The Meridians(82)

***

Lynette heard the voice, and was positive that it signaled the end; that it was the last voice she would ever hear, and trembled.

"I feel you, Kevin," said Mr. Gray.

The voice was somewhat muffled, but still clear enough to make out fairly easily. "Coming for you, Kevin," said the man - the monster - who was after her and her family.

She almost panicked and ran, even though that would have been certain disaster, when she heard the voice. A part of her whispered that the gray man was there, was right in the room with her, and that part of her was so powerful, so insidious and persuasive, that she believed it almost to the point of despair.

We're going to die, whispered that horrible, horrified part of her. Kevin and I are going to die here, together, cowering in the dark like frightened mice while a gray cat prowls the night for us.

Then she felt Scott's hand on her shoulder. The touch had an immediately calming effect. Not that she had any mistaken beliefs about Scott's ability to keep them safe. Though kind and special in many ways, he was still just a man, he could still bleed and be killed like any man. But his touch still kept her from running, from bolting like a rabbit from its warren when a fox prowled the darkness.

"He's not here," whispered Scott, guessing her thoughts and fears. "The voice is coming through the shared vents," he added, pointing to a nearby ceiling vent. Sure enough, as soon as he pointed it out, she could orient herself aurally and could instantly tell that the sounds of the gray man were, in fact, issuing from the vent.

"I can feel you, Kevin. I can feel the nexus...." The old man in the office next to theirs giggled suddenly, and the madness that sought them was audible in that crackling laughter. "I'm so close to home," whispered Mr. Gray. "So close to home."

Then there was the sound of things being thrown violently about the next room, as though the man in the office nearby was having a breakdown of some kind, his grip on reality so tenuous that he had to seek destruction in order to assure himself that the world existed. She shuddered, and tensed again in spite of herself.

"No," whispered Scott, again seeming to sense her thoughts. "We've got to wait him out. If we leave, we're in the middle of the sports fields, and there's nowhere to hide for a hundred yards. If he came out right then, we'd be spotted for sure."

"So we just have to wait here and hope that nut doesn't come around and search us out again?" she whispered back, keeping her voice so low that she wasn't even sure that Scott could hear it: she didn't want to take any chances tipping off the gray man by talking so loudly that he heard her just as she could hear him.

"I don't have any better ideas," Scott whispered back to her, shrugging in a helpless gesture. "It's not like we can outrun the guy," he said, and nodded toward Kevin.

Lynette knew that he was right. Kevin was many things, many good and wonderful things, but he was not a strong runner. With the exception of the single race through Albertson's, the race that had resulted in the salvation of Ruth and her baby, he had never managed more than a shambling run that was typical of many autistic people: head down, shuffling forward at a quick but hardly unbeatable pace. Certainly that kind of running would doom them. Nor could she or Scott carry Kevin for any kind of extended distance and hope to maintain a speed that would keep them ahead of the relentless gray man. No, Scott was right: their only hope lay in remaining silent and still, hoping that Mr. Gray passed them by like a hurricane - surely leaving devastation behind, but leaving them their lives at the same time.

The violent racket next door stopped abruptly. "I can feel you," said the voice again.

Lynette was holding Kevin's hand, and could feel it trembling in her grasp. For the first time in her life she was grateful that he primarily spoke through his laptop: should he give voice to the fear she knew he was feeling, he would doom them all. The merest whimper could bring Mr. Gray down on their heads like a grim reaper in a threadbare suit.

Then, suddenly, the feeling of Kevin's hand in hers changed. It had been trembling, but now it began jerking violently back and forth, as though he were trying to escape her grasp. She looked down at her son, and there was just enough light in the dim office for her to make out that he was, as he had several times now, shifting between two similar appearances. The two Kevins that she had seen before various times were now both holding hands with her.

The sensation was strange, like being plugged into a low voltage wire. It was an electrical sensation that thrummed through her, powerful but not entirely unpleasant. The feeling ran up her arm and to her chest, spreading throughout her in a bloom of heat that reached forth tendrils and vines until it had run its course throughout her entire body. The feeling crept up her neck, to her face, and then she felt it encircle her brain, her eyes.

Her vision split suddenly. Not as though she were seeing double, but more like she imagined a chameleon, with its independently rotating eyes, could see: not in anything approximating stereoscopic vision, but rather two different views of the same world. Only in her case, she was seeing two different views of a pair of worlds that were almost the same, but not quite. In one world, she was holding her Kevin's hand, she was holding the hand of a boy who was leaning to one side, his head cocked intently as though he were listening to a symphony that no one else could hear. It was a normal stance for him when he was feeling overwhelmed, as he must be now.