The Fall of Never(66)

“So this is real?” He didn’t know what to say.

“Real,” Josh said. “And yeah, I was…shit, I don’t know, I guess I was frightened. But it was more than just being frightened, you know?”

“You wanted to know what the hell was going on,” Mendes said, thinking: Just like I want to know.

“Exactly. I mean, what the hell, right?” Josh laughed nervously.

“Still,” Mendes continued, “that’s a hell of a conclusion to make based on just seeing—”

“She explained some things to me that night,” Josh interrupted. “She started with her accident—the one that had left her paralyzed and her father dead. Said they were on some country road driving vegetables from somewhere to somewhere else when another car came speeding around a turn and drove right into the driver’s side of her father’s car, killing him instantly. Their car tipped and skidded along the road until it pitched down into a ravine where she lay trapped beneath the crumpled dashboard until some people came along and managed to pull her out of the wreck.

“Doc, she swears that she saw the accident happen a good five seconds before it did—saw it clear as day. And it scared her enough to make her open her mouth to her old man and tell him to turn the hell around, that today was not a very good goddamn day to deliver tomatoes, but she was too late. The accident happened so quickly. She never even got the words out.”

Mendes just shook his head. In almost a whisper, he said, “I don’t know what to say to that, Josh.”

“She says she’s been that way all her life. It comes and goes. Sometimes she picks up vibes from people, really strong ones, the way antennas pick up radio signals in the air. She just sucks them in, she says. Other times, with other people, she has to go searching for them.”

“Like with the women playing bridge.”

“Yeah. She had to lean her head back almost against her bedroom wall—the wall that is directly across from Miss Shott’s apartment in the next building over—to be able to see those women, see those cards.”

Their waitress returned, refilled Mendes’s coffee, and vanished like a ghost.

“That’s unbelievable,” the doctor said after some time passed.

“About a year ago I was shot twice in the chest by some kid robbing a convenience store,” Josh said suddenly. His eyes had grown distant; they now stared at some empty place in the distance between Mendes’s face and the tabletop. “I nearly died. And for several months after that, I was petrified of leaving my apartment. For a long time, I was only capable of going outside to get back and forth to work. I was sure I’d eventually suffer a nervous breakdown. Hell, I think I almost did once, right out in the open on a crowded street. For whatever reason, I told Nellie this story…but she admitted to me later that she already knew it, that she had searched inside my head and sniffed out all the details. And it was true—she could recall it as if she were there, man. She could see the gunshots, the two quick bursts of flames shoot out the muzzle, the number of people cluttered around the counter, the soda spilling on the floor. She even understood my pain, and I can’t even begin to fathom how something like that is possible. But she was there and she could do it. Suddenly, she put herself inside my memory and she was there.”

Unable to face Josh any longer, Mendes shifted his eyes to the two textbooks Josh had placed on the table. The Powers of the Mind, and the other, Brain Secrets: Finding the Door to Extra-Sensory Perception. He considered all that Josh had just told him and found that, surprisingly, it wasn’t too difficult to believe. Which meant there must be some truth to everything the woman had said, that her words were nearly prophecy…

That Julian, his son, would not survive his own birth.

“My son,” he said, unable to control himself any longer. “Has she said anything more about my son?”

Almost apologetically, Josh shook his head. “I even tried prompting her about it, but she couldn’t recall saying anything before, couldn’t recall anything about it. Maybe…I mean, just because she has this ability doesn’t have to mean that she’s always correct in what she sees, right?”

“Jesus, Joshua, I don’t know. I don’t know anything.” He could feel his heart beating so perfectly in his chest. “It is a boy, you know. She was right about that much.”

“Oh.” Josh looked away, down at his plate. “Oh.”

“Where is she now?”

“Her apartment.”

“I’d like to see her,” Mendes said.

“Yes. But maybe I should talk with her first. I’ve been trying to think of a way to bring this—”

“No, f*ck that. I want to talk with her tonight.” He leaned closer to Josh from across the table. “Listen, you don’t understand what I’ve been going through since that old lady said those words to me. I feel like I’m just standing here watching my life fall apart around me. And maybe what she said about my son is true and maybe it’s not…but if it’s true, then maybe there’s something she can tell me that will help change the outcome. Maybe there’s something I can do.”

After a long moment of silence, Josh nodded. “All right. But I think…”

“What? What is it, Josh?”

Josh shook his head. “I think you should know something first.”