The Fall of Never(32)

Josh was not a buffer, not like Collin had been. No—Josh was a friend. She made a mental note to phone him as she’d promised as soon as she got her senses about her.

Naked from the waist down, she hurried into the adjoining bathroom, turned on the shower, and stripped out of the rest of her clothes. And stood there, looking at herself in the mirror over the sink.

She was thin. Her eyes were naturally dark, but a thick swipe of mascara over each lid darkened them to morbidity. Her hair—also dark—was unkempt and partially pulled off to the side of her head, held in place with an imitation leather strap. Lips chapped and peeling. Her fingernails were also black, only with grime. She was all nipple and no breast, with drying urine staining her thighs.

What the hell is wrong with me? This is obviously not something that is going to go away. This is obviously a serious problem, perhaps a serious medical condition. I haven’t pissed my pants since I was a toddler. It can’t be healthy for me to start doing it again now.

Steam from the running shower began to fog up the mirror. She reached out and swiped the moisture away.

You look like you’ve been through the wringer, a small voice spoke up in her head. She thought it sounded very much like old Nellie Worthridge. And it isn’t just from today, isn’t just from being back here in Spires, or even back here in this house. This is something different and unrelated, something you’re going to wish you took care of once some quack in a white lab coat gives you his second opinion.

But she didn’t want to think about that now. Besides, there was Becky to worry about, the poor thing. Becky was her reason for being here, her reason for coming back to this foul little village.

And just why do you hate this place so much, anyway? Nellie’s voice again. What is it that’s been sitting so quietly inside you for so long that it’s just now creeping out of the darkness? If you can’t even remember this place or what happened to you here that put you in that institution for three years of your life, what the hell are you so goddamn frightened about?

And that was just it: she was frightened.

But of what?

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t know.”



To every castle, there is a king.

Gordon Kellow was a large man. His hands were rough and huge, like two worn catcher’s mitts. His face was full and round like the moon, his skin tanned the color of rawhide, his eyes like two seabed stones, polished to eerie luminescence. When he walked, he did so slowly, as if to respectfully warn others of his approach. His presence alone was enough to fill one hundred rooms. His voice was a thunderous applause.

Despite the dark veil that clouded over certain years of her childhood, Kelly managed to maintain two distinct images of her father. One was of him in his study, observed in every direction by the countless trophy animal heads that populated the walls—deer, antelope, buffalo, moose, bobcat, and so many others. He’d been meticulous about keeping his study a hideous shade of purple—velvet drapes; plum-colored Oriental carpeting; monochromatic oil paintings (donning the sections of wall that were not already occupied by glassy, sightless eyes and racks of antlers). The vision was of him standing in this study, his broad chest puffed out, a glass of brandy in his hand. He never spoke, just admired the decapitated heads the way an arrogant baseball player might watch his home-run ball go over the outfield fence. He’d spend hours at a time in this room, usually with the great oak double-doors closed, though sometimes not. And just stare and grin. The proudest damned father of bodiless heads anyone had ever seen.

The second image she had of her father was of the great, hulking man curled into a ball on the stairwell that wound down from the second floor landing, crying like a small child. Though he made no noise, she recalled his sobs coming in tremendous quaking waves, his moon-shaped face buried into his catcher’s mitt hands. She’d caught him doing this one time as a child, and was na?ve enough to make her presence known to him. When he finally realized she was there, he’d jerked as if he’d just been prodded with the business end of a stun-gun. And he’d said something to her then too…although his words had long become the feast of whatever monster lived inside her head and fed off her memories.

She was never really afraid of him, exactly. His commanding eyes, arms like pillars, and booming voice notwithstanding, she never truly feared him.

Years later, when attending a party thrown by one of Collin’s coworkers, she saw a painting on one of the walls in the main hallway of the house. It was of a great behemoth crouched by the side of a pastel river, his head bent in sorrow, the fingers of one hand combing through the motionless river water.

“Maccinetti,” a woman had said from behind her, some trim number in a red party dress.

“Is it?” she’d responded, though she knew next to nothing about painters.

“Fabulous piece,” the woman said, and not without sarcasm. “I hear Phil actually attended an auction in Concord to bid on the original, but inevitably lost out. He’s a freak when it comes to Maccinetti. All of them: Nina MacDonald, John Parrish—if it’s been painted by some dull, neoconservative philanthropist, it’s probably hanging on one of these walls.”

But Kelly had blocked the woman out; she could only stare at the painting—at the giant impression of a man crouching beside a river—and think of one thing. That’s my father, she thought, the notion materializing from nothing. I haven’t thought about him or even seen him in so long, but I know that the man in this painting is my father. And he’s all bent over and sobbing the way he was that night on the dark winding stairs, when he thought I couldn’t see him…