The Meridians(41)

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

But in spite of the tone of her son's voice, Lynette once more felt herself clench from the inside out, reacting to the words as she might expect to react to an eviction notice or to bad news. She did not understand what her son was saying, anymore than she had understood it on the first night that he spoke it, but she knew instinctively that it signaled some great change, and that not all of the change would be good.

"Witten was white, witten was -"

"Stop saying that!" screamed the gray man. And now his voice, too, was different. No longer the contained tones of a tightly-wound madman, nor the dulcimer tones of one of Satan's minions, sweetly calling people to their doom. The voice was fragmented as the color scheme he now inhabited, now sounding like the voice of a man, now like that of a woman, now like that of a child, now like that of a death-bed geriatric. "Stop saying that! Stop saying that and die!"

He reached forward with the blade he still held, and as he did the storm around them peaked in force, feeling as though it must at any moment pick them up bodily and slam then against the side of the elevator. But somehow Lynette stayed rooted to the spot, managed to hold her ground in the face of the onrushing tempest.

The blade passed through them with no more effect than it had previously.

The gray man screamed, and then became so bright that Lynette did shield her eyes, prying one hand away from her death-grip on Kevin long enough to cover her eyes. The scream of the gray man elongated, stretching out into eternity, becoming not a human voice but a bell-like tone that slowly, slowly lowered in volume until it was impossible to tell where the sound left off and the silence that followed it began.

Lynette opened her eyes.

The gray man was gone.

The storm was over.

For now.





***





19.

***

Scott hated first period.

Every teacher at Meridian High School had at least one down period - an hour when they were supposed to prepare lesson plans, go over grades, and do the sundry other tasks necessary to prepare for their days. First period was Scott's down period, but he never used it to prepare lesson plans, or for much of anything else. For some reason, he usually spent it in his "office" - not much more than a cubby in the room that housed all the physical education supplies - staring at a wall.

Surprisingly, Scott had managed to survive the eight years since the deaths of Chad and Amy. Had even, to some eyes, managed to thrive. He had come to Meridian and proved himself to be a surprisingly effective P.E. teacher, the kind of teacher that the students all hoped they got. Considering that the other P.E. teacher was an elderly man who seemed determined to shout the students in his classes to death, this may not have been much of a compliment, but even Scott knew that he was more than a comparatively good teacher. He was an excellent educator, viewed on his own and not merely when standing next to the crotchety old Mr. Randall.

Part of the reason for his excellence was that he was simply available. Where other teachers invariably tried to finish up their school days so that they could get home to families or friends or whatever else "normal" people did, Scott had no such aspirations. Indeed, he dreaded going home, since it meant he would be going to an empty house full of nothing but the sounds of silence and hopelessness that clung to him like phantoms wherever he went. The only thing that he had found that could exorcise those demons was to be helping his students. And even then, the exorcism was only temporary - the demons of despair came back to plague him at every opportunity.

Which was why Scott hated first period. His free period was the only time he was really and truly alone at the school. The other periods were full of the students and the successes and failures that they - like all teenagers - wore on their sleeves for all to see. They were full of games and sweat and work and all manner of things that could keep his mind off the one thing it inevitably strayed to whenever given half a chance: the past.

But not first period. No, in that period the students were all in school, all busy with their regular classes, so he was usually alone. Even Mr. Randall was off limits, since the other P.E. teacher did use the time to prepare for the day ahead, and had made it clear very early on that he sorely resented any intrusions into the precious time he had each morning from seven thirty to eight twenty-five a.m.

So Scott sat in his office, and sat alone, and though he usually tried to busy himself with something - some new text on PhysEd training, or reading up on the newest teaching methodologies, or simply working on inputting students' grades into the school's computer records - he almost always ended up sitting motionless, silent, staring at the wall ahead of him without actually seeing it. He would sit, and stare, and think.

He would think of his son, so happy and free.

He would think of his wife, so bright and beautiful.

He would think of the family he had had, and the family he had lost.

Often, sitting there in the dim half-light of the poorly lit office, he would hear sounds. The pleasant tinkling of his son's laughter, as though even in death he were still enjoying his last birthday presents. The throaty whisper of his wife as she lay beside him, curled up in his arms after they made love. The loud, brassy sound of the family together at the dinner table.

They were phantom sounds, existing only in his mind, and though Scott knew that after eight years to still be hearing the memories of his family so vividly was not a good sign, still he reveled in them. He could not help but wish that the memories were real, and so when they came he allowed them to consume him entirely.