The Fall of Never

by Ronald Malfi

  Several times during the following day, Kelly found herself wandering out to the edge of the hillside that overlooked the spread of forest below. She did this with an unconscious need to be there, to go down into the forest and lose herself within the concealment of the snow-covered firs. Looking down the slope of the valley, she imagined Becky lost somewhere in that fairy tale world, struggling to overcome some unimaginable horror. Becky almost died down there, she thought, the notion so sharp and matter-of-fact that it nearly lost all relevance. She recalled last night’s dream and, again, her conscious mind leapt out for something it could not find, could not grasp, searching with mounting anxiety for secrets her subconscious was not yet ready to disclose. Yet some pieces filtered in nonetheless: blood in a running brook; a wounded dog; a glowing red light; the grating awareness of some inexplicable terror. And what did these things have to do with Becky? Anything? Anything at all?

  Yes, she knew, it’s all tied together. Somehow.

  “I can’t remember.” Vapor blossomed before her face.

  Following a moment’s hesitation, Kelly found herself weaving down the hillside by way of a rocky path, the memory of last night’s dream growing more and more intense. Practically ignorant of her actions, she downed the snowy slope with vague absence, the way a dog driven by loyalty follows its owner. The slope was steep and twice she nearly spilled herself to the ground. Having not fully recovered from her recent fever, she could feel her body wearing itself out, tiring itself, burning too much energy. It occurred to her, as she reached the bottom of the hillside and stood on the cusp of the forest, that she did not want to proceed any further. It was cold and it was getting dark.

  Also, she was scared.

  There is something here.

  The concept struck her with inexplicable priority. There is something here. She suddenly knew this, was certain of it, and felt drawn to the forest by the same sense of mysterious urgency that had ushered her into the basement the night before. Her mind generated images of hibernation, of wild things lying in wait for the arrival of something else. Again, she was struck by the image of her sister lost somewhere in these woods.

  There is something here.

  Warmth touched her. In her mind’s eye she saw Becky moving swiftly down the hillside in her nightgown and bare feet, her legs pumping furiously, her hair streaming behind her while sharp tracks of tears ran down her face. The girl moved with somnambulistic detachment. Kelly watched her run into the darkness of the forest, devoured by the darkness. She was suddenly terrified for Becky and tried to call out to her…only to realize she was daydreaming the moment she opened her mouth. Becky was still in the house, unconscious and in bed.

  But she’s here too, she thought. I can feel her.

  Encouraged by that same driving force, Kelly stepped into the forest.

  Ancient pines loomed above her; random rays of sun bled through the treetops. Some snow had reached the ground here, but not much. Mostly, the forest floor was a dump of wet, dead leaves and fallen pine needles.

  Becky was standing right here, she thought, right here on this spot the night she was attacked.

  The air smelled charged with static. Looking around, bracing herself against the cold, she imagined Becky running through the trees, her body beaten and scraped by protruding branches, patterned with bruises and cuts. And she’d fallen too—Kelly was suddenly certain of this, knew it as if she’d been there to watch it happen. Becky had fallen just a few yards up ahead, her bare foot snagged by a rotting downfall hidden beneath the underbrush. But Becky had hardly noticed: she’d gotten quickly to her feet again and taken off deeper into the woods.

  But why?

  And how do I know all this? Kelly wondered. Why can I see it so clearly?

  Not see it. She could feel it.

  Something carved into the bark of a tree caught her attention and she went up to it, traced it with her fingers:

  K.K. + S.S.

  Closing her eyes, Kelly remained standing in front of the tree. There was a sense of peace all around her—of nature and all its appropriateness—and yet…there was something masked by this peace, something like a dark bruise, a sour spot in the middle of green health, hiding just beyond the surface…

  With little surprise, Kelly found she could see the forest with her eyes closed: that the trees and the land and the sky were laid out before her. Not memory, not recollection—this was here and now. A path weaving through the underbrush…a glowing red beacon just beyond the trees, shining in the darkness, summoning…summoning…

  She opened her eyes, suddenly terrified, and saw that there was nothing carved in the bark of the tree. Memories swam just beneath the surface of her mind, nearly coherent. Yet these were not her memories, she knew; these images and thoughts and sensations did not fully belong to her. At least not all of them. It was not Kelly running through the forest, not Kelly tracing a hand to the carving on the tree…

  It had been Becky.

  She’s inside my head, Kelly thought.

  Becky’s bedroom door was cracked open. Kelly pushed it open further and poked her head inside. A single lamp beside the bed illuminated Glenda’s ample form huddled over the bed. Smoothing back Becky’s hair with one hand, Glenda looked up at the sound of the bedroom door opening. She looked startled at first, then relaxed and offered Kelly a wan smile.

  “She’s like a daughter to me, just as you were. Sometimes I think that if I stand here long enough, she’ll open her eyes,” the old housekeeper said. And without another word, she bent and kissed Becky’s forehead, tucked the blankets up around the girl, and moved toward Kelly in the doorway. “Are you all right, dear?”

  “Okay.”

  “Could I take you to the kitchen, fix you something?”

  Kelly shook her head. “I think I’m just going to sit with her for a while.”

  Glenda nodded and quietly left the room.

  For a long while, Kelly remained standing in the doorway, staring at her sister. Was Becky dreaming right now? And if so, was she dreaming of the attack? Was she dreaming of what happened to her that night in the woods?

  “I can feel you,” Kelly whispered. “Inside my head. I know you’re dreaming because I can feel your dreams. I can almost see your memories. It was you, wasn’t it? You forced me down into the woods today. And you forced me into the basement last night too. You wanted me to find that sketch pad, those drawings. But not just that. It’s been you for a long time, hasn’t it? Inside my head, I mean. Even back in the city, where this all started, it was you trying to reach out to me. And damn it, I heard you, felt you…I just didn’t know what the hell was going on. I blocked something out from my past and now you’re trying to make me remember. And you’re scared, and I can feel it.” She moved into the room, stopped at the foot of Becky’s bed. The girl looked so peaceful, so permanent. For one terrifying instant, Kelly feared her little sister would never wake up. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  No, not tell me, she corrected herself. You’re trying to get me to remember something. I know you are.

  Becky’s eyes moved beneath their lids.

  “Becky…”

  Help me, Becky. Help me remember.

  Heat broke out along Kelly’s back, along her arms and neck. She moved slowly around the foot of the bed and to Becky’s side until she was close enough to reach down and touch the girl. She laid her hand on Becky’s arm. The girl felt cold.

  You’ve been desperate to get inside my head for a long time now, Kelly thought. It was the only way you knew how to get in touch with me. You needed help and knew that I’d be the only person who’d understand, for some reason. And somehow you knew how to get inside my brain, my head, and stir up my thoughts and emotions. It’s impossible, but you’re able to do it, aren’t you? I know because I could feel it then, and I still feel it now. It’s very strong. But I didn’t know what the hell was happening. I had no idea you were in trouble. I had no idea you even remembered who I was. And I don’t
know what to do now, either.

  She thought of Becky’s diary, about the entries where her sister had mentioned speaking with her. Of course that hadn’t happened…but had Becky somehow spoke to Kelly inside her mind, without Kelly ever knowing? Had she reached inside Kelly’s head and plucked answers from her mind like some kleptomaniac psychic? Could that be it?

  That’s what you were doing, wasn’t it, Becky?

  Kelly felt the girl’s arm twitch.

  You have that power, Kelly thought, and I have it too. Maybe it’s hereditary or maybe it’s just the work of some god, but we both have it, don’t we? We both share that gift. I can remember that now…

  Feelings, memories rushed back to her…

  As a child, she’d had an active imagination. Sometimes she found she could actually feel people’s emotions, could sense what was going on inside them. Sometimes—like with her parents—there had been nothing but cold. An empty void. To them, emotions—particularly love—were alien. But feeling…

  And there had been something else too…some other special gift…only she couldn’t remember…

  I’m listening now, Becky. Can you hear me? What happened to you? What is it you need to tell me? And what is it that I’ve forgotten and you want me to remember? Please…

  Remember. She had to remember. Kelly realized this with sudden and absolute clarity, as if she should have known all along. But remember what?

  Looking at her sister, Kelly could almost—

  (help me)

  —sense her pleading, her begging for Kelly to comprehend, to remember.

  “Show me. Can you show me?”

  And then it occurred to her that maybe Becky already had shown her, at least as best she could.

  Kelly turned and stared at the closed closet door. The other night, she’d imagined herself back inside the institution, and that Mouse herself was hiding in Becky’s bedroom closet…Mouse, or those two dead girls…

  The institution, she thought. Mouse and those two dead girls.

  Something turned over inside her head. There was no sense to be made of anything—there was no solid realizations or epiphanies—just the simple fact that the institution, and perhaps Mouse herself, was the final piece of the puzzle that needed to be snapped into place.

  Remember…

  The institution…

  “But I don’t understand…”

  Yet she couldn’t pull her eyes away from the closet door. She thought of Mouse, her dark hair in ropy strands, her eyes bloodshot and darting, her bruised and scabbed arms and legs…

  What does Mouse and the institution have to do with any of this?

  She felt herself begin to shake. When she looked down, she saw that Becky’s fingers had closed around her own.

  Lost in thought, Kelly did not notice the shape that passed in the hallway just outside Becky’s door.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  In the two days following the incident at Nellie Worthridge’s apartment, Marie grew despondent and uncommunicative. On the cab ride back to their home, Marie’s sobs eased off, only to be replaced by a disturbing calm that seemed to quickly overtake her. Too angry and afraid to speak to his wife, Carlos only held her body against his own as the taxicab trundled through the city and away from the old woman’s tenement. She was stiff against him, unresponsive. And for the length of the cab ride, he couldn’t help but think, What have I done? What just happened up there? It felt like a radioactive charge filled the room. My God, did we all almost die?

  Although his mind continuously replayed the image of Nellie’s resuscitation, Carlos suddenly felt no compassion for the woman, and certainly none of the concern he had felt toward her upon their initial meeting at the hospital. Now, in his mind, she had become nothing more than the conduit for something bad: not only a speaker of cryptic words damning his unborn son, but now, based on what had happened, he saw her as a harbinger of a power beyond her own control.

  In his mind, she’d become very much a monster.

  “She all right?” the driver said as Carlos fitted his hand with bills.

  “Fine.”

  At home, he helped Marie into the house, peeled off her coat, pushed her up the stairs, and set her down on their bed.

  “Is there something I can get you?” he asked her. He’d been thinking about what to say for the length of the cab ride home, and now that he spoke, he was disappointed in his lack of something better.

  She only looked at him with blank, confused eyes. As if something both beautiful and intelligent was now lost to her. What had she seen? What things had the old woman projected in her mind?

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I had no idea. You…are you all right? Are you scared? Angry?”

  Again, no response.

  “Marie…” Her silence agitated him. In his mind he relived the events in that bedroom—the electrically-charged atmosphere, the pulsing inside his own head…the image of some strange girl on a wooded hillside just moments before his body was blown clear across the room and slammed into the wall.

  “Orange juice,” Marie said after some time, and it would have to be good enough.

  She didn’t leave the bedroom that first day. He sat with her for as long as he could tolerate. Twice, his mother came knocking at the door to see if Marie was all right. He called back that she was, and that she was just resting.

  On the second day, when her condition showed no sign of improvement, Carlos again tried to talk with her. But there was nothing he could say to get her to open up to him. It was almost impossible to see any hint of the old Marie in her eyes, and that frightened him more than anything. It was as if she were someplace else…some distant land, never to return…

  While he stood on the porch later that afternoon smoking a cigarillo, Marie slid the deck door open and stepped out into the cold, wearing only the bedclothes Carlos had dressed her in the night before. He turned and was surprised to see her standing there, was almost glad…then noticed the vacant look in her eyes. He felt like a child reminded of a nightmare.

  “You’re going to catch cold out here like this, darling,” he told her, flicking the cigarillo off the deck.

  She said, “There are some things I need.”

  He was shocked to hear her speak. “Yes,” he said, “of course. What?”

  “Books,” she said.

  “All right. You want books. All the books in the world you could possibly want.”

  “Children’s books. Storybooks. Tales.”

  “Tales?” he said. “Like fairy tales?”

  She nodded once—head up, head down—her eyes never leaving his. They’d grown dark and brooding, he noticed, rimmed with calculation. What was she thinking? What was going on inside her head?

  What did that old witch do to you? he wondered. Did she do something to your mind?

  Marie’s hands went up to her stomach, rubbed it tenderly.

  “Okay,” he said, and she turned and slipped back inside the house.

  A half-hour later, Carlos was at the library, absently extracting children’s picture books off the shelf until the muscles in his arms began groaning.

  Once upon a time there was this old crippled witch who knew something she had no right knowing. And she whispered words. This witch posed as a harmless old woman with a heart to help, and managed to trick a young doctor into bringing his pregnant wife into the witch’s home. There, she quickly administered a spell rendering the poor pregnant woman dispassionate and aloof, nearly in a walking coma, while her husband felt his last nerves begin to unravel. This was all part of the witch’s plan, for she fed off the pure evil derived from such acts, and off the harm she happened to bring to others. And in the end, as the young doctor’s sanity finally fell apart and his poor wife slipped deeper and deeper inside herself, the old witch only laughed and laughed and laughed and lived happily ever after.

  Before leaving the library, he passed down an aisle of psychology books. Soon, he found one on mind-reading and other psychic phe
nomena. The cover looked colorful and the doctor’s name sounded like something from a lousy paperback romance. He muttered the name aloud to himself and forced a tired smirk.

  Ding-dong, the witch is dead, he thought.

  At home, he distributed the children’s books to his wife, who accepted them with unaffected lethargy moments before disappearing into their bedroom and shutting the door behind her.

  His own book in hand, Carlos sat on the back porch, lit his last cigarillo, and began to read:

  Though most skeptics believe otherwise, telekinesis is quite real. Laymen understand it to be the power to manipulate physical objects without the demonstration of physical attributes, i.e., with the mind. This is due largely to mental focus and control. Telekinesis is best defined as a higher state of consciousness, where thoughts are formed in the collective unconscious mind and are executed in the form of actions via conscious and rational thought. Tapping this power insists that the conduit, or subject, use much more than the average ten percent of their brain. Primitive man made use of this ability to ensure his survival; today, having no need for such an ability, most of us have forgotten how to tap into this source.

  He pulled on the cigarillo, sputtered a cough, and looked out over the porch railing at the large apartment complexes on the other side of the courtyard. Against the gray backdrop of a prewinter sky, the buildings appeared hungry and desolate, ancient and timeworn, too heavy on the ground and too rigid and full to be real. They also seemed impossibly close…as if he’d be able to reach out and brush their facades with the tips of his fingers.

  Looking down, he noticed his hands were shaking.

  I’m on my way to a nervous breakdown, he thought. Can bet the farm on that.

  He skipped several pages and read on:

  Although the movement of physical objects via the human mind is the main focus of the telekinetic conduit, it must be observed that many people having expressed the possession of this ability also show signs of some lesser-known and rather misunderstood capabilities, some of which remain even more remarkable than the telekinesis itself. Such subjects convey mild associations with various forms of telepathy, psychokinesis, spontaneous human combustion, ESP, aesthetokinesis, which is the ability to create physical matter from thought, etc. Though these abilities are exceptionally rare and remain highly undocumented, there have been some reported cases where subjects have displayed some, if not all, of these traits.