The Fall of Never(98)

“She’s still in bed,” Josh half-whispered. “Go ahead.”

Carlos paused in the darkness, uncertain of his next move. He looked back over his shoulder at Josh, but Josh had vanished into the small kitchenette.

I can still feel it, he thought. It’s still here, floating in the air—that charge of electricity, that swelling and deflation of the atmosphere, as if the entire room is breathing. It lingers.

Silently, he crept down the narrow hallway, the fingers of his extended right hand tracing the wall for support. As he progressed down the hall, he could feel the apartment’s electrical charge intensify. Nellie was its source; the closer he drew to her, the stronger the vibration.

At the end of the hallway, Nellie’s bedroom door stood half-open. Carlos paused just outside it, catching his breath, his mind reeling with the images from two nights ago. He pictured his wife slumped against the back of her chair while Nellie’s talon-like hand gripped at her belly. He thought of Marie now, and for the past two days, dumbstruck from shock and sleeping in bed amidst a scattering of children’s fairy tales.

He pushed the door open and stepped inside. Immediately struck by the heat, he recoiled, bringing a reflexive hand up to his forehead. It was a dry heat, issuing in rolling waves from across the bedroom, as if the old woman’s body had somehow become some living, breathing generator.

In the gloom, he could make out Nellie’s form huddled in bed. He gasped. She was a skeleton, her skin completely rotted away, her eyes two black pits in the center of gray bone. But no—it was only the darkness playing with his mind. As he stepped closer, her features fell into place, withered and parched as they were. He could even hear her low, raspy breathing now—a sound not unlike the scrape of a rake dragged along a gravel driveway.

“Nellie?” Should he even wake her?

“Carlito,” he heard her mutter. Her voice startled him; she wasn’t asleep after all. “Come.”

He moved closer to the side of the bed. A strip of sodium light from the street passed through the space between the curtain and the window, illuminating the side of the old woman’s face. She’s a corpse, Carlos thought. At least, she soon will be. Her eyes had sunk deep into her head, their lids paper thin and half-closed, while her ears lay flat against the sides of her head. This close, the sound of her respiration was grating.

“Don’t be scared for your wife,” the old woman said. Surprisingly, she spoke with little difficulty. “What happened is part of a process, an old process. You didn’t need to intervene; she would have been fine.”

He blurted an apology.

Nellie smiled weakly. “I am sorry, but I could not see…anything about the baby.”

“I know.”

“I sensed the child. It is so wondrous, so beautiful inside her, Carlito, growing there.”

Carlito. Hearing her speak the name sent tremors racing through his body. He suddenly wanted to be with his wife, to hold her, to sleep beside her.

“You’re afraid,” Nellie said.

“No.”

“You are. I can feel it.” She shifted beneath the blankets. “She needs our help.”

“The girl Kelly?”

“It’s coming,” she said. “Soon.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. I cannot tell.”

“But she’s in danger, this girl?”

“Yes.”

Carlos leaned closer to the bed. He could smell a strong medicinal stink fanning from the woman in hot waves. “How are you able to know this?”

“The human mind is a hidden book, Carlito. For most people, it is a book they open only for themselves. Only they know their secrets, their desires, and their sins. Few others are capable of peeking into these books. They’re not hidden to some. Sometimes, we can see inside. I found Kelly’s mind as she searched through her own hidden book, turning the pages of a past she’d forgotten. She’s as strong as me. Stronger, I think. She just doesn’t know she is.”

“What do you mean, strong as you?”

“We’ve all felt a little bit of Kelly recently,” Nellie said. “Josh, your wife, even you. I’ve felt her, too. She’s reaching out to someone and she doesn’t even know it. She doesn’t fully understand the powers of her own mind.”

It occurred to him then what Nellie was saying. “You mean this Kelly girl has the same…she’s…like you?”

“Stronger,” Nellie breathed.

“How is that possible?”

“We’re not as unique as you might think.”

“But the chances of the two of you—”

“There is no coincidence here,” Nellie said. She was struggling to lift her head from her pillow, to see him better. “I’ve felt Kelly’s presence for a long time now. Years, in fact. It just took me so long to find the source of the power, to find Kelly. It wore me down, caused terrible headaches and most likely even my stroke, and sometimes I found I couldn’t…I found…” She struggled for the words. “Sometimes I was so weak I couldn’t get out of bed,” she finally said. “She may believe our meeting was chance, may believe that she even came to me on her own accord, but that is not the truth. The truth is that I finally found her and willed her to come to me. I was testing her powers, seeing how strong she was. My father had this gift too, and I believe it might be hereditary. But his gift was not strong enough, not like mine. He didn’t know he was going to die in the accident that killed him. I did. And when I became aware of Kelly’s presence in the city, I was so amazed at the sheer strength of her power that I could feel it across the city, tugging at my brain. So I reached for her. And after time, I made the connection, without her even knowing it. And after some prodding, I managed to make her come to me.”