The Meridians (19 page)

It was unfair, Scott knew, but he was also powerless to stop it from happening. The students learned within a year or two of his arrival that bothering Mr. Cowley during his free period was not a good idea, so now, eight years after his arrival at the school, Scott had one full hour each day where he was able to think of his family, was able to revel in their memory, was able to bathe himself in the purity of his past.

Only he knew it was a lie.

Because each year the memories grew more ephemeral, less grounded in reality. Each year, his son's smile widened in his mind, his wife's laugh became ever brighter and happier. Soon, he knew he was no longer even remembering his family, but was instead remembering crude caricatures of them, "perfect" versions of the flawed, imperfect beings he had lived with in happiness for so long. And the perfect versions were not nearly as satisfying. Part of what had made his marriage great, he came to realize, was not the absence of fights with Amy, but rather the fact that each fight ended in making up. It was not that his son listened to him and did everything right the first time out of the gate, but rather the fact that Scott had to work to help him to learn and grow. His life with Amy and Chad had consisted not merely of "good" moments, but of harder times that served to illuminate the good times by giving them a point of comparison.

But more and more in his memory, he was remembering the good and forgetting the bad. In his mind he never fought with his wife, never had a disagreement with his son. In his mind dinner was always ready on time, and rooms were always clean, and teeth were brushed at bedtime and no one fussed when the time came to put away toys. In his mind, the languid disease of perfection stole from him the reality of the hard-earned victories and the lovingly won triumphs. He was no longer living in a past that was real, but only a flawed version of it, only a version where everything was perfect, and so nothing had any real value at all.

But in spite of this, in spite of the fact that he knew his memories resembled the realities they were modeled on a little less each day, Scott could not help but spend time staring blankly at the wall during that terrible first period, sinking deeper and deeper into remembrances of a past that never really happened, because the past that
had
occurred - the real past, the flawed, imperfect, difficult, wonderful past - was far too complex and wondrous to be encompassed by anything as frail as human memory.

So he hated first period. Because he both felt himself passing into a falsehood of perfection...and still couldn't help drinking it in, like a thirsty man drinking seawater, all the while knowing that it would just make him thirstier and sick, but unable to stop nonetheless.

Today was no exception to that rule, either. He came in early, passing through the main office as he always did, gathering the day's announcements and various other items from his mail cubby. He did this as quickly as possible, hoping against hope to get in and out of the office undetected, but as usual he failed in this mission.

"Hi, stranger!" said a high, chirping voice.

Scott pasted a smile on his face as he turned to face the source of the voice, but inwardly he cringed. Cheryl Armstrong, the school's new secretary, was standing behind him, her perfume wafting about her in an almost visible cloud. She had started work at Meridian High School a few months before, when the school's previous secretary left to have a baby and had decided not to return to her job in favor of remaining a full-time mother, and had immediately decided that she was either in love with Scott or that he would make a great fixer-upper project. Scott wasn't sure which it was, and wasn't sure if there was even a difference in Cheryl's eyes.

Either way, she seemed to be at his elbow at every turn, as though she were some kind of a strangely smiling spirit determined to haunt him out of his misery.

"Hi, Cheryl," he answered, then fell silent. Part of the problem with Cheryl was that she was clearly interested in him, and he didn't know how to react to that. He knew that Amy was gone, had no illusions about that, and also knew that most of his friends in Meridian were of the opinion that he had "suffered enough" and should "move on." Whatever that meant. As though there was some quota of suffering that, once filled, entitled a person to live their lives worry free from that point on.

But Scott knew that was not the case. The one constant in life
was
suffering. And no amount of it could ever satisfy the cruelties of a universe that demanded happiness like a tribute; that demanded blood like a tyrannical ruler determined to prove his worth by sacrificing any who dared to find joy under his reign.

Cheryl, in fact, proved that fact, because almost nothing made Scott suffer more than having to brave the morning ritual that had come to define his relationship with Cheryl.

"So," she said, as she always did. "Is today the day?"

And Scott, as he always did, responded, "What day, Cheryl?"

"The day you ask me out, we fall in love, and you take me away from all this," she responded brightly.

Scott usually tried to remain smiling, to remain polite throughout this exchange, usually ending the conversation with an awkward excuse why he could not ask her out. He had friends in town. He was busy doing grades this weekend. He had other plans. He had to wash his hair. He had a headache.

But today was different. He didn't have it in him to continue the pleasant lies that were a staple of human existence. He just wanted to be alone, to steep in the false memories of his past life, and Cheryl was standing between him and that goal.

"Cheryl," he said, "I don't mean to be a jerk, but I'm never going to ask you out."

Cheryl's face changed subtly, as though she were the lead actress in a play and her counterpart had just delivered a line that was not in the script. She recovered quickly, though, beaming her smile once again and saying, "Aw, honey, you don't mean that. After all, where else you gonna find someone like me?"

"I'm sure I don't know," he said. And, truthfully, he had to admit that most men would find Cheryl a catch. She was attractive, charming, vivacious, full of life.

But it was that last that made her ineligible for Scott's affections. He could not love someone who was full of life; his attentions were reserved for those who lived in the realm of the dead.

"But it's just not going to work out, Cheryl," he continued. "You should spend some time on someone else."

Again, Cheryl's face changed. But this time she was not able to recover nearly as well as she had the first time. Her lip quivered slightly, as though she had never been turned down before. And perhaps she hadn't - most people didn't tend to turn down the attentions of women like her, Scott knew.

But then, most people didn't have families that had been stolen from them, either. Most people could afford to live in the present, because they had something worth living for there. But Scott was not most people. He could not afford to live in the present, because to do so would be to lose the most important and defining parts of his life. He was already starting to lose the memories of his wife and son; he could not bear to complete the process by crowding out what little remained with new experiences with other people.

Cheryl looked like she was going to cry, but Scott didn't know what to do about that. Should he comfort her? Hardly. That would be inviting her to knock on the doors of his heart even harder than she had been doing before. But he didn't feel right just leaving, either. He wasn't a monster. Or at least, he had never thought of himself as a monster. But perhaps he was wrong about that. Maybe he
was
nothing but a monster, nothing but a Dr. Jekyll inhabiting the destroyed world of a once-happy Mr. Hyde. Maybe the darkness that lived in his heart had finally escaped into the rest of his life, and would now be an ever-present companion, a new source of misery in Scott's already miserable world.

And now Cheryl
was
crying, though Scott had not intended for that to happen. He stood in front of her for a long moment, wondering what to do, then finally put out a hand to touch her shoulder.

She slapped it away.

"Don't you dare," she said. "All I've ever been is nice to you, so why can't you be nice back?"

Scott had no answer for her. At least, he had no answer that he could give her there, in the public space of the office. So he simply turned and walked away, hoping that tomorrow, or the next day or the next month or the next year he would find in himself the strength to talk to her, to explain to her why he could never be happy, and so he could never allow himself to get close to her. Because she might actually
try
to make him happy, and that would bring her nothing but misery and pain. The universe did not intend Scott to be happy - it had made that dreadfully clear to him eight years ago - and anyone who tried to change the universe's plan would find themselves in mortal danger. He couldn't do that to anyone, so he had to keep everyone away; had to keep everyone at arm's distance.

Scott left. He walked with his head down to his own office, unlocking it and walking in without looking up, moving around the balls and equipment that cluttered the room without having to pay attention, because after eight years he knew this room better than he knew his own house.

Which was why it was doubly unexpected when a voice said, "A little hard on her, weren't you?"

Scott looked up, and as he did the papers he had been carrying dropped from his nerveless fingers and fluttered to the floor like pigeons gathering on the ground to feed.

He reached instinctively under his armpit. But there was nothing there. No gun. Not anymore. He wasn't a cop anymore, he was just a middle aged PhysEd teacher without many friends or much of anything to live for.

But that didn't mean he had to leave mortality quietly. And it sure didn't mean that he had to go out without a fight. Especially not when confronted by the monster in front of him.

"Hello," he said, and rushed at the old man in his office, fingers outstretched and looking for a chance to kill.

***

20.

***

Never before had Scott wanted so badly to kill something. The only thoughts in his mind were thoughts of destruction, of maiming, of killing Mr. Gray; of killing the thing that had destroyed his family and so had destroyed him as well.

He rushed at the old man, then skidded to a halt as he realized that instead of a gray suit, this man was wearing simple jeans and a button down shirt. Nor did he have gray eyes, but instead had eyes that were as blue as any that Scott had ever seen.

He also looked familiar, and when Scott realized who the man was, Scott stopped moving completely, arresting his forward momentum so completely it felt as though he might have suffered internal injury with the sudden stop in motion.

"John Doe," he breathed.

It was. It was the very same man who had died - Scott had
seen
his dead body - in the garment district, died of a bullet wound to the head on the day that Scott's family had died.

Scott's world spun around him. How could this be? How could he be seeing a man whom he had seen die some eight years before?

"Well," said the man as Scott stopped moving, "that's a relief."

Scott gawked. Somehow as bad as it was having someone in his office who should be dead - who
was
dead - it was infinitely stranger having the man speak to him.

"Who are..." Scott stuttered, but the sentence drifted off into silence without him being able to finish it. His head was still reeling, and so rational thought or logical conversation seemed suddenly to be quite impossible.

The old man smiled, and his eyes seemed to twinkle with barely-contained amusement. In contrast to Mr. Gray, whose eyes were either dead or insane, this man's eyes were expressive to the point of being incredible. They sparkled with intelligence and a radiant charisma that Scott could feel as easily as he could feel heat coming off of an oven.

The man winked. "Sorry if I scared you, but I had to make sure you did some things."

"What...who are you?" Scott finally managed. "Who let you in here?"

"Well, as to who let me in here, I guess I did that for myself. And as for who I am...well, that's something of a secret right now, I'm afraid. But I'm not Mr. Gray."

Scott started. He had never told anyone that name, no one at the force, no one at the school, no one.

"How did you know -"

"How did I know the name?" The old man laughed again. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you. Not now, at any rate." Then he grew serious, leaning toward Scott with intensity. Scott had the urge to lean away, as though the man were not a kindly old man, but a force of nature like a typhoon or a hurricane. Something that one could observe, but was always best suited doing so from a safe distance. "Now listen," said the man. "You're going to do something in a few days. Something very important."

"Why should I do anything you tell me to?" asked Scott. He was feeling nervous, and knew he was translating the nervousness to anger in order to feel like he was having some modicum of control over the conversation, even if the feeling was a complete and utter illusion.