The Fall of Never(89)

“You were afraid?”

“No. If I was afraid I would have forced myself to go. No, this was something different, a little more complex.”

“What?”

“I guess I didn’t want to have to run away from anything. And that’s what I realized I’d be doing. The city is beautiful and inspiring…but it’s there, it’ll always be there, and I can always go there for inspiration. That wasn’t why I wanted to go, despite what I tried to convince myself. I really wanted to leave because I wanted to run from this place, from Spires. And for some reason, that didn’t sit well with me. I mean, it just seemed like such a cowardly reason to go. I didn’t want it to be for that reason. I wanted to pursue what was right, not just run away from what was wrong. I don’t know, maybe that sounds crazy, but I don’t feel like I’m really wasting my time in Spires. I feel…well, I feel like I’m really prepping myself, preparing myself. This way, when I finally leave, I’m able to look back without regret.”

“No,” she said, “that makes perfect sense.”

“I thought you’d understand.”

“Yes.” She smiled at him. He smiled back and kissed her. It happened too quickly—over and done with before she even had time to register what had happened. It was Gabe, Gabriel, Gabriel Farmer, the young boy with the tousled hair and conspicuous laugh who’d fallen from a tree and skinned his knees on the day they met. Kissing. And in the follow-up moments, as Gabriel pulled away, she felt something hot and uncomfortable turn over inside her chest which she recognized to be the initial stirrings of guilt. Again she thought of Josh, despite her intentions to pitch him from her mind and live in the moment.

“It’s too bad we never had the opportunity to…” Gabriel faltered, smiled, blushed. “I don’t know. To be ourselves. To really get to know each other and grow up together. I think that would have been good. Things might have turned out different.”

“You were a good friend.”

“I wish I could have helped you. I didn’t know what to do when you went away.”

Smiling, she rubbed his arm. “I didn’t know what to do, either,” she said.



It was late when she finally arrived back at the compound. Slipping in quietly through one of the many side doors, she made her way down the hallway and into the kitchen where she set the purple folder on the table and poured herself a glass of milk. The house was silent. Peering out the window over the sink, she saw past the film of frost on the pane to the blackness of the forest beyond.

There was a noise behind her. But when she turned around she saw that she was alone.

“Hello?”

This house brings out the fear in people. So big and empty, jumping at shadows. This house and this town.

She finished her milk and tucked the purple folder under her arm. Careful not to make a sound, she crept down the main hallway toward the winding staircase, her mind preoccupied with Gabriel and his words—It’s too bad we never had the opportunity to…

To what? she wondered now. To what, exactly?

The basement door at the end of the hallway caught her attention for some reason and she paused just before mounting the winding staircase. It was closed and bolted. She was abruptly overcome by a strong urge to go to it, to unlock and open it, to go down into the basement.

Kelly turned and went to the basement door, turned the bolt, and cracked the door open. It creaked and she winced, the sound amplified in the nighttime silence of the house. Leaning into the doorway, she put her hand against the stairwell wall to feel around for a light switch. Finding none, she forced the door open wider to allow light from the hallway to flood the descending staircase. She peered in. After the first three steps, the rest of the staircase was devoured by darkness.

Why in the world do you want to go down there? a small voice spoke up in the back of her head. What’s gotten into you?

But she had already started descending the stairs. Her body blocked out the light of the hallway behind her, making it nearly impossible to see. Each footstep caused the risers to creak and groan. With her hands she traced the walls as she crept further down, intent on uncovering a light switch. Still nothing. And the stairs seemed never-ending.

What am I doing?

Finally she reached the bottom and felt something cold brush by her face. Startled, she jumped back…then sighed as she realized it was the chain to a light fixture in the ceiling above her head. Blindly, she groped for it, found it again, yanked it on. Shadows scattered. The light was strong enough to illuminate only her immediate area—a section of basement encumbered with countless brown boxes, each stacked one on top of the other, straight to the ceiling. Spools of masking tape lay scattered along the floor and in rings at her feet. Old, moth-eaten clothes lay stacked in forgotten piles.

Ahead of her, the basement landing communicated with a large room. Creeping forward, her hands splayed out before her face, she found a second light fixture and turned it on as well.

The basement opened up before her.

It was a mausoleum of forgotten artifacts, stiflingly congested with domestic refuse, making navigation difficult. Mildewed sofas; pitted brass lamps; scores of leather-bound books; a hand-carved coat rack adorned with a twist of tangled Christmas lights; busted wicker chairs; an old sewing machine housed in a mammoth maple cabinet: these things loomed liked the skeletons from some lost era, mummified in dust and frozen in time. Generations of family possessions. The heads of innumerable mammals, horribly tremendous and lifelike, stared at her with black, glassy eyes from against one wall: remnants of her father’s forgotten obsession. The entire cellar exuded a stale, necrotic stink; it seemed to coat everything, to radiate from every shadowy corner, every piece of junk that littered the floor. She could already start to smell it on her own skin.