The Meridians (17 page)

"Looks cool, doesn't it?" asked the gray man. He smiled even wider, though Lynette noted with distress that the smile did not reach his dark gray eyes, did not touch his cheeks. It was a smile bereft of warmth or human feeling, the smile of a hyena that has chanced upon big game brought low by infirmity.

The smile of a killer about to feast.

"I've been practicing with this thing for almost thirty years, you know, just waiting for this one single moment." Then the grin disappeared from his face completely, leaving behind only rage and madness as the killer lunged forward with his knife.

Lynette danced to the side, more fleet of foot than she had ever before been, her body seeming to amplify its own natural abilities and strengths as though it knew that not only her life, but Kevin's depended on its quick and decisive action. Still, though she moved quickly, the gray man moved faster still, and she felt the razor slice through her clothing and knick her on the side.

Wetness immediately saturated the waist of her pants, and she wondered how badly she had been cut, and how long she had until blood loss brought her down.

At the same time, a cruelly rational part of her pointed out that she was unlikely to bleed to death from such a minor wound since the gray man appeared intent on killing her quickly with his blade.

Then something happened that was almost as unexpected as the very appearance of the gray man in the first place. Kevin moved. He kicked out with his little foot, and with the precision of a karate expert he knocked the blade out of the gray man's hand.

The gray man cursed, holding the hand that Kevin had just kicked, and turned to scoop up the knife that had fallen to the floor some feet behind him.

It was all the opening Lynette needed. She ran like liquid lightning to the front of the apartment. Kevin had a tendency to wander, so she had installed a chain latch on the front door, and precious microseconds were lost during which she fumbled with the chain and then turned the deadlock below it.

"No!" screamed the old man behind her, his rage both beyond what she would have expected any human being capable of and at the same time strangely perfect due to the fact that whatever he was, she seriously doubted that the gray man was human.

Still clutching her son to her body so tightly she thought it likely that he would have bruises on his neck and back when - if - they got through this, she yanked open the front door. Heavy thuds behind told her that the gray man had regained his weapon and was giving chase. She dared not look back. Instinct told her that even the time spent in turning her head would be too much to give her pursuer. If she stopped to look, she would die.

So she did not look. She ran. She ran through the apartment complex, screaming with all her might as she tore down the third floor corridor that led to her and Kevin's apartment.

Breaching all Los Angeles rules of conduct, one of the neighbors actually opened his door and stuck his head out, clearly wondering what was going on, though whether he was looking because he wanted to help or because he was intent on finding the source of the ruckus so that he could tell he/she/it off was not nearly so clear.

"Help!" shrieked Lynette. But here the neighbor - a short, middle-aged man with thinning hair and a sense of compassion that was even thinner - comported more fully with the rules of neighborly living in the city of angels: he slammed the door as quickly as possible, leaving Lynette once again alone with a madman.

She continued running, heading as quickly as she could to the elevator, aware that the man had to be only a few paces behind her, aware that there was no way she would be able to call for the elevator, board it, and get away before he was on her, gutting both her and Kevin like so many bony fish. But then she slammed into the elevator door, jamming the call button so hard she thought she might have broken her thumb, and looked back to see that she had overestimated her pursuer's speed. He was close, but not nearly as close as her panic-driven mind had imagined.

The elevator dinged. Dinged again. Going down.

"No you won't, bitch!" screamed the man.

The door opened.

He wielded the knife again, passing it from hand to hand as he ran toward them.

She got into the elevator.

He was going to get them. He was going to kill them.

She pressed the button for the first floor, then hit the "close door" button, breaking her resolve never to pray again, asking God to please help her and Kevin - or just Kevin, to just help her son. The gray man was almost on them.

The door began to slide shut.

And before it could, his arm jammed into the diminishing opening, brightly shining knife jabbing toward them in a blur of gleaming menace.

The elevator was one of the type that was equipped both with an electric eye rig in the door and a pressure plate that would cause the door to slide back open if anything either got in the range of the electric eye or so much as brushed against the pressure plate. Lynette hurried to the back of the elevator, but knew that she and her son were doomed. The second the elevator sensed the presence of the gray man's arm, it would swing open wide, and there would be no further place for them to run.

She had run straight into a carpeted coffin, one just big enough for her and her son to die in.

The knife slashed in through the opening.

The door swung toward the gray man's arm.

"Don't look, sweetie," she whispered to Kevin, though the words must have been for her more than for him, since he had had his eyes clenched tightly shut for the entire time following his life-saving kick to the gray man's hand. "Don't look, don't look."

The door touched the gray man's arm...and kept swinging shut.

"No!" screamed the angry man from the other side of the closing door. "No, no, no, I have to do this!" Then, to Lynette's shock and horror, she watched as the elevator door completed its sliding movement, cutting them off from the gray man, but leaving his arm waving inside the compartment with them. It appeared as though the limb had been severed at the shoulder, and Lynette was reminded of any of a number of cheesy ghost stories from her youth, before CGI effects became the standard, and directors had to rely on hand-spliced reels of film to provide the effect of a ghost passing through a door or other solid object.

Still, ghost or not, the knife in the monster's still-moving hand still seemed real enough, and Lynette was careful to keep herself and Kevin well away from the waving implement of death, pressing herself into the back of the elevator.

With a click and a whir, the elevator began descending. The hand did not, passing through the ceiling of the elevator and disappearing as the elevator dropped below the level where the gray man had been - and apparently still was - standing. Lynette could still hear him, screaming obscenities, as they fell away from his rabid attack.

Then the elevator hitched to a stop, and the doors opened...to reveal the gray man, standing impossibly before them. He was panting as though he had run down stairs at great speeds to reach them, but Lynette knew that such was impossible: the nearest stairs to the elevator were at the opposite end of the apartment hall, and there was no way he could have found the stairs, run to them, run down them, then run back up the first floor corridor to reach the elevator before it reached its present location.

Still, impossible or not, there he was, smiling as before, holding the knife as before.

"You're lucky I ran out of bullets the last time, bitch," he said.

Lynette's mind reeled. Last time? What last time? When Robbie had died there had been no bullets, only spilled water and blood on the floor. Then all thoughts were ejected from her mind as the gray man once again slashed with his weapon, and this time Lynette knew there would be no salvation, only death in this lonely hallway on the first floor of an apartment complex in Los Angeles.

"Please," she whispered, and for some reason the gray man halted his slicing motion mid-arc. She wondered why he would do such a thing, and then realized the reason: he was enjoying this moment. The bastard was enjoying her debasement as she begged for her life and - more important - for the life of her son. "Please, we've never done anything to you, please let us go. Let my son go, at least."

"Never done anything?" repeated the gray man, an amused smile playing across lips that had been pressed into a thin line by the prospect of the violence to come. "Never done anything?" He laughed, a laugh that was without mirth or warmth, a laugh that was like icicles stabbing into Lynette's heart.

Kevin groaned and began rocking in her arms. She held his head and cooed to him, determined that if they were to die, she would at least make his transition into eternity as painless and fear-free as possible.

The old gray man leaned in close to her, and again she smelled and tasted the stink of death come to roost, of a soul damned and condemned to rot alive. "You've done
everything
," he almost spat. "You and your bastard boy."

Then he leaned away, inhaling deeply as though savoring the most amazing moment of his existence.

"Sixty two years," he whispered, and then struck with the blade. The silvered object moved with the speed and precision of a cobra striking its prey, finding its target, slashing down and through the back of Kevin's neck.

Lynette screamed, because she knew in that instant that her son was dead.

***

18.

***

She heard a low, rhythmical sound, like the bass beat of the world's softest and simplest rock song. Someone was whispering something. Someone was saying something. Someone was saying the
same
thing over and over and over.

"Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy...."

The sound continued and only gradually did Lynette come to realize that it was the sound of her son saying her name.

Kevin!

She opened her eyes, which had been squinched tightly shut against the vision of blood and death that she knew she had been about to witness. She had seen Robbie die, and the sight had very nearly killed her. To see her son die, she knew, would be tantamount to instant death. Not that she would have a heart attack or anything so benign, but rather she knew that if her son died she herself would have her soul ripped apart like cobwebs in a Category Five hurricane.

"Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy...."

The sound continued, but Lynette still did not open her eyes. She was too busy saying something of her own.

"Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed by Thy name...."

"Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy...."

"Thy kingdom come...."

"Mommy Mommy Mommy...."

"Thy will be done...."

"Mommy Mommy Mommy...."

"On earth as it is in -"

"God
dammit
!"

And at last, Lynette's eyes snapped open, and she saw something that, as impossible as the rest of the day's events had been, made them seem like everyday occurrences in comparison.

The last voice had been that of the gray man, who was still swinging his gleaming blade back and forth.

Right through Kevin's neck and back.

And then right through her own neck with a savage swipe that should have left her bleeding, dying, if not outright decapitated.

She blinked and cringed away, but to no avail: the razor went right through her.

And had no effect.

The gray man cursed again, and again swung his deadly weapon...and the same thing happened. It passed right through her and Kevin.

For a moment Lynette was convinced that the man standing before her was a ghost. Either that or she was insane, but strange as it seemed the prospect of having a ghost standing before her was actually less frightening than the thought of being insane. A ghost merely meant that she and Kevin were in mortal - and perhaps immortal - danger. But the shadow of insanity was more terrible, for that story ended inevitably with her son being removed from her care. So a ghost was by far the preferable of the two.

Regardless, however, even as she posited that she and Kevin were under some kind of supernatural influence, she discarded the thought. The being that stood before her was no ghost. It was more vibrant, more present, more
alive
than any ghost could possibly be. Rather, it was as though the thing that stood before her was a living, breathing being - she could see him breathing, in fact, could smell the rotten fumes he was exhaling after each inhale - but one composed of some different kind of matter, a matter that resonated on a different frequency from her own, so that though they could interact visually, they could not actually touch.

Then how could he have hit the chair? she thought, remembering the vivid gash that had been cleaved in her son's chair in the instant after she pulled him away. And why was the gray man talking about bullets and about shooting if there was no chance for him to use such implements to destroy her?

But even as she contemplated these questions, the gray man cursed again, and began to...change. She could see him, standing there as bright and loud as a circus tent at midday.