42.
***
Lynette agonized.
She didn't want to leave her son in the car alone. But neither did she feel good about the fact that Scott had gone alone into the dark house that stood before them. It had been several minutes, and he had neither come out to signal all clear nor to give any other clue what was going on in the place.
The house simply stood dark and empty-seeming, a vast monster that might as well have swallowed Scott whole in the night, like the whale that had emerged from the depths to swallow Pinnochio. Only she knew that in this case, there would be no joyful reunion with a long-lost father deep in the belly of the beast. Rather, there was bound to be only death and danger.
He was alone. Scott was alone.
She could not help but feel that she ought to be inside helping out somehow. But then, again, there was Kevin. Under normal circumstances, she might have chanced leaving him alone for a few moments, as long as he had his laptop to keep him company.
But then, under normal circumstances she would not have followed her autistic son's directions to an apparently abandoned house into which only Scott had to go. Normal circumstances would have found her peacefully in bed right now, not in a car in the middle of a field waiting hopefully for the return of a man she had inexplicably come to admire, respect, and even love in the past hours. Normal circumstances would not have included Mr. Gray, or the fact that her son was currently acting as though he had some kind of strange pipeline into future events.
How was that happening? she wondered. How was he seeing what he was seeing?
Kevin was typing on his laptop, his fingers flying frenziedly across the keyboard, typing what she now knew to be mathematical phrases and theorems that were so far beyond the norm that the average college professor would have been baffled by them.
"Kevin," she said on a whim. He kept typing, but she knew that that did not necessarily mean he was not hearing her. Indeed, it was likely that he was hearing her, though he would not show it. "Kevin, I'd like to talk to you. Can I have your keyboard?"
He did not answer, but his fingers stopped moving across the keys. He sat back, expectant.
She slowly moved the laptop into her own lap. "Where is Scott going?" she typed, then handed it back to him.
"Into the mouth of darkness," he typed back. She shuddered at the uniquely adult phrasing he was falling into when "talking" on his computer. Not only was he typing mathematics at an advanced level, but apparently he was also able to communicate in an advanced though oblique manner when doing so through the medium of his computer.
"What does that mean?" she typed.
"It means that everything matters. Everything counts. Everything is critical. The timing has to be perfect," he wrote back.
"What happens if it isn't perfect?" she typed.
"The world we know will never end. The world that must be will never come to pass."
She sighed. This wasn't helping her understand anything that was going on with Scott, or with herself for that matter. She tried another track. "Who am I talking to right now?"
"Kevin."
"Why do you sound different on the computer?"
"Because I'm different on the computer. I'm a different Kevin."
She felt a thrill of fear, remembering the dual children she had seen in Kevin's bed and then again in the car.
"What kind of different Kevin? How different?" she wrote.
He paused for a moment before typing. "I'm older. I'm an older variant."
"Variant?"
"Dimensional variant."
"What does that mean?"
This time he did not reply, either in word or on the computer. He merely sat, limp, as though the words he had already typed had taken a heavy toll on him. She tried typing several more things, but apparently he was done talking - or writing - for the time being.
She reached out a hand, and slowly took his. Usually even that level of personal interaction was too much for him to handle, and would signal a withdrawal both physical and mental. But this time he did not pull away. Indeed, he actually curled his small fingers around hers, holding them tightly. She sighed in happiness, for in that instant it felt as though all would be right with the world. As though things could be fixed. As though whatever was happening would come to an end, and they would be happy again. Her, and Kevin, and Scott. Happy. A family.
Then a voice spoke.
"Aww, ain't that sweet."
Lynette grew instantly cold. She looked all around for the source of the voice, but saw nothing. Even though no one was apparent, though, she knew the voice. Knew who it was.
Mr. Gray.
He was here.
***