The Fall of Never(135)

“No!” she sobbed. “No! We have nothing! Nothing! You killed—”

“I did what—”

“You f*cking killed him!”

She ran to Gabriel in slow motion, her muscles working as if under water. As she drew closer, the obscenity of Gabriel’s form hit her—his face, crooked and broken; jaw shattered; eyes swollen shut, the lids a dark purple. Crying freely now, Kelly dropped to her knees just inches from the body. Wanting to touch him, too overwrought to know how, she oscillated between placing her hands on him, and pulling his lifeless body into her lap.

“God…”

Images flashed before her eyes: Gabriel as a child; Gabriel wearing his glasses while sketching pictures by the brook; Gabriel’s skinned knees poking through twin tears in his pants. These images whipped by with lifelike clarity, so deep inside her head that if she concentrated long enough she found she could actually go to them, become part of them and live there in the past inside her own head for the rest of her life.

I’m sorry, Gabriel.

It’s okay.

I’m so, so sorry.

Do what you have to do. Finish this.

“You can’t live inside that head of yours,” Simon said from behind her. She spun around and glared at him through the darkness, her hands trembling, her eyes fierce. “He was the best,” the monster continued, “because he truly cared for you. And it felt so good to end all that.” She could hear his skin crack as he grinned. “So good.”

“How can you expect me to give in to you now?” Despite her tremors, her voice was strong, defiant. “How can you expect me to follow you one goddamn step further into this hell?”

“Oh,” Simon whispered, “you will.”

The creature stepped aside, allowing the full heat of the red light to wash over Kelly’s body. Instantaneously, her flesh broke out in beads of sweat. The heat was potent enough to sting the serration at her forehead and feel the heat course through her lifeblood, though she was in a place beyond pain and did not notice.

“Beats,” Simon muttered, no longer looking at Kelly. He had stepped around the floor, allowing the pulsing red heart in the floor to beat between the two of them. “Beats the heart.”

One of the floorboards sprung up at a forty-five degree angle. She heard wood splinter and crack. A plume of dust exploded from beneath it, tinged red from the light beneath the floor. With a crunch, a second board wrenched free of the floor, crossing over with the first to make an X. A welt of steam billowed from the crevice, tinged red from the light. As if there were a busted steam pipe down there. For one wild instant, the vapor appeared to assemble and solidify in midair, creating a meshed veil between her and Simon. In that instant, only the ghost-boy’s eyes were visible through the shroud, alight with wicked desperation. Between them, the floor continued to split apart, to widen; floorboards like spears shot across the room, whizzing through the darkness and landing soundlessly in the black. With a sound like tearing cloth, Kelly could see jagged lightening bolt zigzags weave across the floor, spreading out like runnels of blood in every possible direction.

Around her, the walls began to shake. A cry caught in her throat. She pushed herself back against the wall, struck Gabriel’s lifeless body, and screamed into the confusion. Her eyes moved up and through the rising steam, which was now dispersing through the atmosphere like mist on a lake, and saw that Simon’s eyes were no longer there, staring at her. She couldn’t see him at all.

With a sound like crashing thunder, a number of floorboards exploded from the widening hole in the floor and shot into the air. Immediately, the red light blinded her and she brought her arms up before her face. The heat was oppressive and unparalleled. The stink of sulfur burned her sinuses.

Simon appeared at her side, his face so close now she could smell the acrid fumes of his breath, could make out every minute pock and nick and furrow in his fishlike flesh. His eyes were suspended in deep, black hollows in his skull, the skin around them purple and flaking. His lips were peeling and crusted with dried saliva; his teeth were like the heads of rusted spades.

“Beats,” he breathed over her. Repulsed, she recoiled, her body still wracked with sobs. “Disappointing. You were stronger when you were a child.”

She felt his presence float around her, shift, and move in front of her. Even with her eyes closed she could see him moving across the floor like a phantom, his pale and sickly skin meshing seamlessly with the evaporating steam all around them. She opened her eyes and saw him creep to the edge of the hole in the floor, stare down into the blinding red glow. The light did not affect him: he looked straight at it without wincing. It reflected in his eyes, gleamed in the moisture on his lips and on the surface of his teeth. She felt herself begin to slide across the floor. Her feet skidded against the flooring but did not stop her.

“Get out of my head!” she screamed.

“My head, too,” Simon muttered without facing her. He seemed entranced staring into that gaping maw at his feet. “It’s my head too.”

Kelly’s body shuddered and came to a stop beside Simon. The toes of her sneakers broke over the edge of the hole in the floor, and she felt a blast of heat and steam rush up and over her. Sweat ran down her temples, her neck. Her shirt clung wetly to her chest.

“Look down,” he told her. But he didn’t have to say anything; she’d already dropped her head to look.