The Fall of Never(123)

Around her, a dull blue light began to glow, to fill the room, radiating from her own flesh. A voice boomed in her head: You can’t get away from me, Kellerella.

There was something thick and sturdy and secure at the back of her mind that shattered in that instant into a billion crystallized pixie-dust fragments; with her mind’s eye, she watched the fragments disperse through the air, watched them flutter in impossible directions, watched them slowly waft to the ground and coat her mind in a fine, sparkling mist.

Glenda found her the following morning curled in a ball on her floor beneath her open window, her knees pulled up against her chest, her eyes wide and staring. Frantic, Glenda dropped to her knees and attempted to wake Kelly from her daze. Kelly did not wake up. Soon, Glenda began shouting, her hands on Kelly’s shoulders, shaking her. DeVonn Rotley appeared in the doorway. Gordon Kellow and his wife appeared. Becky, who’d just recently celebrated her fifth birthday, also came to the door, her eyes wide and frightened.

DeVonn Rotley picked Kelly up in his arms. Her body was small and nearly lifeless, her eyes staring and unfocused, and carried her downstairs while Glenda rushed to a telephone. The doctor would not make it up to the house that day because of the storm. Nor the next. Nor the next. And by the time he did reach the house, young Kelly Kellow had retreated so far into her mind that the flustered pediatrician was at a loss.

“She needs a good psychiatrist, I think,” was the only advice he could offer.

Afraid to touch her, to be near her, Kelly’s parents remained in the hallway outside her bedroom, peering in at their daughter as she lay lifeless in bed. At one point, Gordon Kellow turned to his wife as if to say something…then appeared to change his mind at the last minute.

Several times Gabriel stopped by, but he was too frightened and confused to stay long. Kelly never even knew he came.

Nights, Glenda would remain at the foot of Kelly’s bed and read from her favorite storybooks—storybooks that had long since been packed away in boxes in the basement, but had been retrieved at Glenda’s insistence—or sing her the occasional song:



Little Baby Roundabout,

Someone let the Baby out,

And now, Sweet Babe, it’s time for bed,

So close your eyes and rest your head.



If her song reached Kelly, Glenda did not know.

One morning in the fall, Kelly appeared in the doorway of her father’s thinking room. The room had long since been cleaned out of the animal heads, and now resembled the farthest corner of a musty library. Seated in his leather chair with a book propped open on his lap, Gordon Kellow looked up at the sight of his daughter standing in the doorway and found his throat dry, his mind blank.

“Kelly,” he said, his hands beginning to shake. “Well…you’ve come back to us. That’s…” He smiled at her, his lips quivering. He looked nervous and afraid. “That’s good.”

She only stared in silence.

“Your mother will—she’ll be happy to see you’re…well…”

Nothing.

“You know, you had us both worried. We didn’t know what—we called so many doctors—it was…”

She stood there, unmoving—more a memory of herself than an actual person.

The smile faded from her father’s face. “Say something,” he told her. “Damn it, Kelly, say something. Don’t just stand there like that.”

“You’re lucky I stopped when I did,” she said, turned, and continued down the hallway.

Gordon Kellow watched his daughter leave, his heart trip-hammering in his chest. The book in his lap—Travis Glasgow’s Silent River—slowly fell closed and slid down his pant leg to the floor, where it struck with a muted thump.

Doctors came and went but said little. She remained in her room most of the time, refusing to speak with anyone, including Gabriel. And soon Gabriel stopped coming around. And then so did the doctors. One evening, when Glenda asked her if she felt all right, asked her what had happened to her to set her off in such a fashion, Kelly only stared blankly at the woman without saying a word. And there was nothing left in her eyes—anyone who looked at Kelly could tell. They were cold and withdrawn.

Several times during the night Kelly would find herself creeping out of bed to stand before her bedroom window and peer out over the magnificent blanket of forestry that unraveled below. She did this without understanding why. And when she prodded her brain to fill in the missing pieces—and there were many—her brain simply shut down and refused to cooperate.

Following Kelly’s fifteenth birthday, the Kellows took their daughter to the Coopersville Female Institution where they met with several different people—doctors and nurses and specialists and even a dietitian. Kelly felt like a deck of cards, continuously picked up by strange hands and shuffled. Afterwards, on the quiet car ride back to Spires, her father asked her what she thought about the institution—though he didn’t call it an “institution,” he called it a “home.”

Without facing her parents, Kelly said, “I’m setting fire to my room when I get home.”

Her parents exchanged silent glances as the car passed through the quaint, little town. A week later and Kelly was admitted to the “home.”

Cards, she thought, stacked with their faces down, their secrets hidden, their stories untold and forgotten. Hidden books. Storybooks.