The Fall of Never(131)

The front door was open, that burning red light flooding out of it, pulsing like a heartbeat. Something dark and immense was suspended in that light: from her new proximity, she could see that now. Something large and indefinite, hanging inside the doorway, slowly swinging back and forth. Again, her mind returned to the gutted, decapitated squirrel. And to the three dead men out here with her.

“She’s unconscious because of you. What did you do to her, Simon?”

—Now we use the name…

“What did you do?”

—I did nothing. You did it. Can’t you see that yet? Don’t you understand any of this? I would never have existed if it hadn’t been for you, Kelly, and for your mind.

“So what do you want now?”

—More, he said. What else?

“More what?”

—More life. More power. I want what you already have. I want what you have and are too afraid to use. I want, Kelly, what I wanted all those years ago, and what you refused to give me. I want to live.

“Sacrifice myself…”

—No. Join together. Make us one.

“That’s what you tried to do with Becky. Only it didn’t work. Did she fight you at the end? Did she reject you?”

—Don’t give the girl so much credit. She wasn’t strong enough. I wanted you. I’ve always wanted you.

“Show yourself now.”

—Lonely growing up here, wasn’t it? Do you think it was any different for your sister?

“Come out. I’m calling you out!”

—Lonely children are such easy targets. Such fascinating imaginations.

“Out!” she screamed—then felt a surge of electricity slam through her body, scooping her feet out from under her and sending her crashing to the ground. In pain and gasping for breath, Kelly rolled over to one side, her face pressed into the freezing snow.

—I miss our games, Kelly, Simon said, his voice now like a sonic boom in the center of Kelly’s head. I miss all our good times. Again, she was aware of a million voices at once, each struggling for supremacy. Now come inside the house.

She sprung to her feet, her hands shaking, the blood from the gash in her forehead now stinging her eyes, and she began moving toward the house. Closing in, she could feel that pulsing light searing her flesh. The heart of Never.

All in my head, she promised herself. It can’t hurt me if I don’t let it.

But the pendulous shape in the doorway was not part of her imagination.

—Come inside…

“I’m not afraid of you!” she shouted, standing directly before the burning front door. Her hands were balled into fists; her face was flushed, her teeth clenched together. “I made you and I can destroy you! You’re not real!”

—Too late, chuckled Simon. Now I’m as real as you.





Chapter Twenty-Six


Carlos splashed cold water on his face then paused to stare at himself in Nellie’s bathroom mirror.

He thought, With all man’s ability to study and learn and hypothesize answers to our world’s greater mysteries, how is it that we all feel so small? The question of God is not really a question of God; rather, it is a question of how much we’re afraid of and how much we cannot understand for ourselves, despite our test tubes and charts and graphs and awards we present ourselves—all that tells us we understand things that we really do not. We say “theorize” and “solution” and “predict” and think we are intelligent. We read Whitman and Hemingway and Darwin and Einstein and Shakespeare and think we are enlightened. We establish a foothold in the bustle of society and feel we have somehow, by some personal achievement or device, attained a certain piece of land for ourselves, a certain societal slip in which to dock. Yet when faced with the severity of the incomprehensible—the impossible and the terrifying—then why is all rationale lost to us? Is the human race that doomed? Or perhaps in blindness we find comfort, or that nothing behind our faces is of any importance until it attacks us? Have we gotten so arrogant that we no longer want to be protected and informed by our own brains, our own minds? As if they are separate from us—the enemy? In the end, have we shut ourselves off to our own instincts because people as a whole are terrified of the idea that something had to instill those instincts in us, and that we ourselves are truly powerless?

The bathroom door opened a crack and Josh poked his head in. “Am I bothering you?”

Carlos shook his head.

“Sorry. Thought you might have fallen in.”

“You would have heard a splash. How’s your hand?”

Josh shrugged and held up his bandaged right hand. “Flesh wound. I’ll survive.”

“Should have had me look at that before you mummified it.”

“No biggie,” he said. “You can check out the cuts on my feet if you feel bored later.”

Carlos offered Josh a tired smile and dried his face with a towel. “You get those windows papered up?”

“As best I can. I did a double-layer job in Nellie’s bedroom.”

“How is she?”

“Fading in and out. Stepping into that room is like stepping into a microwave oven on high. She’s not really all there, I don’t think. Her mind, I mean. She’s out of herself, searching for Kelly, trying to reach her.”