The Meridians (15 page)

"Don't go home," said the voice.

And Scott, to his amazement, answered.

I must be dreaming, he thought. I must be about to crash the truck. I should stop this dream before I'm killed.

But he didn't stop the dream; made no attempt to wake from the nightmare that held him in its pincer-like grip. Instead, he merely spoke to the form that sat on its haunches in the seat beside him. "I have no home," he said.

The dog licked its dark fur with a tongue that was yellow and oozing, its breath reeking of sulfur and other, less pleasant smells - decay, rot, desiccation...mortality.

"Oh, but home is where the heart is, Scott. Home is where you make your life."

Scott turned his eyes back to the road, and saw that the black dogs that had been running at the edges of his vision now were running in the road directly ahead of him, their black haunches illuminated by the brightness of his headlights. They looked back at him, and in their eyes he saw the lives of the people he had failed to save as a cop. He saw the victims of domestic violence he had seen during his time in Homicide; saw the drug hits gone terribly awry; saw the bodies of the small children, innocent victims in a deadly cross-fire between rival gangs, that he had found at one crime scene, curled in on one another as though hugging would somehow stop the bullets that had been ricocheting all around them.

He saw Amy and Chad.

Scott returned his gaze to the black demon-dog beside him, preferring its unholy presence to the reminders of his past failures.

Only the dog was gone.

Mr. Gray was now sitting there. He smiled, and had the same gnarled teeth as the dog had possessed, the same rotten tongue and acrid breath the hellhound had brought into the truck with it.

"You'd be better off not going to Meridian," said Mr. Gray. Not the Mr. Gray from the alley and the shootout, this was again the old Mr. Gray that had plagued Scott since that date. The Mr. Gray of the ruined face and aged body. Only he didn't seem quite so old this time, and his voice was a shade stronger than it had been, as though the passing of time was for him a healing balm that would lend him greater strength and youth.

"Eat shit," said Scott. Hardly eloquent, but it was the nearest thing he could think of that conveyed his depth of disgust at the man's presence.

"Now, now," said Mr. Gray. "I've come here peacefully, with your best intentions at heart, my boy."

Scott repeated his invitation that Mr. Gray partake of his own bowel movements, then said nothing.

"Fine," said Mr. Gray, and suddenly he was in the form of a dog again, the black canine dark and massive in the passenger seat, staring at Scott with eyes that were as gray as slate, and twice as brittle. "Have it your way, little man, little boy."

And with a bark, the dog threw itself at Scott. Scott threw his arms up to ward off the attack, and felt the truck slide and skid below him as his hands left the wheel.

But the expected attack never came. Scott looked beside him.

Nothing. The cab was empty, save only a few packing boxes with articles he had deemed too fragile to travel in the back with the rest of his possessions.

Dreaming, he thought again. I was dreaming.

He looked forward quickly as he realized he must have been asleep on the road, and wondered if he was about to find himself going over the edge of a cliff or veering into the lane of an oncoming semi.

Neither was the case. He was still firmly on his side of the road, his position as centered as it could have been under the best circumstances. But that did not mean that he was out of danger.

Because Mr. Gray was standing in the road right in front of him.

Scott had no time to crank the wheel to the side, only a split-second in which to decide whether or not to even try to brake.

Bastard killed my family, he thought, and instead of stamping on the brake his foot came heavily down on the accelerator.

Mr. Gray's face, illuminated in the bright lights of the oncoming truck, smiled. Actually, he
leered
, as though he could see into the darkest portions of Scott's heart...and liked what he saw.

"No!" Scott screamed, and in that single word he packed all the longing and despair that he had felt these long months and years since he had lost his family, his job, his life. "No!" he shrieked again, and his foot was an anvil resting on the accelerator, an immovable object pressing the van to its top speed limit.

"Been seeing you," said the old gray man.

And in the instant before Scott's truck plowed into him, in the fraction of a second before which he should have been converted to nothing more than a smear across Scott's windshield, he once again did what he had done on every encounter before.

The gray man smiled, and disappeared.

Scott was alone, not even the black dogs on the side of the road deigning to accompany him in his travels any more.

Meridian, he thought. The middle, the center, the halfway point. And with the thoughts he shuddered. Because he could not bear the thought of the events of the past months and years continuing on for months and years in the future. He prayed - no,
hoped
; prayer was a pastime he no longer engaged in - that the name of his destination was not a harbinger of things to come. He did not know what was going on, whether he was going mad or instead suffering from some other malady, at once darker and far harder to explain than mere insanity, or whether perhaps he had in fact died on the day that Mr. Gray had put a gun to his forehead and pulled the trigger.

Perhaps that's it, he thought. Maybe I'm in Hell.

The thought had a certain appeal, mostly because certainly if Hell existed, its very definition would be to cut him off from the people and things he loved most in the world.

But no. Hell had no more meaning to Scott now than did Heaven. There was only madness, and the interminable sanity of what was left of his life.

Perhaps he was going mad.

If he was lucky.

But until then, he kept the truck in gear, and sped down the dark road toward the small town of Meridian. The small town that marked the center of things past and things to come, the middle of all things that had and would happen, the confluence of past and future in a permanent present.

Scott shuddered. The present was something he dreaded. Only in the past could he find solace from the wounds he had suffered. Only in the past could he be with his family again.

Not in the present. Not in Meridian.

But he had nowhere else to go, so he continued on the long stretch of road, making good time, and seeing no more black dogs, no more Mr. Gray. And if he did see the beasts again, he intended to pull out the gun he had kept after leaving the LAPD from its place in the moving truck's glove compartment, to put it under his chin, and to pull the trigger.

And Hell be damned.

***

16.

***

Kevin's eighth birthday came and went as most days did. His schedule was set and he did not enjoy deviations from it, not even for an event as important as a celebration of the anniversary of his birth.

Autistic children were even more dependent on routines than other children their age, and the slightest deviations could be cause for problems or even self-destructive tendencies. Luckily for Lynette and for Kevin, he was developing into a very high-functioning autistic child, with real hope for becoming an independent member of society some day, though he would always face challenges and problems.

Equally lucky-seeming today was the fact that, though Kevin resisted the smallest changes to schedule and diet, he was able to make concessions in one very important area: he
was
willing to have cake if it was presented to him properly: on his Thomas the Tank Engine plate, laying on its side in an unbroken wedge. The last condition was a bit infuriating for Lynette since she was not a skilled cake cutter and tended to end up with several pieces of cake rather than one perfect slice, but if presented with irregular chunks of cake - even on his Thomas the Tank Engine plate - Kevin would either continue with his other activities as though the plate did not exist or, worse, would throw a tantrum until the offending broken sweet was removed from his sight.

After three tries, however, Lynette managed to get a neat slice of cake maneuvered onto his plate, unbroken and unblemished. She resisted the urge to put a candle in it. As much as she wanted to try doing so, she had put a candle in his cake two years ago and the resulting fallout had been traumatizing for both of them. Kevin was a child who seemed to identify with things better than with people, and he appeared to view his cake as being threatened with fire, and screamed in terror until she removed the candle and then put a Band-Aid over the resulting hole in the cake. Even then he refused to eat that particular slice, but insisted that it go on a place of protection and honor, sitting at his right side at the kitchen table for the entirety of his birthday meal.

So no, no candle. Just as perfect a wedge of cake as she could manage, and a party hat - for Kevin, not the cake. Granted, the party hat was mostly for her benefit, as that was one thing that Kevin barely seemed to register about his birthdays, suffering the indignity of having a pointy hat placed on his head with a certain gravitas, as though he knew that the hat was important for his mother and so permitted it to be placed on his head for her benefit. This could in fact be true, or it could simply be Lynette placing her own emotive interpretation on his actions. It was often impossible to tell with Kevin what he was thinking, or even whether he enjoyed something or not. New things had to be introduced with care, however, for if they were simply thrown into his schedule without a proper integration the reaction would, again, be something resembling an emotional nuclear strike, with both Lynette and Kevin standing at ground zero.

Kevin was typing on his laptop, as he usually was mid-morning. The discovery that he enjoyed typing had been a boon to Lynette, who had gone back to school and finished a degree in accounting and then gotten certified as a CPA subsequent to Robbie's death. She worked at home as a freelance consultant, which was perfect for her since it enabled her to keep an eye on Kevin while working. Still, the first few years had been something of a difficulty, with Kevin insisting on her attention and her trying to find a way to deal with the special needs of her very special boy at the same time as she did the work that kept a roof over their head and food in their mouths. She had barely touched the money that Robbie had left to her, preferring to keep that in an interest-bearing account where it would be ready for a rainy day - or at any rate, a rain
ier
day, since most of Lynette's days were punctuated by at least minor cloudbursts. Though to be fair, each cloudburst ended with a sunny dose of love and caring from her boy, her love, her life.

The laptop had solved the stormy problem of what Kevin could do while his mother was working, at least. Lynette had brought a laptop into the front room one day so she could work while Kevin played with his favorite toys. He had long ago discarded the wooden toy cars in favor of a sleek and gleaming collection of Hot Wheels cars that he could play with for hours on end.

The two red balls, tattered and dark with sweat and use, were still an integral part of his collection, however. And though Lynette still could not look at the aging orbs without a small shudder of remembrance, she could at least function around them now.

But the day that Lynette brought the laptop into his presence, little Kevin dropped what he was doing instantly and came over to do something highly unusual: directly watch what she was doing. Like most autistic children, new things had a tendency to render him overwrought in an eyeblink, so such were to be treated with care. One way that he dealt with novelty was to avoid looking at it directly. Sideways glances from across the room were his preferred mode of examining some article that had newly come into his life.

Not so with the laptop. When she opened up the computer and began inputting figures into the accounting program she was using, Kevin immediately dropped his Hot Wheels in a pile on the floor - in itself a small wonder, since he usually refused to stop playing with them until each had been properly parked in its spot in his Little People Ramps Around Garage - and walked directly over to stand at her arm to watch what she was doing.

Aware what a signal occurrence this was, Lynette carefully avoided making eye contact or even slowing what she was doing. She simply worked on, her son at her arm, for a full ten minutes before finally speaking. Then, without altering her cadence of typing or inputting, she said, "Do you like the computer, Kevin?"

Kevin nodded. He had started talking soon after the night she had heard him speaking in those strange whispers in his bed, saying "Witten was white" over and over, but had never developed what anyone could fairly call a scintillating conversational persona. His conversation tended toward the esoteric, the oblique, and the repetitive. It took her years to crack "the Kevin Code," as she jokingly described her son's mode of conversation to her friends.

The day she had brought out the laptop was no exception to his preferred mode of speech. Rather than say anything as crass as "Can I try?" the then five-year-old started sucking his fingers loudly. After waiting for a suitable time, she asked without looking at him, "Do your fingers hurt, Kevin?" She did not look at him because, like many autistics, Kevin had an aversion to eye contact. To look directly into his eyes was to establish a connection too strong to be borne, and so would often signal the early demise of any conversation. Discussions had to be had within the framework of sideways glances from under heavily-veiled lids.