The Meridians (18 page)

Then, she couldn't. Or rather, she could, but what she saw was dramatically different. Instead of a gray man, he seemed for a moment to become a creature of color. He shifted through all the hues of the rainbow, and even beyond, shifting into colors that Lynette had never seen before, and suspected that
no one
had ever seen before. Colors that were so vivid and unreal that she tasted as much as saw them, so bright that they tinkled in her ears as much as they tickled her optic nerves. It was strange, because it was the most beautiful thing that Lynette had ever seen - probably the most beautiful thing that
anyone
had ever seen - but because it dealt with colors and hues that she knew were outside the ken of normal human experience, there was no way that she would ever be able to describe them beyond this: when she saw the gray man begin his strange shift into colors beyond those of anything she had ever before experienced, Lynette suddenly suspected that she knew what angels looked like.

That in itself surprised her. She had thought after Robbie was taken that she no longer believed in God; that she no longer believed in a being that was so great and wonderful that it had created her family as though out of a dream; but at the same time so small and horrible that it had then ripped that same family to pieces as though in a nightmare. But here she was entertaining thoughts of angels. And not only that, she realized suddenly that in her greatest fear - in the moment when she thought she had lost her own angel, her Kevin - she had turned not to screaming obscenities, or to yelling for her mother as she had heard even the bravest people did in times of extreme stress, but to a simpler, calmer expression. She had begun repeating the Lord's Prayer.

Our Father, who art in Heaven
...

The words rang through her and she realized with a start that she
did
still believe in the greatness of something beyond humanity, something that had been responsible for the birth of her species in all its misery and imperfection, yet was at its heart good and understanding and hopeful. Her faith, it seemed, had not been lost, but only misplaced for a time.

Then the thing that stood before her - surely no angel, or if he was an angel, then a dark angel, one that brought fear and hatred in lieu of good news and love - cursed vehemently. He gave voice to a slew of swear words so vile that she immediately covered Kevin's ears, as though they were somehow no longer in mortal peril, but were in danger of nothing no worse than picking up a bad habit or two.

"This isn't fair," said the old gray man who was no longer gray, and his voice was as strange and musical as his coloration, vibrations that belonged on a scale that was audible to her, but at the same time did not belong in her world. She did not know what she was witnessing, but
did
know intuitively that it was something mystical and otherworldly, something that no one else in all of history might have seen before. No angel, certainly, but perhaps something just as mysterious, just as strange and incomprehensible.

The gray/not-gray man cursed again.

Then the colors grew more intense, and suddenly began washing out. In a moment, Lynette found herself looking at what appeared to be a color negative of the gray man: a gray man in reverse, with the color wheel turned on its back and flipped around insanely.

The old man looked at her. And as though he had not just tried to kill her, as though they were trusted friends and confidants, he pleaded with her. "Help me," he said. "Please, help me. I can't go through another sixty years like this."

In spite of the man's cruel temperament and obviously evil nature, she suddenly could not help but feel a pang of pity for his plight. Whether this was a product of her newly reborn faith or merely a human response to another being in pain - and perhaps they were one and the same - she could not tell for certain. She only knew that she had the insane urge to comfort him in that moment.

The urge passed as he unleashed another spate of curse words that made the previous stream of invectives seem positively tame in comparison. He was insane, she knew. He had to be. And his next words confirmed it, and as well as confirming the diagnosis they drained whatever warmth she had from her heart, replacing it with a steely strength that she knew would lend her the vigor needed to stand against this otherworldly being in whatever form he might appear, be it an angel of death and who dealt in shining razor blades, or an angel of brightness and light who begged for her son's death.

"Please," he said, reaching out a rainbow-colored hand to her. "Please. I just need to kill him. I just need to kill your boy." The man began to cry, golden tears coursing down his cheeks and dripping from his chin.

The tears disappeared before they touched the ground, and again Lynette was reminded of biblical stories about angels whose feet did not rest upon the earth, as though their incorruption could not tolerate the corruption of a fallen planet.

But this was no angel, she reminded herself. This was a devil incarnate. A being that for some reason had chosen to fixate its destructive powers on her family in general and her son in particular.

"Just kill him," whispered the gray man. "Just kill him, please."

Then the gale that had appeared in Lynette's apartment reappeared in the confines of the elevator and the corridor outside it. Wind whipped through the space, tousling her and Kevin's hair and intertwining them into a single hydra-like mass. The brightness of the being before her continued to grow, then grew still further until it was almost impossible to look at.

Lynette looked down at Kevin, and saw to her startlement that he no longer had his head buried in her chest. In fact, he was staring single-mindedly at the gray man, at the golden pillar of light and death that stood before them. Small Kevin, who could not even look a stranger in the eye at the supermarket, was staring directly at the nightmare that had tried to kill him. He was whispering something, though Lynette had to strain to hear it in the sound of the wind that pervaded the atmosphere all around them. And when she did, her heart again grew cold as she was reminded of a night some five years and more before. The words threw her back to the days immediately after Robbie's death, to those dark stretches of day and night that seemed as though they would never end. To a night when she found her baby boy sitting in bed, and speaking a breathy fragment of a sentence, a strange cipher of thought.

"Witten was white," breathed Kevin. "Witten was white, witten was white, witten was white."

Only this time, he was saying it in a different tone of voice. Whereas when he had spoken the words in his sleep he had seemed almost drugged, or perhaps even possessed by some otherworldly force that had come in and inhabited his body for a time but had barely the strength to speak through him, the voice that was now coming from her son was stronger than any she had ever heard. He was doing something more than merely speaking; he was making a
declaration
. As though he were the town herald in medieval times, he was speaking words that were meant to reveal and amaze, to awe and inspire.

"Witten was white, witten was white...."

But in spite of the tone of her son's voice, Lynette once more felt herself clench from the inside out, reacting to the words as she might expect to react to an eviction notice or to bad news. She did not understand what her son was saying, anymore than she had understood it on the first night that he spoke it, but she knew instinctively that it signaled some great change, and that not all of the change would be good.

"Witten was white, witten was -"

"Stop saying that!" screamed the gray man. And now his voice, too, was different. No longer the contained tones of a tightly-wound madman, nor the dulcimer tones of one of Satan's minions, sweetly calling people to their doom. The voice was fragmented as the color scheme he now inhabited, now sounding like the voice of a man, now like that of a woman, now like that of a child, now like that of a death-bed geriatric. "Stop saying that! Stop saying that and
die!
"

He reached forward with the blade he still held, and as he did the storm around them peaked in force, feeling as though it must at any moment pick them up bodily and slam then against the side of the elevator. But somehow Lynette stayed rooted to the spot, managed to hold her ground in the face of the onrushing tempest.

The blade passed through them with no more effect than it had previously.

The gray man screamed, and then became so bright that Lynette
did
shield her eyes, prying one hand away from her death-grip on Kevin long enough to cover her eyes. The scream of the gray man elongated, stretching out into eternity, becoming not a human voice but a bell-like tone that slowly, slowly lowered in volume until it was impossible to tell where the sound left off and the silence that followed it began.

Lynette opened her eyes.

The gray man was gone.

The storm was over.

For now.

***

19.

***

Scott hated first period.

Every teacher at Meridian High School had at least one down period - an hour when they were supposed to prepare lesson plans, go over grades, and do the sundry other tasks necessary to prepare for their days. First period was Scott's down period, but he never used it to prepare lesson plans, or for much of anything else. For some reason, he usually spent it in his "office" - not much more than a cubby in the room that housed all the physical education supplies - staring at a wall.

Surprisingly, Scott had managed to survive the eight years since the deaths of Chad and Amy. Had even, to some eyes, managed to thrive. He had come to Meridian and proved himself to be a surprisingly effective P.E. teacher, the kind of teacher that the students all hoped they got. Considering that the other P.E. teacher was an elderly man who seemed determined to shout the students in his classes to death, this may not have been much of a compliment, but even Scott knew that he was more than a comparatively good teacher. He was an excellent educator, viewed on his own and not merely when standing next to the crotchety old Mr. Randall.

Part of the reason for his excellence was that he was simply available. Where other teachers invariably tried to finish up their school days so that they could get home to families or friends or whatever else "normal" people did, Scott had no such aspirations. Indeed, he dreaded going home, since it meant he would be going to an empty house full of nothing but the sounds of silence and hopelessness that clung to him like phantoms wherever he went. The only thing that he had found that could exorcise those demons was to be helping his students. And even then, the exorcism was only temporary - the demons of despair came back to plague him at every opportunity.

Which was why Scott hated first period. His free period was the only time he was really and truly alone at the school. The other periods were full of the students and the successes and failures that they - like all teenagers - wore on their sleeves for all to see. They were full of games and sweat and work and all manner of things that could keep his mind off the one thing it inevitably strayed to whenever given half a chance: the past.

But not first period. No, in that period the students were all in school, all busy with their regular classes, so he was usually alone. Even Mr. Randall was off limits, since the other P.E. teacher
did
use the time to prepare for the day ahead, and had made it clear very early on that he sorely resented any intrusions into the precious time he had each morning from seven thirty to eight twenty-five a.m.

So Scott sat in his office, and sat alone, and though he usually tried to busy himself with something - some new text on PhysEd training, or reading up on the newest teaching methodologies, or simply working on inputting students' grades into the school's computer records - he almost always ended up sitting motionless, silent, staring at the wall ahead of him without actually seeing it. He would sit, and stare, and think.

He would think of his son, so happy and free.

He would think of his wife, so bright and beautiful.

He would think of the family he had had, and the family he had lost.

Often, sitting there in the dim half-light of the poorly lit office, he would hear sounds. The pleasant tinkling of his son's laughter, as though even in death he were still enjoying his last birthday presents. The throaty whisper of his wife as she lay beside him, curled up in his arms after they made love. The loud, brassy sound of the family together at the dinner table.

They were phantom sounds, existing only in his mind, and though Scott knew that after eight years to still be hearing the memories of his family so vividly was not a good sign, still he reveled in them. He could not help but wish that the memories were real, and so when they came he allowed them to consume him entirely.

On rare occasions a student would come to visit him during that first hour, clutching a hall pass and with special permission from the principal to come and see Scott on some emergency or other. When that happened, Scott was invariably cranky and snappish, as though he resented the students' intrusions into his time of remembering, his sanctuary of memory. He knew it was happening, knew he was angry and acting out against the student, but was helpless to stop it. After all, who else could he act out against? God? God, he had decided, was either a myth or a petty creature so small that he was determined to make the world an uglier place by stealing people of beauty and life like his family. So all that was left was to take solace in his memories, and that meant that when his memories were interrupted, he could only respond angrily at the person who had interrupted them, even if the person was otherwise innocent.