The Fall of Never(130)

She recalled Simon’s words: Not all of what you’re about to see is make-believe. Not everything here is part of Never. Some of it is very, very real. So how much can you take?

She took a step closer and her foot come down on something thick and wet.

It was a body. She knew this before actually looking down and seeing it. Quickly pulling her foot away, she stumbled backward and slammed against a tree, her eyes straining in the darkness to make out the shape on the ground, already visualizing the worst. A shaft of moonlight broke through the treetops and illuminated the irrefutable swell of a human body. It lay slumped and broken on the ground, its limbs indecipherable from the vegetation that surrounded it. Yet, she knew it was a person—could almost make out the shape of a boot protruding from the thicket…could almost see a pale-white hand, dense with frost, curling up out of the ground like a leaf…

“No,” she managed, and sought out that special part of her brain that controlled such hallucinations. She pressed against that part, intent on demolishing this mirage as she had done with the phantom pains of urination, the receding earth and the injured dog. Yet she found only a hollow void in her head—a coldness that could only mean that her mind was not engaged with this mirage, that Simon hadn’t penetrated her, was not siphoning her powers…

Which meant the body was real.

She side-stepped around it, not taking her eyes from it. From this new angle, she caught a glimpse of its face. It was a man. Eyes wide and frozen to crystals, mouth agape, lips frozen in unending agony, she found herself again thinking about the animal heads that had decorated her father’s thinking room. And this strange man…this dead human being lying here in the woods, here at her feet, wrapped in a checkered hunting jacket and—

—It’s not all make-believe, Kellerella.

“No!” The word exploded from her throat like a rocket, shattering in the air. She knew what this was, knew what this dead man represented, and in a fit of tremors, Kelly pushed herself back along the embankment and surveyed the rest of the clearing.

A second lifeless hump was strewn on the ground a few yards ahead of the first one. Again, she could make out the features of its face in the moonlight. Another man. Wearing a flannel hunting jacket and cap. Over his jacket he wore an orange hunting vest. However, this time she could clearly make out the cause of death: the hunter’s orange vest, flannel jacket and, subsequently, his chest and ribcage had been torn down the middle. Dead for some time now, the hunter’s blood had coagulated and gelled. His skin had turned a gray-blue color. A nest of insects had infested his guts; they squirmed in the gore, each maggot as thick as a human finger.

Missing hunters, she thought. There was a third. And there was: several yards beyond the second corpse, closer to the crest of the house and half-buried beneath a plume of bushes. Dead. Dead.

—Do you like what you see? I’ve recreated it all for you, Kellerella. I’ve made Never real for you once again. For both of us. I’ve never stopped thinking about you.

Petrified, she found she could only shake her head. “Why?” she managed, her throat small and clogged with fear.

—Because I need you. Just like you need me. There’s no escaping the truth, Kelly. We’re both the same person. The difference is, you’ve worked long and hard to forget about me. But I haven’t forgotten about you. Can’t you see that now? Can’t you see all I’ve done?

“Killed people,” she said. “You—you killed…people…”

—I wanted everything just as it had been back then. Only better. We’re both stronger now, don’t you see? You just have to learn to go with what you feel, to use your power…

“What else have you done?”

—It only gets better. I promise.

“Come out,” she said. “Show yourself.”

—Why? Are you afraid to come inside the house? Are you afraid to see what’s next? You know, don’t you? I’ve knocked it all up a notch just for you. So come inside our little home. It’s your house, really. You built it.

Three dead men leading the way to the gingerbread house. Knocked it all up a notch, she thought, and remembered the dead squirrel that had been hanging from vines just inside the doorway of the house when she’d followed Simon inside all those years ago. The squirrel, dangling with its belly split open and its bowels hanging out. Knocked it all up a notch just for you.

The image of Becky, prone and helpless in bed and covered in bruises, roused Kelly and forced her to take another step toward the house. The red light was hot on her skin now, and she could see that most of the snow and ice had melted away from the front of the house. Becky—that was what drove her.

“I should have never left her here for you,” she growled. “And I should have never left you here for her.”

—She has the same power, Simon said, but she’s nowhere as strong as you.

“You hurt her. You used her to bring me back here.”

She crested the embankment and hopped down the other side. Now, the house loomed before her, much larger than she ever remembered. It seemed as wide as a school bus, with windows that scaled up past the treetops. Its facade was black as tar, no longer made of sweets, but of stone and wood and moss and rot and blood and bone. Staring at it, she felt something deep inside her give way, like an elevator dropping several floors. She braced herself for the crash, but none came. Not from inside her, anyway; the outside world had crashed, though. Everything around her screamed in agony. The brook ran thick with blood, she knew at that moment. For some reason, that notion left her with little hope.