The Fall of Never(142)

And then it returned.

In a single numbing shudder, she felt her mind flood with energy and sensation, filling in every empty crack and fissure of her mind. It was different, somehow altered in a way, but she devoured it as if starving. Her mind replenished, she wasted no time pushing herself from the floor and righting her body against the wall. Other than her own thoughts, she was faintly aware of the clutter of more foreign ones, bizarre and almost irrational: a smoking handgun; a pack of cigarettes; the contemplation of suicide; an adroit wit; a cultivated sense of compassion. And although she possessed many of these qualities herself, she understood them to be the property of someone else—some stranger who’d somehow managed to slip into her mind and offer her a chance at survival.

And retaliation.

Simon reached down and yanked the IV tube from Becky’s arm. The girl stirred soundlessly in the bed. He appeared to smile—to grimace—to himself moments before looking up and seeing Kelly standing against the wall. A look of perplexed disquiet drew a crease down the center of his forehead. He looked as if he were about to speak, his lips trembling, but no sounds came out.

“I said don’t touch her,” Kelly said. She moved around the side of the bed, her eyes alternating between her sister and the monster that loomed above her. “What do you do now?” she taunted.

Simon slipped around the opposite side of the bed and began pacing slow circles around Kelly, like a lion examining a carcass. The gaping wound at his chest was now nothing more than scarred, raw-looking flesh. “You have no control over me,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do. If you don’t give in to me, you’ll spend—”

Fresh blood began seeping from the wound at his chest.

“You’ll spend the rest of your life fighting me off,” he continued, unabashed.

“No,” she said, “you’re wrong. I can’t touch you…but I don’t need to.”

The windowpane beside the bed popped as more cracks fractured the glass. Despite the stillness of the air, the curtains on either side of the window puffed out, their corners draping lazily overtop the bed. There was the rushing sound of metal—of the bolt sliding shut on the bedroom door—followed by a number of eerie breaks along the bedroom’s ceiling and walls. In the corner, Becky’s rocking chair broke into motion, its wooden runners creaking on the floor. Like a trapped animal, Simon glanced around and backed toward the rear of the room. His face toyed with a smile; his lower lip split down the middle and exuded a dribbling yellow discharge.

“What does it feel like to hurt?” she said, advancing. “What does it feel like to be real? You enjoy the pain?”

His eyes blazed. “I want it all,” he whispered.

The small lamp beside Becky’s bed flickered.

“All,” said Kelly, taking another step forward.

There was a pulling sound, like heavy cloth being torn down the middle, as the carpet buckled beneath their feet, rising in a series of mounds from the floor.

“All,” he repeated. She was close enough to breathe him in now: imaginary stink. “I want it all.”

“Then you get my memories,” she said, and stopped just in front of him. He looked ravenous, his eyes glowing like twin lamps, his grin splitting his face in half. “You get everything I have—my memories, my nightmares, my fears.” She grinned. “My illusions.”

There was a moment of perfect silence then. It filled the room like liquid, heavy and dense, soaking up all sounds, all movements, all stray thoughts. And then, in a single sweeping crash, the silence was obliterated.

A crash.

Simon turned at the sound, just in time to see Becky’s closet door swing open and crash against the wall. Through the exposed rectangle of darkness, a suffocating current of energy exploded, flooding the room. Two sets of arms, like black-blue tendrils of smoke, sprung out and grasped Simon’s arms, his head, around his chest, one of his legs. The suggestion of faces and the outline of bodies appeared within the closet, along with the strong, pungent odor of decay. Strands of seaweed hair whipped. Torn clothes…a bare shoulder, blue and knobby…the smoldering pupils of sightless eyes…

It was Mouse’s voice that filled her head: They died in here, Kelly. Those two girls came up here to love each other and they died. What do you think it would be like to die like that?

Simon attempted a groan, but his mouth was quickly stuffed with a clawing hand. He struggled, turned to pull himself away, but the girls’ hands clutched at him, their fingernails driving deep into his flesh. He hit the ground face-first, his bones rattling inside his skin, and clawed at the carpet. His eyes were blazing and alight, his enormous pupils darting wildly around the room. He met Kelly’s eyes just for a split second—

—hurtsafraid—

Fuck you.

—before the clawing hands defeated him, pressed his face against the rippling carpet, and dragged his squirming body into the closet with a tremendous jerk. The shadows of the closet surrounded him, engulfed him, and when he finally did scream, all Kelly could see of him were the silver pinpoints of his eyes.

The closet door slammed shut and Kelly collapsed to the floor.





Chapter Twenty-Nine


Josh fell back against the wall, the sill of the window cracking smartly against the back of his head. His hands slipped away from Nellie’s, his fingers stiffened into fishhooks, the hairs on the back of his hands and lower part of his arms stood up like wire bristles. The bandage that he’d wrapped around his one wounded hand had burned and flaked off.