The Meridians(40)

That in itself surprised her. She had thought after Robbie was taken that she no longer believed in God; that she no longer believed in a being that was so great and wonderful that it had created her family as though out of a dream; but at the same time so small and horrible that it had then ripped that same family to pieces as though in a nightmare. But here she was entertaining thoughts of angels. And not only that, she realized suddenly that in her greatest fear - in the moment when she thought she had lost her own angel, her Kevin - she had turned not to screaming obscenities, or to yelling for her mother as she had heard even the bravest people did in times of extreme stress, but to a simpler, calmer expression. She had begun repeating the Lord's Prayer.

Our Father, who art in Heaven...

The words rang through her and she realized with a start that she did still believe in the greatness of something beyond humanity, something that had been responsible for the birth of her species in all its misery and imperfection, yet was at its heart good and understanding and hopeful. Her faith, it seemed, had not been lost, but only misplaced for a time.

Then the thing that stood before her - surely no angel, or if he was an angel, then a dark angel, one that brought fear and hatred in lieu of good news and love - cursed vehemently. He gave voice to a slew of swear words so vile that she immediately covered Kevin's ears, as though they were somehow no longer in mortal peril, but were in danger of nothing no worse than picking up a bad habit or two.

"This isn't fair," said the old gray man who was no longer gray, and his voice was as strange and musical as his coloration, vibrations that belonged on a scale that was audible to her, but at the same time did not belong in her world. She did not know what she was witnessing, but did know intuitively that it was something mystical and otherworldly, something that no one else in all of history might have seen before. No angel, certainly, but perhaps something just as mysterious, just as strange and incomprehensible.

The gray/not-gray man cursed again.

Then the colors grew more intense, and suddenly began washing out. In a moment, Lynette found herself looking at what appeared to be a color negative of the gray man: a gray man in reverse, with the color wheel turned on its back and flipped around insanely.

The old man looked at her. And as though he had not just tried to kill her, as though they were trusted friends and confidants, he pleaded with her. "Help me," he said. "Please, help me. I can't go through another sixty years like this."

In spite of the man's cruel temperament and obviously evil nature, she suddenly could not help but feel a pang of pity for his plight. Whether this was a product of her newly reborn faith or merely a human response to another being in pain - and perhaps they were one and the same - she could not tell for certain. She only knew that she had the insane urge to comfort him in that moment.

The urge passed as he unleashed another spate of curse words that made the previous stream of invectives seem positively tame in comparison. He was insane, she knew. He had to be. And his next words confirmed it, and as well as confirming the diagnosis they drained whatever warmth she had from her heart, replacing it with a steely strength that she knew would lend her the vigor needed to stand against this otherworldly being in whatever form he might appear, be it an angel of death and who dealt in shining razor blades, or an angel of brightness and light who begged for her son's death.

"Please," he said, reaching out a rainbow-colored hand to her. "Please. I just need to kill him. I just need to kill your boy." The man began to cry, golden tears coursing down his cheeks and dripping from his chin.

The tears disappeared before they touched the ground, and again Lynette was reminded of biblical stories about angels whose feet did not rest upon the earth, as though their incorruption could not tolerate the corruption of a fallen planet.

But this was no angel, she reminded herself. This was a devil incarnate. A being that for some reason had chosen to fixate its destructive powers on her family in general and her son in particular.

"Just kill him," whispered the gray man. "Just kill him, please."

Then the gale that had appeared in Lynette's apartment reappeared in the confines of the elevator and the corridor outside it. Wind whipped through the space, tousling her and Kevin's hair and intertwining them into a single hydra-like mass. The brightness of the being before her continued to grow, then grew still further until it was almost impossible to look at.

Lynette looked down at Kevin, and saw to her startlement that he no longer had his head buried in her chest. In fact, he was staring single-mindedly at the gray man, at the golden pillar of light and death that stood before them. Small Kevin, who could not even look a stranger in the eye at the supermarket, was staring directly at the nightmare that had tried to kill him. He was whispering something, though Lynette had to strain to hear it in the sound of the wind that pervaded the atmosphere all around them. And when she did, her heart again grew cold as she was reminded of a night some five years and more before. The words threw her back to the days immediately after Robbie's death, to those dark stretches of day and night that seemed as though they would never end. To a night when she found her baby boy sitting in bed, and speaking a breathy fragment of a sentence, a strange cipher of thought.

"Witten was white," breathed Kevin. "Witten was white, witten was white, witten was white."

Only this time, he was saying it in a different tone of voice. Whereas when he had spoken the words in his sleep he had seemed almost drugged, or perhaps even possessed by some otherworldly force that had come in and inhabited his body for a time but had barely the strength to speak through him, the voice that was now coming from her son was stronger than any she had ever heard. He was doing something more than merely speaking; he was making a declaration. As though he were the town herald in medieval times, he was speaking words that were meant to reveal and amaze, to awe and inspire.