The Fall of Never (33 page)

“Mr. Rand, you’re going to have to answer my question, please.”

“Oh?”

“What did you go and see Detective Raintree about?”

“The detective.” Graham shuffled to the refrigerator, opened it and selected a pitcher of milk, and placed it on the counter. He stared at it for some time. When he spoke again, his tone was oddly sober. “I’m dying, Sheriff. I feel it more and more every day. Mostly in the mornings when I wake up. And if I wake up too early it seems all the more closer, d’you understand? Like I’m waking up too soon and catching death sittin’ right there on top of my chest. Too early, catching the dirty bastard in the act.” He turned and looked at Alan. His eyes, clear and lucid, were nearly frightening. “A man who can sneak up on death like that every damn day of his life, and for the rest of his life, ain’t afraid of much, Sheriff. But recently…you know, I been seeing some things and I been hearing some things and…shit, I guess I been
feeling
some things too.
Scary
things. And I know that. Scary to me—to a man who don’t think twice ’bout sneakin’ up on death in the early hours of the morning.”

“What have you seen, Graham?” Though he didn’t realize it then, it was the first time Alan had ever called the old hermit by his first name.

Graham’s eyes shifted around the kitchen—and finally rested on the rectangle of black glass over the kitchen sink. He was looking beyond, out into the night.

“I ain’t sure,” he mumbled.

Jesus Christ, he’s playing games with me,
Alan thought,
and I don’t have time for that bullshit.

As if having read Alan’s mind, the old man said, “I went to see Detective Raintree because he’s the only fellow around here who gives a bloody goddamn. Maybe he just likes humoring an old fool, but I don’t mind it even if that’s the case.”

The old man’s hands were shaking.

“I went to see him because I saw something in the woods the other night and it scared me real bad.”

“What was it?”

“I don’t know. I mean, it was a man…”

“A man?”

“I think so. I’m sure of it.”

“Who?”

“Can’t tell—”

“This is a small town, Mr. Rand.”

“Weren’t nobody from town, Sheriff.”

“And this man frightened you? Did he attack you, threaten you?”

“No…but I felt something threatening from him, you know?” Graham’s eyes ran the length of the sheriff. “No,” he added, “I don’t suppose you would.”

“So you got spooked and went running to your good buddy.”

“Not empty-handed,” Graham said. “Them hunters? I found one of their hats. Hunting cap, initials right on the inside tag.”

“You found
what?”

“Don’t you hear, son? Cap-cap-cap. Checkered hunting cap. You live around here and never seen a checkered flannel hunting cap?”

“How do you know—”

“I gave it over to the detective.”

“What did he say?”

Graham shrugged. “Didn’t say nothing, I don’t think. Just wanted to see where I found it.”

“Where did you find it?”

“Out back my house.”

“And you showed him the spot where you found it?”

“I did. Stayed in the car while he looked around,” Graham said. “Still spooked by that ghost-man, didn’t feel like leaving the car, ’specially steppin’ out in them woods. Not at night, anyhow.”

“The detective find anything else?”

“Not that he said to me.”

“Then he drove you home?”

Graham nodded. “Straight home.”

“That was all?”

“Everything you’d want to know.” He moved back to his stove and lifted the pan of sausage. He dumped the links into a filthy plate, grease and all. “There’s a problem with Detective Raintree, ain’t there?”

“He’s missing,” Alan said. “His car was found abandoned out on North Town Road last night. No one’s heard from him since he’d driven up here, just after dropping you off.”

“Had me some feeling,” Graham said. With an unsteady hand, he clutched at a glass and poured himself some milk. His arms trembled.

“You had a feeling the detective was in danger?” Of course, he knew he was shooting at shadows: the old fool couldn’t really possibly know anything, could he? And even if he did, Graham Rand’s mind was so frazzled that it would probably require a team of top government cryptologists just to decode his rambling applesauce.

“I told you, Sheriff, but you just don’t want to listen.” The old man turned on him, faced him with impulsive tenacity. “Something’s going on around here and it ain’t good. Something in the woods. It got those three hunters and it nearly killed that little girl, too.”

Before Alan’s eyes, the room appeared to shake. He almost felt something click over in his head, like a puzzle piece snapping into place…but the feeling passed like a lumbering wave of nausea: there and then gone. There was still some anger left in him—irritation, really—but that was quickly being displaced with a strong and alien sense of urgency. It was a feeling akin to the anticipation he’d associated with Christmas mornings in his youth…only much darker.

No, not Christmas, nothing like that. It’s like being a child and sitting in the doctor’s waiting room,
he quickly realized.
It’s like sitting there knowing there is no place to run…and knowing damn well what is in store for you behind the doctor’s closed door…

Graham’s eyes appeared to soften. “And you feel it too,” he said. “Maybe just for a second there, right? I can see. Maybe it’s gone now but, goddamn it all, it was there, wasn’t it? Like something big about to fall from the sky and crush you.”

It was all Alan could do to regain composure. “Where is the hunting cap now, Mr. Rand?”

“Detective Raintree had it.”

“And the man you saw in the woods—could it have been one of the missing hunters, do you think?”

Graham tipped his narrow head back and barked a laugh at the ceiling. When he looked back at Alan, his mouth was stretched in a wide grin, his rotted teeth protruding from his gums like gnarled and twisted vines.

“Specters!” the old man howled, caught in the throes of hilarity.
“Specters,
Sheriff!”

“Mr. Rand—”

“You see,” Graham said, “you truly ain’t from around here, Sheriff. If you were, you’d know about this godforsaken weather, and you’d know that it happened this way several years back. The winter came early, the sky turned an evil dark, and hail the size of golf balls fell from the heavens. I felt it then, felt the
wrongness
of it all at the time, but didn’t know any better. Something evil was prepared to happen here those few years ago but, for some reason, it didn’t. Well now it’s back, and this time it’s damn
anxious
to happen. Damn
hungry.”

Alan only stared at the old man.

“Winter came early to Spires once before, Sheriff,” Graham said. “And now it’s here again.”

After several moments, Alan made his way to the door.

Chapter Nineteen

From the eye of some remote nightmare landscape, Nellie Worthridge felt something immense begin to tug at her subconscious while she slept. Harassed by the manipulation of actual fingers—fingers that bent and twisted her mind, tore at the gray bands and sinews of her brain—the old woman felt her heart hitch, her chest heave, her pulse race, explode, then petrify with startling submission. Had she been awake, she would have made the immediate association between the influx of this grasping, new emotion and what was surely the imminence of her own death, yet such concepts held no relevance to her while she slept.

The feeling started as a faint breeze, pushing against her mind as if through the thicket of a forest. Yet hardly before she could even register its presence, its power multiplied almost instantaneously, and she could actually feel its freezing residence soak through the pores in her skin and throughout her entire body. The sheer magnitude of the holocaust rendered her docile and useless. Yet it could reach only her
mind—
and somehow, even in her dream-state, the old woman recognized this and saw it for what it was: not a threat at all, but the strengthening connection of
lines,
of
walking mental lines,
of the steady-steady, the walk-run.

Diffused throughout her body, the power shook her. There was a jarring sensation—inexplicable at first account, yet a second later it presented itself as the jarring of one mind into another: a cry for help piercing the silence of a long hallway, stopping only when it is able to attract the ears of someone capable of interpretation. And for the briefest of moments, Nellie Worthridge was aware that she could stand, that she had legs and could actually stand, and that she was no longer herself—

(someone else’s mind I am in someone else’s mind or they are in mine)

—and no longer confined to her handicap. Bright swirls of colors blossomed before her and she saw these colors not with eyes—
do we dream with eyes?—
but with unexplained harmony and unity throughout her entire being. The colors capered and flared. Some grew fantastic and intense while others simply dissipated like a candle flickering out in the dark. The incredible surge from these colors created a membrane across her mind, something almost tangible and susceptible to physical manipulation, and behind the membranous screen were images and flickering pictures.
Memories,
she thought. But not hers. Someone else’s.

Darkness. A forest, stifled with trees. Off in the distance: the gurgle of running water. And up ahead: a light, a red light. A glowing beacon in the middle of the night.

She wasn’t alone. Nellie understood that immediately, and the realization of such a truth filled her with black dread. Not so much
fear
but, rather, the
expectation
of fear.

Words suddenly spoken by her unseen companion:

—This is pain?

Not quite feminine, yet not quite masculine. And it was almost as if the voice did not exist in the real world at all—and surely it didn’t—but it was
there,
its evidence right inside her own head.

More:

—How do you live like this? I feel things all around me, everything. It all hurts so much. Look at my throat.

In her mind, she searched the dream-forest but was powerless to uncover her unseen companion. And if she wanted to speak out, to shout out, she knew that was an impossibility as well; she was not here at all; merely watching an old filmstrip roll on a screen. This happened long ago, she knew, and on the heels of that she thought,
Kellow. Kellerella.
And nothing made sense.

—Look at my throat,
the voice insisted.
It hurts. Make it stop hurting.

There was a moment of silence then—but only the briefest of moments. Soon, there was another sound permeating the air—this one much more intimate than the voice of the mysterious stranger, much
closer,
inside Nellie’s own head. A girl’s voice. A girl
singing.

I’m remembering this girl’s memories,
Nellie thought, and listened to the song.

Little Baby Roundabout,

Someone let the Baby out,

And now, sweet Babe, it’s time for bed,

So close your eyes and rest your head…

A child.

A child’s mind. She was in the mind of a little girl. Some—

—Kellerella—

A scream pierced the darkness of her mind. The image behind the membranous screen disintegrated into a million shimmering particles of dust, shattered by the terror of that scream. As if in reflex, the old woman’s body hitched yet again, only this time in reverse of the process, and she felt the searing frigidity of those icy, make-believe fingers slowly extricating themselves from the sleeve of her body. It was a feeling akin to pain—perhaps the closest a human being can rationalize and distinguish pain that occurs purely within their subconscious—and upon conclusion of its torturous withdrawal, the old woman felt tremendously weak.

The sound of something snapping—wood or plastic or whatever it was—was the only remaining sound that followed her out of her nightmare. And when she awoke in her own bed in the middle of the night, Nellie Worthridge feared she might just suffer a heart attack and die.

Carlos Mendes had always considered himself a religious man. Therefore, praying wasn’t something alien to him. With ease, he could recall childhood memories of his mother and aunt huddled at the foot of the altar at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, their heads reverently bowed, the murmur of their individual prayers rising with practiced synchronism. He’d been raised to believe in things greater than himself and, despite the daily horrors he had become familiar with throughout his medical career, he’d never once questioned the presence of God. And often, such daily tragedies actually helped
strengthen
his belief: that in the wake of such suffering there were people who still believed in God, or a god, and that was amazing to him and proof beyond anything else that God was real. And no matter what, he’d always managed to find comfort in such proof.

Yet staring at his wife while she slept in bed, the cold trickle of pale blue moonlight accentuating the curve and swell of her form, the dark mat of her hair fanned out along both pillows, he began to have doubts. Suddenly, the prayers of two tired women at the feet of a stone Jesus no longer seemed significant—did not even seem to make any sense to him at all. Now, recalling that memory and a hundred others alike, Carlos became disturbed by the feeling of utter emptiness that now seemed to accompany it. Like a stigma, an irreversible wrongdoing with a loud voice. People suffered and died every day and that, in its own humble way, confirmed God; and now something bigger had landed, something Carlos could not possibly explain or even begin to comprehend…and he just now realized how weak the bridge really was. That the words of an elderly shaman could slowly squeeze the lifeblood from his entire world in so brief a time frame was frightening. And thinking of nonspecific cancers and suffocating children and countless other incurable malignancies rampant in this world now startled him, made him blink and wonder how he could have
ever
believed in such a fairy tale, in such a God. A God that loved and a God that hated. A God that breathed life only to take it away just as effortlessly.