The Fall of Never (44 page)

Stepping further into the room, her head as far back on her neck as it would go, she reached the large leather chair and decided to pull herself onto it. Giggling, she felt herself sink into the cushion. Beneath her, the chair sighed.

There were little orange tubes on her father’s desk. Plastic containers with colored bits inside.
Medicines,
she thought.
Pills.
There were a lot.

Behind her, she heard the door creak and her father’s heavy footfalls on the Indian carpet. Suddenly frightened, she slipped off the chair and poked her head around the other side. Her father spotted her as he crossed the room and froze in midstride, a look of utter disbelief across his face. She could feel a chill at her back, could feel gooseflesh breaking out along her arms.

Daddy’s mad,
she thought.
He always said not to come in here and now I’m here. And he’s mad.

“Kelly…” He looked so big to her. She didn’t know what to say. His cheeks quivered and the fingers of his hands worked spastically at his sides. He exhaled for what seemed like an eternity, the lower lid of his left eye beginning to twitch involuntarily. “Come here,” he breathed.

Shaken, she couldn’t move. She felt the eyes of the bodiless animals boring into her skin, the back of her head.

“Kelly,” he said, his voice trying to remain level, yet his anger clearly apparent. “What are you doing in here? I said never to come in here, didn’t I?”

She could only watch him from the side of the chair, fearful to move, powerless to move.

“Didn’t I?” he repeated. “I’m asking you a question, Kelly. Didn’t I say never to come in this room? Didn’t I say that over and over again, so many times? This is my room. I come here to be alone and I don’t want you in here. Am I going to have to start locking the door?” He brought his hands up, wringing them together. He too was shaking. Had Kelly been older, what she had mistakenly recognized as anger in her father would have more appropriately been identified as apprehension.

“Daddy…”

“What do you want?”

But she could say no more.

Gordon Kellow shook. “You…” he began, his words trembling out over his lips and breaking in midair. “This is my place, Kelly. I come here when I want to get away from things. Do you understand that? When I don’t want to be reminded of the things you…” His voice faded, too unsteady. Finally he managed, “Do you understand me, Kelly?”

She understood nothing yet nodded nonetheless.

“When I come here I don’t want to have to worry about things…about…” Now his eyes broke from hers, began darting around the room. “You shouldn’t come in here.”

It’s me,
she thought.
He comes in here to forget about me.
She felt tears spill down her face.
I hate this stupid room!
her mind screamed.
I hate this stupid room and I hate this whole stupid house! I hate you!

“This room is not for you!” her father shouted, and reached down and grabbed at her arm.

There was a faint cracking sound that permeated the room, like reams of wood being split down the center. Crackling, splintering. It wasn’t just in her head; her father heard it, too. He released his grip and took a startled step back, hands suddenly flattened at his sides, his head tilted back as if to examine the rafters in the ceiling. The sound intensified, multiplied into many sounds, and soon the crackling cacophony shook the room, as if the house itself had gained voice. Kelly could feel the vibrations in the floorboards.

“Daddy,” she blurted again, tears rolling freely down her cheeks. Looking above her father’s head she could see the source of the noises: the animals were
moving.
Like arthritic patients rotating stiff joints, the heads bent side to side, pulling the molding and plaster from the walls. The black, sightless eyes began to shift in their sockets; mouths, creaking like bent steel, slowly began working at the air. The wings of the stuffed owl on one of the rafters began to tremble; a shrill hiss gained momentum in its plastic throat.

Her father had moved between his desk and the bookcase, mesmerized with disbelief at what was going on around him. He couldn’t look away from the heads, now animated and with increased flexibility. Kelly imagined the heads breaking through the walls, their bodies still attached but now only skeletons covered in plaster and insulation, and trampling her father to death. The vision was so vivid she feared that if she thought about it too long, it would actually happen.

“Kelly!” she heard her father shout, a tremor in his voice, and that was what got her moving. Without looking back, she broke into a sprint toward the door, her legs pumping, her hands balled into white fists, tears burning her face. She ran as if in slow motion; it seemed to take an eternity to reach the door. Behind and above her she could hear the sounds of the animal heads peeling away from the wall, their defunct vocal chords regaining composure: a chorus of unnatural sounds. Chunks of plaster crumbled above the doorway.

She burst through the door into the hallway and continued running down the length of the corridor until she spilled out into the main foyer and proceeded out the front door. The image of those struggling animal heads trapped inside the walls followed her into the daylight. Once she made it halfway around the house, she collapsed in a sobbing heap to the ground, exhausted and terrified.

What if he dies in there? What if those animals break from the walls and kill him? It will be all my fault.

A small voice at the back of her head told her to get away. If her father died, people would come looking for her. Police would come. She’d be arrested and put in jail and how could she even begin to explain what had just happened? She didn’t even understand it herself.

Away,
the voice persisted.
Run away.

She sought solace in the cover of the forest in the valley below.
They won’t find me,
she thought.
They’ll never find me. I won’t let them.
She’d been in the forest many times before, though hadn’t strayed too far from the house. Now, she needed to be as far away as possible. The further she ran, she rationalized, the better her father’s chances of survival.

Those heads…those animals…

Thinking about it just made her feel worse.

(stop stop stop stop)

(—kelly—)

She ran until her feet ached and her lungs burned. Around her, the thick bluish branches of the evergreens shrouded her from civilization; she could no longer even see the house on the hill above.

Good,
she thought,
that’s how I want it. I never want to go back there. Never. I hate it there.

“I hate it,” she said between sobs.

Pushing through the underbrush, she uncovered a moss-covered log peppered with tiny white mushrooms. She administered a swift kick to it, causing it to rock. A platoon of black beetles came scuttling out from beneath it and vanished beneath the soil. Frightened and shaking, she sat down on the log and pulled her legs up to her chin, wrapped her arms around her knees. Her sobs dying down now, she sat there breathing heavy while her eyes roamed around the forest. This deep, the trees were full and green and as tall as houses. Somewhere in the distance she could hear the trickle of running water. Every so often the sound of birds taking flight could be heard from various locations, their wings beating against the branches of the trees as they took to the sky.

An image of her father surfaced in her head: lying dead in the middle of his thinking room, bloody and ravaged by hoofs. There were hoof-prints across his chest, on his thighs and shins, and one in the center of his forehead. His eyes had retracted back into his head, the whites tinged red with blood.

On the verge of fresh tears, Kelly began to shake her head frantically. “Is he dead?” she asked, her throat clicking. “Is he? Is he dead?”

—Do you want him to be?

“No.”

—Are you sure?

“I don’t want him dead,” she said. “I don’t.”

—Then I’m sure he’s fine.

She rubbed her nose with the heel of her hand. “I don’t feel well,” she said.

—Will you be sick?

“I think I w—” No sooner had the words come out of her mouth did she double forward and vomit stringy green foam onto the ground. Crouched and tensed, she remained like that for several moments, afraid to move, afraid to set the world spinning around her again. Closing her eyes, she concentrated on the sound of the running water off in the distance. Hearing it evoked the colorful images associated with nursery rhymes and fairy tales—the lands of candy houses and kingdoms by the sea and all those other places she so desperately wanted to run away to. Make-believe…
but real, too.
She understood reality, understood that reality was flawed and subject to manipulation. Listening to the babbling water, she vowed she would track it down, would stand in it and feel its cool rush between her toes.

“I want to go there. I want to leave this place and go there.”

—You can. I know where it is. I can take you there.

Kelly opened her eyes. A cool breeze rustled the trees. “Hello?”

Silence.

A path-like clearing wound its way through the underbrush in the apparent direction of the running water. While part of Kelly wanted to curl up into a ball on the log and fall asleep, another part of her wanted to follow that path to the sounds of the running water. She stared at the path for some time before hanging her legs off the side of the log and hopping to her feet.

The world seemed to tilt to one side. She uttered a weak sob and caught the branch of a tree before vertigo sent her crashing to the earth. After a few moments of rest, her eyelids pressed together, she opened her eyes and released the branch. One foot in front of the other, she wove a steady channel down the center of the path, her eyes never leaving the ground. At one point, a flock of whippoorwills broke out over the trees and she paused to watch them leave.

“Good-bye,” she whispered.

Soon, the sounds of the running water could be heard just on the other side of a leafy embankment. Giddy, Kelly hopped from the path and jumped the embankment. Her sneakers slid in the mud and she downed the opposite side with a display of clumsy acrobatics.

A small brook ran serpentine through a clearing in the forest. Its water shallow and clear, she could see the pebbly floor several inches below the surface. She’d watched an old western on television one night last year. At one point in their journey, the cowboys dismounted from their horses and saddled up to a trickling stream. They drank from it.

It’s like magic here,
she thought, smiling.
It’s like my own secret place, like my own secret world where I can come and never be bothered, never be afraid. Never-Never Land.

She bent and rested the palm of her hand on the surface of the water. It was ice cold. Laughing, she pulled off her sneakers and socks, wiggled her toes, and jumped straight into the brook with both feet. Sharp slivers of icy water shot up her shins, into her thighs, spread like wings throughout the rest of her body. She closed her eyes and stood there, slowly swaying with the breeze, and thought it might be possible for her to fall asleep like this—standing in the middle of a brook.

“I could stay here forever,” she sighed.

—Do it.

She opened her eyes, her smile fading. “Who’s there?”

Again, no one answered.

The icy water spread to her groin. After a few seconds she felt her knees grow weak. She suddenly had to urinate.

—Stay there forever.

“It’s cold,” she said.

—You wanted me to show you, so I showed you. Do you want to stay in Never?

“Never-Never Land,” she corrected. Then: “Who are you?” She scrutinized the underbrush, the shadows hidden behind trees. “Where are you?”

—Where do you want me to be?

“Come out.”

—Just tell me where.

She pointed to the embankment. “There,” she said. “On the other side.”

—Okay,
said the voice,
I’m there.

“Stand up. I can’t see you.”

—I
am
standing.

“I can’t see you,” she repeated.

—That has nothing to do with me. It’s all in your head. Whatever you want to see, you make it. Just like the stone.

The stone—the memory hit her with such force that she felt it as a physical thing. The stone and the ugly, angry-looking girl from town. That stone had just materialized in her hand moments before she knew she wanted to throw it. “I forgot about that,” she said.

—You tend to block out things that frighten you. You have that power.

“Who are you?”

—Who do you want me to be?
the voice said again.

For a brief moment she almost said “Baby Roundabout,” but for some reason that seemed wrong. Instead, her mind flipped through the pages of her brain…and the first thing she thought of was a ridiculous nursery rhyme from one of her books, one that she’d always found a little bit funny and a little bit strange. Like the voice.

“Simon,” she said. “Simple Simon.”