The Fall of Never

by Ronald Malfi

  Someone has to hear all this. Surely a neighbor was shaken awake by the racket. Someone—anyone—has to help.

  Around him: the sounds of glass striking the far wall and thudding to the carpet in pieces. Some blades drove themselves into the wall, where they stuck like arrows in a target. Some others struck framed photographs, sending them crashing to the floor as well. A crystal vase on the small coffee table was struck with an audible ping! but did not break.

  A fading image of Kelly fell across his mind, and he forced himself back to his feet. For a moment, he was pinned with disillusionment before the row of glassless windows like a superhero atop a skyscraper—arms out, clothes billowing, hair blown back—before reality came crashing down on him. Back in the real world, he pushed passed the sofa, the phonograph moaning with Ellington’s orchestra, and back into Nellie’s bedroom.

  For one insane moment, Josh saw Sampers—the kid who’d shot and nearly killed him over a year ago—standing beside Nellie’s bed, one hand over the old woman’s chest. He saw this with perfect lucidity—saw the kid standing beside the window in his crushed leather jacket, the curtains billowing out around his feet, his long, greasy hair hanging in front of his eyes. And he turned up to look at Josh too, his skin pockmarked and honeycombed with sores, his eyes lifeless except for the underlying accusatory light that throbbed beneath their surface.

  How’ve you been, Cavey? You been doin’ good? You been doin’ real good? I haven’t.

  And then Sampers was gone. He’d never really been there: it was just a trick of the light, shadows mixed with the undulation of the curtains. And Nellie’s mind, he thought. That made the most sense. Nellie’s mind, suddenly fired up and running in the red, had plucked that image of Sampers from his own head and had made him see it. She’d made Sampers real, if only for a second.

  Real?

  “Real enough,” he uttered, his voice shaking, and rushed to the old woman’s bedside.

  Carlos Mendes, asleep on his beeper, was awoken by its vibration. Though he’d become accustomed to late-night pages from the hospital over the years, something deep inside him knew this wasn’t the hospital tonight. He needn’t check the number on the pager to know that.

  He pulled himself out of bed, casting a glance at the huddled form of his wife, and slipped on a pair of jeans and an old Rangers sweatshirt. Downstairs, he gathered his medical bag and shuffled out into the cold. An absurd notion struck him then: If we just change the baby’s name, Nellie’s prediction will not come true. It is as simple as that.

  Could it be?

  He took Marie’s car into the city, and was downtown just as it started to snow. It came down in a thick blanket almost immediately, then lessened to a mere flurry by the time he reached the West Side and Nellie Worthridge’s apartment complex. In the darkness, it loomed above him like an omen.

  We’re like old friends now, he thought, scaling the building with his eyes.

  He parked in an alley and hustled up into the lobby, took the elevator to Nellie’s floor. There, he paused as he stepped from the elevator. The corridor was mostly dark, the row of ceiling lights crackling and flashing intermittently. And with each flash, shadows jumped, colors swam. For one crazy instant, he thought the walls had been spray-painted with words: words from his nightmares. He froze, his bowels involuntarily clenching. Peering through the darkness to the end of the hallway, he expected to see that bizarre, deviled caricature of Peter Pan—

  (someone else)

  —sketched across the far wall. But no—it was all in his head. He was being too jumpy.

  He rushed to Nellie’s apartment, considered knocking, then decided to just let himself in.

  He’s first impression was of Blatty’s The Exorcist: lights were blinking, the phonograph was slowly rotating through an old jazz record, and Jesus Christ the goddamn windows had been blown out. Papers and napkins and paper cups—anything the wind was capable of manipulating—bobbed along the floor or gathered in tiny whirlwinds. Directly in front of him, a brass-and-wood wall clock ticked loudly, its minute hand moving too fast. There was a definite fruity stink inside the room, hardly dissuaded by the fresh night air, and as Carlos took a few steps into the apartment, he could feel the hairs along the nape of his neck and his arms prickle and rise. It was static electricity, he thought; that pulsing undercurrent from Nellie’s mind.

  He yelled out for Josh, who appeared around the hallway looking like a drowned mutt. He was breathing heavy, his hair in tousled ringlets, his eyes hidden in the deep pockets of his skull. As Josh approached him, Carlos saw that the kid’s hands were quaking, that his right hand was even bleeding. There was also blood wiped in a smeared arc across his white undershirt.

  “Doc,” he muttered.

  “What the hell’s happening here?”

  “What’s the extent of…” Josh cleared his throat. He sounded confused and uncertain as to what he was trying to say. “Nellie’s doing it.”

  “How in the world—”

  “With her mind.”

  “My God…”

  “Is it bad, the rest of the building?” Josh’s voice shook. “I didn’t know if maybe it went beyond her apartment, maybe somewhere…I don’t know…maybe some other places…”

  “Lights in the hallway are blinking,” Carlos said, his eyes running the length of the room. The jazz record ended and the needle began bumping. “That’s about it, as far as I can tell. Where is she? Is she all right?”

  “Bedroom,” Josh said, and turned to lead Carlos down the hallway. “She doesn’t look well and she won’t say anything to me. I don’t know if she can or just won’t. I think she’s scared. Do you think she could have, you know, had another stroke?”

  Carlos stepped over a fallen picture frame. I’ve never seen a stroke victim blow out windows just by thinking about it, he thought. “Just let me see her,” he said.

  Nellie’s bedroom was in the same state of affairs. The single window here was gone as well, the curtains billowing out like ghosts. The chair Marie had once sat in was now overturned and strewn in a corner, one of its legs busted. As he approached the bed, Carlos sidestepped the larger slivers of glass scattered about the floor.

  “Nellie.” He couldn’t bring his voice above a whisper; it simply would not comply. “Nellie…it’s Carlos. Doctor Mendes from the hospital.”

  “I’ve seen it,” she breathed. Her words caused him to pause in midstride. Behind him, he could hear Josh sigh with either relief of surprise at the sound of the old woman’s voice.

  “Seen it?” he questioned.

  “She’s in trouble,” Nellie said. “Kelly.”

  “What happened here, Nellie? The windows—the whole apartment. What happened to you? Do you understand what you—”

  “Not important!” she half-cried, half-croaked. She sounded as if something had lodged itself inside her throat. Her tongue lolled around inside her mouth: an obstruction. “No time…”

  “What is it?” Josh said from the doorway.

  “We need to help her now,” said the old woman. “We don’t have time. I need to go in after her.”

  Carlos shook his head. To Josh, he muttered, “She’s talking delirious.”

  “No, I don’t think so. She’s talking about Kelly.”

  “She can’t go anywhere.”

  “She can,” Josh said. “In her mind.”

  Carlos moved to Nellie’s bedside and pressed a hand to her forehead. “She’s burning up with fever.” He placed his satchel on the bed, unzipped it. “See if she has some plastic trash bags,” he said. “Big ones. And lots of tape, Josh. Get these windows taped up, at least the one in here, okay?”

  Josh nodded and slipped back into the hallway.

  Carlos shook some instruments onto Nellie’s bed. He had no idea what needed to be done. “Are you with me, Nellie? Stay with me, dear.”

  “Not for long,” she said. There was an odd serenity to her voice now. Carlos expected her to start grinning at any minute.
>
  “Don’t say that.”

  “Can’t stay here. Kelly…” She repeated Kelly’s name over and over again, as if committing it to memory.

  “Nel—”

  The old woman’s eyes began to flutter, her mouth silently working over her tongue. A clear strip of spittle ran down the corners of her mouth to her earlobes. For a brief instant, Carlos thought the woman was suffering a seizure, and he was preparing to respond accordingly…but then the wave hit him, stronger than it had been with Marie. It was a warm, electrically-charged current that emanated from her body, passed right up through his own, and diffused throughout the room. In that moment, Carlos was keenly aware of every organ in his body—every cell, every molecule, every sensation. He could feel the rush of blood washing against the walls of his arteries, could see the granulated flints of light at the base of his eyeballs, even now with his lids closed. And he could see his lids, see the insides of them and see right through them…

  In a state of near-catatonia, Carlos thought, She’s opening up her mind completely now, searching for this girl Kelly, and opening all her senses. It’s like a wave, a current…but an emotion too, in a way. I can feel it—some of it is actually washing over me, washing through me—and I can almost see what she sees too, I think, and feel what she feels. Almost. It is like being in a wind tunnel, or perhaps being the copper in a network of electrical wires. There is an intensity here, a power here, that goes beyond anything I am capable of describing. Of comprehending, too.

  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 r
eturned 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.