The Meridians(91)

"Kevin," she said on a whim. He kept typing, but she knew that that did not necessarily mean he was not hearing her. Indeed, it was likely that he was hearing her, though he would not show it. "Kevin, I'd like to talk to you. Can I have your keyboard?"

He did not answer, but his fingers stopped moving across the keys. He sat back, expectant.

She slowly moved the laptop into her own lap. "Where is Scott going?" she typed, then handed it back to him.

"Into the mouth of darkness," he typed back. She shuddered at the uniquely adult phrasing he was falling into when "talking" on his computer. Not only was he typing mathematics at an advanced level, but apparently he was also able to communicate in an advanced though oblique manner when doing so through the medium of his computer.

"What does that mean?" she typed.

"It means that everything matters. Everything counts. Everything is critical. The timing has to be perfect," he wrote back.

"What happens if it isn't perfect?" she typed.

"The world we know will never end. The world that must be will never come to pass."

She sighed. This wasn't helping her understand anything that was going on with Scott, or with herself for that matter. She tried another track. "Who am I talking to right now?"

"Kevin."

"Why do you sound different on the computer?"

"Because I'm different on the computer. I'm a different Kevin."

She felt a thrill of fear, remembering the dual children she had seen in Kevin's bed and then again in the car.

"What kind of different Kevin? How different?" she wrote.

He paused for a moment before typing. "I'm older. I'm an older variant."

"Variant?"

"Dimensional variant."

"What does that mean?"

This time he did not reply, either in word or on the computer. He merely sat, limp, as though the words he had already typed had taken a heavy toll on him. She tried typing several more things, but apparently he was done talking - or writing - for the time being.

She reached out a hand, and slowly took his. Usually even that level of personal interaction was too much for him to handle, and would signal a withdrawal both physical and mental. But this time he did not pull away. Indeed, he actually curled his small fingers around hers, holding them tightly. She sighed in happiness, for in that instant it felt as though all would be right with the world. As though things could be fixed. As though whatever was happening would come to an end, and they would be happy again. Her, and Kevin, and Scott. Happy. A family.

Then a voice spoke.

"Aww, ain't that sweet."

Lynette grew instantly cold. She looked all around for the source of the voice, but saw nothing. Even though no one was apparent, though, she knew the voice. Knew who it was.

Mr. Gray.

He was here.





***





43.

***

"Stop!" Scott shouted.

Tina's father paid him no heed. Scott might as well have been speaking to a deaf-mute for all the response he got. The man continued his charge, and Scott barely managed to jump around the doorjamb and out into the hallway again before the man waved his knife through the air where Scott's stomach had been just moments before.

Scott felt his guts clench. He had a knife himself - a bigger one - but he didn't know if he had the courage or will to engage in a knife fight. He knew that knife fights almost always ended with both parties in a hospital, if not a morgue, and he had no desire to find himself in such a place - or to put Tina's father there.

"Save my family" she had said. The words took on a new and ominous meaning. Scott had assumed that she was imploring him to protect her family from some intruder, some beast that had entered their house and taken her captive. But now he knew the truth: he had to save her family...from itself. From the madness that had crept in more silently than any sneak-thief ever could, from the insanity that had gripped her father in its iron fingers and squeezed him until he could no longer stand the pressure; until he fused with the grip and became madness himself.

The knife that Tina's father wielded swung to the right, following Scott like a living being, a beast that thirsted for his blood. Scott again moved out of the way with only millimeters to spare, and the knife bit deeply into the wood of the doorjamb. Tina's father looked strangely surprised at the fact, as though it had never occurred to him that the wall was real.

Scott wheeled back, and found himself smashing backward through the half-open door into Tina's room. He looked around for some way to end this conflict before it resulted in loss of life to either him or to the little girl's father. He saw only one thing: the small chair that sat in front of the little girl's vanity. It was clearly hand-made, solid wood construction, the kind of thing a loving and kind father might have made - before that person disappeared into whatever it was that was now chasing Scott. It would be unruly, but not so bulky as to render it useless as a club. And it had the advantage of not being a bladed weapon that would result in critical injury or death. Scott could use it with clearer conscience than he could the knife he currently held.

He swung around and scooped up the chair, then wheeled back to face the open doorway to the room just as Tina's father came through it, eyes wild and knife leading like a single-toothed viper. The man swung the knife at Scott, who just barely managed to bat it away with the chair. He felt a satisfying thud as the chair connected, the feeling reassuring him that he had been correct as to its solid construction, and Tina's father howled. The sound was bestial, an animal cry of pain totally bereft of all humanity or capacity for rational thought. It chilled Scott, making his gut clench and at the same time making his insides feel watery and loose. He worried that he might actually lose control of his bowels because of the intensity of the sound that now assailed him like a sonic jackhammer - not just an inconvenience or embarrassment, but possibly a fatal problem should it slow him down or make his movements in any way more difficult.