The Fall of Never (52 page)

He felt the sensation of rocketing along a skyline toward the horizon, like a bird spread out over a great sea, and he thought his heart might just swell and burst in his chest, that he was suddenly so free.

Josh returned with a roll of trash bags and a spool of masking tape and paused in the doorway.

He, too, felt it.

Chapter Twenty-Five

She wove the Caddy through the streets of Spires in the darkness. The town appeared poised and anxious all around her, as if possessing knowledge of things to come. The streets were dead, empty. And up ahead, now a studded black smear blotting out the stars, stood the wooded precipice on which the Kellow Compound sat. She steered the car off the town road and mounted the lip of the driveway that wound up the massive hillside. She did this with unconscious dexterity, her mind in complete focus, her shirt damp with the tears she’d cried.

Where are you, Simon?
she thought.
Where are you hiding now? Are you still there, still in the woods?

As she urged the car up the drive, she found that a great bulk of her thought was with her sister. In a sense, this had all happened because of her—Kelly—and now Becky was in trouble. This thought forced her to grip the steering wheel tighter, her eyes stinging with fresh tears. If she hadn’t run away after leaving the institution…if she hadn’t left Becky here alone with her parents, with that
boy…

He’s not a boy. He’s a monster from my imagination. I created him—it. It’s my monster come to life.

She braked the car and ran from it, toward the house. And froze.

The house was alive. As impossible as such things were, the vast Victorian mansion had come alive, and now stood massive before her, running invisible yarns of fingers over her body, probing her mind. It had become a puzzle of askew angles, each a slight degree off from perfect; where windows buckled and squinted and stretched; where doorways yawned and grinned; where the spiral peaks of the roofs and eaves curled like fingers and toes. The walls themselves pulsed with respiration—inhaled, exhaled, inhaled, exhaled. She could almost hear it steady in her head, like listening to the din of a reed- and string-less orchestra. Through its doors and windows and chimneys emitted a rank, putrid stench; the cloud of fumes billowed out and around Kelly with each of the house’s exhalations. It immediately corrupted her lungs and stung her eyes, causing flashbulbs to explode in the deepest recesses of her brain. Spinning out of control, her mind summoned the image of those moving animal heads in her father’s thinking room, and of the mechanical rigidity with which they came to life.
She’d
done that.
She’d thought them to life.

Kelly shook her head, slammed her eyes shut.

No,
she thought,
no, no, no! This isn’t real, isn’t what’s happening! I’m seeing the house alive because when I was younger I used to think it was! This isn’t real! It’s all from my head, all part of my imagination. It isn’t real!

But that was just the problem: if she thought it, it
was
real, it
became
real.

“Not this time,” she said, and took a step toward the house. At her approach, the movement of the house appeared to cease, the foul odor suddenly absent from the air. Yet it was fighting her—she could feel it inside her mind, desperate to maintain its consistency, its reality. It was like a soul trapped between two planes, frantically trying to get a foothold somewhere, on some plane or in some world. But she wouldn’t let it. Not this time. No way in hell.

She mounted the steps and reached for the front door. To her chagrin, the door seemed to recoil from her, to buckle inward as a prevention tactic. The beams that held it creaked and groaned, protesting the unnatural act. Above the door frame, the siding panels splintered down the middle…then appeared to undulate, as if seen through the heat of a fire, trying to piece themselves back together. The porch floor also pulled inward; she felt it slide out from beneath her feet. Wood splintered and popped all around her. She heard something snap and seemingly explode, followed by a distant metallic thud: one of the hinges on the door. Could this really be happening? Could she really be this reckless and open, allowing all her bizarre childhood fears come to life on this bitter and dark hillside?

She tried for the knob again but the house refused to let her in.

And what about the people in there? What about Becky?

Backing down the front stoop, she turned and dashed around the side of the house, her hair streaming behind her, her coat open. She was breathing heavy, her breath harsh and dry in her mouth. At the side of the house, she glanced up at the bank of windows that climbed to the roof. Becky’s window was closed.

She turned and faced the forested valley below. At the top of her lungs, she screamed, “You stay the fuck away from her, do you hear me? You leave her alone! You’re not real, you’re part of my fucking brain, so leave my sister alone!”

The world felt like it dropped several feet, and she had to look down to convince herself that she was still standing on it.

Nothing that happens is real,
she thought.
I just have to remember that. It’s all in my head and nothing that happens can hurt me if I don’t let it.

The hair on the back of her neck pricked up and, for some strange reason, she thought of old Nellie Worthridge.

She took another step toward the back of the house, but collapsed to the ground before she could get far. Something had ruptured inside her body, deep in her groin, and she suddenly needed to urinate mercilessly. The pain was so intense, so unique, that it sent spirals of color capering before her eyes. She clamped them shut. Grotesque images flickered across the screens of her eyelids.

This pain is not real. It’s Simon doing this—that monster. He—it—has just as much power as I do, and it’s using every last bit of it to ward me off.

Why? Because it was
afraid.

She lay still on the snow-covered earth, her eyes still closed, and placed her hands down on either side of her body. Wracked by tremors of pain, her teeth gritted together, she forced the feeling to flee her body. It was something she’d never done before, yet she knew exactly how to do it, as if such behavior was natural and she were running off pure instinct.

That’s because it
is
natural,
she heard a voice whisper in her head. Again, she thought of Nellie Worthridge.
Natural to some, that is.

She willed the feeling away. It wasn’t a gradual process; instead, the corruption that had suddenly plagued her simply left with equal abruptness. It happened so quickly that she didn’t believe it at first, and remained lying on the ground, her eyes still shut. Slowly, feeling returned in her arms and legs—a welcomed sense of normalcy. She had combated the power and had emerged the victor.

Yes,
she thought,
but for how long?

Scrambling to her feet, she felt the earth again pitch beneath her. A quake; though it was a quake inside her, and had nothing to do with the outside world. In reality, she was floating on nothing, and possessed every ability to manipulate everything she ever thought permanent. It was a frighteningly powerful comprehension.

“How long have you been hiding down there?” she heard herself whisper. And it was a stupid question because she knew the answer: Simple Simon had been hiding in the woods since his birth. And she’d birthed him. It occurred to her then: she was, in all truth, the mother of the beast.

She pushed herself forward over the edge of the hillside and began to climb down into the wooded valley. It was dark and difficult to see her footing. Several times she nearly spilled to the ground. At one point, she paused because the ground beneath her feet appeared to distort and pull away from her, like a receding carpet. She’d first thought it was a trick of the darkness, and tapped her foot against the dirt. Small stones rolled down the hillside…and vanished over the edge, falling long and deep into the shadow. She listened and never heard them hit the ground. Another childhood fear—the fear of falling over the hillside and injuring herself. Again, this recently remembered rumination became her reality, and she struggled with the reparations as she’d done just moments before when attacked by the sudden urge to urinate. In her head she pictured the earth coming together, the shadows brushed away, and brought down her foot. Solid earth moved up to greet her. And again—another step. And another. And another. She passed trees and bushes, the moonlight fading behind her as the forest grew denser and, after several moments, she touched down on the valley floor.

All was silent. No birds, no insects. The land was in hibernation.

Never,
she thought.
That was the name of this place. We called it Never.

The forest before her was impossibly black. Anything could come at her from any direction and she’d never see it coming, never—

No, I can’t think about that. If I imagine it, it could happen, could come true. Somehow, Simon has managed to tap into my head and use my ability against me and for his own purposes. I have to be careful not to let prying fingers into my brain.

Wind blew, rattling the trees and causing her to gasp.

I’m not going to be able to find anything down here. Not in the dark…

That said, a dull red glow appeared at the heart of the forest, just barely visible for the trees. It pulsed like a heartbeat, and she could almost hear it breathing in her head. Obeying her instinct, she took a step in the direction of the light, her foot crunching dead leaves hardened by frost. The pulse of the light was steady, unflinching. She a ship in the harbor, and that light her beacon. Home. Coming home. Welcoming her back to the Land of Never.

He wants me to find him,
she thought, creeping through the underbrush.
He’s been waiting for this confrontation for as long as I have. And maybe all along he was never satisfied with Becky. Maybe he was smart enough to use Becky to get to me. Maybe all those feelings I started feeling back in the city had nothing to do with Becky calling out to me, and everything to do with this monster.

The notion that this creature was capable of such power nearly frightened Kelly into submission. However, she would not curl up and wish it all away. She couldn’t do that, not now. She’d left a door unlocked here when she went away as a teenager, and the thing living inside that room had gotten out, had himself a grand time. But now the cat was back; the mouse would no longer play.

“I created you from nothing,” she whispered as she walked. Even in the densest part of the forest the wind whipped her face and chapped her cheeks and lips. “I made you and now I’m going to put you back.”

—You’ll never do it.

She froze. It was a voice inside her head.

“Simon…”

—You can try but you’ll never be able to make me disappear. You’ve done too much forgetting while I’ve remained lonely and restless, Kellerella. Now I’m strong and you’re weak. Time has changed things.

And could that be true? Or was it just another tactic?

“What have you been up to?” Her throat felt thick and tight. “What did you do to Becky?”

But the voice did not respond. Her eyes, still trained on the red beacon in the distance, forced her to trudge on. Her fear was slowly being eaten by an urgency to reclaim her own mind and body. She felt cheated. That this creature had done terrible things to her in the past, forcing her mind to block out whole lapses of her childhood, she wanted to punish him—it—whatever—and make him pay, make him go away, to shovel him back into the realm of nonexistence.

And then there was Becky. Poor Becky, whom she’d deserted, had been left unknowingly with a monster in her back yard.

I’m sorry,
Kelly thought.
I’m so sorry.

She stumbled into a narrow clearing, thought she’d gotten somehow turned around, then realized that she was on the path. Though it had become overgrown over the passage of years, the rudiments of the path remained, and she found that she could trace its direction even in the darkness. The beacon was still up ahead of her, but she no longer needed it. Now she was on the path. It would take her home.

Home,
she thought.
My own warped mind poisoned this place.

Something moved in the shadows a few feet in front of her, and she felt her heart skip. She paused, standing there like someone at the scene of a twisted and gruesome accident, her eyes hungry to focus on the thing before her, to draw it out into the moonlight.

She found herself whispering, “Simon…”

Two eyes locked with hers; they were the first things she saw. They were blue and piercing, deflecting the moon glow like polished ice. Yet they were
low,
close to the ground…

“Come out.” She wanted to sound forceful but her voice cracked.

The eyes moved and Kelly followed them in the shadows. Briefly, they vanished in the darkness, only to reappear several inches closer. Its body was still hidden in darkness, yet she could sense the enormity of it moving and shifting around her. Like an embrace, its warm, fetid breath accosted her, wrapped around her. Intelligent eyes…yet not the eyes of a human being. Nor the eyes of anything trying to mimic a human being.

“Come out,” she repeated, her voice a bit sterner.