The Fall of Never(21)

“You look exhausted, dear,” Glenda said, taking her empty plate to the sink. “You should get some rest.”

“Yeah, I think I will.” She stretched and stood up from the table, kissed Glenda on the cheek. “Despite the circumstances, it’s good to see you again.”

Her words apparently touched the woman, and for a moment Kelly thought Glenda was about to say something, but she didn’t.

Tired, Kelly turned to leave—then stopped in the kitchen doorway.

“Glenda?”

“Yes, honey?”

“Why would Becky’s bedroom door be locked?”

Glenda looked surprised. “The door is locked? I was just in there no more than an hour ago, it wasn’t locked then.”

“Who would have a key?”

“I’m sure there are keys lying around. I don’t see why anyone would lock that door, though. Perhaps your father did it before retiring for the night…”

“Yes,” she said, “maybe he did.”

But why?

Moments later and she was upstairs, standing outside Becky’s closed door. This time there was no blue light glowing from beneath the door. Thinking it odd that the door should be locked, she reached out and grasped the knob again, shook it.

It turned.

What the hell…?

It was as dark as ink inside the room, and about as cold as death. Kelly stepped inside, sliding one hand up along the wall, searching for the light switch. She found it but, at the last second, decided to leave the light off. Instead, she opened the door wider, allowing the light from the hallway to slip inside and illuminate some of the spacious bedroom. It was dark, almost too dark to see anything properly, but Kelly was able to make out the shape of her sister bundled beneath the floral bedclothes on her canopied bed (the bed itself was nearly an exact duplicate of the one in Kelly’s childhood bedroom). Beside the bed, the two large windows were open all the way, and the frigid night wind blew the curtains out in great gusting billows.

Are they crazy? She could catch pneumonia.

In the dark, she went to the windows, pulled them shut and locked them. The curtains fell limp on either side of her. The windows looked out from the right side of the house—all sloping forest and large, angry crags of sandstone. The moon was high and full, glowing on the misty valley below.

As if in a dream, she turned and moved to the side of the bed, her eyes now growing accustomed to the darkness. With the help of the moonlight, she could make out Becky’s face in the dark, and it suddenly occurred to Kelly that she was just as much a stranger to this fifteen-year-old girl as anyone could be. She hadn’t seen nor spoken to her in years, and maybe Becky didn’t even remember her. And if she did, maybe she didn’t want to. Maybe—and this, Kelly abruptly realized, was the most horrifying of all—Becky no longer wanted anything to do with her.

“I didn’t mean to leave you like that.”

But that was not exactly true. The fact was, she hadn’t thought about Becky at all back then. And she certainly hadn’t been an older sister to the girl.

That’s because I was too busy running away from this place to ever look back, to bother seeing anything good that might have been here.

But she had been a child herself, really, and she couldn’t blame herself for those mistakes, could she?

Becky’s face was pale, but even in the moonlight Kelly could see the discoloration of her skin, the places where the bruises had blossomed, where her attacker had left his mark.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, “and I’ll be right here when you wake up.”

She reached out and smoothed the girl’s hair off her forehead. She felt so cold. Stepping backward away from the bed, she didn’t want to take her eyes off the unconscious child. This, she was certain, was what it felt like to be a mother. And again, she could clearly see Glenda scooping seeds and slimy guts out of the hole in the top of the pumpkin. So long ago.

Something crunched beneath her foot and she jumped.

She backed up and looked down, saw herself surrounded by a spillage of what appeared to be plastic forks, all strewn haphazardly across the carpet. The broken one—the one she’d stepped on—had splintered into three sharp pieces, like little plastic daggers. Forks. Plastic forks, like booby-traps set into the carpet.

Forks. And on closer inspection, she noticed that each fork only had one tine, and that all the other tines had been broken off. At first, the image simply registered itself as bizarre…but then a moist wave of panic fell over her, and she suddenly felt the burning need to urinate rise up in her bladder, so strong she was hardly able to make it across the carpet without walking bow-legged.

Ready to dash down the hallway to the bathroom, the moment she stepped outside Becky’s bedroom, the sensation to urinate immediately subsided.

That can’t be. How could a feeling that intense just disappear in a flash like that? What’s wrong with me?

She could only stand there in the hallway outside Becky’s room, her feet now planted firmly to the floor, her hands beginning to tremble at her sides. From where she stood, the bedroom was too dark to make out the shape of her little sister sleeping in bed. Instead, everything took on the inarticulate forms of shadowed silhouettes.

It’s just been a long night, whispered a voice inside her head. For some reason, she associated the voice with old Nellie Worthridge. Everything will start making more sense to you in the morning. So go get some sleep.