The Meridians(90)

Scott hoped that the love that had been provided to her would suffice to help her get through the horrors of this night. That it would have provided her with an indefatigable supply of strength and courage from which she could draw on during this dreadful time.

He looked around the room. The bed was flush with the floor; no place there to hide. There was a small door to the left. Had to be a closet. Likely no one was in there, but again, he had to be sure. Elementary procedure.

He turned his body so he could see movement in the hall with his peripheral vision, then edged toward the door. It had slats on it, which was a nightmare: anyone inside could see him coming, but he could not see inside. That meant that if there was someone in the closet - or bathroom, or whatever lay on the other side of the door - the person would be prepared for him.

He edged up beside the door, out of sight of anyone inside. Then, moving slowly as he could, so slowly he felt certain that dawn must arrive before he finished, he twisted the doorknob.

And it refused to budge.

For a moment he feared that it was locked, and he would have to break it down - surely alerting whoever else was in the house. Then he realized that the doorknob was probably not connected to any latch or moving parts; that it was simply an immobile handle to pull open what was most likely a closet door.

Again, moving slowly, he pulled at the door.

It popped open an inch.

No movement.

His skin felt like it was trying to turn inside out. He held the knife close to him, trying to remain as calm as possible while knowing that he could be opening the door to a deadly assault of some kind. Then he threw the door open and simultaneously glanced inside.

Nothing. Only clothing and toys scattered about the dark space. The room was clear.

He moved back to the hallway. One more room to go before bracing the master bedroom.

The next room turned out to be a bathroom. Open and airy, with a bathtub whose shower curtain was pulled back to reveal nothing but porcelain and tile beyond.

It was time to face the last room. The room where the thumps had come from.

He sidled up to it, put his hand to the doorknob, and turned it. Slowly. Careful not to let the knob jiggle in its housing as the knob on Tina's door had done. Absolute silence had to be maintained.

He opened the door, swinging it with only the slightest murmur of displaced air as it moved inward. He stood to the side as he did so, bracing himself for the inevitable attack. But it didn't come. Instead, he was immediately treated to the origin of the mysterious thumps.

He also revised his previous assumptions of what had been happening. Until now, he had believed that a person or persons unknown had entered the house - not difficult, considering that many of the people in this place did not even lock their doors when they slept - and had then overcome Tina's family by force, killing Tina's mother and tying Tina up for some nefarious purpose.

Now he saw the truth.

Whether Tina's father had gone insane all at once, or whether it had been building over time could not be extrapolated from the vision that greeted Scott when he opened the door. But what was immediately apparent was the fact of the man's madness. He was bloody, holding a serrated knife that was clearly the thing he had used on his wife, and was in the process of running straight at the wall when Scott opened the door.

THUD.

The entire house shook with the force of the impact when the man hit. Scott could tell it was Tina's father because there were numerous photos all throughout the comfortable room that featured a smiling trio - Tina, the dead woman downstairs, and the madman before him. All this Scott took in at a glance, but little else. Because immediately upon rebounding off the wall, the man looked at Scott with a gaze that seemed to hover in the air a few inches in front of him, and then charged.





***





42.

***

Lynette agonized.

She didn't want to leave her son in the car alone. But neither did she feel good about the fact that Scott had gone alone into the dark house that stood before them. It had been several minutes, and he had neither come out to signal all clear nor to give any other clue what was going on in the place.

The house simply stood dark and empty-seeming, a vast monster that might as well have swallowed Scott whole in the night, like the whale that had emerged from the depths to swallow Pinnochio. Only she knew that in this case, there would be no joyful reunion with a long-lost father deep in the belly of the beast. Rather, there was bound to be only death and danger.

He was alone. Scott was alone.

She could not help but feel that she ought to be inside helping out somehow. But then, again, there was Kevin. Under normal circumstances, she might have chanced leaving him alone for a few moments, as long as he had his laptop to keep him company.

But then, under normal circumstances she would not have followed her autistic son's directions to an apparently abandoned house into which only Scott had to go. Normal circumstances would have found her peacefully in bed right now, not in a car in the middle of a field waiting hopefully for the return of a man she had inexplicably come to admire, respect, and even love in the past hours. Normal circumstances would not have included Mr. Gray, or the fact that her son was currently acting as though he had some kind of strange pipeline into future events.

How was that happening? she wondered. How was he seeing what he was seeing?

Kevin was typing on his laptop, his fingers flying frenziedly across the keyboard, typing what she now knew to be mathematical phrases and theorems that were so far beyond the norm that the average college professor would have been baffled by them.