The Fall of Never(74)

“Who?”

“Some godforsaken nursery rhyme.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s no use lying to them. It doesn’t do your sister any good.”

“Becky…”

“Damn you, girl,” the nurse-mom said and turned sharply down the hall.

A pushcart appeared beside Kelly, laden with medication and Dixie Cups with floral designs. A clutch of plastic forks lay on a stack of napkins and she reached out and grabbed the forks, not quite understanding why. She just needed them, she knew, needed to…to take them somewhere, bring them somewhere…to someone…

“Mouse,” she muttered. And yes—Mouse. An image surfaced in her head: a spray of lusterless hair; sallow skin and wan eyes; lips chapped and bruised, indented with half-moon bite-marks from her crooked teeth. Mouse. Mouse had shown her breasts. Mouse had talked about dead girls in the closet on the third floor. Mouse had stuffed rolls of ham into her bra to save for later. Mouse.

Mouse…

“She’s in the closet,” said one of the card-playing girls on the floor. “You’re looking for Mouse?”

She hadn’t realized she’d spoken the words out loud. “Why is she in the closet?”

“That’s where the dead girls go,” said the other girl. “Two of them, a long time ago. They loved each other and touched each other in special places. They did it in the closet where no one could see.”

“No one could see,” repeated her friend.

“They died because they got locked in and no one heard them. They were in love.”

“In love,” parroted the friend.

“Why is Mouse in the closet?” Kelly asked. She was aware that she was squeezing the plastic forks very hard, could hear them snapping in her fist. Almost abruptly she became aware of some encroaching horror looming above her, all around her, like a malignant and starving force desiring satiation.

With almost bitter resolve, the first girl said, “Tell her to stop sneaking food. We all get in trouble when she sneaks food.”

“I hate her,” spat the other girl. “She’s nasty and dirty and I hate her.”

Frightened, Kelly turned and moved quickly down the corridor. Hearing her footsteps, some of the girls peeked their heads out of their rooms. One girl had a black eye and a busted lip. Another girl appeared perpetually frightened. Another still broke out into a fit of maniac laughter, her mouth impossibly wide, her gums fitted with countless rows of teeth.

“Nasty!” someone shouted.

The third floor was vacant. No patients roomed up here. There was a tiny workstation at the end of the hall but it was empty. Even the nurses avoided the third floor. It was a wasteland of broken pushcarts and empty cardboard boxes, a graveyard for defeated television sets and damaged furniture. The tile floor was streaked from a recent mopping. Spilled iodine was dried in places on the walls. No lights came on when Kelly tried the switch and the windowpanes had been painted over long ago. Gloomy and depressing. To keep girls away.

Girls died up here.

It had been Mouse who originally told her about the two dead girls. Mouse enjoyed the story, and Kelly had always assumed it was for a variety of reasons: the homoerotic references; the rebellion; the sheer notion of death. They were young lesbians (or perhaps turned lesbian due to their confinement, Mouse had explained) and they would creep from their rooms at night and love each other in the big closet on the third floor. That’s what they did, according to Mouse—they loved each other. And although the reasons for their deaths changed from time to time whenever Mouse told the story, Kelly had always believed it. She understood how bad things could get, sometimes. The story of the two dead girls was a perfect example.

They came up here one night just like they always did, only this time they couldn’t leave. It was like some power forcing the door to stay shut. Like some ghost. And they began to cry and then they began to scream, to scream and slam their fists against the inside of the closet door, but it did no good because no one ever came up to the third floor. No one ever heard them. And they eventually died.

She could see the closet door half-open at the end of the hall. Something moved within. Mouse, she thought, still confused as to what the girl was doing in the forbidden closet on the third floor in the first place. Had she really been caught with ham in her bra? And even if that part were true, would the nurses have really sentenced her to confinement in the closet on the third floor?

“Mouse!” she called in a half-whisper.

Another flicker of movement inside the closet.

Still clutching the plastic forks (they were now leaving impressions in the palm of her hand), Kelly advanced toward the closet. Mouse was a bit older than she, and sometimes the girl would take pleasure in frightening Kelly, or would surprise her with wacky dances and outlandish acrobatics. In fact, it was this sense of character that had initiated Kelly’s openness: Mouse, whose real name was Jennifer Sote, had become her only friend at the institution.

Kelly stopped just outside the closet. Squinting, she tried to see inside.

Two dead girls, she thought. Two dead girls and now it’s probably haunted in there. Two dead girls and now it’s probably full of ghosts.

“Mouse?” Her voice shook.

“Kellerella,” Mouse said from inside the closet. Her voice sounded sour, gritty with sleep.