The Fall of Never(127)

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 f*ck away from her, do you hear me? You leave her alone! You’re not real, you’re part of my f*cking 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 returned in her arms and legs—a welcomed sense of normalcy. She had combated the power and had emerged the victor.