The Fall of Never(90)

Kelly skirted around a water-stained bombe chest and bundles of soggy newspapers tied with twine. Against the wall behind the stacks of newspapers, and quite out of place among the rest of the junk, was an open box brimming with toys. A plastic doll with curly sprigs of blonde hair poked out of the top. A stuffed zebra with button eyes also hung halfway out of the toy box. She tucked the purple folder Gabriel had given her under her arm and bent to her knees, peered inside the box. Sifting around, she uncovered unused coloring books still shrink-wrapped, a slinky, and a collection of ceramic horses, mostly broken. A doll’s shoe; a busted water gun; a toy wheelbarrow sans wheel…

I came down here looking for this box, she thought, not quite understanding why, nor truly believing the thought. All this stuff in here…

Toward the back of the box was a sketch pad, its cover torn off, its pages yellow and stained. She reached for it, tugged it free of the box. On the first page was a crude drawing of a tiny, square house with shuttered windows and large plumes of flowers on either side of the front door. Flipping through the pad, Kelly saw that it was filled with similar sketches, all presumably drawn by her sister Becky at some point. For the most part, the majority of the drawings were exactly what one would assume from a young child. But the drawings on the last dozen or so pages toward the end of the pad were different. Looking at them, Kelly felt herself slowly being consumed by some sick, spreading fear. One sketch depicted a young girl on her hands and knees, blood on the palms of her hands, crawling through the forest. In her wake, the girl left bloody hand-prints in the grass. Another drawing portrayed the same house from the front page of the book, drawn now with much more haste—all sharp angles and heavy impressions. In certain spots, Becky had pressed the pencil-point through the paper, puncturing the page. And on closer inspection, Kelly saw that the shutters were now open and that there was a face in one of the windows. The face itself was too abstract to make out any details—in fact, it hardly even resembled a face at all—but something about it caused Kelly to tense, the muscles in her body becoming taut and myalgic.

Her mind reeled: I came down here and picked up this sketch pad…but why? How did I even know it was here? And what does it mean? Damn it, what am I suddenly so afraid of?

But hadn’t she been afraid for some time now? There was nothing sudden about it…

Even back in the city, that same small voice whispered.

She turned the page. Staring up at her was the drawing of a dog with one of its front paws raised in injury. A jagged lightning bolt cut had been drawn across the dog’s raised leg. And from its back rose the protrusions of a dozen knives.

We almost killed that f*cking dog, she thought, and the thought was alien to her, foreign in meaning…made no sense. Dog? Yet it was there nonetheless: We almost killed that f*cking dog!

Something was happening here—she could feel it pushing against her, driving, fighting for control of her. It was the same sense of impending doom she had felt back in Manhattan, only more prominent now, as if she’d managed to accidentally bump the source. Images flashed across her brain—images from her own childhood—yet they remained nonsensical and still somewhat elusive. Part of her was trying desperately to remember while another part of her was insisting she keep all doors locked, all accesses denied, all memories forgotten.

I was committed to an institution when I was fifteen, but for the life of me I cannot remember why. How come this hasn’t haunted me, driven me crazy after all this time? How come, until just recently, I’ve never bothered to understand what happened to me when I was a child? And why is it all coming down now?

That driving force, that power pushing her, guiding her—it was here. In this house. Strong.

In that instant, and for whatever reason, her mind formed a picture of old Nellie Worthridge. For a split second, Kelly could see the old woman as clear as day inside her head, lying there in a musty room on a tiny bed, the single window’s shade drawn tight against the midafternoon sun.

She sensed movement behind her and she spun around. Shocked by the silhouette of someone standing directly behind her, she dropped the sketch pad and uttered a startled cry.

The figure took a step into the light.

“Kelly.”

It was her father. Dressed in a bathrobe and slippers, his graying hair twisted into corkscrews, he looked like he’d just been involuntarily pulled from a deep sleep.

“Jesus,” she breathed, “you scared me.”

“I heard noise down here,” he said. “We’ve had rats. Big ones. I thought it might be rats.”

Still shaken, she managed to stand and brush the dust off the knees of her jeans. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was making so much noise.”

“It’s a big house. Lots of room for sound to travel, get loud.” Then, perhaps as an afterthought: “I wasn’t asleep.” There was obvious discomfort in his eyes, in his voice: resonant and nearly palpable. “I was up worrying about your sister.”

She didn’t know if she believed his words. The image of her parents standing beside Becky’s bed, their faces expressionless, their eyes noncommittal, surfaced in her head. All their years of parental absence throughout her own youth rushed back to her in one electric wave. Their coldness, their dispassion, their inability to parent. And in the end, was it fair to hate someone for such an inability?

“We’re all worried,” she said, maintaining composure.