The Meridians (43 page)

Kevin chuckles again. "Plays with the mind, don't it. Remember: my dimension is the same as yours, only in reverse. So there's a Mr. Gray
there
as well. Who is catapulted to
your
dimension at the time of
your
Kevin's death. He resides here, living backwards in time, for sixty-two years living - if you can call it that - as a ghost. Existing, aging, but unable to touch anything."

"That's why
he
grows younger and younger."

Kevin nods. "And why his wounds disappear. Because to him, they haven't happened."

"But if he can't touch anything, how did he try to kill us?"

"Remember how earlier he would just appear? Then as time moved on for you he grew younger and more powerful?" Scott nods. "Best I can figure is that he grows in power when he's close to the nexus himself, especially when near to Kevin. So he gears up for a huge attack - his first, which you perceive as what happened tonight. Then, after tonight, he's blown his power, and has less and less ability. He can appear, but can't remain solid. He can write a note, but can't interact with you. He can knock over a glass of water, but can't touch Lynette's husband. Weaker and weaker, until he finally fizzles out and disappears forever."

"But he's dead now. How can
that
be undone?"

"He's not dead. He survives this night. Just like he survived the car crash, the board across the face, all the other things. Something about being catapulted through the dimensions has changed him. But he gets weaker and weaker after this. So what you perceived as his first cautious attacks were really his last gasps, his final attempts at destroying you, me, and my mother. He's a meridian, too. Just that he's an artificial one. By his actions and interventions over the years, he's made a loop of events, a sort of nowhere that he can exist in. It only overlaps you for a few years, and that's when he tries to kill you as something like a ghost. Other than that, Mr. Gray doesn't exist anymore."

Scott feels his head furrow in confusion. "Don't think of it too hard," says Kevin. "It's confusing as hell, and I barely understand it myself."

"It all comes down to that, doesn't it," says Scott. "You. What's your role in all of this?"

Kevin laughs quietly. "I'm the man who figures out how to travel between dimensions. It happens about twenty-five years from now, as you perceive things. Tina solves the problem of my autism, and it turns that autistics in our two worlds are special."

"Special how?"

"We perceive more than we should. It's why we're autistic. We withdraw because of too much information. We live in a constant state of bombardment."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that autistics perceive more than their own dimension. They perceive
all
of them. It scares the hell out of them, so by the time they're about three years old they
have
to withdraw from reality...or go nuts."

Scott snaps his fingers. "Lynette told me when Kevin made the magic trick go wrong, all the autistics got angry, started screaming."

Kevin nods. He looks at the ratty foam balls in his hand. "I reached across a small hole in the dimensions to take these, and the other kids, well, they sensed something
wrong
had just happened. Made them quite upset."

"Can you still perceive the dimensions?" says Scott.

Kevin nods. "After Tina brings me out of my autism, it turns out I've been figuring out a few things. First thing I do is disappear. Go on a bit of a trip between some of the alternate dimensions."

"So that's why you're so important? Because you can do that?"

"Because I'm the
only
one that can do it," says Kevin, nodding. "Other autistics can sense or even see the other dimensions, but I'm the only one who can move between them. No one else, just me."

Scott shakes his head, thinking of the other-Kevins, the ones he and Lynette have seen overlapping their Kevin, the ones who have delivered important messages in this long night. He opens his mouth to ask about them, but before he speaks Kevin does. "You want to know about the other versions of me?"

Scott nods. "If you are the only one who can travel the dimensions, how come they appeared to us?"

"They weren't doing that. I was. Or rather, your Kevin was. Using his power to bring across other versions of himself, versions who had seen things in the other dimensions that they - not being autistic in their timeflows - could tell you about. So they could lead Lynette to save you, could tell you Mr. Gray was coming. The nexus between worlds is very thin around Kevin, so it's possible for things to be communicated like that. Even," he adds, laughing a bit, "a bit of my karate knowledge goes through to Kevin on occasion."

Scott is silent, thinking about the perfect kicks that Kevin has placed from time to time. His mind is reeling. "All so...what?" asks Scott. "Why all the work, the suffering? Just so you can survive? Is that why my wife and child had to die? Just so I could be in the right place and time to protect you?"

Kevin shakes his head. "I've told you. They die no matter what. All that I did - will do? - was alter things so that you survive, and can protect me. And believe it or not, that's a pretty important item. Not just because I'm rather attached to living, but because it turns out that it's critical that I survive. The world is in pretty bad shape in fifty years or so, and the only thing that keeps it from completely melting down is my ability to bring back certain things - technologies, mostly - from other dimensions that help us to survive. The survival of the entire world in my dimension - and in yours - literally depends on my being alive, and being cured of autism, and being able to travel the dimensions."

Scott begins to weep. It is more than he can stand. His family is gone, and will never be back. And perhaps they had died for a good cause, perhaps they had gone so that billions could live, but still....

"I hate you, Kevin," he says.

Kevin reaches out and touches him lightly on the shoulder. "I know. But you won't forever. Not even for very long, in fact."

Scott looks at Kevin. "How can all this be possible? How can I go back and have a life now, knowing all this?"

Kevin sighs. "Because you have to, Scott. Because there's more to life than life. There's more to you than you. Billions of people
do
depend on your decisions, on the life you will decide to lead." Then he smiles. "Besides, I have one more thing to show you."

He again touches Scott on the wrist, and this time when the world disappears around them, it is different somehow. This time, Scott sees nothing. He is in a place that is timeless, shapeless, without form or substance that he can perceive.

And yet, at the same time, he knows that he is not alone. He feels comforted in his anguish. He feels hope in the midst of despair and loss.

He turns, and Kevin is with him. Smiling.

"Where are we now?" asks Scott, and feels himself smile as the feelings all around him come pouring into his heart. Then he is weeping again, but this time not for pain or anger, but for relief and joy. He feels as though a great weight has come off his heart, leaving it free to fly and soar, unlocking it from a cage of grief and anger in which it has been hidden for eight years.

"Heaven," says Kevin simply. "Or at least, one small neighborhood of it."

"Heaven?" Even in his euphoria, Scott cannot believe this.

"Just a dimension. Just a place, like the place I live, like the place you come from."

Scott wants to disbelieve this. But he can't. The evidence his heart presents him is too strong, the feelings that assail him are too real. "There is more to life than life," Kevin had said. And this, Scott realizes, is what he was talking about. There is more. There is more.

Kevin puts out a hand, and Scott wants to shout to him, to plead with him not to take them away. But he does. The world disappears, and they are once again next to the car.

***

56.

***

Scott was still crying. "So beautiful," he said. Then said it again. It was all he could say.

Then he looked at Kevin. "You die!" he shouted.

Kevin smiled, a melancholy smile that looked to Scott as though he were trying not to cry. "I know," he said.

"Can't you stop it?" asked Scott.

Kevin shrugged. "Nope. I don't know how it happens. All I know of the future is what you tell me as I grow up, and so I don't know what mistake I make that kills me. I just know that it will happen, and it has to happen because I have to save you." He smiled that half-smile again, and tried to laugh. It didn't work. "Don't you worry about it, Scott. Just take care of Lynette. Just take care of my other half. Just take care of Tina. Just take care of yourself."

And with that, the familiar rushing sound came. Scott's ears popped, and he blinked with sudden, sharp pain.

And then Kevin was gone. Or at least, the old version of him was.

The young version was still inside the car, waiting for Scott.

Waiting for a father. Waiting for a family.

Scott got into the car. Tina had been freed. She was sitting curled in Lynette's lap, her back to the door through which her father's body could still be seen. She looked so small, so fragile. But Scott could also see the strength in her, the wit and kindness that would lead her to find a cure that would change a world - that would
save
a world.

He looked out the window. Tina's father still lay there, motionless in the dirt. But just as Kevin had said, Mr. Gray was gone. Gone but less powerful, growing weaker as he proceeded backward in time, until finally he was gone forever.

Scott thought about his wife and child. About what Amy would do in his situation. About the fact that he had visited - was it really Heaven? Was there really such a place? But even as he thought it he knew the answer. The purity of the love and hope that he had felt in that place was incomparable. There was such a place. His family was there.

And his family was here.

Waiting for him.

Scott got in the car. He hugged Lynette.

"What happened out there?" she asked. "Where did you go?"

"Let's get out of here, and I'll tell you," he said.

And he would. He would tell them all.

Because once upon a time, Scott had a family.

Sometimes history demands suffering and death. Sometimes it insists upon happiness and survival.

But no matter what, he knew that once upon a time his families - both of them, the one that was here and now, and the one that lived only in his memory - would live again, because there was a place called heaven, and a little boy would unlock the door between this world and that one.

And don't miss
Rising Fears
,

another thriller by Michaelbrent Collings...

RISING FEARS

***

PROLOGUE:
UNCAGED

***

In spite of her name, Amy-Lynn Rand was
not
a small-town girl. Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, it had seemed like the probable end of the world when she got married to a man who not only haled from an improbably small town in Washington, but was determined to return to it someday.

She had put off the inevitable for seven years. Seven good years. Then she had finally gotten pregnant, and looked around at the big city for the first time through the eyes of a mother-to-be...and shuddered.

The avenues and promenades that had seemed so inviting and fun to a woman of twenty were now harbingers of doom to her. Boardwalks that had once beckoned now seemed like nothing but warrens for child molesters and potential murderers.

Amy-Lynn, the big city girl with the small town name, looked around her beloved Los Angeles, and for the first time in her life she shuddered rather than smiled.

They moved back to the town where her husband Ron had been born, back to Rising, Washington, and though Amy-Lynn would have been the first to admit that the move was one borne of fear, she also would have been the first to admit that the end of her trip carried almost as much foreboding as her beginning had.

Within six hours of her arrival in Rising, however, she realized two things: first, that her only idea of small-town living came from television shows where small towns were most often portrayed as the birth-place of bigots and busy-bodies; and second, that those shows had clearly been written by big-city folks with no more idea of what a small town was like than she had had.

Instead of insular life, she found the people open to the point of being a shock to the system. She and her husband had arrived late, Ron driving the small U-haul that carried every one of their meager possessions - only enough to furnish the small apartment that was all they could afford in Los Angeles. Amy-Lynn had fretted about how they would get everything unloaded: Ron's family were all dead or moved away, and at seven months pregnant she knew she wasn't much for the heavy lifting. Ron, however, had merely smiled in a particularly infuriating way and chuckled whenever she broached the subject.