The Fall of Never(91)

“All these years…” He spoke now with an inference of reflection, his eyes distant and sloppy in their sockets. “Your mother and I worried about you, too, Kelly. You think we haven’t, but that’s not true.”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Do you hate me?” His words surprised her. Partly due to the impulsiveness with which he spoke them, but also because it had never occurred to Kelly that her father might actually commit time to the consideration of such things.

And she didn’t know how to answer him.

“You don’t see everything,” he said. “I know…your mother and I know…that you’re a smart girl and a special girl—you always were—but you don’t see everything. And we never knew what to do with you.” His eyes left her and traced briefly around the darkness of the cellar. At one point they came to rest on the decapitated animal heads against the wall. He almost smiled, again lost in retrospection. “On occasion, the smoke clears…and we almost understand what’s going on around us, and who we are, and what we’re supposed to do. And before it all clouds over again, we try to do the right thing.” His eyes fell on her again, frighteningly sober. “I’m trying.”

“Daddy…”

One of his large hands moved…and for a moment Kelly thought he would reach out and touch her, perhaps on the arm or shoulder or even caress the side of her face. Comfort her, the way fathers do. But he didn’t. And despite the enormity of his frame, he suddenly appeared as a child to Kelly, lost and frightened and powerless to communicate beyond fragments and innuendoes. And the appearance of such unexpected innocence managed to vanquish what anger she’d previously felt toward him.

“I wasn’t there for you,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry things turned out the way they did. I never claimed to be a wonderful father.”

She could only watch him speak. It was like watching a mirage through a fan of heat-waves across the landscape of some dream desert.

“This house,” he continued, “has been more than a house. In reality, it’s just walls closing the inside off from the outside. And the outside from the inside too, I suppose. It’s just…sometimes it’s difficult to see past those walls. But I try. You don’t see everything, Kelly, and you may not know it, but I try. Even now.”

Distantly aware that her eyes were welling with tears, Kelly shook her head. Though she feared her voice might crack, she spoke anyway. “You don’t owe me anything. I don’t need an explanation. I’m here for Becky.”

“You’re a good girl, Kelly. You’ve grown into a good woman, too. I just wanted to tell you that.” His eyes shifted upward and appeared to transfix on the beams in the ceiling. “Sometimes I hate this house.” Again it seemed as though he might touch her, but instead he just offered her a weary old man smile. Kelly thought his eyes looked more intelligent than she ever could remember. She thought, My father is an old man. Who would have ever thought he’d become an old man?

“I’m going to bed,” he said. “You be careful down here.”

“Right,” she said. “The rats.”

He nodded and turned, his giant looming shadow covering the entire wall behind him.

“Yes,” he said. “Big ones.”



Hours later, she awoke—or thought she awoke—in the middle of the night to find her mother standing above her bed, looking down at her without expression. Just standing there, staring at her in the darkness, the side of her body illuminated by the strip of moonlight that filtered in through the bedroom window, silent and unmoving. Was this real or was this a slice of dream that had followed her into consciousness as she turned over in bed? Dream or reality, Kelly saw the woman standing there, and if it was a dream, she recognized the peculiarity of the situation even in the depths of slumber. Her eyes closed, she thought she even felt this dream-mother touch a hand to her forehead, smooth back her hair. And in her mind, she watched as the dream-mother departed from the room, passing over the carpet like an apparition, pausing briefly in the doorway before disappearing into the darkness of the hallway.

In her sleep she dreamt of the wooded hillside that surrounded the house. And in this dream colors were much brighter and sharper, the leaves and grass impossibly green and absent of snow. Birds sang and flowers blossomed with the suddenness of tiny celestial explosions at her feet. It was storybook.

Kellllllly…

Becky called to her from somewhere deep in the woods; the girl’s voice carried out over the wooded hillside and treetops in an echo that shook the valley. And at the sound of her voice, the lush forestry blackened and withered, as if ravaged by disease.



Several times during the following day, Kelly found herself wandering out to the edge of the hillside that overlooked the spread of forest below. She did this with an unconscious need to be there, to go down into the forest and lose herself within the concealment of the snow-covered firs. Looking down the slope of the valley, she imagined Becky lost somewhere in that fairy tale world, struggling to overcome some unimaginable horror. Becky almost died down there, she thought, the notion so sharp and matter-of-fact that it nearly lost all relevance. She recalled last night’s dream and, again, her conscious mind leapt out for something it could not find, could not grasp, searching with mounting anxiety for secrets her subconscious was not yet ready to disclose. Yet some pieces filtered in nonetheless: blood in a running brook; a wounded dog; a glowing red light; the grating awareness of some inexplicable terror. And what did these things have to do with Becky? Anything? Anything at all?