36.
***
They finally settled on going to Scott's office at the school. It was a weekend, so no one should bother them, and it was as safe a place as they could think of, mostly since it was a place that Mr. Gray had never appeared or even hinted that he was aware of. Plus, it had a small cot in it - ostensibly for injured athletes - that would serve well enough for Kevin. The boy was still in his pajamas, and had started nodding in the car, as though wanting to doze but not trusting himself to do so until they found a safer place to operate in.
There was a small farm near to the school, one that Scott knew had been foreclosed on in the most recent credit crisis and now stood empty. So rather than park conspicuously in the school's parking lot they went to the farm and Scott used the car to gently push on the padlocked doors to the vacant barn. The padlock parted with a ping, and then the doors could be rolled open easily. He parked the car inside the barn, threw a mildewed tarp over the vehicle in the hopes that it would buy them an extra hour or an extra day, and then they quickly walked to the school.
The walk itself was miserable. Though days were still quite warm, the nights were beginning to cool off significantly, and none of them was really dressed for the weather. Kevin in particular started shivering almost immediately as cool wind whipped through the thin cloth of his pajamas. He didn't complain though, either in word or via his laptop, but merely trudged forward with the adults, as stalwart as any pilgrim traveling across the Old West.
And not only was the walk uncomfortable from a weather standpoint, but it was mentally taxing as well. Meridian wasn't a big city, so there weren't many cars out at this time of night, but there were a few. And each time they heard one coming, or saw the distant pinpricks of light that signaled the headlights of an oncoming car, they would have to hunch down in whatever cover they could find at the side of the road and pray that whoever it was, wasn't looking for them.
At one point they had a scare when one of the cars stopped suddenly, and Scott felt certain it must be the police looking for them. Not that they would have had time to run forensics on the car Mr. Gray had been driving - and crashed - but if they had found the destroyed vehicle, they could easily be doing spot-checks for anyone who might be wandering around after such a massive accident, confused and in shock.
It turned out that the car was just a solitary man in a car, no doubt coming back from a late date or from hunting or one of the few other nocturnal activities that the people in the area engaged in - other than sleeping.
During the walk, Scott told Lynette about his most recent encounter with Mr. Gray, about the alley turning into a perfect rendition of the alley in which he had lost his family all those years go, about Mr. Gray's attack, and then, when he got to the part where Lynette had come to his rescue, he added, "How did you know I was there, anyway?"
Lynette stared pointedly at Kevin. "Oh, right," said Scott. "Our ESP kid to the rescue."
"Scott," said Lynette, "I'm scared."
"You could have fooled me, the way you swung that piece of wood at Mr. Gray," he said.
"I'm serious," she insisted. "It was one thing when it was someone after us. A whole other thing when the guy turns out to be some kind of homicidal ghost. But now that this is something that is involving - coming from - Kevin, I've got the willies."
Scott stopped walking, looking at her in amazement. "Lady," he said, "I've been scared pretty much non-stop for the last eight years of my life. But you...just now you're getting scared? Because this is something that's somehow coming from Kevin?" He shook his head. "You are one tough gal."
She looked away from him and started walking, not speaking a word.
He hurried after her. "Sorry if I embarrassed you," he said. "I didn't mean -"
She turned on her heel and kissed him. He was too shocked to respond at first, but then felt his hands go around her, felt his body mold to hers. "Don't you dare take back a single nice thing you've said about me," she said when they broke the kiss.
"No, ma'am," he said. It was all he could think to say in that instant, but Lynette laughed. Then she gasped and put her hands to her mouth, and looked beside her.
Scott could guess what she was thinking, because he was having the same thoughts. How was Kevin going to react to this? What would someone who relied on consistency in so many things do when confronted by something new like this?
They both looked at the boy at the same moment. And Scott felt relief wash over him when he realized that Kevin was smiling. He was not looking at either of them, it was true, but he was smiling, his gaze fixed firmly to the right of the two of them, a large, lopsidedly goofy grin on his face.
"Does my smile look like that right now?" asked Scott somewhat dreamily. "I bet I do."
Lynette smiled. "I'm guessing he approves."
They held hands the rest of the way to the school.
Scott thankfully had not lost his keys during his altercation with Mr. Gray in the strange alley, so he was able to take Lynette and Kevin through the school gates, past the auditorium and the pool, beyond the baseball diamond and football field, and out to the small building that held his and several other offices. They entered and put Kevin to bed in the cot that Scott had in the office, Scott watching while Lynette went what must be their a ritual to put Kevin to bed when he was upset.
She pulled back the covers - just a tattered bedspread and some linen sheets so threadbare you could see the mattress through them - and Kevin lay down. But he was rigid, his hands clenched into tight balls, his jaw clenching and unclenching as he waited.
Lynette inspected one of his feet. It was filthy, but remarkably unblemished given the trek they had had to take. "Do you have any paper towels?" she asked.
"Wet or dry?" he asked.
"Wet would be better if it's not too much trouble."
So Scott quickly went to the bathroom that was next to his office, unlocked it, and got out some paper towels, wetting them and returning them to the other room and Lynette and Kevin. Neither of them had moved, Lynette still holding Kevin's feet, Kevin still a rigid statue masquerading as a boy in pajamas.
Lynette took the towels from him and slowly, tenderly, wiped Kevin's right foot. "Kevin's foot is clean," she murmured.
"Kevin's foot is clean," repeated Kevin.
She then wiped down his left foot. "Kevin's other foot is clean," she said.
"Kevin's other foot is clean."
She checked his hands, carefully unclenching them to do so. "Kevin's hands are clean."
"Kevin's hands are clean," he repeated, and his hands stayed unclenched after she was done.
Finally, she looked at his face. Kevin closed his eyes, clearly unable to deal with the possibility of having to look at another human being in the face, but he had a smile on his lips.
Lynette smiled. "Kevin's feet are clean, his hands are clean. His body is well and Kevin is a-okay."
"A-okay," Kevin repeated. And a moment later, he had fallen asleep, snoring lightly, the soft snores of a little boy who was somehow so much more than other little boys. Then, and only then, did Lynette kiss Kevin's little cheek. He remained asleep, but Scott thought that he spotted the boy smile in his sleep, if only for a fraction of a second.
Scott watched the whole thing with a lump in his throat. Even though his son's routine had been nothing like this one, he still remembered it suddenly. Only this memory was not the crystal-clear, overly perfect conjurations of his melancholy, they were the real memories of a real person. Chad, screaming and hollering as he was forced to go to sleep one night before he was "ready" to go. Chad, hiding in his room so long and so well that Amy and Scott had nearly called the police, convinced that someone had somehow taken him - had spirited him away to a place of darkness and fear from which he could never escape.
This last brought to mind their current predicament.
"What now?" he asked, as much to himself as anything. Then, answering his own question, he said, "We've got to figure out what's going on."
"No kidding there, Sherlock," said Lynette with a smile. Then, before he could say anything else, she rose from her son's bed and crossed to him, wrapping her arms around him and kissing him once again. This time Scott responded faster than he had the first time, returning the kiss with something more than the surprised enjoyment with which had experienced the kiss the last time.
"That was nice," said Lynette when they came up for air. She waited as though for him to respond, and when he didn't her face grew comically unsure. "Are you...okay with this?" she said haltingly.
Rather than answer with words, Scott kissed her again, the first time he had initiated a kiss with anyone in nearly a decade. Unfortunately, however, it turned out that kissing was a bit unlike riding a bicycle: he didn't just automatically remember how to do it, and do it well. Indeed, when he went to kiss her, Lynette turned a bit. Just a bit, just a fraction, but it was enough that instead of kissing her on the lips, Scott ended up kissing her nose - rather passionately, in fact.
She giggled. He loved the sound. It made the dim ambience of the poorly-lit office brighten significantly, and the same brightness illuminated some of the shadowed recesses of his heart, casting aside the darkness of loneliness and the gloom of isolation, replacing them with something that Scott had not felt in too many years.
A sense of connection. Of belonging. Of family.
And surprisingly, the feeling did not come with accompanying sentiments of guilt at the fact that he was, in fact, kissing someone other than Amy; had just watched a boy who was not his own son be tucked in for bed. Rather, they came with feelings of happiness, gratitude...
And peace.
This last almost shocked him into stopping the silly bliss of the nose kiss. Almost. Because he realized that he had known no peace since the day he had lost his family. No peace through the years of boredom, of drudgery, of trying to put one foot in front of the other as he trudged the doldrums of life. No peace until today, the day after seeing a boy save a young family from certain death, the day that he was hunted in the same fateful alley where he had lost his family almost ten years previously, the day that he was chased by a grim reaper named Mr. Gray who seemed determine to destroy him and these two people that he had suddenly discovered he held so dear.
I love them, he realized. That was what the feeling was. The generosity of soul that he felt when he was with Lynette and Kevin. It was not, he realized with some shock, a feeling that had originated from his nearness to Lynette or to her son, but rather a feeling that originated within him. He had thought he was dead inside, that his heart had become a tomb dedicated to the ever farther away memories of his wife and son, but if once dead, those parts of him had undergone a marvelous resurrection, and what was once a tomb was now a birthplace of joy and love.
He ended the kiss, and smiled. "I hope that answers your question," he said.
She smiled back, looking as starry-eyed and dreamy as any teenager having a first kiss. "What question?" she asked.
He laughed, and kissed her again.
Then grew serious once more. "As much as I hate to say this, we need to talk about what's happened tonight," he said.
"I already told you about how we found you."
"I know," he said. "Tell me again. Slowly and in as much detail as possible. We need to crack what's going on around us, I can feel it in my bones, somewhere deep inside. We need to figure out what's been going on, or else we're not going to make it through this."
So she recounted the way she had found him: the terrifying drive she had endured; the strange screams of her boy and another boy, another Kevin who was not her own. Scott felt himself grow colder and colder inside with every new moment of her description, with every passing word of what had happened.
It didn't help that in addition to complete exhaustion which threatened to overwhelm his consciousness at any moment, he also had to deal with the fact that he was finding it immensely difficult to concentrate on her story. Not that the words themselves were any more terrifying than was anything else that had already happened in recent hours, but he kept finding his thoughts wanting to slide away from the content of her words in favor of the feelings that watching her speak evoked: goodness, kindness, hope...love.
"You paying attention?" she asked on one of several occasions when he felt a wholly inappropriate smile spreading across his face.
"Yeah," he said, trying to stifle the smile in favor of a more situationally-appropriate frown, but finally giving it up as a bad job. "Sorry, I'm just...."
"I know," she said, her hand touching his in a fleeting gesture that he took as an invitation to kiss her once again.
This time, a sound stopped them.
"G-g-g-g-g...."
Both Scott and Lynette looked over to where Kevin was sleeping.
Only the boy was no longer sleeping. And Scott could now appreciate how frightening it must have been for Lynette to drive around Meridian looking for him, driven by the twin screams of her child and some other entity that, though it looked exactly like Kevin, was nevertheless some other being, some other creature not her son.
"G-g-g-g-g...."
The boy was phasing. That was the only word that came to mind for Scott when he looked at Kevin: the kid was a blurry, ever-shifting outline. As though he was both there in bed, and two inches to the side - two images, overlapping almost perfectly, but still leaving the slightest gaps between them.
One of the two images sat up in the bed, while the other one slept on, unmolested and completely unaware of what was happening around him. The one who awoke was speaking, the source of the strange stutter that had arrested their attention in the first place.
"G-g-g-g...," said the image.
Then, abruptly, it solidified. The image of the sleeping Kevin - the one that Scott knew somehow was the image of "their" Kevin and which had remained inert through this moment - suddenly disappeared completely.
It was a moment of supreme visual clarity. The other Kevin, the one that had been stuttering, looked at Scott and Lynette and, with a voice that was both strong and apparently untouched by the problems that plagued him as an autistic child, looked at them both and then spoke.
"Gray man is here."
***