she might have broken her thumb, and looked back to see that she had overestimated her pursuer's speed. He was close, but not nearly as close as her panic-driven mind had imagined.

The elevator dinged. Dinged again. Going down.

"No you won't, bitch!" screamed the man.

The door opened.

He wielded the knife again, passing it from hand to hand as he ran toward them.

She got into the elevator.

He was going to get them. He was going to kill them.

She pressed the button for the first floor, then hit the "close door" button, breaking her resolve never to pray again, asking God to please help her and Kevin - or just Kevin, to just help her son. The gray man was almost on them.

The door began to slide shut.

And before it could, his arm jammed into the diminishing opening, brightly shining knife jabbing toward them in a blur of gleaming menace.

The elevator was one of the type that was equipped both with an electric eye rig in the door and a pressure plate that would cause the door to slide back open if anything either got in the range of the electric eye or so much as brushed against the pressure plate. Lynette hurried to the back of the elevator, but knew that she and her son were doomed. The second the elevator sensed the presence of the gray man's arm, it would swing open wide, and there would be no further place for them to run.

She had run straight into a carpeted coffin, one just big enough for her and her son to die in.

The knife slashed in through the opening.

The door swung toward the gray man's arm.

"Don't look, sweetie," she whispered to Kevin, though the words must have been for her more than for him, since he had had his eyes clenched tightly shut for the entire time following his life-saving kick to the gray man's hand. "Don't look, don't look."

The door touched the gray man's arm...and kept swinging shut.

"No!" screamed the angry man from the other side of the closing door. "No, no, no, I have to do this!" Then, to Lynette's shock and horror, she watched as the elevator door completed its sliding movement, cutting them off from the gray man, but leaving his arm waving inside the compartment with them. It appeared as though the limb had been severed at the shoulder, and Lynette was reminded of any of a number of cheesy ghost stories from her youth, before CGI effects became the standard, and directors had to rely on hand-spliced reels of film to provide the effect of a ghost passing through a door or other solid object.

Still, ghost or not, the knife in the monster's still-moving hand still seemed real enough, and Lynette was careful to keep herself and Kevin well away from the waving implement of death, pressing herself into the back of the elevator.

With a click and a whir, the elevator began descending. The hand did not, passing through the ceiling of the elevator and disappearing as the elevator dropped below the level where the gray man had been - and apparently still was - standing. Lynette could still hear him, screaming obscenities, as they fell away from his rabid attack.

Then the elevator hitched to a stop, and the doors opened...to reveal the gray man, standing impossibly before them. He was panting as though he had run down stairs at great speeds to reach them, but Lynette knew that such was impossible: the nearest stairs to the elevator were at the opposite end of the apartment hall, and there was no way he could have found the stairs, run to them, run down them, then run back up the first floor corridor to reach the elevator before it reached its present location.

Still, impossible or not, there he was, smiling as before, holding the knife as before.

"You're lucky I ran out of bullets the last time, bitch," he said.

Lynette's mind reeled. Last time? What last time? When Robbie had died there had been no bullets, only spilled water and blood on the floor. Then all thoughts were ejected from her mind as the gray man once again slashed with his weapon, and this time Lynette knew there would be no salvation, only death in this lonely hallway on the first floor of an apartment complex in Los Angeles.

"Please," she whispered, and for some reason the gray man halted his slicing motion mid-arc. She wondered why he would do such a thing, and then realized the reason: he was enjoying this moment. The bastard was enjoying her debasement as she begged for her life and - more important - for the life of her son. "Please, we've never done anything to you, please let us go. Let my son go, at least."