The Fall of Never(141)

“No,” Josh said, shaking his head. Pulling a tissue from his pocket, he bent over Nellie to wipe some of the spittle from her mouth, but recoiled as soon as he came within inches of her. “Jesus!”

“It hurt?”

“She’s charged. You wouldn’t believe—”

Nellie’s eyes flipped open. Her mouth worked at nothing; no sounds came. Her pupils the size of pinpoints, the sclera a milky yellow, she stared blankly at the ceiling. The muscles in her face contracted, relaxed, contracted again.

“Shit,” Carlos groaned. The current in the air, all the while unfailing and resplendent, now hitched and seemed to bounce off Carlos’s body in heaving waves. There were patches of weakness: he could feel them like the relaxation of tension against both his body and his mind.

The old woman’s body hitched, as if shocked with current, then fell still. Her eyes appeared to glaze over as they stared at the ceiling. With disturbing quickness, the drone of her power drained from the room, leaving Carlos feeling empty and spent.

Josh felt it, too. “Christ, no.” He moved closer to the woman, now capable of doing so without discomfort, and shouted Nellie’s name inches from her face. “Doc…”

“I don’t know what…” Carlos also moved closer, gently took her wrist to check her pulse. As if bitten, he pulled his arm back. “Still strong,” he said.

“Still…” Josh’s words died in the air. He looked straight at the doctor then down at the old woman. And without pause, he reached down and grasped both Nellie’s hands with his own. He bucked, cried out in pain, his head thrown back and his eyes pressed shut, but he did not let go.

“Josh!” Carlos reached across the bed to grab him. His fingers grazed Josh’s arm and he tried to wrap them around it—

(thegunwatchthegunhehasagunandyou’regoingtodie!)

—his brain suddenly engulfed in a vision: spilled food and drink; tiled floors; a tortoise-shell mirror in the ceiling; a greasy-haired boy with a smoking handgun. Carlos shuddered and pulled away from Josh, his mind still buzzed and reeling. It was like touching fire: after removing his hand, it still burned.

Josh dropped to his knees beside the bed, his hands still clenched around Nellie’s. And like the jarring of a stalled vehicle springing to life, Carlos felt the air grow sharp with static again.

He’s charging the battery, letting Nellie use up his life, Carlos had time to think before a chunk of the ceiling nearly landed on his head.



For an instant, everything became hopeless. The power that had come from nowhere and had been so strong quickly began to drain. In its wake, Kelly could feel the void, the utter emptiness it left behind. She’d been hollowed. And on the heels of that, she was aware of Simon’s grasp around her own brain and felt her own power tighten and pull as her adversary took advantage of this sudden opportunity. She was at the center of some black vacancy, where life was rapidly diminishing from one end, and being taken from her from the other. Once it was over, there would be nothing left inside her. And the only image she found she could summon in those final moments was of her own catatonic, wasted form crouched in a dark corner, mindless and alive only to breathe, for the rest of existence.

At the foot of Becky’s bed, the creature’s chest strengthened and expanded. The wound ceased bleeding, the blackened curls of flesh refolding themselves. The throbbing of his heart against the meager clutch of his ribs intensified. His breathing steadied, became regular, became strong. Even his face reformed, his features perfectly defined now. Actual hair began to sprout at the back of his head.

His walk steady, he moved to the head of Becky’s bed, his eyes cut into narrow slits. He shimmered briefly as his silhouette passed in front of the window. Taking pleasure in her suffering, he examined Kelly with mild curiosity.

“Now you know what it’s like to be a figment of someone’s imagination,” he mused.

A bolt of pain rushed up through her legs and ripped through her groin. She felt her bladder burst, felt a burning heat engulf her. Similarly, she was forced into the awareness of her entire body—felt every crevice of her being, every pore, every spasmodic muscle and throbbing nerve.

“You’re fading,” he said, his voice much stronger now. “Do you see how it is to fade? It’s worse than your pain.”

She gasped for breath but could not inhale. Could not remember. Her arms broke out in welts of burning pain, but the sensation was fleeting, as she quickly disremembered how to pinpoint such pain and transmit it to her brain. Frozen, her brain could process nothing, could do nothing. A second groundswell of pain wracked her groin, this time branching through her pelvis and into her abdomen, her chest, stretching into her shoulders and the small of her back. Yet again, the feeling did not last; it withered to a dim blur before she had time to catalogue it.

Turning from her, Simon moved closer to the bed and inspected Becky’s meager form. “I’ll take whatever’s left in her too,” he said more to himself than Kelly, and began peeling back the girl’s bed sheets.

Like a child shaken and beaten, Kelly opened her eyes and managed to pull her head up high enough to see Simon’s body, bent over Becky’s bed, his body regenerating with the rapidity of sped-up video footage. He was feeding off her mind, sucking the last of her power from her. And with it went everything else: her ability to dream, to think, to rationalize, to recollect, to perceive. At that moment, even the most mundane autonomic reflexes were lost to her, and she found she could not breathe, could not hear, could not force her heart to beat. Fear did not exist; she no longer understood the complexities of simple emotions.