The Fall of Never(121)

“This is how much I’ve been thinking of you,” Simon said. This time when he stepped out of the way Kelly could see that the shifting thing behind him was a dog. A large dog, huddled and tied to the wall, one of its paws up beneath its chin. It was injured; a dark puddle of blood spread on the floor beneath it. “All this planning,” Simon said, “all this thought and work and trouble. All so you could find your way back home to me.”

“What do you want from me?”

He spun and faced her, his features crazy and distorted by the red glow beneath the floor. “I want you to let me have it all,” he seethed. “I want you to give it up to me, allow me to be whole. There’s enough power in your head to give me a life outside of you and outside of these f*cking woods. I want you to give me that power.”

“I want to go home,” she managed, her voice trembling.

He turned and crept over to the selection of tools lined along the floor. Bent to one bulbous knee.

“You’re growing and I’m staying the same,” he said. “What do I do when you finally leave? What do I do a year after you leave? Five years? Twenty years?” He selected the hammer, hefted it in his hands. It looked almost too heavy for his brittle arms to lift. “I’ll be stuck here. I don’t want to be stuck forever in these woods. You made me, Kelly.”

“Stop it,” she sobbed.

“You have enough power in your head to give me life. I want that. I want you to do it.”

And although her mind was reeling with thoughts, she found she could no longer speak. Shocked into silence, she could only watch Simon’s disfigured form twirl the hammer over and over again in his hands.

“Speak,” he said.

“I…I can’t do that…I can’t give…”

“It’s nothing you need to know how to do,” he said. “I can help you do it. It’s not something you need to practice. Just let me in your head, in your mind.”

She shook her head. She could still taste the vomit at the back of her throat. “No,” she managed. “That’s not what I mean.”

He glanced at her from over his shoulder, eyes slit.

“I won’t,” she said. “You’re not real. And what you’ve done…Simon, you’re evil.”

Slowly, he rose. He appeared as a skeleton amidst the illumination of Christmas lights. “You create me,” he growled, “then want to throw me away.”

“I’m sorry.” She felt tears spill down her face, felt her hands begin to shake. “Simon…”

“If I’m evil, you made me evil!” he boomed.

“That’s not true!”

“I can make you change your mind,” he said. He took a shuffling step toward her and extended his hand holding the hammer. Instinctively, she flinched. “Take it,” he said. “Do it.”

“No—” But her hand was already out, had already grabbed the hammer. She held it now in her own hand, turning it over and over and over, just as Simon had been doing moments before. “How…?”

“I can do whatever you can do,” he said. Then, in a near-snarl: “Almost.”

“You can’t make me move—”

With a jerk, she raised the hammer above her head, her arm wooden and stiff. She gasped then erupted in a fit of sobs. “God…”

“God has nothing to do with this. You’re my god. When you created me, Kelly, you instilled in me your power.”

“You can’t kill me,” she managed through her tears. “It would kill you too.” She wasn’t sure how she knew this, but somehow knew it to be true.

“I’m not going to kill you,” he said, stepping aside to reveal the injured dog once again. The dog’s head swung from side to side, a deep growl starting in its throat. It was shaggy and huge, its fur dense with mud. “I’ll make you do things, though. Bad things. Things you won’t want to do.”

“No!” she shouted. “I won’t!”

She felt a tension at her legs…felt one leg lift, move forward, drag her across the floor. She closed the distance between her and the injured dog by just a few inches. The dog’s growl intensified.

“Consider what I’m saying, what I want,” Simon said.

“You’re not real! You’re a dream! You’re inside my head!”

She felt her arm tense, felt the muscles tighten. In her head, she could too easily see herself bringing the claw-end of the hammer down on the dog’s head, crushing its skull, splattering blood across the wall, across her own face…

No! her mind screamed, and she felt through the channels of her brain for the handle Simon was holding. Her mind, she found, was a vast maze of corridors and entranceways, of exits and entrances and hallways and windows blocked by bars. Floors shifted or came up to meet ceilings in certain places. Shapes materialized in smoke, dissipated, reappeared. And always ahead of her: the erratic patter of the ghost-boy’s feet as he ran, just out of reach, out of sight. In her mind. She would follow him down one corridor only to find that she had taken a wrong turn and wound up at a dead end. Or her mind-fingers would graze his bony back, and just as she was about to lunge and grab him, he would vanish into smoke.

“You can’t fight me,” he said, suddenly all around her. “Your power is what gave me life, and I have access to it, have some of that power myself. You can’t fight me, Kelly. It would be like fighting yourself.”