The Fall of Never(107)

It was a grand room with a vaulted ceiling and varnished wood walls. The massive, rhombus-shaped windows were covered by heavy palls of purple velvet and piped with gold embroidery. There was a single chair of red leather in the center of the room, facing an expansive mahogany desk that was propped against the far wall. Two out of the four walls groaned with books of all shapes, sizes, and colors. The room smelled of them—a musty, unused smell that reminded young Kelly of soggy old newspapers and unwashed laundry. And, of course, there were the animals…

They had congregated toward the ceiling, all of them, and stared down with sightless obsidian eyes, black as the darkest midnight. A stuffed owl was perched atop one of the ceiling rafters; a cougar, its jaws wide, protruded above an oil painting of some place called Aspen (the name was on a brass plate tacked to the bottom of the frame); horned animals—animals she did not know the names of—had gathered in military precision just above one of the immense bookcases, their faces lost to any attempt at expression. It occurred to her then what death actually meant: that in death, there was no expression, no smiling or crying or laughter or hurt. That these animals had for some reason been cheated out of such wealth frightened her. The dullness of their eyes and the rigidity of their flesh conveyed a certain sense of permanence to her, of finality, and the awareness of such truths stimulated the anxiety within her.

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.