The Fall of Never(120)

From inside the shack she heard what sounded like a muted whimper. Simon’s face, its left side hidden behind the frame of the doorway, moved to face her again. Head cocked downward, the ghost-boy glared at her from beneath the misshapen ledge of his brow. His eyes glowed with calculation, with intelligence. As if she’d been living in a haze of unreality, Kelly suddenly realized the absurdity of this creature’s existence. The realization dawned on her, hit her so hard across the face, that she almost laughed in spite of her surroundings. And at that instant, she thought she saw the shack waver…thought she could actually see the trees on the other side, right through the walls…

That’s what you’re afraid of, she realized. You’re afraid of me eventually destroying you. And the longer I don’t believe, the less you exist.

—You can’t think without me knowing it, Kelly, his voice erupted inside her head like a thousand gunshots. And you’re wrong: the longer you don’t believe, the more freedom I have to become what I want.

Like an opponent, she stared him down in the doorway. He grinned at her, his mouth cluttered with shredded teeth and purplish gums covered in sores. Shaking, she pushed forward down the walk. When she reached the doorway, she pressed herself against one side and brushed by the decapitated squirrel, trying not to look at it. Somewhere in the stifling darkness ahead of her, she heard Simon chuckle to himself.

Inside, she found that the shack was much bigger than it appeared. In the absolute darkness, she found she couldn’t even make out the opposite wall, and sensed that it went back at least fifty feet. Even her slight footfalls echoed all around her. In that echo, she could also sense the height of the ceiling: tremendous…towering above the trees.

Impossible, she thought.

But wasn’t it all?

There was a definite stink here—it seemed to swim in the air, hungry to cover as much ground as quickly as it could. It infused itself inside her nose, causing her to double over and gag. Each gag boomed in repeat throughout the massive room. Though she’d never experienced such a stench, she somehow understood that it was directly related to death, and to the slaughter of small, bleeding things. Just ahead, Simon’s white form slowly faded into the darkness of the room like a ghost. Seeing him in this light, it was easy for her to question his authenticity. Yet this house—and the stink—only reinforced him, made him more real than he’d been to her thus far.

Sick from the smell, she shuffled further into the room, the outside light almost completely gone now. At her back lay a single panel of sunlight coming in from the doorway and reflecting on the ground. That was all.

Again, she heard that soft whimper—an injured animal. And riding above that sound, so low and steady that it had been indistinguishable until now, she could hear a muted buzzing, like caches of electrons slamming into one another. As she progressed into the room the din grew steadily louder. Flies, she thought then. This room is filled with giant buzzing flies.

“What else is here—?” Her voice boomed and shook the walls. She quickly shut her mouth.

—Back here, Simon said in her head.

She took a few more steps. Now, her eyes starting to grow accustomed to the dark, she was able to walk with a bit more confidence. She brushed by something warm and stiff and shuddered. At that moment, a dim red light began pulsing at the center of the room, and she saw that what she’d brushed was another dead animal, this one too mutilated to distinguish. It had been sliced into membranous sheaths and draped from the ceiling, from one wall to the other, its body drying in the autumn heat like sheets on a clothesline. Its furry hide was saturated with a horde of giant flies, each buzzing and clicking and chirping to a solid wave of static. Flailing backward, her right hand shot out and grazed the fleshy hide, painting her with warm blood and causing her stomach to heave once again. The world spinning before her eyes, she went crashing to the floor—

—and for an instant it felt like wet ground, like solid earth beneath her—

But it was flooring. Wood. She could feel it, even as she pulled herself into a ball and forced her stomach muscles to relax. Looking up, her vision refocusing, she could see Simon’s gaunt silhouette pulsing in the sudden red glow of light at the center of the room. The light itself seemed to be coming from the actual floor, most prominent between the slats in the floorboards. Simon, his back to her, was occupied with something. She noticed things on the floor at his feet: more plastic forks, three of the four prongs busted off each of them; several discarded food and drink containers filled with a dark liquid; a collection of tools and utensils, including an old hammer, a screwdriver, a long carving knife, and an unwound wire coat-hanger. And what looked at first like small stones.

Those are skulls, she realized. Those are skulls of small animals at his feet.

Simon stepped aside and Kelly saw something shudder in the gloom behind him. Something big. Some animal.

“Get off the floor and come here,” Simon muttered, not looking at her.

“What is that light?”

“The heart of Never,” he said, glancing at the pulsing red light coming up through the floorboards. “This place is getting stronger. It’s almost alive.”

“No.”

“Get over here.”

She felt herself rise and duck beneath the slaughtered animal veil hanging from the ceiling. The red pulsing light was like a suffocating heat all around her. Sweat broke out across her face and neck, down her arms and legs. The faint need to urinate passed through her like a virus.