32.
***
Lynette just sat for a while after Scott left, thinking. But not about her son's strange abilities or even about Mr. Gray or Robbie.
No. She thought - pleasantly and unabashedly - of Scott. About his kindness and charm, about his wit and his interest in helping her and Kevin.
About how he had been the one to figure out how to talk back to Kevin via the computer - something that Lynette could not believe that she had never thought of before, but the very thing that had led to the many revelations of this night.
Not least of which was the revelation that she was very, very interested in the kind man with the scarred face.
She sighed, sipping her cocoa in quiet remembrance, and just hoped that she would be able to wind down enough from the events of the evening to be able to get to sleep before too much longer. She wouldn't be surprised if, after all that had happened, she found herself unable to do more than lay in bed, thinking.
A moment later, however, the question was mooted as a scream came from the back of the house.
Kevin! she thought. Then echoed the thought with a more visceral scream aloud: "Kevin!"
The screaming continued. And now it was more than mere screaming, more than the tantrum shrieks that so often accustomed an autistic child who had been overworked or overwhelmed. No, these were shrieks of terror, of anguish.
Of pain.
Mr. Gray! thought Lynette, and stood up so fast that the backs of her knees popped against her chair, sending it flying halfway across the kitchen with the force of the blow.
She was down the hallway an instant later, rushing into her son's room, turning on the light....
And the instant she did, the screaming stopped.
Kevin was asleep in his bed. Completely, deeply asleep. No way could he have made the sounds that she had just heard issuing forth from this place. No way at all.
Yet she had heard the noise, she was sure of it.
She tousled Kevin's hair. He was sweating, as though he had been running a race in his dream. She wondered briefly what kind of dreams he was having, and whether he could have suffered a nightmare that had led to the screaming she had heard.
But no. The screaming would have continued past the moment when she turned on the lights if it had been something as simple as a dream.
She flattened the covers down around her boy, then moved reluctantly back to the door. She closed off the light.
And the screaming happened again. Worse this time, because she was right on top of it and it was a bone-chilling shriek and how could Kevin not be hearing this? How could he not be affected by it?
But again, the instant she turned on the light, two things happened: the screaming stopped, and she saw that her son was still asleep, not so much as even twitching under the covers.
She stood there in the light for a moment, trying to figure out a way to discern what was happening and to find out if it was something that was going to harm her son. Given the recent past experiences with Mr. Gray, she knew it would be dangerous at best and deadly at worst to ignore whatever was going on in her home.
She tried to wake Kevin, but he stayed asleep no matter how hard she shook him. It was as though he had been drugged. Her shaking grew more and more agitated, but no matter how sharply she pushed against him, Kevin remained boneless-seeming as a rag doll.
Lynette finally decided that she was going to call an ambulance, though she knew in her heart of hearts that when the ambulance arrived, they would be able to find nothing amiss. Whatever was happening now had no answers so easy that they could be discerned by something as mundane as medical science, any more than the presence of Mr. Gray could have been explained by resorting to everyday criminal psychology.
But on the way to call for the ambulance, her heart fluttering against her ribcage like a terrified bird, she got an idea. She went to her bedroom and looked around and...there!
She grabbed the high-powered flashlight from its spot near her bedside table. Born and bred in Los Angeles, she was ever-ready for the advent of "The Big One," an earthquake so severe that all power and utilities would be not only knocked out, but destroyed utterly. So even in Idaho, she was still in the habit of sleeping with the flashlight near to her bed, just in case.
She rushed back to Kevin's room, where the light was still on, feeling suddenly as though she was being led by some invisible force, by some benign power that was interested in helping her through this night and through the trials that she and Kevin had been facing. She felt like a prophet of old, led by God and not knowing beforehand what he was going to do.
Kevin was still sleeping peacefully, though once again when she tried to rouse him she met with no success. So she returned to a position near the light switch, and flicked it into the off position.
The scream began again. This time it was not only terrifyingly loud, but anguishingly familiar. The voice was, without a doubt, that of Kevin.
But how? Kevin was sleeping. Or was he?
Lynette flicked the power button on her flashlight, then shone the high-powered beam at her son...and gasped. She literally rubbed her eyes, so unsure of what she was seeing that even a cartoonish denial of what the vision before her seemed to be not only appropriate, but required.
There were two of Kevin. He was asleep before her, and yet not asleep. Her son had his eyes closed, and yet open. She felt like she was looking at a double exposure of a film negative. On one exposure rested the boy she knew and had seen, her Kevin, sleeping without care or concern.
But the other exposure, the other image was a vision of pure terror. He had Kevin's eyes, his hair, his facial expressions - he was even wearing the same pajamas. But where "her" Kevin was quietly sleeping, this Kevin was sitting up in his bed, shrieking and screaming so hard that she could hear his voice growing raw with the force of the banshee wails issuing forth from his young mouth.
"He's dying!" screamed the other Kevin, the ghost-Kevin, and Lynette dropped her flashlight in shock. The light fell to the floor and rolled around, casting strobe-like shadows around the room that disoriented and frightened her as her son/not son did something that he had never done before, never in all his life with Lynette: he looked right at her, right into her eyes, and completed a full sentence. "He's dying, Mom! He's dying, right now, if we don't save him he'll die for sure!"
Lynette realized that she was crying, though whether at the thought that her boy was speaking or at the terror in the phantom child's voice she could not have said. "Who's dying?" she cried back. "Who's dying, Kevin?"
And Kevin said the name, the one name that Lynette dreaded more than any other: "Scott, Mom! We have to save him."
"How?" she shrieked back, her own terror ratcheting up as she saw the agony and fear that was so palpable on this other-Kevin's face. "What's going on?"
Then the screaming stopped. Utterly, completely, it stopped. The phantom-Kevin looked at her for a long time without moving, so completely still that it was as though he had died and rigor mortis set in instantly. Then he laid down. The two images of Kevin merged, becoming one sleeping boy.
Then the most terrifying thing of all happened. Her boy - and it was her boy, undeniably her own son, his face marked by the purity of expression and innocence of visage that were one of the signal hallmarks of his autism - sat up.
He looked at her. He looked straight at her.
And he spoke. Not with the depth of expression and level of maturity that he had displayed in his other form, his screaming form. No, his words were simpler, delivered more haltingly. But no less frightening for all that. Indeed, the simplicity with which the words were delivered if anything added to the terror that had gripped Lynette's spine and squeezed it like a slithering tentacle that moved between her vertebrae, sending shivers convulsively up and down her body.
"Gray man's going to kill Scott."
***