The Fall of Never(62)

Again, the childhood image of her father sobbing in the darkened stairwell returned to her, clear as ever. She could see him perfectly in her mind’s eye—the way his massive shoulders hitched, the way he covered his face with one large, square hand. His other hand hung off his left knee where it trembled in midair. His back was toward her, enormous like God’s, like an expanse of blank canvas. She could even make out the swirls and corkscrews of his hair at the back of his head, peppered with gray and thinning at the crown. His cries were silent, which made them somehow more wretched, as if he were desperate to maintain some semblance of dignity even in the midst of such great despair. And what had happened, anyway? What had made him cry like that? She’d stood in the darkened stairwell watching him for so long, waves of emotion passing through her like colors in a spectrum. Confused. Frightened. Angry. Sad. She’d felt the need to console her father—the most basic human reaction—but she didn’t know how and didn’t even understand if such a thing were appropriate. Her parents hadn’t taught her love, hadn’t taught her kindness and compassion. Likewise, she’d never received it. Not from them, anyway.

She turned away from the view of the snow-covered valley, shivering. Arms wrapped tightly around her body, she turned back around the side of the house. She could feel her tears freezing to her cheeks. Her face burned. Falling snow gathered in her lashes.

Suddenly, she thought of blood. Specifically, of blood flowing down a tiny wooded brook.

Her body seemed to shut down and she couldn’t take another step. She turned her head sideways and stared at the woods.

“We almost killed that f*cking dog,” she whispered, the words meaningless and hardly registering in her brain.

Droplets of blood pooling into the icy brook waters, swirling, changing colors, flowing downstream…

A conversation between strangers in her head:

—What did you do?

—I did it for you. Do you like it?

—You can’t do this.

—Do you like it?

—It’s bad! You have to stop!

—I did this all for you, Kelly. I made them this way. This is our own special little world here. This is like that story where the kids never grow up. This is your Never-Never Land, Kelly.

Her entire body began to tremble. She felt her knees give out, sending her body crashing to the snowy earth. The cold was tremendous. Her bladder suddenly moaned then exploded in a gush of burning urine; she faintly sensed its heat spilling from the crescent of her crotch and tracing down the legs of her jeans. It was like death, she thought, like dying, like suffering and dying in the cold.

Something moved behind the trees to her right and she just barely brought her head around in time to see it. Blurred through fresh tears, she could only make out a fleeting white form. She sensed a memory nearing the surface of her consciousness, almost there, almost there, yet still lost. In her throat, she could feel her breath coming in great whooping gasps and she suddenly feared she was near hyperventilation.

She felt herself roll over on her side, then onto her stomach, her face momentarily pressed into the snow. Her head filled with an image of blood pooling in a clear, running brook. She felt her arms extend themselves, her hands grope at the snow, at the frozen earth below. She dragged herself toward the slope of the hillside until she managed to regain control of her body and rise shakily to her feet. Unthinking, she propelled herself toward the sloping hillside and the dense forest below, her eyes fixed on the tangle of darkness between the branches of trees. Again, she caught the momentary flutter of movement beyond those branches, half eclipsed by protective shade, and her legs pumped her forward through the snow. Her wet crotch froze in the wind.

This is your Never-Never Land, Kelly, she thought.

Then, like a beacon, she saw it: a dull, throbbing red light deep inside the woods, partially inhibited by the tangled network of tree branches. Again, as she walked, her groin convulsed and her knees went weak. Fresh urine soaked her thighs.

“God,” she moaned, her voice impossibly alien. What was happening to her?

That pulsing red light up ahead—she could almost feel its warmth through the freezing air.

She stumbled down the hillside and crashed against a hedgerow at the crest of the forest. Her head rattled. Dazedly, she brought her hands up to touch the bark of the closest tree…and it felt like a dream, malleable and illusory.

Just a few feet ahead of her in the woods stood the dog with the injured front paw. It stood unmoving, its piercing blue eyes staring at her through the thicket. Its pelt was speckled with dried mud and frozen with clumps of snow. Some of the snow on the ground beneath it was stained a bright pink. It watched her unflinchingly, and there was thought behind its eyes, Kelly saw, genuine contemplation that was so human it was almost frightening.

She was not surprised when the image of the wounded dog faded before her eyes. Somehow, she’d known it was only a ghost, a phantom, a vapor. The blood-pink snow returned to white. Yet there was something else, something—

The red light had vanished. And on the heels of this realization came a harsh sense of rejection, of refusal, that she could not even begin to comprehend.

Still—something was moving in the woods.

“Help me…” she managed. Her voice was weak, hardly a whisper.

Something was in the woods. Something was coming for her.

Her mind—reeling with nonsense: