The Fall of Never(63)
(dead animals line the walkway and there is blood trickling into the stream I have a cut on my forehead and the blood stings my eyes there are tiny skeletons on the staircase and where did the staircase come from and there is a pile of garbage hidden in the corner and a pile of old food wrappers that smell like grease and broken plastic forks some of them covered in blood and there is a smell here a smell like dead things and some blood so much blood)
She managed to stumble backward along the wooded slope, her eyes still intent on catching a glimpse of whomever or whatever was quickly approaching. Desperately, she tried to get up, but her legs felt like pipe cleaners and her knees refused to lock. In one unavailing attempt at salvation, she pitched herself backward, arms pin-wheeling wildly, and felt herself slam into the ground, causing her teeth to rattle in her head.
(a glowing red light and trickling blood and oh my god we almost killed that f*cking dog and white white white hands coming around me and COLD—)
What’s happening to me? What the hell is going on?
She promised herself that this wasn’t really happening, that it was all some elaborate hallucination.
The snow between her splayed legs was stained yellow.
Kelly’s breath seized in her throat, her vision dispersed into a multitude of sand-like granules, and an unforgiving darkness quickly claimed her.
She never felt her head hit the ground.
Chapter Sixteen
A sudden and ferocious ice storm assaulted Manhattan one evening, coinciding with the arrival of the season’s first full moon. The storm lasted nearly two hours. It struck with unpredictable solemnity, like a fist striking a hard surface, and slowly diminished to a wet rush of sleet and freezing rain once night had completely claimed the city. Unprepared, most pedestrians gathered inside the closest places of refuge. Others attempted to summon cabs to no avail.
Seconds after the storm hit, a throng of soaked people rushed at the main entranceway of Macy’s department store. In the commotion, it would later be discovered that a young girl with a heart condition collapsed and died, her body carried along on a wave of frantic civilians for several yards before someone acknowledged her lifelessness.
At the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street, two suited businessmen accidentally slammed their cars into one another. In a fit of rage hardly lessened by the violent storm, both men hopped from their vehicles, their faces as red as twin stoplights, their eyes large and disbelieving.
“What is it with you friggin’ maniacs?” one of the men shouted.
“You goddamn—” began the second, the rest of his words muffled by a sharp right hook thrown by the first man. Before the brawl was over, both men would be bumped and bruised, their cars still just as dented.
Carlos Mendes watched the storm die down from his office window at the hospital. He’d been off the floor for over an hour now, yet he’d procrastinated leaving. At one point during the night, one of the duty nurses had spotted him in the hallway and shook her head.
“Dedication only goes so far, Doctor,” she told him. “Beyond that, some people are just crazy.”
After a while, the ice pounding against the window turned to sleet and Mendes knew he couldn’t stay in the hospital for the rest of his life.
Home.
No—home was not necessary. He took the subway to Times Square, his mind occupied with a number of abstract thoughts. And with Nellie Worthridge.
Keep walking the streets. I can be like a vagrant—a doctor doubling as a homeless person.
For some reason he felt he couldn’t go home, couldn’t face Marie. His anxiety was wearing her out, he knew, and he hated himself for that. Home. The brownstone was too small and silent, too conducive to lengthy bouts of rumination. And that was the last thing he wanted. His thoughts frightened him. And the longer he sat and pondered the old woman’s words, he understood, the more he believed them.
Or perhaps he was just slowly losing his mind.
Strong winds whipped sleet at him and he walked with his head down, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his coat. Disinterestedly, he paused beneath a glowing street lamp to consider the peculiarity of the weather—the brutal winds and freezing precipitation. It was bizarre, something out of one of those fact or fiction television programs he’d enjoyed as a child. He shook his head and shivered. Moving down Broadway, his eyelashes accumulating sleet, he paused again: this time beneath a theater sign. He considered seeing a late show. Maybe it would help get his mind off things.
You’re a coward, a voice whispered in his head. You’re running away from ghosts, Carlito. That’s all they are: just ghosts. It was Marie’s voice.
Disgusted with himself, he shook his head, icy water running into his eyes. What was he doing to Marie? Spending longer hours at the hospital and then disappearing into the din of the city—anything to keep him out of the house…and keep his mind off his unborn son. But was that fair to Marie? Sweet, pregnant Marie? About-to-become-a-mother Marie? His wife, for the love of God? No—he hated himself, hated his inability to overcome such cowardice.
Ghosts, he thought.
He walked a few blocks over, leaving the confusion of the theater lights behind, and dipped down a darkened alleyway. A chill passed through his body.
These things happen, sweetheart, he thought. Sometimes these things happen. But I still love you and it’ll be all right. I promise.