The Fall of Never(139)

He forced an image to appear in her head then: a dark, hidden corner where Kelly sat, curled on the floor with her legs drawn to her chest, her eyes blank and sightless, her mind taken from her. Could she spend a lifetime like that? An eternity?

—This is the extent of the power I’ve taken from you so far, he spoke up in her head. Little by little, I keep taking more. I can’t kill you, but I can kill this little one in the bed here without a second thought…and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.

“You know that’s true,” he said aloud.

She turned to face him and saw that something had materialized in his hand. It was a plastic fork, she saw. Only one of the tines remained. Yet unlike the other forks, this one was exaggerated to three times the normal size, the remaining tine nearly as long as the blade of a knife. Tauntingly, Simon brought the fork up to Becky’s face. Kelly tried to summon a burst of energy to propel her body off the wall and at the creature, but she was powerless to do so. Like a vein, she was slowly being drained.

My life or my sister’s, she thought. There’s no other—

Something slammed inside her head, wracking her body, and causing her legs to shoot out in front of her. There was no pain—just the clear presence of something new flooding into her head, quickly spreading to cover her brain like a web. And with it came thoughts—

(dear you need to use me can you use me can you feel me I am here to help you I am here to help)

—and she felt her strength and control return to her and flood through her entire body like a shock from an electric cable. Again, her nose burned with citron. Her eyes stung and her head felt strangely full, as if filled with more thoughts and emotions and ideas than she was capable of supporting. This wasn’t Simon, she understood. This was something else, some other, and she could faintly recall the feeling of a third mind entwined with the community mind that was hers and the monster’s. A third mind—and she could suddenly feel her lungs stretch and breathe from far away…her ears and eyes hear and see from a place she did not occupy…her hands and fingers and flesh feel from a body that was not hers—

She pushed herself away from the wall and gathered her legs up under her. Like an unsteady sailboat in a raging storm, she waved on her own as the world swam back into focus for her.

Simon felt it, too. “What is that?” There was a tremor of fear in his voice. “In our head—” His words died in midair as his hand holding the fork to Becky’s face swung around and planted the utensil deep into his own chest. It entered his body with a wet crunch. Black ink sprayed his neck and hand, his chest, and across Becky’s bedclothes. In shock, he pulled his hand away, the fork still impaled in the center of his chest, the wound spurting ink-colored blood. He shuddered and brought his eyes up to meet Kelly. His pupils filled his eye sockets, black as hot tar, and equally as sightless.

—How…

“It’s my mind,” she breathed.

A thick rope of syrupy blood dripped from the wound and pattered on the floor. Some of it splashed Simon’s feet. The contrast of black on white looked almost premeditated, like the work of a skilled painter.

Another burst of energy washed through her and she felt herself reclaim some of her mind that Simon had wrapped his mental fingers around. She tugged it back to safety, frightened and amazed at this sudden resurgence of power.

It’s someone else, she thought. Someone else is inside me, helping me.

Her eyes fell on Becky’s lifeless form and Kelly knew it wasn’t her.



Nellie Worthridge bucked once, twice, three times. Carlos, close at her side, pulled away from her, terrified of touching her in such a state. In his mind, he couldn’t help replay the scene of him grabbing Nellie’s arm and pulling the woman from his wife…and the surge of power and thought that rose and crested in him as he did so.

“She found her,” Josh whispered. He looked in a daze, his eyes focused on Nellie’s pained face. “Nellie found her.”

“You can tell—”

“I can feel it. It’s in the air, all around us. I can almost see…”

Carlos too found he could almost see: it hung in his mind like a screen on a wall, projecting the flicker of blurred images eager to solidify themselves. A girl—a shape—a room—darkness—the beating of a giant, invisible heart…

“She’s with her now!” Josh shouted. Something popped behind him, and Carlos noticed a slender crack on the far wall begin working its way from the floor to the ceiling. It struggled at first, gaining momentum.

This place will come down around us, Carlos thought. How long can we keep this up?

Again, Nellie shuddered on the bed, her face twitching as if in pain. Watching her, Carlos became cognizant of his unimportance, or his complete and utter smallness. What could he really do? If this woman died right here in front of his eyes, what could he really do for her? And would he even want to touch her?

He watched the crack creep slowly up the wall. Soon, a second one appeared.



Kelly moved toward Becky’s bed. Simon watched her with the distrust and surprise of a wounded child. His image stuttered—blinked—once, twice, three times. The plastic fork still jutting from his chest, he’d backed himself as far back against the wall as he could manage. She could hear his breathing now; it came in wet, labored wheezes, like a flooded engine trying to turn over.