The Fall of Never
Author: Ronald Malfi
Date: 2004-10-02 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Fantasy; Fiction
Description: "Come home to the darkness. " Kelly Rich, long estranged from her family, is forced to return home when her sister is involved in a mysterious accident. After years of suppressing the events that drove her away, she must struggle to unlock the mystery of her past in order to save her sister. But nothing is as it seems in her foreboding ancestral home, where cold hearts rule the hearth and deadly secrets lurk in the forest. Plunged back into the dream world of her youth, Kelly will have to face the dark reality of her own role in the horrors afflicting her family.
Publisher: Samhain Publishing

Prologue

In the darkness, shivering, she ran.

—someone let the baby out someone let the baby out someone let the baby out someone—

She burst through clawed tree branches, her body wracked and sweating, her bare feet raw and bleeding from the frozen earth. Her heartbeat pulsed just beneath the surface of her face; her throat burned with each wheezing breath. And for a moment she thought she would faint. Around her, the darkness became blindness…and the floating orb of the moon, wide and faceless beyond the sprawling canopy of bare trees, blurred and smeared, double, trebled, augmented to a greasy horizontal smudge. Only now, thrust into a wooded clearing, was she able to pause and catch her breath, and to wipe her eyes. Runaway tears had frozen the sides of her face, her temples.

—someone let—

She heard a branch snap behind her. Uttered a breathless scream. Turning, she could see nothing, and could only feel her pulse throbbing inside her head and through her arms and legs, rushing the blood, warfare-like, through her body. Was she breathing? She couldn’t breathe. Was she dreaming? She couldn’t tell for certain…

Another cracking branch, like bone: closer.

No!

Something shifted in the darkness ahead of her. Its proximity paralyzed her.

No…

Pressing her eyes tight, she willed herself away from this place, turning, turning, and called out for her sister, her sister, her—

She could hear him breathing—too close now.

She turned to run, her eyes still shut tight, the fingerlike tree limbs probing and cutting and clawing at her. Her mind summoned images of running brook water, of forested hillsides crested with snow…of the shape, shifting, materializing, fiendishly childlike…of her sister warning her to write it down, write it down, and not to forget it, any of it…

Her legs pumping, she ran. Her heart nearly bursting through her chest, she ran, and she found she could not stop, and though she was running, she was not going anywhere. She was running underwater; she was running in a dream.

A dream…

And she awoke. And she opened her eyes. And she was there, in bed, safe, warm. But afraid.

Because you are here. Because you are right here.

And she was.

And she was.

She screamed. She could not will herself back to bed, could not pull her solid form from this black woods and tuck herself back, back…could not force herself to believe she was not here.

A frozen hand fell on the back of her neck. She stumbled and fell face first to the forest floor. The side of her head struck something hard and unforgiving, and her vision briefly flickered. She dug her fingers into the soil but could not rise, could not move. Behind her, someone shifted, moved. She could hear breathing aside from her own.

“No,” she whispered. It took all her remaining strength just to get it out. “No…please…”

“Please,” a voice hissed from behind her. Very close.

“Please,” she managed again, breaking the word into hitching sobs just before the tears came. She could not think, could not move, and she felt herself falling deeper and deeper inside her own head: here, in my bed, in my room, safe, warm, here, here, here here here here, please God put me back in my room and not here here here—

The shape moved around her. She could hear footsteps crunching the dead, frost-covered leaves. And before her mind shut down, she was vaguely aware of long, icy fingers brushing back her sweaty hair.

“Pretty,” said the voice.

Part One

The (Hidden) Book of Frost

Chapter One

There is a cadence to Manhattan—an explicit hum-hum, steady-steady, walk-run. Most people who have lived there the majority of their lives recognize this only on a subconscious level, weaving in and out of the steady-steady like motors on a track, if they even register it at all. In a way, the looming presence of the city is comparable to the consistency of skin—it’s there, it’s vital, yet it’s infrequently observed. Strangers, on the other hand, feel the presence right away. It is like something falling on them, smashing them, squeezing them until their hearts burst and their brains shut down.

Kelly Rich knew what it meant to be that stranger. Her first year in the city, she’d felt the icy grip about her body, the calloused fingers of the metropolis probing her skin for attainable access. She was young, the ink hardly dry on her divorce papers, when she made a pact with herself to play the Manhattan Game. Unaccustomed to chance, she woke up one morning suddenly and completely cognizant of the fact, and found herself suffering through a hunger for newness, for challenge. In her mind she recalled glimpses of the city from her youth—a city that commanded authority and remunerated only those who faced its cold, cracked pavement and gray-chiseled skyline with unflinching audacity. The notion both excited and terrified her. And maybe it was a bad decision—perhaps she was being too hasty, even running away yet again—but she didn’t think it was. She was through not living. So, Manhattan…

There was the string of dismal, one-bedroom apartments coupled with a cast of roommates, most of them more colorful than a box of Crayolas. There were countless shift jobs—seven at night until three in the morning at the twenty-four hour developer; days in the Village, charging tourists three bucks a pop for Polaroid snapshots. Clever girl. She waited tables and found that she was good at it and that she could actually make some decent cash, but hated it just the same. Pink outfits and nametags had never been her style.

I’m going to crack here. I’m going to lose it and die here.

Often, the streets managed to coax tears from her. She’d listened to the city’s clutter from her tiny apartment, mostly in the dark, mostly in frightened contemplation about her future. She felt sluggish, lethargic, and digested a constant string of poetry—Shelley, Byron, Tennyson, Browning—as well as countless midafternoon cocktails. With an absence that was nearly cataleptic she chewed her fingernails to the skin; she watched the minutes roll by on her bedroom clock, too uninspired to stir; listened to the vague cacophony of neighbors through the plaster walls.

Die here…

Then, one morning, she saw the line. It was lit up before her like an airport runway. In fact, it was so perfectly defined she was surprised she hadn’t noticed it before: the line. The straight-and-narrow. The path. It was as easy as slipping into an old habit. Routine. And, after one year of living as the city’s worn and rugged doormat, she just shook the dirt off, simple as that. She’d become one of the masses, another faceless mover in a packed sea of occupied perambulators. And that was one of the two things she had always wanted: normalcy.

The other thing was art.

Josh Cavey looked up from his cappuccino and smiled at Kelly as she stood shivering in the doorway of the café. She hustled over to him, wrapped tightly in a thick wool coat and a knitted hat, and slid behind the table opposite him. She shook the last of the cold from her body in one quick shudder.

“It’s freezing out there,” she said.

“It’s good,” Josh said. He was an average-looking guy in his late twenties, with cropped, russet hair and a silver loop in each ear. “Wakes you up.”

“I’m awake, all right,” she said, setting a notebook and a large manila envelope on the Formica tabletop. She opened the envelope and slid out a series of black and white glossies.

“Coffee?” he asked.

“I’m good, thanks.”

Josh sipped his cappuccino, the steam rising from the Styrofoam cup and up in front of his face. Kelly was aware of his eyes on her and didn’t look up to meet them. Instead, she concentrated on the photographs, and on the aroma of coffee beans and fresh pastries suffused throughout the air.

“I want to tape those hour segments today,” she told him, flipping through the photographs. “Remember those segment ideas we talked about yesterday?”

“I’m not senile.”

“I want it to be totally natural. I’m going to stay out of the shots today too.”

“Smart idea. Those bags under your eyes might not look too flattering on film.”

She paused in her work and stared up at him. If she’d ever found Josh Cavey attractive—and she had, though it now seemed like a very long time ago—she now only saw him as a transient, as someone who has stepped into this slice of her life merely to disappear before the beginning of the next. Whatever special attraction she had felt for him when they first began working on the project together had gotten lost somewhere along the way. And that was just fine by her; the last thing she needed was another person in her life.

“Are you starting again?” she said.

“What?” He held up his hands, feigning innocence. “I’m just being perceptive. That’s usually considered to be a preferred skill for a cameraman and video producer. You should be pleased.”

“I just haven’t been getting enough sleep lately.”

“Something wrong?”

“No,” she said, looking back down at her photographs. The one on top depicted an obscenely obese woman stretched out across her groaning mattress with a plate of brownies resting on her enormous belly. Above the woman’s head was a framed picture of President Richard Nixon giving his V-for-Victory salute as he stepped off an airplane.

“Something must be on your mind,” he pursued. “And I can tell by the way you’re looking at me that you want me to shut the hell up, which only reaffirms my belief that something is wrong. Is this project stressing you out?”

She drummed her fingers along the tabletop. “No,” she said, “I love the project, you know that.”

“I know it. You want to jab your pen in my right eye? Go on, I’ll be a good boy and hold still for you. When you reach gristle, though, just promise to stop pushing. I’d hate to have you puncture my brain.”

“You’re so morbid.”

“Normally you admire that.”

“Normally it isn’t six-thirty in the morning, Josh. Besides, you don’t look so great yourself, you know.”

“True—but I was out all night last night. Found my drunk self wandering from club to club with friends who…hell, maybe they weren’t even my friends, who can remember now? But that’s me, not you. So in the interest of our friendship, please tell me what’s been bothering you lately?”

His words shook her. Alone, it was easy to convince herself that she was fine, that she was stressed but was fine; however, it became increasingly difficult to foster such a belief when the words started coming from other people…

“You know what?” she said finally, sliding out from the booth. “Order me that coffee after all.”

She moved across the floor, slipped into the café’s bathroom, and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Okay, Josh was right—there were deep purple grooves beneath her eyes. Also, stress lines had formed around the sides of her mouth. Deep. She’d been biting the inside of her cheek lately too—a nervous habit she thought she’d left behind during her childhood.

I kicked that habit, she thought. Yet, here you are again. An old goddamn friend, right?

It was easier thinking about the project, easier to get her mind off this inexplicable growing tension that had been building up inside her for the past month or so. Some nights, she would wake up in a cold sweat and bolt for the bathroom before she vomited on the floor. Occasionally, when riding the subway, she’d be gripped by an overwhelming sensation to urinate—urinate so furiously that she feared something had ruptured inside her. The feeling inside her was so strong, and so indescribable. At any moment, she expected one of Shakespeare’s ghosts to materialize before her and profess some unavoidable, impending doom.

“You’re running yourself too hard, darling,” she whispered, her eyes running over her reflection in the mirror: dyed black hair; a crescent moon of earrings along the outer cartilage of her left ear; unpainted fingernails gnawed down to the quick. There was even the light pink tissue of a road map scar along the top flesh of her left hand—the consequence of a drunken night and a broken glass at some loud club.

A shudder passed through her body.

Who am I? Who have I become? And what has been happening to me this past month?

Disgusted with herself, she looked away. Turned on the cold water, ran her hands through it, washed her face. An image surfaced in her head then: the image of a beacon…a flashing red light, blinking as if in code, as if desperate to gather her attention…

“Yes,” she repeated. “Working too hard.”

Her stomach felt queasy and she took three deep breaths before exiting the bathroom.

Outside the café, Josh stood on the curb holding Kelly’s coffee in one gloved hand, shivering against the wind. It was only mid-November and already the temperature was teetering on freezing. It was going to be one hell of a cold winter. “I was starting to get worried about you,” Josh said, handing over her coffee.

She tried to sound composed. “Thought I fell in, did you?”

“Just some strange folks in this city, gotta be careful,” he told her. “Last time I used the bathroom here I was almost mugged. And what’s with those guys who stand in front of the urinals with their hands on their hips? Whack-jobs. I mean, it’s like watching fucking Superman take a piss. I don’t get it.”

She laughed and a billow of vapor blew from her mouth. “Can’t say I’ve ever seen that before.”

“No,” Josh said, absently considering, “I guess you haven’t.”

Nellie Worthridge was eighty-seven years old and had no legs. When she was twenty, she lost them in an automobile accident—along with her father. Now, she was a withered old thing with a surprisingly pleasant disposition and an animated face that lit up whenever Kelly and Josh turned up outside her tiny West Side apartment. Nellie Worthridge was Subject Number Four of the project, a woman Kelly had read about several months ago in People Magazine, back when the project was still in its infancy. For most of her life, Nellie relied on her motorized wheelchair to get her from place to place and, when in the comfort of her cramped but immaculate one-bedroom apartment (which she hardly left, except to shop for groceries and to play Wednesday night bridge), she frequently ditched the chair and moved about on the palms of her hands. It was sad, but Kelly’s first impression upon seeing such an acrobatic maneuver was that the old woman looked a bit like some withered old wind-up toy. After their first meeting with the woman, as she and Josh took a cab back to the Village, Josh had commented on how much Nellie Worthridge reminded him of his own grandmother.

“Just something about her, I guess,” Josh had said. “In the way she talks, or in her mannerisms or something. I don’t know. I guess deep down, all old ladies are the same animal.”

That was back when Kelly thought she might actually want to sleep with Joshua Cavey, that she might actually be attracted to him. Not because of the grandmother comment, but because of Josh’s line of thinking, and the countless other expressive comments he made, and also in the divine things he saw in ordinary life. He was, in a word, refreshing. But even then, despite her attraction, she realized that a relationship was the last thing she was looking for. In the Big Apple, even refreshing things went stale rather quick.

Like most elderly people (although this was just an assumption on Kelly’s part—she had never really been close to anyone considered “elderly”), Nellie Worthridge awoke at the crack of dawn and was already brewing coffee when Kelly and Josh arrived at her West Side apartment.

“It’s a cold one out there this morning,” Nellie said from the kitchen vestibule. “It’s going to be an angry winter, you mind me.”

“I believe it,” Josh said, dropping to one knee and unpacking his recording equipment.

Flipping through the notes in her notebook, Kelly backed against the wall between a picture of Jesus and a crocheted tapestry of a rainbow. Nellie’s apartment always smelled like a fusion of body odor, lemon Pledge, and camphor—the same smells she subconsciously associated with a high school gymnasium. Despite her handicap, Nellie was a fastidious woman who kept her apartment so ridiculously spotless, one would guess the apartment’s owner had died some time ago and no one had been inside the place to make a mess in a matter of months.

Kelly heard Josh mutter something to himself while searching through his labeled videocassettes. From the kitchen vestibule, she could hear the motorized whine of Nellie Worthridge’s wheelchair as the old woman urged it forward along the floor.

“Coffee, dear?” the old woman offered, easing her chair to a stop in front of Kelly.

“No thank you, Nellie.”

“It’ll warm you.”

“I’m warm.”

“Are you all right?”

Smiling, Kelly looked up from her notebook. “I’m fine.” And thought: Do I really look that bad today? “How are you feeling, Nellie?”

“Oh,” said the woman, “I’m getting by. These winters now…make my bones ache. And I’ve been having these headaches, just these really bad ones. They come and go.”

“Has Doctor Jennasyn been to see you lately?”

“He was here not two weeks ago,” Nellie said. She was trying to crane her neck around to watch Josh set up the camcorder on its tripod. “Gave me some pills for my arthritis.”

“And the headaches?”

“Wasn’t having the headaches then,” Nellie said. “Just started up past couple days. They’ll pass eventually. Everything does, after a while.”

Josh straightened up, slipped off his leather coat, and said, “I’m all set, Kell. Where do you want me set up?”

“We’ll start with some kitchen shots,” Kelly told him. “Is that all right with you, Nellie?”

“Fine, fine,” the woman said, waving a hand. “Should have come sooner, filmed me making the coffee. I can put on some English muffins, if you two’ll eat them. I don’t mind making food long as it’s not wasted.” She managed to bring the wheelchair around and directed it toward the kitchen. The motorization made her entire body vibrate and she looked like a wooden puppet from the back.

“I’m staying out of the shots today, Nellie,” Kelly told the woman. “I’m going to be with Josh behind the camera. I’ve written some narration in this notebook. I’m just going to recite it to myself while Josh films, make sure we’ve got enough useable footage.”

“That’s fine, dear.”

“English muffins would be great, Nellie,” Josh said, rubbing the palms of his hands together. He lifted the tripod and camera and set them directly across from the kitchen vestibule, peered through the lens, and panned back until he was able to see most of the kitchen through the blue-tinted viewfinder.

“We got enough tape?” Kelly asked him.

“Quit worrying about my job,” he barked with some humor, not taking his eye from the eyepiece. “Do me a favor, Kell, and go stand in front of the camera for a sec. I want to get a height ratio here…”

“You nearly ran out of film last time,” she told him, moving into the kitchen and standing in front of the camera. Her eyes were down, still scrutinizing her notes. “Someone needs to keep an eye on you.”

“Worry-worry-worry,” Josh snickered. “Nellie, you think our girl Kelly here is going to worry herself to an early death?”

“Worries me,” Nellie said, unwrapping the English muffins. Then to Kelly: “You don’t look so good, dear.”

“I’m fine,” she insisted, looking up. “I don’t understand why everyone keeps interfering with—”

She froze, staring straight ahead at the eye of the camera…staring at the blinking red RECORD light just above the lens. Too occupied with her muffins, Nellie did not notice the frozen expression on Kelly’s face. Josh, still standing behind the camera and peering through the lens, did.

“Kell? Kelly? Command Center to Agent Kelly Rich…”

She snapped her head away from the blinking red light. “What?” she blurted, temporarily disoriented. “What is it?”

“You’re phasing out on me, kid,” Josh said, peeking at her from around the side of the camera. “A bit camera shy? You did fine the other day.”

“No, I’m just…” She brought a hand up to her forehead, rubbed her brow. “I guess I didn’t get enough sleep last night.”

“You up for this?”

“Yeah, I’ll be okay.”

“You’re the boss,” he said, and stepped back behind the camera. “Now get your mug out of the frame, country girl.”

Kelly sidestepped the tripod and moved into the hallway. She cleared some books off a small wooden chair and sat down, her mind still reeling. Looking down, she saw the knees of her jeans were damp from where she’d rested her hands. Her palms were moist with sweat and she rubbed them together like an Eskimo trying to keep warm.

I don’t know what a nervous breakdown feels like, she thought, but if I had to guess, I’d say it feels very much like this.

The last time she’d felt this way was years ago, back with Collin in the months before their separation. They’d taken turns, it seemed then, struggling with the reality of their incompatibility…with Collin’s infidelity and her neuroses…until the foundation of their impromptu marriage could do nothing but give in and fall away beneath them. And before Collin, the last time she’d felt this unstable and paralyzed had been…Christ, it had been such a goddamn long time ago she couldn’t even remember…

Maybe I should have just taken the day off after all, she thought. This wasn’t such a good idea. I feel lousy. I feel like I’m psychic, and I know I’m going to get creamed by a taxi on my way home tonight.

That wasn’t good. Recently, the project seemed like it was on a perpetual downslope, and for the past week or so she had begun doubting herself. And that just wasn’t good, wasn’t good at all. The onslaught of doubt, she understood, signified the eventual renouncing of the whole project altogether. And early on, she had been so excited about the project’s potential. As most great ideas do, the initial concept of the project dawned on her before she even realized she had been looking for it. It was simple: a series of videotaped biographies, only not about actors or musicians or politicians or war heroes, but about average people who have overcome tremendous adversities in their lives. She’d call it We the People, and would present a new individual with each installment, show how they lived, how they got by day-to-day, and what their specific adversities were. The concept had struck her like a thunderbolt, nearly rattling her brain, and on the heels of the concept she’d thought: Yes, this is it, you are it, you are the art I’ve been searching for all along and I didn’t even know it. How many potential subjects lived in all of Manhattan? Hell, how many potential subjects lived on her very own street? Sure, there would be research and lots of work and she’d probably need to go to the University to gather some help…but this idea…this idea was a good idea, and it would certainly work.

She’d met some amazing people, and interviewed and photographed them all. Belinda Charles, the seven-hundred-pound woman sentenced to live out the remainder of what promised to be a cruelly short life atop her filthy mattress. Jackson Tanner, the teenage boy who’d bitten down on the business end of a handgun, pulled the trigger and blew the bottom half of his face apart…only to survive. So many unbelievable people living so many unbelievable lives. And, of course, old Nellie Worthridge, absent of both her legs since the age of twenty and looking like a wrinkled old wind-up toy.

“On your orders, my lady,” Josh said from behind the camera, snapping Kelly from her daze.

“We ready, Nellie?” she called into the kitchen, not looking up from her notebook.

“I’m just doing what I do, dear,” Nellie called back.

“All right,” Kelly said, trying not to think about that red blinking light. “Roll camera, Josh.”

Chapter Two

It was raining and near dark once Kelly and Josh finally wrapped up the shoot. It had gone smoothly, and both Kelly and Josh were pleased with the footage. Sometime around noon, Nellie’s headaches returned (Kelly insisted Josh keep the camera rolling, even though the headaches really had no bearing on the project itself) and the woman began quietly moaning to herself. She maneuvered her motorized wheelchair over to the sofa in her tiny parlor and, without any assistance, lifted herself up onto the sofa and eased back against one of the arm rests. Josh offered to get the woman a glass of water and some Advil, but Kelly shook her head, insistent upon their complete and total lack of interference. Soon, Nellie’s headache subsided enough for her to crawl back into her chair and fix herself something to eat.

“Could just be a hunger headache,” the old woman told them as she fixed herself some whole-wheat toast and jam. “Ain’t seen food since supper last night. Get too sick eating breakfast nowadays.”

Outside, the sky looked the color of fading iron. It had gotten colder, the wind picking up, and the collection of yellow cabs cluttering the streets already had their headlights on.

“You feel like catching some eats?” Josh asked her.

“Not up to it,” she said. “Think I’ll just head home, get some sleep.”

He nodded. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. Think maybe I’ll go home and go over the dailies.”

“Dedication,” she said, half-smiling. “I like that in a scrub.”

“You know me,” he said, hailing a cab. “Fingers to the bone, right? Share a cab with me?”

She rode with him back to the Village, thanked him for all his hard work (this was a habit; it was the least she could do, given the fact that Josh Cavey worked for free), and crept up the steps to her third-floor apartment like a dejected mutt. Her apartment was small and gloomy, with only two narrow windows facing Washington Square in the main room. It was very obviously the home of someone subsisting on city grants and the emolument for her former duties as a wife and homemaker. The walls boasted a dreary collection of monochromatic Gothic prints, mostly from local artists, and a collection of abstract sculptures could be found resting on nearly every applicable surface: “pene di partecipazione azionaria di uomo,” and “donna senza mammelle” and “masturbazione.” Bookshelves groaning from the weight of thick, leather-bound volumes…a vase of wilted peonies…some week-old Chinese take-out growing fungus on the kitchen counter…a lamp in the shape of a turtle, its shell a patchwork of colored glass rectangles…

She stepped into the apartment, peeling her black coat off and draping it over a wicker chair beside the small sofa. Grabbing a mineral water from the fridge, she moved to the computer beneath the two narrow windows overlooking Washington Square and pushed a Thelonious Monk CD into the drive. Setting the bottled water down, she gathered up her Nikon automatic from the top of the CPU and peered through the viewfinder, snapping off a series of apartment shots, not caring that there was no film in the chamber.

The urge to urinate hit her then, suddenly so overwhelming that she nearly collapsed to the floor. Weak-kneed, she managed to scamper to the bathroom, kick her pants down around her ankles, and drop down onto the toilet seat just as a warm spray of urine came squirting out of her. It seemed like the stream would never stop. If it wasn’t for the fact that I haven’t had sex with a man in over a year, she thought gloomily, I’d think I was pregnant.

She showered for nearly an hour, pulled on a cotton nightshirt, and decided to settle down for a night of reading on her bed when the telephone rang. It was Josh.

“Sorry to wake you,” he said without waiting for her to speak, “but something’s pretty fucked up over here.”

“Where are you?”

“My place. I’ve been running over the dailies for the past half-hour or so…well, trying to, anyway…but it looks like the damn thing blew one hell of a green fuckus right out of—”

“Hold on—what the hell are you talking about? What’s going on, Josh?”

“The dailies are scrubbed. Fucking dead. Which is absolute bullshit because I watched some through the monitor at Nellie’s this afternoon, remember? You were there, you saw me watching them. Everything was fine then, so I don’t understand…”

“Are you saying the tapes are ruined?” She could feel a heavy headache coming on. “Everything we shot today?”

“Ruined or something,” Josh said. He sounded rightfully pissed off.

“Something? What the hell does that mean?”

“I don’t know. It’s not like the tape is permanently damaged because the damaged sections seem to change every time I view it…like maybe something’s wrong with my player, I don’t fucking know. It’s not messed up in the same spot every time, you know what I mean? But it’s not my player because I tossed in a copy of Monty Python and everything worked fine, worked all right, so then I throw in one of the dailies again and fuck it all—the tapes just won’t play right, Kell.”

“All the tapes?” She was staring at the digital readout on her alarm clock beside her bed: 10:32 PM. She wasn’t even tired.

“Looks that way,” he said. Kelly thought she heard someone yelling in the background, but she supposed it could have just been the television. “Every goddamn thing we shot today.”

“Maybe the camera heads were dirty and got shit on the tapes,” was all she could think of. “I’ve got cleaner here. And if not, maybe I can clean it up digitally on the computer.”

“You want me to run them by tomorrow?”

She was still staring at the clock: 10:34. There would be no sleep tonight again, no matter how tired she eventually got. That sensation of building, of blossoming inside her continued to grow, to push against the inner wall of her body. No—no sleeping tonight. “Could you bring them by now?”

“Now?” he said. Again, Kelly thought she heard someone shouting in the background. It sounded like a woman and a man arguing. “It’s late…”

“I just thought you might be going out…”

“I can drop them off, sure. Just figured you’d be too tired to get fired back up again.”

“Well, if we have to reshoot, I’d like to know as soon as possible so we can plan around it.”

“All right,” he said. “Be there in twenty.”

Twenty minutes later Josh showed up with his nylon case slung over one shoulder and a pizza in the other hand. His teeth were still chattering from the brisk walk from the cab to the apartment—it had gotten that cold—and his face looked bright red. “Figured we might as well eat,” he said. “Sorry, but I didn’t pick up any beer.”

“Get in here,” she told him, taking the pizza from him and setting it down on the mock-granite coffee table in front of the sofa. “There’re beers in the fridge, if you’re really looking to dull the senses.”

He moved into the kitchen, unzipping his leather coat and tossing it over a chair. Peering into the fridge, he said, “You said you had beer in here.”

She opened Josh’s nylon case and selected one of the videocassettes from inside, pulled back the rear panel and examined the film. It looked fine. “There is,” she called back.

“No…there’s Coors and Bud Light but no beer.” He shut the fridge, a Coors in his hand anyway. “No real beer. Must be your girlie side. Funny, I didn’t realize you had one.”

Ignoring him, she carefully pushed one of the videocassettes into the digital video camera which she then plugged into her computer, cued up the tape, and eased back onto the sofa with the camera on her lap. In an instant, Nellie Worthridge’s kitchen appeared on the screen with Nellie herself in her chair, fixing lunch at the counter. “Could be just a hunger headache,” Nellie was saying as she toasted her bread.

Josh came up behind Kelly eating a slice of pizza. “This part’s fine. Fast-forward it for a few seconds.”

She did, then hit PLAY again.

“See?” Josh said, his voice raised a notch. It was evident by his aggravated tone that he’d been driving himself crazy with these videos for a good portion of the evening. “You see what I’m saying? Looks like the tape is screwed.”

The screen blurred, went to static, flashed a negative image of Nellie Worthridge’s kitchen, and then fell to static again. Kelly leaned forward and popped the tape cassette out of the camera housing, flipped back the cassette’s rear panel to examine the tape again. “Looks fine,” she said, slipping the videocassette back into the digital camera and pushing PLAY.

The picture returned to the screen—a shot of withered old Nellie Worthridge eating a piece of jammed wheat-toast—and held steady for several seconds before blurring and falling to snow again.

“That’s odd,” she muttered. “If the tape was messed up, we shouldn’t have seen that image when I put the tape back in.”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

She rewound the video and hit PLAY again. Nellie was back at the toaster once more, complaining about her hunger headache. The image held. The toaster popped and Nellie took the toast from it, set it on the counter, and began spreading jam on top of it while smiling absently at the camera. “Get too sick eating breakfast nowadays,” Nellie said on the video.

“Okay,” Kelly said, “two seconds ago we weren’t able to view this scene, and now we—”

As if on cue the image on the screen dispersed, splintering like rays of lights, just as a wave of peppery static flooded the screen. The audio went out as well—didn’t slow or bend or speed up, just went completely dead. Kelly let it run for a while, waiting to see if it got any better, but it didn’t. She kept it on visual fast-forward, but the picture did not return. Only snow and dead sound.

“They’re all like this?” she asked Josh. “All the tapes? Everything we shot today?”

“Everything we shot today,” he repeated dully, finishing off his pizza and taking a slug of beer. “I’m beat.”

She put the camera down and sat in front of her computer, her fingers quickly tapping over the keypad. “Rewind the tape back to the beginning,” she told Josh, “back to where it was fine.”

Josh did so as Kelly brought up the clear digital image in a tiny box in the upper left-hand corner of her computer screen. She typed some code that enlarged the frame. “Go ahead and let it play,” she said.

Josh hit PLAY on the camera and the video started up again, Nellie Worthridge talking about her hunger headache while fixing toast at the kitchen counter, the toaster popping, Nellie smiling at Josh behind the camera. Then it went to fuzz. This time, Kelly tapped out a procession on the keyboard and the lines of static minimized, showing only the faintest picture behind it, as if they were watching the scene through a partially opaque shower curtain.

“I can clean it up a little,” she said, “but it doesn’t seem to be doing much good.”

“And where’s the sound now?”

“I don’t know.” She looked at the audio bar at the bottom of the monitor. “Audio’s registering, we just can’t hear it anymore.”

“That’s so bizarre,” Josh said. He was scrutinizing the other videocassettes he brought with him in his nylon carrying case. Kelly turned to say something and caught the blinking red light of the camera out of the corner of her eye, and froze.

There is a door, and behind that door there is a flash of light, a very cold flash of light, and when you step into that light you can feel the hands on you, the hands guiding you, and you are stepping in something too, something wet and you think it is water at first, but then you realize that it is not water and it is coming from you, and you were laughing about it all just moments before but now you are afraid, now you are very much afraid, and now you think that you might even die here…

“Excuse me,” she managed, hopping up from behind the computer and barreling past Josh like a runaway eighteen-wheeler, her destination the bathroom at the end of the hallway. She hit the toilet bowl like a bull colliding with a matador. Lucky the lid was up, she vomited a filmy green foam into the bowl. Her stomach was empty—she hadn’t eaten anything all day—and she could feel the bile pulling up from the deepest bowels of her being, before breaking off into a series of barking dry heaves. After a few lumbering moments, she reached up and flushed the handle while catching her breath. Shaking, beads of sweat breaking out along her skin, she leaned back against the tub, eyes shut tight. She was aware of Josh standing in the bathroom doorway glaring down at her; she could hear his breathing mixed with her own.

“Kell,” he said, but nothing followed.

She just held up one hand to him, palm out, like a crossing guard halting traffic. The last thing she needed to hear right now was a lecture from someone, from anyone. She was suddenly too frightened to listen to rational thought, too. From behind her closed lids, the image of the blinking red beacon taunted her. And damn it, she knew that light, had seen it somewhere before but couldn’t put her finger on it. It was like some memory from another life, something she almost remembered, yet her physical brain would not allow the entire thought to fully process.

“I’m okay,” she finally managed. She thought Josh would come to her side and kneel down beside her, but he only remained standing in the doorway, silent and staring. “I just…something I ate today didn’t agree with me, I guess.”

“Yeah,” he said, his tone monotonous, “something you ate today.” He had been with her since dawn and hadn’t seen her eat a single thing. And she knew he was thinking just that.

“Don’t start, Josh.”

“No,” he said, “of course not. I’ll never start, right?”

She didn’t know what he meant by that and said nothing when he turned away and walked back down the hallway. Listening, she heard him gather his things, open the front door, and slam it behind him. Her head still against the rim of the bathtub, she listened to his footsteps recede down the hallway until there was nothing left to hear but the simmering hiss of the toilet.

Something jarred her awake in the middle of the night. Some fleeting sound, there and then gone, too quick for her to catch. But it had been there.

She lay in bed for a long while, staring at the dark ceiling. The lull of traffic down below used to soothe her, put her right to sleep, but not tonight. She’d grown immune, she supposed. Either that or she was in some bad shape. Through her bedroom door she could see the bathroom across the hall even in the dark, a bitter reminder of what had happened earlier that evening. She closed her eyes, trying not to think about it, trying not to think of that peculiar image of hands reaching out for her, of water—no, it wasn’t water, it was blood, somehow she knew it was blood—running down her legs and pooling on the floor. A bright light…a closed door, her hand coming out and slowly turning the knob, pushing it open…

I won’t be getting back to sleep tonight, she thought and got up.

In the kitchen she fixed herself some warm milk to which she added a tablespoon of sugar. In the dark, she crept back out into the main room with her milk and sat down on the couch. The only visible light issued in from the two windows on either side of the computer desk, and the computer monitor itself, blinking its KEEP EARTH CLEAN, IT’S NOT URANUS! screensaver. She reached up from the couch and tapped the space bar on the keyboard and the screensaver disappeared. What took its place was the paused video stream from the tape she’d been watching with Josh before getting sick and charging into the bathroom. Setting her milk down, she got up and sat down in front of the screen, rewound the video stream, and played it back. Nellie Worthridge’s voice came out, too tinny on the computer speakers: “Could just be a hunger headache.” Hunched over the keyboard, she watched the old woman spread jam on her toast and smile at the camera. Then the camera panned to the left, following the old woman over to the cupboards where she replaced the jar of jam. One of the gears stuck on the wheelchair and Nellie toggled with it for perhaps a second or two—Kelly remembered this happening—before bringing the wheelchair back around. At that moment, the audio stream died and the sharp black-and-white fuzz invaded the screen.

“Damn you, what’s the deal?”

She brought up the computer’s video editing bank, tried to eliminate as much static as possible, but it was a futile attempt. And it made no sense. For whatever reason, the dailies were ruined.

Just for a second, the audio stream kicked back on. The sound jarred her, and she lifted her fingers off the keyboard, thinking something she’d done had made a connection somewhere. But just as quick as the sound came back on, it vanished again.

And what the hell did I just hear? Maybe I’m really starting to lose my mind, but I could have sworn…

She rewound the footage a few seconds then played it again. Still no clear visual, still no audio…but then yes, she heard it, that quick little audio blip, so abrupt yet suddenly so clear…

It was her name. Someone was saying her name.

But that didn’t sound like Nellie Worthridge and it didn’t sound like Josh, either.

She played it back a third time, but this time she heard nothing. A fourth—nothing. A fifth—nothing.

What the hell is going on?

Although the picture on the screen was still fuzzy with static, she thought she could almost make out shapes beneath it. At one point, the video cleared enough so that she could make out Nellie Worthridge in her chair talking to Josh behind the camera. Still no audio, her wrinkled lips worked in silence. She brought up her hand and motioned at something on her kitchen counter, silently laughing to herself like an ancient, crippled mime. Then blurbs of sound, too there-and-then-gone to be properly deciphered: “on it…making for…see…ate”—or was it “eight”? It just didn’t make sense; digital video simply did not operate in such a fashion—

On the screen, Nellie eased her wheelchair around, her back briefly facing the camera, just as another figure moved past the front of the camera. Upon seeing it, Kelly froze (and she felt something in the back of her mind turn over, or almost turn over, like something trying to return to life but not quite able to). The moving image—it was most definitely a person—was too close to the lens of the camera to be properly defined. But it was definitely there, this moving figure that was neither Josh nor herself, and obviously not old Nellie Worthridge. The figure, from what she was able to ascertain, was pale and quick, nearly transparent—almost like a ghost. If it wasn’t for the fluid, muscled way it moved across the camera’s field of vision, she would have no reason to even think it was a human being.

Can’t be. Just isn’t possible.

She rewound the video and played it back and yes, the pale figure again moved quickly in front of the camera. With her computer’s editing tools, she tried to clean the image, take some of the distorted fuzz away, but the image—whatever or whoever this was—was just too close to the lens to see clearly. She rewound the video a third time, now hitting the keys with shaking hands, feeling that sense of mounting dismay rise up inside her like a volcanic eruption. Suddenly, it was like smelling something she hadn’t smelled in a long time, or hearing a song she hadn’t heard since childhood.

That’s nostalgia, something inside her head whispered. It’s finally remembering the unremembered.

This time, the fleeting pale visage did not pass in front of the lens. Like a piece of dirt that had rubbed itself free of the lens, the figure was gone this time, and all she saw was old Nellie Worthridge turning around in her wheelchair and bumbling toward the refrigerator while Josh filmed. The picture was clear now (there was still no audio) and whatever had been present on the screen only a minute before was now absent. Vanished, like a phantom.

Dumbfounded, Kelly just sat there behind the computer, staring at the monitor, her entire body shaking. What she’d just seen—yes, it had been there, it had been right there on the screen, on the videotape, had been real, damn it, had been real. Maybe not a ghost or a phantom—surely not—and maybe not even a person at all, either. Maybe just something passing in front of the lens, something that, for some unexplained reason, was not there now.

It was a person, that same spiteful little voice spoke up inside her head. You know it was, you saw how it moved. People move like that, not pieces of dust on videotape, not botched patches of an effects-loop on a computer screen. People move like that.

“That can’t be,” she whispered, not realizing she’d just spoken aloud. Something about that pale, ephemeral image passing in front of the camera, quickly moving across her computer monitor…

Is it possible to capture ghosts on videotape? she rationalized. Is it really, genuinely possible? And even if it is, do I really believe such a thing?

Something on the screen caught her eye. Not something moving in front of the camera this time (this thing, if it even really existed outside the scope of her imagination, was behind Josh’s camera) but, rather, an image of something reflected in the tinted black glass of Nellie’s oven door. Again, the image was there for only a split second, hardly conducive to ocular registration, yet for some reason she saw it immediately, almost as if she had been looking for it all along. It was a face. Its reflection was distant and somewhat undefined in the smoked glass of the oven door, yet clearly and undeniably there. Despite the mild disfiguration of its features, it was irrefutably the face of a human being: the deep-set eyes, the rudimentary nose, the slope of a pallid and hairless scalp, the hasty slash of a mouth. The reflected face was only visible for a count of two seconds before Nellie Worthridge maneuvered her wheelchair in front of it, her mouth moving soundlessly on the screen. And in the wake of the wheelchair, the reflection was gone, as if Nellie’s passing had wiped it clean off the glass.

I know that face, she thought, I’ve seen it before. It was different somehow—I don’t quite understand it—but I’ve seen it before.

An image flooded her then: the pale feet of a small child covered in blood, its soles lacerated and oozing. And with that, the faint echo of a young child’s relentless sobbing.

She rewound the video again but this time there was no reflected face in the glass of Nellie Worthridge’s oven door.

Who are you and how do I know you?

Like the dawning of some amazing idea, she suddenly realized what the noise had been that had awoken her from her sleep just a little while ago. Ringing—the telephone.

She stood from behind the computer and turned around. The apartment was still dark and after staring intensely at the computer screen for so long her eyes could only make out the fundamentals of her apartment before her eyes. The phone rested on the half-wall that separated the living area and the small kitchen vestibule. Beside the phone was the answering machine.

Someone had called in the middle of the night.

The red, flashing message light on the answering machine was like a beacon summoning her in the darkness.

Chapter Three

If asked, Joshua Cavey would have agreed that monsters certainly did exist. Just over a year ago, he’d looked one right in the eyes.

He thought about it mostly in the predawn hours of morning, usually while seated outside on his fire escape, smoking a joint and watching the traffic crawl along the street below. This morning, it was unusually cold and he wrapped himself in a thick sweater before creeping out onto the escape, a freshly rolled joint tucked behind his ear. Sitting cross-legged on the grated floor, he slowly rotated his left shoulder—forward-forward-forward, then rotated in reverse. With the cold front that arrived prematurely, his shoulder was already beginning to cramp. It would be a bitter, bitter winter.

Monsters, he thought, watching plumes of steam rise up from the manhole covers and grates on the street below.

The monster in question had been a twenty-year-old kid with greasy hair and chapped lips named Sampers. Just over a year ago, this greasy-haired, chap-lipped monster made a decision to send two burning pieces of lead into Josh’s chest and left shoulder, nearly puncturing his heart. As with most tragedies, it happened without notice or warning (except for that split microsecond when their eyes locked and Josh suddenly knew what was about to happen, yet was powerless to avoid it) and, now that it was in the past and he had survived, the memory of the event was like the memory of some multicolored abstract painting. His mind only allowed him to recall selected visuals: the way the handgun bucked in Sampers’s hand; the dark, scaly-looking rings around Sampers’s eyes; the constellation of blood, more black than red, which arced into the air, seemingly in slow motion. Then there was the pain, which he didn’t think he’d ever forget—the sudden impact of heat, the brief but blessed moment of total numbness, then the burst of flames, abrupt and roaring. The first collision—the one that hit his shoulder—was like being whacked by Babe Ruth’s ash-handle, and the follow up shot—the one that pierced his chest, nearly plugging his heart and turning out his lights permanently—was like a Mike Tyson upper-cut. He went down, and the world seemed to spin before his eyes, to cant to one side, his entire world suddenly consisting only of those things nearest to him in the physical world: Doritos, two-liter bottles of Coca-Cola and Sprite, a streaming waterfall of Lotto tickets, and the tortoiseshell bulb of the theft mirror hanging from the convenience store’s ceiling. In that mirror he saw himself fall, saw the entire cramped convenience store in disproportioned miniature. There were sounds, only now blocked out by giant wads of cotton in his ears, and then there was nothing but darkness and the insanity of his labored breathing echoing deep within his head.

The memories immediately following the shooting were tumultuous ones. He recalled the sounds of people standing above him, and even remembered the wail of the ambulance as it pulled up outside in the street. He even remembered someone in the distance shouting, “Listen, this is not what I meant by ‘immediate’! This is not what being ‘quick’ is all about! What you fail to understand is that fast is fast and there ain’t no other way about it!” Whatever that meant.

In those moments he thought of God. Insanely, he imagined Him as a giant insect with a large, bulbous head hosting countless feline-like eyes. And when God spoke, His voice was like resonating guitar strings in a silent room, and the trick was actually deciphering those plucked notes and arranging them into some semblance of comprehension.

Monsters, he thought again. He lit the joint and inhaled vehemently. Who would have ever thought such things existed?

Yet for what it was worth, it was Sampers who had eventually led him to Kelly Rich, and that was a good thing. A very good thing. Obsession, Josh quickly discovered, was simply a fungus waiting to take hold. In many respects, it was a monster in and of itself, very different from Sampers, and somehow worse too because of its inability to think, to feel, and to contemplate. Obsession was just this thing, and in the months following his run-in with the greasy-haired kid with the handgun (particularly during his time in recovery), he discovered that the fungus had somehow managed to catch hold of him. It grew on his brain, impeding him from stepping outside his apartment other than to go to work, forcing him into paranoid seclusion. But he’d always been strong-willed, and after he realized the fungus wouldn’t just disappear on its own, he knew he’d have to find a way to scrape it off.

It was an obsession with survival, an obsession with the fear of dying. We never realize just how close we are to death, just how fleeting life is, until it is nearly taken away from us. It was an obsession with paranoia in a way too, and Kelly saved me from it.

Kelly…and her project, We the People. For some reason, he felt like his old self again when working on the project, partially because it kept his mind focused, but mostly because he genuinely believed in the project. The money was nowhere near what he usually made on a freelance project, but he’d discovered a sense of kinship with Kelly and an uncommon sense of peace in the work itself. Answering Kelly Rich’s ad in the university paper, he understood, was what had really saved his life.

“And what the hell is wrong with you now, Kelly?” he said aloud, still slowly rolling his left shoulder. In the past few months they spent working together, Josh felt he’d grown to understand Kelly Rich. And the Kelly Rich of the past few weeks was not the same Kelly Rich of the past several months, was not the same Kelly Rich whose ad he had answered. Something had changed within her recently—something akin to the degeneration of the human soul, the human spirit. Not that he really believed in such things. But he understood that something was wrong with her, and it bothered him that she felt so insecure about talking to him about it.

Or maybe she doesn’t even know herself, his mind added as an afterthought. Maybe she’s just as lost as I am.

Then why was she so cold about it? Why did it seem like she was trying to cover something up? Something big that she was afraid of, for whatever reason people have for being afraid of certain things? He was here to help, was her friend. Couldn’t she see that? Didn’t she even care?

Now I’m really getting ahead of myself. Why in the hell should I even expect her to tell me her deepest, darkest secrets, anyway? It’s not like we’ve been best buddies for the majority of our lives. Despite how closely we’ve worked together on this project for the past several months, we’re still essentially strangers in the whole scheme of things. And we’ve cultivated our relationship that way on purpose, so who can really blame her? Everyone’s got secrets.

And that was true. Kelly knew nothing about Sampers, knew nothing about that late afternoon over a year ago when Joshua Cavey took two burning-hot slugs in the upper torso, had nearly died, and he had no desire to tell her about it. Sure, she knew he liked cappuccino and was a damned good editor and occasionally went skiing in the Adirondacks. Likewise, he knew some cursory details concerning her divorce and knew she spent her childhood upstate—was a “country girl,” according to him, but that was really about it. As far as their friendship went he never really opened himself up to her, so why should he expect her to do the opposite? That wasn’t fair. As his mother would say, that was being downright stupid-headed.

You only get what you give, he thought, thinking it was a line from some song. You only get what you give and if you expect anything different, then you’re only being stupid-headed.

True.

He smoked.

After grabbing a bite at Bastian’s, he took a cab to Radio Shack where he bought some cheap videotape, and then to Nellie Worthridge’s apartment. If they were going to need to reschedule yesterday’s shoot (and he was positive that they would), he wanted to set everything up again without having to bother Kelly. Perhaps the project was adding to her stress. Maybe showing her those ruined tapes last night hadn’t been the best of ideas.

He stopped at the grocers and filled a plastic bag up with oranges. The old woman had a fetish for oranges and Josh did his best to support her habit. He liked the old woman: she was much more cheerful that the seven-hundred-pound woman with the plate of brownies. She had been depressing. Nellie, on the other hand, always managed to lift his spirits.

I can use some lifting today, he thought, walking up the risers to the old woman’s apartment. He had taken the elevator only once—the first time he and Kelly had been to see the old woman—and had decided upon the stairwell for each subsequent visit. Any display of lethargy made him feel somewhat guilty. After all, the old woman went through her life without any legs. Was he really going to bitch over a few flights of stairs?

He knocked several times on Nellie’s door. She rarely ever answered it, so he waited for the mandatory “Come in.” But it never came. He knocked a few more times and waited (this wasn’t unusual; the woman’s hearing was about as flawless as a country road). When she didn’t answer the second time he reached out and jiggled the doorknob. It turned and he cracked the door open and peeked his head inside.

“Nellie?”

The apartment looked empty. If not for Nellie’s old-fashioned phonograph slowly turning through a Duke Ellington album in the corner of the living room, he would have thought the old woman had stepped out.

He stepped inside and placed the plastic bag of fruit on the kitchen counter. There was a pot of boiling water on the stove. Something wasn’t right.

“Nellie? Hello?”

She might be in the bathroom, he rationalized. Even old ladies have to drop the kids off at the pool on occasion. And if she comes out now and sees me standing here in her kitchen, I might cause her to suffer a heart attack, the poor old thing.

But he didn’t convince himself. Something wasn’t right.

“Nellie? Where are you? Are you here?”

He moved across the living room just as Ellington ended one number and struck up another. As he peered down the hallway he expected to see the bathroom door closed, but it wasn’t. It was propped open halfway by Nellie’s overturned wheelchair. On the floor, half in the bathroom and half in the hallway, was the old woman. She lay there unmoving, and the first thought that blasted through Josh’s head was, She’s dead.

He rushed over to her, righting the wheelchair and pushing it out of the way. It clanged against the toilet. Bending down to the old woman’s chest, he could hear her rasping breath pushing in and out of her lungs, could hear her heart—faint, but still on the clock—beating within her chest. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was frozen open, pulled into a grim mockery of a smile. Dried laces of spit ran down the corners of her mouth and into the wrinkled grooves of her cheeks.

“Okay, Nellie,” he breathed, pulling himself to his feet and rushing for the nearest telephone, “you just hold on, all right? You just hold on.” He was whispering these words, but that didn’t matter; he didn’t think Nellie would be able to hear them, anyway. They were more for his comfort than hers.

He reached for the telephone on the kitchen counter, knocking the bag of oranges to the floor. The bag ripped open and the oranges fell out and rolled across the floor in different directions.

“Hang on, Nellie,” he whispered, and called for help.

It was a stroke and no one had any definite answers. Josh stayed with the old woman until she was stabilized, staring in at her through the glass-and-wire doorway of the ICU. She looked like a child in that bed, so small and seemingly at peace. He remembered her complaining about headaches during the shoot yesterday and now he wondered if that had been a signal of things to come. He didn’t know the first thing about strokes nor about what their symptoms included. And the way he’d found her, unconscious in the doorway to her bathroom at the end of the hall, her chair tipped on its side, those dried lines of spit tracing down her cheeks…he couldn’t shake the image.

Is that how we all go in the end? he wondered. Is it just a matter of time before we all get old and alone and die on the floor of our bathrooms, our chairs tipped over, dried spit on our face?

A young nurse with wide hips brushed by him.

“Will she be all right?” he asked her.

“We’ll be keeping a close eye on her,” the nurse said, smiling with a mouthful of teeth as she continued down the corridor.

That’s not what I asked, he thought, and turned away from the ICU. He walked down the hallway, the sodium ceiling lights making his shadow large and almost comical on the tile floor in front of him. There was a pay phone at the end of the corridor. He picked up the receiver, slipped thirty-five cents into the slot, and dialed Kelly’s number. As he stood listening to Kelly’s phone ring on the other end, he questioned whether or not he should say anything to Kelly at all about Nellie. Would this be the final thing to set her over the top? Would she perhaps discontinue with the project altogether? Surely he’d sensed Kelly’s recent lack of enthusiasm. Would she see Nellie’s stroke as an omen, as an excuse to finally put We the People to rest without ever completing it?

It doesn’t matter, he thought, because I won’t let her. This project is too good, too important, to simply cast aside when it becomes too difficult.

The phone continued to ring with no answer. He hung up the receiver before Kelly’s answering machine picked up and leaned back against the wall. His mind returned to Sampers, the Monster of Manhattan, and to the way the kid had looked in that split second when he pulled the trigger and fired the first of two shots at him. There had been an amalgam of conflicting emotions in the kid’s face—fear, anger, sadness, confusion.

You didn’t want to pull that trigger any more than I wanted to get shot, Joshua Cavey thought morosely.

It was an insane world.

Chapter Four

After leaving the hospital, Josh decided to stop by Kelly’s apartment and give her the bad news. He knocked once and the door was immediately pulled open. Kelly stood on the other side, her eyes red and puffy, her face more haggard than it had been in the past several weeks. Upon seeing her, Josh’s initial assumption was that she had already (for some reason) been notified about Nellie Worthridge’s stroke and had spent the afternoon crying. But no—that didn’t make sense.

His concern was quick to register in his voice. His words came out shaky and uncertain. “Kelly…what is it?”

She just shook her head and rubbed her eyes. Stepping aside, she motioned for him to come in. There was Tuvan music playing low on her stereo and no lights on in the apartment. The sweet, aromatic odor of sandalwood incense filled his nose. Without thinking, he reached out for her and placed a hand on one of her shoulders. He could feel her entire body tremble with each hitching breath she took.

“I’m sick,” she practically whispered, trying to cultivate a smile for him. With little emotion, she brushed his hand away, went over to the half-wall that separated the kitchen and the living area, and depressed the message button on her answering machine. Before the message even began, she was moving down the hallway and closing herself in the bathroom.

The machine beeped and the voice that came through the speaker was a man’s voice, quite stern and matter-of-fact. A down-to-business voice. Josh summoned a mental image of Christopher Walken, the movie actor—all stone-faced and expressionless.

“Miss Rich,” the stone-voice said, “my name is Jeffery Kildare, I handle your father’s personal agenda. I’m afraid it’s my duty to notify you of an unfortunate incident that has occurred here at the compound. Your sister Becky has come under some adverse circumstances. Plainly, Miss Rich, your sister was brutally attacked and nearly killed. Your father was adamant about contacting you. I have taken the liberty of securing you a plane ticket for tomorrow evening from JFK to Burlington International. You can pick up your ticket at the counter, and a driver will be at Burlington when your flight comes in to take you up to the compound. I apologize for the brevity of this message, but there is much to attend to here. Your parents look forward to your arrival.”

The machine beeped and clicked off. Josh just stood there in dumb silence, staring at the answering machine in an attempt to fully understand the severity of what he’d just heard. Christ, he hadn’t even known Kelly had a sister.

Becky, he thought, her name is Becky and she was brutally attacked and nearly killed.

He went to the closed bathroom door and rapped on it twice with his knuckles.

“Kell? Come on, kid, open the door, all right?”

He was anticipating an argument, but none came. Instead, Kelly opened the bathroom door and slipped out into the hallway, brushing past him as if he didn’t even exist. She walked with a purpose, moving fast. As if someone or something were chasing her.

“You all right?” he asked, following her into the living area. “You want to talk about this? I’m here.”

Not looking at him, she clicked off the music and removed selected art books from a shelf. She examined them absently before stacking each one on the smoked-glass coffee table between the bookshelf and the sofa. Josh watched her shoulders hitch several times as she struggled to keep herself under control. For the first time, he noticed how much weight she’d lost over the past month or so. Her arms appeared to float within the fabric of her pullover and her waist seemed trimmer. No, not trim—emaciated. Was she not eating too? First no sleep and now no food?

Finally, Kelly sat down on the sofa and folded her hands around her face. “I feel frozen,” she said.

“I’m sorry.” It was all that came to his mind, all he was able to spit out. Like some horrible actor on a pitiful made-for-television movie. “Do you need me to do anything for you?”

Kelly shook her head. She looked exhausted. “I need a drink.”

“What can I get?”

“There’s some Absolute in the cupboard above the fridge,” she said. “Grab some glasses, will you, please?”

He went around to the cupboard, fished out the bottle of vodka and two rocks glasses. “You want me to knock some orange juice in it?”

“Straight,” she said.

He filled two glasses. “What happened?” he asked, his back toward her.

“You heard the message, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Becky, right?”

Kelly’s voice from very far away: “Becky…” As if she were trying to remember the name herself.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“That’s all you were told about what happened? You don’t have any other information about what happened other than that message on your machine?”

“That’s all.”

“Did you try calling your parents’ house?”

“I don’t exactly know the phone number anymore,” she practically whispered. It sounded like something was caught in her throat. A groan, maybe. She still sounded very far away. “If they even have a phone number…”

“That Kildare guy…who was that, anyway?”

“My father’s hands.” She sounded both dejected and partly amused at the same time. “A puppet. I don’t know. I’ve never met him. My father is a very wealthy man, Josh. He doesn’t need to do things on his own. He pays others to do those things for him.”

Josh handed her one of the glasses and sat down beside her on the sofa. He didn’t know how to proceed; this was uncharted territory. And the look on her face—that look frightened him. It went deeper than just the expected sorrow she was justified in feeling in the wake of her sister’s tragedy. This look had thought in it. Too much contemplation behind those eyes, too much lousy thinking.

“I felt this coming,” she spoke up suddenly, clutching her glass with both hands between her knees. “I mean, I felt something coming. I don’t know. It all just sounds crazy. I can’t even think straight right now.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not. I think…this sounds crazy, Josh, but I think something inside me has been expecting this. You know? Like how a mother just knows when something bad has happened to her child? It’s like that, I guess. I think that’s why I’ve been feeling this way…or maybe not…Jesus, I don’t know.”

“When does your flight leave?”

“Tonight. I should be at the airport no later than nine o’clock.”

“How long will you be staying there?”

Her eyes trailed off into space, unfocused and facing the far wall. “I don’t even know yet.” Then she faced Josh. She looked half-asleep and dreaming, lost in her own mind. “I haven’t seen my sister in years. I haven’t even been back to the compound in so long.” Surprisingly, she broke out into choked laughter. “Compound,” she muttered. “Sounds like a fucking military base. House. That’s all it is. Just a big fucking house.” She took a long drink from her glass.

Josh thought, Plainly, Miss Rich, your sister was brutally attacked and nearly killed.

“It’s such a cold place,” Kelly went on, “and I haven’t been there in years. My parents are not the warmest, fuzziest people, in case you didn’t catch that from the message on my answering machine. Thank you, Mr. Kildare, whoever the hell you are. You are my hero. Good luck and good-bye, Bobby Jean.”

“I’m sure your sister will be all right,” he said, realizing as soon as the words were out of his mouth just how ridiculous he sounded. “I mean…I’m sure if it was very serious your father—or this Kildare guy—would have left you more information. Or at least a phone number. I mean, I would think…”

She nodded, but Josh could tell she didn’t agree with him and he didn’t say anything more about it. In his head he could still hear that cold, mechanical voice issuing from Kelly’s answering machine: I have taken the liberty of securing you a plane ticket for tomorrow evening from JFK to Burlington International. You can pick up your ticket at the counter, and a driver will be at Burlington when your flight comes in to take you to the compound. I apologize for the brevity of this message, but there is much to attend to here. Your parents look forward to your arrival. How could a human being be so cold, so formal? And what kind of parents have some personal assistant make such a telephone call in the first place? It was utterly ridiculous. Josh hadn’t necessarily grown up in the most nuclear of households, but such estrangement between family members seemed absurd to him.

“That poor girl,” Kelly whispered and finished off her vodka. “I should have taken her out of there when I left.”

“Christ, Kell, don’t start blaming yourself for all this.”

“It’s no way for a kid to grow up…”

“Still—it’s not your fault. I don’t care what you say, but I’m not going to let you believe that, you understand? Don’t be that way.”

“I just…” She rested her face in her hands again. She’d set her empty rocks glass at her feet and now she accidentally kicked it with the toe of her left foot, knocking it on its side and sending it into revolutions across the floor. “My childhood was a very unusual one, Josh. My parents were very cold, unforgiving people and I think that if I stayed there with them I would have turned out pretty cold and unforgiving too. I was sent away at fifteen. I married Collin at eighteen and moved to New Hampshire. I was running away, I knew it even then, but it was just something I had to do. I don’t expect you to understand.”

“What was so horrible back home?”

The rocks glass at her feet had stopped rolling. Now, she stared down at it as if it held all her answers. “I don’t know,” she said. “That’s the most difficult thing of all. I can’t remember. But I do think it has something to do with the way I’ve been feeling lately. And maybe with Becky, too.”

“How is that possible?”

She just shook her head slowly. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s not possible at all.”

“I’m sure everything will be fine,” he said and threw a clumsy arm around her shoulder. He thought of Nellie at that moment and was suddenly surprised at how promptly the old woman had slipped from his mind. He wouldn’t bring up Nellie’s stroke now. It would just have to wait until Kelly came back from the—compound, he thought and shuddered. It was just so damned institutional.

What if Nellie Worthridge is dead by the time Kelly comes back? a small voice deep inside his head spoke up. And on the heels of that: What if Kelly never even comes back at all?

Of course she would be back. Why wouldn’t she?

His mind shifted from Nellie to Sampers, He of the Greasy Hair and the Chapped Lips. Sampers had had a first name—was it Kenneth?—and had a father and a stepmother and a little sister and lived in a house and probably had a dog and maybe some old skin magazines hidden under his bed and maybe his old man beat him and maybe his stepmother was a degenerate alcoholic and maybe all those things came together and, in the end, created a monster out of Kenneth Sampers. Or maybe none of that was true and Sampers—the monster Sampers—was just birthed that way by nature. Josh recalled an intensity in Sampers’s eyes in the mere moments before the trigger was pulled, and it was a muddled, alarming intensity, brimming with questions and confusion. As if his brain was flying solo and his actions, no matter what drove his desires, were inevitable. Maybe sometimes, Josh thought, bad things just happen for no reason and without provocation. And what could you do?

Nothing, he knew. We can do nothing.

He comforted Kelly and let her fall asleep on his shoulder until it was time to leave for the airport.

Doctor Carlos Mendes, a fresh smattering of chalky vomit on the front of his white lab coat, washed his face and hands in the men’s room of the Intensive Care Unit at NYU Downtown Hospital. He was thirty-seven, looked fifty, and felt like he was seventy. He hadn’t seen the underside of his eyelids in roughly forty hours, hadn’t curled up behind Marie, a single arm draped over her slumbering form, in what seemed like weeks.

He dried his face and hands with paper towels from the dispenser, then proceeded to rub off as much of the vomit from his lab coat as he could.

There was much traffic in the hallway of the ICU. Three gunshot wounds, eleven auto accident victims, a dozen heart attacks and embolisms, a plethora of near-suicides—pill-poppers, jumpers, inhalers, and a variety of creative self-inflicted gun wounds and knife mutilations. The ICU could beat you to hell and back, if you only let it—Mendes knew this and accepted it the way a fireman tolerates heat, and never allowed it to overwhelm him. A little vomit on a lab coat meant nothing in the whole scheme of things. Sleep, in essence, was the same. Really, what did sleep mean? Shut your eyes for five minutes in the cafeteria then jerk awake again seconds before you planted your cranium in a bowl of rice pudding. It was a perpetual process, a revolving circus carousel.

Mendes checked his watch and saw that it was late enough to have missed dinner but still early enough to make love to his wife. He grabbed a cup of canned fruit and a plastic fork from the nurse’s station, popped the top and forked some chilled pear cubes into his mouth. Deborah tossed a few clipboards on the desk and smiled wearily at him.

“You about closing shop?” she asked him.

“Got about ten more minutes,” he said, flipping through the clipboard charts. “I’ll make rounds, grab a burger from the cafeteria, then head straight home. I feel like I could sleep for a month.”

“You and me both,” Deborah said, disappearing behind a wall of thick files wedged into flimsy manila folders.

A clipboard under his arm and the can of diced fruit up to his face, he moved down the corridor, absently avoiding traffic. He stopped outside Room 218 and peered down at the chart—Nellie Worthridge. Cerebral thrombosis. Still unconscious.

He pushed open the door and stepped inside, the hiss-and-pull of the old woman’s respirator the only sound filling the room. Her stunted form beneath the bed sheets reminded him of her handicap, and he thought, Yes, that’s right, you’re the poor old thing with no legs. It was clinical, yes, but it was too impossible to remember everyone by name. Particularly the unconscious ones.

Setting his fruit up on the table beside the bed, he checked the old woman’s blood pressure and examined her papillary response while thinking about the smooth brown slope of Marie’s back as she lay in bed, and the perfumed scent of her thick, black hair. How long had it been since he’d crept up behind her and nestled his face in that hair?

Tonight, he promised himself, checking off Room 218 on the clipboard chart.

The old woman’s eyes flipped open. The blood pressure monitor above the bed began whirring. The woman’s mouth began working silently while her spotted and bony hands clutched blindly at the bed sheets. Startled, Mendes backed up a step and stared down at the woman who had been completely unconscious two seconds before.

Like a mechanical puppet, Nellie Worthridge snapped upright in bed, her eyes suddenly very wide and glassy, the sclera of each eye tinged egg-yolk yellow. The machines above her head continued to whir while the respirator sped up to double-time. Before Mendes could react, the old woman shot her right hand out (Mendes had time to catch a glimpse of the loose flap of dangling skin swing out from her upper arm) and blindly grasped the fruit cup from the table beside her bed. Syrupy juice spilled across the table as she shook the contents out and yanked the plastic fork from the cup. With a speed uncommon to someone of her age (not to mention a recent stroke victim), she brought the fork up in front of her and, without looking at it, proceeded to break the plastic tines off the fork with her other hand.

Carlos Mendes snapped back into reality, dropped the clipboard, and rushed to her bedside. He rested a hand on both her shoulders and gently began easing her back down onto the bed while yelling for a nurse. With all the commotion in the hallway someone had to hear him.

Pupils dilated and staring straight through Mendes and at the ceiling, the old woman’s hand shot out again and sent the plastic fork sailing across the room. It clattered against the door just as it was swung open, two young nurses rushing in.

“Let’s get her down,” he called to them, the old woman already becoming docile beneath his grip. Her eyes eased closed again. “Her blood pressure just shot through the roof.”

One of the nurses plunged a syringe into the old woman’s arm but by that time, Nellie Worthridge was already out, her respiration slowly returning to normal.

“The hell happened?” one of the young nurses asked.

Mendes didn’t answer her. Massaging his forehead with one hand, he bent and picked up the dropped clipboard, then slowly moved across the floor toward the door. Looking down, he saw the broken fork by his shoe. Three of the four prongs had been busted off, and he had time to think, How incredibly bizarre is that? I swear, with everything I’ve ever seen in all my working years, that was one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever witnessed.

He stared down at the fork for longer than he should have, perplexed by it on a level that he shouldn’t have been. It made no sense.

How strange.

Yet by the time he got home and made love to his wife, he had forgotten all about it.

Chapter Five

It had started to rain when Josh put her into a cab to send her off to the airport. Before closing the door on her, he said, “Will you make me a promise?”

“What?” she said.

“Will you give me a call at some point while you’re away? Just, you know, so I know you’re doing all right.”

She smiled wearily. “I’ll find a phone if I have to.”

Josh shut the door.

The cab ride to JFK felt too long. She watched the cool evening rain splash against the windows of the cab while the cabdriver listened to a news radio show, the volume turned low. To keep her mind off her sister (and off the unexplainable tumult in her gut) she flipped through one of the art books she’d taken off her bookshelf and brought with her. But the distraction didn’t last long, and soon she found herself trying to summon the image of her childhood home in her head, to picture it as it had been before she went away.

And why did I go away, anyhow? She couldn’t remember. It was something, and something big, but I can’t remember anything about it for the life of me.

Becky had been only five years old when Kelly finally left the house to stay at the hospital. Her stay was only supposed to be temporary, until she was able to regain her composure, but she had wound up staying for three years. In fact, thinking back, she found it easier to recall her stay at the hospital than her childhood at the house.

Oh, what a bunch of garbage. Let’s just call a spade a spade. The “hospital” was an institution. Just like the “compound” is really just a house.

Alabaster mortar and puke-green cinderblock walls. Fluorescent tube lighting and gray linoleum hallways. Wire-mesh windows and uniform bedclothes, where every bedroom looked like a carbon copy of each other. Three years. She was eighteen when she finally left, legal adult age to sign herself out. And after that, she didn’t go back to the house, to her parents’ compound. No—after that, she went out on her own, fell into a hasty marriage that ended in divorce, and spent the last few years of her life in Manhattan with very little memory of her childhood and the events that led her down such a path. And that was fine, because until a month ago she had no desire to recall her childhood, her parents or even Becky. She’d even kept Collin’s last name.

Kelly Rich is better than Kelly Kellow any day, she rationalized. I don’t sound like some ridiculous fairytale character anymore.

She’d met Collin in New Hampshire, where she moved after leaving the institution. Even back then it had been her intention to eventually take a shot at New York City, but she decided to take a job as a receptionist at an independent publishing house in Concord which she had been told about by a warm-hearted young nurse at the institution. It wasn’t anything spectacular, but it was a responsibility she’d never had and attacked the opportunity with gusto. There she met Collin Rich. He was twenty-five then and an in-house editor for the company. Handsome, intelligent, funny, Kelly quickly fell in love with him. In hindsight, Kelly supposed her initial attraction to him (and their subsequent engagement) was something she needed rather than something she wanted. But at the time, it seemed the best way to overcome the embarrassment and solitude of the years spent at the institution.

I don’t want to think about Collin, either. In her head, everything just seemed connected to the same invisible hub, the same unremembered yet uncomfortable childhood. And that video, that pale face reflected in the glass of Nellie’s oven? Was I just seeing things, was I just imagining it or was that reflected face really there?

For the briefest of moments she feared she was cracking up again.

This is what it’s like living on the edge.

The cab pulled into the buzzing hub that was JFK International Airport and, after some driving confusion, the driver let her out. Armed with a single duffel bag, she hurried through the terminal, again feeling the sudden need to urinate. She reached the reception desk and gave her name to the attendant behind the counter.

After a few moments of silence from the perky blond attendant, she turned to Kelly and said that she was not registered for any flight leaving this evening.

“I have to be,” she said. “Are you sure? Are you checking everything?”

The attendant looked a little annoyed, all perkiness suddenly gone. “I’m checking, ma’am, there is no Kelly Rich anywhere in our system.”

“It was left for me by a Jeffery Kildare. I called earlier today and they said they confirmed Mr. Kildare’s ticket purchase.” Then it dawned on her. “Try under Kelly Kellow.”

Exasperated, the attendant retyped the name. The moment it appeared on the screen, the attendant perked up again. “Yes, here it is, Kellow.”

There’s no escaping it, is there? she thought. We can forget about our past but our past will always come back to bite us in the ass eventually.

She urinated twice in the terminal’s restroom, once more while waiting at her gate before boarding the airplane, and a fourth time while on the plane before take-off. Rain sluiced against the side window and she pulled the shade down over the pane. After the plane was in the air, the sensation to urinate subsided and she tried to soothe herself by listening to some soft jazz through a pair of airplane headphones.

She fell asleep midway through the flight.

And awoke to the sound of a million ball bearings crashing down on a tile floor.

Her eyes sprung open and it took her a couple of seconds to realize she was on an airplane. And not ball bearings at all—rather, large clusters of hail smashing against the window near her head. She slid the plastic window shade up and stared at the blackness on the other side of the glass. The hail was so thick, it was nearly impossible to make out the collection of city lights on the ground.

The captain came on the intercom then, informing everyone that all was fine and they would be landing shortly. And as if in spite of the captain’s statement, the plane surrendered in a great heave and shuddered violently. Kelly sat with her hands gripping the armrests, her stare straight ahead, until the shower of hailstones finally tapered off and she could make out the runway lights through the porthole window.

A large black man was waiting by the baggage claim holding a placard that read KELLY KELLOW. He was an easy seven feet tall and nearly busting out of his navy blue chauffer uniform. His eyes were narrow and sober and she caught him staring at her through the mob of people before she even recognized her name (my old name, she thought passively) on the placard. As if he knew immediately who she was.

“Miss Kellow.” His voice was deep, like a rumbling truck. He made no attempt to gather her bag from her. Seeing him jarred her momentarily, and she paused just before him. Some lost memory struggled to surface.

“Hello.”

“DeVonn Rotley, ma’am.”

“Yes,” she said. “I remember.”

“Ma’am?”

“I remember you,” she said. “From when I was a child.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “This way.” And he turned as if on a pivot and began striding through the wedge of travelers like an African elephant marching through a field of overgrown grass.

Outside was brutally cold. The hailstorm had apparently hit the airport pretty heavy; the tarmac and parking lots were already crystallized and even the roof of the black Cadillac that Rotley led her to was covered in the tiny white balls.

In silence, Rotley pulled onto the highway and headed west. Kelly, seated in the back seat, stared out the side window. They crossed Lake Champlain, the moon glowing over the still waters, and headed north on Route 9.

“You never left,” she said at one point. It was not a question and it was just barely directed at the driver. It was spoken, she understood just as the words came from her mouth, more so to enable her to recapture some visage from her youth—something, anything—and to move past the forgetting and the not remembering and to arrive at something of substance and familiarity. “You’ve been working for my father for all these years?” She knew this yet could hardly remember any of it.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“It’s good to see you.” And it was a stupid thing to say, she knew, because it really felt like nothing to see him, and she thought he knew it.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Cold tonight.”

“Hmmm.”

“Winter’s come early this year,” she said to Rotley, not wanting to talk about what was really on her mind.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“We hit the hailstorm just before landing.”

“Yes,” said Rotley. From the back, he looked like one of those giant statues on Easter Island.

“Is my sister all right?” Okay, so she couldn’t avoid asking the question. From the moment she heard Jeffery Kildare’s voice on her answering machine, Becky had been the only thing she could think about. Becky…and maybe that pale reflected figure in Nellie Worthridge’s kitchen, the figure from the video…

“I’ve not been detailed on the situation, ma’am,” Rotley intoned. “My apologies.”

Frowning, she slumped back against the seat and turned to stare out the window again. Champlain was gone, hidden behind a blind of black trees. The further north they drove the denser the forestry became, and soon it was almost impossible to even see the moon through the tinted windows. It was cold, even inside the Cadillac, and she leaned forward and peered at the dashboard up front. Rotley drove without the heater on. There was a bloom of frost on the windshield in front of Rotley’s view and each time the giant man exhaled, a cloud of vapor billowed out.

After twenty minutes they passed a hand-carved road sign, half hidden by underbrush and masked in darkness, with one word carved onto it: SPIRES. The roadway deteriorated into a scored dirt path, crunchy with frost and rock. Still, the woods grew denser. A heavy ground fog now impeded her view, and she turned away from the window.

“How did my father track me down?”

“I’ve not been properly informed about that, ma’am,” Rotley rumbled again, briefly glancing at her reflection in the Cadillac’s rearview mirror.

“Who is Jeffery Kildare?”

“Mr. Kellow’s personal assistant.”

“What happened to my sister?”

This time Rotley stared longer at her reflection in the rearview. Then: “I’m sure I don’t know. My apologies again, ma’am.”

Yes, I’m sure you don’t know. I’m sure you’re just as blind as everyone else my father deals with. No questions asked, just do your job like a good little robot and everything will be just fine.

She turned and looked back out the window. Spires, New York was perhaps the darkest place on Earth. She watched the tops of the trees blow in the strong wind (she could hear it blowing strong against the Cadillac, could feel the difficulty Rotley was having keeping the vehicle straight and steady). It was a fairytale forest, deep and enchanting, just like a small child’s dreams. And nightmares.

Something about a dog, she thought suddenly. I remember something about a dog in those woods, something about a dog and it was hurt and I can’t remember exactly what happened, but I know something did. Or maybe I’m just recalling some ancient, forgotten dream.

The car twisted along through the woods for perhaps another ten minutes. Soon, the forest receded and a series of squat houses, almost hut-like in appearance, materialized through the fog. These were new; Kelly did not remember them from her youth…although there was a lot she could not remember about her childhood. Like the memory of the dog—and what had that been about?—everything seemed like just a half-memory, like a memory that was not truly hers, but maybe someone else’s she had been allowed to borrow.

“Who lives here?” she asked Rotley. “I don’t remember houses being here.”

“I’m not familiar with anyone around here,” was all the driver said.

Thanks, Shaft, you’ve been real helpful. Much obliged.

And then—there it was. Leaning forward in her seat and peering through the Cadillac’s windshield, Kelly could see the looming monstrosity atop its grand sloping precipice, brooding and haunted against the backdrop of the pitch-black night. The compound, she thought, hating that word even as her mind brought it up. It was almost surreal, this Frankenstein image, this postcard from a distant world, and she found she could not take her eyes off it as they approached. The house’s silhouette was all spires and points and arrowhead roofs—something out of an architect’s nightmare. Like a clawed hand ripping out of the ground, reaching for heaven.

It became difficult for her to breathe, and the inside of the Cadillac no longer seemed cold. Rather, she’d broken out in a sweat, could feel droplets of perspiration running from her armpits and down the sides of her ribs.

Rotley maneuvered the Cadillac around a dirt turnabout and passed through an open iron gate. Rocks popped and snapped beneath the crunch of the car’s tires. Slowly, as if the climb were too strenuous for the vehicle, Rotley urged the Cadillac up the face of the precipice.

Ahead in the darkness, and like an unavoidable illness, the compound grew closer.

Chapter Six

Jeffery Kildare looked like an eagle—all right angles and aquiline features, with a sloping brow and dark ink-spot eyes. When he spoke, he did so in a manner that communicated unquestionable superiority, as if each word was its own enigma spoken for the sole purpose of being solved. In a way, he was very much like the house itself, Kelly realized.

Walking up to the house with DeVonn Rotley leading the way, Kelly caught a glimpse of the ghostly man as he passed behind one of the sprawling first floor windows—a tall, gaunt figure that moved with a refined yet calculating determination. Mounting the series of stone steps to the front porch, she could hear the front door being unbolted from within. Nostalgia had yet to hit her, and she attributed its absence to the mere fact that she really could remember nothing at all about the place. About all of Spires, for that matter. And in a half-hearted attempt to recall some memory, any memory at all, she cast a glance over her shoulder and peered down into the steep, sloping valley below. The midnight fog was so great that she could not even make out the tiny houses at the foot of the precipice from such a height. The treetops, black in the night, pushed up through the fog like fingers through cloth.

The front door eased open, letting warm, yellow light pool out onto the porch. The tall, gaunt figure stood on the other side. Immediately, Kelly knew he was the man who’d left the message at her apartment.

“Mr. Kildare,” she said. Vapor blossomed in front of her face.

“The older daughter,” Kildare said, his face expressionless. He was dressed in a dark, modest suit with his hair combed meticulously to one side. Surprisingly, there was a slight southern air about him. “I trust your flight went well? Please come inside, it’s cold.”

“Ma’am,” Rotley said and took her bag from her, carried it into the house where he quickly disappeared among a maze of expansive corridors.

Kelly stepped inside, immediately warming up, and Kildare shut the door behind her. Without provocation, he placed his hands at the collar of her winter coat, initiating its removal. She pulled it off and allowed the eagle-like man to take it, shake the melting snow from it. Looking around, it was like slipping back into some barely remembered childhood dream. The foyer was tremendous, decorated with modest Navajo tapestries and countless oil paintings in gold frames. The floor was polished wood, so pristine that the vaulted ceiling and exposed beams reflected in its surface. To the left, a staircase clung to the wall and swept up to the second and third floors, the risers themselves marble, the banister polished brass and wood. She could hear an old phonograph playing a Duke Ellington number coming from one of the many first-floor rooms.

“I’ve been told that not much has changed since you’ve last been here,” Kildare said. He hung her coat on an immense sculptured coat rack and stepped up beside her. He straightened his modest suit and tie, adjusted the cuffs of his shirt; the clothes clung to him the way they might cling to a mannequin.

I don’t remember, she thought, but said, “Yes.” She stepped into the middle of the foyer, her gaze trailing up the winding staircase, her footfalls echoing throughout the room. Everything was beyond tremendous. Above her head hung an impressive crystal chandelier, which reminded her of The Phantom of the Opera, and the act where the glass chandelier comes crashing down to the stage below. “Where are my parents?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Kellow are asleep,” Kildare said. “They sent their apologies, but these past few days have been quite trying and they needed their rest. There is a bedroom made up for you on the second floor, and I’ve had Glenda prepare you some food in the kitchen, in case you showed up hungry—”

“Glenda’s still here?” She’d completely forgotten about Glenda, but now that the name had been spoken, a barrage of memory-fireworks went off inside her head. Glenda…

(let the baby out)

“Yes,” said Kildare. “I can show you to your room where you can freshen up before you eat.”

“Becky? Is she here?”

Kildare stepped back toward the front door where he turned a series of deadbolts. “Your sister is in her bedroom. She’s been unconscious since the accident. I’m afraid she’s in no condition for visitors.”

Something snapped inside her. “And when the hell is someone going to fill me in on this accident? No one’s told me a damn thing yet. I want to know what happened to my sister. I want to see her. If it’s so goddamn serious, why the hell isn’t she in some hospital?”

Her rise in temper did not ruffle Kildare in the least. He merely brushed lint from his slacks—or pretended to do so—and motioned for Kelly to follow him up the stairwell. Most cavalier, he said, “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt for you to peek in on her, once you’ve gotten situated. As for what happened to her, I’m afraid I really shouldn’t go into too much detail before you speak with the police tomorrow afternoon.”

Kelly paused halfway up the stairs. “The police? Why would the police want to speak with me?”

“Please,” Kildare said, continuing up the stairs. “This is not my matter. I can only tell you what I know.”

“Which isn’t much, apparently,” she said, angry.

Kildare either did not recognize her agitation or simply didn’t care. He led her down the second floor to a closed door at the end of the corridor. He opened the door and stepped inside the room, flicked on the light. Kelly stepped in behind him, immediately aghast.

It was her bedroom, exactly as she’d left it at age fifteen. The impact of the visual summoned her memory of the room—the canopied bed; the pink silk drapes; the hand-carved hope chest with the heart-shaped keyhole; the cavalcade of stuffed animals at the foot of her dresser, around her bed, around the perimeter of the room itself. Against the opposite wall hung a full-length mirror. Both Kildare and herself were reflected in it, and she nearly broke out into a strangled laugh when she saw the mismatched image: this dark, pierced young girl from the pit of New York City standing beside this double-breasted suit, this eagle-like man with narrow little eyes and deliberate speech.

I’m surprised he has a reflection at all, she thought, still fighting back a grin.

Her bag was already on the bed, the black canvas looking so out-of-place in this pink pastel wonderland, like a sour bruise on the face of a beautiful child.

“As I’m sure you remember,” Kildare the Eagle-Man said, motioning toward the closed door beside the bed, “there is the adjoining bathroom. You can freshen up there. You are familiar with the kitchen?”

“I can find my way,” she said.

Kildare did not offer any more information. He stepped out into the hallway and pulled the bedroom door closed behind him. Kelly listened to his footfalls recede down the corridor until they vanished.

This is the bedroom of Little Kelly Kellow, the sweet little thing. See how everything is so perfectly preserved? Nothing has been touched since the day the little dear went away to the nuthouse.

She went to the maple armoire, opened it. A small mirror hung on the back of one of the doors, and the interior of the armoire was stuffed with a selection of small dresses in a variety of muted colors. It felt odd staring at them, as if she’d somehow invaded some stranger’s room, some stranger’s life, and was here to take it away.

No—you can keep this life. I want nothing to do with it.

Before venturing back into the hallway, she washed her face and hands in the connecting bathroom and tied her hair back with an elastic band. The upstairs hallway was silent and cloaked in shadows, each door to every room closed. Like secrets, she thought. Remembering correctly, Becky’s bedroom was the one opposite her own, and her parents would be asleep on the third floor. She went to Becky’s door, touched the brass knob, jiggled it. It was locked. Looking down, she could see a soft blue light pulsing beneath the door, as if someone had left a television on inside. Moonlight?

Lightly, she tapped her fingernails on the door. “Becky? Beck?”

My God, she realized, I don’t even know what to call you.

She watched as the blue light beneath the door slowly faded, but no one answered her.

In the kitchen, Glenda Banczyk was hunched over the stove boiling a pot of water. She was a meaty, compact woman who now must have been in her mid-sixties. Kelly barely recalled the days of her youth when Glenda had moved around the compound in a starched white uniform (per regulation), her graying hair tied up in a bun (also per regulation), her thick arms laden with laundry. In those days, Kelly had recognized an almost admirable attractiveness in the woman, as if she had been destined to be beautiful if only she’d followed a different path. But she had always been kind, and that was what Kelly remembered most of all.

Kelly entered the kitchen and paused by the table, watching the old housekeeper work with her back toward her. Glenda went to the refrigerator, grabbed several eggs, and dipped them one by one into the pot of boiling water. Still wearing the white uniform, the woman seemed to be caught in an inescapable time warp. She caught Kelly out of the corner of her eye and turned around, beaming.

“Kelly!” She moved to her, hugged her warmly, then held her out at arm’s length for a full examination. “Oh, honey, you’ve grown up!”

“Hello.”

“Yes!”

“You look good. How’ve you been?”

“Good-good-good, healthy as a horse,” the woman said. Her face was fuller than Kelly remembered, and creased with faint wrinkles like the dog-eared pages of a paperback novel. “Sit down, sit, I’ve prepared food.” She moved to the refrigerator again as Kelly sat, and fished out a turkey sandwich and potato salad on a plate, covered in Saran Wrap. “So good to see you, dear,” Glenda said. “It’s just unfortunate it has to be under such horrible circumstances.”

“What exactly are the circumstances?” she asked. “No one’s told me anything.”

Glenda set the plate of food down in front of her, brushed a string of gray hair from her face, and gently caressed the side of Kelly’s face. Her hands were like mother-hands, tender and loving. “You got so pretty,” she said. “I knew that you would. You were such a pretty little girl…”

“Glenda, please…”

Resigned, the housekeeper sat at the table. “No one knows for certain what happened to your sister,” she said, “except for Becky herself, the poor darling, and she’s been asleep since it happened.”

Becky wasn’t just asleep, Kelly knew; Becky was unconscious.

Glenda said, “Four nights ago, for whatever reason, your sister crept out of the house and started wandering through the woods out back. She apparently walked out pretty far, and we assume she might have gotten a bit lost too. Mr. Kildare—I don’t like that man, dear—he found her the next day while searching the compound. Someone had hurt her badly.” It was obvious that this part was difficult for Glenda to say. “Her body was covered in bruises and she was unconscious, with a large gash at the back of her head. There was…she had blood everywhere, and her clothes were practically torn to shreds. The police said she was definitely attacked and, from her appearance, they think the attacker might have intended to…” She struggled with the words, “Well, to rape her, dear.”

Suddenly not hungry, Kelly rested her face in her hands, staring down at the floral-printed tablecloth while her head cultivated a throbbing headache. “Oh, Christ, Glenda…”

“The doctors said she’s all right physically. It’s just a question of when she’ll wake up again. She will wake up again, dear. She’s just slipped into herself pretty deep, but she’ll be back. I know she will. I feel it. But for now, there’s nothing we can do. The hospital let us take her home after your father insisted. Mr. Kellow’s had a doctor come in every day, just to make certain everything is okay, that she’s doing fine. And she is.” The woman smiled wearily. “She just doesn’t want to wake up yet.”

“What do the police think?”

“They don’t understand why she would have left the house, unless it was to meet someone.”

“The attacker?”

“No one knows, not until Becky wakes up.”

“Do they know when that will be? Do they have any idea?”

Glenda shook her head. “No one knows anything for certain, dear.”

“Kildare said something about the police wanting to talk with me tomorrow. Do you have any idea why?”

Glenda ran her palms along the tablecloth, as if to iron out wrinkles. “I don’t know, dear.”

“Who is this Jeffery Kildare guy anyway?”

Standing up and moving to the stove, Glenda was silent for a few moments before speaking. “I don’t like that man,” she said again. She took a spoon and began to lightly tap the eggs in the boiling water. “I don’t know where your father found him, but he thinks his word is gold and he’s been staying in this house for the past few months. He’s got a room on the third floor, keeps the door locked all the time, won’t even let me in to clean. Not that I mind. I prefer to steer clear of that one.”

Funny, Kelly thought, I don’t trust him, either. There’s just something about the man…

“Mr. Kellow doesn’t say much about him, either,” Glenda went on. “I asked him how they were introduced and your father just brushed the question. You know how he does when he doesn’t feel like answering any questions.”

“How is he?”

“Your father?” Glenda said. “He’s heartbroken over your sister, same as your mother. They both are. But they’re confused and angry too and I’ve hardly seen your father since the incident. He just sits in his study and reads, or goes for walks in the garden for hours on end. I suppose every person has their own way of dealing with things, and your father has every right to brood alone if he chooses, although I do worry about him.”

“I haven’t spoken with them since I left the hospital and moved to New Hampshire,” she said. “That was about six or so years ago. How did they even know where to find me?”

“Oh, honey, your father has his ways.” It was meant to sound lighthearted but instead, it made Kelly feel cold inside. Like her father was some sort of preternatural being, capable of keeping a mental lock on those he chose, no matter how far they strayed.

“He found me, even under a different name.” She muttered this more to herself than to Glenda. Then, for the woman’s sake, added, “I was married in New Hampshire.”

“You’re married?” Glenda turned away from the stove again, her face suddenly beautiful and radiant. For an instant, she appeared maybe twenty years younger. “Oh, Kelly, that’s wonderful! You must be so happy! I always knew you’d be such a success, honey. I’m so happy for you.”

“We’re not married anymore,” she quickly added, then thought, Oh hell, she didn’t need to know that. “It lasted only a few years. It was mutual.”

“Oh, dear…”

“Really, it’s okay. I’m happy now. It’s better this way. New era—these things happen. It’s more common than car wrecks nowadays.”

“Well, as long as you’re happy, I suppose that’s all that matters.” Glenda smiled at her and again the old woman’s motherly nature was clearly visible, as was that resurgence of youthfulness and beauty. In truth, Glenda Banczyk had been more of a mother to her than her own mother had been, and just as quickly as she thought that Kelly’s mind opened up to an image of carving Halloween pumpkins with Glenda so many years ago, the two of them sitting around the kitchen table (which they covered in newspapers), pulling the guts out of the giant orange vegetables. It was a good memory, and one that her brain hadn’t insisted she block out. Thinking of it now, it made her smile.

“I don’t remember much about this place, you know,” she said, not really expecting any sort of answer from Glenda. “In the time before I went away to the hospital, I don’t really remember anything about what happened—”

“Shhh,” Glenda said. Her face grew somber, perhaps a bit saddened. “Don’t think about those times. You’ve moved on.”

“Maybe…”

“Those were bad times for you, dear.”

“I can remember having…well, I guess what would amount to a nervous breakdown when I was fifteen…but I don’t remember the details of it, don’t remember exactly what happened.”

“You needed medical attention and your parents felt the hospital was the best thing for you at the time,” Glenda said. “They were worried about you, dear. You were becoming frazzled, too much anxiety. Your parents love you, Kelly. They only did what they thought was best.”

But Glenda misunderstood—this wasn’t about her parents’ reasons for putting her in the institution, this was about the events that had caused her to require institutionalization. Strange thing was, she couldn’t remember. But how could she expect Glenda the housekeeper to understand such things? How in the world would Glenda know what had been going on inside her head if she herself couldn’t properly recall any of it? It was unfair. She wanted answers to questions that were, essentially, unanswerable. She couldn’t expect Glenda to know anything about that any more than she could expect herself to suddenly figure it all out on her own.

Changing the subject, Glenda asked her how long she’d be staying.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’d like to see that Becky fully recovers.”

“I’m sure she’ll be all right,” said the woman. “I’ve been keeping her in my prayers.” Then, as an afterthought: “The both of you.”

For the next fifteen minutes, Kelly ate while Glenda scooped the hardboiled eggs from the pot and set them on the counter to cool. (It was a ritual of Gordon Kellow to have fresh hardboiled eggs for both breakfast and lunch every day. There were some things Kelly felt she’d never forget. Her father’s hardboiled eggs were one of them.)

“You look exhausted, dear,” Glenda said, taking her empty plate to the sink. “You should get some rest.”

“Yeah, I think I will.” She stretched and stood up from the table, kissed Glenda on the cheek. “Despite the circumstances, it’s good to see you again.”

Her words apparently touched the woman, and for a moment Kelly thought Glenda was about to say something, but she didn’t.

Tired, Kelly turned to leave—then stopped in the kitchen doorway.

“Glenda?”

“Yes, honey?”

“Why would Becky’s bedroom door be locked?”

Glenda looked surprised. “The door is locked? I was just in there no more than an hour ago, it wasn’t locked then.”

“Who would have a key?”

“I’m sure there are keys lying around. I don’t see why anyone would lock that door, though. Perhaps your father did it before retiring for the night…”

“Yes,” she said, “maybe he did.”

But why?

Moments later and she was upstairs, standing outside Becky’s closed door. This time there was no blue light glowing from beneath the door. Thinking it odd that the door should be locked, she reached out and grasped the knob again, shook it.

It turned.

What the hell…?

It was as dark as ink inside the room, and about as cold as death. Kelly stepped inside, sliding one hand up along the wall, searching for the light switch. She found it but, at the last second, decided to leave the light off. Instead, she opened the door wider, allowing the light from the hallway to slip inside and illuminate some of the spacious bedroom. It was dark, almost too dark to see anything properly, but Kelly was able to make out the shape of her sister bundled beneath the floral bedclothes on her canopied bed (the bed itself was nearly an exact duplicate of the one in Kelly’s childhood bedroom). Beside the bed, the two large windows were open all the way, and the frigid night wind blew the curtains out in great gusting billows.

Are they crazy? She could catch pneumonia.

In the dark, she went to the windows, pulled them shut and locked them. The curtains fell limp on either side of her. The windows looked out from the right side of the house—all sloping forest and large, angry crags of sandstone. The moon was high and full, glowing on the misty valley below.

As if in a dream, she turned and moved to the side of the bed, her eyes now growing accustomed to the darkness. With the help of the moonlight, she could make out Becky’s face in the dark, and it suddenly occurred to Kelly that she was just as much a stranger to this fifteen-year-old girl as anyone could be. She hadn’t seen nor spoken to her in years, and maybe Becky didn’t even remember her. And if she did, maybe she didn’t want to. Maybe—and this, Kelly abruptly realized, was the most horrifying of all—Becky no longer wanted anything to do with her.

“I didn’t mean to leave you like that.”

But that was not exactly true. The fact was, she hadn’t thought about Becky at all back then. And she certainly hadn’t been an older sister to the girl.

That’s because I was too busy running away from this place to ever look back, to bother seeing anything good that might have been here.

But she had been a child herself, really, and she couldn’t blame herself for those mistakes, could she?

Becky’s face was pale, but even in the moonlight Kelly could see the discoloration of her skin, the places where the bruises had blossomed, where her attacker had left his mark.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, “and I’ll be right here when you wake up.”

She reached out and smoothed the girl’s hair off her forehead. She felt so cold. Stepping backward away from the bed, she didn’t want to take her eyes off the unconscious child. This, she was certain, was what it felt like to be a mother. And again, she could clearly see Glenda scooping seeds and slimy guts out of the hole in the top of the pumpkin. So long ago.

Something crunched beneath her foot and she jumped.

She backed up and looked down, saw herself surrounded by a spillage of what appeared to be plastic forks, all strewn haphazardly across the carpet. The broken one—the one she’d stepped on—had splintered into three sharp pieces, like little plastic daggers. Forks. Plastic forks, like booby-traps set into the carpet.

Forks. And on closer inspection, she noticed that each fork only had one tine, and that all the other tines had been broken off. At first, the image simply registered itself as bizarre…but then a moist wave of panic fell over her, and she suddenly felt the burning need to urinate rise up in her bladder, so strong she was hardly able to make it across the carpet without walking bow-legged.

Ready to dash down the hallway to the bathroom, the moment she stepped outside Becky’s bedroom, the sensation to urinate immediately subsided.

That can’t be. How could a feeling that intense just disappear in a flash like that? What’s wrong with me?

She could only stand there in the hallway outside Becky’s room, her feet now planted firmly to the floor, her hands beginning to tremble at her sides. From where she stood, the bedroom was too dark to make out the shape of her little sister sleeping in bed. Instead, everything took on the inarticulate forms of shadowed silhouettes.

It’s just been a long night, whispered a voice inside her head. For some reason, she associated the voice with old Nellie Worthridge. Everything will start making more sense to you in the morning. So go get some sleep.

Closing Becky’s bedroom door and moving quietly down the hallway, Kelly Rich thought she would do just that.

Chapter Seven

Josh Cavey spent the morning working at the bookstore in the Village, and when he finally got home around midafternoon, there were five messages on his answering machine. He listened to all five, and all five were from the same person—some doctor named Mendes from NYU Downtown calling about the patient he’d admitted yesterday, an old woman named Nellie Worthridge. Mendes left his office number, which Josh called only to get his voicemail. Though Mendes did not go into any detail beyond the fact that he had “some questions about Miss Worthridge,” there was an urgency in his voice that made Josh both concerned and a little bit curious. He changed his clothes and grabbed a cab to the hospital.

There, a young nurse directed him out back to a shady little courtyard where Carlos Mendes sat on a weathered bench, smoking a Lucky Strike.

“Doctor Mendes?”

The doctor looked up. He was ageless. There were dark rings around his eyes and his lips were pressed tightly together, almost crushing the cigarette that poked out from between them. Between his knees, he rubbed his hands together nervously, like a child seated outside the principal’s office.

“Yes?”

“I’m Joshua Cavey. Apparently you’ve been calling my apartment all morning…”

“Mr. Cavey.” Mendes was quick to stand, shake his hand. He looked about on the verge of a nervous breakdown. There was a dark coffee stain on the light blue Oxford shirt he wore beneath his white lab coat. Josh could imagine Mendes filling his coffee cup this morning, shaking so badly that he’d spilled roughly half the cup down the front of his shirt. “You didn’t need to come down here, I’m sorry, I just needed to speak with you.”

“It’s all right, I wasn’t busy.” Also, that urgent tone in Mendes’s voice on the machine. Looking at him now, Josh thought that tone fit the man perfectly. “Is something wrong with Nellie?”

Carlos Mendes motioned for Josh to sit down, and they both did. He offered Josh a cigarette, which he declined, and Mendes hurriedly crushed out his old stick and lit a fresh one.

“You are a relative of Miss Worthridge?”

“No.”

“You signed her admittance form?”

“Well, yes. I found her unconscious in her apartment yesterday.”

“So you’re a friend then?”

Josh nodded. “Yeah, I guess you can call me a friend. Is something wrong? Something must be wrong…”

“Miss Worthridge is stable, Josh,” said Mendes. His eyes darted around the courtyard, refusing to lock a gaze on anything for longer than a millisecond. “She’ll be all right, which is…well, it’s good. The type of stroke she suffered is the most common there is, and although we can’t really do anything to treat it or prevent any more, she should almost fully recover.”

“Almost?”

“Well, for one, there’s the aphasia, the slurred speech. I’ve managed to speak with her a few times, and she does try to communicate, but not without some difficulty. There has also been some paralysis of her left side, particularly her left arm. It’s not total, but it’s severe enough to sufficiently impede her day to day, and I would think she…” He trailed off. Mendes hadn’t called him to discuss Nellie’s recovery, Josh realized. There was something else, something that was nearly driving the poor doctor over the edge.

“What is it?” Josh said. “What’s this about?”

Carefully choosing his words, Mendes said, “The extent of her paralysis wasn’t examined until this morning, before I even arrived. When I saw the chart, the diagnosis was hemiplegia, which is basically the paralysis of one side of the body, and when I later examined her I saw that was true, that her left side—her left arm was…”

“Hold on,” Josh said, “I don’t understand.”

“Me, neither,” said Mendes, and for the first time, the doctor brought his dark brown eyes up to Josh’s, held them there, studied Josh’s face. “Before leaving the hospital last night, I stopped in to check on her and she…it’s bizarre, I know, but she sat straight up in bed, grabbed a can of diced pear cubes from the table beside her, and broke the plastic fork that was in it. She used both hands, Josh. Are you following me? I questioned the staff whether she had another stroke after I’d left for the evening but she hadn’t, there was no medical record of it, and she’s been hooked up to monitors since her admittance. So there’s that. And yes, it’s damn strange, but that’s not the strangest part, not the part that prompted me to call you and leave those messages on your machine.”

He smoked his second Lucky Strike down to the filter, examined the butt, then tossed it on the ground and stomped out the cherry with the heel of his shoe.

“There was a word she continued to say over and over again, mostly in her sleep,” Mendes continued. “At first I thought it was a color she was saying—the color yellow. It’s difficult to make out, what with the slurred speech. When she awoke I asked about it and she didn’t know what I was talking about, but while she napped she began saying it over and over again. In her sleep, she pronounced it repeatedly, almost like a chant, and I thought—yellow? Hello? Jell-O? I didn’t understand. While she slept, I brought in a hand-held tape recorder and recorded it, then brought it around to show some of the nurses. Most of them agreed, after some scrutiny of the tape, that it was actually a name she was saying—‘Kellow.’ Just talking in her sleep, right? So when she awoke later this afternoon I asked her what Kellow meant, who was Kellow…”

Josh waited, but no more came. He urged the doctor along: “What did she say?”

“She didn’t say anything, as if she’d never heard of the name but was thinking real long and hard about it…and then she grabbed me real tight around the wrist—grabbed me with her left hand, her paralyzed hand—and looked me right in the eyes and said, in perfectly clear speech, ‘Julian will be born dead.’ Then her voice went up in pitch, almost like a little girl’s, and she yelled, ‘We almost killed that fucking dog!’ Then she fell silent and dropped back down on her pillow, her eyes closing immediately and her hand around my wrist falling limp.”

When Mendes finished, he rubbed his eyes with his fingers and exhaled shakily. Perhaps he was waiting for Josh to contest what he’d just said, or perhaps even react with utter shock or disbelief, but Josh did not. The truth was, Josh didn’t fully understand the gravity of what Mendes had told him. Wasn’t there some sort of delusion that went along with strokes, something Josh’s mom would have called a tumble of loose screws?

Mendes recognized his ignorance. The doctor said, “Josh, people who are paralyzed like that can’t just turn it on and off like a switch. Either they have motor control or they do not. It’s not an option, not like wiggling your damn fingers or choosing the type of tile you want to go on your kitchen floor. For the sake of argument, we’re talking permanent here.”

“All right…”

“Josh, my wife is five months pregnant. If it’s a boy—and I have a strong feeling now that it just might be—we’re going to name him Julian, after Marie’s father.”

Josh just looked at the doctor. In some distant part of his brain, he wondered how old Mendes was. It was nearly impossible to tell for sure. Carlos Mendes, with his dark eyes, dark skin, dark hair, dark aura. This man before him—this doctor—looked very, very frightened.

“I guess,” said Josh, “that I don’t need to ask if you’d previously told Nellie about your son’s name?”

The doctor exhaled with a shudder. “I’m not usually a superstitious man,” Mendes said, his voice quieter now, “but there are some things that can get lodged in the heads of even the most rational and cynical human beings. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“How do you explain it?” Josh asked him—then realized it had been Mendes’s intention to bring him here and ask him that very same question. “I’ve only known Nellie Worthridge for a few months,” he said, sounding almost apologetic. “I don’t know how…” But there was nothing he could say.

“Does she have any family that you know of? Any living relatives at all?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“How about close friends?”

“I’m not sure.” Then he remembered: “She told me once that she played bridge with group of women on Wednesday nights.”

“Bridge,” Mendes mused. He produced a third Lucky Strike from the pack in his breast pocket, lit it, and inhaled deeply.

“I’d think a doctor would know how unhealthy those things are,” Josh said, trying for levity.

“Knowing and caring are two different things,” said the doctor.

“True,” said Josh. “Could I bum one from you now?”

Forty minutes later, Josh pulled up a plastic folding chair beside Nellie Worthridge’s hospital bed. The old woman was asleep, or perhaps just resting soundlessly, and did not stir when he entered the room and sat down beside her. He watched her for an exorbitant amount of time, watched the reluctant rise and fall of her frail chest, her withered old hands folded neatly atop the bedclothes. Her left hand, he noticed, appeared somewhat gnarled and tense, painfully frozen. The tips of her fingers looked almost blue.

Startling him, a wan smile crept across the old woman’s face.

“Jesus,” he muttered under his breath. Then, in a whisper: “Nellie?”

“Dear?” she whispered back. Her voice sounded strained and was difficult to hear. The left side of her mouth did not move at all. “Dear?”

“Did I wake you?”

Her smiled only widened. Such a crooked, obscene smile, as if half her face was trying to scowl at the same time. Again, when she spoke, it was like she was sucking on a mouthful of chew. “I was just resting my eyes.” And then she opened them.

Why is it, he thought then, that old people’s eyes look so wise? Is it really possible that you can see all the years of knowledge they’ve attained just by looking into their eyes?

“The doctor phoned me,” he told her. “Said you were doing some weird stuff. How you feeling?”

“Could be better.” With some difficulty, she raised her right hand and extended it across her midriff to rest it atop Josh’s own. “Thank you. The nurses told me what happened. Thank you, Josh. Dear.”

“He said you sat up in bed and used your hurt arm.”

“I know.”

“You remember?”

“I remember him telling me that’s what happened.”

“But you don’t remember?”

She looked past him and at the window on the far wall. The blinds were pulled, but she stared at it nonetheless. And after two minutes, as if she’d summoned it, it began to rain. Josh heard it begin to patter gently on the glass.

“It’ll turn to snow before dark,” the old woman muttered, more to herself than to him. “Been around long enough to know such things.”

He squeezed her hand lightly. “Some other things too,” he continued. “Something about a baby named Julian?”

“Julian?” she said, and for the briefest moment her eyes shifted away from the window. “Who told you that?”

“Doctor Mendes, the fellow who’s been treating you, Nellie. That name doesn’t sound familiar to you? Julian?”

She rolled the name around on her tongue, and when she finally spat it out, it came out sounding like Droo-leen. “I don’t know anything about that,” she said, uninterested.

“Did you happen to overhear any of the staff talking about Doctor Mendes’s wife having a baby?”

“No, Joshua, I don’t know what this is about.” She tried to adjust the pillow behind her head. Josh leaned over and did it for her. He was right—it was starched to all hell.

But aren’t you even curious? And then as if to scold himself: No, she’s old and she’s been through enough already.

“One last thing,” he added quickly. “The name Kellow—does that mean anything to you?”

This time there was something behind the woman’s old eyes. Recognition? He couldn’t be sure, but there was something, some glimmer, there and then gone. Split-second action, as his mother had been fond of saying. The woman had a saying for everything.

“Kellow,” he repeated, hoping to see that spark again. But no, not this time.

“I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“Are you certain?”

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted, dejected.

“I said it?”

“You said it in your sleep. Mendes heard you. He said he spoke to you about it.”

“Hmmm. What does it mean?” she asked him.

He just shook his head and rolled his shoulders. “I don’t know, Nellie.” He sighed. “Just wanted to pay you a visit, you know? See how my favorite lady is doing.”

“Favorite lady,” the old woman mused, beginning to grin. Then the grin faded, and her eyes again locked with the window across the room. The rain was coming down heavy now and Josh was quite sure that Nellie was right, that it would turn to snow before the day was through. “Kelly…” she said, hardly audible.

“Kelly? Is that what you’d been saying? Were you dreaming about Kelly?”

A veil of confusion fell across the old woman’s face. Her wrinkled, pale brow creased together while her eyes became even more distant. She worked at her crooked lower lip with her yellowed upper teeth, as if deep in concentration.

She said, “I remember Kelly telling me something…something about a hurt animal, a boy and a hurt animal…some story, Josh. I don’t…I can’t even remember it all now. I’m sorry. My head hurts.”

“When did she tell you this story?”

“I can’t remember. Maybe back at the apartment. Could I have some water? There’s a pitcher and a glass there behind you.”

“Sure.” He poured her some water and handed it over to her. She took it with her one good hand and, shakily, brought it to her quivering lips. She sipped it like a perfect lady.

“Better,” she sighed when she’d drank all she could.

“Have you told the doctor about those?”

“The headaches?”

“You’ve been having them for a while now, right?”

She turned away from him as much as her uncooperative body would allow. “Off and on, on and off. Nothing unusual in that. I’m an old lady, Joshua, dear.”

He leaned over the bed and adjusted the bedclothes over her shoulders. “Just get some rest, all right? I’ll hop in to check on you before they let you out of this prison, okay?”

“Don’t trouble yourself, dear. It was nice this once.”

“No trouble,” he said truthfully. “I’d like to.”

“Well,” she said, trying to smile again, “in that case, see if you can sneak me in some coffee, will you? What a lousy damned hospital this is, doesn’t even serve coffee.”

Grinning, Josh stood and slid the folding chair back into the corner of the room. “I’ll see what I can do,” he promised.

Chapter Eight

She awoke very late, and still exhausted. Upon opening her eyes, she found herself staring at the underside of the sheer pink canopy and all in one great tidal wave, she remembered where she was: home.

She showered quickly, dressed, and slipped into the upstairs hallway as silent as a sigh. Passing Becky’s closed bedroom door, she reached out and jiggled the doorknob. Locked.

What the hell is that all about, anyway?

Downstairs, Glenda had prepared her a full course meal: eggs, bacon, hash browns, pancakes, English muffins, cornbread, a variety of peeled fruits, a pitcher of crisp milk beside a pitcher of freshly squeezed orange juice. Centered on the table in a beautiful ornate vase was a bouquet of cream-colored peonies. She sat down readily and ate by herself, the house silent and brooding all around her. How much of this place did she remember, exactly? Sure, there were bits and pieces of childhood memories—Halloweens and Christmases, Thanksgivings and even birthdays—but none of those memories seemed to be connected to anything, just free-floating and incorporeal, ghosts at the window. And then there were what could only be called “snippets”—those bodiless images surfacing in her head, of faces hardly remembered, of a certain pair of patent leather shoes with brass buckles, of chasing squirrels and rabbits through the wooded hills behind the house.

And the almost forgotten words to a child’s song:

Little Baby Roundabout,

Someone let the Baby out,

And now, sweet Babe, it’s time for bed,

So close your eyes and rest your head.

“Shit,” she muttered, grinning softly to herself.

“Well,” said a woman’s voice behind her.

Startled, Kelly swung her head around and saw her mother standing in the kitchen doorway. A tall, thin, pointed woman, Marlene Kellow stood with her bony arms at her hips and her face occupied with an unreadable expression. Her nearly lipless mouth was pressed tightly together and her eyes were sharp yet somehow vacant, the way space is vacant. The woman’s barrage of thoughts were practically surface level, nearly there and ripe for Kelly to pluck them out of the air. Mother and daughter—and the lumbering passage of so many years.

“Mom,” she said, and her voice hitched. She quickly pushed herself away from the table and stood.

“Kelly,” her mother said and made a move as if to step closer to her, then perhaps changed her mind at the last second. Instead, Marlene Kellow moved around the kitchen table, a strained smile quickly adopted. “You’re looking well, dear. Are you well?”

“I’m fine, mom.”

“I apologize for not being here when you came in last night.” She sighed, fidgeting with her fingers, twisting her hands. “Your father and I…you know, with Becky and everything…”

“No, it’s all right. It’s good to see you.”

Her mother nodded. “Yes.” And in the silence that followed, they both examined each other. Not like mathematicians to a textbook of equations; rather, like two children meeting for the first time in the sandbox.

Little Baby Roundabout, Kelly thought, head spinning. Someone let the Baby out.

“How’s Dad?”

“Occupied,” her mother said. “Gets up early, has his eggs, goes for walks around the compound. He’s crushed, this whole thing with your sister…”

“How is she? Becky?”

“Oh,” said her mother. Kelly had to hand it to her—the woman was doing one hell of a job sporting that smile. “Well, the doctors have been in and out, in and out. A madhouse, really. And the police too. This whole thing has been so trying. On everyone.”

“But she’ll be all right?”

“We’re just waiting for her to wake up now.”

“How come she isn’t at a hospital?” And she almost asked why the girl’s bedroom door was locked half the time, but decided she’d save some tinder for future fires.

“She was,” said her mother, “but we insisted she come home.”

“Why?”

“Why not? There isn’t anything a hospital can do that we can’t pay good doctors good money to do it here, am I right?” She dropped her voice. “Anyway, I wouldn’t want that poor girl waking up in some institutional white room, stinking of antiseptic.”

You didn’t have a problem with that when it was me, Kelly thought.

Her mother quickly waved her hand. “But no—don’t worry about your sister, she’ll be fine.”

“Then why did you call me? Or, should I say, request that Mr. Kildare call me? Who is he, anyway?”

Her mother’s eyes narrowed the slightest bit. Apparently, she was being frugal with her tinder as well. “Are you making some sort of statement by that?”

“By what?” But she knew.

“Why we didn’t call you ourselves. Or perhaps call you sooner. Or whatever it is you meant.”

“Yes and no,” she said coldly. “But it was an honest question. Why did you and Dad ask for me to come home?”

“Because of the police, dear,” her mother said and, as if rehearsed, three sharp knocks echoed down the corridor from the foyer.

The police had arrived.

Two officers stood in the living room, DeVonn Rotley beneath the doorway, his face expressionless. The officers themselves looked like a comic relief from some Sherlock Holmes paperback—one short, one tall; one mustachioed, one clean-shaven; one stout with an ample gut and short arms, the other slender with arms that practically allowed his fingertips to reach his knees when fully relaxed.

Kelly entered the room, her mother leading the way. Marlene Kellow greeted the officers in a way that made Kelly assume this was not the first visit these two had made to the Kellow compound.

“Thank you, Rotley,” Marlene Kellow said. Rotley nodded once and disappeared back into the hallway, closing the double-doors as he went.

“Kelly,” said the tall, clean-shaven officer. He removed his crumpled fedora and set it on a mahogany end table. “I’m Detective Raintree. This is my partner, Detective Sturgess.”

Sturgess, the pudgy, mustachioed cop nodded. “Ma’am.”

“Please have a seat,” Raintree said. He spoke with a velvet voice. “We just have a few questions to ask you.”

Kelly sat on the sofa. Raintree remained standing, but both Sturgess and Kelly’s mother sat down on either side of her.

“I’m a little confused,” Kelly said. “This has to do with Becky? With what happened to her?”

“Her diary,” Raintree said. “Were you aware Becky kept a diary? A journal?”

Kelly shrugged. “No, but it doesn’t surprise me. She’s a little girl.”

“Most young girls keep journals,” Raintree agreed. “Nothing unusual about that.” He slipped his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “You kept one? As a little girl?”

“I might have. I don’t remember.”

“My daughter keeps one,” Sturgess added from nowhere.

“When was the last time you spoke with your sister, Miss Kellow?”

“It’s Rich,” she said and saw her mother glance at her, perplexed.

“Beg pardon?” Raintree too looked a bit confused.

“Kelly Rich. I was married.”

“Oh,” Raintree said, eyebrows arching.

Her mother’s features, on the other hand, did not change at all—she merely continued to stare at her daughter, almost to the point where Kelly was certain her eyeballs were going to roll right out of their sockets. “Married,” she said with cold absence. “Well, now…”

“Mrs. Rich,” Raintree continued. “Can you recall the last time you spoke with Becky?”

“Are you serious?”

“I’m sorry?”

“What makes you think I spoke with Becky?” She coughed up a dry laugh. “I regret it—really, I do—but I haven’t spoken with my sister since I moved away from home. Years ago. And she was really just a baby.”

The two detectives exchanged a look. Her mother was still looking at her; Kelly could see her stare from the corner of her eye, hard and pressing. It wasn’t a particularly angry stare, she noted; rather, it was the sort of look a circus clown might elicit from a small, mentally underdeveloped child: quizzical uncertainty. Almost a dumb look, a stupid look, a look that showed not even a single trace of comprehension.

“Years ago?” Raintree said.

“That’s correct.”

“We were under the impression…” Sturgess began.

“Yes,” Raintree interjected, “the impression…”

“Don’t lie to these men, Kelly,” her mother snapped. “Mrs. Rich.”

“Why would I lie?” Then to Raintree: “I’m a bit confused here…”

Raintree chuckled nervously, like someone under intense interrogation. “Well, now, I guess we’re all a bit confused at this point. Understand that we’re in no way insinuating that you had anything to do with what happened to your sister, so there is really no need to hide any information—”

“Hide information?” She stood up. “Why would I hide anything? And why would I assume you’re here to interrogate me, anyway?”

“It’s not that,” Sturgess said. He put a hand out to Kelly, touched her right wrist, beckoning her to sit back down.

“Cooperate, Kelly,” her mother said.

“Kelly,” continued Raintree, “your sister mentions speaking with you on practically a regular basis in her diary. For the past several months, really. Now, according to Mr. Kildare, Becky never made any phone calls from the house to your apartment. The phone records would show if she had, and they don’t. So she’d either been receiving calls from you to her direct phone line or, perhaps, through the mail. Through letters?”

“Are you serious? Her diary says this?”

Raintree shook his head. It was a perfunctory gesture, executed without thinking: a turn to the left, a turn to the right, return to center. “Not really, no.”

“She doesn’t come right out and say who called whom,” Sturgess clarified. He had folded his small hands in his lap, pressed against his large gut.

“But she makes mention of you several times. Mentions speaking with you, mentions discussing things with you.”

“It’s just my name? Couldn’t it be someone else named Kelly?”

“Stop it,” her mother nearly scolded. “You’re ashamed of this place, of your father and I, but don’t you start lying to the detriment of your sister.”

She shot her mother a poison stare. “You’ve got some nerve.”

“You know it’s true. And don’t think I don’t see it. You have your hang-ups, I don’t care. But don’t think for one second that I will allow your lies in—”

“I’m not lying,” she insisted. “Why the hell would I lie about that? If I’d been talking with Becky—and I wish I had kept in touch—then I’d say so. There’s nothing for me to lie about. That’s ridiculous.”

“There are several passages where your sister has not just mentioned your name, Kelly,” said Raintree, “but where she has mentioned you as her sister, too.”

Quietly, almost to herself, Marlene muttered, “Becky has no friends. Not here, not at school.”

“That can’t be. I haven’t spoken to her since I left Spires. She was just a little kid.”

“So you have no knowledge of any boys she might have been interested in?” Sturgess said. “You wouldn’t know if, say, she had a crush on some young fellow from town?”

“There are no young fellows from town,” Marlene said. “This was some stranger.”

“No,” Kelly said.

“Or no boy that might have had some interest in her?” Raintree added.

“No,” she repeated. “I’m not lying to you.”

“Of course not,” Raintree said. He pulled his hands from his pockets, rubbed them together quickly. “I suppose we’ll all have to wait for young Becky to come back around to us before we can clear up this little mystery then, yes?”

“Do you have any leads?” her mother said.

Raintree just shook his head. “Not of yet,” he said, “but we’ve got several men on it, Mrs. Kellow.”

“Confidentially speaking,” Sturgess began, “three hunters disappeared up in these woods about a month ago. Now, we don’t have any reason to believe these disappearances are in any way connected to your daughter’s attack, but it doesn’t hurt to make certain. We’re looking into it.”

“Doesn’t hurt,” Raintree agreed. “But we don’t really think…”

“No, we don’t,” Sturgess said.

“Three hunters,” Marlene Kellow said to herself.

Sturgess stood, clapped his hands together. “And she’s doing all right?” he asked Kelly’s mother. “The poor thing…”

“Doctors have been keeping abreast of her condition,” Marlene said. “They suspect she should come around soon enough.”

“Well that’s good news,” Sturgess said.

“It is,” Raintree said, scooping up his fedora from the end table. He looked at Kelly. “I was hoping our conversation would have proved useful.” He pulled out a card and handed it to her. “Perhaps you’ll give me a call if…well, if you remember anything. I keep my cellular on twenty-four-seven. So…well, whatever.”

“Or if you just want to talk,” Sturgess interrupted.

“Yes,” Raintree said, “or just talk.”

Without word, Kelly took the card. Beside her, her mother stood stiffly from the couch, smoothing out her blouse, and clasped both hands together between her breasts. She was still staring at her—Kelly could feel her eyes pushing against the back of her head, the side of her face when she turned. Was it possible for her mother to be as bitter as she herself was about sending her to an institution when she was only fifteen years old? Maybe bitter about the years since, years that had surrendered to silence, to no communication? And, if she was bitter, did she have any real right to be?

I don’t care, Kelly thought. Bitter or not, it doesn’t change the past, doesn’t change anything at all.

“Thank you for coming out,” her mother said to the detectives. “I’m just sorry for…”

“No,” Raintree said with a wave of his hand. Then he smiled at Kelly. “Really, it’s all okay.”

“Never hurts to try,” Sturgess said.

His partner smiled even wider. “No,” he said, “it doesn’t.”

“Excuse me,” Kelly said as they turned to leave. “Could I see Becky’s diary?”

“That’s up to your mother, dear,” Sturgess said.

“You still have the diary, Mrs. Kellow?” Raintree asked.

“I do,” Marlene said, and shot her daughter a sideways glance. “I’m not sure I like the idea of strange people continuing to flip through it, however.”

Strange people, Kelly thought. As much as it hurts to admit it, I really can’t argue with her there. After all these years, I really am a stranger—to Becky, to my parents, to this house, to all of Spires. An unwelcome stranger.

“Well, now,” Raintree said, “that’s up to you.” He smiled at both Kelly and her mother. “Ladies,” he said.

“Ladies,” Sturgess said.

Five minutes later, Becky’s bedroom door was unlocked and Kelly stepped inside. It was gloomy and stank of unwashed sheets. Yet someone had been in here since last night to straighten up: the bed sheets looked pressed, and that peculiar collection of broken plastic forks was on longer strewn about the floor. Also, someone had opened the window beside Becky’s bed again, allowing the curtains to blow across the foot of the bed. If it was Glenda opening the window, Kelly made a mental note to mention to the woman that it probably wasn’t a good idea and that Becky could catch a cold.

Beneath the blankets, unmoved from last night’s position, her little sister slept a dreamless sleep. Kelly crept up to the foot of the bed, brushed the curtains away.

What do you really think of me, Becky? What do you really think of your older sister, the sister you never got to know because she was afraid and embarrassed and downright chicken shit and split when you were very young? And forgot about you too—let’s not forget that, Becky, darling. Your big sister—me, the one standing here right now—left and never looked back. No sense bothering to sugar-coat any of it. All cards on the table, all aces facing up. What do you think of me, Becky? Even now in your sleep, what do you think of your sorry big sister?

For a brief moment, she thought the girl stirred beneath the bedclothes. She watched her like a pupil, followed the trail of the IV tube from her arm to the bag of fluid hanging from the rack beside the bed. Here, in the daylight, it was easy to see what her attacker had done. Becky’s face was a mottled patchwork of hues, the skin of soured fruit and ruptured vessels. The left side of her mouth was puffed out and split vertically; a mossy growth of scabs clung to her lower lip and chin. And her eyelids looked blue, and as thin as tissue.

What do you think of me, Becky?

“God,” she muttered. “Little Baby Roundabout.”

She went to the window to pull it closed and saw someone down below, standing half-hidden beneath the edge of the woods: there and then gone, too quick for her to make out any detail. But someone.

It was cold outside. The second Kelly stepped from the house, the frigid air attacked her, slammed into her like a speeding car into a brick wall. At this rate, the winter was going to be brutal, even worse than in the city. Up here, a brutal winter was practically a death sentence—families jailed up for what could potentially be months while the snow outside accumulated with no apparent end in sight. Sometimes three, four, five feet. And not just against the doors and windows and siding, but heavy on the roof, on skylights and chimneys and spires and porches. A snapping sound in the night could be a section of roof giving up the fight. Skylights splintered and cracked, and that was a problem, particularly when the weather started to warm up and the snow would start melting. The sleet and hail that had attacked the airport was nothing; Spires understood the power of winter, understood that it was something to be respected and feared. And it would be a fearful winter this year, Kelly knew.

She stepped around the side of the house, her breath billowing out of her mouth in plumes. The forest was densest to the east, and as she crept around that side of the house, she looked down upon the great woodland with a similar sense of respect and fear she afforded each and every winter.

“Dad?”

Had he come out here to take his morning walk around the compound as her mother had mentioned? Thinking of her father, she was accosted by a barrage of moth-bitten memories of the man, spliced and not fully whole, like cut loaves of bread. He was a big man, a strong man, and—oddly—a pathetic man. That was something it had taken Kelly a while to see, yet something that had been so clear all along.

No one wants to believe their father is weak, that their father has emotions and can cry and feel pain, she thought. It’s safer to pretend fathers are invincible robots, and feel no pain.

She walked around the east side of the house, heedful of where she stepped. Here, the ground gave way to a sharp slope, where the grass and flowerbeds were no more, and where sharp slate crags and leafless candelabra-shaped bushes sprung up from nowhere. A careless step and she could break her ankle, and wouldn’t that just be terrific?

Again she saw someone move within the woods, beyond the first veil of trees.

“Hello!” she called out, now not so certain this person was her father.

Carefully, she eased herself down the face of the cliff, grabbing onto the bare stalks of small trees and bushes as she went. With each footstep, a tumble of stones was loosened and rolled down the side of the hill and disappeared into the woods. Further down, patches of wildflowers sprung up in scattered wedges, and Kelly thought, That’s odd. I would think it was too cold for flowers to grow out here.

She entered the woods, and it was somehow warmer. Like the woods closed arms around her, blocking out the cold. Unmoving, she stood among the trees, peering into the darkness ahead. So dense. Even in midday it was like the throes of night just up ahead. She took a few steps in, not so much interested in finding her father anymore (or whoever that had been), but now just relishing what warmth the place offered. It was like a living thing, this woods—dry and breathing all around her. A carpet of orange pine needles beneath her feet. The sounds of birds, not yet migrated, off in the distance. Squirrels plodding from branch to branch high above her head.

Don’t be fooled. There is no peace here, no rest here, she thought for some reason, not understanding any of it.

Something moved off to her right, and she turned to look at it.

A dog. A large white and gray dog stumbling along with a severe limp. Or a wolf. It could be a wolf.

She felt her throat tighten, her lungs constrict. The overwhelming need to urinate hit her like a thousand pounds of pressure on her bladder, and she was nearly crippled by the pain. In that second, she doubled over and fell against the sap-covered trunk of a tree. Still, she could not take her eyes from the dog that could be a wolf…

It continued to limp through the woods, slowly working its way deeper into the blackness of the forest. It moved with its head down, its tongue out, its pyramid-shaped shoulder blades pumping in mechanical succession. It was in obvious agony, unwilling to put any pressure on its right front paw.

“God,” Kelly moaned, clasping her hands to her groin, but it was no good—the dam was about the break. “God-God-God…”

The pain intensified, blossomed like a flower, then exploded like a punctured balloon. Before she even realized what was happening, she was aware of a wet heat at her crotch, coursing down the legs of her jeans and soaking her buttocks. The flood seemed to have no end. Sickened and ashamed, she collapsed to her hands and knees on the pine needle carpet, finally able to recapture her breath, her lungs opening, her throat becoming unstuck.

Oh Christ…

She’d wet herself. Like a fucking child, she’d wet herself. And despite her solitude, her sense of shame was nearly overwhelming.

An anguished howl rang through the air and she looked up. The dog was hardly visible now, having maneuvered its way deeper into the forest, but she could still just make it out. Limping and hurt.

“God,” she breathed, and fought back tears.

After regaining composure, she climbed back out of the woods and up the steep embankment toward the house. She was nervous and shaking, like a small child coming out of a horror movie, and twice she nearly lost her balance, almost sending her rolling back down the hill.

She reached the top with some difficulty. Her heart was working overtime and she was practically out of breath when she stood and looked back down at the woods. A mix of confusion rushed through her body—the embarrassment of her soiling herself coupled with the vision of the limping dog. And though the urination disturbed her greatly, something about that dog bothered her even more.

Because that dog wasn’t real. I don’t know why I know this, but it’s true. That dog wasn’t real, yet I just saw it limping along. I heard it howl in pain as it disappeared into the woods. Saw it, heard it—this thing that wasn’t really there.

Or was she just losing her mind? This urination thing was nothing new—had been happening to her for some time now—along with her constant anxiety.

It’s like standing on the edge of the world and watching it all end, she thought. It’s just a matter of time before it ends for me too.

She leaned up against the house to catch her breath. Above the wooded valley the sky looked gunmetal gray, pregnant with storm. Still catching her breath, she pulled away from the house and stared up at Becky’s bedroom window.

What the hell is going on around here?

The window was open.

Chapter Nine

Early evening, and the bus was crowded. Carlos Mendes sat, his eyes unfocused, his hands slowly wringing the unread newspaper on his lap. It was raining, and as the bus trundled along through the cluttered streets, he listened to the rain patter peacefully against the window next to him. The small Hindu woman beside him shouted something at her little boy, who spilled a bag of Skittles on the floor, then started to cry.

Think about something else, he thought. And he did: he thought of getting home in time for dinner with Marie and his mother. He imagined the kitchen smelling of stir-fry, of grilled onions and scalloped potatoes and those sliced tomato wedges covered in cheese Marie sometimes made. He would have some wine with supper, something dark from the Russian River Valley. And afterwards, maybe a cigar or two out on the back porch. He was fairly certain he had an unopened box of Macanudo miniatures hidden in an old margarine container toward the back of the refrigerator. And then—sleep. No thought; just sleep. He’d wrap his arms around Marie’s body and pull up against her, just the way he liked it. You are a little child, Marie would say—she always said that when he curled up around her—but she would laugh quietly to herself. Because she liked it too.

Thinking of Marie made him smile. Even after such a strenuous day. Even after what that old woman in Room 218 had said about Julian, about their unborn baby…

You see? There you go again—thinking of crazy, crazy things. You are like a superstitious old woman!

But she had known the baby’s name…

No!

He turned away from the small boy (he was bending forward in his mother’s lap, trying to touch the rolling tide of candy that he’d spilled) and looked back out the window. Yes, he thought, dinner would be nice. Very nice.

And it was. There was no stir-fry, no potatoes or cheese-covered tomato slices. Instead, there was grilled salmon, doused in butter and lemon and garlic cloves, and there was wine and there was a box of cigars hidden at the back of the refrigerator.

Marie hummed while she set the table, was in a pleasant mood during dinner, and picked up her tune again once it was time to clear the dirty plates away.

“You look tired,” his mother said to him. She limped on her bad leg over to where he stood, rooting around in the junk drawer for a book of matches. “I worry about you.”

“Don’t worry, Mamma.”

“Ahhh,” she scolded, “trabajas demasiado.”

“I work when I’m needed. I don’t make my own hours, Mamma, you know that.”

“Still, you look very tired.”

“You wanted me to be a doctor, remember?”

“I wanted you to be a plastic surgeon,” she corrected. Then she smiled wearily and patted the loose flesh at her chin. “This way you fix this. Now I look like a big, gray-haired turkey.”

“You don’t look like a turkey, Mamma.” He found the matches, glanced around for Marie (she had disappeared into the small laundry room off the main hallway), and slipped the book into his pocket.

“And smoking,” his mother said. “These are the things I teach you, right?”

“We’re all going to die at some point,” he told her.

“Marie said you quit.”

“I did. Before. Anyway, I’m not smoking cigarettes.”

“Oh, then.” Sarcasm. “Maybe next week you start up with the heroin, with the marijuana and cocaine.”

“Mamma.” You couldn’t reason with the woman. Instead, he opted for changing the subject. “How’s your leg?”

She waved her hand at him and ambled to the kitchen sink. “Llaga,” she said, turning the water on and hunting for a dishrag.

The rear porch was cold but quiet. He lit one of the Macanudos, inhaled, and blew the smoke out over the porch railing. He lived in a renovated Long Island brownstone just five blocks from the neighborhood he grew up in. Five blocks—but such different worlds. Not that they were living high on the hog now, but he did all right for himself and his family, and that was all that mattered. There were times as a child when he’d have to go down to Smitty’s and buy a wheel of electrical tape to mend his sneakers. Rubber soles only had so much life in them. Between him and his three brothers, they became good at finding ways to help objects—particularly clothing—live past their life expectancies. But not anymore.

The brownstone’s back porch faced the rear of a three-story apartment complex. Between the two buildings was an enclosed yard, half unkempt weeds, half blacktop. Someone—probably some kid from the neighborhood or even the apartment complex itself—had written the words DENIS DOES DAILY in bright orange chalk on the blacktop.

You know as well as anyone else that a stroke can cause dementia, that someone who’s suffered any sort of chemical or physical unbalance concerning the brain is apt to say and do things that may seem peculiar, that may seem almost frightening.

Yes, that was true. But such an injury didn’t generally render the victim psychic, did it? Strokes usually didn’t grant the stroke victim the ability to see things into the future, wasn’t that correct? Or to know secret things about other people…

There’s an explanation for that. She must have heard—

But that was bullshit, self-appeasement at its finest. How they hell could the old crippled woman know anything at all about his unborn son?

Child, he mentally corrected himself, it is not an unborn son, it is an unborn child. We do not know the sex of the baby, and until we do, it will remain simply a child. As if that truth would somehow rectify Nellie Worthridge’s prediction. What if it’s a girl? If it’s a girl, the baby won’t be named Julian and then all that old woman’s spouted fortune will mean nothing, nothing at all. Or what if it is a boy and we simply call him by a different name? Wouldn’t that make her statement untrue then? Fuck tradition and fuck Marie’s father—we could call him Billy or Jimmy or Bobby or something equally unoriginal. At least then we’d be safe.

He couldn’t help but cough up a chuckle—it really was all too much, wasn’t it? Psychic old women with no legs and unborn babies already given a death sentence! It was something out of a second-rate horror movie.

The sliding porch door opened and Carlos tossed the smoldering cigar over the porch railing reflexively. Marie stepped outside, a knitted afghan about her small shoulders. She looked tired, with dark looping rings beneath her eyes. But still beautiful. She’d always been beautiful, Carlos thought.

“Chilly out here,” she said. “You like it, Carlito?”

He closed his eyes, shivering at the name. “I do,” he said, masking his discomfort.

“You were quiet at dinner.” She came up behind him, began rubbing his shoulders. “It was hard today? Work?”

“No,” he lied, seeing Nellie Worthridge’s contorted old face tell him that his son was destined to be born dead. He had said it so simply to that Cavey fellow earlier that day, so plainly…but there was so much more than that, so much more than the simplicity of words.

Words are unfair, stupid things, he thought then. Controlled by words, everything real is corrupted, everything real is destined to be cheapened somehow. I don’t think there is a single human being who can find the words to express how that old woman made me feel today.

“You want to talk about something?” Marie said, pressing her lips to his ear.

He smiled, but he shook his head. “How do you feel?” he asked her.

“Tired but good. It’s nice to see you for dinner once in a while. Sometimes I think you’re having an affair with that damned hospital. Does it have bigger boobs than I do?”

He laughed. “Much,” he said.

Giggling, she jabbed lightly at his ribs. “We’ll see about much, Doctor. So maybe there’s some beautiful supermodel nurse you work with, right?”

“Yes,” he said. “After a long, dreary day of high-fashion photo shoots, Nurse Bambi likes to unwind by putting in ten hours at New York University Downtown. You got my number, all right, Mrs. Mendes.”

“Smart ass. You always joke. Everything is one big stupid joke with you.” She was still smiling; he could hear it in her voice and didn’t need to look at her face.

Not everything is a joke, he thought. Infants born dead aren’t a joke. Old, crippled psychics—nothing funny there, either.

“Too cold,” his wife said, pulling away from him. “Do you think you’ll be coming to bed soon?”

“Soon,” he promised, and she left him alone on the porch with his thoughts.

He had a withered old aunt who lived just north of the New Jersey Pine Barrens and, as a child, his mother would make him and his three brothers visit her twice a year—once in the summer and once in the winter. Aunt Teresa—whom the four of them called Aunt Tet—was a skin-and-bones woman with large brown eyes and fingers as long and wiry as pipe-cleaners. She always reeked of ammonia and mothballs and her little cottage (houses built near the woods are called cottages, his oldest brother Michael once explained to the rest of them) was always like a sauna, no matter how late into the winter they’d arrive. Often, Aunt Tet would try to scare the boys (or try to win them over by scaring them—young boys could be peculiar) with stories of the Jersey Devil, the cloven-hoofed serpent-child that roamed the wooded Pine Barrens circuit. According to Aunt Tet, way back in the Olden Days (any period of time just greater than a year, explained Michael, was called the “Olden Days”—capitalized and everything) a woman named Leeds gave birth to a creature of unimaginable horror. It had the head of a horse, the body of a chicken, and the forked tail of the Devil himself. Upon giving birth, the poor Leeds woman was systematically killed and partially eaten by her malformed offspring, who then spread a set of bat-like wings and flew up the chimney and into the nearby Pine Barrens. Aunt Tet’s favorite part was the big closer: And people say that to this very day, the Jersey Devil still haunts these woods, stealing chickens and pigs and dogs and cats in the night. And sometimes, she’d add with a sugary coating of extra inauspiciousness, stealing children.

The image of this disfigured fairytale ungulate was what awoke him in the middle of the night now. Breathing heavy, afraid he’d made some sort of noise in his sleep and awakened Marie, he sat up and looked over at her. Peaceful and dreaming, his wife lay on her side, her dark hair curled beneath her chin. She had the thumb of her left hand stuck between her lips—a childhood habit she’d never been able to break.

Sometimes stealing children, he thought and climbed out of bed.

Downstairs, the lights were off and it was still dark. He listened and heard an owl hooting somewhere in the distance, and thought it peculiar that there would be an owl around this time of year, particularly so close to the city.

Now what? his mind scolded. Are you going to start jumping at every shadow? It’s only an owl, for Christ’s sake.

And Nellie Worthridge was only an old woman.

His medical bag was on the counter in the kitchen, his unread newspaper draped over top of it. Clicking on the kitchen light and with one eye open, he went to it, unzipped it, and peered inside. After a moment’s hesitation, he produced a small hand-held tape recorder. He stared at it for a long time. For some reason, he thought of his mother telling him he works too much and that he shouldn’t smoke, that smoking would kill him. We’re all going to die at some point, was his classic response. We’re all going to die at some point. And does it really matter when?

He pressed first the REWIND button and then the PLAY button on the little machine. A static whir hissed through the speaker…and then he could hear the old woman’s strained and slurred voice, and pictured her speaking those words inside his head as he listened…

“Kellow…Kellow…Kellow…”

Then his own voice on the tape: “Miss Worthridge? Can you hear me?”

The old woman: “Kellow…”

“Miss Worthridge?” The sound of rustling paper. “Nell?”

On the tape, the old woman continued to repeat the name for some time. Several long minutes, in fact. And though it was the same thing over and over again, Carlos Mendes did not fast-forward the cassette. And then, after some time, there was a choked, coughing sound, then something else—something that sounded oddly like someone passing gas (blowing sugar, as his brother Michael would have put it)—and then the old woman’s voice again, only much stronger, and so much more than he’d been able to bring himself to tell Joshua Cavey at the hospital: “Julian will be born dead! Your son will be born dead, Carlito! Your son will be born dead!” Then something that sounded like sheets being upset on the old woman’s bed. And in a higher, almost child-like voice, the woman cried, “We almost killed that fucking dog!”

Footsteps behind him and he clicked the tape recorder off.

“What are you doing?” It was Marie. She stood wincing in the sharp light of the kitchen, a terry cloth robe about her body. “Carlos?”

He just shook his head, trembling. Miraculously, he managed to slip the tape recorder back into his bag without dropping it on his foot.

She came to him quickly. “Baby, what is it? What’s the matter? Don’t you feel all right?”

“I…” He cleared his throat. “I feel fine.”

“Can’t you sleep? I can make you something…”

“No, no.”

“What?”

“I just need…”

“What is it?”

“Bad dream,” he said finally.

“A nightmare?” He could almost taste her relief in the air. “It woke you?”

“I’m all right now.”

“What was it about?”

“The baby.” The words were out of his mouth before he could think of anything else to say.

“You had a nightmare about the baby? What about?”

“Nothing,” he said, forcing a grin. He suddenly felt very, very old. “It was stupid. Just so stupid.”

“Was it?”

“Yes.” Then he thought. “But I would maybe feel better if we scheduled an appointment with Doctor Chalmers for some time this week.”

“I have a check-up next month…”

“I know,” he said, “but I would just rather clear my mind, okay? Is that okay?”

She smiled wearily and hugged his neck with one arm, kissed the tasseled springs of his hair. “It’s okay,” she told him. “I will call tomorrow.”

“Good,” he said.

“Good,” she repeated. “Now will you come to bed, my Carlito?”

He smiled at her, trying to erase the sickening image of Aunt Tet’s devil-child from his head.

They went to bed.

Chapter Ten

After coming in from the woods, Kelly rushed upstairs and quickly changed out of her urine-saturated jeans, both frightened and disgusted. For the first time since her homecoming she thought of Josh, and of Josh’s concern for her. For the past month or so she’d been acting peculiar and for that same period of time she knew Josh could sense it. He was a stranger, really—a twenty-eight-year-old sometimes-musician stumbling through a relay of his own hidden problems—but he was also the closest thing to a true friend she had in the city. She’d never been personable, never really understood what was involved in talking with people, laughing at all their around-the-buffet-table dinner jokes. Collin had pursued her (and she’d allowed herself to be caught because she understood no other way and merely assumed that she loved him, which she genuinely did for a period) and had maintained the role as her social buffer throughout their cursory marriage. And it had taken a lot to finally leave him when she did, but then she was Out There again, and there was no more buffer Out There, there was just her and the world. And it was a hungry fucking world.

Josh was not a buffer, not like Collin had been. No—Josh was a friend. She made a mental note to phone him as she’d promised as soon as she got her senses about her.

Naked from the waist down, she hurried into the adjoining bathroom, turned on the shower, and stripped out of the rest of her clothes. And stood there, looking at herself in the mirror over the sink.

She was thin. Her eyes were naturally dark, but a thick swipe of mascara over each lid darkened them to morbidity. Her hair—also dark—was unkempt and partially pulled off to the side of her head, held in place with an imitation leather strap. Lips chapped and peeling. Her fingernails were also black, only with grime. She was all nipple and no breast, with drying urine staining her thighs.

What the hell is wrong with me? This is obviously not something that is going to go away. This is obviously a serious problem, perhaps a serious medical condition. I haven’t pissed my pants since I was a toddler. It can’t be healthy for me to start doing it again now.

Steam from the running shower began to fog up the mirror. She reached out and swiped the moisture away.

You look like you’ve been through the wringer, a small voice spoke up in her head. She thought it sounded very much like old Nellie Worthridge. And it isn’t just from today, isn’t just from being back here in Spires, or even back here in this house. This is something different and unrelated, something you’re going to wish you took care of once some quack in a white lab coat gives you his second opinion.

But she didn’t want to think about that now. Besides, there was Becky to worry about, the poor thing. Becky was her reason for being here, her reason for coming back to this foul little village.

And just why do you hate this place so much, anyway? Nellie’s voice again. What is it that’s been sitting so quietly inside you for so long that it’s just now creeping out of the darkness? If you can’t even remember this place or what happened to you here that put you in that institution for three years of your life, what the hell are you so goddamn frightened about?

And that was just it: she was frightened.

But of what?

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t know.”

To every castle, there is a king.

Gordon Kellow was a large man. His hands were rough and huge, like two worn catcher’s mitts. His face was full and round like the moon, his skin tanned the color of rawhide, his eyes like two seabed stones, polished to eerie luminescence. When he walked, he did so slowly, as if to respectfully warn others of his approach. His presence alone was enough to fill one hundred rooms. His voice was a thunderous applause.

Despite the dark veil that clouded over certain years of her childhood, Kelly managed to maintain two distinct images of her father. One was of him in his study, observed in every direction by the countless trophy animal heads that populated the walls—deer, antelope, buffalo, moose, bobcat, and so many others. He’d been meticulous about keeping his study a hideous shade of purple—velvet drapes; plum-colored Oriental carpeting; monochromatic oil paintings (donning the sections of wall that were not already occupied by glassy, sightless eyes and racks of antlers). The vision was of him standing in this study, his broad chest puffed out, a glass of brandy in his hand. He never spoke, just admired the decapitated heads the way an arrogant baseball player might watch his home-run ball go over the outfield fence. He’d spend hours at a time in this room, usually with the great oak double-doors closed, though sometimes not. And just stare and grin. The proudest damned father of bodiless heads anyone had ever seen.

The second image she had of her father was of the great, hulking man curled into a ball on the stairwell that wound down from the second floor landing, crying like a small child. Though he made no noise, she recalled his sobs coming in tremendous quaking waves, his moon-shaped face buried into his catcher’s mitt hands. She’d caught him doing this one time as a child, and was naïve enough to make her presence known to him. When he finally realized she was there, he’d jerked as if he’d just been prodded with the business end of a stun-gun. And he’d said something to her then too…although his words had long become the feast of whatever monster lived inside her head and fed off her memories.

She was never really afraid of him, exactly. His commanding eyes, arms like pillars, and booming voice notwithstanding, she never truly feared him.

Years later, when attending a party thrown by one of Collin’s coworkers, she saw a painting on one of the walls in the main hallway of the house. It was of a great behemoth crouched by the side of a pastel river, his head bent in sorrow, the fingers of one hand combing through the motionless river water.

“Maccinetti,” a woman had said from behind her, some trim number in a red party dress.

“Is it?” she’d responded, though she knew next to nothing about painters.

“Fabulous piece,” the woman said, and not without sarcasm. “I hear Phil actually attended an auction in Concord to bid on the original, but inevitably lost out. He’s a freak when it comes to Maccinetti. All of them: Nina MacDonald, John Parrish—if it’s been painted by some dull, neoconservative philanthropist, it’s probably hanging on one of these walls.”

But Kelly had blocked the woman out; she could only stare at the painting—at the giant impression of a man crouching beside a river—and think of one thing. That’s my father, she thought, the notion materializing from nothing. I haven’t thought about him or even seen him in so long, but I know that the man in this painting is my father. And he’s all bent over and sobbing the way he was that night on the dark winding stairs, when he thought I couldn’t see him…

In the end, that was really all she had: two images of the man whom had initiated her creation—the Proud Hunter and the Weeping Behemoth.

After showering and closing her sister’s bedroom window, Kelly came downstairs and walked along the downstairs hallway in search of either her mother or Glenda to complain about the window being opened. She could find neither of them (in such a large house, no matter how many people occupied it, the damnable thing always felt empty).

A noise from the other end of the hallway gathered her attention, and she went to the end of it, pausing outside what had once been her father’s purple room. The two oak double-doors were not completely closed and there was a light on inside, so she came up to the crack between the two doors and peered in.

She saw her father standing in the middle of the room, his back facing the doors. With only a moment’s hesitation, she pushed the doors open and took one step inside.

“Daddy,” she said.

The room was no longer purple. In fact, it was no longer anything. The hardwood floor was carpetless and caked with dust. The grandiose oil paintings had been removed, the only indication of their existence the darkened rectangles of wood paneling left in their stead. The purple velvet drapes were gone too, having been replaced by functional white blinds. And all those staring animal heads were gone now as well.

He turned to the sound of her voice, and she half-expected him to look just the way he did in her memories, maybe even caressing a tumbler of brandy. But when he turned and faced her, she saw that he was now only the rudimentary caricature of that man, with pieces long lost and too forgotten to be remembered.

“Kelly,” he said. His eyes had dulled over the years and he’d lost too much weight. “This is good.”

She went to him and hugged him awkwardly with one arm. He reciprocated, his movements stiff and confused. He smelled faintly of powder and sleep.

“I was beginning to think I wouldn’t see you,” she said.

“Everything is all right? The trip in—it was fine?”

“Fine.”

“All right.”

She wanted to ask him what happened to his room, what happened to the crushed velvet drapes and the stupid stares of the bodiless wildlife, but didn’t.

“You look well,” he told her. “You’re healthy?”

“I’m good, Dad.”

“That’s good.” He smiled the slightest bit. “And married?”

“Divorced.”

“Did he hit you?” he asked. “Hurt you?”

It was an abrupt question, one she hadn’t anticipated. After a brief hesitation, she said, “No, of course not. It just wasn’t right.”

“But you’re happy now?”

“I’m good,” she said again.

“It’s unfortunate,” he said, his words coming slow, “that it had to be under these circumstances…”

“I’d like to stay until Becky wakes up.”

He nodded. “That’s good. The police explained things to you, then?”

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “No one did. Not mother, not the police. Glenda started to, but…”

“You shouldn’t have to hear such things from Glenda.”

I shouldn’t have to get phone calls in the middle of the night from a stranger telling me my sister’s been beaten half to death, either, she thought.

“Why isn’t she in a hospital where there are doctors and they can keep an eye on her?”

“Because this is where she belongs,” he said.

“That makes no sense.”

“This is her home, Kelly. It was yours once too, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“There should be doctors watching her.”

“Doctors come here,” he said. “There’s nothing they can do in a hospital that they can’t do here.”

“Why is she still unconscious?”

“Why?” mulled her father. He turned away from her and stared at the white blinds over the windows. Outside, it was falling dark. “Why do people do things that hurt other people? Can you answer that question for me? Why did your sister almost die that night? Why did she even leave the house? I don’t know the answers, Kelly, do you? If you know, I’d like you to tell me. Tell me what you know.”

She was at a loss. “I don’t know,” she said.

“So you don’t know then too.” Then he turned back to face her, and his eyes were more alive. “You’ve hated us for a long time,” he said. It was not a question. “It was because we sent you to that hospital.”

“Hospital?” Barred windows, straps on the bedposts. “It was a goddamn asylum. I was fifteen years old.”

“It was a place for you to get better, to get well, and your mother and I didn’t want to see you going through any more pain.”

“Pain,” she repeated, beginning to tremble.

“We didn’t know what else to do. How could we watch you fall apart like that without doing anything about it? You were fifteen, yes, but you had some sort of nervous breakdown. You shut down, shut everyone out. You wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t move, for Christ’s sake. A parent doesn’t just watch that happen—”

But those were just excuses. “You never came to see me in three years. You could’ve at least done that.”

He just stared at her. For one reeling moment, she thought he was about to agree with her and admit his fault. But he didn’t. He didn’t say anything. Just stood there staring at her, as if trying to see past the woman she had become to the small and frightened child she had once been.

Finally, he said, “Did they at least help you?” His voice had taken on a hushed quality. “Did they at least get you beyond whatever you needed to pass over?”

“I…” And what was she about to say? The truth: “I don’t know.”

“Don’t know,” her father mumbled.

Yet maybe she did know, at least a little bit. During her time at the institution, she did not cooperate with the doctors and nurses, did not try to weed out her fears and the reason for her emotional breakdown. Instead, she focused all that anger on her parents—the parents who had locked her in such a hell hole, the parents who did not come to visit in the three years she’d remained caged up like some psychopath, like some animal. There was no getting better at the institution; rather, she just got angrier.

No, she thought, that’s not completely true. I did get better, in a sense. I got better at forgetting.

Forgetting.

The cloudy veil.

“The police mentioned something about a diary,” she said to him. “It seems Becky mentioned something about me, about having been in some sort of contact with me.”

“The police thought you might know of someone she’d been seeing, someone that would give them a lead.”

“I want to see the diary.”

“Your mother put it away.”

“I want to see it.”

“Were you in contact with her? Did you call her regularly? Or perhaps write letters back and forth? Maybe on the computers down at the library in town…”

Kelly shook her head. “No,” she said, “I hadn’t spoken to her. Not since I left this place.”

“But her diary—”

“I want to see it.”

He pressed his lips together until they turned white. Then he released a gust of pent-up breath. “You’ve eaten?”

“Not since this morning.”

“Have Glenda fix you something,” he said. “Then go upstairs and get some rest. The diary will be on the nightstand beside the bed.”

“Okay,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Right.” And he examined her again, up and down, as if for the last time. He looked tired and somewhat withdrawn, like a field worker after a long day in the sun. Wordlessly, he moved past her and toward the doors. “I’m tired now.”

She watched him go. And realized he looked nothing like the melancholy figure in the Maccinetti painting after all.

The kitchen was dark and empty, Glenda having already gone off to bed. She wasn’t very hungry, not really, but opened the refrigerator and peered inside. The refrigerator light illuminated a tall figure standing stock-still against the far kitchen wall, staring at her.

She jumped back, startled. “Jesus Christ.”

It was Kildare, dressed commonplace in a pair of nondescript slacks and a freshly pressed Oxford. “Miss Kellow,” he said. His voice was like an iceberg—only the sharp point of his emotions on the surface, and everything else hidden beneath. “I startled you?”

“Goddamn you did,” she said, shutting the refrigerator. “I didn’t see you there.”

“Is there something I can get for you?”

Her eyes narrowed. “How long have you been here?”

“Ma’am?”

“How long have you been in this house? How did you meet my father?”

“You were just with him not five minutes ago,” Kildare said complacently. “Did you forget to ask him that yourself?”

She was being jumpy. She knew that, couldn’t help it. Her mind slipped back to the scene in the woods earlier that day, and the image of the injured dog limping through the underbrush…then her agonized collapse to the ground, the uncontrolled release of her bladder…

“It’s late,” Kildare said, his voice a thousand steel razors, and moved past her and into the hallway. “Goodnight, ma’am.”

She watched him walk until his form was eaten up by the shadows in the hallway.

Upstairs, she stood outside Becky’s closed door again, tried the knob. This time it was unlocked. She peeked her head in. The room was dark, the window beside the bed closed. In the silence, she could hear her sister’s labored breathing from across the room.

Sleep well, Little Baby Roundabout, she thought, closing the door and stepping back out into the hallway.

Something moved by the stairwell—she saw it out of the corner of her eye. A person, no doubt. Kildare? Had he followed her up? She went to the stairwell, peered down over the railing and saw nothing. It was as dark as a well.

Now we’re seeing things, too?

Damn it all, she should have called Josh before it got too late. Would he be asleep now? Should she even bother? All at once she felt very alone and near the point of both physical and mental collapse. Josh was someone she could talk to—not her mother or her father. Not Kildare.

There was a telephone in her bedroom. She sat on the edge of the bed, picked up the receiver, considered dialing his phone number.

I should have listened to you a month ago, Josh. I should have gone to see a doctor. But now I’m trapped here and I feel so incredibly unsettled and I don’t know what to do. And I think it might be too late. It’s just something I feel, like feeling the difference between hot and cold. I think it might be too late now, Josh, and I think I’m starting to lose it, starting to slip downhill. Fast.

She hung up the receiver. It was a last-ditch effort to display (if only to herself) some form of semblance, some degree of self-control. She didn’t need Josh, didn’t need anyone. She could deal with this on her own. God knows she’d been on her own before.

There was a small, leather-bound journal resting on the nightstand beside her bed. On the book’s cover was a note: At the request of your father, Miss Kellow—J.K. She shuddered, imagining that creep Kildare moving around inside her room. As if his presence alone was enough to contaminate what purity remained. And what purity had remained, anyway?

She grabbed the book and eased back on the bed, paused, then hopped up and went to her bedroom door. Locked it.

Settled back in bed, she flipped open the diary’s front cover and saw that someone—again, probably Kildare—had placed yellow Post-It notes on many of the pages, half peeking up from the top of the book. She flipped to the first note and scanned the page. It only took her two seconds to locate her name there, halfway down the page and written in the diligent, swooping cursive of a teenage girl. Shocked, she backed up and read the passage in its entirety:

I spoke with Kelly today about keeping the journal and she said it was a good idea. She said I should write everything down in it so I remember and won’t forget the way she forgot. But I still haven’t been able to write anything down, and I don’t think I ever will. I just don’t want to think about it. Kelly said when she was little she was scared a lot and when she got older she had to go away to get better. But she didn’t get better. She said to be careful and watch out for myself. I wish we talked more. I wish she tried to reach me too, but I know she’s moved away and lives a different life now. It’s okay. We all have different lives.

When she’d finished reading the passage, she went back and read it again. And again. And again. Frozen by disbelief, she actually had to touch the print, trace the imprint of the letter with one finger. Doing so didn’t make it any easier to comprehend. The police had been right—there she was, her name right there in the middle of the page…and she flipped to the next Post-It marker and found her name again…and the next marker and again. And all without an ounce of explanation. Was it possible Becky had merely filled some sort of empty void? Had the girl simply created an idealized version of her older sister in her head? Was poor Becky losing her mind, thinking that her—

But something was there, caught in the web of her thoughts. Like someone’s name you just couldn’t remember—something that was there but just out of reach. Like fingers, barely grazing the tips of someone else’s.

What? What the hell is it?

But she couldn’t grasp hold of it, and the next second it was gone.

Another passage: Spoke to Kelly about him today. She didn’t have much to say. She’s a good sister. But she’s so far away and it’s difficult to talk to her.

Who was “him”?

Kelly thought, She’s a good sister.

Sorry, kiddo, I let you down. Really. I’m going to take the fall on this one, just lay it all down on me. I don’t know what the hell happened to you out there in the woods that night, but just go right ahead and put the weight on me, as the song goes. Take a load off, Becky, and put the weight on me.

She wished she could take it back, take it all back. And not just the event that lead up to Becky’s unconscious, bedridden state, but the whole thing, the whole goddamn mess she’d made by running away and never looking back. Never looking back for Becky.

I’m sorry. I can only say that so much.

“Sorry,” she whispered. Her voice cracked, and she found she was very close to tears.

In the darkness of the night, DeVonn Rotley—shivering against the cold—glanced up at the light that was Kelly Kellow’s bedroom window. He stared at the warm, glowing light for just a few moments before turning away and heading down the other side of the house toward the rear. He stopped here before a chain-link fence eight feet high and tipped with barbed wire. Behind the fence, a huddle of squat little doghouses stood in a line, as if at attention. The dogs were not out in the yard, agitated by the cold.

“Milky,” he half-whispered, peering into the darkness on the other side of the fence. He heard Milky or one of the other dogs wheeze from inside one of the doghouses. “Capri,” he called, “Dozer, Grizzle…”

Gordon Kellow owned the dogs, but Rotley trained them, named them. They were his dogs, really. It was his hand they ate out of, his face they lapped with their sloppy, flattened tongues.

There was a hose in the grass, attached to a well pump. He primed the pump and used the hose to refill the dogs’ water dishes. Again, he heard one or two of the dogs stir in the darkness. There were seven of them in all—Dobermans, all as black as the Devil’s asshole. Milky, Capri, Dozer, Grizzle, Humbert, Fenniwick, and Ophelia-Meringue. The cold air, now coupled with the splash of water spilling into the dogs’ plastic bowls, provoked the need to urinate in him. He finished off filling the bowls, tapped the hose out, and wound it back up against the well pump. Then he moved behind the pump, unzipped his fly, and relieved himself on a wedge of serviceberries.

He heard one of the dogs whimpering behind him. Without turning around, he called back, “You boys keep it down now. I don’t like the cold any more than you do.”

Finished, he shook himself off, zipped up his pants, and side-stepped the serviceberries. Heading back up to the house, he turned his head slightly toward the fenced-in community of Dobermans and said, “You good boys sleep well. We’ll all go running in the woods for a while tomorrow. You all just…”

His voice died in his throat. He froze in midstep, and it felt as though his heart had suddenly seized in his chest. Struggling to speak again, he managed a choked, “What are…” before he was silenced.

Moments later, and DeVonn Rotley was gone.

Chapter Eleven

Joshua Cavey got out of bed early, fixed himself some scrambled eggs, and ate them out on his fire escape while thinking, To hell with the cold weather. It’s too beautiful out here.

Traffic was moving sluggish this morning. Even this early, with the mist of a fleeting dawn still hanging in the air, impatient commuters were laying on their car horns. He could hear a group of children laughing somewhere behind his apartment building, and could also hear the steam engine-sound of a bus’s air-brakes the next street over.

He’d dreamt of Kelly last night. And though he only remembered fuzzy selections of the dream, he remembered enough to leave an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach. Kelly…and an immense house that reached high into the night sky…the sound of barking dogs…a mysterious figure, maybe…

But he couldn’t really remember it. He rarely remembered his dreams. Except for a select few—dreaming of Sampers raising the gun, his eyes like chunks of granite, pulling the trigger, doing it over and over and over again. Those dreams had just been unsettling; the dream about Kelly seemed almost like some sort of premonition, something he should be watching for and worried about. Shoveling the last bit of egg into his mouth, he silently wished Kelly would call him as she’d promised. Surely she was all right—he was just being a big goon, really—but she had promised. Besides, was it a crime to want to put your mind at ease? He didn’t think so. Not yet, anyway.

After a short while the cold began to make his left shoulder throb, and he climbed back into his apartment.

There was no mistaking the absence of a feminine hand in the decoration of Joshua Cavey’s apartment. For the most part, the walls were completely barren with the exception of a large Andy Warhol print that hung on the wall opposite the windows. His furniture was functional and sufficient. An acoustic guitar stood on a stand in one blank, white corner while a fishbowl on a pedestal (the bowl, though filled with water, contained no fish—the pathetic things had died almost a year ago) stood in another.

His kitchen was of similar practicality. He owned only one pot, one pan, two plates, three glasses (all mismatched), and a handful of spotty silverware. The table in the center of the cramped kitchen boasted only a single chair. And to look inside his refrigerator was to look upon the shelves of a grocery store the day after a mean winter storm.

There were a few five-pound barbells on the floor of his bedroom, and he went to them now, sitting down on the edge of his bed. He grabbed one in his left hand, began working the weight up and down, up and down. This was no longer necessary—as part of his physical therapy following the shooting, he hadn’t needed to continue after what the doctors called a “complete recovery”—but he did it on occasion because it relaxed him. The arm and shoulder were still sore, but the weights did not cause a strain as they had when he’d first tried to lift them following a number of operations and an obscene selection of medication. Now, lifting the weights only gave him peace. On many occasions, he found they forced his mind to run blank and his body to completely relax. It was something akin to transcendental meditation.

But the barbells weren’t working this morning. He couldn’t stop thinking about Kelly.

And just what is it about her? his mind spoke up. Why should you even care so much about her, anyway? Are you falling in love with her? That would be bad.

Bad, he knew, because she did not feel the same way. He knew nothing of her past—like him, she chose to keep certain things to herself—but he knew there was something there, something she either didn’t fully remember or didn’t feel comfortable talking about. He never spoke to her about Sampers and about his injuries, mainly because he was afraid and embarrassed by them. So didn’t it make sense for her to withhold information about her own past for similar reasons? Perhaps an abusive boyfriend in her past, an old uncle who liked to touch her in places little girls should never be touched…

Now you’re just forcing yourself to think, his head yammered. Now you’re just insistent upon thinking about Kelly Rich, about keeping her picture inside your head. Are you doing this to yourself on purpose? Are you trying to drive yourself mad? She is practically a stranger to you; you had better friends at NYU who you don’t bother to keep in contact with. And now you’re sitting here worrying about her, hoping she calls, when she has every right in the world to do as she pleases, even if that means completely forgetting about you.

But the dream—something about her running through the woods in the dark, out of breath and frantic…and a dog chasing her…or something like that, something about a dog…

In that instant, he recalled what Dr. Mendes had told him about Nellie Worthridge, about one of the things she’d said to him: We almost killed that fucking dog. What that meant he didn’t know, but he surmised that he had dreamt about a dog because he had dogs on the brain (or, rather, had both Kelly and Nellie Worthridge on the brain, and his dream had simply incorporated recent details of both people—Kelly’s departure from the city, and Nellie’s comment about killing—or almost killing—a dog).

Strange how the brain operates, he thought.

Stranger still, the telephone rang just as he set the barbell down, and it was Carlos Mendes calling about Nellie Worthridge.

At the hospital, Josh met Mendes in the doctor’s office—an institutional-looking room with lemon yellow walls and a single window behind a small oak desk, the filthy tin shade drawn. It was early and Mendes, seated behind his desk and fingering a cup of coffee he hadn’t yet taken a single sip from, looked just as haggard as he had on their first meeting. Josh wondered if the doctor always looked that way, the way some people always seem to have bags under their eyes, tired or not. On the corner of Mendes’s desk was an old clock-radio, turned on but turned low. Its dial was stuck between two channels, and the result was the intermittent sounds of a radio talk show and a jazz station, occasionally interrupted by bursts of static.

“I’m going to assume, since you are here now,” Mendes began, “that you care for Miss Worthridge?”

The question seemed oddly phrased. “I…well, of course I do. I wouldn’t want anything bad to come to her, if that’s what you mean. You know, if it’s something serious, I’d want to know about it.”

“Well, no,” Mendes said. “What I mean is that you are of no relation to this woman and have no obligations to her. You found her in her apartment and called the paramedics. Essentially, your job is done. If you want to walk, I wouldn’t say anything about it. Couldn’t say anything about it.”

For one brief, insane instant, Josh thought Mendes was going to hit him up for the cost of Nellie Worthridge’s medical treatment. He shook his head. “Dr. Mendes, I’m not following you here…”

“I just don’t want you to feel as though I’m wasting your time with anything I’ve got to say, anything pertaining to Miss Worthridge…”

“No,” Josh said, “you’re not wasting my time. In fact, I appreciate the call. Please, go ahead.”

Mendes lightly tapped the side of the coffee cup with a fingernail. “Nellie doesn’t play bridge,” he said matter-of-factly. “I asked her about that this morning—you know, opening her up with what she assumed was merely chitchat—and she said yes, she played bridge. I asked her the names of the women she played with and she gave them to me, first and last names. I asked where she played and she said their Wednesday night bridge game was always held in an apartment in the building next to hers. Just one building over. And I smiled and said something to the effect that it was good she was keeping active and she smiled too and said that it was fun and it kept her mind off other things. Like dying, she said. It kept her mind off dying.”

Josh just nodded. This was making no sense.

Mendes continued, “I looked up the names she’d given me and it turned out that one of the women, a Betty Shotts, does have an apartment in the building next door. I’d planned on phoning her to tell her of Miss Worthridge’s condition, and maybe find out a little about Nellie Worthridge myself, but when I called and mentioned Miss Worthridge’s name, this Betty Shotts had never heard of her. I asked if she was certain and she said of course, that she was old but she wasn’t that old. Then I asked if she played bridge on Wednesday nights and she admitted that she did—but no one named Nellie Worthridge ever played. No one in a wheelchair with no legs.”

“All right,” Josh said. “So she fibbed a little. She’s an old woman, that’s no big deal. Maybe she just knew of the game from one of the other women who played.”

“Right,” Mendes said, “that’s what I figured too. So I got in touch with them as well. And guess what?”

“Don’t tell me—none of them have ever heard of Nellie Worthridge?”

“Nail on the head,” the doctor said. He brought the cup of coffee to his lips with a shaking hand, took a sip, then set it down. “I’m sorry, I didn’t offer you any—”

“I’m all right, thank you.” Josh thought about what the doctor had just told him. “I see why this is strange,” he said, “but I’m not really sure what this means.”

“Neither am I,” Mendes admitted. “I wish I knew. Something isn’t sitting right, keeps gnawing at the back of my brain, you know? Like something I should be figuring out, only I can’t. And it’s frustrating.”

What Josh guessed was that Carlos Mendes felt more than just frustrated. Looking at him, Josh could tell he felt scared.

“You’re thinking this has something to do with your son?” Josh said. “Has something to do with Nellie saying your son’s name?”

“Yes. I can’t even sleep, can’t get that out of my mind. She knew it, knew that name, and the child hasn’t even been born yet. I’ve been waiting for her to say something else about it, something I can almost use to reaffirm what I know damn well she already said once, but she hasn’t spoken another word about it. And I’ve tried prompting her, but how can I open up conversation like that? How can I be subtle about something so profound?”

The incident where Nellie had yelled out the name of Mendes’s unborn son was peculiar, sure, but it was not at the forefront of Josh’s concerns. There was Kelly’s well-being, first and foremost…and with each passing minutes, he could feel the knot in his stomach pull tighter and tighter. Damn it, why couldn’t she just call him? Didn’t she know he was worried about her?

Mendes cleared his throat and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “There’s nothing more that can be done for her here,” he said, “so she’s free to go home. I just…part of me is grateful that she’s leaving, and I don’t mean to sound heartless—”

“Out of sight, out of mind.”

“Yes,” Mendes agreed. “Yet there’s another part of me—the doctor in me, I guess, or even the concerned husband and father—that wants her to stay so I can keep an eye on her, learn more about her, and come to understand how she knew that about my son.”

Josh swallowed a lump of spit that tasted like motor oil. “Has it been confirmed?” he asked. “Do you know for certain it’s a boy?”

“No,” Mendes said. “Marie doesn’t want to know until she gives birth. Says it is bad luck to know.”

“Have you told your wife about any of this?” But he knew just from the expression on the doctor’s face that he hadn’t.

“No. How could I? What do I say? And aside from that, I think she’d believe it. Superstitions, right?”

“Believe it just like you believe it,” Josh said. “With two believing it instead of one, it makes it all the more likely that her prediction will come true.”

Mendes tightened his lips. For a second, Josh thought he’d offended the doctor. Then Mendes smiled and stood from behind his desk. “She is going to be released today. Again, you’re not obligated to—”

“I’m here,” Josh said.

“Then you’ll see to it that she makes it home? That she has everything she needs and that she can contact you if she needs to?”

“Of course.”

“Good.” Mendes reached down and pulled a card from his desk drawer, handed it to Josh. “My number is on there. My office number, but also my home and beeper number. I want you to call me if anything—anything—appears out of whack. Even if she starts talking in her sleep, you give me a call and I’ll come over ASAP.”

“I didn’t realize doctors still made house calls.”

Again, Mendes smiled that tired, weary smile. “Only the truly concerned ones do, Mr. Cavey.”

Yes, Josh thought, and the truly scared.

Dr. Carlos Mendes thought, What’s inside your head? What secrets do you know, and how in the world do you know them?

The old woman looked at peace in the bed, tucked beneath crisp white sheets. Some color had returned to her face and her eyes looked more alive now than they had since her admittance. She smiled warmly when he and Josh both entered the room. They smiled back and she tried to articulate something to them, but it came out as nonsense.

“Don’t get yourself all riled up, Miss Worthridge,” Mendes told her. He took her temperature, her blood-pressure, adjusted the sheets about her waist. She was thin, the poor old thing, and she watched him plod around the cramped little room like some ancient amphibian incapable of human thought. The notion was not a cruel one—it was merely reflexive, looking at her staring up at him, that half-smile following him around the room.

What do you know? he wondered. What great magic lies inside your sweet, silver head?

“You feel all right?” he asked her.

Nellie nodded once, emphatically. “Yes,” she said, slurring. “I said so this morning.” It was difficult for her to speak.

“You look better,” he told her. “You sound better.”

“I’m talking like a child.” Curiously enough, she said this perfectly clear.

“Nonsense. Can I see you flex the fingers of your right hand, please?”

She flexed them with no difficulty: opened, closed, opened, closed. But his eyes were hardly on them; he was busy looking at her left hand, the hand that lay motionless and curled into a bony talon on top of the bedclothes. That hand had moved too. Would she be able to move it now? And could he even ask her to do such a thing without making the request sound like a cruel joke? After all, the woman had no recollection of moving her left hand. To ask her to try now would be insensitive, crazy. It would begin to confirm too much in his own mind…

He checked her pupils and thought, If there is anything hiding behind these eyes, come out now! If there are any secrets stashed away back there, I insist you expose yourselves!

Josh stood on the other side of Nellie’s bed, looking down on her. “I’m going to get you home,” he told her. “You’ll feel better once you’re back at home.”

“Home,” the old woman muttered, still struggling to smile.

Mendes nodded, replaced his ophthalmoscope, and clapped his hands together in a gesture imitative of content finality. “Well, now,” he said. “You’re in good shape. Ready to get back into the daily grind, as far as I’m concerned.”

Her smile widened—it was a sorry state of affairs, really—and she reached out to him with her tangled right hand, patted him on the arm.

“You’re welcome,” he told her.

Five minutes later, he watched from the nurses’ station as Josh and Daphne, the floor nurse, pushed Nellie Worthridge out of her room in a wheelchair and into the bustle of the hallway. Nellie’s eyes, he noticed, darted around the hallway until they found him. Again, she smiled. It made him feel cold inside.

Am I being ridiculous? Really, after all, am I just overreacting? She’s just a harmless old woman…

But he didn’t really believe that, and there would be no talking himself into it. Nellie Worthridge…

And what about her?

He didn’t want to think about it.

Daphne wheeled the woman over to the nurses’ station. Mendes couldn’t help but look at her then.

“Thank you, dear,” Nellie said.

God, he thought, just stop smiling like that. Please.

“My pleasure, sweetheart,” he said. Then he quickly brought his eyes back down to his paperwork. Too quickly? Maybe—he thought he caught Daphne raise her eyebrows at him. But he didn’t care. Anything to get the old woman to leave. The sooner, the better.

He only looked up again when he was certain they were at the end of the hallway and about to get onto the elevator. He saw Josh Cavey leaning down while the old woman muttered something into his ear. Daphne was standing beside them, working the elevator button like a pump in need of priming, and smiling down at the old woman. When they finally disappeared behind the steel doors of the elevator, he felt a sizable weight lift from him, and he actually breathed a sigh of relief. He looked down: his hands were shaking. His stomach was upset too—there was a damned hamster in there running laps on his little clacking wheel.

Food, he thought, realizing he hadn’t yet eaten this morning. Food will settle my stomach.

He slipped out from behind the nurses’ desk and headed down the ICU corridor. He moved quickly. And before he could even realize that he was actually headed in the opposite direction of the cafeteria, he was already pushing through the men’s room door, kicking open a stall, and dry heaving into the porcelain bowl.

On the way home from the hospital, Josh had the cab pull over so he could grab some fresh bagels and cream cheese. Back at Nellie’s apartment, he helped the old woman get settled into her motorized wheelchair before preparing them a bagel feast. Nellie disappeared around the corner and into her little bedroom where she changed her clothes. The stink of hospital, she told Josh on the ride home, clung to you no matter what. It was all she could do not to fall ill in the back of the cab during the ride back home.

He toasted some bagels, applied the appropriate amount of cream cheese to four halves, and set out two plates around the small kitchen table. Searching the refrigerator for juice, he found none and settled on two tall glasses of cold milk. Then, recalling Nellie’s penchant for hot coffee, he brewed a pot. All things aside, they would eat like kings this morning. The thought made him smile a bit.

Nellie appeared in the kitchen doorway. The motorized gears of her chair had sneaked up on him. She looked a little tired, but overall she looked good. He’d been worried about her since her accident.

“Breakfast will be ready in just a minute,” he told her. He worked quickly to get the coffee into a mug for her.

“Are you hurt?” she asked him.

“Hmmm?”

“Your arm is hurt, dear.”

“What?” He finished pouring the coffee and set the mug down on the kitchen table.

“Your left arm.”

It was hurting him. It was the cold weather. Going out onto the fire escape earlier this morning had not been the brightest of ideas. There was a dull pain just below his left shoulder blade, and it ran the length of his back, nearly down to his buttocks. This was nothing unusual—dependent on the weather or a multitude of other factors, the dull throbbing pain was always popping up in some form or another—but over time, he’d gotten good at ignoring it. Most times, he didn’t even realize the pain had returned at all, his mind so busy somewhere else.

“Oh,” he said, suddenly embarrassed. He realized he’d been slowly rotating it in midair, working the joints. “No, I’m all right. It’s just…it’s nothing. Cream and sugar?”

“Black,” she said, inching the wheelchair closer to the table as Josh pulled up his own chair and sat down. “What happened?”

“What happened with what?”

“Your arm,” she said.

“The cold bothers it every once in a while. It’s not a big deal.”

“You’re too young to suffer from arthritis.” She was feeling him out.

“Right,” he said. “Long story. Something that happened to me some years back. Your classic case of Wrong Place at the Wrong Time.”

“And this is something you don’t like to discuss?”

“I just don’t talk about it.”

“Why is that?”

“It’s embarrassing.”

“Oh?” Her eyebrows arched. “Hooligan? Chased down by some neighborhood ruffians when you were a little pup?”

“Not exactly.” There was no real harm in telling Nellie any of this. Would she even understand? “I was shot,” he said. “About a year and a half ago, I walked into a convenience store while some kid was robbing the place. Guess I scared him pretty bad. As I came through the door, he turned and shot me twice. Here,” he said, pointing to his left shoulder, “and here,” he finished, pointing to his heart. “I lost a lot of blood and nearly died. Would have, the doctors said, but Sampers—the kid who shot me—missed my heart. It was a close call.”

Nellie just nodded, as if they were discussing local politics instead of his near-death experience.

“I hit the ground and was out. I only remember bits and pieces of everything after that, including most of my stay at the hospital. Sampers apparently freaked out, didn’t know what to do or where to run, and the police picked him up just a few minutes later, still standing in the convenience store. In a corner, shaking, eyes wide—that’s how the arresting officer described Sampers at the trial. I guess shooting someone had never really been on the kid’s mind. Probably figured he’d swoop in, grab what cash was in the register—what could it be, fifty bucks?—and take off like nothing ever happened. Didn’t count on my stupid ass waltzing in there, that’s for sure.” Then he blushed. “I’m sorry, excuse me.”

Nellie was not bothered by the profanity. “And this is something you’re embarrassed of?”

“No,” he said, “not that part.”

“Then what part?”

“The rest of the story,” he explained. “The parts that follow. Everything. Until recently. I didn’t leave my apartment for a long time. I didn’t ride the subway, didn’t even like getting into a cab. People on the street freaked me out. And to hell with going into a convenience store, you know what I mean?” He laughed nervously. “I just couldn’t get over it. What if that bullet had been, like, an inch closer to my heart? Or a centimeter? One minute I’m strolling down Twenty-fourth Street, and the next I’m lying in a pool of blood with cheese curls scattered on my chest and Coca-Cola in my hair, in my eyes.”

“Facing one’s mortality can be a sobering experience. Particularly at such a young age.”

He shook his head, looked down at his uneaten bagel and glass of milk. “I was embarrassed that I couldn’t get over it. And I was angry at myself too.”

“But you got over it.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks to Kelly.” He felt himself smile. “I saw an ad posted at NYU about her project, this thing called and something about the way she advertised it piqued my interests. Something…it just made me feel invigorated to be a part of something again, a part of We the People that we’ve been working on, anything. So I figured what the hell and I went and met with her. And she was nice and pretty and maybe even a little eccentric, which I like, and just hearing her explain her ideas about the project just got me off one track and onto another. I’m listening to her, and I start realizing that she’s actually talking about me, that I’ve learned to overcome my own adversities…and I didn’t even realize it until that day sitting across from her at a Burger King.”

“She saved you, in a sense.”

“But it was something more. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but I can see what it was now. She had secrets of her own too, and she wasn’t only talking about me, she was talking about herself. And to this day I still don’t think she knows it.”

“We all have secrets,” Nellie said and sipped her coffee. “Good,” she sighed.

He’d lost his appetite. “So my turn?”

“Turn?”

“To ask a question.”

“Oh,” said the old woman, “is that what we’re doing, now?”

“It’s a straightforward question.”

“Ask it, but eat too. Put some meat on those bones.”

Just like a grandmother, he thought, grinning. He took a bite of his bagel, swallowed it nearly without chewing, and said, “How come you told Kelly and I that you play bridge on Wednesday nights?”

Nellie’s eyes didn’t falter. If she realized she’d been caught in a lie she didn’t let her acknowledgment register on her face. Calmly, like one about to recite a poem to a group of young children, she said, “I’m a fanatic when it comes to bridge. Love the game. Always have. My father taught me to play before he died.”

“You gave Dr. Mendes the names of the women you play bridge with at the hospital,” he said. He felt ridiculous, questioning this old woman like a detective pumping a murder suspect for information.

“We were making small talk.” Slurred the S.

“He was concerned for your well-being. He phoned the women you mentioned to him.” He suddenly realized he was walking a thin line and didn’t want to offend this sweet old woman, but he’d come too far to turn around now. Besides, there was a burgeoning curiosity within him, like the inkling of a small but potentially powerful fire, and it excited him. “None of the women you mentioned to him have ever heard of you, Nellie.”

This time, he thought he saw a spark of—well, of something behind those stoic gray eyes. Not taking those eyes off him, the old woman shifted her weight in her chair and adjusted her immobile left hand in her lap.

He couldn’t help but back off. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound accusatory, I just didn’t understand—”

“It’s all right.”

“No. It’s not my place and I apologize.”

“Don’t be silly.” She offered a warm smile. “I’m just surprised at the doctor’s…” she considered her words, “methods of extraction. I thought his small talk was genuine. I never realized he was so concerned.”

“He’s concerned for you, but he’s also concerned for himself too. Do you know what I mean?”

Again—something faltered behind her eyes. She knew, all right. But it was probably something she didn’t want to think about. And did he really have any right forcing her to, anyway? He’d offered up his story about getting shot with little protest, but it was evident that he had crossed over into territory Nellie Worthridge probably preferred remain untouched. For whatever reason.

We’ve started opening all the doors, now, he thought. All sorts of doors…

When she spoke, her speech came out garbled. “I’m aware that some things were said, that I said them to Dr. Mendes, which caused him to become quite upset. I can’t recall what I said, but I know I upset him and I am sorry for that. My mind was in another place at that time.”

“You were medicated and just suffered a stroke,” he said in her defense.

“Afterwards, I tried warming up to the man, but he couldn’t reciprocate. I’d frightened him, that was evident. But beyond that…well, there’s nothing I can do about any of that now.”

For a moment, Josh thought she was talking about something much bigger than what had transpired between her and the doctor. Something just beyond his own ability to perceive, perhaps, although old Nellie Worthridge could see it just fine.

“Kelly,” she said, snapping him back to reality.

“Kelly?” Hearing the old woman speak her name startled him.

“Is she all right?”

It occurred to him that Nellie did not know Kelly was out of town. She might have been feeling hurt Kelly hadn’t shown up at the hospital. “She’s left town for a while, went upstate. Her parents’ house, where she grew up.”

“Is everything all right?” She sounded very concerned, which bothered him for some reason. He felt like he was in the middle of an empty room, and the walls were all beginning to fall in on him at once.

“She’s fine.” And thought, Kelly doesn’t know about your stroke and you don’t know about Kelly’s sister nearly being killed. I’m like a safety deposit box for sad little truths.

“When will she be back?”

He told her he didn’t know.

“You’ve spoken to her since she’s left?”

“No,” he said, “I haven’t.” Then, for whatever reason prompted him to do so, he said, “Do you think she’s all right?”

Nellie Worthridge only sipped her coffee, using one hand. There was a look of concern in her eyes, too obvious to be denied. It glistened there like drops of water on old boards. It was ridiculous, thinking he could find solace in the words of an old woman, particularly when she knew nothing of his concerns. He didn’t even know…

“I hope so,” she said finally, and with no relief. “I hope so.”

Chapter Twelve

No one noticed DeVonn Rotley was missing until well into the afternoon. When the dogs started barking.

Kelly had slept a restless sleep the night before and awoke late in the afternoon, groggy and with a sore neck. She would have probably slept longer too, if it wasn’t for the incessant barking coming from the rear of the house. The sound yanked her from sleep and she sat up like a bolt, running her fingers through her matted hair. She leaned over the edge of the bed and peered out the window (noticing that her window, like Becky’s, was now cracked open, though she couldn’t remember if it had been that way when she’d gone to sleep last night). Yes, there were dogs barking. An entire platoon of them, by the sound. Faintly, in the distance, someone was calling DeVonn Rotley’s name. It was her father—and there was some semblance of his long-gone intensity in his voice this morning. After some time, she saw Glenda hurry around the front of the house lugging a sack of dog food on her hip.

Kelly looked at the clock on the nightstand and saw that it was well after lunch time. She quickly dressed, unlocked her bedroom door (it was locked all night, she convinced herself, so how could anyone get in to crack open her window?), and slipped out into the upstairs hallway. Jiggling the knob on Becky’s bedroom door, she found it unlocked and poked her head inside. The room was quiet, the window shut. Very much like a porcelain doll, Becky Kellow rested with her bruised and sleeping head on a silk pillow.

Downstairs, she found her mother in the dining room, leafing through thick catalogues of flowers and sipping cognac. Some pastries had been set along the dining room table. Without looking up, her mother said, “I thought you would never wake. And locking your bedroom door—is that something you’ve become accustomed to from living in the city?”

“What’s that noise?”

“Those filthy hounds from hell,” her mother growled. “I don’t know where in the world Rotley’s disappeared to, but if someone doesn’t feed those dogs and shut them up quick, I’m going to go out there with your father’s hunting rifle and make peace with nature.”

Glenda swooped into the dining room from the kitchen entranceway, anxious to collect the uneaten pastries from the table. She saw Kelly standing disheveled in the doorway and smiled. “Looks like someone let the Baby out,” the woman chirped. “I’ve left some breakfast in the kitchen for you, dear. I’m afraid it’s cold now, but if you give me just a minute I can heat something up for you, after I take care of your sister.”

“I’m not hungry.” She went to the dining room windows, peered out. “You have dogs?”

“Your father has dogs,” her mother said quickly. Her voice was sharp, like she’d just been poked in the rear with a hot iron. “The man spends half his life butchering wildlife, and the other half collecting them in cages at the rear of the compound. He puzzles me, that man.”

“They should quiet down soon enough,” Glenda said. “I just came from feeding them.”

“That’s Rotley’s job. They’re his dogs, really.”

“I know, Mrs. Kellow.”

“Where is he, anyhow?”

“Don’t know,” Glenda said, filling her arms with pastries. Kelly went to her and took some of the load from her arms, followed her into the kitchen.

Helping the housekeeper put the food away, Kelly said, “Are you close with Becky?”

“Becky’s a lovely girl.” She seemed saddened just thinking about her. “I try to be close. We get along nicely. Not like us, though.”

“I remember,” Kelly said. “You were good to me. I never thanked you for that.”

“Oh, honey…”

“Really. You raised me, not them.”

“Your parents were busy people, dear.”

“No, they were just rich people, and that allowed them to keep busy. Growing up, I sometimes thought they forgot they even had a daughter.”

Glenda replaced a tray in the refrigerator, shaking her head. “Now, honey, you know that’s not true—”

“I know,” she said, “but it still felt that way sometimes.” She thought about her mother sitting at the dining room table, flipping absently through a gardening brochure. And then her father, standing in the middle of his once great purple room that was purple no more. He was almost a nonentity—back then, and even more so now, it seemed. It was the house, she thought, consuming them just like it had tried to consume her as a child.

This house had nothing to do with what happened to me, she thought, although she still couldn’t be certain. It was just a gut feeling. The memories of her childhood were like slices of Swiss cheese—riddled with holes and inconsistencies. It was something else, something I still can’t remember.

“You were the one who wanted to keep me here,” she said then, as if suddenly remembering. But she’d at least known this part all along. “They sent me to that institution but you tried to get me to stay. Thank you.”

Glenda was now leaning over the kitchen sink, staring out the window at the hedgerow in the yard. The windowpane was covered in a film of frost. “Don’t be hard on them,” she told Kelly. “They did what they thought was right. They only wanted what was best for you. You can’t keep hating them for that, darling.”

“Well,” Kelly said, putting a hand on the woman’s back. “Thank you nonetheless.”

It was cold outside, and Kelly hugged herself tightly about the shoulders as she crossed around to the rear of the house. She saw her father standing beside the large pen that housed DeVonn Rotley’s collection of Dobermans. His back was to her, and he stood staring down the valley into the immense swell of trees. She came up behind him, uncertain as to what she should say (or even if she should say anything at all), and stood watching him in silence for several moments. She thought of the painting of the giant kneeling down by the river. Despite his imposing size, her father no longer seemed like a giant, crouching or otherwise. Rather, his form evoked in her images of downed power lines, of aged cattle strewn without method or purpose about some green pasture, lost and forgotten. With the passage of so many years, and like magic, he’d somehow managed to regress in age, as if his physical self was desperate to return to its youth. She watched him, and when he sighed, he did so with a great heaving roll of his broad shoulders.

Yes, she thought, he looks like a child.

He turned. Her presence startled him. Some of the dogs behind the fence looked up at them.

“Sorry,” she said.

His complexion was sallow and pasty. His eyes looked too small, pushed too deep inside his head. “I was thinking of your sister.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated.

“Becky would come out here, would scoot down this hill when she was younger. In the snow, she’d slide down on a sled or even without one, on her belly. Just laughing. I used to watch her from the window.” His eyes grew distant. “It snows every winter. You can almost count on it. Every year, every winter, like nature’s promise.”

“She’s going to be all right,” she told him, not really knowing whether or not that was true.

“Yes, she is.” He turned away from her again and looked back out over the forest below. “Just like you, Kelly. Always looking for adventure, always out seeking for something, always keeping busy. What do you suppose she looks for out there?”

“I don’t know.”

“What was it you were looking for?”

She thought of her childhood, of hiding in the woods by herself, keeping herself occupied with one thing or another. There’d been the bird book that one summer, and she’d taken to cataloguing birds. Or the toy boats she used to sail in the little stream. Always alone, always keeping busy. Alone…

“I don’t remember,” she told him, which was partially true, although she thought, I was looking for companionship. I was looking for someone to spend time with me. I was looking for what I never received from you and Mom.

“Did you ever find it, do you think?”

“I can’t remember that, either. Maybe.”

“Maybe,” he agreed. “It’s nice to think so, isn’t it?”

“She’s going to come out of it, Dad. And they’ll catch the person who did this.”

“Yes,” her father said, though without much conviction. Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he turned and pushed past her, making his way toward the house. She watched him go and, for the briefest moment, she saw him hesitate just as he made the turn as if he’d suddenly remembered something he wanted to say…but then he continued on his way, not stopping to look back.

Still cold, she breathed warmth into her hands and passed along the fence of the dog pen. Several of the large, black dogs poked their heads up again, watched her pass.

“Don’t you boys get cold out here? Doesn’t seem like those little houses keep you very warm.”

There was something small and dead half-buried in the ground on the other side of the pen, Kelly saw. A squirrel, it looked like. Dumb thing must have found its way into the pen, most likely attracted by the smell of the dog food, and before it knew what hit it, Rotley’s Dobermans had undoubtedly pounced.

An image broke through her mental veil: a stairway banister laden with the skulls of tiny forest creatures—squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, mice. A dark, narrow stairwell leading neither up nor down, just there, like a bridge in need of crossing but attached to no land. Darkness. Canted, distorted walls. A floor made of…of…

A floor sometimes made of wood, sometimes made of leaves and dirt and earth…and sometimes littered with broken plastic forks, she thought suddenly, not fully understanding where such a memory—and was it even a memory?—had come from.

Plastic forks.

There’d been a broken plastic fork on the floor of Becky’s bedroom. And the connection between the two didn’t sit well with her, suddenly putting her on edge and making her nervous all over again. A broken plastic fork—it meant nothing to her, yet it suddenly scared the hell out of her.

A chill passed through her, and it wasn’t due to the cold.

She looked down the slope of the great valley, looked down into the black forest of trees. She’d spent most of her childhood hidden behind the veil of those firs, grew up there like a wood elf. Sailing boats in streams and watching birds and building forts and…

And broken plastic forks, her mind returned to her.

She backed away from the side of the hill, turned away from the trees and the sloping green valley, now powdered with frost.

Get back inside before you lose your mind out here, that same head-voice spoke up. And when Becky’s doctor gets here, it might not be a bad idea to suggest he give you a full examination, too. Maybe see a psychiatrist.

No, she didn’t need a psychiatrist. She just needed to get inside.

A young man with flowers stood on the front porch. As Kelly turned the corner of the house, the young man saw her the same moment she saw him and there was a flicker of recognition in her eyes, yet there and then gone just as quick as the report of a pistol.

The young man recognized her too. He quickly dismounted from the porch and moved almost hesitantly toward her, his eyes a mix of emotion, his features somehow growing more and more familiar with each step he took toward her.

From nowhere, Kelly pictured a set of bloody knees.

“Is…my God, Kelly?” the young man said, and she suddenly knew him in the instant that followed.

“Gabriel?”

It was him, now all grown up and a man. A handsome man. His eyes were bright and thick with lashes, his hair impossibly curly and cropped short. He was perhaps a bit thin, but he carried himself with great purpose.

Gabriel…

He paused just two feet in front of her. His lips decided on a smile, though it was an awkward and confused one. He said, “I don’t believe it,” and reached out to hug her with clumsy forcefulness, the handful of flowers pressed against her back. She returned his hug then allowed him to pull away. With some amusement, she watched his eyes skirt up and down her body, that awkward smile still firm on his face. “Guess you went and grew up, huh? I can’t believe it. You look good, Kelly.”

“You too,” she said. Gabriel Farmer, she thought.

“I didn’t know you were coming home. When did you get in?”

“Last night.”

“I just…” He was at a loss for words. Looking down, he pulled the bundle of flowers apart and handed half the arrangement to Kelly. “Here. I don’t think Becky would object.”

“You came to see her?”

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what else to say. Is she awake yet?”

“Not yet, no.”

“Soon, though,” he said.

“Yes. I think so. She’s sleeping, but she looks strong, you know? Healthy.”

“That’s good.”

“You still come around the house?” she asked him. In her own head she sounded giddy and beseeching, like a child.

“I do some work for your father on occasion. Mostly painting and yard work here and there.” He shrugged. “I’m still in town, might as well pick up what work I can.”

“The way you used to talk, I would have guessed you’d be far from Spires by now.” And thought, Damn it, am I trying to insult him?

“I guess I picked up a different track along the way.”

“Are you still painting?” She almost asked a more personal question, but noticed his ring finger was naked at the last second. “Other than houses, I mean.”

“Yes,” he said, “still plugging away. I actually had a small showing in the city last month. Nothing big, but it was something.”

“Damn, you should have looked me up. I didn’t know.”

“You’re in the city now?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m so sorry I missed it. I would have loved it.”

“It was exciting.”

“I’m sure it was spectacular.”

“I wish I knew about you,” he said. “Being in the city, I mean. I would have loved for you to be there.”

She rubbed her shoulders and said, “It’s cold, let’s go inside.”

As a child, she first spied Gabriel through a thicket of trees. He’d been playing in the woods by himself—as was she—when she heard someone sobbing. She followed the sound through the thicket and happened upon a meek, wild-haired boy in square eyeglasses fighting back tears by the edge of the small brook that ran through the woods. Both his knees were cut and bleeding and he had managed to tear off a section of his filthy T-shirt, dip it in the cool brook water, and dab at his bloodied knees.

She stepped on a fallen branch and he jerked his head up. He saw her standing between the trees, a little forest nymph. Something inside her made her blush, like someone caught eavesdropping, and she unconsciously backed up a step. The boy watched her, his eyes swimming behind the thick lenses of his glasses, unmoving.

“Hello,” she nearly whispered. “Did you get hurt?”

“I fell,” the boy said. He pointed up and behind him where he—or someone—had tied a cut log to a rope suspended from a high tree branch. A makeshift swing.

“You’re hurt,” she said, stepping out from behind the trees and moving beside him. She caught their reflections in the rippling brook water and thought, No one ever comes up here in these woods. Kids from town are afraid of these woods.

“It’s not a big deal,” he said. He finished blotting his cut knees and wrung the wet piece of cloth over the water.

“Did you tie that swing up in that tree?”

The boy nodded.

“How did you get all the way up there?”

“I climbed.”

“That whole tree?”

“Just up to the branch.” He pointed to the branch tied with the piece of rope. “See?”

“That’s pretty high up,” she marveled.

“It’s not so high. I can climb higher.”

“Higher than that? Aren’t you afraid you’ll fall again?”

He just shook his head and puffed his chest out the slightest bit. He was a small thing, more fragile than she, and his body was covered in a barrage of scrapes, cuts, and bruises. Now, his ruddy face grew red. “I can climb to the top.”

“Wow,” she said, craning her neck back to look up. The top was a hundred feet high if it was an inch, she hypothesized. “You’ve climbed to the top before?”

The boy thought this over before shaking his head. Even at such a young age, there was ample intelligence and a mature sense of peace in his eyes. “Well, no, not yet. But I’ve been practicing. I climb up a little at a time, and each time I go up some more and up some more and pretty soon I’ll make it to the top. Just not yet.”

“You should be careful,” she told him. “You could fall and hurt yourself again.”

“You too.”

“Me too what? What do you mean?”

Hesitantly, he pointed at her forehead. “You’re bleeding, too,” he said.

Gabriel Farmer followed Kelly into the house. In the kitchen he gave Glenda a quick hug and helped her place Becky’s flowers in a crystal vase. Kelly arranged her own bouquet in a second vase, very conscious of the fact that Gabriel was watching her from the corner of his eye.

“Is Mr. Kellow around?” Gabriel asked.

“Always around,” Glenda said. “Here and there.”

“He was outside this morning,” Kelly said.

“He must still be looking for Mr. Rotley,” Glenda said, placing the crystal vase on the kitchen table and wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “There,” she said complacently, “that looks beautiful. Such a thoughtful boy, Mr. Farmer. I’m sure Becky will cherish them once she wakes up.”

“Do you think I could peek in at her?”

Kelly saddled up beside him. “I’ll take you up.”

“Ahhh, now,” Glenda said, smiling. “You two together—it’s like you’re both children all over again. Didn’t she grow up to be so beautiful, Gabriel?”

His face turning red, Gabriel said, “Yes. Quite beautiful.”

“Who would have thought, right?” Kelly snickered and winked at Glenda. “Come on,” she said, and led him upstairs.

Becky’s door was unlocked and Kelly eased it open. Gabriel followed her inside. The room was stale and stuffy. Kelly quickly became aware of Gabriel’s aftershave, of his broad yet delicate presence stepping across the plush carpet behind her. They both stopped at the side of Becky’s bed.

“There,” Gabriel said, “she’s looking better today.”

“Today? You’ve seen her before?”

“I was here the night they found her. I was helping the police search.”

“They found her that night?”

He frowned at her slightly. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing.” She shook her head, looked down at her sister. Yes, her bruises were clearing up. Who could hurt such a precious child? Who in their right mind could even fashion laying a hand upon her? “I was just under the impression that she was found the next morning. I didn’t realize they found her the same night she disappeared.”

“Oh,” he said, “not the same night. Sorry, you misunderstood. This was the next night. That’s when the police found her in the woods.”

“The next night? Like…like she’d been missing for twenty-four hours before she was found?”

“Yes. Didn’t you know that?”

“No, I didn’t.”

He looked suddenly pale. “I’m sorry, I hope I didn’t open my mouth with something…”

“No, it’s not you, nothing you said. I just didn’t realize it, that’s all.”

“Didn’t mean to upset you.”

“It’s okay,” she insisted. Thinking she felt a slight draft, she looked up from Becky and at the window, but it was closed. “No one told me that, that’s all. And she wasn’t far from the house?”

Gabriel shook his head. “Just a little way into the woods.”

“And it took twenty-four hours to locate her?” Her tone was becoming angry; there was no use hiding it. Twenty-four hours—she wasn’t stupid. She knew what that meant, knew why it had taken twenty-four hours. “Gabriel, when did they start looking for her? Do you know?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t know when they realized she was missing.”

They probably didn’t even realize it until later the next night, she thought. God damn this cold dungeon. What kind of parents don’t even realize their fifteen-year-old daughter’s been missing for an entire day? Jesus Christ, it’s not like she just traipsed off to a friend’s house or something—the nearest house is literally a half-day’s walk into town…and the nearest children on top of that?

She could feel a hot clot of anger sticking to the inside of her chest.

How do you bring children into the world and then ignore their existence?

“Kelly, are you okay?”

She looked quickly down at her hands. “Just thinking. I’m sorry. Yes, I’m okay.”

“I’m sure she’s going to be fine,” he told her, and she felt one of his hands lightly squeeze her right shoulder. “Just have to keep a positive outlook, you know what I mean?”

She forced a smile. “You’re right. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“It’s good to see you again, Gabriel.”

“Gabe,” he insisted. “And you too.”

Ten minutes later, after Gabriel Farmer left the house, Kelly slipped into the kitchen and found herself staring at the two vases of flowers.

“He certainly is a gentleman,” Glenda said, sneaking up behind her.

“He is.”

“I hope you don’t mind me saying so,” Glenda went on, “but I used to think you two would fall in love, get married, and live here in Spires your whole lives. Just like some little fairy tale. Oh, I don’t know. I suppose I’m just a hopeless romantic. But I just used to think the two of you looked so happy together. In fact, the only time I could remember you smiling—I mean really smiling—was when little Gabriel Farmer was around.”

Kelly nodded, fingered one of the flower petals. “Yes, you’re probably right.”

“A gentleman,” Glenda repeated. “And he’s handsome.”

Kelly laughed. “If you must know, he’s taking me out tonight.”

“Oh?” Glenda raised an eyebrow. “Well-well-well, now. The fairy tale has a happy ending after all?”

“It’s nothing, just two old friends.”

“Be it what it may. An old woman can dream, can’t she? Darling, I’m from a generation of lonely old housekeepers in this tiny little town and in this great big house—can’t I live my misspent youth through you?”

Kelly laughed again. “Simplicity is so often underrated. Sometimes I think I’d give anything to just fade away into the background.” And oddly enough, she realized that fading into the background was what her childhood had been all about. What had changed in her since then?

Glenda came up behind her, patted her lightly on the back. “Well, you just have a good time tonight. Get your mind off all this horrible stuff. Sometimes I think this house breeds sadness.”

Breeds sadness, Kelly thought. The notion chilled her to the center of her soul and she suddenly felt the burning need to urinate again. Without so much as another word to Glenda, she turned and darted out of the kitchen, down the hallway, and into the bathroom at the end of the hall. She slammed the door, rattling the frame. Behind her, frightened by her suddenness, Glenda stood in the kitchen doorway calling her name over and over again.

Detective Felix Raintree had a penchant for New England clam chowder, oven-baked bread sprinkled with sesame seeds, and stiff black coffee, hold the cream and sugar. Having spent his entire life in Spires afforded him the opportunity to trek across the county in search of a restaurant that prepared such delicacies to what he considered perfection. But Raintree was not a punctilious man, and it didn’t take him long to settle on Gray Cloud, a small eatery just north of Spires. It was a shy, modest place stashed off Interstate 87 that was never more than half-full. Maybe the service wasn’t the greatest, but service he could overlook. It was the food that kept him coming back. That clam chowder—something in that chowder just worked. Something creamy and thick, like sifted butter. Good food.

He was seated at his usual window-side booth just finishing up a bowl of the chowder from heaven when his cellular phone rang. Still scraping the bottom of the bowl with his spoon, he reached for the cell phone with his free hand, not bothering to look at the caller’s ID on the display.

“Raintree,” he said, his mouth still full.

“I catch you during supper, Felix?”

“Oh.” He set the spoon down. “Hi, Annie.”

“We’ve got a little situation down here, Felix. Big to-do.”

“Sturgess find that cat in his office again? I keep telling him to keep those windows closed. Darn thing walks the ledges around the building. I’ve seen it.”

“Not Sturgess,” Annie said. She sounded tired. Her voice was flavored with just a bit of urgency. It was enough to disturb him. “We’ve got Graham Rand down here causing some kind of scene. Came in maybe all of two minutes ago, been pacing through the offices like some caged animal, Felix. He’s all tempered out. Says he wants to speak with you.”

“Isn’t Bannercon around? He’s the sheriff, have him take care of it, Annie. He’s the one running the show, right?”

“Graham Rand don’t want to talk to nobody but you, Felix. He said so straight away, made a point of it.”

“Heck, now,” Raintree grumbled.

“He’s fierce upset, Felix. He’s got his hunting cap in his hands and he’s darn near wringing the life out of it right in the office. He won’t talk to Bannercon. He wants you. Says he was up in that tract of woods in the valley around Gordon Kellow’s place. Said he saw something there you might want to know about. Only wants to talk to you about it. Made that part perfectly clear.”

“All right,” Raintree said. “I’ll be there in a shake. Thank you, Annie.”

He slipped his phone back into his coat pocket and waved the waitress over for the check. She was a young girl named Rachel with purple-streaked hair and a silver barbell speared through her tongue.

“Ready to pay up?” she said.

“Unfortunately, my dear. Nature of the beast, I’m afraid.”

“You haven’t had your three cups of coffee today.”

“Well,” he said, “what about one of those wonderful new beverage containment apparatuses? Those—ahhh, now, what do they call them? Yes—I believe it’s a Styrofoam cup? Am I pronouncing it correctly, my darling?”

Rachel laughed. She’d heard the routine before—hundreds of times before, Raintree was certain—but she was a good sport. “Sty-ro-foam, you say?” She tapped her pencil on the corner of her mouth. “Must be one of those fancy French contraptions all the runway models have made popular. I’ll see what I can dig up in the Dumpster out back for you, but that’s the best I can do.”

Raintree laughed and fluttered a hand at the girl.

“All right, then,” he said. “We make no promises. Good, good, good. Now scoot. Duty calls.”

“Yes it does,” Rachel said and hurried away.

Chapter Thirteen

It was already dusk when Gabriel returned to the Kellow Compound. He was dressed nice in pressed slacks and a blue chambray button-down, his curlicue hair tamed and parted to one side. Upon arrival, he presented Kelly with a second spray of wildflowers. He then drove her into downtown where he’d made impromptu dinner reservations at a local tavern. Together, mostly in embarrassed silence, they dined on scalloped potatoes, grilled salmon, and chords of asparagus. Throughout dinner, Kelly tried to see herself through Gabriel’s eyes. After all this time, how did she appear to him? Was her hair too dark? Were the rings beneath her eyes too noticeable? Did she wear too many silver bracelets and rings and have too many piercings? Or maybe not enough?

Gabriel was thoughtful enough to steer away from discussing Becky’s condition over dinner.

“Tell me more about this project of yours, this We the People documentary series.”

“Like I mentioned, I’ve really only started,” she said. “I was lucky enough to get a grant from the city, and I’m hoping I can get someone to pick it up. I’m hoping for the Discovery Channel.”

“It’s an incredible idea,” he told her, his tone genuine. “I’m sure you’ll have no problem selling it. Have you made any initial contacts?”

“Not yet. I’m just filming the preliminary segments now.”

“Meeting all those different people, filming each segment—sounds daunting.”

“I have someone to help me.” And damn it all, she’d forgotten about Josh. He’d wanted her to call and she still hadn’t. She looked down at her plate, and at the potato coins and asparagus antennae. “Tell me about your paintings.”

“I’m working on a series now,” he said, half-grinning. He seemed embarrassed. “I’m afraid it’s a bit morbid, though. Not quite dinner conversation.”

“Do I look like a prude to you?”

He laughed. “No, I guess city life has hardened you a bit, right?”

She flexed one arm jokingly. “Me big strong girl.”

“Have you heard of the German artist Lars Kurtz?”

She shook her head.

“He started out doing modern abstracts but somewhere along the line he got the brilliant idea to dabble in human taxidermy. Particularly pregnant mothers and their fetuses. I mean, of course they were already dead, most from natural causes. They’d previously donated their bodies to Kurtz—or, in the instance of the fetuses, I suppose the parents allowed such a thing, although who could imagine? He found a way to preserve the skin and had them stuffed. Some of his work exhibits a pregnant mother with a section of her torso removed, allowing people to observe the mummified child inside her. Jesus, I’m sorry, this isn’t dinner conversation at all. I must sound disgusting.”

“No, actually, it’s fascinating.”

“Serious?”

“Go on.”

“Anyway,” he continued, “I’d heard about the controversy and became interested. Practically the only place you can view his work now is on the Internet. As you can imagine, not too many galleries want to prop dead people against the walls, put them on display.”

“Imagine that.”

“But something about his worked touched me. I think it was the total originality of it all, the human quality. So I actually started doing a series of paintings titled Rest depicting different people in the positions they died in.”

“Interesting,” Kelly said. “So, like, a woman with a broken neck draped over the wall of her bathtub? Some old guy cleaning his gun on his back porch just as the trigger goes off, pushing the back of his head through the wall?”

“I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic.”

She grinned. “Me, neither.”

“It’s not that gruesome. That’s why I call the series Rest. Death is very peaceful. And I think we as people understand that, we’re just so frightened and saddened by death that we don’t stop and realize it. For many people suffering from terminal illnesses or severe debilitation, death is quite welcome. But for most people—well, I guess that’s not something we’re comfortable considering.”

“Well, I’m glad you stuck with it,” she said. “You were always such a wonderful artist.”

“And a wonderful sentimentalist too, I’m afraid.”

“Oh?”

He smiled. “Remember that week I insisted you paint with me? That it didn’t matter what you painted as long as you painted something? And all you did was bitch and moan…but you finally conceded.”

Kelly laughed. “I remember.”

“I still have them. All your paintings. Packed away back at my apartment, but they’re still there. I hope you don’t think that’s creepy.”

“A little.” She laughed again.

“Would it be even creepier to ask about your personal life? I don’t want to sound pushy—”

“No,” she said.

“Are you seeing anyone?”

Oddly, she thought again of Josh. Then shook her head. “No. But I was married for a while.”

“Married? Are you serious?”

“Collin Rich.”

“Imagine you married.” He seemed unsure how to react. “Let me guess—tax attorney?”

“Textbook editor. But he spoke mostly like a tax attorney, I guess.”

“And it didn’t work out?”

“We both just sort of jumped into it. And I was just a stupid kid.” She smiled in a way that looked like a frown. “He cheated on me several times,” she added, unsure why.

“I’m sorry. He was a fool.”

“No. I mean, yes, he was—but I wasn’t the greatest person to live with, either. Collin was a very proud, very boisterous person. He was proud of his work, proud of the money he made, proud of the long hours he spent behind a locked office door. We were just too different. I was like a scared white rabbit around him most of the time and he couldn’t stand that. Eventually, he found other women with whom he felt more comfortable with. That happens sometimes.”

“You’re not angry with him?”

She shook her head. “Not really, no. It’s more like…I don’t know. It seems like I was more angry at myself back then.”

“And now you’re not?”

I don’t know, she thought, and said, “No.”

After dinner, they walked around the small downtown common area. The evening was chilly but it felt invigorating, and they walked down to the park and sat on an iron bench beneath a selection of fir trees. Ahead of them, a few teenagers were lighting sparklers and tossing them into the air, laughing loudly. A middle-aged man in a Jets sweatshirt and black spandex jogged by them on the narrow trail. Again, their talk was lighthearted. Gabriel seemed aware of the tender areas and refrained from traversing there: Becky’s attack as well as the embarrassing conclusion to their own friendship years ago, which ended when Kelly had been sent away to the institution.

“Are you cold?”

“Maybe a little,” she said. “But it’s nice out.”

“I can take you home whenever you get too tired.”

She thought about home—about the compound, that looming black structure with its conical towers and obelisk roofs, its yawning doorways and narrow, powder-stained windows. And the woods, dark and brooding and solid with frost. She had no desire to return to the house any time soon.

“I wouldn’t mind seeing some of your work,” she said to him.

Gabriel Farmer lived in a single-bedroom apartment south of downtown Spires. It was a small place with a one-window view of a thick shade of trees (which blocked what could have been a beautiful though distant view of Lake Champlain) and a star-cluttered night sky. Stepping inside the apartment, it struck Kelly as odd to imagine that little boy with glasses and bleeding knees down by the brook to have grown up. And here—the walls natural wood paneling; the tiny entranceway and living area as pristine as one could want; obscure paintings on the far wall, hung in almost a functional formation. It was the fastidious home of a perfectionist.

“This is nice,” she said, following Gabriel to a small love seat.

“Quaint,” he said, shrugging.

“You make quaint sound bad.”

“It’s usually what people say when they mean ‘barely adequate.’”

“I didn’t say quaint. I said nice.”

“Noted.”

She watched him disappear into the tiny kitchen nook and hit the refrigerator. “What can I get you?” he called.

“A beer will be fine.”

Her eyes wandered over the paintings on the walls. There were also some more in the narrow hallway leading to what was most likely the bathroom and bedroom. Some were abstract, a wash of monochromatic tones that reminded her of soft jazz, particularly the sounds of brass instruments. Other paintings depicted cottage-like houses in the middles of dense forest, their doors and windows and sidings painted the sharp and jarring colors of penny-candy.

“Are some of these yours?”

He returned with two bottles of Amstel Light, handed one to Kelly and remained standing. “The paintings? Yes.”

“They’re beautiful.”

“Stages,” he said. “From high school on up. I hit a certain mood and I just couldn’t shake it. The only way to move on is to let it take over. Those colors in that painting there? Those—”

“Yes.”

“My ‘wind’ phase.”

“Oh?”

“Damn thoughts hit you sometimes and you know it’s going to be a pain in the ass. It’s like describing the color blue to a person who has been blind their whole life. How the hell do you do it? Those colors—it dawned on me one afternoon to paint wind. Not leaves or plastic bags or anything blowing in the wind, but actually paint the wind itself. As colors. So that first one there—that blue one—was the first one I painted. Because the day was cold, I painted it blue and was mildly satisfied. Then a month later it started getting warmer and I happened to glance at the painting and think, no way, wind isn’t blue, it’s red, and what the heck had I been thinking painting it blue. So that’s where the red one comes into play. God, I was so naïve then…”

Kelly laughed. “Yes,” she said, “and the green and the yellow and the orange and the black?”

“All there. Days have a way of changing. I figured wind is just days. Or days changing. I don’t know, I guess that doesn’t make any sense.”

“Sure it does.”

“Well, you’re just a crazy artist like me.”

She shook her head, looked at the mouth of her beer bottle. “No, not like you.”

“Sure.” He maneuvered around the side of the love seat and hefted two canvases from against the wall. He turned them around so Kelly could get a good look. “Just a glimpse of what I was telling you about.”

The first painting was of an elderly woman seated in a straight-back chair before a window, her silvery head bent down and resting on her left collarbone, eyes closed. One hand hung loosely over the chair and dangled. A yellow bar of sunlight came in through the window and cast an eerie, angelic glow over the woman’s body.

The second painting was only half finished, and depicted an old man positioned in a similar fashion on a park bench beneath the gentle sway of a weeping willow.

“They’re both dead,” she marveled. “My God, they’re so beautiful.”

Gabriel smiled. “Then I’ve succeeded.”

“You certainly did. You have such a great talent, Gabe. You always did.”

“No,” he said, replacing the paintings back against the wall, “I just have an excellent Muse.”

He took a seat beside her on the love seat, also staring at his own beer. Kelly sensed there was something important on his mind before he even started speaking again.

“I hope I don’t come off as too forward or anything now,” Gabriel began, his eyes still down in his lap, “but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about you after you left. And, well, it was never really clear to me why…I don’t think…” He cleared his throat, tried again. This time, he brought his eyes up to meet her. “For a long time after you went away, I tried to understand a few things.”

She knew where he was headed. And no, she didn’t fault him for his curiosity. He’d been her friend once, or at least tried to be, and he was owed something, wasn’t he? In his own small way, he’d been affected by what happened to her back then too.

“When I went away,” she said. “You’re talking about the institution?”

“When you left, I wanted to say something to you, to see if there was something that maybe I could have done. I don’t know.”

“There was nothing you could have done.”

“And then after that—well, you never came back, Kelly.”

“I don’t think I could even if I wanted to. There was just too much bullshit, you understand?”

He shook his head. “Yes and no,” he said. “I mean, I don’t understand. Not all of it. I didn’t then, and I still don’t even now. And I don’t mean about the institution. Back then—sometimes it was like we were the best of friends—”

“You were my only friend.”

“But then other times it seemed like you wanted nothing to do with me. And then that day I came over, and what happened down in the woods, and that’s when you closed up. Just like that. Never said anything to anyone after that. You scared me and I missed you.” He tried to laugh but it came out too jittery. “Shit, kid, I’m sorry. You didn’t come back home to hear any of this.”

“No. It’s all right.”

“So what happened to you? Why’d you go away? And do I even have the right to ask that of you? I mean, we’re really just two strangers sitting here…”

“It was a nervous breakdown,” she said.

“You were fifteen.” As if this was proof against her own reasoning.

“It was a head-thing, a mental thing. I just broke down.”

“What did it to you? Did something happen?”

Again, she thought about meeting little Gabriel Farmer in the forest that day. She’d watched him blot blood from his knees, then also wipe it off her own forehead (although she could not recall what had happened to her). They’d talked, and he had sketched her face in the dirt with a stick, and that had made her laugh. Gabriel Farmer, falling off the damned rope swing and cutting both his knees. Had he ever made it to the top of the tree that year? She didn’t think she ever saw him climb so high. Was it possible that he’d made it to the top sometime after she’d gone away? Maybe one day by himself, maybe even angry with her for leaving him, he’d gone back down into the forest and climbed that towering tree straight to the top, or as high as his weight would allow. And he’d been a twig of a thing, so that would have been pretty high. My God, did he go back and climb it all by himself? What if he’d fallen? He could’ve been killed.

“I don’t know what set it off,” she said and it was the truth. “I mean, I can’t remember now. And that’s why I stayed at that institution so long—they wanted me to remember, but I couldn’t remember. Christ, I didn’t even know if there was anything to remember.”

“How long did you stay in there?”

“Three years. I signed out when I was eighteen.”

“Was it bad?”

“The hospital?”

“Was it cruel? I just have this image of barred windows and people screaming crazy behind locked doors. I couldn’t shake that image for a long time after you went away.”

Went away, she thought. My God, it makes me sound like a certified psychopath.

“It wasn’t too bad, but I don’t remember it very well,” she said, but could easily summon the institution in her mind: peeling walls and dried vomit on the communal sofa in the TV room. Loose-leaf pages taped to the hallway walls: crude drawings done in crayon and watercolor. The regiment of nurses was unrelenting. They were everywhere. And then that breaking point—that key point in time when she felt like she suddenly opened her eyes, really opened them, and realized where she was and why she was here. And thought, What if I never get out of here? What if I’m locked up in this place for the rest of my life? What if I die in here? And she thought maybe that was a very real possibility, that maybe a great number of these young girls in here would simply grow old and die while locked away like broken dolls in a trunk. And then what? What did they do with the bodies, the corpses? Did they chop them up and serve them on those steel lunch pallets, serve them with those rock-hard biscuits and half-frozen slaw? There was no shaking the initial suffocation. The rooms were too small, and two, sometimes three to a room. The beds were white and sterile. The sheets were tissue paper, the pillows hard. She’d seen girls cut themselves and bleed there, but that was usually the worst of it. No one died. At least, to her knowledge. Though there were screams—mostly at night, and muffled through the walls and echoing down the hallways. Screams of pain and the unrelenting sobs of the frightened. She’d been a sobber, too, on more than one occasion. Futile sobs: no one came running, no one listened, no one cared in that cold, cold place. And in many ways, it was very much like home.

Kelly thought: I remember Mouse and the two dead girls on the third floor. The thought shook her and initially made no sense.

“You look sad,” Gabriel said.

She looked at him, then looked down again, feigning interest in the creases of her hands, the label on the bottle of beer. “I was in there for three years,” she half-whispered. “And maybe that was what I needed, but three years? How do parents send their children away to places like that? Send them away and just forget about them? In three years, my parents never came, never stopped by to see if I was even still alive.”

“I’m sure they were just worried about you. Maybe it would have been too hard on them to come.”

“Well, it was hard on me not seeing them. Sometimes,” she said, her voice dropping down a notch as if they were about to share some intimate secret, “I think my parents didn’t even know I was alive. Like they’d forgotten all about me.” And she could see them in her mind’s eye, standing in that bright yellow office at the institution—both of them with their heads bowed, their eyes unable to focus on her. Her father had almost said something just before she was taken away down the hall, but in the end words had proven too difficult for him. And then they were gone.

She could feel herself on the verge of tears. Coward, she thought.

“I’m sorry,” Gabriel said. “I’m sorry it was that bad for you.”

“I wonder if they were the reason I broke down when I was fifteen,” she said. It was a matter-of-fact statement, resonating with the quality of a well-worked notion, although this was truly the first time such a thought had ever occurred to her.

“Why?” Gabriel said. “What could they have done?”

“Maybe nothing,” she said, “and maybe that was all it took. Maybe their absence as parents caused that breakdown.”

There was a long silence that followed. Then Gabriel said, “You’re thinking of your sister?”

“I am.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Just that it’s odd how she’s in a bad place right now too. Right in the middle of her childhood.”

“Right at the age of fifteen,” Gabriel added. “Just like you.”

“Fifteen,” she muttered. The corresponding ages hadn’t occurred to her before.

“But it’s something different with Becky,” Gabriel said. “I mean, the poor thing was attacked and nearly…” He trailed off, sparing Kelly’s feelings. “Maybe there’s something more there and you’re just using the similar events of both your lives to cover up what’s really the problem.”

“So what’s really the problem?”

“Maybe,” he said, “you feel bad for leaving your family behind. Maybe you feel bad for leaving Becky behind.”

The concept was nothing new—in fact, she’d thought it herself several times—but Gabriel’s words struck her like a hammer whacking a gong nonetheless. She’d just needed to hear someone else say it.

“I think maybe you’re right,” she said. “So how do I fix that? How do I make up for lost time and fix those mistakes?”

For some reason, she anticipated some grand solution to come from Gabriel Farmer—something that would make everything all better and heal old wounds, erase the ugly scars.

“I don’t know,” was all he wound up saying.

Just as Kelly and Gabriel entered Gabriel’s tiny apartment, Detective Felix Raintree parked his sedan outside the police station. He wasn’t thinking about old wild-eyed Graham Rand; rather, he was silently observing the weather. It had gotten cold feverishly quick this year, and winter wasn’t even fully upon them. Lawns were already stiff with frost. Windows had been shut and locked weeks ago, heaters already pumping.

Going to be brutal this year, he thought to himself as he mounted the front steps of the station.

Inside, Annie Haas, the station’s dispatcher, sat at her desk with her face buried in a desk drawer, as if searching for something. Behind her on the desk was a small Philco radio from which Billie Holiday gently worked through “Solitude.” Annie, who normally communicated an air of pleasant contentment to those around her, looked frazzled and even a bit irritated. As Raintree approached her desk, she looked up sharply and nearly sighed with relief at the sight of the detective.

“Felix,” she said.

“What’s the matter? You look distraught.”

“Mr. Rand. He’s just been getting me so uptight and nervous, walking around the way he was.”

“Where is he?”

“I told him to wait in your office.”

“Sheriff?”

“He went home,” Annie said. Raintree had a distaste for Sheriff Alan Bannercon, a young fellow from Shitpoke, Kentucky who, the detective surmised, would probably have himself a difficult time if he ever had to distinguish his handgun from his nose-picking finger.

“And Sturgess?”

“Out on a call. Mr. Rand was quite adamant about speaking with you, Felix.”

“Rather,” Raintree mused. He slid off his overcoat and, standing on one foot, leaned over Annie’s desk to peer through the wire-mesh glass wall and into his own office. The shades were half-drawn. He could make out a flannel hunting jacket pacing back and forth from behind them.

Felix Raintree really had no problem with old Graham Rand—he was a lonely, keep-to-himself widower with an excruciatingly dull life and a severe imagination that compensated for such dullness. To date, and since the death of his wife three years ago, Graham Rand had professed to several members of the Caliban County Police Department that he’d seen the ghost of his dead wife roughly sixty-three times since her demise. Sometimes she was standing out in the yard, half-hidden behind a huddle of blue spruce; other times, he claimed to have opened the bathroom door only to find the poor dead woman using the toilet, or sponging herself in the bath. Or sometimes just standing there in the middle of the night at the foot of his bed. Usually Graham Rand made these claims while in his cups and seated on a bar stool at Rita’s; other times, he called the station and insisted someone be sent over immediately. Being the patient and good-natured soul that he was, Raintree usually found himself volunteering to drive out to the old Rand place. Soon, Graham Rand began asking for him by name.

Raintree knocked his boots against the wall, leaving splatters of melted frost on the linoleum. “Coffee on?” he called to Annie.

“I’ll put some on.”

“Don’t bother,” he said and entered his office.

Graham Rand was seventy-seven and looked twice that. He was as thin and as spindly as an uprooted weed. To Raintree, Rand’s face looked as if someone had untied some essential knot at the back of the old man’s head, allowing nearly eight decades of cheesecloth flesh to hang loose. He had the jowls of a junkyard bulldog and the head-works of a common house rodent that’d been cracked over the cranium one too many times with the business end of a broom.

Rand paused in midpace as Raintree entered the office, his hands frozen in a death-grip around his wool hunting cap. His granite-colored eyes were wide and obtrusive.

“Detective,” Rand said.

“Graham,” Raintree said, moving behind his desk and taking a seat. There was a sharp draft coming from a crack in the windowpane behind his head—he could feel it on the nape of his neck when he leaned back. “You could take a seat.”

“Thank you.” The old man dropped into the wooden chair on the other side of Raintree’s desk. So thin, he appeared to be swimming inside his hunting coat.

“Annie says you had some trouble up in the woods today?”

“Oh, yes.” He was fidgeting and looked uncertain where to begin. “I was out most of the day. Collecting box-traps. It sometimes takes a while, having to stick them way out past the yard—”

“I’ve told you about trapping squirrels, Graham.”

“They get into my shed, tear apart the birdseed, tear apart the fertilizer. Damn things already gnawed the life out of my spark-plug wire on my mower…”

“What happened?”

“One of them varmints chewed right through the wire.”

“No,” he said, “what happened today in the woods?”

“Oh.” His eyes were red and shifty and Raintree guessed the man had been drinking. “Well, it was just starting to get dark—sun was just slipping through the mountains out west, could see it through the trees—and I’m out collecting the last of the box-traps when I heard something. Sounded like someone laughing. Well, I stood stark still and started looking around—you know how I don’t cotton to folks trespassing, and I own that whole lot right until that valley begins, and then it belongs to Mr. Kellow…”

“Someone laughing?”

“Yes, sir. And it sounded close by, but I didn’t see nobody when I looked up. But like I said, it was getting dark and things in the woods tend to look funny in the dark.”

Raintree leaned forward in his chair. He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand, working the cold out of it.

“Anyhow, I shout out, ‘Who’s there?’ but no one answers, so I think maybe it was an owl or whippoorwill or something and I start heading back home. And then I stop because I saw something on the ground.”

In one quick motion—quite agile for such an old man—Rand pulled open the snaps of his jacket with his left hand and dove into the jacket’s lining with his right. In that instant, Raintree had time to think, Dear God, I think the old coot is actually going to pull out a gun and shoot me. But Rand didn’t pull out a gun. What he pulled out was a wool hunting cap, nearly identical to the one he’d been wringing through his hands just moments before, except this one was green, not red.

Rand slammed the cap down on Raintree’s desk. “I found this,” he said with as much conviction as someone who’d just presented incontestable evidence that there was life on Mars.

“A hunting cap,” Raintree said.

“A hunting cap belonging to one of them,” Rand said, and pulled back the inner lining of the cap, exposing the brand tag. Two initials were written on the tag in permanent marker: J.M.

“Them?” Raintree said.

“One of them hunters that disappeared,” Rand said, now with some agitation. “One of them fellas was named Justin McCullum, am I right, sir?”

“Shoot,” Raintree said, reaching out and grabbing the cap from the old man’s gnarled fingers. “You playing some kind of head-game with me, Graham? That’s serious business with those hunters, you know…”

“No games, Detective, no way.” He thrust a finger at the hunting cap. “Sure as shade, that cap belonged to one of them disappeared hunters, I’ll bet any amount of money on it. I read the names in the papers last month when everyone was out looking for them and I know one of those names was Justin McCullum, know it just like I know my own shoe size. I’m right, yes?”

Raintree sighed. The cap was still damp from having been out in the woods—presumably for a month, if the old man’s story was authentic. “Justin McCullum,” he acknowledged, “yes, one of the hunters. You found this where? Could you take me back to the spot where you found it?”

The old man’s face grew dark. Jesus save the world, his eyes just wouldn’t stop.

You’re pumped up a good one there, pal, Raintree thought.

“I ain’t going back.” Rand’s voice suddenly sounded very small.

“And why is that?”

“I can tell you where I found it, right down to this rock and that tree, but I ain’t going back in those woods. Not now, not tonight and in the dark.”

“Why not, Graham?”

“That cap,” Rand said, and now he was nearly whispering, “ain’t the only thing I found out there tonight.”

Graham Rand had become a small, helpless child before Raintree’s eyes. He watched him—watched his eyes, really, those crazy and rolling eyes—regress until there was no sense behind them. Only fear. Basic, animal fear—like the unencumbered fear of small children.

“What else did you see out there tonight?” Without realizing, Raintree’s own voice came out in a whisper.

“A man,” Rand said.

“A man.”

“I think it was a man. It was dark. A man…or a boy. It was male.”

“This is the person you heard laugh?”

“Oh, I’m certain of it.”

“Did you recognize this man?”

“No, sir.”

“It was too dark?”

“Well, too dark…but not just the dark, you know what I mean?”

“I don’t think I do.”

“I didn’t recognize him because…well, Detective…he didn’t seem like no man I’d ever seen before.”

“A stranger? Not someone from town?”

“Not someone from…” Rand’s rheumy eyes narrowed. He chose his words. “Not someone real, Detective. At least, not someone I’d ever imagine seeing in town. Or in any other town anywhere else for that matter.”

“I’m not following you, Graham.”

“Don’t think it’s nonsense—”

“I didn’t say that.”

“All right.”

“Just explain to me who—explain to me what you saw tonight.”

Rand worked his livery lips together, created a slightly irritating clicking sound. His hands had gone back to torturing his own hunting cap. “I caught him out of the corner of my eye just as I was heading back to the house. He was running, moving fast, and half-hidden behind some trees. He was deeper in the woods, an’ toward the northeast where the woods was already grown dark. But I saw him and he saw me, too—I’m pretty certain of that—and I think he wanted me to see him.”

“Why did you say he was like no other person you’d ever imagine seeing?” Raintree asked. “I don’t understand that part, Graham.”

“I was afraid,” Rand said frankly, unashamed. “It was like a warning came with him, maybe some warning that followed him in the air, I don’t know. But there was something there, sure as I’m sitting right here in front of you. Something. Just something, Detective.”

“Could you describe him? What was he wearing?”

To the detective’s astonishment, Graham Rand let out a small chuckle. But it was a nervous chuckle. Rand was still that child sitting before him. “That’s the other strange thing,” the old man said. “He wasn’t wearing no clothes.”

Raintree blinked. “He was naked?”

“As a jay bird, at least from what I could tell.” Rand swallowed a lump of spit that, from his expression, apparently felt like a golf ball going down. “And his skin was white, like snow. Or like—you know, when a dead body’s been laying around? Just white. Like no skin I’d ever seen before in my life. Not on anything alive, anyway.”

“Like snow,” Raintree repeated. If it wasn’t for the hunting cap, Raintree would have smiled at the story, patted the old man on the back, and bought him a cup of coffee. But that cap—J.M.—was here, dampening the Xeroxed papers that it rested upon. Smelling of cedar and winter and, faintly, soil. There was no denying the cap. Also, there was the fact that this strange man—this strange naked man—had frightened this poor old fellow enough to keep him out of the woods. And Graham Rand loved the woods. It was all he had.

“Ain’t making this up, Detective,” Rand said, mistaking Raintree’s silence for disbelief.

“Did this person just disappear?”

“Ran off into the woods. I said it was dark.”

“What direction?”

“Northeast, just like I said.”

“And he looked at you?”

“Yes, sir. Saw him turn his head as he ran. It was quick and I suppose if my eyes weren’t as good as they are—twenty-twenty, you know, all my life—then I wouldn’t have even noticed. But I noticed, all right. And then he just took off deeper into the woods.”

“What did he look like?”

“Not sure. Face was…I don’t know…kinda smeary.”

“Smeary?”

“Hard to see.”

“Did you try and make any further contact with him? Call out after him?”

“No way on God’s green Earth. Had no mind to whatsoever. Let ’im go.”

“No mind,” Raintree said. There was a tapping noise to his right. He looked down and saw that he was drumming his fingers on the top of the desk. “If you didn’t get a good look at him, Graham, how do you know he was male?”

“Because,” Rand said with the unimpassioned simplicity of old men, “a man can tell another man. It’s a simple as that. We’re all animals, Detective.”

Yes, Raintree thought, looking back down at the initials printed on the label of the hunting cap, we’re all animals indeed.

Five minutes later, Graham Rand was seated in the passenger seat of Raintree’s sedan as the detective maneuvered the vehicle through the darkened, wooded back roads of Spires. The moon was full in the sky, passing behind the occasional coal-colored cloud.

“The spot ain’t far from my home,” Rand said. He was sitting on the edge of the passenger seat, straining the seat belt. His fingers, thick and fumbling, wrestled with each other. “I’ll point out where I saw him, but I ain’t going back into those woods. You can take me directly home, thank you.”

Graham Rand lived in a clapboard ranch just off North Town Road. The tiny house was obscured on three of its four sides by the massive expanse of woodland that stretched all the way beyond the Adirondack Mountains and as far north as Canada. From Rand’s house, over and above the forestry, it was easy to make out the brooding profile of the Kellow Compound nestled on its hill on the other side of the valley. Deep Valley, as it was called by some of the locals, separated the Kellow place from Graham Rand’s home—and the rest of Spires, for that matter. A network of vein-like brooks and streams wove throughout the canyon in every imaginable direction in Deep Valley and, in some places, the forestry was so impenetrable, even the most experienced hunter knew to steer clear of the area.

North Town Road turned to dirt and gravel, now covered in a film of frost, and Raintree slowed the sedan down to a manageable speed. The car slowly drifted by Graham Rand’s little house.

“Just a little further up,” the old man said to Raintree. He was pointing at the windshield. “Just a little. On your left now…here…up here…”

“Here?”

“Stop.”

Raintree stopped the car, clicked it into PARK, left the engine running. “You want to show me exactly?”

“Ain’t moving,” Rand said, shaking his head. “It’s just there. You’ll see my traps. I dropped them and didn’t pick them up. Go on, you’ll see them. That’s where I was standing.” He shifted his index finger and pointed due north. “And that direction—that’s where I saw the fellow. He moved deeper into the woods that way.”

Now, peering through the windshield, Raintree could see the silhouette of the Kellow Compound on the hill in the distance.

“All right,” Raintree said, grabbing his flashlight from the back seat. “I’ll just be a minute, I’m going to have a look around. You wait here, then I’ll take you home.”

“Be careful, Detective.”

It was freezing outside the car. Raintree shuddered against the heavy wind, pulled his coat close to his body, and stepped across the dirt road. His shoes crunched on the frozen earth. He clicked on the flashlight and worked it around the perimeter of the woods. The old man’s story was certainly peculiar, but not uncharacteristically peculiar; old Graham Rand had told some whoppers in his time, and naked albinos weren’t the craziest. However, he didn’t believe the old man was lying this time. Maybe a bit confused with what he saw, but not lying.

Is it possible that the old man actually saw one of those missing hunters, that maybe he saw Justin McCullum himself? he wondered. That hat he found—that could certainly belong to McCullum, those could certainly be his initials…but running around naked in the woods? No, that doesn’t make any sense at all.

Raintree jumped, nearly dropping his flashlight, the second the sound of the car horn pierced the night. Shaken, he spun around to see Rand poking his pigeon-faced head out the window at him.

“Graham!”

“Would you mind gathering up the traps for me, Detective?”

“Be quiet!”

Regaining his composure, Raintree turned and stepped into the forest.

A little jumpy, are we? a small voice said from the back of his head. Maybe just a little bit frightened?

No—he wasn’t frightened. There was nothing to be afraid of. Just a few missing hunters and an injured young girl.

He walked through the woods, side-stepping the interlocking arms of impassable vegetation, his booted feet crunching on the frozen dead leaves. The flashlight’s beam only played a small distance ahead of him. The woods beyond the beam was dark, like a black curtain drawn across that part of the world. Again, he thought of the hunters. They’d gotten a call about them just over a month ago, from one of the wives of the three men: they’d gone hunting for the afternoon, and had not returned the following day. Alan Bannercon had taken the call and had calmed the woman, but did not bother to put anyone on the case (hadn’t even referred to it as a “case” until a good two days later when commotion befell the station in a hailstorm of frantic wives and sobbing, grub-faced children), having prematurely written the situation off as an instance of Three Men and Some Booze and Guns Out on a Friday Night. But Bannercon had been wrong—those hunters had not just been out having a good time. They’d disappeared. And soon, Bannercon had the entire Caliban County Police Department searching the immense timberland for any trace of the three hunters. Helicopter sweeps, scent-trailing canines—only to turn up not even a single clue as to the hunters’ disappearance. And now old Graham Rand finds a hunting cap? A hunting cap with the initials J.M. printed in marker on the tag? Maybe it was some kind of joke after all…

Raintree’s foot slammed into something solid and he muttered under his breath. He focused the flashlight beam on the object and saw that it was one of Graham Rand’s squirrel traps. It was on its side, its wire-mesh hinged doors flung open.

Old Mr. Rand dropped you and ran in one heck of a hurry, Raintree thought, grinning without humor. This is ridiculous. There is no one here.

He bent and scooped up the trap. Something white and plastic was beneath the trap, half-hidden under some leaves. With one hand (the tips of his fingers already starting to go numb), he reached down and brushed the leaves aside. The white, plastic thing was a fork, three of its four tines broken off. Nothing. Garbage.

He found a few more box-traps deeper in the woods and gathered them up before turning around and heading back to the car. He hadn’t expected to find anything, anyway—and now it seemed too evident to him that Rand, that lonely old bastard, could have simply written those initial inside one of his own hunting caps and brought it down to the station. In fact, if he had to bet, he’d say the initialed hunting cap was probably the same exact size as the one the old fool now had perched on his head.

Christ…

He tossed the box-traps in the back of the car and slid back behind the wheel.

“Well?” Rand’s eyes were like saucers.

“Well,” Raintree repeated in his way, “you left those rusted box-traps back there in the woods, Graham, left them all just lying on the ground.”

“Forget the traps, what did you see?”

“I didn’t see anything. Just traps—traps I told you to keep out of these woods, remember?”

“I said forget the traps!” the old man barked. He suddenly became very nervous, his eyes darting along the length of the windshield and out into the night. Great blue veins surfaced and throbbed at his temples. His skin looked tissue paper-thin. “Detective, what did you see?”

Taking a deep breath, slowly counting backwards in his head (this was a calming stunt he’d mastered after several confrontations with the disagreeable Sheriff Bannercon), Raintree said, “Graham, I didn’t see anyone out there. The place is pitch black. And cold. Maybe you saw someone there and maybe you just think you did, but whatever the case, there is no one there now. I promise you.”

Rand’s eyes did not accept the detective’s promise; they continued to dance across the dark scenery beyond the windshield, searching.

“I’ll take you home now,” Raintree said. He threw the car into reverse, executed a two-point turn on the narrow road, and headed back down toward the old man’s house.

When he stopped and turned to look at Rand, he saw the man was shaking violently. “You’re cold?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll warm up inside. Do I need to keep these box-traps?”

“No, sir.”

“Keep them in your yard, Graham, and not scattered throughout North America, all right?”

“Yes, sir.”

The old man collected his traps from the back seat and walked silently up the shadowed walkway toward the front of his square little house. Raintree watched him go. Despite the situation, he harbored a sense of compassion for the old man. He’s lonely, he thought. He can’t help it.

Once Rand had passed through his front door, Raintree turned the sedan around and headed back to town along the dirt road. He tried the heater but, go figure, the darn thing hadn’t worked properly the past three winters, why should it start working now?

In his rearview, he caught a glimpse of the Kellow Compound in the distance. And for some reason, he suddenly felt as though the giant mansion was creeping up on him, that its image in the rearview mirror was a false one, a mock-image reflected only to fool him while the real thing was right now sneaking up on him in the woods—

He saw something dart through a thicket of trees off to his left, causing him to slam on the brakes. The tires growled along the road. He jerked his head in that direction and caught a fleeting human visage disappear into the darkness of the forest.

My sweet God…

It took all of thirty seconds for Raintree to regain composure and snap from his daze. His right hand went for the flashlight that now rested on the passenger seat while his left hand popped open the door. Again, freezing wind blew into the car, mercilessly needling his skin. The air was so bitterly cold, it caused his head to spin. He thought, This is what it is like at the top of a mountain.

He hopped from the car and hustled in the direction of the figure, now completely gone from his sight. He moved the flashlight to his left hand, his right unconsciously sliding to the handgun inside his pancake holster.

“Hello?” he shouted. His voice echoed back on the dry, cold wind. “This is the police. Step out, now.”

He crossed the dirt road and stepped into the woods for the second time that evening, only now his heart was pounding and the beam of the flashlight vibrated ahead of him like a giant epileptic lightning bug. Sweat blossomed on his forehead, immediately freezing in the cold night air.

“Hello?”

Except for his muted footfalls crunching on the dead, frozen earth, the woods were silent. He paused in midstride and swept the surrounding trees with the flashlight.

There was someone out here, all right, someone for certain. Some white figure, just like Graham Rand said…

But the thought of spotting Rand’s naked ghost-man just minutes after convincing Rand himself that no such person existed seemed way too economical. It was impossibly—

A flutter: a materialized image somewhere in the darkness ahead of him. Like flailing arms. He was too slow with the flashlight beam, just barely missing the figure—yet he could hear it now, bounding through the forest. The abecedarian gait of a human being. He’d grown up in these woods and was certain of the sound—the sound of a human being, a man, running through the woods.

“Police! Police!”

Raintree hopped a deadfall and proceeded after the man, moving faster, although he could no longer see the figure. Arms up as protection against the whipping tree limbs, the cop ran awkwardly and without certitude, his subconscious mind already beginning to doubt a positive outcome to this situation. It was an inbred knowledge, akin to Graham Rand’s proclamation that he could tell a man was a man because he could just feel it. Instinctual. It was the basic, animalistic sensation of unavoidable doom. And it was now mere seconds away.

Out of breath and vanquished, Felix Raintree paused and leaned his great weight against a tree, his head back, his teeth chattering in the frigid air despite the sweat he’d managed to work up. He brought his flashlight down. The beam trickled over his boots. His right hand slowly slid away from his holster and to his right side, where a burning stitch had suddenly materialized.

Just a few feet ahead of him, the woods seemed to come alive. It wasn’t something he saw—not immediately, anyway—but, rather, something he felt—felt it like a white-hot pulse at the center of every cell, every fiber in his body. A sense of thereness, of an empty space suddenly and completely filled.

And then he saw the figure, half hidden behind a stand of firs.

Out of breath, he managed, “Step out. Sir. Caliban County…Police…please…step out where I can…”

Felix Raintree’s words caught in his throat.

A moment later, he was screaming.

A moment after that, he was dead.

Part Two

Figures Unseen

Chapter Fourteen

Carlos Mendes thought of blood. He thought of it when he looked at food, when he looked at alcohol, when he looked at rain washing against his bedroom windows. Mostly, he thought about blood when he looked at his wife.

He’d never been a paranoid man. And, despite his family’s strong proclivity toward the belief in the supernatural, he’d never truly been a superstitious man. Such beliefs were erroneous and without foundation, and he was a doctor—someone who’d surrendered such beliefs the moment he took his professional oath. There was nothing to be afraid of in that make-believe world of fairies and goblins and trolls; it was only once you started fearing that make-believe world was there a cause for worry. It became dangerous when you started to believe in such things.

Yet, the blood…

He knew he was imagining it, that it was all in his head, but he couldn’t shake it. It was less a vision (or a series of visions) than a version of his own personal warning. Warning him of impending doom.

He’d look at Marie and think, What’s going on inside you, my sweet? What’s going on inside your body that is making me so paranoid, so frightened? What was it that old Nellie Worthridge saw that I can’t? Can you tell me?

He’d stare at Marie’s hands and would suddenly find himself acutely aware of the blood that coursed through her veins. Or he’d watch her eat, knowing that the food would turn to blood, that it would become her blood…and then it would become the baby’s blood. Because they were now one thing, one creature, living off the same blood, the same food. Or worse—that they actually were two separate entities entirely, and that the little life inside Marie was only using his wife as an incubator, prepared to burst out once it was fully formed and ready to claw and scratch and survive on the outside. He would think of his aunt’s stories of the Jersey Devil, that hoofed, horse-faced child-monster, and he would wake up in the middle of the night with a scream caught in his throat. And Marie? She didn’t even notice. Like any woman in the throes of procreation, she had her good days and her bad days. Yet even on her bad days, she never exhibited any signs that anything was wrong.

One evening, Mendes was awakened by Marie using the toilet in the small bathroom off their bedroom. His eyes flipped open and he darted toward the half-closed bathroom door in his underwear. There was already a picture in his head: Marie, projected onto a huge screen in a darkened theater, her body covered in blood, her eyes wide and frightened and staring. On the floor between her thighs was this purple, vein-riddled expulsion that moved on its own, that was sightless and limbless yet still desperate to pull itself across the cold tile floor of the bathroom and away from the womb that had birthed it. Baby, was all he could think. Baby.

But when he entered the bathroom, Marie was standing at the sink, washing her hands. The sight of her husband swinging the door open gave her a start.

“Carlito,” she breathed.

He was immediately embarrassed. “I’m sorry.”

“These bad dreams have got to stop.”

“I’ll be okay.”

“No,” she said. “Let me take care of you. It’s not your job to always be the one taking care of someone else.”

“It’s not a big deal. Can’t even remember what it was about.” But that image still lingered behind his eyelids—his wife’s blank stare beneath the warming lights of the bathroom, blood congealing in her hair, her eyelashes…and that indescribable thing slinking across the floor, leaving behind a snail-trail of pink membrane…

Other nights, when he couldn’t sleep, he found himself sitting in his study with the lights turned out, listening to Nellie Worthridge’s voice on his tape recorder over and over again.

He managed to convince Marie to go with him to Doctor Chalmers’s office for a full examination, despite her insistence that she felt fine. When Bruce Chalmers questioned the reason for Mendes’s concern, Mendes did not know exactly how to respond.

Marie said, “He’s been having nightmares.”

Chalmers laughed in his deep-belly way. “You’re about to be a father, Carlos,” Chalmers said. “I’ll grant you some nervousness. But don’t overdo it. You should be calm, like Marie here.”

“She’s a tough one, all right,” he said, smiling at his wife. But all he could see was blood. “I’m very proud of her.”

“She’s doing great,” Chalmers agreed. He adjusted two suctions on the side of Marie’s belly and clicked on a small machine mounted on the wall. The sound of a washing machine heard from some great distance away filled the room. “You hear that? There’s your baby’s heartbeat.”

“Oh,” Marie managed, a loss for words. “Oh-oh-oh…”

“It’s fast,” Mendes said.

“It’s perfectly normal,” Chalmers assured him.

“It sounds fast,” Mendes repeated. Chalmers gave him a sideways glance.

The examination lasted roughly one hour, after which Bruce Chalmers assured the couple that he could find no cause for alarm, and that everything was fine. “You’re like a clock, Marie,” Chalmers told her. “Everything’s running on time.”

“Maybe poor Carlito can sleep now,” she joked.

Chalmers laughed. “Maybe. What do you think, Carlito?” he said, causing Marie to giggle at Chalmers’s use of her husband’s pet-name.

“I think I’m fine,” he told them both. Then as an afterthought: “Could you tell us what the baby’s sex is at this point?”

“No!” Marie nearly shouted. “No, Carlito, we agreed, remember?”

“I know, I’m just curious, sweetheart.”

“I could tell you, yes,” Chalmers said. “If you wanted to know…”

“No,” Marie insisted, “we don’t.”

In the hallway, as his wife filled out medical papers, Mendes thought, If I knew the sex of the baby and the baby turned out to be a girl, I could rest easy. Then I’d know what Nellie Worthridge said was just a bunch of nonsense and I could rest easy. If only I knew…

A hand fell on his shoulder. He looked into the smiling face of Bruce Chalmers. “Can we talk just for a minute?”

“All right.”

Mendes followed Chalmers down the hallway. They paused just outside the men’s room. Chalmers tapped a pen against his left index finger as he spoke.

“Carlos, what’s bothering you?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

“It’s something. Tell me. You’re having trouble sleeping? You’re worried about the baby? Well, that’s normal. But you can tell me if it’s something else, you know. Is it something else?”

Yes, Doctor, I’m afraid that our baby will be born dead just like the old crippled woman predicted, and I’m also afraid of these dreams I’ve been having where my wife gives birth to a bloody, pulsating mutant.

“There’s nothing,” he told Chalmers. “Just sleep. I’ve been working too hard lately.”

Chalmers nodded. “I know how it is downtown. You should take some time off, relax, spend it with your family. You’re going to be a father soon, Carlos. You’re about to face a lifetime of difficulties, but also a lifetime of some pretty great stuff too. You work too hard, Carlos. You always have. You need to take some time for yourself.”

“I know.”

“This isn’t just lip service.”

“Yeah, I know. You’re right.”

“I am. Listen to me, then, all right? Do me a favor here? It’s not doing Marie any good for you to be working yourself into the ground. Now, if you want, I can give you something for those nightmares. I can have you sleeping through the night like a baby, if you’ll pardon the pun.”

He shook his head. “No, I’m good.”

“Suit yourself. But my primary concern here is Marie and that baby. So I don’t want you driving that pretty little wife of yours crazy.”

“You’re right,” he said, suddenly anxious to get home. “Thank you.”

When they arrived home, Mendes’s mother had prepared a stew for them. “Everything is good?” she asked her son.

“Good, Mamma. The baby’s fine.”

“This is good,” his mother said, hobbling around the table and taking a seat by the window. Frost had formed on the pane. “And you?”

“Me?”

“Why you’re not sleeping.”

“Mamma,” he said, “Bruce Chalmers is an obstetrician…”

“He said Carlito is working too hard, Mamma,” Marie said while filling their bowls with stew.

“This I knew,” his mother said. She hooked a crooked finger in his direction. “You see what I’ve been saying? Maybe you don’t listen to your mother, Carlos, but maybe now you listen to a doctor, eh?”

“I’m all right,” he insisted. It had become his own personal litany.

“All this work is not for good,” his mother continued. “You work so hard and you forget to remember the important things. You have the stress.”

“I’m not forgetting anything, Mamma.”

“Let’s eat,” Marie said.

He took Bruce Chalmers’s advice and took a few days off—his first since he began working at NYU Downtown. He spent the first day lounging around the house, reading books, and fixing the busted lock on the bathroom door. When night came and Marie went to soak herself in a warm bath, he crept out onto the back porch with a cigar and suffered the cold. But it was all a show. His absence from the hospital did not ease his tension any; in fact, it only seemed to add an extra layer of apprehension to his condition. Without work, he could think of nothing but Marie and the baby. And no amount of time off was going to make him forget about Nellie Worthridge and what she said.

After his wife and his mother had gone to bed, Mendes once again found himself sitting in the dark study with his hand-held tape recorder on his lap. By now, he’d memorized the old woman’s voice all the way down to her most trivial inflection. And continuing to listen to the recording was not helping him any; rather, it was like a hidden stash to a drug addict: as long as it was in the house, he would have his nightly fix.

And what if Marie sneaks down here one night and catches me listening to it? What if she hears what the old woman says on the tape? Then what? How do I explain it? And moreover, how do I prevent her from becoming just as frightened as I am?

It would feel good to have someone to share the recording with, just so he didn’t have to feel so alone. But he couldn’t bring Marie into it. That wasn’t fair.

Be a man, he thought, and pressed the PLAY button on the recorder.

Static. Silence. Nothing.

He leaned back in his chair toward the window and examined the tape in the moonlight. It was rewound—he could see that—yet it did not play. He tried it a second time, a third time, but there was still nothing.

Partially angry and partially relieved, he assumed he must have carelessly recorded over the tape the last time he’d listened to it.

He’d flushed his own stash.

Despite Dr. Bruce Chalmers’s assurance that both Marie and the baby were in perfect health, Mendes’s nightmares did not ease up.

He found himself in a darkened hallway that smelled vaguely of vinegar. The walls were skewed at uncertain angles, rippling in places, visibly moving, undulating. But it was too dark to see. He took a step closer to one of the walls (felt his foot sink an inch into the quicksand floor) and brought his hand up to the wall to feel for a light switch. The tips of his fingers sank into the fleshy membrane that was the wall, and he could feel a cool menthol liquid coursing down his arm to the crook of his elbow. Disgusted, he quickly withdrew his hand.

There was a dull red light up ahead, but the abstract hallway turned and he could only make out the light’s reflection on the opposite wall. In that light, the consistency of the wall itself resembled the surface of a human tongue…as if he were trapped in some giant’s throat.

He took several dreamlike steps toward the light and the bend in the hallway. With each step, he could feel his bare feet sinking into the moist, pappy surface of the hallway, chilling him. The deeper he moved down the winding, fleshly corridor, the thicker the air grew—wet and heady and stinging his eyes. The reflection of the light on the wall grew more and more intense as he maneuvered through each curve of the hallway, and he thought, This is not a hallway—this is a tunnel.

Up ahead, somewhere in that red light, he could hear a baby crying. It sounded close.

He started to run, but the more effort he put into his movements, the more the ground tried to swallow his feet. Yet he was almost there, almost in the light, almost right there with that baby…

Julian!

A fierce convulsion sent the floor heaving toward the ceiling, sent the walls in on themselves, and he heard himself scream. The intensity of the red light flared to an almost fiery brilliance, then resumed its original muted pulse. A second convulsion rocked him off his feet and sent him head-first onto the ground. Slick moisture splashed his face. On his stomach with his hands splayed out in front of him, bare feet dragging behind, a third convulsion sent him sliding down the tunnel toward the red light. His splayed hands and spread fingers kicked up a gelatinous spray that pattered against his face as he slid.

The infant’s crying grew steadily louder.

He felt himself lose momentum and crash—no, splash—against one of the living walls before tumbling further down the tunnel, and then there he was, at the epicenter of this giant, yet not in the throat, not in the mouth, but in the life force, in the womb, in the center of creation.

The baby and the light were the same creature—not tiny and helpless, but indefinably enormous and alive, each heartbeat like the pounding of a steel drum, like the resonant hum of a live electrical wire…

Julian! Julian!

It was aglow and too bright to stare at. A cloth-like membrane webbing encased it, stretching taut with each spastic movement of the infant creature inside. And it was still crying—mewling—with each exhale of air from its incomplete lungs sending vibrating ripples along the skin of the membrane. It was just so enormous, this titanic infant-creature. Some monster…

This is not a baby, he thought, on the verge of screaming those very words. This is not a baby at all!

There was a blast of moist, stinging heat. A final convulsion caused the red light to burst into a stunning white flame, with the infant-creature’s silhouette directly in the center of that flame, and Mendes felt himself crushed by the mucus-lined walls of the tunnel and forcefully pulled from the womb—

(I am a violator here, this is sacred)

—and back in the direction he had come.

He shot up in bed covered in sweat and trembling with convulsions of his own.

The remaining two days off from the hospital were spent cultivating what he feared would soon turn into a full-fledged obsession. He found himself walking the streets by himself, or riding buses to nowhere in particular (or so he tried to convince himself), only to arrive outside Nellie Worthridge’s apartment building each time. He’d gotten her exact address from the hospital records, and although it hadn’t been his intention at the time to ever stop by Miss Worthridge’s complex, his mind had miraculously retained the building’s address as if he’d known on some subconscious level that it would be of some future importance.

In the cold, he found himself leaning against the outside of the building and staring up at its array of tinted windows. He watched traffic pull in and out of the Port Authority across the street and thought, Wouldn’t it be something to go in and buy a bus ticket to someplace different, someplace I’ve never been before? For once, just forgetting about everything that I know to be important and just shirking all responsibility. Mamma is right—I work too hard, and now it seems like I am going crazy too hard, as well.

He watched an exhaust-stained Peter Pan bus pull from the Authority and weave through the sluggish traffic of West 42nd Street. He watched arbitrary pedestrians scuttle like crayfish along the gray streets, most of them bundled against the premature cold. Willowy plumes of vapor blossomed from their mouths. Some of them rubbed their hands together to make friction.

Okay, a small voice in his head spoke up, now that you’re here, what are you going to do? Are you going to go inside and find Nellie Worthridge’s apartment and demand she explain how she knew the things she knew? Or will you stand out here and freeze your ass off?

“This is ridiculous,” he muttered—and maybe that was true, maybe he was getting carried away. After all, Nellie Worthridge hadn’t caused his bad dreams; his own overactive mind had caused them. That was all. He was the one to blame, not the old woman. And he knew that.

Still…she knew Julian’s name…and those horrible things she said…

And something else too—something about a dog.

We almost killed that fucking dog.

Yeah. Sure. Fine. Goddamn. But he felt like he was losing his mind.

He spent the remainder of the evening across the street from Nellie’s building in a stuffy coffee shop sipping a steaming cappuccino. When it became dark, the world outside grew alive with the neon lights of countless Chinese food restaurants and 24-hour delicatessens. Cars hurried home and taxis whipped by like greased pigs through fence slats. Windows glowed soft yellow in Nellie’s building across the street. Mendes wondered what window belonged to the old woman. Was she awake now? Asleep? What other secrets did she have?

His reflection stared back at him from the coffee shop window. This is stupid, he thought, ashamed. A young Puerto Rican fellow bumped the leg of his chair with a broom, mumbled something from the side of his mouth. He could smell fresh coffee brewing behind the counter.

It was nearly ten o’clock when he arrived home that evening. Marie was watching television by herself in the cramped little living room, a bowl of ice cream resting on her belly.

“Howdy, stranger,” she said.

“Mamma go to bed?”

“An hour ago. Where’ve you been?”

“Out and about. Library, mostly. And a movie.”

“What movie?”

He didn’t know any movies. “Some mushy romance,” he lied, hating himself for it.

“Oh,” she pouted, “I could have come.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think.”

“That’s all right. You know I hate the movies. I went shopping with Mamma.”

“Her leg’s okay?”

“Just a little sore today. What’s behind your back?”

He showed her what he carried in his hand: a plastic bag of tangerines.

“My favorite,” she said, smiling. “So then you missed me today after all?”

“All day,” he said, which was mostly the truth.

“That’s good. You look tired.”

“A little.”

“Go to bed then,” she told him.

“I think I will.”

“Hot bath first. It’ll feel good. Make your toes tingle.”

He smiled. “I don’t want my toes to tingle. I want to go to bed.”

“You’re very tired?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then no more bad dreams.”

“No,” he said. “Not tonight.”

“Goodnight, Carlito.”

“Goodnight.”

“Leave me the tangerines, sweet.”

He could hear his mother snoring soundly down the hallway. He crept into the bathroom at the end of the upstairs hallway and flicked on the light. For a long time he stared at his reflection in the mirror before undressing and going to bed.

He dreamt of going to Nellie Worthridge’s apartment building. Only in his dream he actually went inside the building, found a narrow staircase beneath a fire exit, and began to climb the risers. The stairwell was ill-lit and several times he checked over his shoulder for approaching unseen figures he was certain were there. After what seemed like a hundred flights of stairs, he reached a solid white door with the words CARRY-OUT SPECIAL and FREE DELIVERY written on it in neon lights. He pushed the door open and stepped into a darkened hallway with closed doors on either side of him. At the end of the hallway was what looked like a sliding subway door with a cartoon picture of Peter Pan on it. Only this Peter Pan seemed to be scowling, his eyes a deep crimson, his pointed ears more closely resembling horns. The crotch of Peter’s pants was saturated with blood, Carlos saw, and the lower half of Peter’s abdomen was swollen to a bulge.

Carlos Mendes walked down the hallway toward the sliding subway doors. Each closed door on either side of him also had words written on them, only in blood. OPEN 24 HOURS, said one. BUSES 5, 7, 9 TO UPTOWN, read a second. ABORTIONS HERE, exclaimed a third, OUR DRS WORK 4 U! As he walked, he could hear each door that he passed rattle and slowly creak open, could hear muffled footsteps pooling out onto the hallway carpet behind him. He didn’t turn to look, suddenly too afraid. There was a stink in the air, some offensive concoction—the warm, thick stink of fresh blood and hot urine and methane.

Ahead of him, the subway doors at the end of the hall slid open, splitting the obscene Peter Pan in half. A dull red luminescence pulsated from within. Something moved in the midst of that red light—something serpentine and stimulated, snake-like—and he nearly recoiled at the first glimpse of it.

A cluster of small hands at his back urged him forward.

To his left and right, more doors creaked open. Now they were opening faster than he was walking, and he was able to catch glimpses of them slowly opening from the corners of his eyes. There appeared to be children on the other sides of those doors—countless small children, still mostly cloaked in shadow, all curiously stepping out into the darkened hallway.

The tip of the snake-like entity within the red light inched just a bit outside the gaping subway doors. It was a tentacle, he saw, or some vein-riddled proboscis the thickness of a grown man’s wrist. He felt a scream creep up from his throat, threaten his lips…but he could make no sound.

More small children joined the gathering in the hallway. He felt added sets of tiny hands at the small of his back, his buttocks, even the backs of his legs. Pushing.

The tentacle bent and touched the hallway carpeting. It was dripping a reddish fluid too viscid to be blood. Like an enormous lethargic snake, the tentacle eased from left to right, left to right, probing its new surroundings and leaving a gelatinous webbing on the carpet. After a moment’s hesitation, the tentacle appeared to come to a decision—it began twisting toward him, the width of its body growing greater and greater as more of it withdrew from behind the subway doors.

It wasn’t a tentacle at all, he suddenly realized, feeling that quaking scream brewing up inside him again.

It was an umbilical cord.

Again the following day, he found himself standing outside Nellie Worthridge’s apartment complex. But this time he stood in the rain and knew he was more conspicuous. Knew too that he was one step closer to the edge of his mind than he had been yesterday. A young woman and her small child nearly ran into him while hurrying along the street just as the rain started. The woman shot him a what-are-you-doing-here? glance, which he turned away from, embarrassed.

I must look like a psychopath, he thought. Not for the first time, he wondered if he was going crazy, genuinely crazy. Was it possible Nellie hadn’t said anything at all? Even now, the tape of Nellie’s words—his only proof—had been mysteriously erased…

Or had those words even been there at all?

No, I’m not going crazy, not losing my mind. I know what I heard.

Again, he looked up at the apartment complex. In his head, he could clearly recall the telephone conversation he had had with the woman Nellie claimed she played bridge with on Wednesday nights. None of them had ever even heard of the old woman.

I didn’t dream that part up, did I? I didn’t just dream up a bunch of names that actually live in the city, one of whom lives in the building next door to the old woman, did I? No—that’s impossible.

A taxi sped by, dousing him in freezing rainwater.

At dinner, Marie was visibly distraught by her husband’s behavior, although she kept her disapproval to herself.

“You’re not eating,” his mother said from her own seat at the table. “You’re not hungry?”

“I had a late lunch, Mamma.”

“At the movies,” Marie said. There was unmistakable disapproval in her voice.

“I think it’s all this time off,” he said. “I think I get restless and don’t know what to do with myself.”

“Now with this work again,” his mother said, bringing up one hand. “This stress is why you cry out in your sleep last night?”

“What?” He looked from his mother to his wife. Marie only offered the most minimal of glances before turning her eyes toward her mashed potatoes. “I cried out in my sleep last night?” He forced a grin, desperate to make light of the situation. “Did Marie tell you that, Mamma?”

“I heard nothing,” Marie said flatly.

“I don’t need Marie to tell me,” his mother said, “I heard it with my own ears. You woke a poor woman up in the middle of the night! This is what your stress does to your tired old mama. Your Marie is just careful of your feelings, Carlito. You nearly woke the whole city.”

“I cried out in my sleep?” he asked his wife.

Marie only looked at him. “Eat your greens,” she said.

Later that night, with the rain already turned to sleet and whipping against the eaves, Mendes found himself in the kitchen with the telephone in one hand and Marie’s phone book opened to Bruce Chalmers’s home number in the other. After some consideration, he dialed.

“Hello?”

“Bruce,” he breathed, “it’s Carlos Mendes. I’m sorry to call you so late—”

“Is something wrong?”

“No,” he said. Then: “Yes. Christ, I don’t know.”

“Marie?”

“No, Marie’s fine. It’s me. That discussion we had…”

Bruce Chalmers sounded irritated. “You should have let me prescribe you some Zetran.”

“I think I just need to ask you a question, then I’ll be all right.”

“You’re starting to scare me here, Carlos.”

“I’ll be okay.”

The obstetrician sighed. “What is it?”

“The baby,” Carlos said. “I need to know the sex of the baby.”

“You and Marie agreed not to—”

“Marie still doesn’t want to know,” he said. “I do.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. For a brief moment, Mendes thought Bruce Chalmers had hung up on him. Then, with deep resignation, Chalmers’s voice again: “It’s a boy, Carlos. You’re going to have a son.”

Before Mendes’s eyes, the world abruptly went gray and grainy, as if he were no longer on the same dimensional plane as the rest of his surroundings. Objects right in front of him looked impossibly far away. The soft light over the kitchen sink suddenly seemed overly bright, nearly blinding. Even the sound of the sleet patting against the windows behind him sounded like someone dropping uncooked rice into a tin can.

Chalmers’s voice, equally distant: “Carlos? Carlos? What the hell is going on with you, man?”

“I’m here,” he said, forcing himself back into reality. He closed his eyes, no longer willing to look at the cruel world around him. “Just letting it all sink in. I’m going to be a father. I’m going to have a son.”

“Yeah,” Chalmers said, still a bit concerned. “Get that throwing arm in good shape, huh?”

“Right,” Mendes said, no longer hearing the other man’s words.

“Carlos—”

“Goodnight, Bruce.”

He hung up the phone and managed to catch himself in one of the kitchen chairs. He opened his eyes: looked at his hands, looked at the tabletop, looked at the two black windows frozen with sleet.

It’s a boy.

You’re going to have a son.

For the first time in his adult life, Doctor Carlos Mendes was terrified.

Chapter Fifteen

Felix Raintree’s sedan was discovered on North Town Road one day after the detective went missing, several hours after a heavy snowstorm swept through the valley. The car was uncovered by Sheriff Alan Bannercon of Caliban County—a young, southern officer who’d worked most his life in the backwater of Astroville, Kentucky before relocating to New York. Though none of his deputies appeared to have a problem with him, he knew there were some personnel, particularly from the District Attorney’s office, who did. Felix Raintree was one of them.

Bannercon found the car with its driver’s side door half open, the interior light off, the battery already dead. The entire vehicle was covered in snow; yet, there were no footprints in the fresh snow outside the car. Which was a bad sign. The absence of footprints meant Raintree’s vehicle had been abandoned some time ago.

This ain’t good.

Alan Bannercon thought of the missing hunters. It was not a passing consideration; rather, it hit him as if he’d seen a blaring neon sign, loud and clear, and it bothered him to make the connection so quickly. Associating Raintree with those hunters was like dooming the detective from the start. Three hunters mysteriously vanished last month…and now Alan Bannercon sat in his cruiser, staring at Raintree’s abandoned vehicle, with no impressions left behind in the snow. The car must have been there for hours, Bannercon understood, could have been there since last night.

He got out of his cruiser and carefully stepped around Raintree’s car, his eyes sweeping the ground for any sign of the missing detective, any footprint, a popped button from his shirt, a single loose thread. Peering inside the vehicle, he saw that the keys were still in the ignition, though the car had been turned off. Not a positive sign, those keys being there. He reached in and tried the headlights, found them to be dead (they were, in fact, already turned on), and backed away from the car. Looking over his shoulder, he cast a glance into the deepening woods behind him. Clumps of wet snow had already gathered in the branches of the fir trees, and the ground was sufficiently covered as well. Again, no footprints.

No shit, Bannercon thought. There are no footprints because he stepped away from his car before the snow ever started falling.

“Raintree!” His voice seemed to shake the trees. “Felix Raintree! Hello!”

Stepped away, he thought.

And what if Raintree didn’t step away at all? What if he’d been taken away?

But no, that was ridiculous. In Spires, everyone practically knew everyone else. Who would attack Felix Raintree? What in God’s name would be the reason? And would an attacker bother to shut off the car’s engine? No, it just didn’t make any sense. There had to be some other explanation for this, for Raintree leaving his car like this…

Of course, there was no explanation for the disappearance of those three hunters last month, either.

Cold, Bannercon hustled back to his cruiser and radioed the dispatcher.

For the next couple days, Kelly spent her time either with Gabriel Farmer or at her sister’s bedside. With Gabriel—Gabe, he liked to be called now—she felt a certain homey quality, a certain welcoming that she did not feel around her parents or inside the walls of her parents’ house. He was quiet and passive in his own sociable way, yet he seemed an attentive listener.

Though Becky still had not woken from unconsciousness, the young girl’s complexion gradually began to return to its normal color, and the bruises and scrapes that sheathed her body had started to fade. In the two weeks Kelly had been at the compound, she saw Becky’s doctor twice. He was an anticlimactic fellow with an enormous brow and quicksilver eyes which lingered just a second too long on the mouth of any person he watched talk. Both times, Kelly watched this Doctor Cavanaugh shuffle into the house, shake nonexistent rain off his overcoat, and nod deferentially at her parents (both of whom seemed not only accustomed to the small doctor’s aversion to conversation but more than willing to follow suit). In Becky’s bedroom, Doctor Cavanaugh huddled over Becky’s slumbering form like a troll looking to steal her breath. He carried with him a small leather satchel, and from it he produced a series of instruments with which he examined the sleeping girl. Cavanaugh checked her blood-pressure, her pupils, her respiration—all with the perfunctory efficiency of an electrical engineer. Kelly’s parents stood behind the little doctor the entire time, their eyes glazed, their faces slack and void of expression. It was like they were here because they knew they should be, not because they actually wanted to be, Kelly realized as she stood leaning in the bedroom doorway. And to her amazement, her parents didn’t ask the doctor a single question, didn’t express an ounce of concern. Their detachment from the situation infuriated Kelly. It evoked images of institutional Christmases where there would be a single wrapped gift at the foot of her bed—a gift from Glenda, she knew, despite what was written on the card; the meals in the enormous, sterile dining room where her parents sat like stone gargoyles at either end of the massive, hand-carved table. Even as a child she had wanted to stand up and scream at them, wanted to burst into a fit and start flinging silverware around the room—anything to break the monotony, and to generate some hint of emotional reaction from her parents.

“What’s going on?” she asked on Doctor Cavanaugh’s second visit. He looked up at her, neither startled nor expectedly, his eyes immense and swimming behind the lenses of his glasses. He stared at her with the curiosity of a caged bird. Her parents turned toward her as well, her mother’s lips pressed whitely together, her father practically staring straight through her.

“I’m sorry?” Cavanaugh said.

“What’s going on here?” she repeated. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Ma’am,” Cavanaugh began.

“This is Kelly, our other daughter,” her mother said, as if in apology.

“She’s still not awake,” Kelly said. “Why isn’t my sister awake yet?”

“Your sister’s in a coma,” Cavanaugh said.

“So what do we do?”

“We do nothing,” Cavanaugh said. “There’s nothing. We wait. She’ll awake when she’s ready.”

But that wasn’t good enough. Just looking at the girl lying there, her body so unreceptive, Kelly wanted to burst into tears. “What else do you know?”

“What else?” Cavanaugh repeated. “Ma’am, your sister is unconscious. She needs rest. That’s all we can give her—rest.”

“And why does everyone seem so damned satisfied with that?” she said. Without waiting for an answer, she turned and stormed out into the hallway.

I’m sorry, Becky. I can’t help but feel that I deserted you. And it’s true—I hadn’t really even thought of you in so long, and that’s not fair. Maybe I dreamed about you, but what good did that do? Look at you now.

Not for the first time, she tried to understand why her parents had ever bothered to have children. The gap between their ages could suggest that they’d both been unplanned (or at least Becky could have been, she supposed), but still…did it make any sense? She tried to summon the image of her parents making love and found it impossible to do. Their reservations were too great, their personal walls too high. It would be like two robots simulating copulation.

She rushed through the downstairs foyer and through the front door, stepping into several inches of snow. The icy wind attacked her out of nowhere. In an instant, her eyes watered and blurred. It took her several seconds before she realized she was sobbing.

It was something about this place—this house, this compound—that weakened her, drained her. She’d suspected this as a child or, rather, sensed it (it was something too great and too aesthetic to mold into linear thought at such a young age), and knew it all the more as an adult. There was that lingering suffocation about her—the sensation of tight arms wrapping themselves around her body and slowly squeezing out her life. And despite her fear of the institution, there had been some relief there as well when she’d gone away as a child, as if a small part of her had actually realized that she’d finally been pulled from the nightmare.

The loneliness and despair that had consumed her childhood suddenly rushed back to her in one thick, frozen wave, nearly knocking her to the ground. Sobbing, she skirted around the side of the house and traversed along the frozen ridge. From this standpoint, she could see clear across the snow-covered valley and straight out above the town of Spires in the distance. It’s snowing in autumn, she thought absently. It’s the middle of fall.

Again, the childhood image of her father sobbing in the darkened stairwell returned to her, clear as ever. She could see him perfectly in her mind’s eye—the way his massive shoulders hitched, the way he covered his face with one large, square hand. His other hand hung off his left knee where it trembled in midair. His back was toward her, enormous like God’s, like an expanse of blank canvas. She could even make out the swirls and corkscrews of his hair at the back of his head, peppered with gray and thinning at the crown. His cries were silent, which made them somehow more wretched, as if he were desperate to maintain some semblance of dignity even in the midst of such great despair. And what had happened, anyway? What had made him cry like that? She’d stood in the darkened stairwell watching him for so long, waves of emotion passing through her like colors in a spectrum. Confused. Frightened. Angry. Sad. She’d felt the need to console her father—the most basic human reaction—but she didn’t know how and didn’t even understand if such a thing were appropriate. Her parents hadn’t taught her love, hadn’t taught her kindness and compassion. Likewise, she’d never received it. Not from them, anyway.

She turned away from the view of the snow-covered valley, shivering. Arms wrapped tightly around her body, she turned back around the side of the house. She could feel her tears freezing to her cheeks. Her face burned. Falling snow gathered in her lashes.

Suddenly, she thought of blood. Specifically, of blood flowing down a tiny wooded brook.

Her body seemed to shut down and she couldn’t take another step. She turned her head sideways and stared at the woods.

“We almost killed that fucking dog,” she whispered, the words meaningless and hardly registering in her brain.

Droplets of blood pooling into the icy brook waters, swirling, changing colors, flowing downstream…

A conversation between strangers in her head:

—What did you do?

—I did it for you. Do you like it?

—You can’t do this.

—Do you like it?

—It’s bad! You have to stop!

—I did this all for you, Kelly. I made them this way. This is our own special little world here. This is like that story where the kids never grow up. This is your Never-Never Land, Kelly.

Her entire body began to tremble. She felt her knees give out, sending her body crashing to the snowy earth. The cold was tremendous. Her bladder suddenly moaned then exploded in a gush of burning urine; she faintly sensed its heat spilling from the crescent of her crotch and tracing down the legs of her jeans. It was like death, she thought, like dying, like suffering and dying in the cold.

Something moved behind the trees to her right and she just barely brought her head around in time to see it. Blurred through fresh tears, she could only make out a fleeting white form. She sensed a memory nearing the surface of her consciousness, almost there, almost there, yet still lost. In her throat, she could feel her breath coming in great whooping gasps and she suddenly feared she was near hyperventilation.

She felt herself roll over on her side, then onto her stomach, her face momentarily pressed into the snow. Her head filled with an image of blood pooling in a clear, running brook. She felt her arms extend themselves, her hands grope at the snow, at the frozen earth below. She dragged herself toward the slope of the hillside until she managed to regain control of her body and rise shakily to her feet. Unthinking, she propelled herself toward the sloping hillside and the dense forest below, her eyes fixed on the tangle of darkness between the branches of trees. Again, she caught the momentary flutter of movement beyond those branches, half eclipsed by protective shade, and her legs pumped her forward through the snow. Her wet crotch froze in the wind.

This is your Never-Never Land, Kelly, she thought.

Then, like a beacon, she saw it: a dull, throbbing red light deep inside the woods, partially inhibited by the tangled network of tree branches. Again, as she walked, her groin convulsed and her knees went weak. Fresh urine soaked her thighs.

“God,” she moaned, her voice impossibly alien. What was happening to her?

That pulsing red light up ahead—she could almost feel its warmth through the freezing air.

She stumbled down the hillside and crashed against a hedgerow at the crest of the forest. Her head rattled. Dazedly, she brought her hands up to touch the bark of the closest tree…and it felt like a dream, malleable and illusory.

Just a few feet ahead of her in the woods stood the dog with the injured front paw. It stood unmoving, its piercing blue eyes staring at her through the thicket. Its pelt was speckled with dried mud and frozen with clumps of snow. Some of the snow on the ground beneath it was stained a bright pink. It watched her unflinchingly, and there was thought behind its eyes, Kelly saw, genuine contemplation that was so human it was almost frightening.

She was not surprised when the image of the wounded dog faded before her eyes. Somehow, she’d known it was only a ghost, a phantom, a vapor. The blood-pink snow returned to white. Yet there was something else, something—

The red light had vanished. And on the heels of this realization came a harsh sense of rejection, of refusal, that she could not even begin to comprehend.

Still—something was moving in the woods.

“Help me…” she managed. Her voice was weak, hardly a whisper.

Something was in the woods. Something was coming for her.

Her mind—reeling with nonsense:

(dead animals line the walkway and there is blood trickling into the stream I have a cut on my forehead and the blood stings my eyes there are tiny skeletons on the staircase and where did the staircase come from and there is a pile of garbage hidden in the corner and a pile of old food wrappers that smell like grease and broken plastic forks some of them covered in blood and there is a smell here a smell like dead things and some blood so much blood)

She managed to stumble backward along the wooded slope, her eyes still intent on catching a glimpse of whomever or whatever was quickly approaching. Desperately, she tried to get up, but her legs felt like pipe cleaners and her knees refused to lock. In one unavailing attempt at salvation, she pitched herself backward, arms pin-wheeling wildly, and felt herself slam into the ground, causing her teeth to rattle in her head.

(a glowing red light and trickling blood and oh my god we almost killed that fucking dog and white white white hands coming around me and COLD—)

What’s happening to me? What the hell is going on?

She promised herself that this wasn’t really happening, that it was all some elaborate hallucination.

The snow between her splayed legs was stained yellow.

Kelly’s breath seized in her throat, her vision dispersed into a multitude of sand-like granules, and an unforgiving darkness quickly claimed her.

She never felt her head hit the ground.

Chapter Sixteen

A sudden and ferocious ice storm assaulted Manhattan one evening, coinciding with the arrival of the season’s first full moon. The storm lasted nearly two hours. It struck with unpredictable solemnity, like a fist striking a hard surface, and slowly diminished to a wet rush of sleet and freezing rain once night had completely claimed the city. Unprepared, most pedestrians gathered inside the closest places of refuge. Others attempted to summon cabs to no avail.

Seconds after the storm hit, a throng of soaked people rushed at the main entranceway of Macy’s department store. In the commotion, it would later be discovered that a young girl with a heart condition collapsed and died, her body carried along on a wave of frantic civilians for several yards before someone acknowledged her lifelessness.

At the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street, two suited businessmen accidentally slammed their cars into one another. In a fit of rage hardly lessened by the violent storm, both men hopped from their vehicles, their faces as red as twin stoplights, their eyes large and disbelieving.

“What is it with you friggin’ maniacs?” one of the men shouted.

“You goddamn—” began the second, the rest of his words muffled by a sharp right hook thrown by the first man. Before the brawl was over, both men would be bumped and bruised, their cars still just as dented.

Carlos Mendes watched the storm die down from his office window at the hospital. He’d been off the floor for over an hour now, yet he’d procrastinated leaving. At one point during the night, one of the duty nurses had spotted him in the hallway and shook her head.

“Dedication only goes so far, Doctor,” she told him. “Beyond that, some people are just crazy.”

After a while, the ice pounding against the window turned to sleet and Mendes knew he couldn’t stay in the hospital for the rest of his life.

Home.

No—home was not necessary. He took the subway to Times Square, his mind occupied with a number of abstract thoughts. And with Nellie Worthridge.

Keep walking the streets. I can be like a vagrant—a doctor doubling as a homeless person.

For some reason he felt he couldn’t go home, couldn’t face Marie. His anxiety was wearing her out, he knew, and he hated himself for that. Home. The brownstone was too small and silent, too conducive to lengthy bouts of rumination. And that was the last thing he wanted. His thoughts frightened him. And the longer he sat and pondered the old woman’s words, he understood, the more he believed them.

Or perhaps he was just slowly losing his mind.

Strong winds whipped sleet at him and he walked with his head down, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his coat. Disinterestedly, he paused beneath a glowing street lamp to consider the peculiarity of the weather—the brutal winds and freezing precipitation. It was bizarre, something out of one of those fact or fiction television programs he’d enjoyed as a child. He shook his head and shivered. Moving down Broadway, his eyelashes accumulating sleet, he paused again: this time beneath a theater sign. He considered seeing a late show. Maybe it would help get his mind off things.

You’re a coward, a voice whispered in his head. You’re running away from ghosts, Carlito. That’s all they are: just ghosts. It was Marie’s voice.

Disgusted with himself, he shook his head, icy water running into his eyes. What was he doing to Marie? Spending longer hours at the hospital and then disappearing into the din of the city—anything to keep him out of the house…and keep his mind off his unborn son. But was that fair to Marie? Sweet, pregnant Marie? About-to-become-a-mother Marie? His wife, for the love of God? No—he hated himself, hated his inability to overcome such cowardice.

Ghosts, he thought.

He walked a few blocks over, leaving the confusion of the theater lights behind, and dipped down a darkened alleyway. A chill passed through his body.

These things happen, sweetheart, he thought. Sometimes these things happen. But I still love you and it’ll be all right. I promise.

It was a scenario he’d already started to consider: Marie, pumped full of sedatives, staring blankly from her hospital bed in the delivery room, a drying stain of blood on the sheets. Her eyes unfocused and nearly sightless, staring at—or through—the far wall. He’d go to her, console her, try and touch her. Powerless, he would feel like a child. He’d say words—just stupid, meaningless words—and place an awkward and shaking hand on her small shoulder. And she wouldn’t look at him, her eyes still so distant and void of life, and he’d know she was thinking about the baby they’d lost, the baby that she had been carrying inside her for so long now. Dead things. He’d know because he’d be thinking about that, too. And what else was there? That stillborn creature was supposed to be the rest of their lives and now it was gone. And he’d try to say more words—These things happen—but he’d find himself slipping away too, his throat beginning to constrict, his eyes—like Marie’s—steadily losing focus and sailing off into some painless oblivion. And what was to happen from there? They’d return to a house that never seemed emptier, and his mother would be there sobbing silently in her bedroom behind a closed door, and there’d be cold soup on the stove and cold coffee in a pot. Marie would disappear into the bathroom for twenty minutes at a time and he’d most likely step out onto the back porch to smoke, his eyes grazing lazily over the cornucopia of blacktop graffiti down below: EAT YOUR YOUNG and SATAN’Z PLAYGROUND and BE LIKE VEAL. And then there’d be sleep…and maybe—blessedly—the dreams would have run themselves out, perhaps because his subconscious could no longer handle the anxiety of them, or perhaps the object of those dreams had been delivered stillborn and such foreboding dreams no longer served the dreamer any purpose. Then there would be several weeks of uncomfortable noncommunication, which included his arbitrary attempts at stimulating his wife’s return to normalcy through banal conversation, followed by his zealous immersion into his work, keeping longer hours than he’d ever known—once again, anything to keep away from the house. As if there were a disease within the walls, slowly blackening his lungs and killing him with each breath he took.

That’s how it would be, he knew. He could imagine it so clearly.

He suddenly found himself standing outside Nellie Worthridge’s apartment building in the dark, his shoulders soaked with sleet. He stared at the crossword of illuminated windows with bitter resolve.

The old woman lives somewhere inside that building, he thought. I should stop being such a coward and finally go speak with her.

But what could he say without sounding insane?

He felt eyes on his back, heard dull footsteps on the wet concrete. Turning, he saw a figure emerge from the darkness of a street corner and move towards him. The neon lights of the all-night diner across the street played circus colors across the approaching figure’s face. Mendes only stared. It was a young man. And to his amazement, the man stopped directly in front of him, causing Mendes to pull reflexively back against the face of the building.

“Doctor?”

Startled, Mendes uttered a jumble of nonsense.

“It’s Joshua Cavey,” the figure said. “We met at the hospital, remember? I was the one who—”

“Yes,” Mendes managed. Despite the cold, his hands were sweating in the pockets of his coat.

Josh glanced up at the building, his long hair wet and hanging in loose strands in front of his face. He then looked back at Mendes. “I know,” he said.

Mendes was confused. “I’m…sorry?”

“I couldn’t stop thinking about it, either,” Josh said. “Something’s been tugging at me.”

“What are you talking about?”

Josh looked around and spied the diner across the street. He jerked his head in that direction. “Come on,” he said. “I’m freezing my ass off out here.”

Josh ordered a plate of scrambled eggs, toast, hash browns, and burnt sausage links while Mendes only sipped at a cup of lukewarm coffee. He watched the younger man rub his hands together before shaking an obscene amount of salt onto his scrambled eggs, then shovel some into his mouth. When Josh offered him a slice of toast, Mendes only shook his head.

“I figured you’d show up sooner or later,” Josh said from nowhere. “I even thought about calling you at some point. Figured you might be going crazy. You feel it, right? Like we’re being drawn here.”

“I don’t know.” Mendes’s hand was shaking, causing his coffee to ripple. He let go of the cup and looked up at Josh with tired, searching eyes. The young man’s face was all the evidence he needed to see that this young man too had not been sleeping for quite some time now. Also, Mendes thought he recognized a trace of fear.

“Listen,” Josh said, “I’ve learned some things. But—and I’m going to sound crazy here—but I need you…I mean…”

“I’m willing to consider anything you have to tell me,” Mendes said. “I’m in no position to scoff at theories, believe me.”

Josh nodded, not taking his eyes off him. “Yeah, all right.” He leaned over and unzipped his backpack that he’d rested on the seat beside him. He withdrew two textbooks from it, placed them on the table. “What do you know about telepathy, Doctor?”

Mendes just stared at him. “You mean like psychic powers?”

“I mean the whole gamut. And these books are just the tip of the iceberg. There’s been studies done, been actual documented accounts. Recently I’ve been reading up on it and I’ll tell you, some of this stuff blows my mind.”

“This is about Miss Worthridge?”

“You have to keep an open mind and understand…”

“What you’re telling me is that Nellie Worthridge is telepathic?”

“To be honest, I don’t know what abilities that woman has. I mean, not fully. Maybe she doesn’t fully understand it either, I don’t know. But I will tell you this: I think I’ve recently been able to answer some of our previous questions.”

What about my son? Mendes wanted to yell. That’s the only question I have—what about my son?

“I’ve recently been spending some time with Nellie, since she’s come home from the hospital,” Josh continued. “Outwardly, there have been some strange occurrences—she talks in her sleep, she zones out for several minutes at a time, she breaks the prongs off plastic forks—”

“She did that at the hospital, too.”

“Right. And also—and I swear to God I’m being truthful when I say this—but I’ve seen her left arm move.”

“Her paralyzed side…”

“Just a bit, hardly noticeable. Hell, I don’t think she knows it, but I’ve seen her move it. Just like you said she did at the hospital.”

Mendes looked down at his fingernails. They were ragged and chewed down to the quick. Both hands were shaking. “There’s no explanation for that,” he said almost to himself.

“Explanation or not, it’s what I saw,” Josh said. “And you did too, right? I mean, I’m not losing my mind here, right? And if I am, at least tell me I’m not losing it alone.”

Mendes shook his head. “No,” he said. “No. I saw it too.”

Lips pressed firmly together, Josh nodded at him. He appeared to relax somewhat once he had Mendes’s concordance. Then he said, “There have been other things, too. More…I guess you’d say they’re more internal things. Her headaches, for one. She doesn’t say too much about them, but I can tell when they hit her, and they hit her hard. I’m not sure if they have anything to do with her abilities, but I think that there’s probably a pretty good chance—”

“Josh,” Mendes interrupted, “you keep saying ‘abilities’ and you mentioned telepathy, but what the hell is going on? I don’t understand how you’ve drawn these conclusions based on some migraines and restless sleep.” He exhaled unsteady breath. “I’m not criticizing, I just…”

“Right,” Josh said. “You remember the Wednesday night bridge game?”

“Yes. The one she lied about.”

“She wasn’t necessarily lying, Doc,” Josh said. “In fact, you nearly solved this one yourself some time ago, only we didn’t put the pieces together then, do you remember? It’s not our fault—how the hell were we supposed to know what to look for?”

“Tell me.”

“You checked up on the names of the women Nellie gave you and discovered that a Betty Shotts did live in the next building over and did in fact host a Wednesday night bridge game every week. Do you remember?”

He nodded. Of course he remembered. It was one of the many things that simply didn’t make sense, and that had sent him spiraling deeper and deeper into what had inevitably become this living, waking nightmare.

“It’s not unusual for Nellie to not hear me when I come to her door,” Josh continued. “She’s old and so I just let myself in. And this past Wednesday I did just that—opened the door while carrying in a bag of groceries, all set to make some spaghetti sauce, and I called out to her as I made my way to the kitchen. No answer. I quickly became nervous and moved down the hallway toward her bedroom. I paused just outside the door. It was closed almost all the way, and I knocked on it and called out to her again. But she still didn’t answer. But I could hear her in there, talking to herself.

“I pushed the door open and saw her—she was right there beside her bed in her wheelchair, and she would have looked like she were asleep if not for this really peculiar grin on her face. Her head was sort of tilted back and her hands were clenched together and pressed into her lap. In fact, she was about an inch away from leaning her head back against the bedroom wall.

“She frightened me, sitting like that with her eyes closed and her mouth working at the air, so I called out to her again. And when she spoke, I thought she was answering me, but she wasn’t. She said something about an eight of clubs, something like, ‘Watch out, Margie, she’s got an eight of clubs.’ As if in a trance or something.”

“She was playing bridge,” Mendes said, marveling at his own words, and at the situation that had evoked them.

“Yes,” said Josh, “she was playing bridge through her bedroom wall. She could see the cards, could even see the people—see into their heads so clearly she was able to learn their names.”

“Jesus,” Mendes muttered. He was suddenly aware of how wet and cold he was.

“After a few seconds, she snapped back to reality and saw me standing in the bedroom doorway. I must have been looking at her as if she’d grown an extra head, because she was quick to assure me that she was all right and she apologized for frightening me.”

“So this is real?” He didn’t know what to say.

“Real,” Josh said. “And yeah, I was…shit, I don’t know, I guess I was frightened. But it was more than just being frightened, you know?”

“You wanted to know what the hell was going on,” Mendes said, thinking: Just like I want to know.

“Exactly. I mean, what the hell, right?” Josh laughed nervously.

“Still,” Mendes continued, “that’s a hell of a conclusion to make based on just seeing—”

“She explained some things to me that night,” Josh interrupted. “She started with her accident—the one that had left her paralyzed and her father dead. Said they were on some country road driving vegetables from somewhere to somewhere else when another car came speeding around a turn and drove right into the driver’s side of her father’s car, killing him instantly. Their car tipped and skidded along the road until it pitched down into a ravine where she lay trapped beneath the crumpled dashboard until some people came along and managed to pull her out of the wreck.

“Doc, she swears that she saw the accident happen a good five seconds before it did—saw it clear as day. And it scared her enough to make her open her mouth to her old man and tell him to turn the hell around, that today was not a very good goddamn day to deliver tomatoes, but she was too late. The accident happened so quickly. She never even got the words out.”

Mendes just shook his head. In almost a whisper, he said, “I don’t know what to say to that, Josh.”

“She says she’s been that way all her life. It comes and goes. Sometimes she picks up vibes from people, really strong ones, the way antennas pick up radio signals in the air. She just sucks them in, she says. Other times, with other people, she has to go searching for them.”

“Like with the women playing bridge.”

“Yeah. She had to lean her head back almost against her bedroom wall—the wall that is directly across from Miss Shott’s apartment in the next building over—to be able to see those women, see those cards.”

Their waitress returned, refilled Mendes’s coffee, and vanished like a ghost.

“That’s unbelievable,” the doctor said after some time passed.

“About a year ago I was shot twice in the chest by some kid robbing a convenience store,” Josh said suddenly. His eyes had grown distant; they now stared at some empty place in the distance between Mendes’s face and the tabletop. “I nearly died. And for several months after that, I was petrified of leaving my apartment. For a long time, I was only capable of going outside to get back and forth to work. I was sure I’d eventually suffer a nervous breakdown. Hell, I think I almost did once, right out in the open on a crowded street. For whatever reason, I told Nellie this story…but she admitted to me later that she already knew it, that she had searched inside my head and sniffed out all the details. And it was true—she could recall it as if she were there, man. She could see the gunshots, the two quick bursts of flames shoot out the muzzle, the number of people cluttered around the counter, the soda spilling on the floor. She even understood my pain, and I can’t even begin to fathom how something like that is possible. But she was there and she could do it. Suddenly, she put herself inside my memory and she was there.”

Unable to face Josh any longer, Mendes shifted his eyes to the two textbooks Josh had placed on the table. The Powers of the Mind, and the other, Brain Secrets: Finding the Door to Extra-Sensory Perception. He considered all that Josh had just told him and found that, surprisingly, it wasn’t too difficult to believe. Which meant there must be some truth to everything the woman had said, that her words were nearly prophecy…

That Julian, his son, would not survive his own birth.

“My son,” he said, unable to control himself any longer. “Has she said anything more about my son?”

Almost apologetically, Josh shook his head. “I even tried prompting her about it, but she couldn’t recall saying anything before, couldn’t recall anything about it. Maybe…I mean, just because she has this ability doesn’t have to mean that she’s always correct in what she sees, right?”

“Jesus, Joshua, I don’t know. I don’t know anything.” He could feel his heart beating so perfectly in his chest. “It is a boy, you know. She was right about that much.”

“Oh.” Josh looked away, down at his plate. “Oh.”

“Where is she now?”

“Her apartment.”

“I’d like to see her,” Mendes said.

“Yes. But maybe I should talk with her first. I’ve been trying to think of a way to bring this—”

“No, fuck that. I want to talk with her tonight.” He leaned closer to Josh from across the table. “Listen, you don’t understand what I’ve been going through since that old lady said those words to me. I feel like I’m just standing here watching my life fall apart around me. And maybe what she said about my son is true and maybe it’s not…but if it’s true, then maybe there’s something she can tell me that will help change the outcome. Maybe there’s something I can do.”

After a long moment of silence, Josh nodded. “All right. But I think…”

“What? What is it, Josh?”

Josh shook his head. “I think you should know something first.”

“What? Damn it, tell me.”

“I think,” Josh began, choked on his words, then started again: “I think she might be dying.”

In the bathroom of the diner, Mendes dialed home on his cell phone.

“Baby.”

“Come home, Carlito.”

“A few more hours.”

“They work you too hard. Tell them I said to send you home.”

He smiled. “Them who?”

“I don’t know. Them who is keeping you from me. I don’t like it. It isn’t fair.”

“I know, my sweet.” He caught his reflection grinning in the bathroom mirror and quickly stopped. He looked like a ghost, like the walking dead. “I won’t be much longer. Are you feeling all right?”

“I’m perfect. And fat.”

“Not fat.”

“Very fat. I feel like a watermelon. Big-big-big.”

“I think you look beautiful, sweet.”

“Well you are a strange man.”

“Isn’t that why you married me?” He couldn’t help but smile again. “How’s Mamma?”

“Asleep. Her leg’s been hurting all day.”

“I’ll bring home some aspirin.”

“There’s enough here. Just come home straight.”

“All right,” he said, “I’ll come home straight. In a little while.”

Josh was waiting for him outside. A fine mist was working its sluggish way along the ground. In the dark, Joshua Cavey somehow appeared older, almost wizened. His skin looked pale and sickly.

“You haven’t been sleeping,” Mendes said as he followed Josh across the street. It was not a question.

“Is that a professional observation?”

“It’s a friendly observation. Or maybe just an observation, period. You’ve been really going crazy with this, too?”

“More than you could know,” Josh said, and stepped up on the opposite curb.

The furnace in Nellie’s building was pumping ferocious heat, and it attacked them as soon as they stepped inside. To Mendes’s surprise, and for whatever reason, Josh opted to take the stairwell to Nellie’s apartment. The stairwell was a narrow, almost perfectly vertical maze of linoleum risers and pitted iron railings. Their feet made hollow thuds on the stairs.

“She’s close?” Mendes asked.

“Seventh floor.”

“Seventh?”

Josh, ahead of him on the stairwell, glanced back over his shoulder. Mendes couldn’t tell if he was grinning or not. “What’s wrong? Too many cigarettes on your lunch break?”

They reached the seventh floor and, upon stepping through the small stairwell passageway that communicated with it, Mendes froze. Josh noticed and looked back at the doctor again.

“What is it?”

“This hallway,” Mendes said. “I’ve been…”

“What?”

“I think I’ve dreamt of this place.”

Josh remained staring at him for a beat longer before turning around and moving further down the hallway. For a brief moment, Mendes could only watch him walk, powerless to lift his own feet, move his own legs. So vividly, he could recall his dream from the night before—the narrow hallway with what appeared to be subway doors opening and closing at one end; the vulgar words spray-painted on the apartment doors; the sounds of small children creeping into the hall behind him, their urgent little hands all of a sudden against his back; and, worst of all, the fleshy umbilical cord that came slithering out from between those subway doors toward him…

You’re here, that same Marie-like voice spoke up in his head, you’re inside your dream now.

And on the heels of that he thought: Just what the hell is going on here?

“Come on,” Josh said and tried the knob of what was apparently Nellie Worthridge’s apartment. Locked, Josh withdrew a ball of keys and unlocked it, opened it.

They stepped inside.

The apartment was dark and stiflingly hot. It smelled of soured fruit, Mendes recognized. Fruit…and sweat, maybe. And there was a sound, too—a crackling, perpetuating sound which suggested a small fire roasting in a distant hearth. The sound was so peculiar, in fact, that he opened his mouth to ask what it was—and then the music hit him and he recognized it immediately: Duke Ellington striking up “Black Beauty.” They’d walked into the apartment between two songs playing low on an old record.

Josh snickered off to his left. “Startled?”

“Caught me off guard.”

“She likes the record player on all the time now. Always Ellington.”

“At least she has good taste.”

They were talking in unconscious whispers. His eyes slowly growing accustomed to the dark, Mendes saw Josh step into the small kitchen nook and switch on a single light over the sink. The bulb illuminated the countless orange curls that littered the countertop: orange peels. Seemingly hundreds of them. That explained the smell.

“What is this?” Mendes whispered.

Josh returned to his side. “I told you she’s sick.”

“You said you think she’s dying.”

“Yes. I mean, I think so. She won’t talk about it. Come on, she’s in the back bedroom.”

He followed Josh down the dark hallway and through a half-opened door just before the bathroom. In here, the stench of sweat and rotten citrus fruit was so ripe, Mendes felt his eyes begin to water immediately.

Like the rest of the apartment, the old woman’s bedroom was also cloaked in darkness. The shade was drawn across the single window opposite the bed. It glowed a dull white-blue. He could just barely make out the huddled shape beneath the bedclothes. It occurred to him that it was very possible the old woman had suffered another stroke. That would explain her inability to communicate her sickness with Josh.

God, if You are going to take this woman, please let me at least speak with her first. I know how selfish that sounds, but please…please…

“Nellie,” Josh said, his voice just above a whisper. “Nellie, are you awake?”

The person on the bed shifted positions. Then a voice, more like a monster’s voice than a human being’s: “Daaahl…”

“Wha—” Mendes stuttered…then recalled the effects of the stroke, the speech aphasia.

“Hey there, Nellie,” Josh said. Even in the dark Mendes could tell he was smiling. “You feeling all right?”

“All right,” the woman managed.

“Doctor Mendes is here,” Josh said. “From the hospital.”

Silence from the bed.

Josh made a sound of discomfort. “Nellie,” he said again.

“Doctor?” In her handicap, the old woman managed to break the word in half: Dah-tuh.

Uncertain whether he should even respond, Mendes forced out a weak, “I’m here.”

More silence. Then she spoke again, “Please wait…wait outside…Doctor…”

“Yes.”

He turned and quickly negotiated his way out of the darkened room without slamming into anything. Finally out in the hallway, he released what felt like a week’s worth of pent-up breath, and moved into the tiny living room where he collapsed against the arm of the sofa. God, the smell. Somewhere behind him, Ellington had concluded “Black Beauty” and now had his orchestra rolling through an up-tempo rendition of “Cotton Tail.”

Again he thought of the dream in the hallway and the umbilical cord that had glided with sinuous conviction from between those two subway doors and across the floor toward him. Having just learned of Nellie’s powers—“abilities,” as Josh called them—he wondered if his dreams were somehow connected to the old woman. Surely that would explain him dreaming of her hallway—a hallway he’d never been in before until tonight. Yet…was that even possible? True, he knew nothing about telepathy and those who possessed such an ability, but didn’t it seem just a bit inconceivable?

Josh came up behind him, walked past him and toward the kitchen. “Have a seat,” he said. “You look like you’re about to topple over.”

Mendes eased himself onto the sofa. His head was throbbing, the palms of his hands dripping with sweat. “What did she say? Is she upset? Is she sick?”

From the kitchen, Josh said, “She’s confused, that’s all. She doesn’t want you to think she’s upset that you’re here. Like me, she knew you’d pop up eventually.”

Pop up eventually, Mendes thought, his mind racing. Christ, you make me sound like a goddamn piece of toast!

“Will she speak with me?”

“Yes,” Josh said. Mendes heard him turn on the sink, run water into what he assumed was the coffee pot. “She’ll be out shortly.”

“Is she sick?” Mendes repeated. And when Josh didn’t answer, he picked himself off the couch and poked his head into the kitchen. “Josh…”

“She’s sick, yeah,” Josh said. He was pulling coffee mugs from a cupboard with deliberate slowness.

“You know, I’m still…” He regrouped his thoughts. “I can have a look at her, Josh. I’m still a doctor. I don’t mean to come off so selfish. I know you care for her. You’re a good friend.”

“Thank you,” Josh said, not facing him, “but I don’t really think there’s anything you can do.”

“I can try.”

Josh rolled his shoulders. “Yeah,” he said in a voice that conveyed not even the faintest glimmer of hope.

“Josh,” Mendes began, “I think—”

“Doctor,” Nellie said from behind him.

Startled, Mendes jerked his head around. The little woman had crept up behind him in her wheelchair. In the short time she’d been absent from the hospital, Nellie Worthridge had lost considerable weight. Her face was gaunt and bony, her skin the color of drying wax. Her eyes looked as though someone had hastily thumbed them in place. Mendes could see the strain the stroke had on the left side of her face: her mouth was pulled slightly down and to the left in a perpetual scowl, the skin taut and nearly transparent across her left cheek. Enormous blue veins pulsed at her temples.

“Nellie,” he heard himself say. To his own ears, his voice sounded very far away. And very frightened.

“Come,” she managed.

“Yes?”

With her good hand she motioned for the doctor to move nearer. With some hesitation, he did. The old woman accomplished a smile and wrapped her arthritic fingers around the thumb of his right hand.

“I understand,” she said with near-perfect clarity. “We even said so, Josh and I, that you were…” All of a sudden she appeared close to tears. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” he said.

The grip on his thumb tightened the slightest bit. “I can’t see…”

“My son, Nellie,” he said. “I need to know about my son. I spoke with my wife’s doctor and you were right, it’s going to be a boy. Julian. Don’t you remember saying that name? Don’t you remember what you said about my son?”

A single tear slipped from the corner of Nellie’s right eye and traced the wrinkled contours of her cheek. It reached her chin, clung there suspended in time, then dropped suddenly onto their clenched hands.

“I don’t remember,” Nellie said.

Mendes pulled away and straightened up. Over his shoulder he saw Josh leaning back against the kitchen counter, watching him. Beside him on the countertop, the coffee percolated.

“There are things I know,” Nellie said. Her voice was almost apologetic. “Some other things I cannot. Some things I see, Doctor. Some things I don’t.”

“Josh told me about…” About what? How could he say something as ridiculous as “telepathic powers” while keeping a sane mind? In fact, though he had no reason not to believe Josh just moments before, he suddenly felt as though his world had just been pulled out from beneath him. Suddenly, he felt angry.

“Let’s sit down,” Josh spoke up. “All of us. Nellie, I’m making coffee—”

“No.”

“Hmmm?”

With much difficulty, the old woman shook her head in defiance. Her eyes were pinned on Mendes. He couldn’t shake her stare, practically couldn’t move. He thought he even felt a heat emanating from those eyes, bridging the gap between them, and warming his own flesh from across the room.

“No,” Nellie repeated. “Doctor Mendes isn’t here for a friendly little chat. Doctor?”

“I’m sorry,” was all he could say. “I’m not even sure what I expected.”

“Please,” said the old woman. She manipulated her wheelchair around and maneuvered it around the other side of the couch. The intent in her eyes was unmistakable—she wanted Mendes to sit directly in front of her.

As if pushing through a dream, he repositioned himself in front of the old woman. The record had reached the end; the phonograph needled crackled and popped ceaselessly, the only sound in the room.

Nellie rested her good hand in her lap and sat without a word, her darkened, rheumy eyes staring at the shadows that played along the opposite wall.

“Nellie?” Mendes said, leaning forward on the edge of the sofa. “You’re sick,” he said.

She waved her hand at him. “What you hear someone say,” she said, “and what you experience for yourself sometimes makes all the difference in the world, don’t you think?”

“All right.”

Slowly, she brought her right hand up off her lap, palm up. Her fingers were all gnarled and bent at right angles, curled and twisted like dehydrated vegetables. When she brought her eyes up to meet his, he noted strong reflection in them. “There is nothing good about knowing certain things, especially when we can’t do anything to change them. I have come to know a few things in my time. Some of those things have been good. Have been beautiful, in fact—such greatness in some, such harmony. Then there are the others, and there is nothing good there, Doctor, nothing of beauty. They’re people just the same, but it’s almost as if the Lord had forgotten to add some significant ingredient that makes them complete. And I’ve seen both types of people in my lifetime. Plenty. I’ve lived a long, long time.”

Josh moved behind the sofa in the darkness and turned the phonograph off. He remained beside it, his hunched form silhouetted before the blue illumination of the drawn window shade. Yet Mendes did not notice this. He had fallen into Nellie Worthridge’s incredible world.

“You scared the hell out of me when you said that about my son, Nellie,” he whispered. “And all I’ve been able to do since then is return to what you said, go back to it over and over and over again, and I can’t keep doing that. I’m driving myself insane thinking about it—God, even thinking about how someone could know something like that—and I’m causing my family to become very worried about me. Please don’t think I blame you for anything. I just…I came here because I need to know what to do. I need some sort of truth, some sort of verification that if what you said is actually going to happen, then I need to find a way to prevent it.”

Sitting before Mendes, the old woman looked to him like a small child. Her face, half cast in darkness, even took on the appearance of youthful innocence. For the first time he noticed dark patches of bruised flesh running up her arms and creeping up the right side of her neck.

“Maybe there is a way,” she said quietly.

Mendes put a hand atop Nellie’s own, his breath exhaling in one long sigh. “Yes. What? Tell me.”

“You can’t be afraid.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t want to be. Not anymore. That’s why I’m here.”

Again, Nellie overcame her paralysis and offered him a warm smile. Her right hand again slipped around his own. Easing back in her chair, she closed her eyes and widened her nostrils, inhaling deeply. The stale, humid stink of citron and body odor rushed back at Mendes yet this time he did not recoil; he merely sat beside the tiny woman in meditative silence, his eyes glued to her shimmering face. He could feel her grip on his hand slowly grow tighter, tighter.

—tighter, tighter—

Behind the sofa, Josh Cavey slipped out of the living room and disappeared in the darkness, leaving the two alone. Mendes, in all his concentration, did not notice this either.

Carlos Mendes is ten years old again and trudging along a bustling sidewalk. On his back is a backpack filled with comic books and root beer, while his arms hug a brown paper sack busting with groceries. It is hot. A faded Yankees cap keeps his dark hair matted to his head—at ten, he wears the hat even if it reaches two hundred degrees—and salty tears of sweat burst from his forehead and temples. The sweat rolls down his face, stinging his eyes and tickling his neck.

He arrives at a cross-street and stands behind a large wedge of people huddled against the curb, waiting for the traffic to clear. He cannot see the traffic, cannot see past the thick thighs and thicker hips of a woman in a floral-printed dress just a foot in front of him. Arms aching, he shifts the grocery bag and daydreams about the root beer hanging from his back. Root beer is his favorite—at least for this summer.

A gap in the traffic sends the wedge of pedestrians scooting across the street. Carlos Mendes scoots with them, nearly riding the coattails of the zaftig brunette in the flowery dress. To his left he hears a man shout something about goddamn son-of-a-bitch cracks in the street. Somewhere up ahead he can hear someone—a policeman?—bleating a whistle.

Two minutes later and he is seated at the back of the uptown bus, bumping along through the stop-and-go traffic. With the shoulder of his T-shirt he wipes sweat from around his mouth and sits watching the traffic through the side window. Beside him on the empty seat is the bag of groceries and his backpack. As if struck by sublime intentions, he yanks the pack nearer to him, unzips the pouch, and produces a bottle of root beer and a bottle opener—what his brother Michael calls a “popper-topper,” even though Michael was older. He pops the cap, lets it drop to the floor of the bus, and guzzles half the bottle in only two or three chugs. The root beer has gotten a bit warm in the heat but it is still good.

The bus stops and a handful of passengers boards. All but one of the newcomers claim some of the empty seats close to the front of the bus. The one remaining passenger moves jerkily toward the rear of the bus. He is old and looks lost, Carlos thinks, the way his grandfather sometimes looks. He wears a long coat and a hat like the detectives wear on the covers of the murder mystery novels he sometimes reads when his mother has gone to bed, and he walks with a disjointed, almost painful confusion. Though he is looking directly at Carlos—or at the seat beside him—he continues to shuffle around as if still searching for something or someone. At one point, it almost appears the old man will stand for the entire trip. Then, without asking permission, the old man approaches the bench seat beside Carlos, bends awkwardly at the knees, and pushes Carlos’s bag toward Carlos. The man drops himself onto the seat. Suddenly afraid that the stranger has crushed his mother’s groceries, Carlos reaches over and slides both the grocery bag and backpack all the way onto his lap.

The old man turns a white, blotched and grizzled face in young Carlos’s direction. He neither smiles nor scowls—just stares him up and down, as if considering whether or not it would be appropriate to eat him.

“Ain’t right takin’ up two seats,” the man says, his eyes still on Carlos.

Not saying a word, Carlos turns away from the stranger and looks back out the window. A few kids have unscrewed the cap on a fire hydrant and are trying to fill up plastic water guns beneath the blast.

He is suddenly aware of a ghastly stink, like burning cabbage, and he jerks his head back around to see that the stranger has slid closer to him on the seat and is leaning down as if to speak with him.

“Be it okay,” the stranger says. “Harm ain’t done, not here, no sir. See? We just sittin’ t’gether, me an’ you, you an’ me.”

Carlos feels a hot lump of spit at the back of his throat. And of course his mind suddenly replays the barrage of precautions his mother has drilled into him since he could walk and talk—precautions about strangers in strange places, about not talking to such people, not even making eye contact if he could help it.

He turns again and looks out the window.

He feels the old man press his shoulder against his own. And he is trapped, right here on the bus, caught between the window and some smelly old strange man. He suddenly doesn’t want the rest of his root beer. And when the bus comes to the next stop he silently prays that the strange man will get off. But he doesn’t.

If he doesn’t get off at the next stop, he thinks, then I will.

The stink of cabbage is nearly suffocating him. For some crazy reason, he thinks of the time Michael and Juan pinned him to the kitchen floor and proceeded to stuff Michael’s sweaty gym socks into his mouth. They managed to get both socks in there too, before his mother came in and they both scattered like mice.

“Petey,” says the stranger.

Carlos doesn’t answer.

“What’s your name, boy?”

Carlos still doesn’t answer.

“Not nice to ignore someone when they’s talkin’ to you.”

“Carlos,” he stutters finally, feeling his entire body break out in a wave of perspiration. Looming large in his head is the image of his mother’s face, her heart broken, wracked with disappointment, as if he has just driven a spear through her chest.

“Carlos-Carlos,” the man says. He is rolling the name around on his tongue, trying its pronunciation with different accents. “You dark. You ain’t a nigger-boy, is you? You ride the bus a’ time? Me—I don’t like it.”

Carlos cannot look away from the stranger, he is so completely frozen in terror. The man’s face is loaded with red, flaking patches of skin and bulbous whiteheads. His lips are like two broken snaps of balsa wood, brittle and peeling. And behind those lips is a row of teeth the color of turpentine, gums the color of day-old bruises. A dried tongue of snot clings ornately to one nostril.

“I think I sick,” the man says. His eyes are moving fast. They are yellow. “You get sick onna bus, boy?”

“No.” It is hardly even a whisper.

“Thass you a big fella then, right? Carlos-Carlos-Carlos. Big like some big man.”

The bottle of root beer suddenly drops from his sweaty hands and lands in his lap, dumping the remaining soda on his pants. A burning embarrassment abruptly wells up inside him and he wants to scream, wants to cry. His breath starts coming in great wheezing gasps.

“Now-now-now,” the stranger says, “what we done? You done it, Petey can see you done it. Foolish thing, it is.”

And then the man’s right hand comes out, slides itself between the bag of groceries and Carlos’s chest, and reaches down for the bottle. Paralyzed with fear, his throat too constricted to utter a single sound, he can only watch that hand slide across him and reach down into his lap. It is like watching a film in slow motion. The hand is enormous, he sees, and sprouts silvery wires of hair from the knuckles. It is a multicolored hand, adorned with a selection of brown splotches and tiny, bloodied nicks and cuts and scratches. The fingers are impossibly long and wide, capped with thick nails packed with crud.

The hand lingers in his lap too long. Carlos feels a pressure in his groin as Petey the Stranger presses the glass root beer bottle into his privates, delicately swiveling the bottle from side to side. And that desperate scream is caught in his throat, caught there and useless, and he actually feels his mind begin to creep away from what is happening. In a flash he is back on the kitchen floor. Juan’s knees are pressing into his wrists, pinning them to the linoleum, while Michael straddles him good and holds his legs to the floor beneath his weight. In Michael’s hand is a balled up pair of gray gym socks, still dense with sweat, and jeez-it-all if he can’t smell those socks from here, from where he lay bound by his brothers to the floor, from here on the bus—

And then his brothers and the gym socks are gone.

And then so is the stranger’s hand.

Carlos manages to look down at his shorts—they are soaked with root beer—and then glances over at the stranger from the corner of his eye, not wanting it known that he is actually looking in the man’s direction. Petey holds the empty soda bottle on his lap. He is scraping at the bottle’s label with a curled yellow thumbnail.

“Done messed yourself, Carlos-Carlos. We should clean you up. Where you goin’ to, boy?”

Blessedly, he feels his throat sear open, feels a rush of air enter his windpipe—then tighten again as the man leans over him and kisses the top of his head.

The sound of hissing air-brakes and the bus jerks to a stop. In that same instant, the man—Petey—dislodges himself from the bus seat and bunches his long coat up in front of him as he makes his way down the aisle toward the bus’s doors. Though Carlos suspects he might, the old man does not turn to look back.

Once the bus starts moving again, Carlos pulls his legs up to his chest, rests his head against the window, and stares at the traffic below. Ashamed, he cries.

There was a surge of warm air at his face followed by the sensation of something large shifting directly in front of him, and Carlos Mendes opened his eyes and jerked away from Nellie Worthridge. It took several seconds for his thoughts to properly regroup, finding their appropriate niches, and the world swam back to him in one great rush.

“I…”

He was anxious to speak (though he had no idea what he wanted to say) yet he found himself too busy searching for breath. It was as if the wind had just been knocked out of him. And he was sweaty and shaking all over. His mouth was pasty and dry.

Like some medieval witch, Nellie sat perched on her chair in the darkness in front of him, her face unchanged and without expression. Well, almost—her eyes had narrowed and her crooked lips appeared to be working over the beginnings of words. The congruity of her form, slated in darkness, suggested the gnarled and mangled rudiments of an ancient tree. She looked very near death, Mendes noted. Only her eyes proposed any implication of life: they remained narrow and grating, nearly allowing him to feel the full force of their stare scraping along his flesh.

“I…” was all he could manage.

“Some good people, some bad,” Nellie interjected. Again, it looked as if she were trying to smile. “But I guess you know that, don’t you, Doctor?”

Even now, even here, the doctor could almost smell the stranger from that bus—Petey, his name had been—and remembered the terror that had welled up inside him as he sat there in that seat, helpless. He clearly recalled the heat from the sun amplified against the bus window, hot to the touch, and the panels of light that spread in great lunging rectangles across the green vinyl seat in front of him.

“That happened…” he tried again. Then: “I was just a kid. So long ago. I never…I couldn’t tell anyone about that and I was scared, I…I didn’t know what…” He paused, gaining control of his thoughts. “I haven’t thought of that in forever,” he managed finally. “I…I’d forgotten…”

Nellie offered a weak smile. “You may forget the past, but the past don’t forget you. It clings.”

“Okay,” he said, “okay, you…see things, know things…but what about my son? Nellie, you may not remember, but I need to know what’s going on. I need to know why you said what you said.”

“I tried,” she said. Her pale face appeared to regress into the shadows of the apartment. “I felt nothing.”

“Felt nothing?”

“I searched your mind, Doctor, your soul. I dipped in for as long as I could, for as deep as I could, but there was nothing there.”

“How can that be? Nellie, you knew about my son back at the hospital. You even called me Carlito. My wife calls me that. How did you know that?”

“There aren’t definitive answers for everything, I’m afraid. Sometimes I just pick up things—there and then gone, like an old ham radio scooping up signals from Japan. Sometimes I remember them. Sometimes I don’t.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head, “no, that can’t be it. There’s got to be more to it, got to be some way…”

“I know of no other way.”

“How is it you see inside my head yet you can also see things that haven’t happened yet, can see my son?”

“It all comes from the same place,” she said. “Everything’s connected in some way. I don’t fully understand it—I don’t think anyone does, really, nor are they supposed to—but I know that’s just the way it is. Your memories and thoughts and emotions are what I am able to read. Also, your future. Sometimes.”

“How?”

“Because to some degree, we all know our future. There is a predestination mapped out for all of us. It’s there at birth. We know who we are, who we will become, and when we will die. We also know this about those closest to us.”

“You picked up my son through me?” he said. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“Your son is you,” she said. “You are the closest thing to your son, you are made up of the same elements. There is only one other person who is closer.”

“Marie.” And he’d known this; somehow, deep within the recesses of his own confused brain, he’d known this all along. Perhaps Marie felt it even stronger than he did, she just didn’t have the confirmation of someone telling her the outcome, telling her the truth. Marie didn’t have Nellie Worthridge’s verification.

“Your wife,” Nellie said.

“So what more can we do? What is it? Tell me. Anything.”

“You don’t have it in you because you don’t have your son’s soul in you. Your wife does.”

And like a flash he pictured Marie stretched out in the faded blue recliner in the living room, the dull glow of the television set washing over her soft features in the dark, the almost timid swell of her pregnancy perched on her lap like a child with her favorite toy. The image was so clear, so lucid, that he was suddenly confident that he was actually seeing his wife, seeing her as she was right at that moment, despite the impossibility of such certainty.

The world is full of impossibilities, he thought then. The world is apparently teeming with them. And they’re all very, very real.

“You can do this with Marie?” he said. “You can—what is it? Get inside her memories like that?”

“The truth,” the old woman corrected. “I can get inside the truth of a person.”

“And find out things…”

“Sometimes I can find out things. But there are no promises, you understand. There are things simply beyond the control of us mortals.”

“But sometimes—”

“You have hope,” she said. “And that’s good.”

“We have to help my son.”

“We can try. Your wife is…?”

“Is what?”

“She knows your feelings? Your concerns?”

He hadn’t thought of that. “No,” he said.

“Then you will tell her.”

He started. Considered. “I don’t know. I don’t even know what to say. And does it even make sense to have her worry?”

“You’ve been worrying by yourself for too long,” Nellie said.

You’re talking almost perfect now, Nellie, he thought. And I bet you can move your left arm right now, too, if you wanted. Sure, why not? You know things you have no right knowing, so why couldn’t you move things you have no right moving? Why be bothered by limitations when all you have to do is will yourself to do it?

Mendes said, “I have.”

“Yes. Your wife may be able to tell me things you cannot.”

“Yes.”

“She may not know it. But her connection to your son is stronger. I need to see her. You need to bring her to me. That’s the only way.”

“I’ll figure out a way,” he said.

And thought of his wife.

Chapter Seventeen

Piloted by fever, Kelly wove in and out of dreams.

At one point, she found herself standing by a gurgling brook in the middle of a dense forest, the landscape green and full in every direction. Something wet ran down her forehead and stung her eyes. Bringing a hand up to her face, pulling it away, she saw it wet with blood. Panicked, she dropped to her knees and gaped at her reflection in the running water—and glimpsed a pale, fleeting figure moving behind her. She felt her insides freeze up, her stomach knot. Her small hands—still the hands of a child—knotted at the edge of the brook, clawing at the earth. A phantom wave of near-recollection shook her, like something from some ancient nightmare dreamt when she was a different person, inhabiting a different body…

She stood quickly, frightened, and turned around—

—to find herself the centerpiece in some abstract pantomime version of Earth, where the trees swiveled and twisted at impossible angles and the leaves—grotesquely green—defied gravity, growing straight up. Rattles of flowers exploded at her feet in a myriad of hues. Colors were horribly brighter. Smells were sharp and acidic. Behind her, the sound of the gurgling brook now shook like a waterfall; she could feel its strength reverberating in the ground. Instantly, she was aware of every molecule in her body—every sinew and blood vessel and follicle of hair; every organ pumping or contracting or secreting. With each exaggerated inhalation she could feel the icy burst of air rush into her lungs, fill and expand multiple pockets of flesh deep inside her chest, could feel oxygen being absorbed by each individual blood cell.

She saw the pale figure again, blurred and indistinct amidst a mine of firs, darting toward a darkness without source. And then she was running. Each step against the ground was purely reflexive. In a spontaneous impression of human articulation, she forced out a guttural laugh—or something akin to a laugh—and felt it rise up in her throat and explode out her mouth. The forest closed tight around her, whipping her with tine-like fingers and inflexible arms as she ran. And strewn almost functionally among the foliage: empty bottles and cans; broken plastic forks; a torn piece of clothing; a moldy bowler hat; a discarded automobile tire bursting with steel tread; a mud-soaked ball of socks; half of a NO TRESPASSING sign. She streaked past these items like mile-markers on a freeway, their presence hardly registering.

And there—a ramshackle structure tucked between a stand of trees, half-cloaked in shadow. A house. And was it real? Clapboard siding and iced shingles, perfect octagonal windows, empty of pane, with a steepled roof and a solid white door: to taste this house, she understood immediately, would be to taste saffron and ginger and spiraled cinnamon quills. It was the accumulation of dreams and prayers and whispered childhood fairy tales. She paused to stare at it and discovered that prolonged scrutiny caused the structure to yield and waver, to swim in and out of existence, out of reality. At one point she could make out the trees behind the house, could see straight through it. It wavered, like an image veiled by waves of heat. And with that dissipation came the true smell around her—not of spice and sugar but of rot and decay. She closed her eyes on it. She blocked it out.

Out!

And when she opened her eyes she was in a bland white room furnished only with a single bed and a window cased in wire mesh. A sweat broke across her face and her arms sprouted fleshy knobs. The woods and the house and even the fleeting figure had been only a dream; she was here now, here—the institution. The floor was dull and scuffed, cold beneath her bare feet. She could see her toes, pale and like giant grubs, beneath the hem of her nightdress. The room itself was stiflingly small. She could see her distorted reflection in the brass doorknob. She went to the knob. The door was locked.

I can unlock it, she thought.

She willed it to unlock and stepped into the narrow corridor outside her room.

The familiar tang of antibacterial soap and detergent accosted her. And beneath such pungency lingered the faint aroma of vomit, sour bodies, and bug spray. Above her head the tracks of sodium lights flickered and buzzed. The hallway was spotless and lined with closed doors. Behind each closed door she passed while moving down the corridor, Kelly could hear the muffled shuffle of feet, the soft moans and sobs of young girls. Some of them sounded in pain; others simply sounded lost inside their own heads, the sounds they created only human sounds by the farthest stretch of the imagination. A frail Asian girl shambled past her in a pink robe, seeming to materialize out of nowhere, and whispered, “Electrical tongue.”

There was a workable recreation room at the end of the corridor, dressed in stiff blue carpet and a row of ping pong tables. A multitude of television sets lined the far wall before a row of pebbled windows like soldiers in a line-up. Cross-legged on the carpet before a worn and tattered sofa, two teenage girls sat playing cards. They stared up at Kelly in unison as she passed by, a twin expression of disinterest on their faces. Beside them, a portable radio volleyed between intermittent bursts of static and a Dean Martin number.

“You move very slow,” a female voice said to her left. She turned and saw a tall, pale woman in a nurse’s uniform carrying a stack of books. The nurse looked angry. “Don’t you understand that these boots can’t hold up all this cedar?”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Damn you,” said the nurse…and it was suddenly the pinched and bitter face of her mother. “How could you have forgotten? What kind of games are these? You get me so angry sometimes, Kelly. How could you forget about him?”

“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.

“What are you doing in there?”

“This is where the dead girls go,” Mouse said.

“You’re not dead.”

“Just tired.”

“I’ve been looking for you.”

“No you haven’t,” Mouse said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

Something occurred to Kelly then: “I’m dreaming.”

“Do you remember him?”

Again, Kelly felt her skin break out in gooseflesh. Jarred by a clacking sound, she looked down and realized she’d dropped the forks. Some had even spilled across her bare feet.

“Come in here,” Mouse said.

“Can’t,” she whispered back. “Scared.”

“It’s just me, Kellerella.”

“Stop saying that.”

The door creaked open wider. A strip of light caught motion from inside. Kelly saw white skin and a tattered nightdress the color of bad teeth.

“Come on.”

“I’m scared,” Kelly said again. She’d taken a step away from the closet.

“You weren’t scared before.” Again, some movement within the closet—something brushing up against something else. Then, with sudden understanding, Mouse added: “You’ve forgotten, haven’t you, dear? I should have known that.”

“What?”

“We’ve been in here before, you and I. Together. One time. Do you remember?”

And it was as if those words carried Kelly back to that night—the creaking stairwell, Mouse’s slender shadow moving against the corridor, the hushed disturbance of their breathing. The sound of their bare feet patting against the floor was like a muted ovation. The closet was closed that night and it had been Mouse who’d opened it. It opened without a sound, Kelly remembered. And why had they gone to the closet in the first place?

“It was the only place you felt safe,” Mouse said suddenly, bringing her back. “It was your idea. It was the only place you felt safe telling me about him.”

A shudder wracked her body and she suddenly felt the need to urinate. “God,” she croaked, pushing herself back against the wall.

“Do you remember?”

“I can’t remember anything,” she sobbed.

“This is all half-real, Kellerella,” whispered Mouse. Another shuffling footstep inside the closet.

Kelly’s body tightened. “Who else is in there with you?” Her voice fell like icy darkness pushing up through her throat. “You’re not alone in there. Who is it?”

A muffled giggle. The sound of heavy breathing.

“Mouse!” Kelly screamed and sprung forward. With both hands she grasped the door and swung it open with such force that it slammed against the wall and nearly rebounded closed.

Mouse was not inside the closet. The two girls Kelly saw were naked and emaciated, their skin blue and hairless, their eyes bulged to reptilian exaggeration. The two dead girls, Kelly thought instantly—but no, they weren’t dead, they were alive, were moving…

One of the girls bolted into a sitting position as if her body were on a spring. When she opened her mouth, Kelly saw her teeth and gums were black.

“Kellerella,” croaked the dead girl.

Kelly screamed.

Her fever broke two days later and she awoke hungry and dehydrated. Glenda stood above her bed, smiling down at her.

“There, darling,” Glenda said. “You’re back with us now.”

“I don’t feel well.”

“You’ve had a fever. What in the world possessed you to go outside in such weather?”

“Outside?” She hardly remembered. “What happened?”

“Mr. Kildare found you halfway down the embankment on the side of the house. It is a good thing. Lord knows how long you’d been out there.”

She remembered going outside, remembered seeing something in the woods…

“I’m thirsty,” she groaned.

“Here.” Glenda poured a glass of water from a pitcher resting on the night table and handed it to Kelly, who drank it in three large swallows. “Bad dreams?”

“Just strange. Why?”

“Talking in your sleep.” Glenda smiled. “You used to do that often as a child.”

“The amazing Kelly Kellow.” Surprised at how easy the name slipped from her mouth, she just shook her head and set the empty glass back on the night table. She suddenly felt overcome with weakness. “Becky?”

Glenda sighed. “The doctors are still coming around. I’m afraid there has been no change in her condition. Poor dear.”

“I’m worried about her.”

“We all are.”

“Sure,” she said, recalling the way her parents stood idly by during each visit from Becky’s doctor.

Glenda slipped around the side of the bed and produced what appeared to be a large leather folder with brass buckles. “Your suitor has been worried about you as well, Sleeping Beauty.”

“Gabriel?”

“Such a nice boy.” Glenda placed the folder on Kelly’s lap. Scrambling to sit up, Kelly leaned against the headboard and unbuckled the brass clasps at the bottom of the folder. “He’s certainly had you on the brain, I’d say.”

“What is this?” Opening the folder, Kelly withdrew a series of watercolor paintings done on thick leaves of cardboard. It was evident that they’d been recently painted—some of the paint had even smeared after being slid inside the leather folder—and it was also evident that the artist had taken great care in their creation. They were done beautifully: forested landscapes, a bridge over a tiny river, a quaint little town square…

“Glenda, will you look at this…?”

It was a portrait of Kelly.

“That’s you, dear,” Glenda said, amused. “Well, now—what do you think about that? Something special.”

“I…yes, I think so. Jesus.”

“Isn’t that just something?”

“When did he come by?”

“This morning. You were sound asleep.”

“Do you think you could get me his number? I’d like to see him.”

“Yes-yes-yes,” Glenda said. “What a nice boy. But be sure you feel better first.”

“I’m all right,” Kelly said, pulling herself from bed. The room tilted briefly to one side before righting itself again. “Thank you, Glenda. I mean it.”

Glenda paused by the bedroom door, warmed by Kelly’s appreciation. “Darling,” she said, and disappeared.

Downstairs, her mother was locked away in her sewing room while her father sat motionless in what had once been his purple hunting room. He caught her from the corner of his eye slipping past the doorway and called to her.

“Kelly…”

“Daddy,” she said.

“How do you feel?”

“I’m okay.”

“It’s a good thing Jeffrey found you when he did.”

“Yes,” she said, wondering what Kildare had been doing out there in the first place. “Is he around? I’d like to thank him.”

“Oh, I guess he’s around somewhere.”

She took a step further into the room and shivered. The curtains were drawn across the immense windows and only a tiny desk lamp at the rear of the room was turned on, providing little light. Her father rested in a large cushioned chair in a buttoned shirt and black slacks, his large feet bare. He looked at her with only the most docile observation, as if casually staring out a window and across a field bustling with wildflowers.

“You should open the curtains, get some light in here,” was all she could think to say.

A phantom smile passed through his lips and he looked away from her, hardly waving the fingers of his right hand. “I think…” he began, then paused. “I think your sister’s getting better.”

“Oh?”

“She looks healthier, don’t you think? Her skin color is good.”

“Dad…”

“I hope this doesn’t go on too much longer. She is a good girl, Becky. She’s terribly quiet some—”

“Why were you crying that day?” she said suddenly. It was stupid—there was no way he could remember—yet she continued. “When I was just a little girl. Do you remember? I saw you at the bottom of the stairwell and you were bent over and crying. I can’t remember…I think I went to you and I think you turned away…” The words flooded out of her before she could stop them, or even consider exactly what she was saying. And the words returned the image to her again—her father, crumpled in a heap at the foot of a darkened stairwell.

Her father’s eyes slowly rose to meet hers. They were sloppy and red in their sockets, as if he’d been drinking. Stark and shallow, his eyes were incapable of emotion, empty of passion. Incapable, also, of comprehension, Kelly saw.

“You remember, don’t you?” she persisted, now against her own will. She didn’t want to talk to this man, nor did she want to rekindle any memories he may have doused so long ago.

“You shouldn’t be angry at things,” he said. “You’re still sick.”

“I’m not sick. And I’m not angry. I’m just trying to figure some things out for myself. It’s important to me.”

“Yes.” Her father nodded once then turned to look at the bank of drawn windows. “I don’t think that happened. All that crying you say.”

“I remember it.”

“No,” he said, “I don’t think it did. Strange, though.”

“Dad.”

“It is.” He turned again to face her. “I love you, Kelly. Did you know that?”

She suddenly wanted to collapse to the floor, sobbing. Instead, she closed her eyes briefly and frowned.

Behind her eyelids, the world was spinning on its side.

It was a twenty-five minute walk from the compound to the foot of the hill on which the house rested. Bundled against the cold, Kelly covered the distance by herself, desperate to get away from the house for a while. It was late afternoon and the sky was the color of iron, with thick storm clouds still looming over the horizon. As the wooded hillside gradually flattened out and congregated with the valley and the adjoining town road below, the snow tapered off. The dirt road had been cleared, although she couldn’t imagine too many vehicles occupying it, and the entire valley smelled strongly of cedar and musk. Some distance ahead she could make out the steeple of the town church and some of the taller buildings just beyond a veil of snow-covered trees.

Hands in the pockets of her coat, head down, she walked the circumference of the hillside in quiet deliberation. Several yards off the side of the town road rested the jumble of small hut-like shacks which she recalled seeing the night she’d been driven up the hillside. Too small and depreciated for anyone to actually live in, they looked like a manic depressive’s idea of a gingerbread house. There were maybe a half-dozen shacks spread out along the stretch of road, most of them windowless, their roofs in the process of collapse. A handful of young children played at the foot of the road, bundled in their winter clothes, and Kelly assumed the neighborhood kids had fashioned these little shacks into rather sufficient clubhouses.

She smiled at the children as she passed by. There were five of them, each packaged to the neck in stiff winter clothing. As she passed they turned their heads to watch her go—five cherubic snowmen with rose-red cheeks.

“Buy some lemonade?” one of the children said. He held up a pitcher with one mitten-clad hand.

“Lemonade?”

“One dollar,” chimed a second boy.

“I have no money,” she said, pausing at the side of the road. “And isn’t it a little cold to be selling lemonade?”

“We make it hot,” said the first boy. One of his friends snickered. “We heat it up.”

“We got lighters,” said a third.

She half-frowned, half-smiled. “Do any of you kids know Becky Kellow?”

They shook their heads.

She pointed to the row of shacks. “Whose houses are these?”

The children appeared to consult one another. One of them had a rubber ball on an elastic string and was bouncing it in the road.

One of the younger-looking boys said, “The skeleton-man lives in one.”

“Skeleton-man, huh?”

“I seen him.”

“He has, lady,” said one of his friends.

“Who’s the skeleton-man?”

Again, the five boys huddled together in consultation. And again, the younger-looking boy poked his head up. “We don’t want to talk about the skeleton-man,” he said.

“You’ve seen him?”

“Jessie Halloran at school saw him. Said he walks around with no skin on and lives in one of those houses. We play there but not at night. At night is when the skeleton-man comes home.”

“Oh,” she said. “Where’d they come from, these houses?”

“We made them,” said the youngest boy. “We made them with wood that we bought and we even hammered some of them together.”

“Is that so? How come?”

The boy shrugged. He turned his head and looked at his friend, perhaps in hopes of acquiring an answer.

“Dumb, stupid houses,” said the boy.

“He’ll getcha, lady.”

“Give us a dollar for some lemonade?” one of the boys asked again.

“Sorry, I have no money with me.”

“It’s good. It’s hot. It’ll warm you. Good.”

“Maybe I’ll come back later.”

“Sure,” the boy said, but she knew he didn’t believe her.

During lunch with Gabriel at a small café in town, Kelly said, “Do you remember anything strange about growing up here?”

Gabriel just shook his head. “What do you mean?”

“Anything at all bizarre.”

“I don’t know.” He grinned. He was very handsome. Kelly suddenly considered what it would be like to run her hands through his hair, to graze his lips with the tips of her fingers. She’d loved him as a child—loved him in that pure, unquestioning way children are capable of loving other human beings. Had he ever loved her? She thought maybe he had.

“Oh,” he said, “Reverend Taylor from the Lutheran church was arrested for selling narcotics to some of the altar boys. You remember that? That was a pretty big thing back then. My father knew him. I remember when the police came and arrested him. I remember he started crying and it scared me.”

Indifferently, she stabbed at her salad. “What about me?” she said then. “Do you remember anything strange about me?”

Gabriel suddenly looked concerned. “What is it, Kelly? Something’s bothering you. Tell me what it is.”

“I don’t know. It just feels like this whole place is pushing down on me, trying to crush me under its weight.” She shook her head. “Or maybe not. Maybe it’s not this place at all and I’m just going crazy. I felt like this for a while back in the city, too.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. I wish I did. I wish something made sense to me right now but nothing does. I’m scared to death for my sister, yet I feel like I’m the one falling apart. I don’t know what it is.”

“This sounds serious.” He looked genuinely concerned.

“God,” she said, not looking up from her plate. “What about those three hunters?”

“Who?”

“Some detective was at the house, said something about three hunters that disappeared in the woods here last month. Do you know anything about that?”

He dropped his head. “Yes,” he said, “I confess, I killed them, I forced them into the wilderness and fed them nothing but each other’s buttocks—”

She grinned. He suddenly reminds me of Josh, she thought…then quickly chased the thought away.

“I heard about the hunters,” he said, “but I know nothing about them. And what does that have to do with you, anyway?”

“I don’t know. Nothing, really.”

“So what is it? Nerves?”

“I guess so.”

“Well…promise to let me in once you figure out what’s going on, all right?”

She smiled. “Promise.”

“All right. Hey—you want to know a secret?”

“Hmmm?”

He winked. “I think your housekeeper’s cheering for us.”

“She thinks I’m lonely,” Kelly said.

“Well,” Gabriel said, “is she right?”

“And she thinks you’re a godsend.”

“Well then,” he said, “she must be right.”

“Eat your salad,” she told him.

That night, she awoke to a noise. Covered in sweat and breathing heavy, she sat up stiffly in bed—and caught movement in the dark, at the opposite end of the room.

Someone stepped out of her bedroom, closing the door behind them.

“Who’s there?”

She pulled back the blankets and swung her legs to the floor. When she stood, her world seemed to cant to one side, as if in an attempt to shake her off balance. She thought she could hear footsteps creaking down the hallway outside her bedroom. She moved quickly to the door and pulled it open—

—and saw Becky’s bedroom door close at the other end of the hall.

The hallway was dark, but Becky’s bedroom door was awash in the white-blue moonlight issuing from the bank of windows that made up the opposite wall. Beyond that, the hallway was a confusing channel of closed doors and, at the end, a pit of black winding stairs.

There was a light on in Becky’s room. Kelly caught movement from inside through the crack at the bottom of her sister’s bedroom door.

Becky!

She dashed across the length of hallway and nearly drove herself into the framework of the door. She grasped the knob with an unsteady hand and turned it—

It didn’t turn.

It was locked.

As if swatted by an invisible hand, she took a step away from the door and simply stared at it. She fisted her right hand and knocked twice against the door.

She heard someone moving on the other side of the door.

“Becky? Honey, open the door. Becky, it’s Kelly. Open the door, sweetheart.”

It’s Kelly, her mind echoed in an imaginative impression of her sister’s voice. Who’s Kelly?

“Becky?”

The stairs at the end of the hall creaked.

Fear suddenly hit her, sharp and incensed.

That’s where the dead girls go, she thought, recalling her dream.

A glimmer of moonlight briefly illuminated what appeared to be tiny pale stones lined up on the banister—tiny white stones with eye sockets and teeth. But they were there and then gone, having never existed.

It’s all in my head, she thought. She felt her entire body begin to shake and knew that she was very near collapse, very near the end of the line. She’d suffered through three years at an institution, a loveless marriage and divorce, and had not tamed but at least managed to coexist in New York City…and now her batteries were finally about to die, to burn themselves out. All along, she’d been thinking that she was strong, that she could overcome, that things got better when you decided to make them get better. But no, she’d been wrong. Because nothing got better. Not really. Things kept locked away and forgotten just kept perpetuating themselves until there was no more room in the closet. And then there was nothing left but for those things to blow up.

I’m blowing up, she thought.

And insanely, she thought of Collin. More specifically, she recalled making love to Collin—and Collin making love to her—and the way they moved in bed together, the way he touched her and how she understood that maybe things weren’t perfect but they weren’t bad, either. He’d touch her and she’d shudder and sometimes force him to squeeze her in his arms. And after the truth of his infidelity was disclosed and they continued to make love, he’d felt the same to her—which was wrong. He should have felt different, she knew, should have felt like an immediate stranger, but he didn’t and it was almost as if his affair had never happened. And she knew it. And he knew she knew it. And it didn’t seem to make any difference to either one of them. Not for a while, at least. And although it made no sense at the time, she seemed to zone in on it now and single that moment out as the initiation of her breakdown. It was like proof, like the foreshadowing of an unavoidable mental collapse. What type of woman makes love to a man fresh from another’s bed? What type of wife?

Someone was on the stairwell, hiding in darkness. Kelly could almost hear breathing.

“Beck—”

The latch on Becky’s bedroom door popped and the door creaked open an inch. Kelly felt her heart leap in her chest and nearly threw herself backward across the hallway. She brought a hand up to touch the door. It shook badly. She couldn’t control it—couldn’t make the hand go back to her side. Her hand reached out and pushed against the cool wood of the door. Inside, the light had been turned off. And had it ever really been on?

She thought, Little Baby Roundabout, someone let the Baby out…

Catching her breath, she stepped a foot into Becky’s room. The breathing she’d thought she’d heard—it was coming from in here, from Becky.

“Becky?” Her voice shook the silence. “Sweetheart?”

Across the room, Becky’s window was wide open; the sheer curtain flagging in the cold wind.

“Goddamn,” she moaned and ran for the window—slicing her bare feet on bits of sharp somethings—her lungs aflame—the entire room seeming to spin before her eyes—dizzy. The flailing arms of the curtain wrapped around her body. The wind hit her, frozen and angry, and she brought an arm up to prevent her eyes from watering. Blind and with her free hand, she reached out impulsively, her fingers probing for the raised window. Her hand thumped glass and she leapt forward and slammed the window closed on its sill. The frame rattled and the curtains withered around her.

Catching her breath, she moved backward several paces from the window. The moon was full and pale yellow.

Man in the moon! her mind screamed. It’s a face, just like a face!

And her mind made no sense.

Broken bits of plastic lined the carpet. The shards had cut her feet. And they almost reminded her of something—there and there and almost there—but she couldn’t grasp it.

This is all coming together, all coming down, all starting to reek like two hidden dead girls in the third floor broom closet.

“Kelly…”

And it was a perfect sound, those words—as if all space and time had briefly given way to absolute silence in order for that word—that sound—to justly impress and frighten her…like words spoken in a room filled with no one but the dead…

“Becky,” she managed and sprang forward toward her sister’s bed. In the darkness she groped for her sister’s hand, found it, squeezed it—and recoiled. It was cold and stiff: the hand of a corpse.

A scream threatened her throat. She felt the room tilt to one side, desperate to shake her off balance.

And again that voice: “Kelly…”

She spun around and peered through the darkness. For the briefest of moments, Kelly stood in the darkened bedroom staring at the half-open closet across the room. And the shape inside, pale and moving, nearly squirming…

“They did it in the closet where no one could see,” whispered a voice from the closet. It was undeniably a female voice, yet gritty and baritone.

Kelly couldn’t move.

They did it in the closet…

“Mouse.” The name did not simply issue from her mouth; rather, it was coughed up through her throat and forced through her lips like verbal constipation.

Snapping, she scrambled toward the closet door, grabbed the knob, and—

—ohGodohGodohGodohGodoh—

—flung it open, prepared for the worst.

The closet was empty.

Kelly stood there in the darkness, her chest heaving, sweat sliding in large rolls down her ribs, her eyes wide and staring.

I heard you. My God, I really heard you…

I’m losing my mind here…

Yet now, all she could hear was the sound of her sister’s labored breathing from halfway across the room.

And, of course, her own.

Chapter Eighteen

“Time’s catching up to me,” the hermit Graham Rand said, sizzling sausage links over a flame on his range. He dropped several pats of butter into the pan. From over Graham Rand’s shoulder, Sheriff Alan Bannercon watched as grease from the pan spat and exploded like miniature fireworks. “No spring chicken, that’s for sure. You can tell everywhere you look at me—I see my hands shakin’ and I know. Like some sort of warning, some way of God’s, tryin’ to tell you your time’s almost up. Better make the goddamn beds and milk the cows, because it’s about to fall to dark.” The old man turned and faced the sheriff. “There’s chairs around th’ table for sitting, you know.”

Five minutes ago, Alan had been standing outside Graham’s secluded cabin, staring at the peeling siding and splintered roof with passive deliberation. In short, Alan had no patience for the old hermit—considered him more a nuisance than anything else, really—and regretted having to speak with him. That Graham Rand was the last person to see Felix Raintree was unfortunate. If he could coax even the slightest suggestion of helpful information from the old recluse, Alan Bannercon could go home a happy man. But he hadn’t counted on it; there’d simply been too many phone calls in the middle of the night, too many occasions where the old fool had seen—allegedly—the apparition of his dead wife floating among the trees of the surrounding forest. He was a lonely old man that, over time, had managed to trick himself into believing in the purely absurd.

“Mr. Rand, I need to ask you about Detective Raintree.”

Graham swiveled the pan on the burner, skirted to his left to retrieve one final pat of butter, and dropped it into the sizzling grease. He turned around and faced the sheriff, his face looking hollow and malnourished.

“That man is a good man,” Graham said, wagging a tree-branch finger at Alan. “He knows about these woods, I think.”

“You spoke with him two nights ago at the station? He gave you a ride home?”

“It’s considerate.” He said this with an unflinching air of stateliness. “And don’t think I don’t know about some of you boys.”

“What was it you spoke with Detective Raintree about the other night?”

“Specters,” Graham said, and flared his nostrils. He half-grinned.

“Beg pardon?”

“Things out there.” The half-grin widened. “Do you know something, Sheriff?”

“What?”

“You think things are peaceful here, but they’re not.”

“Is that right?”

“In real life, things are mostly just up and down. Straight up—and straight down. No in-betweens. But around here—and most especially recently—things is all up and down and left and right and side to goddamn side and no one knows which damn way they’re turning.”

Alan crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall. The kitchen was small and rustic, empty except for a badly marred clapboard table and a water-stained refrigerator with a busted door handle. Only one of the three light fixtures worked; it cast an ominous luminescence along the filthy counters and scuffed tile floor.

“Mr. Rand, you’re going to have to answer my question, please.”

“Oh?”

“What did you go and see Detective Raintree about?”

“The detective.” Graham shuffled to the refrigerator, opened it and selected a pitcher of milk, and placed it on the counter. He stared at it for some time. When he spoke again, his tone was oddly sober. “I’m dying, Sheriff. I feel it more and more every day. Mostly in the mornings when I wake up. And if I wake up too early it seems all the more closer, d’you understand? Like I’m waking up too soon and catching death sittin’ right there on top of my chest. Too early, catching the dirty bastard in the act.” He turned and looked at Alan. His eyes, clear and lucid, were nearly frightening. “A man who can sneak up on death like that every damn day of his life, and for the rest of his life, ain’t afraid of much, Sheriff. But recently…you know, I been seeing some things and I been hearing some things and…shit, I guess I been feeling some things too. Scary things. And I know that. Scary to me—to a man who don’t think twice ’bout sneakin’ up on death in the early hours of the morning.”

“What have you seen, Graham?” Though he didn’t realize it then, it was the first time Alan had ever called the old hermit by his first name.

Graham’s eyes shifted around the kitchen—and finally rested on the rectangle of black glass over the kitchen sink. He was looking beyond, out into the night.

“I ain’t sure,” he mumbled.

Jesus Christ, he’s playing games with me, Alan thought, and I don’t have time for that bullshit.

As if having read Alan’s mind, the old man said, “I went to see Detective Raintree because he’s the only fellow around here who gives a bloody goddamn. Maybe he just likes humoring an old fool, but I don’t mind it even if that’s the case.”

The old man’s hands were shaking.

“I went to see him because I saw something in the woods the other night and it scared me real bad.”

“What was it?”

“I don’t know. I mean, it was a man…”

“A man?”

“I think so. I’m sure of it.”

“Who?”

“Can’t tell—”

“This is a small town, Mr. Rand.”

“Weren’t nobody from town, Sheriff.”

“And this man frightened you? Did he attack you, threaten you?”

“No…but I felt something threatening from him, you know?” Graham’s eyes ran the length of the sheriff. “No,” he added, “I don’t suppose you would.”

“So you got spooked and went running to your good buddy.”

“Not empty-handed,” Graham said. “Them hunters? I found one of their hats. Hunting cap, initials right on the inside tag.”

“You found what?”

“Don’t you hear, son? Cap-cap-cap. Checkered hunting cap. You live around here and never seen a checkered flannel hunting cap?”

“How do you know—”

“I gave it over to the detective.”

“What did he say?”

Graham shrugged. “Didn’t say nothing, I don’t think. Just wanted to see where I found it.”

“Where did you find it?”

“Out back my house.”

“And you showed him the spot where you found it?”

“I did. Stayed in the car while he looked around,” Graham said. “Still spooked by that ghost-man, didn’t feel like leaving the car, ’specially steppin’ out in them woods. Not at night, anyhow.”

“The detective find anything else?”

“Not that he said to me.”

“Then he drove you home?”

Graham nodded. “Straight home.”

“That was all?”

“Everything you’d want to know.” He moved back to his stove and lifted the pan of sausage. He dumped the links into a filthy plate, grease and all. “There’s a problem with Detective Raintree, ain’t there?”

“He’s missing,” Alan said. “His car was found abandoned out on North Town Road last night. No one’s heard from him since he’d driven up here, just after dropping you off.”

“Had me some feeling,” Graham said. With an unsteady hand, he clutched at a glass and poured himself some milk. His arms trembled.

“You had a feeling the detective was in danger?” Of course, he knew he was shooting at shadows: the old fool couldn’t really possibly know anything, could he? And even if he did, Graham Rand’s mind was so frazzled that it would probably require a team of top government cryptologists just to decode his rambling applesauce.

“I told you, Sheriff, but you just don’t want to listen.” The old man turned on him, faced him with impulsive tenacity. “Something’s going on around here and it ain’t good. Something in the woods. It got those three hunters and it nearly killed that little girl, too.”

Before Alan’s eyes, the room appeared to shake. He almost felt something click over in his head, like a puzzle piece snapping into place…but the feeling passed like a lumbering wave of nausea: there and then gone. There was still some anger left in him—irritation, really—but that was quickly being displaced with a strong and alien sense of urgency. It was a feeling akin to the anticipation he’d associated with Christmas mornings in his youth…only much darker.

No, not Christmas, nothing like that. It’s like being a child and sitting in the doctor’s waiting room, he quickly realized. It’s like sitting there knowing there is no place to run…and knowing damn well what is in store for you behind the doctor’s closed door…

Graham’s eyes appeared to soften. “And you feel it too,” he said. “Maybe just for a second there, right? I can see. Maybe it’s gone now but, goddamn it all, it was there, wasn’t it? Like something big about to fall from the sky and crush you.”

It was all Alan could do to regain composure. “Where is the hunting cap now, Mr. Rand?”

“Detective Raintree had it.”

“And the man you saw in the woods—could it have been one of the missing hunters, do you think?”

Graham tipped his narrow head back and barked a laugh at the ceiling. When he looked back at Alan, his mouth was stretched in a wide grin, his rotted teeth protruding from his gums like gnarled and twisted vines.

“Specters!” the old man howled, caught in the throes of hilarity. “Specters, Sheriff!”

“Mr. Rand—”

“You see,” Graham said, “you truly ain’t from around here, Sheriff. If you were, you’d know about this godforsaken weather, and you’d know that it happened this way several years back. The winter came early, the sky turned an evil dark, and hail the size of golf balls fell from the heavens. I felt it then, felt the wrongness of it all at the time, but didn’t know any better. Something evil was prepared to happen here those few years ago but, for some reason, it didn’t. Well now it’s back, and this time it’s damn anxious to happen. Damn hungry.”

Alan only stared at the old man.

“Winter came early to Spires once before, Sheriff,” Graham said. “And now it’s here again.”

After several moments, Alan made his way to the door.

Chapter Nineteen

From the eye of some remote nightmare landscape, Nellie Worthridge felt something immense begin to tug at her subconscious while she slept. Harassed by the manipulation of actual fingers—fingers that bent and twisted her mind, tore at the gray bands and sinews of her brain—the old woman felt her heart hitch, her chest heave, her pulse race, explode, then petrify with startling submission. Had she been awake, she would have made the immediate association between the influx of this grasping, new emotion and what was surely the imminence of her own death, yet such concepts held no relevance to her while she slept.

The feeling started as a faint breeze, pushing against her mind as if through the thicket of a forest. Yet hardly before she could even register its presence, its power multiplied almost instantaneously, and she could actually feel its freezing residence soak through the pores in her skin and throughout her entire body. The sheer magnitude of the holocaust rendered her docile and useless. Yet it could reach only her mind—and somehow, even in her dream-state, the old woman recognized this and saw it for what it was: not a threat at all, but the strengthening connection of lines, of walking mental lines, of the steady-steady, the walk-run.

Diffused throughout her body, the power shook her. There was a jarring sensation—inexplicable at first account, yet a second later it presented itself as the jarring of one mind into another: a cry for help piercing the silence of a long hallway, stopping only when it is able to attract the ears of someone capable of interpretation. And for the briefest of moments, Nellie Worthridge was aware that she could stand, that she had legs and could actually stand, and that she was no longer herself—

(someone else’s mind I am in someone else’s mind or they are in mine)

—and no longer confined to her handicap. Bright swirls of colors blossomed before her and she saw these colors not with eyes—do we dream with eyes?—but with unexplained harmony and unity throughout her entire being. The colors capered and flared. Some grew fantastic and intense while others simply dissipated like a candle flickering out in the dark. The incredible surge from these colors created a membrane across her mind, something almost tangible and susceptible to physical manipulation, and behind the membranous screen were images and flickering pictures. Memories, she thought. But not hers. Someone else’s.

Darkness. A forest, stifled with trees. Off in the distance: the gurgle of running water. And up ahead: a light, a red light. A glowing beacon in the middle of the night.

She wasn’t alone. Nellie understood that immediately, and the realization of such a truth filled her with black dread. Not so much fear but, rather, the expectation of fear.

Words suddenly spoken by her unseen companion:

—This is pain?

Not quite feminine, yet not quite masculine. And it was almost as if the voice did not exist in the real world at all—and surely it didn’t—but it was there, its evidence right inside her own head.

More:

—How do you live like this? I feel things all around me, everything. It all hurts so much. Look at my throat.

In her mind, she searched the dream-forest but was powerless to uncover her unseen companion. And if she wanted to speak out, to shout out, she knew that was an impossibility as well; she was not here at all; merely watching an old filmstrip roll on a screen. This happened long ago, she knew, and on the heels of that she thought, Kellow. Kellerella. And nothing made sense.

—Look at my throat, the voice insisted. It hurts. Make it stop hurting.

There was a moment of silence then—but only the briefest of moments. Soon, there was another sound permeating the air—this one much more intimate than the voice of the mysterious stranger, much closer, inside Nellie’s own head. A girl’s voice. A girl singing.

I’m remembering this girl’s memories, Nellie thought, and listened to the song.

Little Baby Roundabout,

Someone let the Baby out,

And now, sweet Babe, it’s time for bed,

So close your eyes and rest your head…

A child.

A child’s mind. She was in the mind of a little girl. Some—

—Kellerella—

A scream pierced the darkness of her mind. The image behind the membranous screen disintegrated into a million shimmering particles of dust, shattered by the terror of that scream. As if in reflex, the old woman’s body hitched yet again, only this time in reverse of the process, and she felt the searing frigidity of those icy, make-believe fingers slowly extricating themselves from the sleeve of her body. It was a feeling akin to pain—perhaps the closest a human being can rationalize and distinguish pain that occurs purely within their subconscious—and upon conclusion of its torturous withdrawal, the old woman felt tremendously weak.

The sound of something snapping—wood or plastic or whatever it was—was the only remaining sound that followed her out of her nightmare. And when she awoke in her own bed in the middle of the night, Nellie Worthridge feared she might just suffer a heart attack and die.

Carlos Mendes had always considered himself a religious man. Therefore, praying wasn’t something alien to him. With ease, he could recall childhood memories of his mother and aunt huddled at the foot of the altar at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, their heads reverently bowed, the murmur of their individual prayers rising with practiced synchronism. He’d been raised to believe in things greater than himself and, despite the daily horrors he had become familiar with throughout his medical career, he’d never once questioned the presence of God. And often, such daily tragedies actually helped strengthen his belief: that in the wake of such suffering there were people who still believed in God, or a god, and that was amazing to him and proof beyond anything else that God was real. And no matter what, he’d always managed to find comfort in such proof.

Yet staring at his wife while she slept in bed, the cold trickle of pale blue moonlight accentuating the curve and swell of her form, the dark mat of her hair fanned out along both pillows, he began to have doubts. Suddenly, the prayers of two tired women at the feet of a stone Jesus no longer seemed significant—did not even seem to make any sense to him at all. Now, recalling that memory and a hundred others alike, Carlos became disturbed by the feeling of utter emptiness that now seemed to accompany it. Like a stigma, an irreversible wrongdoing with a loud voice. People suffered and died every day and that, in its own humble way, confirmed God; and now something bigger had landed, something Carlos could not possibly explain or even begin to comprehend…and he just now realized how weak the bridge really was. That the words of an elderly shaman could slowly squeeze the lifeblood from his entire world in so brief a time frame was frightening. And thinking of nonspecific cancers and suffocating children and countless other incurable malignancies rampant in this world now startled him, made him blink and wonder how he could have ever believed in such a fairy tale, in such a God. A God that loved and a God that hated. A God that breathed life only to take it away just as effortlessly.

Who is really out there? he thought, surprised by the depth of his passion. Who? What? Anything at all?

On the bed Marie sighed and shifted position. “Carlito,” she whispered.

Her voice startled him. “Did I wake you?”

“Why are you standing in the doorway?” she said.

“I was watching you sleep.”

“You are a strange man. Muy loco.”

“Can’t sleep.”

“Take pills.”

“Pills don’t work.”

He heard laughter in her voice. “And you are a doctor-doctor-doctor,” she said teasingly. He wondered now if he were dreaming. “I was thinking that we don’t have a television in here.”

“That is what you were thinking?” he said.

“Hmmmm.”

“You said you never wanted a television set in the bedroom,” he said, moving closer to her side of the bed. He wanted to reach down and touch her, run his hands through her dark hair. But he couldn’t move beyond his feet. “Don’t you remember? Or are you just so fickle?”

“I think maybe that was a bad idea,” she said. She still sounded half-asleep. “I think that with a television in the room you could sleep with me. You could watch the television while I sleep and then you would fall asleep too.”

“Is that so?”

“It is. And we would be together.”

“Oh, well,” he said, “we’re always together. Really.”

“Not always. Not really.”

“You would get sick of seeing me so much,” he said.

“Sometimes I think I will forget your face. You’re gone too much.”

“I know,” he said. “So then a television?”

“I think that is a good idea. I like that idea.”

He watched her body shift again. She tugged the bed sheet over her body, wrapped it around herself with little difficulty. His eyes lifted and came to rest on the wooden crucifix on the wall just above the bed’s headboard. And for an instant he thought of Chopin and Mozart and wet, sugary fruit and heartfelt laughter in theaters and home-runs, and was suddenly certain once again of the existence of a higher being. In fact, the certainty flooded him in one hot current, making his bare feet break out into a sweat and causing an involuntary tug at the corners of his mouth. It was powerful and inclusive: something that fashioned God not as nonsense but as fact. But like a flashbulb, it was there and then gone.

There are such great, wonderful creatures who suffer such fantastic atrocities, he thought.

“Marie?”

She did not answer.

He bent and hovered above her face for a moment, reveling in the pureness of her breathing, before kissing her softly on the cheek and disappearing into the hallway.

A moment later he discovered himself pacing the kitchen in search of his cigarillos while heating some tea on the stove. But his mind was not eager to commit to the search. He found himself thinking about the rush he’d felt when Nellie had touched him, and the way he’d somehow slipped into a…into a what? A fugue state? A hypnotic trance? A coma, even? The way the room had spun, the way his vision had clouded—and then his mind became his vision, his memory. That day on the bus, so long ago, had surfaced in his head as if the events were unfolding right then and there for the first time. Everything—he was aware of everything: smells, colors, pressures, heat, cold, moisture. All the senses were present. All the senses in the human thinking brain. And she was there. Nellie Worthridge had been there. And was that even possible?

“Medical science be damned,” he grumbled and found one of his cigarillos in the cupboard above the sink, wedged between a box of ten-inch fireplace matches and an old pasta maker.

Ten minutes later and he was out on the back porch, sipping his tea and inhaling cigar smoke. It was cold and the night seemed unusually quiet. Folding his hands, he leaned forward on the deck railing and stared at the freshly fallen snow below.

If it’s true, he thought, and Marie can sense something wrong with the baby, how is she able to keep it together so much better than me? How is it possible that she can even be asleep right now? I don’t understand. Is it a question of the strength of her own faith? Is she at peace because she believes that it will all work out, that she believes in a just and compassionate god? And if so, how does one believe in something so arbitrarily?

He found himself grinning.

He once believed without question. And now…

An idea struck him then. It was a simple idea, a simple solution, and it would work. Was it wrong? Would it be taking advantage of Marie’s faith? And not just her faith in God but her faith in him as her husband, as the person she was supposed to trust over anybody else? Damn it, he hated to lie to her…

“It is for her own good,” he whispered, blowing plumes of smoke into the freezing night air. “Her good and mine.”

Not until the arrival of morning did Carlos realize he hadn’t slept through the night. His mother shuffled into the kitchen to set the coffee just as Carlos heard the shower off the master bedroom turn on, the cold pipes bucking and reluctant in the walls.

“You look sick,” his mother said without looking at him. “Again you were up last night. Still not sleeping. Not good.”

He ate breakfast with his wife.

“Am I to suspect you will be spending the day with me?” she asked playfully. That morning, she looked almost like a child to her husband. And it frightened him how much love he suddenly felt toward her.

“With you,” he said. “There’s something special today.”

“Like a surprise?”

“Like a good blessing. From a friend.” He smiled and watched her eat, watched her eyes and the way they crinkled at the corners. “Do you feel all right?” he asked her.

“I do.”

“Nothing wrong?”

“No. And you?”

“Me?”

“Mr. Sleepwalker,” she said. “Mr. Zombie-Man.”

“It’s insomnia, not somnambulism.”

“What is that?”

“Sleepwalking,” he said. “I don’t do that.”

“Lots of almost-fathers have a difficult time sleeping in the months before the baby’s due. I read an article about it in a magazine. I saved it for you.”

“Thoughtful.”

“What’s my surprise?”

“Soon, soon,” he said. “This afternoon.”

Sometime later, standing outside the door to Nellie Worthridge’s apartment, Marie tugged on her husband’s coat sleeve and smiled.

“What?” he said.

“What is this? Now I’m making house calls with you?”

“I said it was a surprise.” He knocked twice against the door. “This is a friend I met at the hospital, a sick old woman who happens to have a special gift.”

“So this woman has my real surprise?”

“This woman is the surprise. She blesses the unborn. She’s going to give Julian grace.”

Marie’s eyes softened. She brought her head down to one side, let it rest briefly on Carlos’s shoulder. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, Carlito. This is the sweetest.”

“How many babies get their own personal blessing?”

“And you know so strongly that it is a boy,” she said.

“Why?”

“You called him Julian.”

He hadn’t even noticed.

The door opened and Josh stood on the other side. The weariness in his features shocked Carlos. The young man’s face was pale and unshaven. Deep grooves clung to either side of his mouth like parentheses. His eyes were dark, cavernous pits. Though Marie had never before met Joshua Cavey, Carlos felt his wife tense the moment he opened the door, similarly taken aback.

“Doctor,” Josh said, and nodded at Marie.

“This is Marie, my wife.”

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello. Come in. Nellie’s in bed.”

“Is this a bad time?”

“It won’t get any better, I don’t think. Please, come in.”

They entered the apartment. Nellie’s Ellington record was turning in quiet revolutions toward the back of the sitting room. The entire place reeked of citron. All the curtains had been pulled shut, blocking out the daylight.

“Is she still asleep?” Carlos asked.

“Not asleep,” Josh said. “She’s sick. Bad sick. Too weak to get out of bed.”

Marie looked at her husband, suddenly concerned and still very confused.

“Has she been to her physician?” Carlos asked.

“There’s nothing anyone can do. And she’s a stubborn old bird. She won’t let me do anything for her.”

“We should leave,” Marie whispered.

“No,” Josh said, “please. She knew you two were coming, it’s fine. She just feels bad that you have to see her this way.”

Marie only nodded. She was staring about the room, her small hands pressed together and resting atop the swell of her belly. Her winter coat was buttoned to the neckline and she wore a knitted beret pushed to one side. She looked incredibly young, Carlos thought, just as young as she had before they’d been married. Pregnancy—the dominance of perpetuation—had kept her beautiful and untouched. Again, he thought about all the lying he had done recently, thought about the long nights away from the house, afraid to go home where his thoughts (and Nellie’s words) only felt stronger and truer. Unfair—but he’d done it all for her, all of it, every second away from the house, every waking hour of his life these past few weeks. Was he a coward for refusing to instill in his wife the same unfounded fears he’d been carrying since Nellie had spoken those words? Was he a coward or a hero? No—he couldn’t see himself as a hero. Yet not a coward, either.

I’m a child, he thought. A frightened and confused child.

The bedroom was quiet and dark, the drapes pulled across the window here as well. A pungent medicinal smell hung like vapor in the air. Josh led them in but seemed reluctant to step too close to the old woman’s bed. Instead, he remained by the doorway and simply motioned for Carlos and his wife to enter.

Nellie was difficult to see in the darkness. As they approached, Carlos could see that she was indeed awake and propped into a sitting position beneath a bundle of heavy bedclothes. And as he got even closer, he could see that she was trying to smile. But there was a strong, sickly smell about her, and her aura was just as weak as Josh’s. Worse. Nellie appeared as the disease that had somehow found its way to Josh. She was the carrier, the host, the architect of both their deterioration. The presentation of her body conveyed images of soiled canvases; of downed telephone poles after a storm; of a discarded flat tire on the side of an interstate; of everything that seemed ruined and unhealthy in this world.

“Welcome,” Nellie said. Her voice sounded dry and abrasive.

“Carlito,” Marie whispered. Her discomfort was mounting. Another two minutes and she would insist they leave.

“Beautiful girl,” Nellie said.

“This is my wife, Marie.”

“Marie Mendes,” Nellie said. Not just dry and abrasive: her voice was troubled—wracked with something other than the inhibitions of her stroke and the weariness of her apparent state of being. And despite Carlos’s professional intimacy with such a realization, he was delayed in diagnosing Nellie’s condition: simply, the woman was dying.

“Hello,” Marie said. Her own voice shook.

“How beautiful,” Nellie said. She slowly brought a hand up to Marie’s belly and paused just before touching, allowing her hand to hover only an inch away from Marie’s swollen abdomen. Marie flinched subtly, then looked embarrassed by her reaction. “Such a gift,” the old woman said.

“Here.” Josh came up behind her with a chair from the kitchen. “Sit.”

“No, I…” She looked toward her husband. Her eyes were suddenly pleading—he knew it would come to this—and he took her hand, squeezed.

“Sit,” he told her.

“We should leave this woman alone,” Marie insisted.

“Please,” Nellie said. Her good hand trembled and she replaced it atop the bedclothes.

With hesitance, Marie sat in the chair. Carlos placed a hand on her shoulder.

“This is a beautiful thing,” Marie said to the old woman. “To bless our child—really, it means a lot to me. To the both of us. But it is not necessary to do this now when we can come back at some other time—”

“Things need to be done,” Nellie whispered.

Josh brought around a second chair and set it on the opposite side of Nellie’s bed, where he sat and did not say a word.

“The baby,” Nellie said. “How far along are you, dear?”

“Almost six months.”

“Boy or girl? Do you know?”

A smile passed along Marie’s face. “We don’t know for sure,” she said, “but Carlito thinks it’s going to be a boy.” She looked at him. “So do I.”

“God bless,” Nellie said. “Such a wonderful thing.”

“He’ll be our first.”

“Of many?”

“Oh, we’d like many.”

“Not too many,” Carlos interjected, grinning.

Marie winked at the old woman. “Many,” she said.

Nellie smiled. “You will name him—”

“Julian, after my father,” Marie said.

“Julian.” The word was difficult for Nellie to say. “How beautiful. So much greatness.” She extended her hand and Marie took it, gently. “You are a religious woman?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Very spiritual. You believe God to be good?”

“Of course.”

“And maybe sometimes frightening, too?”

Marie considered. “I suppose.”

“You are so confident,” said Nellie, “and that is such a blessed thing. Sometimes people don’t believe as strongly, and I then feel the need to reinforce God to them. He’s there; He exists.”

“Yes,” Marie said, “I know.”

“All right,” Nellie said, and her grip on Marie’s hand suddenly tightened. “Now close your eyes.”

Marie did.

Nellie shut hers as well. For what seemed like an eternity to Carlos, silence hung in the air like a physical creature, hovering above all their heads and examining their minds, their thoughts. On the opposite side of the bed, Josh sat in nervous concentration, bent forward in his chair with his fingers steepled beneath his nose.

“Think of the most beautiful memory from your childhood,” Nellie said. “Think it as clear as you can. Search for it if you have to.”

“Yes…”

“Can you find it?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“You are young, still just a little girl…”

Marie’s voice had dropped to a mere whisper: “So beautiful.”

“It’s your family…”

“My father and my mother,” Marie said. “Both of them together. And me. We’re at the park. My father looks so young.”

Carlos heard his wife’s voice break. He squeezed her shoulder for support…but had the strange feeling that his wife could no longer feel him. Marie was now gone, lost in some remote part of her own mind, just as he had been that day Nellie forced him back onto that city bus. Marie was no longer in this bedroom.

“It is such a wonderful day,” Nellie whispered.

“Yes. It’s a picnic. My father would take us to the country for picnics when the days were pretty. He loved my mother very much. I can tell, just looking at him now. God…”

“Very handsome,” Nellie said.

“This is our last picnic. We never got to go on another one. He died the next week in an automobile accident. When we were told—my mother and I—I didn’t even know what an automobile was, that it was a car. Sometimes I wish I’d known that would be our last picnic. If I’d known, I think I would have done things differently.”

“We can’t know those sorts of things,” Nellie said.

“I would have hugged him and kissed his cheek and told him that I loved him, even though he knew. He knew we both loved him. Do you think he thought of that while he was dying? Do you think he was comforted by that?”

“I do.”

“It was such a beautiful picnic. I wish I could have told him I loved him.”

“So tell him,” Nellie said. “You’re here now.”

There was another long pause. Marie’s face was still and expressionless. Her eyes shut, her lashes moist, large tears spilled down her face. Her lower lip quivered. Carlos thought she even looked like a child then—perhaps like that little girl at the picnic that very day, so many years ago. That girl who didn’t know what an automobile was when she was told her father had been killed in one.

I would do anything for you, Marie, Carlos thought suddenly. I would do anything in the world without ever thinking twice. Maybe I am a hero after all.

“Daddy…” Marie whispered, her voice broken by silent sobs.

“You see?” Nellie said. “We can make some things right, only if it is in our own heads.”

“Yes,” Marie sighed. “Yes-yes-yes-yes-yes.”

Nellie’s left arm stirred beneath the blankets. Carlos saw a hump rise, fall, rise again. In utter amazement, he watched as the old woman slid her paralyzed hand out from the blanket and carry it shaking across the bedspread. Her eyes still closed in concentration, she managed to work her bent and crooked fingers apart, worked them closed, worked them apart again.

She’s moving that arm and that hand with her mind, he understood. It goes against everything I’ve ever come to understand and believe in, but here it is, and she’s doing it with her mind. She’s controlling her own brain. She’s unlocked some secret door and now she’s in control.

With mounting astonishment, he watched as Nellie brought her paralyzed hand up to the swell of Marie’s belly, placed it right in the center. It was the most tender action he’d ever witnessed executed by another human being. He was confident that there was actual love in that touch—love and caring and compassion and something akin to sympathy.

“Let me inside,” Nellie whispered then—and Marie’s sobs hitched in her throat. She became silent. Her body jolted the slightest bit—rigid and briefly insecure. A strong whiff of citron rushed Carlos, so powerful that he had to take a step back once he realized it was actually emanating from the old woman. Even Josh, who had remained largely nonexistent throughout, stood and backed away from the bed. Hands on his hips, Josh faced the curtained window.

My God, Carlos thought, I can actually feel it.

And he could…although he didn’t understand exactly what it was he was feeling. A sensation? An electrical charge in the air? It was like standing in the synapse of some powerful, organic machine, as it fired currents right through his body.

—brain—

He was cold, he was hot. His skin was crawling, was sweating, yet he was shaking from a coldness at the pit of his stomach. And it wasn’t just him: across the room, Josh had buckled against the wall, shivering with his head tucked down, his chin pressed against his chest. Whatever power was here—was being created by Nellie—had filled the entire room. There was no describing it, no understanding of what it meant to even feel it pass through his body, yet somehow its very own lack of definition was also its confirmation. And if he concentrated, he could almost pick up glimpses—

(pocket fear this cavern this body this blood this safe pocket)

—of ideas and notions and thoughts that were not his own.

The human brain has capabilities we will never fully understand.

His mind reeled.

(safe-safe-blood)

(this baby is going to die)

Marie jerked forward in her chair, her beret falling off her head, hair spilling out. Her free hand broke into a claw, pitched upward and outward as if to strike some unseen figure. She moaned. Fell silent. Shrieked—once, twice. The clawed hand swatted at the air to her left and she jerked her body forward in the chair again. The rigidity of her posture suggested bands of tense muscles, of cramped fingers and toes.

Carlos, fearing his wife would unintentionally knock herself off the chair, rushed to her side. He froze when he saw her face.

There was pain there, etched in every line of her face, every wincing crease of her eyelids. Her lips were pulled back from her gums, her teeth pressed tightly together. She was sucking wind through her teeth—he could hear it: shhhhhhhhhh!

“Marie…” His own voice sounded dead, a blown amplifier speaker.

Trapped inside the vacuum of her mind, she did not react to his voice.

He reached out and clamped his hands down on either side of her face, trying to force her lips closed, yet only succeeding in producing a grotesque grimace. He repeated her name over and over again, although he could not be certain if he were shouting or whispering. Like a stone gathering momentum down a hillside, he felt something shift and pitch forward inside his gut—as if the floor had just given way. Beneath the palms of his hands Marie’s flesh sent electrical vibrations up his arms, his shoulders, straight to his brain.

“Damn it, help me!” he finally shouted. “She’s hurting!”

Josh was buckled over against the far wall. At the sound of Carlos’s voice, he eased his head up part way, strings of greasy hair hanging before his eyes. He was shaking, his entire body wracked with tremors.

“Goddamn you, Josh!”

“She’s—” Josh began. His words died in the air moments after they were spoken.

“Help me!”

Nellie’s withered old hand caught Carlos’s attention at that moment. The old woman’s fingers were bent into crooked hooks, pushing forcefully against the swollen flesh of Marie’s abdomen. And for one wild instant he imagined Nellie’s fingernails elongating and piercing the flesh of his wife’s belly, a spreading stain of blood appearing across the bottom half of the rose-colored blouse she wore…and those fingers going deeper and deeper inside his wife, probing, searching, tearing at her womb. And in that crazy instant, he realized the irony of such a situation—that Nellie’s touch would suddenly and undoubtedly result in the death of his son and perhaps his wife too…that perhaps the prophecy merely required the prophet’s own fulfillment and life was just a sick and twisted circle…

These thoughts and images appeared and disappeared almost simultaneously. But before he could even rationalize the situation—and what was there to rationalize, anyway?—he reached down and closed his hand around Nellie Worthridge’s frail wrist. Tight. And with the force of someone much greater and stronger than himself, he tore the woman’s hand from his wife’s body, tore it back and—

—and there is a child who is living and breathing inside this body and I can see it I can see it and I can smell and taste and feel it too and it is real it is real this is not a dream and I am inside sweet God I am inside I am inside inside inside and I am right here with my baby my son my Julian—

As if he’d just grabbed a live wire, Carlos released Nellie’s hand and felt himself thrown back against the far wall of the bedroom by some powerful yet unseen force. His head cracked the wall, his teeth rattling in his head, and he hit the floor like a wet sack of laundry. Stars exploded. And then, for the briefest of moments, he was aware of a young woman standing in the middle of some snow-covered hillside screaming as a towering inferno blazed all around her.

“Doc,” he heard Josh say somewhere in front of him. And when he couldn’t see him he was certain he had been blinded, perhaps by the crack on the back of the head. Then he realized his eyes were shut.

Shaking, Carlos opened his eyes. Like reality following a dream, the bedroom swam back into perspective. Marie was slumped back in her chair, slowly shaking her head from side to side, the expression on her face one of dazed incomprehension. Nellie remained unmoving beneath her bedclothes, one bony arm hanging limp over the side of the bed.

Dead, Carlos had time to think.

Josh rushed to him, bent with one hand on the doctor’s shoulder. “Doc,” he said, his voice fading in and out. “Jesus Christ…”

“Marie…” he managed. He could feel his heart racing in his chest and about to burst into flames.

Marie turned to face her husband, still numb. Her eyes were vacant.

“What the hell happened?” Carlos said, refusing to let Josh pull him to his feet. He feared he might pass out if he stood too quickly. “Jesus Christ, what the hell just happened here?”

“Take it easy,” Josh said, out of breath himself. “It’s over now.”

“What’s over?”

“The exchange.”

“Goddamn…”

“Are you all right?”

He pushed Josh away. “I’m fine.” Struggling to his feet, he said his wife’s name again. This time he noticed some recognition in her eyes…and then everything hit her like an open floodgate, and her face creased down the middle and she burst into tears. Bringing her hands up to her face, she sobbed greatly. Carlos rushed to her, aware that the room was still spinning slowly, and gathered her up in his arms, held her tight against his chest.

“Quiet,” he whispered. “Quiet.”

Through her sobs she was trying to form words. He couldn’t understand them.

“Doc,” Josh said from behind him. Then again with greater urgency: “Doc.”

Carlos turned to see Josh half-bent over Nellie’s prone body, his face practically pressed up against the old woman’s. When Josh met his eyes, he suddenly knew what had happened without Josh having to say a word.

Carlos said, “She isn’t breathing.”

“Shit,” Josh barked, pulling back from the woman. “Goddamn…”

For a second, Carlos was struck dumb by a moment of jamais vu—that he didn’t know who he was or where he was, or who any of these people were in the strange room with him. Then he felt something in the back of his mind click and he was thrust back into some semblance of normalcy.

“Hold up,” he said, allowing Marie to slump down in the chair and out of his arms, and moved to Nellie’s bedside. No—she wasn’t breathing. Her eyes had rolled back into her head. Cardiac arrest? Damn it all, he thought. Where the shit is God now?

He fisted his hands together and pressed them against Nellie’s frail chest. Five succinct pumps, his mind suddenly elsewhere. In the chair behind him, Marie managed to pull herself up and to her feet. She swayed, appeared ready to fall. Josh was quick to her side, but she froze him in midstride with one hand, palm out.

“No,” she breathed. “Don’t.”

Josh shook his head. “I want to help.”

Carlos breathed into the old woman, pumped more, breathed more, and then she breathed back. Sputtering, turning her head from side to side, greasy slicks of sweat at her temples, Nellie’s eyes fluttered open. Her pupils were dilated, and there was a lack of comprehension in her gaze.

Carlos straightened. “Nellie? Nellie? Can you hear me? Nod your head if you can hear me.”

Slowly, the old woman nodded. She struggled with words: “…hear…”

“Call a doctor,” he said to Josh, turning away from Nellie and moving toward his wife. Like a child he reached out for Marie with both arms, her lower lip quivering, her eyes like two silver dollars. “Shhhh,” he said, grabbing her, holding her tightly against him. He could feel her frame shaking, could feel the soft push of her belly against his own. “I’m sorry, Marie, I’m sorry. Shhhh. I’m sorry.”

Through the tangles of Marie’s hair, Carlos saw Josh standing distraught in the space between Nellie’s bed and the wall.

What did you people just do to my wife? his mind screamed. What in the world just happened here?

Marie’s hands found the small of his back. Her fingers pushed into him hard as her sobs subsided.

“Okay,” he whispered to her, “we’re getting out of here.”

Chapter Twenty

“What do you remember about the day we met?”

Kneeling on the floor in the hallway, searching through a series of water-stained cardboard boxes he had pulled from the hall closet, Gabriel Farmer looked up at Kelly. The boy he had once been briefly emerged in his features, his face looking very young and very innocent. There had always been a sense of purity in Gabriel, and such purity had somehow managed to follow him into adulthood. It conveyed a soothing element of trust, of compassion, that put Kelly at ease. He was smart and creative and talented and very good-looking. Not for the first time, Kelly wondered why he was alone in life.

“Embarrassment,” he said, grinning to himself.

“What? Why?”

“Here I am, whining like some damn baby, and then out of nowhere this beautiful young girl appears. Sneaks up on me, really. Almost gave me a heart attack. Then again, I think you might have actually saved my life that day.”

“How’s that?”

“Well,” he said, “I’m sure I would have tried to tackle that tree swing at least one more time. Who knows? I could have killed myself. In fact, I’m almost certain of it.”

“Or you could have made it to the top,” she suggested.

Gabriel shook his head. “Not a chance. Thump—right on the ground.”

Kelly laughed. “You certainly were a dumb kid,” she joked.

“Ouch. Salt in the wound now?”

She smiled. “You weren’t the only one who was hurt,” she said. “Do you remember?”

“Hurt.” He rubbed his eyes with his hands. “You mean the blood? The cut on your forehead?”

“So you remember…”

“Sure.”

“I can’t remember how it happened.”

Gabriel shrugged, occupied with his search. “Don’t really remember. We were kids playing in the woods. Kids fall and bleed.”

“We both remember how you got hurt. We remember the tree swing.”

“So?”

“I’ve just been thinking about that.”

“Oh.” He sounded disappointed. In fact, the quality of his voice reminded her now of Josh Cavey—and she suddenly hated herself for not having called him as she’d promised. Anyway, she didn’t owe Josh anything. They were just friends. They weren’t even that close. Yet, like a sharp spear to the heart, the notion pricked her: Do I love Josh Cavey? And where did that come from, anyway?

“This is from before,” Gabriel said, not looking up. “This is about finding yourself again, right?”

“I think I hate this town,” she said. “I mean it. Really hate it.”

“Welcome to my head.”

“Why don’t you leave?”

“Where would I go?”

She crouched to his side and peered inside the boxes. Gabriel smiled when he came across a large purple folder held together by rubber bands.

“Here it is.”

“You save everything.”

“Memories. Who wants to throw them away and forget about them?”

“Sometimes we don’t have a choice,” she said.

Pulling the rubber bands off and peeling back the folder’s worn cover, Gabriel presented her with a series of rough sketches and drawings done in crayon and by a child’s immature hand.

“Damn,” he said, “will you look at these? I haven’t seen these…”

“We drew them?”

“You were a stubborn student, but I eventually got you to sit down and draw. Only took some bribery. And a couple of locks and chains.”

“Which ones are mine?”

He laughed. “The bad ones.”

“Ha. Thanks, Picasso. Let me see.”

There were about twenty leaves of paper, all scrawled with swirls of Blue Sky and Brick Red and Grass Green—puerile renditions of dogs and ducks and boats on ponds and people on bicycles and trees and houses with candy roofs. It was obvious which ones belonged to Gabriel—some of the drawings showed evidence of artistic promise—while Kelly’s were merely crude imitations of the world as seen through the eyes of a small child.

“Amazing,” she said.

“I keep everything,” he said. “That’s my thing.”

“Gabe?”

“Hmmm?”

“I don’t want to insult you…”

“Uh, here it is.”

“Seriously.”

“What?”

“This town is horrible. Spires is like a bad dream. What are you doing wasting your time here? And I don’t just mean with your artwork; I’m talking about your life. This place is dead and empty and there’s really nothing here for you.”

His smile faltered and she feared she’d insulted him. She started to apologize but Gabriel only shook his head.

“I’m not insulted,” he said, “and in a lot of ways you’re right. In fact, when I had that showing in the city, I honestly considered moving there. I mean, all that inspiration every day, right? I even made some phone calls about apartments. But in the end, I wound up changing my mind.”

“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.

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 fucking 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 fucking 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.

“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?

Yes, she knew, it’s all tied together. Somehow.

“I can’t remember.” Vapor blossomed before her face.

Following a moment’s hesitation, Kelly found herself weaving down the hillside by way of a rocky path, the memory of last night’s dream growing more and more intense. Practically ignorant of her actions, she downed the snowy slope with vague absence, the way a dog driven by loyalty follows its owner. The slope was steep and twice she nearly spilled herself to the ground. Having not fully recovered from her recent fever, she could feel her body wearing itself out, tiring itself, burning too much energy. It occurred to her, as she reached the bottom of the hillside and stood on the cusp of the forest, that she did not want to proceed any further. It was cold and it was getting dark.

Also, she was scared.

There is something here.

The concept struck her with inexplicable priority. There is something here. She suddenly knew this, was certain of it, and felt drawn to the forest by the same sense of mysterious urgency that had ushered her into the basement the night before. Her mind generated images of hibernation, of wild things lying in wait for the arrival of something else. Again, she was struck by the image of her sister lost somewhere in these woods.

There is something here.

Warmth touched her. In her mind’s eye she saw Becky moving swiftly down the hillside in her nightgown and bare feet, her legs pumping furiously, her hair streaming behind her while sharp tracks of tears ran down her face. The girl moved with somnambulistic detachment. Kelly watched her run into the darkness of the forest, devoured by the darkness. She was suddenly terrified for Becky and tried to call out to her…only to realize she was daydreaming the moment she opened her mouth. Becky was still in the house, unconscious and in bed.

But she’s here too, she thought. I can feel her.

Encouraged by that same driving force, Kelly stepped into the forest.

Ancient pines loomed above her; random rays of sun bled through the treetops. Some snow had reached the ground here, but not much. Mostly, the forest floor was a dump of wet, dead leaves and fallen pine needles.

Becky was standing right here, she thought, right here on this spot the night she was attacked.

The air smelled charged with static. Looking around, bracing herself against the cold, she imagined Becky running through the trees, her body beaten and scraped by protruding branches, patterned with bruises and cuts. And she’d fallen too—Kelly was suddenly certain of this, knew it as if she’d been there to watch it happen. Becky had fallen just a few yards up ahead, her bare foot snagged by a rotting downfall hidden beneath the underbrush. But Becky had hardly noticed: she’d gotten quickly to her feet again and taken off deeper into the woods.

But why?

And how do I know all this? Kelly wondered. Why can I see it so clearly?

Not see it. She could feel it.

Something carved into the bark of a tree caught her attention and she went up to it, traced it with her fingers:

K.K. + S.S.

Closing her eyes, Kelly remained standing in front of the tree. There was a sense of peace all around her—of nature and all its appropriateness—and yet…there was something masked by this peace, something like a dark bruise, a sour spot in the middle of green health, hiding just beyond the surface…

With little surprise, Kelly found she could see the forest with her eyes closed: that the trees and the land and the sky were laid out before her. Not memory, not recollection—this was here and now. A path weaving through the underbrush…a glowing red beacon just beyond the trees, shining in the darkness, summoning…summoning…

She opened her eyes, suddenly terrified, and saw that there was nothing carved in the bark of the tree. Memories swam just beneath the surface of her mind, nearly coherent. Yet these were not her memories, she knew; these images and thoughts and sensations did not fully belong to her. At least not all of them. It was not Kelly running through the forest, not Kelly tracing a hand to the carving on the tree…

It had been Becky.

She’s inside my head, Kelly thought.

Becky’s bedroom door was cracked open. Kelly pushed it open further and poked her head inside. A single lamp beside the bed illuminated Glenda’s ample form huddled over the bed. Smoothing back Becky’s hair with one hand, Glenda looked up at the sound of the bedroom door opening. She looked startled at first, then relaxed and offered Kelly a wan smile.

“She’s like a daughter to me, just as you were. Sometimes I think that if I stand here long enough, she’ll open her eyes,” the old housekeeper said. And without another word, she bent and kissed Becky’s forehead, tucked the blankets up around the girl, and moved toward Kelly in the doorway. “Are you all right, dear?”

“Okay.”

“Could I take you to the kitchen, fix you something?”

Kelly shook her head. “I think I’m just going to sit with her for a while.”

Glenda nodded and quietly left the room.

For a long while, Kelly remained standing in the doorway, staring at her sister. Was Becky dreaming right now? And if so, was she dreaming of the attack? Was she dreaming of what happened to her that night in the woods?

“I can feel you,” Kelly whispered. “Inside my head. I know you’re dreaming because I can feel your dreams. I can almost see your memories. It was you, wasn’t it? You forced me down into the woods today. And you forced me into the basement last night too. You wanted me to find that sketch pad, those drawings. But not just that. It’s been you for a long time, hasn’t it? Inside my head, I mean. Even back in the city, where this all started, it was you trying to reach out to me. And damn it, I heard you, felt you…I just didn’t know what the hell was going on. I blocked something out from my past and now you’re trying to make me remember. And you’re scared, and I can feel it.” She moved into the room, stopped at the foot of Becky’s bed. The girl looked so peaceful, so permanent. For one terrifying instant, Kelly feared her little sister would never wake up. “What are you trying to tell me?”

No, not tell me, she corrected herself. You’re trying to get me to remember something. I know you are.

Becky’s eyes moved beneath their lids.

“Becky…”

Help me, Becky. Help me remember.

Heat broke out along Kelly’s back, along her arms and neck. She moved slowly around the foot of the bed and to Becky’s side until she was close enough to reach down and touch the girl. She laid her hand on Becky’s arm. The girl felt cold.

You’ve been desperate to get inside my head for a long time now, Kelly thought. It was the only way you knew how to get in touch with me. You needed help and knew that I’d be the only person who’d understand, for some reason. And somehow you knew how to get inside my brain, my head, and stir up my thoughts and emotions. It’s impossible, but you’re able to do it, aren’t you? I know because I could feel it then, and I still feel it now. It’s very strong. But I didn’t know what the hell was happening. I had no idea you were in trouble. I had no idea you even remembered who I was. And I don’t know what to do now, either.

She thought of Becky’s diary, about the entries where her sister had mentioned speaking with her. Of course that hadn’t happened…but had Becky somehow spoke to Kelly inside her mind, without Kelly ever knowing? Had she reached inside Kelly’s head and plucked answers from her mind like some kleptomaniac psychic? Could that be it?

That’s what you were doing, wasn’t it, Becky?

Kelly felt the girl’s arm twitch.

You have that power, Kelly thought, and I have it too. Maybe it’s hereditary or maybe it’s just the work of some god, but we both have it, don’t we? We both share that gift. I can remember that now…

Feelings, memories rushed back to her…

As a child, she’d had an active imagination. Sometimes she found she could actually feel people’s emotions, could sense what was going on inside them. Sometimes—like with her parents—there had been nothing but cold. An empty void. To them, emotions—particularly love—were alien. But feeling…

And there had been something else too…some other special gift…only she couldn’t remember…

I’m listening now, Becky. Can you hear me? What happened to you? What is it you need to tell me? And what is it that I’ve forgotten and you want me to remember? Please…

Remember. She had to remember. Kelly realized this with sudden and absolute clarity, as if she should have known all along. But remember what?

Looking at her sister, Kelly could almost—

(help me)

—sense her pleading, her begging for Kelly to comprehend, to remember.

“Show me. Can you show me?”

And then it occurred to her that maybe Becky already had shown her, at least as best she could.

Kelly turned and stared at the closed closet door. The other night, she’d imagined herself back inside the institution, and that Mouse herself was hiding in Becky’s bedroom closet…Mouse, or those two dead girls…

The institution, she thought. Mouse and those two dead girls.

Something turned over inside her head. There was no sense to be made of anything—there was no solid realizations or epiphanies—just the simple fact that the institution, and perhaps Mouse herself, was the final piece of the puzzle that needed to be snapped into place.

Remember…

The institution…

“But I don’t understand…”

Yet she couldn’t pull her eyes away from the closet door. She thought of Mouse, her dark hair in ropy strands, her eyes bloodshot and darting, her bruised and scabbed arms and legs…

What does Mouse and the institution have to do with any of this?

She felt herself begin to shake. When she looked down, she saw that Becky’s fingers had closed around her own.

Lost in thought, Kelly did not notice the shape that passed in the hallway just outside Becky’s door.

Chapter Twenty-One

In the two days following the incident at Nellie Worthridge’s apartment, Marie grew despondent and uncommunicative. On the cab ride back to their home, Marie’s sobs eased off, only to be replaced by a disturbing calm that seemed to quickly overtake her. Too angry and afraid to speak to his wife, Carlos only held her body against his own as the taxicab trundled through the city and away from the old woman’s tenement. She was stiff against him, unresponsive. And for the length of the cab ride, he couldn’t help but think, What have I done? What just happened up there? It felt like a radioactive charge filled the room. My God, did we all almost die?

Although his mind continuously replayed the image of Nellie’s resuscitation, Carlos suddenly felt no compassion for the woman, and certainly none of the concern he had felt toward her upon their initial meeting at the hospital. Now, in his mind, she had become nothing more than the conduit for something bad: not only a speaker of cryptic words damning his unborn son, but now, based on what had happened, he saw her as a harbinger of a power beyond her own control.

In his mind, she’d become very much a monster.

“She all right?” the driver said as Carlos fitted his hand with bills.

“Fine.”

At home, he helped Marie into the house, peeled off her coat, pushed her up the stairs, and set her down on their bed.

“Is there something I can get you?” he asked her. He’d been thinking about what to say for the length of the cab ride home, and now that he spoke, he was disappointed in his lack of something better.

She only looked at him with blank, confused eyes. As if something both beautiful and intelligent was now lost to her. What had she seen? What things had the old woman projected in her mind?

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I had no idea. You…are you all right? Are you scared? Angry?”

Again, no response.

“Marie…” Her silence agitated him. In his mind he relived the events in that bedroom—the electrically-charged atmosphere, the pulsing inside his own head…the image of some strange girl on a wooded hillside just moments before his body was blown clear across the room and slammed into the wall.

“Orange juice,” Marie said after some time, and it would have to be good enough.

She didn’t leave the bedroom that first day. He sat with her for as long as he could tolerate. Twice, his mother came knocking at the door to see if Marie was all right. He called back that she was, and that she was just resting.

On the second day, when her condition showed no sign of improvement, Carlos again tried to talk with her. But there was nothing he could say to get her to open up to him. It was almost impossible to see any hint of the old Marie in her eyes, and that frightened him more than anything. It was as if she were someplace else…some distant land, never to return…

While he stood on the porch later that afternoon smoking a cigarillo, Marie slid the deck door open and stepped out into the cold, wearing only the bedclothes Carlos had dressed her in the night before. He turned and was surprised to see her standing there, was almost glad…then noticed the vacant look in her eyes. He felt like a child reminded of a nightmare.

“You’re going to catch cold out here like this, darling,” he told her, flicking the cigarillo off the deck.

She said, “There are some things I need.”

He was shocked to hear her speak. “Yes,” he said, “of course. What?”

“Books,” she said.

“All right. You want books. All the books in the world you could possibly want.”

“Children’s books. Storybooks. Tales.”

“Tales?” he said. “Like fairy tales?”

She nodded once—head up, head down—her eyes never leaving his. They’d grown dark and brooding, he noticed, rimmed with calculation. What was she thinking? What was going on inside her head?

What did that old witch do to you? he wondered. Did she do something to your mind?

Marie’s hands went up to her stomach, rubbed it tenderly.

“Okay,” he said, and she turned and slipped back inside the house.

A half-hour later, Carlos was at the library, absently extracting children’s picture books off the shelf until the muscles in his arms began groaning.

Once upon a time there was this old crippled witch who knew something she had no right knowing. And she whispered words. This witch posed as a harmless old woman with a heart to help, and managed to trick a young doctor into bringing his pregnant wife into the witch’s home. There, she quickly administered a spell rendering the poor pregnant woman dispassionate and aloof, nearly in a walking coma, while her husband felt his last nerves begin to unravel. This was all part of the witch’s plan, for she fed off the pure evil derived from such acts, and off the harm she happened to bring to others. And in the end, as the young doctor’s sanity finally fell apart and his poor wife slipped deeper and deeper inside herself, the old witch only laughed and laughed and laughed and lived happily ever after.

Before leaving the library, he passed down an aisle of psychology books. Soon, he found one on mind-reading and other psychic phenomena. The cover looked colorful and the doctor’s name sounded like something from a lousy paperback romance. He muttered the name aloud to himself and forced a tired smirk.

Ding-dong, the witch is dead, he thought.

At home, he distributed the children’s books to his wife, who accepted them with unaffected lethargy moments before disappearing into their bedroom and shutting the door behind her.

His own book in hand, Carlos sat on the back porch, lit his last cigarillo, and began to read:

Though most skeptics believe otherwise, telekinesis is quite real. Laymen understand it to be the power to manipulate physical objects without the demonstration of physical attributes, i.e., with the mind. This is due largely to mental focus and control. Telekinesis is best defined as a higher state of consciousness, where thoughts are formed in the collective unconscious mind and are executed in the form of actions via conscious and rational thought. Tapping this power insists that the conduit, or subject, use much more than the average ten percent of their brain. Primitive man made use of this ability to ensure his survival; today, having no need for such an ability, most of us have forgotten how to tap into this source.

He pulled on the cigarillo, sputtered a cough, and looked out over the porch railing at the large apartment complexes on the other side of the courtyard. Against the gray backdrop of a prewinter sky, the buildings appeared hungry and desolate, ancient and timeworn, too heavy on the ground and too rigid and full to be real. They also seemed impossibly close…as if he’d be able to reach out and brush their facades with the tips of his fingers.

Looking down, he noticed his hands were shaking.

I’m on my way to a nervous breakdown, he thought. Can bet the farm on that.

He skipped several pages and read on:

Although the movement of physical objects via the human mind is the main focus of the telekinetic conduit, it must be observed that many people having expressed the possession of this ability also show signs of some lesser-known and rather misunderstood capabilities, some of which remain even more remarkable than the telekinesis itself. Such subjects convey mild associations with various forms of telepathy, psychokinesis, spontaneous human combustion, ESP, aesthetokinesis, which is the ability to create physical matter from thought, etc. Though these abilities are exceptionally rare and remain highly undocumented, there have been some reported cases where subjects have displayed some, if not all, of these traits.

Ten minutes later and he was helping his mother up the stairs. She complained that her leg was tender, that it got bad with the cold weather, and he promised he’d take a look at it when he got home.

“You’re going out?” she said.

“I need to stop by the hospital for a while,” he told her. “I won’t be long.”

“Baaah,” she said, exasperated. “Marie is sick?”

“She doesn’t feel well. Let her stay in bed. Don’t disturb her, Mamma.”

Moments later, he stood in the upstairs hallway peeking into his bedroom. His wife had fallen asleep on the bed, one of the children’s books splayed open across her lap. He pushed the door open, mindful not to wake her with its creaking, and crept into the room like a ghost. Saddling up to the bed, he brushed his wife’s hair from her face. His hands were still shaking. His fingers looked pale and felt cold. From being outside, he told himself.

He removed the book from her lap, glanced at its pages (some nursery rhyme about Simple Simon and the Pie Man), and placed it on the night table with the rest of them.

“Soon, we’ll forget all about this,” he promised her. “Soon, it’ll just be you and me and baby makes three and none of this will even matter. It’ll all be like some horrible, horrible dream.”

Downstairs, he dug through his medical case in search of his office address book, thumbed through the pages until he came across Joshua Cavey’s number, and went for the phone. It rang just as his fingers closed around it.

How’s that for psychic powers? he thought dryly.

“Hello?”

“Doc, it’s Josh.”

Psychic powers, indeed. “Jesus,” he muttered, “I was just about to call you.”

“I need to talk with you.”

“We need to talk,” Carlos corrected. “My wife…” He lowered his voice. “My wife hasn’t gotten out of bed for two days. Josh, what the hell happened in that apartment?”

“That’s all part of it.”

“Part of what? What are you talking about?”

Josh sounded out of breath. “Can you meet me?”

“Yes.”

“The diner across from Nellie’s building,” Josh said. “In an hour.”

Carlos brought the library book with him and tossed it on the table as Josh, stepping into the diner and out of the cold, approached.

“Sit down,” Carlos told him. The anger in his voice was quite clear; it was enough to cause Josh to pause while removing his coat. Josh sat down across from the doctor, folding his coat across his lap, his eyes jogging between the library book to Carlos’s eyes as if watching a tennis match.

“Calm down,” Josh said.

“Fuck you and to hell with calming down. It’s been two days and my wife hasn’t said more than five sentences to me, all because of…Christ, I don’t even know, whatever the hell happened up there in that apartment…”

“Take it easy,” Josh insisted. Though the place was empty, his eyes darted around the diner as if embarrassed that someone might overhear. “You’re pissed and you’re scared, all right, fine…but don’t lose sight of the fact that it was your idea to drag your wife into this in the first place.”

“You shit…”

“No,” Josh said, shaking his head, “no, I’m sorry. Stop. Let’s start this over. Nothing happened—this isn’t anyone’s fault.”

“Nothing happened? Where the hell were you?”

“Nothing serious, is what I mean.” Josh rubbed his hands together, cupped them, blew into them to get the feeling back. “It seems bad, but it’s not. It’s okay.”

Carlos studied the kid, as if to mentally extract any knowledge about the situation he possessed that Carlos, himself, did not. He wished he were angrier; instead, his anger was diluted by confusion and frustration and the bitter ineffectiveness of his own ministrations thus far.

“When we spoke at the hospital you said you really didn’t know this woman all that well,” Carlos said. “So what’s the deal? How the hell do you know so much about her now, about what she can do, and about these powers or abilities or whatever the hell you want to call them?”

“Because she told me.”

“She just came out and told you whatever the hell—”

Josh shook his head. “This thing goes pretty fucking deep. And man, I don’t know how much you’d be willing to believe and…well, Christ, I don’t even know how much I believe…”

“Try me.”

Josh closed his eyes, rubbed color back into his face. It occurred to Carlos that Josh had most likely rehearsed what he was about to say, that he’d struggled to understand it at some point himself. Perhaps the words he was about to hear were really coming directly from Nellie Worthridge.

“About your wife,” Josh said. “Nellie said to tell you that she’ll be fine. It’s shock, that’s all. Remember when Nellie first touched you? The things you saw, the things you remembered? Well, it was like that with your wife, only amplified, like, a zillion times over, you get it? You asked her to search for information on your unborn son, Doc, and that’s apparently not an easy task, even for someone like Nellie, with Nellie’s powers. She said she had to dive deep and overturn a lot of mental stones, peek inside a lot of mental closets. Real detective shit, right? Your wife is just in shock from what she saw, from what Nellie showed her when she opened those closets, in order to feel out the essence of your son.”

Carlos shook his head. “I felt…it was like the room was electrically charged. I could feel some current running up through my arms, through my body. I could taste it. It curdled my stomach.” His voice jumped up a notch. “You know this too! I saw you. You felt it. I saw you against the wall. You could hardly move, just like me.”

“Normal,” Josh said, his voice impossibly calm. “That’s normal.”

“How can you even say that? How is that possible?”

“It happened when she did it with you,” Josh said. “That’s why I left the room. The more power she uses, the stronger those around her can feel it. It comes off her in waves. When she dips into the heads of those women she plays cards with, it’s like using a double-A battery. With you, it was like charging up to a car battery. And with your wife, it was like being hooked up to some sort of nuclear generator or something. Einstein wasn’t no slouch; it’s all relative.”

“So my wife…?”

“She’ll be fine. Nellie said she’s still charged up, that’s all. Residual current from that nuclear generator, right? You were probably pretty damn shaken for a while after she hopped inside your head. I know I was.”

“She did you, too?” For some reason, the notion seemed absurd.

“Point is,” Josh went on, “your wife will be fine.”

“And my son?” It was the reason he’d gotten Marie involved in the first place, and he’d almost forgotten about it. How could he ever forget something like that?

Josh took his gaze to the table. “She couldn’t tell,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

Josh rolled his shoulders. His knee was bouncing beneath the table, causing the tabletop to rock. “She couldn’t find anything. It doesn’t always work and she couldn’t find anything out about your son, couldn’t feel him. She tried.”

“Tried. Goddamn…” He brought his hands up to his face, rubbed his tired eyelids. He could feel his hands trembling against the skin of his face. He wondered what he looked like to Josh, and what the boy thought of him. “So this all happened for nothing…”

“She tried,” Josh reiterated. “I’m sorry.”

Carlos sighed. He felt an insane laugh threaten his throat. “Well,” he said. “Okay then. Well-well-well-well-well. And you wanted to meet me, put my mind at ease about my wife? How very noble. Your mother must spin circles.”

“Actually, I wanted to see you because I need your help.”

The doctor grabbed his book, slid it across the table, and dumped it into his lap. He was ready to leave.

“I have a good friend who’s in a lot of trouble,” Josh said quickly. “Her name is Kelly. She went upstate to her family home about a month ago and I haven’t heard from her since. Which isn’t bad in and of itself…but Nellie’s been having these dreams, getting these bad feelings. Sometimes she fades out in the middle of the day, just closes her eyes and she’s gone, and I know she’s searching for Kelly with her mind, that she can feel something’s wrong with her…”

“What’s wrong?”

Josh frowned and brought his eyes down, almost ashamed to meet Carlos’s own. “I don’t know. I mean, I can’t tell…and Nellie isn’t sure…but it’s something. We both feel it, and Nellie much stronger than me.”

“I don’t understand. What do you need from me?”

“You saw what happened to Nellie after the trance with your wife. She almost died. In fact, she’d be dead right now if you hadn’t saved her. It weakened her, took all her strength. She’s been getting weaker each time she goes into one of these fugues. I’m just afraid that if she goes too deep after Kelly that she won’t wake up again, that she’ll die. And I think Kelly’s in some kind of danger.”

The tiny bell over the top of the shop door rang; upon hearing this, Josh jumped in his seat and slid around to stare in the direction of the sound, suddenly nervous. A man pushed in through the door, bundled in winter clothes, and waddled up to the counter to order some pastries.

He’s just a scared kid, Carlos thought, that’s all. Nothing magical or supernatural or even special here. Just a scared kid sitting here talking about ghosts with an even more scared kid. We’re in the same club, you and I, Josh. Hell of a membership fee, isn’t it?

“You’re asking me to stand guard in the room while Nellie goes into another one of those trances, and to pump her back to life in case she happens to have heart failure in the process? And all this because you think your girlfriend might be in some sort of trouble somewhere? Josh, this is getting insane…”

“I know what it sounds like,” he said, “but I don’t have another choice. She tried to help you, she really did, so can’t you help us now?”

“Josh—”

“I’m asking.”

“I understand…”

“Kellow,” Josh said.

Carlos felt something turn over in his head. “What?”

“Kellow. You remember that word you told me Nellie was saying over and over again in her sleep? That word you recorded?”

The man at the counter coughed loudly into his hands, did a half-turn to examine himself in the reflection of the diner’s bank of windows, and turned back to face the counter again.

“Yes,” Carlos heard himself say, “I remember.”

“That’s Kelly’s real last name. I didn’t know that until Nellie told me. Nellie felt it—it came to her during one of these trances.”

Kellow, Carlos thought. What a goddamn mystery.

“She said that name right around the time she said those things about my son. Do you think there might be a connection? That maybe…” But his words died off. It was too nonsensical, too full of bullshit. In fact, in retrospect, he was amazed that the thought even crossed his mind to begin with. How in the world could the possible death of his unborn son be related to what some girl in upstate New York was doing?

Like a flash of lightning inside his head, the image of the young girl on the wooded hillside filled Carlos’s mind. The sheer power of the vision caused his entire body to tremble, and he grasped the corners of the table to keep himself still.

“Jesus,” he muttered, “I think I saw her. I think…God, I think I saw her there…”

“Saw who? Kelly?” Josh’s voice sounded very far away. Behind him, Carlos watched as the man in the winter garb gathered his pastries from the counter, paid the cashier, and exited the store. “You saw Kelly?”

“When I touched Nellie’s arm,” he said. He felt himself become detached, knew that his eyes were unfocused and looking past Josh now, through Josh. “I had this vision of a young woman standing on this hillside, surrounded by these trees, and this sense of…of urgency, like something bad was about to happen, only I didn’t know exactly what it was. I didn’t know what I was seeing. But now I think I do. Somehow…”

“You saw her? She was all right? You…how did…you saw her?”

Carlos snapped forward, his eyes refocused. A film of sweat coated his forehead, the palms of his hands. “Jesus,” he whispered.

“Nellie’s powers are strong,” Josh said. “Sometimes, it’s like…I think I can feel it too, even when I’m not with her. You know? Like I dream about what she sees and what she knows when I’m asleep.”

“Your friend,” Carlos said. “Why do you think she’s in trouble? What has Nellie felt?”

“I don’t know. Nothing specific. She can’t tell. It’s all just a jumble of feelings, of emotions, all coming at her at once. And half the time I think she’s just as scared and confused as me. And then, like I said, she isn’t getting stronger. She keeps this up and she’s going to die.”

Kellow, Carlos thought again, recalling the day at the hospital when the old woman began mumbling the word in her sleep. For some reason I knew it was a name.

Josh sighed, leaned back in his seat. “I don’t know about your son,” he said, “so I’m not going to lie to you. There may be some bizarre connection between your son and what’s happening with Kelly, but that’s just a feeling. Or coincidence. I’m not going to make you believe that just so you’ll help me.”

“That’s just impossible…”

“Yeah, well, I’ve had to realign my own concept of the world lately. I’m sure you have, too. About a month ago I wouldn’t have thought people like Nellie Worthridge even existed.”

Carlos found himself slowly nodding. His eyes trailed down to the book on his lap. Was it possible that this was all some horrible, horrible dream? That he’d wake up any minute, sweating and shaking, and utter a frightened laugh for dreaming such a morbid and purely ridiculous dream? Again, he felt that same maniacal laughter threaten to bubble up through his body and explode from his throat. His lips played with a terrified smile.

Look at me, he thought. I’m going insane.

Josh led him into the darkness of Nellie’s apartment. Even at night, all the shades were drawn against the lights of the city. The apartment lights were all off except for a small kitchen nightlight plugged into the wall beneath a row of cabinets. Darkness. To Carlos, this more than anything suggested the old woman’s imminent death. Like some wounded forest creature, she was barring herself from the rest of the world, walling herself up in seclusion. It was something human beings, like many other animals, did instinctively when faced with the sudden prospect of their own fleeting mortality. In fact, the entire apartment suggested an ancient crypt or mausoleum: stagnant and unused, from which all essence of life was being slowly drained over a long period of time.

“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.”

Carlos backed away from the bed. He was visibly shaken, his hands trembling so much he shoved them into the pockets of his pants. Nothing made sense.

“Don’t be afraid,” she repeated.

He shook his head.

“Whatever danger Kelly is in, it has to do with her own mind, her own hidden book. I feel her searching for something—some memory—but it continues to elude her…and me. I feel that once she finds it, it will open all the floodgates. I’ve been keeping a strong lock on her. When she finally remembers, then I will understand too.”

“How can you help her?” His throat was dry and abrasive. “What could you possibly do?”

“When the time comes, I can reach for her, pull her, make a grab for her. The mind is a powerful thing, Carlito. More powerful than most of us know. Maybe, if we’re careful, there will be a way for us to pull her from this danger.”

“But we don’t even know what the danger is.”

“Soon,” she said. Something in her voice sounded off, as if half her thoughts were occupied by something else. “When she remembers, I will know. I’m there inside her mind, but her mind is thick with smoke, her memories hard to see. The moment she remembers and the smoke clears, I will be able to see. Then it will be time.”

Carlos backed up against the wall. Resting his head against the wall, he peered through the crack between the drawn curtain and the window at the glitter of city lights below. It occurred to him then that he had been a very different person just one short month ago.

Nellie’s voice floated across the room to him: “You are thinking of your son.”

“I am.”

“I feel there may be some connection between Kelly and your son, that the two events are somehow linked. It is too hazy to tell for certain; it is just a feeling I have…”

“I don’t believe that,” he said, not knowing exactly what he believed. “You don’t need to say it to get me to help you.”

“That’s not why I say it.”

“I still don’t believe it.”

“But you will help us?”

Carlos closed his eyes. He could feel the room throbbing all around him. It was as if he were standing in the heart of some great beast—and perhaps he was, in a way. Standing in the center of this vital, life-breathing organ. Or perhaps he was the organ himself.

We’re all a part of the same monster, he thought.

“I’ll help,” he said.

Part Three

The (Hidden) Book of Thaw

Chapter Twenty-Two

In many ways, the Coopersville Female Institution was very much like the Kellow Compound itself. Constructed in the wake of the Second World War, when it was simply referred to as Coopersville, the immense brick-and-mortar facility’s primary objective had been to accommodate the large influx of injured war veterans from New York State. Later, in the midsixties, and after a lengthy and strenuous renovation, the facility reopened as a hospital for young women suffering from psychological aberrations. The building rested atop a massive wreath of aggregate rock, shouldered on three of its four sides by the sprawling wishbone-shaped Champlain Forest. A squat, three-story building with limited windows (all of which were laid with pebbled, wire-meshed panes), the institute hunkered close to the earth like a crouching beast above the skyline of the feeble and hapless city below. The sheer authority of the building was reminiscent of Kelly’s childhood home: upon her initial arrival all those years ago, the building’s wealth, frigidity, and isolation created in Kelly a warped sense of belonging.

The bizarre death of the two young girls on the third floor was not the only black cloud hanging over the history of the institution. A number of tragedies occurred throughout the passage of years, most notably the electrical fire in 1982 that caused sufficient damage to most of the third floor. At that time, the third floor had served as an invalid ward, catering to the bedridden and physically inept. And due to the failed conditions of these patients, several were unable to be removed from the building in time. The number of deaths was disastrously high. And despite major reconstruction to the floor soon after the fire, the third floor of the Coopersville Female Institution remained closed. These stories were known by many to be legends and ghost stories, monsters in the proverbial closet; they were known to few others as the truth.

Now, all these years later, Kelly maneuvered her father’s Cadillac up the paved incline that led to the institution’s front entrance. She braked the car as it cut through a clearing in the trees, enabling her to view the building in all its monstrous grandeur. She stared at it for a long time, suddenly deaf to the car radio humming softly from the dash, and was somewhat surprised at her own lack of emotion. She’d spent three years of her life inside the walls of the institution, caged and numbered, while her mind worked on suppressing the memory of the very evil that had forced her into such a place. Yet looking at it now, she felt only a sinking dullness at the core of her being, too distant and meaningless to rile her.

She continued up the driveway and pulled around to the side parking lot where she docked the Cadillac in a visitor’s spot.

Inside, she found herself frozen in the doorway of the front hall. All the emotions that had thus far eluded her now slammed home all at once. Her sense of function evaporated into nothingness. Her legs went weak and her bladder suddenly blossomed into a well of bursting agony. Before her eyes, the hallways appeared to cant to one side, to shift positions in an attempt to throw her off balance. After all this time, nothing had changed. The cinderblock walls were still painted in the same industrial flavors; the carpet beneath her feet remained the color of iodine, the texture of Velcro; the light fixtures in the ceiling still buzzed and hummed and spat with a persistence as deliberate as human personality.

That’s it, she thought. That’s why this place is so similar to my home. It’s because both places feel alive.

Home. It wasn’t her home.

She moved down the hallway toward the nurses’ workstation. The air smelled strongly of antiseptic. Somewhere within the maze of the first floor, a young girl was shouting something about Gavin, Gavin, where did you go? Kelly felt herself begin to tremble, the pressure at her groin growing more intense. What little she remembered about the place was suddenly reinforced; and all that she’d forgotten had started filtering in through the cracks in her mind.

Just before approaching the front desk, she turned and dashed into the bathroom at the end of the hall. There, she assaulted a stall, dropped her jeans, sat, and urinated for what felt like an hour.

God, I can’t do this. What the hell am I even doing here?

Back in the hallway, she stepped toward the nurses’ workstation like a timid child.

Because last time I was here, she rationalized, I was a child.

“Can I help you?” one of the nurses behind the desk asked without looking up from her paperwork.

“I’m here to see someone.”

“Name?”

“Kelly Kellow. I’m here to see Jennifer Sote, a patient—”

“Relationship?”

“Relative.”

The nurse looked up at her only briefly, her eyes running a scan of Kelly’s face. “Sisters?”

“She’s my cousin,” Kelly lied.

“Identification, please.”

Kelly produced her driver’s license. The nurse scrutinized it. She was a compact little woman with squinty eyes and a lipless mouth.

“I haven’t changed back to my maiden name yet,” Kelly said to assuage the woman’s suspicion at her last name.

“Let me see inside your purse, please,” the nurse said.

Kelly spread open her purse and the nurse peered inside.

“Carrying any sharp objects, such as pocket knives, metal nail file, toenail clippers with a file, screwdrivers, or any eating utensils?”

“No.”

“Jennifer Sote,” the nurse grumbled, swiveling in her chair to face a large computer screen. Her bony fingers attacked the keyboard, hammered away at the keys.

Is it possible that she’s no longer here? Kelly wondered. It’s been roughly six years. Isn’t it possible Mouse has moved on? Doubtful she was released—she was too far gone for that, I think—but she could have moved to some other facility. Then on the heels of that: Or she could be dead.

“Jennifer Sote,” the nurse repeated, tapping a fingernail against the computer monitor. “Second floor, room 218. Would you like someone to show you up?”

“I’ll find it, thanks.”

She moved swiftly down the corridor, deliberately refusing eye contact with any of the other nurses, just as she had done as a teenager. When she turned the corner, the hallway opened up into a spacious recreation room, aligned with a multitude of television sets and activity tables. Some of the ward’s occupants had gathered here—young girls in varying stages of repression, depression or outright psychosis. It occurred to Kelly that some things never change. These girls were no different than the ones who’d inhabited the institution six years ago. Perhaps twenty years ago, for all Kelly knew. They were children: some the victims of domestic abuse, rape, incest, the whole gamut. Others were here suffering from uncontrollable bouts of depression, hopeless in the face of any type of medical treatment. And then there were others, though perhaps only a slim few, who displayed running strains of violent tendencies. No—some things never change.

A young girl passed her in the hallway, her head bent toward the floor, though she followed Kelly from the corners of her eyes. As she passed, the girl whispered, “Electric tongue,” and continued down the corridor.

The second floor housed the older residents. Though the facility did not usually admit adults, the second floor was comprised typically of those residents who had been unfortunate enough to grow old inside the walls of the institution. Had Kelly’s condition been more severe—as severe as Mouse’s, for instance—she too might never have left, doomed to haunt the second floor of the Coopersville Female Institution for the remainder of her life.

The hallways were white—white walls, white linoleum floor, white clapboard ceiling tiles. Her footsteps echoed across the floor as she advanced down the hallway. One of the doors to her left opened just a crack. A pair of bright blue eyes examined her from the other side. Two more residents paced back and forth up ahead, where the hallway emptied into a lounge and dining area. A group of women in colored sweatpants sat watching television; only one of them turned her head to watch Kelly pass.

The door to room 218 was closed.

This is insane. What could I possibly say to this woman? Why am I even here? That’s it—I’ve finally gone out of my mind.

Yet she could feel Becky’s essence piloting her actions, refusing to relent. This was something that had to be done, something that was essential to the stimulation of her memories. This place—these blank walls and blank stares—held secrets. That was fact; she knew this as plain and as simply as she knew her own name. And just as she’d been during her jaunt into the basement back at the house, she was overcome by the notion that there was something here. What Mouse had to do with any of it, she didn’t understand. But that feeling was there and she was powerless to ignore it.

I’ve come this far, she thought and knocked on the door.

Nothing.

Looking back over her shoulder she noticed a few more women had turned to watch her. Most of them stared at her with blank expressions, their distant eyes traitors to the severity of their psychological instabilities.

Of course she won’t answer your knock, a voice spoke up in her head, you didn’t do it correctly.

Code. The secret knock. Two knocks, shake the knob, two more knocks. Wasn’t that it? It’d been six years, but wasn’t that it?

To her consternation, a small grin tugged at the corners of her mouth. Kelly administered the secret knock, then waited. And at first it seemed that nothing was going to happen. Was Mouse even in the room? But then she heard the advancing shuffle of feet across the floor on the other side of the door. Kelly’s trembling became more pronounced. In her mind, she held onto her mental picture of Mouse, or Jennifer Sote, and wondered what she looked like now. Moreover, she wondered what the girl—the woman—acted like now, what she thought like. Back then, Mouse had been slipping. Her mind had been slowly deteriorating, leaving her for some remote corner of an infinite void. After these six years, had Mouse’s mind finally retreated for good, given up the ship? Even as a teenager, her brain’s gradual degeneration was most prominent not in her actions but in her eyes, practically foreshadowing her doomed future. Her fingers were always scabbed because she chewed at them. Her skin, particularly her legs and neck, always boasted a variety of colorful bangs and bruises.

“I can’t do this,” she breathed.

Yes-yes-yes, her mind insisted.

The shuffling feet stopped but no one came to the door. Secret knock? What was she thinking? After all this time, did she honestly expect Mouse to remember something as ridiculous as a secret knock?

She probably won’t even remember who I am, she thought.

More women from the lounge were watching her now. One of them appeared to be making her way in Kelly’s direction, although she moved with the hesitation associated most often with curious forest animals. Very few women seemed interested in the television now. Anxious, Kelly searched the hallway for a nurse. Found none.

She knocked again. “Hello?”

There was definitely someone inside; she was certain she’d heard movement.

“This is where they make the ice cream,” a woman said from behind her, shambling along the hallway like someone lost in a dream.

“Yes, okay. Excuse me.”

Kelly turned back to the closed door. She took a deep breath, turned the knob, and pushed open the door.

It was a small, single-occupancy room with a solitary bed tucked into one corner and a simple white throw rug in the center of the floor. A few arbitrary drawings were taped to the walls, each of them at waist-height. A single window stood opposite the bed, through which the muted rays of daylight filtered. No details of the outside world could be made beyond the wire-meshed, frosted pane.

An undernourished woman in a white cloth gown stood in the middle of the room, half-poised to look out the window, but was instead staring at the wall. Her hair was as black as fresh tar, stringy like cobwebs, and framed her pale, ghostlike face with matted tendrils. She looked emaciated, the knots of her elbows and knees bulging from inside her skin with painful exaggeration. Her feet were bare, the ankles ringed with bruises.

Herself moving dreamlike now, Kelly entered the room, shutting the door behind her. She expected the room’s occupant—Mouse?—to turn around at the sound of the door closing, to at least acknowledge her arrival, but the woman did not move.

“Jennifer Sote?” Kelly stepped around the small room trying to get a better view of the woman’s face.

As if reading her mind, the woman lifted her head and stared at Kelly. It was Mouse; there was no doubt about it now. Mouse. At least, what was left of her: Mouse’s face was jaundiced and sallow, her eyes two bruised pockets of flesh. Her lips were dried and peeling, a pale blue. A fading discoloration on the left side of her face just above the jaw-line suggested some sort of physical abuse.

“Jennifer?” Her voice shook. “Mouse?”

To her astonishment, Mouse’s peeling lips broke into a skeletal half-grin. With painful lassitude, Mouse backed herself up against the bed then proceeded to ease herself down onto the mattress, not taking her eyes from Kelly for a single moment. It seemed her bones might snap. That half-grin remained, unflinching. Something fluttered behind Mouse’s eyes and it wasn’t merely recognition. It was something else, something almost devious. Kelly was suddenly afraid…

How can this be Mouse? Mouse was so virile, so intense, so active. This can’t be Mouse, can’t be the same person. She would have never allowed herself to go this far.

But Mouse had never possessed control over her mind; rather, it was the other way around. It was an unraveling—that was the simplest way of understanding it. In a way, Mouse had lived her life as a slave to the bizarre inclinations of a faulty mind. It owned her. Perhaps the same sickness that had satisfied her youth with a dramatic imagination and a profusion of energy had, in adulthood, crippled her into the vapid, feeble woman that now sat on the edge of a hospital bed, watching her from across the room.

“You don’t remember me,” she said. “It’s me, Kelly. We used to be friends. Long ago.”

“It’s warm,” Mouse said, her voice rusty and out of practice. It didn’t sound like it should be coming from this woman, Kelly thought. “I need help to open the window.”

Kelly looked at the window. It was sealed shut and presumably had been since forever. Short of a sledgehammer, there was no way of opening the window. Plus, the room was freezing, probably a chilly sixty degrees.

“Kelly Kellow,” she repeated, hoping the name would spark some sort of recollection. But even as the words vacated her mouth, one look into Mouse’s blank eyes assured her that there would be no recollections today, and probably for the remainder of Mouse’s life. Yet Kelly continued nonetheless. “We used to be friends here a long time ago. Kelly Kellow. Do you remember?”

“I’ll help you,” Mouse said, and Kelly felt her heart leap, as if this strange woman somehow understood that she was here for answers, here seeking something, and that yes, yes, she did need help. But then she realized Mouse was still talking about the window and she felt a sudden sinking in the pit of her stomach. “It’s warm and the window sticks,” Mouse went on. “I’ll help you lift it.”

It’s okay, Kelly thought. What would it matter if you remembered me anyway? What would it matter if you had all your senses about you? Was I driven here to see you, to see how you turned out? Jesus Christ, what the hell good does that do me?

Mouse cocked her head to one side like an inquisitive puppy. A pang of grief washed through Kelly and she didn’t think she’d be able to spend another second in this room.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to bother you. I was…I’m…”

I’m what? Huh? I’m sorry that she turned out this way, that her brain continued to decline after I was released and went about my life on the outside world? Where I can open all the windows I damn well please?

She turned to leave…then stopped, suddenly frozen by one of the drawings taped to the wall. She stared at it in utter disbelief, like someone abruptly confronted with their past life, as the rest of her surroundings faded away into nothingness.

It was a simple drawing done in crayon of a little girl standing in front of a tree. Large, diamond-shaped tears spilled down the girl’s cheeks. A second figure stood in the background, half-hidden behind the tree itself, too indistinct to make out if it was a boy or a girl, or even a human being at all. But what caught Kelly’s attention was what was written on the trunk of the tree, in scrawling red crayon:

K.K. + S.S.

She felt reality suddenly shift, suddenly teeter to one side, and felt a tremendous heat overtake her. Her skin prickled and sweat broke out along her arms, her neck and forehead, droplets running down her ribs from beneath her arms. On unsteady legs, she propelled herself across the room and thrust a finger at the drawing.

“What is this? Mouse, what is this?” Her voice cracked under the strain of fear. “Did you draw this? What is it supposed to be?”

Mouse just studied her face. She didn’t even turn to look at the drawing.

“Is this it? Is this why I’m here? Did I come here to see this, Mouse?”

Her mind was careening. Who’s the crazy one now?

Like a bolt of electricity through her head, an image shocked her mind and sent her conscious thoughts into a spinout. Suddenly, she was not in the tiny white room with Mouse any longer; now, she was in some ill-lit, cavernous room that smelled oddly of cedar and copper and moldy furniture. She was aware of a throbbing red light, of a jumble of plastic forks strewn across the wooden floor…a floor covered in pine needles…

Mouse stood from the bed, her head still cocked. Her movement shook Kelly back to reality. She was breathing heavy. In a fever, Kelly’s tongue worked over the contours of her mouth, which felt like hot dunes of sand.

Mouse was muttering something under her breath: “Simple Simon met a Pie Man going to the fair…Said Simple Simon to the Pie Man, ‘Let me taste your ware’…”

“This picture!” Kelly insisted. “Damn it, Mouse, where did this come from? Who’s in this picture? Is it me? Is it? It is, isn’t it? K.K.—those are my initials, aren’t they?”

Mouse only chanted louder: “Said the Pie Man to Simple Simon, ‘Show me first your penny’…”

“Stop it, Mouse.”

“Said Simple Simon to the Pie Man, ‘Indeed I have not any’…”

“Stop it!” She could feel her heart beating thunderously in her chest, could hear it in her ears.

“Indeed I have not any!”

“Stop!”

“Indeed!” Mouse barked and sprung forward, her tine-like fingers hooked into claws, her eyes suddenly ferocious and startlingly intelligent. Her hands closed around Kelly’s arms, the force of the jolt knocking her off balance and sending them both crashing to the floor. Kelly’s head slammed against the linoleum and oily stars exploded in front of her eyes. She felt Mouse’s bony knees digging into her arms, pinning them to the floor, as the woman straddled her.

And then Kelly was gone again—

(lost in some secret fairy tale world of gingerbread houses and rivers of chocolate and rainbow bridges and marshmallow clouds but the rivers did not run full with chocolate they ran deep with blood and the marshmallow clouds blackened and curled destroyed by fire and the smell of rot clogged the air)

She managed to knock Mouse off her and roll onto her side, dragging herself across the floor to the door. The back of her head throbbed, and as she tried to stand her vision multiplied. In one final effort, she made a leap for the door and grasped the knob with one quavering hand—

“Kelly Kellow and Simple Simon,” Mouse muttered from behind her.

Kelly turned, her breath coming in great whooping gasps now. “What did you say?”

“What did you tell the Pie Man?”

“Mouse…” She looked back at the drawing on the wall, the initials: K.K. + S.S.

“What did Simple Simon do to you? You told me once.”

“Simple…?” Her voice died. Her mind was like a dam, bulging under the force of a river of memories. She could almost hear the sounds of bolts coming loose in the foundation of the dam, popping free and whizzing through the air…

“Is he still your friend?” Mouse said. “Does he still come to you, come creep-creep-creeping in your window? Does he still haunt you, Kellerella?”

“Muh-Mouse—”

Mouse tilted her head forward. She stared at Kelly from beneath the ridge of her brow. Her eyes gleamed. “I remember you, Kelly.”

“You…remember…” Her own voice sounded very far away.

“The ham,” Mouse said, breaking into a grin. “We were sneaky, weren’t we?”

“Yes. You brought ham into the room after hours. You…you hid it in your bra strap.”

“You did it.” Without looking, Mouse’s arm shot out and pointed to the drawing of the sobbing little girl on the wall behind her. “You did it, Kelly, and I kept it for you. Maybe he’d come for me one day too.”

“Who?”

“Simple Simon,” she said. “The Pie Man.”

“Why do I know that?” The dam was losing strength, the bolts popping in steady succession now. “Why do I know…?”

“You don’t remember,” said Mouse. Her eyes narrowed. “That’s why you came here.”

She didn’t understand. “I came here because of Simple Simon?” The dam—creaking…ready to burst…water seeping through…

“You came to get away.”

“What is this? How do you know this?”

“Because you told me,” Mouse said. Then: “Because you showed me. You showed me what you could do, Kelly.”

“What could I do? What did I show you?”

“Upstairs,” Mouse said, “on the third floor. You showed me on the third floor. You were scared to go because of what happened to those two girls there but it was your idea, wasn’t it? Yes. You were scared but that was the only quiet place, the only place you could show me. It felt safe then. It was where those two girls died and you used them to show me what you could do.”

You used them to show me what you could do. Mouse’s words rang in her head. Her mind was pulsing, expanding and contracting in synchronization with the force of her memories, now furious to break free.

“I can’t remember,” Kelly said. “Mouse, help me remember.”

“I can’t show you,” Mouse said. “Go upstairs and see for yourself.”

“Where?”

“The closet. Go upstairs and see the closet where the two girls died, just like you showed me that day. Go see the closet and you’ll remember what you told me, what you showed me. You’ll remember it all. Go up and see.”

For a moment, Kelly couldn’t move.

“Go up and see. Go up and see. Go up and see. Go up and see…”

As if driven by some unseen force, Kelly turned, flung open the door, and hustled down the corridor to the stairwell. A dozen eyes watched her leave.

In all its mystery, the third floor hallway stretched out before her just as she’d remembered it. Idle and silent, the faint but distinct smell of sulfur in the air, the hallway was a straight length of white track to the end. On either side of the hallway, doors to the long-vacant rooms stood shut and barred, the paint peeling off in flaky spirals and curls. Several sections of the ceiling sported large brown water stains; other places boasted gaping holes stuffed with twigs, straw and dried leaves—the nests of animals. Plaster from these holes had fallen and shattered on the floor, covering the linoleum in a sheet of powder. The light fixtures either didn’t work or were not in use; the only light issued in through the windows, casting crooked panels of sunlight against their respective walls. Dust motes floated in the air.

Here, the silence was arresting. Kelly was aware of every sound—her own breathing, heartbeat, the scuff of her heels against the floor. An enormous fly thumped stupidly against one of the milky windowpanes off to her right. Up ahead stood the abandoned nurses’ workstation, now a relic in its own time. The countertop was blistered and warped from water damage.

At the end of the hallway, facing her, was the broom closet. The door was closed, though not barred and locked like the rest. It didn’t seem real; rather, it seemed superimposed on the wall, its image a projection of her own imagination. If she went to it, reached out and touched it with her hand…would she actually feel anything? Would the door really be there? After all these years, would it be there?

She began walking toward it. Her shadow, large and distorted, followed her along the wall. The stink of sulfur intensified.

They’d come up to the third floor only twice, Mouse and her. The first time it had been Mouse’s idea. After stories about the two dead girls diffused throughout the institution, Mouse found herself unable to think of anything else. She’d been ravenous with desire to actually see the place where the girls had been found dead, to perhaps open the closet door and step inside. “You’re afraid of ghosts,” Mouse had said to her one evening. It was not a question and the authority in her voice had irritated Kelly. Wild-eyed and unsettled, Mouse had insisted they creep up to the third floor and at least look at the closet—heck, no one had to actually go inside if they didn’t want to. And despite Mouse’s affinity toward the extreme, she was the closest thing Kelly had to a friend at the hospital. If Mouse wanted to go to the third floor, Mouse was going to go…with or without Kelly. Anyway, she wasn’t terribly scared…

They’d gone up after everyone was asleep. The corridors were uncomfortably silent, pierced by the occasional muffled shout in the night. Mouse had led the way, her thin and spindly form just a few steps ahead of Kelly on the stairwell going up. And when they reached the third floor, Mouse had crept on ahead of her in the darkness, her eyes alight with something too close to insanity, her mouth twisted into a bizarre grin. The look in her eyes that night frightened Kelly more than the actual trek to the third floor. Even more than the stories about the dead girls.

“What do you think they did in that closet?” Mouse had asked, leading the way down the hall. “You think they did sex?”

“I don’t know,” she’d answered.

“You think they went in there a lot? To do sex?”

“I don’t know.”

Their bare feet padding along the cold floor, Kelly had followed Mouse to the end of the hallway. Mouse stopped just in front of the closed broom closet.

“This is it,” Mouse had said.

“So now what?”

“Open it.”

“No.”

“I want to look inside.”

“No.”

“I’ll do it.” And she did—Mouse reached out and turned the knob. The door stuck a bit, warped from age, but when Mouse administered more force, it popped free of its molding and creaked open. Blackness inside—

Mouse had screamed, jumped back. Startled, Kelly had cried out and stumbled backward. She tripped over her feet and crumbled to the floor, twisting her ankle in the process, her heart thudding mechanically in her chest.

Mouse had broken out laughing. “Gotcha,” she’d said.

“Bitch,” said Kelly.

“Bitch you.” Mouse peered back inside the closet. “This is it,” she said again. “This is where they died.” And after a length of silence: “What do you think it was like for them to die in here like that?”

She had no answer for Mouse, too afraid to let her mind summon the corpses, to see them, to see what they might have looked like…

Now, stopping before the closed broom closet door, Kelly could recall the expression of intensity so prominent on Mouse’s face. What had Mouse expected to find in the closet, anyway? Perhaps she’d wanted to see it the way young boys will want to explore haunted houses—not necessarily because they believe in ghosts, but because they wanted to believe in ghosts.

Ghosts, she thought now.

That had been the first time. They’d gone up to the third floor a second time too—almost a full year later. Only that time Mouse hadn’t been so excited. By then, Mouse had started retreating into the back of her mind, and by then she had become frightened too. Frightened and confused. And it had been Kelly’s idea to come back up to the third floor, not Mouse’s. Kelly’s idea…because she needed to tell Mouse something, needed to show her something…

Standing before the closet door now, Kelly almost recalled what it was. And with that near-recollection, she could feel the threads of other memories—memories from home—being pulled along behind it. It was a train; everything was connected.

This is the only way I can explain it to you, Kelly had said.

Tell me, said Mouse.

I can’t. I have to show you. And I don’t want to talk about it down here, not with everyone else around. Let’s go upstairs, to the third floor. Let’s go to the closet again.

And what exactly had she told Mouse? What had been so important to tell her friend…to bring her back up to the third floor one year later? Kelly had become more and more depressed with the passage of time. It had been Mouse who’d forced her to talk, prevented her from falling too deep inside herself. And it had been Mouse who’d finally asked what had happened, and why Kelly had been sent to the institution in the first place. Mouse’s story was not a secret: though Mouse’s parents claimed they were concerned about their daughter’s well-being, it was clear that the Sotes really feared for their own lives. Mouse had been a confused and bizarre child who had often succumbed to impromptu bursts of violence. But Kelly…she’d never given up her secret, never told what had happened, never wanted to discuss it. It was just best to forget, she’d managed to convince herself. Some nights, she almost managed to make herself forget, and that would have been just perfect. There was nothing she wanted to remember, nothing she wanted to keep inside her for the rest of her life.

We can forget, she thought now, but it never truly leaves us. It just stays inside, sits dormant, until it’s ready to attack us again.

“What did I take you up here to tell you?” she mumbled to herself. And she didn’t just tell her story—she showed Mouse, convinced her…

How?

Reaching out, she gripped the pitted brass knob of the closet door, turned it. She heard the tumblers in the lock roll over. In one great swoosh, she yanked the closet door open and stood there, staring inside.

Her heart nearly stopped. Her hand fell away from the doorknob. The world around her pulled back and vanished as she stood there, staring inside the closet, staring at the two writhing, huddled shapes in the blackness…

The two dead girls were there, propped crookedly against each other, their clothes hanging off their bodies, their skin a pale white-blue. Patches of scalp showed through their hair. Their eyes, large and fishlike in their heads, rolled with a wet, sucking sound to face Kelly. Their lips parted simultaneously, exposing black, rotted gums and teeth like twisted, rusting metal.

“Kellerella,” they both breathed at the same time, and a flood of memories suddenly burst through the dam of her mind, and she—

(this is what I can do this is what I can create you don’t believe me but watch what I can do I can make things be real)

—saw herself standing up here with Mouse, telling Mouse that she can make things be real, that she can create things from her mind just by thinking about them, and that these were real things, and the only way to prove it was to stand there and open the closet and show Mouse, to show her those two dead girls, materialized into reality from the sheer power of her mind, and they were real and they could do things if they wanted and if she didn’t make them vanish again, and that was what happened at home, was what happened in the woods with Simple Simon the Pie Man, and that she had a power—

In her head, she heard the whizzing sounds of iron bolts fired from the framework of her mental dam just as the dam itself gave way, crumbling against the pent-up force of her memories, which now came crashing down around her.

She remembered.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Marlene Kellow thought of the baby as a beehive inside her, buzzing and bustling with life. With a hand to the gentle swell of her belly, she was certain she could almost feel the bees pulsing within, thudding blindly against the inner walls of her womb with dizzying stupidity. When standing, she could feel the weight of the hive in her gut, held there as if by invisible hands, pressing against her body, her flesh. And at night, lying on her back and barely breathing, she could make out the rise of her belly in the darkness, and would swear it was the shape of a beehive. Listening during those late hours, she could even hear the perfect buzzing, the unmistakable drone of thousands upon thousands of bees swarming around inside her.

There is no baby inside me. This thought haunted her constantly, most often in the quiet hours of a sleepless predawn. I don’t know what it is, but there is no baby inside me.

Not a baby; an infestation.

She found herself suffering from a barrage of nightmares. In one, she imagined her baby to be a goat-faced ungulate, a devil-child with glowing red eyes and a head swarming with stinging, angry bees. It would come out mewling like a pig, stabbing its hoofed legs into the air, hungry for human flesh. In another dream, she was being pursued through a field of wild sunflowers by a ravenous greyhound. And although the dog never caught her in these dreams, it would just get closer and closer over time…eventually to the point where she could feel its bristling muzzle pressed into the tight flesh of her shins as she ran.

There were times when she entertained the notion of killing herself and, inevitably, the hive inside her. She considered this act with the same sense of dispassion one might feel upon crushing a lizard beneath a steel-toed boot. She thought of pills. She thought of the poison fumes pumping from one of the cars in the garage. She thought of jumping out a window—quick and painless, over and done with.

But she never did any of those things. In the end, Marlene Kellow carried the baby to term and was rewarded with a quick and uncomplicated delivery. Kelly Kellow was born. The name had struck Marlene in a dream: the name of a fairy tale princess, of something she knew—she felt—her daughter would truly never be, no matter how much money her father made nor how many princes came knocking at the castle gate. Because Kelly, then still unborn and unnamed, would be different; Marlene knew this in that certain mystical way mothers tend to know things.

Infestation. She would tremble.

In the delivery room, when the child was handed to her, Marlene accepted it with passionless disinterest, not really wanting to touch it. It had lived inside her for nine months, and now here it was again, back again, and it weighed heavy in her arms. She despised herself for these feelings, yet she couldn’t deny them. And it occurred to her right then and there that she was actually afraid of the child…that all these confused and acrimonious emotions had welled up within her, augmented by a steadily mounting horror. It wasn’t fear for the child; it was fear of it.

It, Marlene thought. It.

Kelly Kellow spent her childhood mostly alone. Though her parents performed their requisite parental tasks from time to time, the young girl quickly became accustomed to the strange hands and cradling bosoms of a collection of live-in nurses and housemaids. There had been a young teenage girl named Sandy who would take Kelly to the park in town on the weekends. But eventually the trips to the park stopped, and one morning Kelly overheard Sandy speaking with her mother in the kitchen.

“She never plays with anyone,” Sandy told her mother. “She sits by herself in the sand, or by the woods, or in a tree, and she never plays with any of the other children.”

“Maybe she doesn’t like the other children,” her mother responded coldly.

“I don’t think I’m going to be coming around anymore, Mrs. Kellow.”

“Because my daughter won’t play with strange children?” There was spiteful humor in her voice.

“I just don’t feel comfortable around Kelly,” Sandy replied.

The absence of Sandy did not affect Kelly. Neither did the repeated abandonment of many other sitters throughout her early years. If she needed to be taken care of, Glenda was always around, always pleasant. In fact, Kelly was just as reluctant and solitary around the babysitters as she was around the other children from the neighborhood. Because she was different. The neighborhood children didn’t understand her, didn’t know her like she knew herself, and even at a young age Kelly understood this.

Still…she was alone.

Home-schooled throughout her childhood, she would ruminate about what it was like to attend regular school. Come two-thirty, she would dash outside and stand at the crest of the hill just as the school in town let out. From there, she would watch the children below disperse throughout the tiny streets, shouting and running and jumping and laughing. Over time, and with mounting curiosity, these hillside jaunts eventually brought her down the side of the hill and to the cusp of the closest town road. She never spoke to the children as they streamed by, never made herself stand out. Except once.

A group of girls paused one afternoon beside the road and one of them pointed up at Kelly. They were giggling behind cupped hands, staring at her as if she were a caged animal at some small town carnival.

“Freak on the hill,” the lead girl provoked. “Freak on the hill, freak on the hill.”

“I’m Kelly.” She introduced herself with the understanding that these girls had no intention of befriending her, yet it was all she knew to say.

“Kelly is the freak on the hill,” the lead girl shouted. She was an ugly, pudgy thing with an angry face, Kelly noted. Faintly, she wondered how such people attract friends. This girl appeared to have a lot of them.

“Rich people are weird,” said a second girl.

“She don’t look rich,” said a third. Then to Kelly: “You really live in that big house up there? Your daddy’s rich?”

“I don’t know,” Kelly stammered. She suddenly wished she hadn’t come down the hill.

“Look at her clothes,” the girl continued. “She don’t look rich to me. Did your mommy make those clothes for you, rich girl?”

“Did one of your servants?” chided their angry-looking leader. Her friends exploded with laughter, pointing and snickering.

Kelly felt tears burn her eyes. “I don’t have servants,” she said.

“Those are ugly pants,” said one of the girls. Then she laughed. “Like your ugly face.”

“Ugly face!” another girl shouted.

“Freak on the hill!” they all began to chant. “Freak on the hill! Freak on the hill! Kelly is the freak on the hill!”

Trembling, tears streaming freely down her face now, she balled her right fist into a tight knot, felt a large, heavy stone there, and drew back her arm. She fired the stone at their pudgy leader; it caught the girl’s shin and bounced into the street. The girls fell immediately silent as their leader’s face blanched scarlet, her eyes squinted, and she started to howl in pain.

Kelly just stared at them. Slowly retreating back up the hillside, she glanced once down at the palm of her right hand and saw that it was flecked with sand. The indent of the stone was pressed into the soft flesh of her hand.

I imagined you, she thought, and wondered where the stone had landed. Was it still there in the street? Could she go find it, pick it up? Or had it vanished? Where did it come from? Inside me, she thought, inside my head. I imagined it was there…and then it was.

It was make-believe.

Nights, Glenda kept Kelly on a strict diet of children’s books—nursery rhymes and fairy tales and stories of kings and queens and princesses.

“Where do they live?” she asked Glenda one evening, just as the woman was about to turn out the light and let her sleep.

“Who, dear?”

“The people in these books.”

Glenda smiled warmly, ran her fingers through Kelly’s hair. “Sweetheart, these stories are make-believe. The people don’t really exist.”

“Oh,” she said, disappointed. “Too bad.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I want to go there.”

Still smiling, Glenda bent and kissed her forehead. She smelled of cinnamon and freshly baked bread and fruit-scented hairspray. Glenda was older than her mother, yet Glenda didn’t have children of her own. Eventually, the affection she displayed toward Kelly led the girl to believe that Glenda was her real mother. For some reason, Kelly rationalized, those two strangers who claimed ownership of her were insistent about keeping the truth hidden, portraying Glenda Banczyk as a simple housemaid. Who were those two strangers, anyway? Locked away in large rooms by themselves, fearful (or so it seemed) to be near the child they called their daughter.

Kelly Banczyk, Kelly would often think, smiling to herself. That doesn’t sound stupid at all.

Glenda turned out the light beside the bed and stepped toward the door, singing softly to herself:

Little Baby Roundabout,

Someone let the Baby out,

And now, Sweet Babe, it’s time for bed,

So close your eyes and rest your head.

“Goodnight, Glenda,” Kelly whispered.

“Goodnight, sweetheart.”

She never could remember her dreams.

For whatever reason children are prompted to suddenly and compulsively rebel against the canons of authority, a nine-year-old Kelly found herself in her father’s thinking room one day despite the man’s constant insistence that she never set foot inside the room. Perhaps it was for that very reason she felt compelled to push open the door and peek inside. Occasionally, when it was occupied by her father (most usually after dinner and with a snifter of brandy), he would leave the door open the slightest bit: just enough for Kelly to peer in and get an eyeful of the magnificent room…of the wondrous yet frightening floating animal heads that decorated the walls. They were real animals, she understood…or they had been at some point. Now they were dead, and at nine years old, the concept of death fascinated her.

It was a grand room with a vaulted ceiling and varnished wood walls. The massive, rhombus-shaped windows were covered by heavy palls of purple velvet and piped with gold embroidery. There was a single chair of red leather in the center of the room, facing an expansive mahogany desk that was propped against the far wall. Two out of the four walls groaned with books of all shapes, sizes, and colors. The room smelled of them—a musty, unused smell that reminded young Kelly of soggy old newspapers and unwashed laundry. And, of course, there were the animals…

They had congregated toward the ceiling, all of them, and stared down with sightless obsidian eyes, black as the darkest midnight. A stuffed owl was perched atop one of the ceiling rafters; a cougar, its jaws wide, protruded above an oil painting of some place called Aspen (the name was on a brass plate tacked to the bottom of the frame); horned animals—animals she did not know the names of—had gathered in military precision just above one of the immense bookcases, their faces lost to any attempt at expression. It occurred to her then what death actually meant: that in death, there was no expression, no smiling or crying or laughter or hurt. That these animals had for some reason been cheated out of such wealth frightened her. The dullness of their eyes and the rigidity of their flesh conveyed a certain sense of permanence to her, of finality, and the awareness of such truths stimulated the anxiety within her.

Stepping further into the room, her head as far back on her neck as it would go, she reached the large leather chair and decided to pull herself onto it. Giggling, she felt herself sink into the cushion. Beneath her, the chair sighed.

There were little orange tubes on her father’s desk. Plastic containers with colored bits inside. Medicines, she thought. Pills. There were a lot.

Behind her, she heard the door creak and her father’s heavy footfalls on the Indian carpet. Suddenly frightened, she slipped off the chair and poked her head around the other side. Her father spotted her as he crossed the room and froze in midstride, a look of utter disbelief across his face. She could feel a chill at her back, could feel gooseflesh breaking out along her arms.

Daddy’s mad, she thought. He always said not to come in here and now I’m here. And he’s mad.

“Kelly…” He looked so big to her. She didn’t know what to say. His cheeks quivered and the fingers of his hands worked spastically at his sides. He exhaled for what seemed like an eternity, the lower lid of his left eye beginning to twitch involuntarily. “Come here,” he breathed.

Shaken, she couldn’t move. She felt the eyes of the bodiless animals boring into her skin, the back of her head.

“Kelly,” he said, his voice trying to remain level, yet his anger clearly apparent. “What are you doing in here? I said never to come in here, didn’t I?”

She could only watch him from the side of the chair, fearful to move, powerless to move.

“Didn’t I?” he repeated. “I’m asking you a question, Kelly. Didn’t I say never to come in this room? Didn’t I say that over and over again, so many times? This is my room. I come here to be alone and I don’t want you in here. Am I going to have to start locking the door?” He brought his hands up, wringing them together. He too was shaking. Had Kelly been older, what she had mistakenly recognized as anger in her father would have more appropriately been identified as apprehension.

“Daddy…”

“What do you want?”

But she could say no more.

Gordon Kellow shook. “You…” he began, his words trembling out over his lips and breaking in midair. “This is my place, Kelly. I come here when I want to get away from things. Do you understand that? When I don’t want to be reminded of the things you…” His voice faded, too unsteady. Finally he managed, “Do you understand me, Kelly?”

She understood nothing yet nodded nonetheless.

“When I come here I don’t want to have to worry about things…about…” Now his eyes broke from hers, began darting around the room. “You shouldn’t come in here.”

It’s me, she thought. He comes in here to forget about me. She felt tears spill down her face. I hate this stupid room! her mind screamed. I hate this stupid room and I hate this whole stupid house! I hate you!

“This room is not for you!” her father shouted, and reached down and grabbed at her arm.

There was a faint cracking sound that permeated the room, like reams of wood being split down the center. Crackling, splintering. It wasn’t just in her head; her father heard it, too. He released his grip and took a startled step back, hands suddenly flattened at his sides, his head tilted back as if to examine the rafters in the ceiling. The sound intensified, multiplied into many sounds, and soon the crackling cacophony shook the room, as if the house itself had gained voice. Kelly could feel the vibrations in the floorboards.

“Daddy,” she blurted again, tears rolling freely down her cheeks. Looking above her father’s head she could see the source of the noises: the animals were moving. Like arthritic patients rotating stiff joints, the heads bent side to side, pulling the molding and plaster from the walls. The black, sightless eyes began to shift in their sockets; mouths, creaking like bent steel, slowly began working at the air. The wings of the stuffed owl on one of the rafters began to tremble; a shrill hiss gained momentum in its plastic throat.

Her father had moved between his desk and the bookcase, mesmerized with disbelief at what was going on around him. He couldn’t look away from the heads, now animated and with increased flexibility. Kelly imagined the heads breaking through the walls, their bodies still attached but now only skeletons covered in plaster and insulation, and trampling her father to death. The vision was so vivid she feared that if she thought about it too long, it would actually happen.

“Kelly!” she heard her father shout, a tremor in his voice, and that was what got her moving. Without looking back, she broke into a sprint toward the door, her legs pumping, her hands balled into white fists, tears burning her face. She ran as if in slow motion; it seemed to take an eternity to reach the door. Behind and above her she could hear the sounds of the animal heads peeling away from the wall, their defunct vocal chords regaining composure: a chorus of unnatural sounds. Chunks of plaster crumbled above the doorway.

She burst through the door into the hallway and continued running down the length of the corridor until she spilled out into the main foyer and proceeded out the front door. The image of those struggling animal heads trapped inside the walls followed her into the daylight. Once she made it halfway around the house, she collapsed in a sobbing heap to the ground, exhausted and terrified.

What if he dies in there? What if those animals break from the walls and kill him? It will be all my fault.

A small voice at the back of her head told her to get away. If her father died, people would come looking for her. Police would come. She’d be arrested and put in jail and how could she even begin to explain what had just happened? She didn’t even understand it herself.

Away, the voice persisted. Run away.

She sought solace in the cover of the forest in the valley below. They won’t find me, she thought. They’ll never find me. I won’t let them. She’d been in the forest many times before, though hadn’t strayed too far from the house. Now, she needed to be as far away as possible. The further she ran, she rationalized, the better her father’s chances of survival.

Those heads…those animals…

Thinking about it just made her feel worse.

(stop stop stop stop)

(—kelly—)

She ran until her feet ached and her lungs burned. Around her, the thick bluish branches of the evergreens shrouded her from civilization; she could no longer even see the house on the hill above.

Good, she thought, that’s how I want it. I never want to go back there. Never. I hate it there.

“I hate it,” she said between sobs.

Pushing through the underbrush, she uncovered a moss-covered log peppered with tiny white mushrooms. She administered a swift kick to it, causing it to rock. A platoon of black beetles came scuttling out from beneath it and vanished beneath the soil. Frightened and shaking, she sat down on the log and pulled her legs up to her chin, wrapped her arms around her knees. Her sobs dying down now, she sat there breathing heavy while her eyes roamed around the forest. This deep, the trees were full and green and as tall as houses. Somewhere in the distance she could hear the trickle of running water. Every so often the sound of birds taking flight could be heard from various locations, their wings beating against the branches of the trees as they took to the sky.

An image of her father surfaced in her head: lying dead in the middle of his thinking room, bloody and ravaged by hoofs. There were hoof-prints across his chest, on his thighs and shins, and one in the center of his forehead. His eyes had retracted back into his head, the whites tinged red with blood.

On the verge of fresh tears, Kelly began to shake her head frantically. “Is he dead?” she asked, her throat clicking. “Is he? Is he dead?”

—Do you want him to be?

“No.”

—Are you sure?

“I don’t want him dead,” she said. “I don’t.”

—Then I’m sure he’s fine.

She rubbed her nose with the heel of her hand. “I don’t feel well,” she said.

—Will you be sick?

“I think I w—” No sooner had the words come out of her mouth did she double forward and vomit stringy green foam onto the ground. Crouched and tensed, she remained like that for several moments, afraid to move, afraid to set the world spinning around her again. Closing her eyes, she concentrated on the sound of the running water off in the distance. Hearing it evoked the colorful images associated with nursery rhymes and fairy tales—the lands of candy houses and kingdoms by the sea and all those other places she so desperately wanted to run away to. Make-believe…but real, too. She understood reality, understood that reality was flawed and subject to manipulation. Listening to the babbling water, she vowed she would track it down, would stand in it and feel its cool rush between her toes.

“I want to go there. I want to leave this place and go there.”

—You can. I know where it is. I can take you there.

Kelly opened her eyes. A cool breeze rustled the trees. “Hello?”

Silence.

A path-like clearing wound its way through the underbrush in the apparent direction of the running water. While part of Kelly wanted to curl up into a ball on the log and fall asleep, another part of her wanted to follow that path to the sounds of the running water. She stared at the path for some time before hanging her legs off the side of the log and hopping to her feet.

The world seemed to tilt to one side. She uttered a weak sob and caught the branch of a tree before vertigo sent her crashing to the earth. After a few moments of rest, her eyelids pressed together, she opened her eyes and released the branch. One foot in front of the other, she wove a steady channel down the center of the path, her eyes never leaving the ground. At one point, a flock of whippoorwills broke out over the trees and she paused to watch them leave.

“Good-bye,” she whispered.

Soon, the sounds of the running water could be heard just on the other side of a leafy embankment. Giddy, Kelly hopped from the path and jumped the embankment. Her sneakers slid in the mud and she downed the opposite side with a display of clumsy acrobatics.

A small brook ran serpentine through a clearing in the forest. Its water shallow and clear, she could see the pebbly floor several inches below the surface. She’d watched an old western on television one night last year. At one point in their journey, the cowboys dismounted from their horses and saddled up to a trickling stream. They drank from it.

It’s like magic here, she thought, smiling. It’s like my own secret place, like my own secret world where I can come and never be bothered, never be afraid. Never-Never Land.

She bent and rested the palm of her hand on the surface of the water. It was ice cold. Laughing, she pulled off her sneakers and socks, wiggled her toes, and jumped straight into the brook with both feet. Sharp slivers of icy water shot up her shins, into her thighs, spread like wings throughout the rest of her body. She closed her eyes and stood there, slowly swaying with the breeze, and thought it might be possible for her to fall asleep like this—standing in the middle of a brook.

“I could stay here forever,” she sighed.

—Do it.

She opened her eyes, her smile fading. “Who’s there?”

Again, no one answered.

The icy water spread to her groin. After a few seconds she felt her knees grow weak. She suddenly had to urinate.

—Stay there forever.

“It’s cold,” she said.

—You wanted me to show you, so I showed you. Do you want to stay in Never?

“Never-Never Land,” she corrected. Then: “Who are you?” She scrutinized the underbrush, the shadows hidden behind trees. “Where are you?”

—Where do you want me to be?

“Come out.”

—Just tell me where.

She pointed to the embankment. “There,” she said. “On the other side.”

—Okay, said the voice, I’m there.

“Stand up. I can’t see you.”

—I am standing.

“I can’t see you,” she repeated.

—That has nothing to do with me. It’s all in your head. Whatever you want to see, you make it. Just like the stone.

The stone—the memory hit her with such force that she felt it as a physical thing. The stone and the ugly, angry-looking girl from town. That stone had just materialized in her hand moments before she knew she wanted to throw it. “I forgot about that,” she said.

—You tend to block out things that frighten you. You have that power.

“Who are you?”

—Who do you want me to be? the voice said again.

For a brief moment she almost said “Baby Roundabout,” but for some reason that seemed wrong. Instead, her mind flipped through the pages of her brain…and the first thing she thought of was a ridiculous nursery rhyme from one of her books, one that she’d always found a little bit funny and a little bit strange. Like the voice.

“Simon,” she said. “Simple Simon.”

—I am Simple Simon, said the voice.

“I still can’t see you.”

—I’m right here. You can hear me, can’t you?

“Yes.” Sort of: the voice was inside her head.

—Then I must be here.

“I want to see what you look like.”

—You haven’t decided that yet.

“When can I see you?”

—Whenever you’re ready, I suppose.

The dull throb at her groin suddenly blossomed into exquisite pain, and she felt herself double over, planting her hands into the water and dropping to her knees. The pain was fierce and acidic, reminiscent for some reason of oranges, and with one great exhalation, she urinated in her pants.

She thought she heard faint giggling coming from the embankment and she blushed, embarrassed.

It was dark by the time she returned home. Glenda fussed over her as she entered the house, asking where she’d been and stuffing her full of hot chicken soup. Her parents were nowhere to be found. On her way past her father’s thinking room, Kelly noticed that the door was shut. She jiggled the knob and found it locked, too.

Upstairs, she prepared for bed and crawled beneath the bedclothes, suddenly exhausted. Closing her eyes, she waited for sleep to carry her away…yet found herself concentrating on the sound of creaking floorboards in the hallway just outside her bedroom door. Sitting up, she thought she saw a shadow pass beneath the crack in the door. Listening, she heard the footsteps recede down the hallway until they reached the stairwell. She heard the stairs creak.

Pulling back the blankets, she slipped out of bed and padded across the floor to the bedroom door. Careful not to make any noise, she turned the knob and pushed it open just a crack. The hallway looked empty, but she could clearly hear someone moving down the staircase at the end of the hall. Hers was the only bedroom on the second floor, and it was unusual for anyone—even Glenda, except for when she read to Kelly at night—to walk around up here.

Kelly crept into the hallway and tiptoed to the edge of the stairwell. A soft yellow light played against the wall: the downstairs hall light. Peering over the railing, she made out the lumbering shuffle of her father as he eased down the last of the risers and paused at the foot of the staircase. Black from shadows, he was only a silhouette to her, and she leaned further over the railing to see him better.

He appeared to waver at the foot of the stairs, confused as to his destination, and finally rested his bulk against the wall. Soundlessly, he let his weight slide down the wall until the first few stairs came up to meet him. He hunkered there, his legs bent, his long arms and hands draped over his knees like large fish laid out on rocks. She watched him, hardly breathing, frightened by what she was too young to acknowledge as his vulnerability. And then came the sounds—the soft, miserable hitches in his unsteady breathing. His massive back, like the canvas sail of some great ship, shook and trembled with each sob.

In utter shock, Kelly thought, He’s crying.

Without thinking, she turned around the railing and grabbed the banister with one hand. She took a step down on the stairs; it creaked loudly under her foot. Terrified, she froze.

Her father’s head snapped in her direction. Shadows played heavy across his features, but she had no trouble making out his eyes—they pierced the darkness like those of a frightened forest animal. For a brief moment, the two of them remained silent and unmoving, trapped in a place passed over by time.

Then her father stood quickly from the stairs. “Go to bed,” he said. His voice was flat. “You stay away from me.”

He turned and disappeared down the hall. Motionless, Kelly watched her father’s enormous shadow withdraw from the opposite wall and disappear.

Before the conclusion of that year, Kelly came to understand two things: that her mother was pregnant and that this new child, once born, would come to occupy what little time Kelly spent with her parents. This did not bother her. However, she knew that it had been Glenda who’d taken care of her all these years, and that therefore her time with the old housemaid would also be severed. She thought of Glenda’s singing, thought of the storybooks the woman would read to her on occasion, and it filled Kelly with a premature longing for the woman. She found she missed Glenda before Glenda was even gone. And although her parents said very little to her about the new child, Glenda had sat her down on her bed one evening and asked Kelly if she understood what having a new baby in the house meant.

“I don’t know,” Kelly said, but thought, It means that you’re going to forget about me and I’ll be all alone.

“It means,” explained Glenda, “that you’ll have a little brother or sister, and that I’ll have a new baby to take care of. You see, we’re both going to be very busy, Kelly. Do you know what it’s like to be a big sister?”

Kelly shook her head. Until now, the prospect that she herself might be expected to play a role in this strange child’s life had eluded her. “No,” she said.

“Well,” Glenda said, “it means you will have to take good care of this little fellow, and teach him or her how to do the things that you already know how to do.”

Kelly’s mind returned to the day in her father’s thinking room—the day she had made the animal heads come to life. Was that the sort of thing she was supposed to teach her younger brother or sister? And how in the world does someone even begin teaching such a thing? She thought of the barrage of tutors that marched through the house during the week and tried to understand the difference between teaching arithmetic and teaching…teaching scary things. It occurred to her then that she possessed no word for what she’d done in her father’s private room. And the thought of teaching someone else how to do that frightened her.

“No,” she said, “I don’t want a baby here, I don’t want it.”

“Why, dear?”

“I don’t,” was all she said. “I don’t, I don’t, I don’t!”

Regardless, the baby came. After two days at a hospital in the city, her parents returned to the compound with a tiny, squirming thing wrapped tight in a soft pink blanket. Too afraid to approach, Kelly remained on the stairwell and watched as her parents silently ushered their new child into the house, spoke a few incoherent words to each other, then carried the baby upstairs. Her mother passed her on the stairwell and watched her with narrowed eyes. Haggard and distressed, Marlene Kellow paused briefly, her arms full of the little thing.

“Want to see it?” she said flatly.

Kelly nodded and her mother bent and exposed the ruddy, pig-nosed face of her sister Becky. It was impossible, she thought, that anything that looked like that could be alive. She’d never seen a baby before and suddenly her mind filled up with a million questions: how does it eat? What does it wear? When will it speak and what will it say? Mostly, while staring at it, she wondered what its purpose was—what did it do, what purpose did it serve? As Glenda cleaned the house and prepared the meals, as her father and mother earned money, what would this new addition contribute to the household? It made no sense.

She looked up and met her mother’s eyes. There was no compassion there. Yet the woman appeared deep in thought. The corner of her mother’s mouth twitched. Marlene Kellow said, “I felt the same thing with this one. God help me.”

Though she didn’t understand what her mother’s words meant, she understood the contempt in her tone. Backing against the stairwell wall, she watched as her mother rose and continued up the stairs with the baby.

She looked down and saw her father glaring at her from the bottom of the stairs.

Several evenings later, Kelly crept into the large and mostly barren room where Becky slept. The room was empty save for a crib in the center, the dusty shades half-drawn against the setting sun. Kelly moved across the floor, careful not to make the floorboards creak, and edged up to the side of the crib, peered in. The baby was awake and fussing to itself, sputtering tiny sounds that were almost nonexistent. Its face was red and puffy, its eyes almost lidless and squinty. And it was so small. It seemed ridiculous to think that this creature would ever grow to be a genuine human being. How could that be?

“Becky,” she whispered over the railing of the crib. Her voice caused the infant to start. “Becky.” She repeated the name. It sounded make-believe to her. “Where did you come from?”

Of course, the child did not answer. But at the sound of her older sister’s voice, infant Becky managed to turn her tiny head and look in her immediate direction.

Curious, Kelly reached over the railing and touched the side of the baby’s face with her index finger. It was hot and soft. She kept the finger there for several moments, until the baby started to struggle against her. Only then did she retract her hand.

“Glenda’s mine,” she said. “You can’t take her away. I won’t let you. I don’t know where you came from, but I won’t let you. And I won’t teach you anything, do you understand? I’m not your big sister. I don’t want to be.”

The baby began to cry.

Over the passage of seasons, the forest became her home. Though the imaginary creation that she had named Simple Simon only presented himself when she was lonely or angry or both, she found solace in the welcoming green of the woods. She spent several days during the summers of her tenth and eleventh years wading in the cold waters of the brook and reading high school romance novels beneath the trees. And although Simple Simon only emerged (vocally, at least) when Kelly needed him, there was always an underlying presence she was aware of on a subconscious level…as if the imaginary boy had somehow become part of the forest itself, and he was always all around her.

In December of that year, she fell ill with the flu and was castigated by Glenda for leaving her bedroom window open throughout the night.

“I didn’t open it,” she said, tucked beneath layers of heavy quilts.

“Somebody did,” Glenda insisted. “Windows just don’t open by themselves.”

“Wasn’t me.”

“What if you get the baby sick? Wouldn’t you feel badly?”

“No,” she said truthfully. Then reiterated that she hadn’t opened the window.

Glenda waved a hand at her. “Oh hush, now. Anymore fibbing and I’ll tell your parents.”

Kelly shrugged. “Go ahead, they won’t care.”

Her mind floating in and out of fever, Kelly remained in bed for several days. At one point, in the middle of the night, she saw a blurred image on the other side of her bedroom window. It was white and vaporous, almost ghostlike. Contributing the hallucination to fever, she watched as the window slid open, the curtains billowed out, and a strong gust of wind assaulted the room. She could feel the freezing night air against her face. Her eyes fluttered.

When she awoke in the morning, the window was shut.

She called for Simple Simon on her first day back at the woods. He responded almost immediately.

“You came to my room,” she said, “and pulled my window open, didn’t you?”

—Where have you been? It’s lonely here. He was avoiding the question.

“I’ve been home sick because you let the window open.”

—Are you mad?

Half-grinning, she shook her head. “No,” she said. “I’m sorry you get lonely. I do too, sometimes. A lot.”

—I’m not lonely now.

“Me, neither,” she said. Crossing the clearing beside the now-frozen brook, she curled up on her throne—a pile of rocks covered with cushions from her mother’s patio furniture she’d constructed the previous summer. After some consideration, she said, “I almost saw you one night. When you came to my window. You were almost there.”

—I can feel it, Simple Simon said.

“I think I’m ready to see you now.”

—Can you do it? It’ll be more difficult than seeing that stone…

“Don’t make me nervous!” she joked. Closed her eyes. She thought: Simple Simon met a Pie Man going to the fair…

She thought of a boy—of a handsome, friendly, happy boy who liked to smile and play games and…and live in the woods. A perfect boy, just like in fairy tales. And yet she found it impossible to summon the image of an original boy; instead, her mind became cluttered with images of boys from television programs and magazines and books…from the few boys she recognized (and secretly admired) from town…

—That won’t do.

“I’m trying.”

Unsatisfied, she erased the images of those boys and started from scratch. Simplicity was the key—a nose, a mouth, two eyes, two ears. It was different with the stone; she hadn’t thought about it hardly at all. In fact, when it had appeared in her hand, she was almost as surprised as the ugly pug-faced girl who caught it in the shin. But now, this was something different, something much more difficult. She didn’t even know what to think about, what to focus her attention on…if it would even work…

She opened her eyes, exhausted, and realized that the sun had shifted position.

From the corner of her eye, and moments before it faded, she caught a reflection in the frozen brook water of a spindly male form standing at the bank. Like the impression of a waning shadow, it made itself visible only with the most rudimentary of details, and dispersed into nothingness moments after she saw it.

She felt a chill pass through her body. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “You’re…” She looked up in the direction of the wooded embankment beside the brook. “You’re standing right there…” She felt a giggle build up inside her. “Simple Simon the Pie Man.”

—Stop that. I don’t like that.

“How come you didn’t stay? How come I can’t see you?”

“Because you’re not trying hard enough.” There was a slight irritation to his voice…and for the first time, Kelly realized she was actually hearing this imaginary boy speak, not just thinking the words inside her own head. She could hear him.

“Talk,” she said.

“Talk,” he repeated.

To her astonishment, she watched as a billow of white vapor materialized from nothing and dispersed in the air. Breath, she heard a tiny voice whisper at the back of her head. That was breath. Simple Simon is breathing.

She noticed that milky shadow fall back across the ice again, slowly shifting in form and solidity. Any distinct features the reflection might have had undulated beneath the formation of its body—its face, head, arms and legs.

Beside the reflection, a hazy shadow fell across the grass. Shimmered. Faded. Held.

“There…” she breathed, suddenly aware of her heart beating in her throat. “There…”

Like a ghost before her eyes, the creation that was Simple Simon—her creation—took form and held against the light of day. He wasn’t quite there—depending on how she looked at him, the reliability of his physical body either increased or diminished—but at least now she could see him.

She slid off her throne and slowly circled around the boy, catching him from every possible angle. He looked watery, translucent. Yet at times when his skin held solid, she could see that it was a pasty white color. His body professed no discernible sex (Kelly was too immature to consider such things when thinking of the boy), like the torso of a plastic doll. His head was hairless—she’d forgotten to imagine hair too—and two black orbs had collected in the center. Simple black eyes, no pupils, no lids nor lashes. Perhaps these were simple details a trained artist would have remembered to include, but they had never crossed Kelly’s mind.

“Can you see me now?” His voice wavered, as if he were speaking under water.

“You’re real,” she said. It was all she could say. Again, she felt the earth begin to shift, to spin around with her at the center. A blast of pain ruptured inside her abdomen and she collapsed to the ground, curled like a shrimp plucked from the riverbed. Carried along with the pain was the faint sensation of nostalgia, and she suddenly realized that she had to urinate, that the pain wasn’t in her belly at all but between her legs. Just like that day she stood unflinchingly in the icy water of the brook.

A shadow moved across her as she lay on the ground, moaning.

“Turn away,” she sobbed.

“Why?”

“Don’t watch me.” She pressed her eyes shut and fumbled with the snaps on her jeans. A cramp tightened inside her right thigh, sending shooting pain through the length of her leg. She struggled with her jeans and, after several drawn-out seconds, managed to yank them down around her ankles. Unable to move hardly at all, she could only roll onto her back, her eyes still clenched shut, and relieve herself. Around her, she could feel Simple Simon’s presence again—stronger this time—as if he were not only a figment of her imagination, but a thing of nature as well.

Something nudged her arm and she opened her eyes. The boy stood above her, still hazy and crude as a sketch, looking down with those solid black eyes. The boy’s bare foot was pressed against her arm. There were no toes, per se; five small lumps, more like the suggestion of toes. With one hand, Kelly managed to pull her jeans back up, buttoned them. Then she reached out and pushed two fingers against the skin of the boy’s foot. It felt pliable and cold to the touch. Like touching gelatin, she thought.

The boy watched her as she backed away from him, still on the ground, and righted herself against a tree.

“Did you do that?” she asked.

“What?” His voice seemed to come from everywhere at once.

“You know. Did you just make me…feel like that? Like I had to pee. Like that day in the brook.”

“I’m not real,” he said. “I’m in your head. You did it to yourself.”

And didn’t that make sense? In fact, over the passage of time, it seemed Simple Simon began making more and more sense. Imaginary or not, he’d become her friend. She spent the following summer in this imaginary Never-Never Land with Simple Simon. She read aloud to him and he told her things about people in the neighborhood, specifically the young boys and girls with whom she’d never dared become friends.

“How do you know all these things?” she asked him once.

Simple Simon was crouched beneath a tree, his pale legs bent up to his chest. By summer, his eyes had grown real—pupils, sclera, even lids and lashes—and he watched her now as she sat, eating an apple beneath one of the giant fir trees.

“I see them,” he said.

“But how?”

“I don’t sit in these woods all the time. Like I told you, I sometimes get lonely. I need to go places and do things.”

“Sure.” Kelly laughed. “If you’re so bored, I can bring you games, books or something…”

“I keep busy enough,” he told her. He looked away, at the rumbling brook. He never touched the water. “I’ve built a house.”

The notion struck her as impossible. “A house?”

“A small one. Hidden.”

“Where is it?”

“Behind you,” he said. “Down the path.”

She craned her head around but could see only dense foliage. “Liar.”

“I’m not,” he said.

“What does it look like?”

Simple Simon rolled his pale shoulders.

Kelly’s eyes lit up. “Can I see it?”

“Fine,” he said, standing up. His image flickered briefly in front of her eyes, like a poor electrical connection. “Come on.”

She stood and skipped after him down the path, deeper into the woods. The boy didn’t necessarily walk; rather, he seemed to simply appear ahead of her, materializing at certain points along the path. Not once did he look back at her. And Kelly, herself, was lost in this secret wonderland. She thought of the kids from Spires, the kids who played football and attended regular school and had friends sleep over their houses on the weekends. A year ago, such ruminations would have saddened her. Thinking about them now, however, caused her to actually pity them all—unfortunate that they would never know the wonder and appreciation of living in a fairy tale world, where football and school and sleepovers didn’t matter. Where nothing could get you. Where you were safe.

“What do you think it will look like?” Simple Simon called back to her only once.

Kelly didn’t answer out loud. Instead, she summoned an image of the imaginary boy’s house: a tiny gingerbread cottage with sugarcane windows and cookie shingles and candy canes laid in Xs above the front door. The doorknob itself would be a giant gumdrop…the flowers with candy petals…

She laughed out loud.

“Here,” said Simple Simon, and stopped walking. The boy faced a clearing in the woods, the floor bedded with orange pine needles and dead, crispy leaves. There was no house here, Kelly saw, and thought it was a joke at first…but then there it was, right in front of her eyes, and just as she had imagined it. She stood there, staring at it like a child discovering her presents beneath the tree on Christmas morning, her heart pounding dramatically in her chest. It was there, all there, all real. How in the world could it possibly exist?

“Oh,” was all she was able to force out. Her breath had abandoned her.

It was a small, square, one-level house tucked within a crook of trees. Its siding and roof were indeed made of gingerbread, enough to feed all of Spires for months; the roof itself was shingled in ginger snaps and had been whitewashed in icing, now hardened, and sprinkled with lemon drops and peppermints; two enormous candy canes, perhaps six feet high and five inches thick, stood like sentries on either side of the front door; and the front door itself was constructed of what appeared to be a million square crackers all joined together by icing and sprinkled with cinnamon.

“Oh,” she repeated. Slowly, Kelly moved around the house, the extent of her astonishment apparent in her lethargy. “How did you make this?”

“You made it,” he said. “You thought it.”

“Is it…real?”

He told her to touch it and she did. It was solid. Some icing came away on her fingertip and she brought it to her mouth, sucked it off. It was sweet and warm. Before she knew it, a tremulous giggle had broken through her throat, and she began running circles around the squat little house. It was real. Glenda had been wrong: places in fairy tales really did exist.

She paused at the front of the house and scurried up the walk. (The walk was a collage of enormous chocolate chip cookies, assembled to suggest cobblestones.) “What does it look like inside?” she said, grabbing the gummy doorknob and pulling open the gingerbread house’s front door.

She stopped, her smile fading.

There was nothing inside the house. Not even a back wall. Through the open door, she could see straight out into the trees on the other side. For a few confused moments, she watched the cool summer breeze rattle the leaves.

“You haven’t thought up the inside yet,” Simple Simon said from somewhere behind her.

Dream it, she thought. Dream it.

“We can make this place wonderful,” she told him.

“We can,” he said. “But I want something first.”

“What?”

“Look at me.”

She turned. Simple Simon was standing behind a waist-high hedgerow, his skin white and sickly in the light of midday. “What?” she asked again.

He didn’t answer; instead, he rolled his tongue and spat a gob of green snot onto the ground.

“Disgusting,” Kelly said.

“That’s never happened before,” he told her. “It started today.”

“What?” She didn’t understand. “It’s spit. Spit and boogers.”

“From where?” Then: “From me.”

“So what do you want from me? Kleenex?”

“No,” he said. “Food.”

“You’re hungry?”

“No, I don’t think so. I just want to know what it’s like to eat. I want to eat.”

“Let’s have a tea party—”

“Damn it, no!” His outburst startled her. She could see veins throbbing in his temples, his bald scalp riddled with them. “I want real food. I’m tired of make-believe, Kelly.” He paused, then added, “Kellerella.”

“Kellerella,” she said. “Like Cinderella.”

“Food,” he told her.

“Okay,” she said, and following dinner that evening, she packed some meat loaf into a plastic container and slipped it into the pocket of her coat. Outside, the night had cooled the summer atmosphere considerably. Guided by the light of a full moon, Kelly carefully downed the hillside and disappeared beneath the cover of trees and into the valley below.

The woods were impossibly dark, the moon blotted out by the trees, and she crept as far along the wooded path as she felt comfortable, jumping at every shadow. Several times she heard things bounding through the underbrush behind her and she froze, petrified by a wave of fear, and considering the worst. After all, who knew what sort of things lived in the woods? Who knew what things came out at night? It’s too dark, she thought. I should keep a light down here.

At one point she half-shouted, half-whispered for Simple Simon, but he did not appear. She tried to summon him in her mind, as she’d always been able to do in the past, but it was a futile attempt. And instead of recreating him in her mind, she found she was now only recalling memories of him—Simple Simon standing by the brook; Simple Simon standing by the gingerbread house; Simple Simon spitting on the ground, becoming angry, the veins throbbing at the sides of his head. And it then occurred to her, innocently enough: How come he has veins? He shouldn’t have veins, should he?

The hoot of an owl nearly caused her to scream out. For fear she’d suffer a heart attack if she dawdled around much longer, she left the container of meat loaf on top of her rock-throne beside the running brook and began the climb back to the house.

“You certainly are spending a lot of time out of the house this summer,” Glenda said one morning over breakfast. “What’s so fascinating about that forest, anyway?”

“Not much.”

“A lot of other kids play in there?”

“Yeah,” she lied.

“Well, you just be careful. It’s a big forest. Don’t wander off too far, you might get lost.”

The notion struck Kelly as bizarre. Watching Glenda’s back as the woman washed a plate at the sink, Kelly asked if anyone had ever gotten lost there. Without turning around, Glenda said, “My, yes. A long time ago. I was just a little girl. A brother and sister had gone off playing in the forest and had gotten lost.”

“Hansel and Gretel,” Kelly marveled.

“Very much so,” Glenda said, turning her head and half-smiling at Kelly. “That may have even been their names.”

“Did they leave a trail of bread crumbs to find their way home?”

“No,” Glenda said. “They never found their way home.”

Kelly was shocked into silence. She was still considering Glenda’s story when her mother came storming into the kitchen, a sour expression on her face. She slammed something down on the kitchen table hard enough to make Kelly jump. She heard Glenda drop a plate in the sink.

“Do you see this?” her mother demanded, brandishing what appeared to be one of her father’s stripped socks.

“Yes.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“A sock,” she said.

Her mother only stared, the expression on her face one of mounting fury. “Your father’s sock, Kelly. It belongs to your father.” Her mother threw the sock at her face and Kelly flinched. “Do you know where I found it?”

Now scared, Kelly shook her head.

“Take a guess, missy.”

“I don’t know.”

“In your room.” She emphasized each word, as if they were code for something else, something much more important than socks. “I found it in your room, on the floor by the window. Now,” she went on, bringing up her other hand and slamming that one down on the table, “do you know what this is?”

It was a second sock, different than the first.

Daddy’s sock, she wanted to say, knew the answer, but suddenly couldn’t speak. Her eyes refused to leave her mother’s face, which was growing hotter and redder with each passing second. Large creases had appeared across her forehead, and her teeth were pressed together so tight Kelly thought they might shatter at any second.

“Another sock,” explained her mother. “I saw this one after I found the one in your room. Do you know how I found it? Have any idea? I happened to glance out your window and saw it hanging from the roof.” She threw the second sock at her daughter. This time she didn’t flinch, didn’t even notice. “What in the world are you doing? Are you throwing goddamn socks out the window? For what purpose? Huh? Can you tell me? Go on—tell me.”

She shook her head, the arrival of tears blurring her vision.

“So what? You didn’t do this? No? So maybe it was someone else, right? Maybe someone else in the house went into your room and threw your father’s socks out the window. Is that it? Did I solve the case?”

“I didn’t do—”

Her mother’s hand shot out and smacked Kelly across the face. Pain exploded in her head and she nearly fell off the chair. Glenda, who had tried to remain as inconspicuous as possible, turned from the sink at the sound of the slap. Her face burning and her left ear ringing, Kelly brought her face back around to meet her mother’s. Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks.

The assembly of emotions that swam across her mother’s face at that moment were too great to know what the woman was thinking, was feeling. She looked like she might begin to cry too, Kelly thought.

Her mother stuck a finger out at her. “I’m not your father, you little witch,” she said. “I’m not afraid of you. Don’t forget that.”

Her mother seemed to hang above her for an eternity before leaving. Staring straight at the kitchen wall, Kelly listened to her mother’s heavy footfalls slamming against the hardwood floor until they disappeared.

Glenda shuffled over, gathered the socks and stuffed them into the pocket of her apron. With one hand, she smoothed back Kelly’s hair and departed again for the sink. “Finish your breakfast, dear,” Glenda said without looking at her.

“You’re getting me in trouble,” she told him.

The boy was slinking behind some bushes, as if trying to hide from Kelly, yet being casual about it. Every once in a while he coughed, sounded close to choking, then she’d hear him spit repeatedly. “I didn’t do anything,” he said after a time.

“You did. You sneaked into my room through my window and stole my father’s socks. My mom found two that you must have dropped.”

“I wanted to try them.”

“You don’t need clothes.”

“I don’t care,” he said. Briefly, his eyes flashed up to meet hers. They were dark and calculating. And they looked blue now, not black. Was that possible? Was she now imagining his eyes as blue? “I wanted to try.”

“And my mother hasn’t noticed yet, but you’ve been taking other things from the house too. There’s food missing from the refrigerator, stuff I only eat so no one’s said anything about it. But I know.”

“I don’t like food,” he told her. “It is disgusting, the whole process. It’s painful and it doesn’t feel good. I’m crazy with it.”

She leaned forward, trying to peer over the veil of shrubbery. “What are you doing back there?”

He didn’t answer; she could hear him breathing loudly. Again, he coughed, sputtered, and spat on the ground.

“Are you all right? What’s the matter?”

She hopped down from her rock-throne and crossed over through the bushes. She paused as she reached the other side, not quite knowing what to make of the situation.

Simple Simon was crouched on the ground, leaning forward on the balls of his feet. His toes—now fully developed—lay splayed like fingers in the grass. His hands were up to his face, to his mouth, working with something like a squirrel packing acorns into its mouth. When she appeared before him, he poked his head up and watched her with insect-like eyes, unnaturally still. He held something white and plastic in his hands.

“What are you doing?” she repeated, this time with a hint of caution. “You don’t look well.”

“It’s making me crazy,” he muttered, refusing to move. His eyes drilled into her.

“What is?”

“How do you do it? I can’t stand it.” It was a plastic fork he was holding, she saw. Only three of the four prongs had been broken off.

“Do what? I don’t understand what’s wrong.”

“Food,” he said. “There are things in my throat now. Big, fleshy things. I got food stuck in them. It hurts, it’s driving me crazy.”

“Those are tonsils, I think…”

“I don’t want them. Why did you give them to me? Think them away.”

“I can’t…”

“Do it.”

“I never thought them there in the first place.”

She thought she would turn and run screaming out of the woods if he didn’t take his eyes from her, avert that piercing stare. The anger behind those eyes reminded Kelly of her mother—that fueled cocktail of anger, fear and confusion.

His eyes still trained on Kelly, the boy opened his mouth as wide as it could go—and for the first time, Kelly realized just how real he had become. She saw yellow, crooked teeth and a pink slab of tongue. She recognized the moisture of saliva, saw ill-looking gums. With a trembling hand, Simple Simon pushed the single-pronged end of the plastic fork into his mouth and all the way toward the back of his throat. His whole fist went into his mouth to the second knuckle. Slowly, he began to rotate his hand in small circles, the fork’s prong scraping along the back of his throat. Kelly could clearly hear it scraping through the mucus. Just watching him repulsed her.

“Oh my God,” she muttered, turning away. “Stop it. You’ll hurt yourself.”

Something snapped. He withdrew the fork with a wet, sucking sound. The prong had broken off. “I don’t hurt.”

“Stop it,” she repeated.

“It’s making me insane,” he said. “I can’t stand it. How do you stand it?”

“I don’t even feel it. I’ve never noticed it before.”

He stood, his meager body trembling. “I need more forks. Plastic ones, so I can break the other points off. Or anything else that will fit in the back of my throat—”

“Stop it!” she suddenly shouted, a well of anger erupting from her chest. The unexpected outburst surprised and frightened her. “I didn’t imagine you like this! You’re in my head! You shouldn’t be this real!”

Shaking, she hugged herself and backed up a step, catching her breath.

“I’m here,” the boy muttered. “Real or not, I’m here. And another thing—I don’t like being called ‘Simple Simon’ anymore. It’s stupid. It’s for children. Like you.”

“I…don’t call you that anymore.”

“No, but that’s how you think of me. Stop it.”

Leave, her mind suddenly said. He doesn’t want you here anymore so just leave, run, get away. Maybe Glenda was right after all—there’s no perfect fairy tale world. Sooner or later, everything comes crumbling down.

“What are you going to run from?” He could read her thoughts. He was her thoughts. “Why would you want to run from me?”

She was backing away slowly. She watched as Simple Simon—Simon—backed around a cluster of bushes, his own eyes narrowed, never leaving her face.

“You don’t have to get upset,” he said…but she didn’t like the look on his face. Something was swimming below the surface there, like a corpse submerged in swamp water. He crept along the guard with a slight bend to his posture, as if his head had suddenly become too heavy to carry. “You can just blink me away. Do it. After all…what’s the sense of having an imaginary friend if you’re going to be afraid of him?”

And that was it—she’d just needed to hear the word. She was suddenly afraid of him. He wasn’t natural; he was a monster.

“You’re not real,” she breathed, her voice shaking, her heart racing. “You’re not. You’re in my head.”

“That stone was pretty real, wouldn’t you say?”

“What stone?”

“The one you flung at Ugly-Girl,” he snickered. “It seemed pretty real to her, didn’t it? Or did you forget about that again so quickly? Why is it your mind keeps trying to block out the scary stuff, Kellerella? Why can’t you just accept the truth for what it is?”

But he was talking over her head now and she didn’t fully understand where he was headed, what he meant by his words. Confused and frightened, she turned to run…and screamed, suddenly accosted by a web of sharp, jutting tree branches. Yet she didn’t stop, and pushed through them. She felt a stinging tear at her forehead, was aware of wetness running down into her eyes, but she didn’t stop until she passed through the thicket and broke out into a shade-covered clearing.

Out of breath, she bent at the waist and gripped her knees with her hands. Her throat felt like dry burlap. Her breath pushed from her throat in hot wheezes.

None of this is real, none of it exists, she tried to convince herself. There is no Never-Never Land. There never was. It was all in my head. It was never real…Never never existed.

Yet she was here, trapped in the middle of Never.

Wary, she looked over her shoulder for Simon but he hadn’t followed her. Around her, the woods stood like a corral, closing her off from the rest of the world. And was this really what she’d wanted? To be closed off, to be alone? No—she’d wanted someone. And that’s how this all started in the first place…

She started heading in the direction of the brook, to follow it back up to the house instead of along the path. Half-dazed, she stumbled through the woods, her mind and body still shaken. Frightened and not quite certain why, she passed through a stand of firs and broke out along the bank of the brook just as she caught the sound of someone sobbing quietly. A boy. Could it be Simon? Had he tried following her through the forest, weeping? Kelly paused just below the embankment that ran toward the brook, and noticed a boy her own age fighting off tears further down the brook. Stunned, she only stood there and stared at him. She’d never seen anyone else in these woods before. It was almost surreal.

She stepped closer and crunched a branch on the ground. The boy jerked his head up in surprise and they both froze, staring at each other.

He was slight and fragile, with square glasses covering his face, and shoulders like two little knobs poking from beneath his shirt. The knees of his corduroys were shredded, the skin beneath cut and bleeding. His face was pale, but bright flowers of red had blossomed across his cheeks and neck. His chest hitched the slightest bit, as if he’d been fighting off tears for some time now.

Seeing him, she felt intrusive, as if she’d walked into a part of this boy’s own personal world and interrupted him. “Hello,” she whispered. Uncertain what to say, she found her eyes skirting back over his injured knees. “Did you get hurt?”

“I fell,” the boy said. His throat sounded choked and frightened. He turned and pointed to a makeshift swing hanging from a rope tied to a high branch on one of the trees.

“You’re hurt.” She moved along the brook, following her reflection in the ripple of the water.

“It’s not a big deal,” he said, suddenly trying to sound both tough and casual. In his hands he held a piece of wet cloth. He held it out and wrung it over the water.

“Did you tie that swing up in that tree?”

The boy nodded.

“How did you get it all the way up there?”

“I climbed.”

“That whole tree?”

“Just up to the branch.” He pointed. “See?”

“That’s pretty high up.”

“It’s not so high,” he told her, now exuding confidence. His birdlike chest seemed to puff out before her eyes and she fought back a grin. “I can climb higher.”

“Higher than that? Aren’t you afraid you’ll fall again?”

He shook his head, but his eyes had crept up and to the right in contemplation. “I can climb to the top,” he stated.

“Wow. You’ve climbed to the top before?”

“Well, no, not yet. But I’ve been practicing. I climb up a little at a time, and each time I go up some more and up some more and pretty soon I’ll make it to the top. Just not yet.”

“You should be careful,” she told him. “You could fall and hurt yourself again.”

“You too.”

“Me too what? What do you mean?”

He pointed at her forehead and said, “You’re bleeding too. What happened?”

She brought a hand up to her forehead and gently touched the tender area. When she brought her fingers away, she saw they were slick with blood. Staring at it made her feel dizzy and she thought she might pass out. For a second or two, while talking with this boy, she’d forgotten all about Simple Simon and the Land of Never.

In my head, she told herself. All of it.

“I don’t know,” she said.

The boy shrugged. “Oh,” he said. Then he nodded toward the brook. “Clean it with the water. It’s clean water. Cold. It’ll make it feel better.”

“Will it sting?”

“No.” Then: “Maybe a little. But not much. You’ll be okay.”

Smiling, she hunkered down beside him along the edge of the brook. With both hands, she reached into the brook and cupped some water, brought it up to her face, hesitated.

“It feels good,” he promised her.

“Yeah,” she said, and patted her hands against her forehead. It stung, but felt good, too.

“I’m Gabriel,” said the boy.

“Kelly,” she responded, a blushing heat flooding her face. Then said, “Do you want to come see a baby?”

Gabriel smiled. “I’ve never seen a real one before,” he said.

Kelly spent the following few weeks getting to know and befriend Gabriel Farmer. He lived with his parents in a small cottage on the other side of the wooded valley and was an only child. He seemed fascinated by the idea that Kelly had a younger sister, and although he never questioned her about it much, Kelly knew he wanted to ask her what it was like…if it was like anything at all…

He taught her to draw. On warm days, they’d sit by the brook and scrawl with crayons in Gabriel’s notebooks endlessly, laughing and telling jokes, and sometimes shooting spit-rockets into the brook water.

“You ever see anything strange down here?” she asked him once.

Not looking up from his artwork, Gabriel said, “Nope. Like what? Bears?”

“Not bears.”

“What?”

She shrugged, her eyes trailing off into the forest depths. “I don’t know. Just stuff. Nothing, I guess.”

Gabriel laughed. “Look at this.” He held up a picture of Kelly in a pink princess gown and pointed hat. She held a star-crowned wand trailing glitter in one hand.

“What’s that?” she said, pointing to a green lump at Princess Kelly’s feet.

“That’s me,” said Gabriel. “A frog.”

“A frog?” Kelly laughed. “Why a frog?”

Blushing, Gabriel turned back to his drawing pad and rubbed at his eyes from beneath his glasses. “Because that’s what the prince looks like before the princess kisses him.”

She laughed harder and stuck out her tongue. “Oh, gross!” she said.

“Yeah, I know—”

Giggling, she leaned over and kissed Gabriel Farmer on the cheek, shocking him into silence. As she pulled away, the boy clamped a hand over the targeted spot, too embarrassed to look her in the face. She could see tiny droplets of sweat breaking out along his face and neck.

“Nope,” she said, “still a frog.”

He laughed. “Shut up! Shut up!”

“Give me that.” She grabbed the picture from him, examined it at arm’s length. “Kellerella,” she muttered, her face completely sober now.

“What’s that?”

She looked at him. “What?”

“What you said,” he said. “Like Cinderella.”

The palms of her hands began to sweat. “Yeah,” she said, “like a fairy tale.”

Hours later, as she headed back through the forest toward home, she heard the clatter of something up ahead and froze. Movement caught her eye and she turned in time to see several white objects drop from a tree branch and rattle to the ground. They were forks, she saw. Plastic forks with all but one prong busted off.

“Simon,” she whispered.

One of the boy’s pale, thin legs swung down from the tree branch, dangled several feet in front of her. Its sudden appearance startled her and she jumped back, uttered a small cry. Craning her neck, she could barely make out Simon’s poorly-defined form crouched among the leaves and branches of the tree.

“What are you doing up there?”

He tossed another fork down at her and spat on the ground. “Found a new friend?” he said.

“His name’s Gabriel,” she said.

“Do you like him? Is he your boyfriend?”

“No,” she stammered.

“Oh.” He shifted positions in the tree, sending a wave of leaves fluttering to the ground. His swinging foot moved out of the way and Kelly noticed that something had been carved into the bark of the tree, just above her reach. They were initials, she saw: K.K. + S.S.

“Did you tell him about me?” Simon said, and she looked up at him.

“No.”

“Why not?”

She sidestepped the tree. “I have to go home,” she said.

“I don’t like being by myself.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re not,” he told her. “You ignore me, just like your parents ignore you. You’re just as evil.”

His words hurt her. “That’s not true!”

“Let’s go to the house,” he said, “the gingerbread house.”

“I can’t,” she told him. “I have to get home.” The truth was, she’d been having a difficult time seeing the gingerbread house lately. It no longer existed for her.

“You’re supposed to be the Princess of Never,” he muttered, hiding his face behind a pall of leaves. “I’m supposed to be the Prince.”

“Some other time,” she said. “I have to go.”

Not looking back, her head down, she pushed on through the forest toward home. And although she didn’t want to think about Simon, Prince of Never, she could hear him yammering in her head: You’re just as evil as your parents, Kellerella. You left me. You left me.

Go away! she thought, and ran the rest of the way home.

Gabriel’s birthday was in the fall, and two days prior to it, Kelly slipped down into the forest to hang a newly made swing from the tallest tree she could find. She’d wanted to do something special for him and, having never had a close friend, she didn’t want to disappoint him and scare him off. Not that she thought Gabriel was like that. Would it be possible to ever scare him off? she wondered.

After much searching, she finally decided on a large oak that sat crookedly on the sloping valley floor. It would be difficult to climb it and tie it up there, she knew, but there were plenty of branches to grab and handhold, plenty of places for her to step around—

She heard someone behind her. Turning, she nearly tumbled down the hillside, but managed to grab onto a tree branch at the last second. Simultaneously, she felt a rumbling in her groin, felt the hot urgency of urine rush through her. Uttering a sharp cry, she dropped to the earth, knocking her head back against the tree.

Half-masked by foliage, Simon stood in the valley below, staring up at her. His eyes had mutated, were now a startling blue. He stood huddled like a hunchback, his slender form contorted and misshapen. For the first time, it occurred to her that her ignoring him had begun to twist his physical presence. The less she thought about him, the more deformed he became.

“Simon,” she heard herself whisper.

“You came back,” he called up to her, only his own voice did not rise above a whisper. Mostly, she was hearing him inside her head.

“You scared me. I didn’t hear you coming.”

“I’m quiet.” He moved along the valley floor, remaining concealed by the shrubs. “Never’s been quiet without you, too.”

“Sorry,” she said, “I’ve been busy.”

“Growing up,” he said.

She nodded slowly. “What’s the matter? What happened to you? You look funny.”

“Funny,” he snickered. He coughed and spat onto the ground. “I’ve been busy too.”

“Have you?”

“Want to see?” She could make out a grin. “I’ve been busy for you.”

“What is it?”

“Something I found. I’ll show you. Like old times, right?”

She swallowed a hard lump of spit. Absently, she found that her sudden urge to relieve herself had vanished as quick as it had come. It was Simon’s power over her, she knew. He possessed what she possessed. He had powers of his own.

“Come,” he said, and turned his back to her. He began ambling through the thicket, his gait hindered by a slight limp.

Setting the tree swing down at the foot of the giant oak, Kelly crab-walked her way down the hillside and jumped down into the valley. Upon hitting the ground, the world seemed to shift all around her, to take on the bright, plastic colors of the fairy tale world she herself had created. And for a moment she was no longer Kelly Kellow, but Kellerella, Princess of Never.

No, she thought, and shook the notion from head. That’s not me thinking that. It’s Simon, taking control of my mind. He wants me to think it.

Her legs pushed her forward through the forest. Ahead of her, Simon snaked along, his form flickering in and out of the foliage as if he were deliberately trying to elude her. After several minutes, she emptied out onto the cleared path and got a better glimpse of Simon. His skin had soured to a dull gray, the comb of his spine a series of crooked protrusions weaving down his back. Cobwebby strands of silver hair fanned out from choice places along his back, neck, scalp, arms, and legs; they undulated with each step he took.

He’s no longer perfect, she thought. Without me to regulate him, without me thinking about him, he can be and look like whatever he wants.

They reached the embankment to the gingerbread house and Simon turned to face her. His face looked small and flecked with minute scales. His lips were dry and cracked, laced with fine threads of blood vessels. A stench clung to him—foul and corrupt, radiating from him in moist waves. She recoiled at his sudden proximity, which made him crack a ghoulish grin.

“What is this?” she said.

“Don’t you trust me?” His grin widened. There was suddenly something reptilian about him. “We used to be such good friends, you and I.”

“What?” More forceful this time. She thought of Gabriel, of how he’d looked the day she’d kissed him on the cheek, and of the picture he’d drawn of her in the pink princess gown.

Kellerella…

“Come,” Simon muttered and crept up and over the embankment.

Kelly had it in her mind to turn and run at that moment—but her feet suddenly refused to comply. Instead, she found herself scaling the embankment and dropping down to the other side, caught in surprise by a gust of freezing air.

At her foot lay a dead raccoon, its belly torn down the middle, its innards spread like butter across its fur and the pile of dead leaves on which it lay. Fat, yellow maggots squirmed in the gore; flies had taken up residence in its half-open mouth. A sharp, jagged piece of slate rested nearby in the leaves, slick and sticky with gore. Sticking out of the animal’s shredded belly were the remains of a several white plastic forks.

Groaning, she shuffled backward and nearly fell, unable to take her eyes off the carnage before her. A scuttle of large, black beetles dispersed from beneath the small corpse and scattered for the cover of the underbrush.

“God…”

“For you,” Simon said. There was a hint of joviality in his voice. He tiptoed around the carcass, his bare feet kicking up flecks of sod, and hopped behind a fence of berry bushes. “Like the story of the children lost in the woods,” he said. “To find your way back again.”

Again she wanted to turn and leave, but couldn’t. She wasn’t fully in control of her body, she knew; that somehow Simon had latched on to a hidden handle inside her brain, and was now dragging her through his insane funhouse. She followed him, managing to keep a distance at least, and only paused once upon seeing a second gutted raccoon strewn on the ground. This one’s arms and legs had been spread and speared to the earth with plastic forks, its face smashed and torn down the middle. She felt something lurch inside her, bent, and vomited a stringy paste onto the ground. Her whole world began spinning again. She heard Simon’s voice, but couldn’t tell if he was actually speaking or if she was hearing it solely inside her head: You’re not alone now, Kellerella. Now we’re both freaks on the hill. Ugly, ugly freaks on the hill.

“Keep moving,” Simon grunted and Kelly’s feet obliged.

He led her around a scattering of stones, laid out in a seemingly functional formation, and she nearly slid in the mess of a third carcass—this one larger than the first two. Though there were no visible wounds to it, she knew it was dead, could tell by its stillness, its rigidity, from the sightless bulge of its eyes. Its mouth was stuffed with something—some cloth, it looked like. And then she knew what it was: her father’s socks. The thing had been suffocated with socks.

She stopped walking, her head bent and hair streaming in her face, one hand out. “No,” she said, “stop. Stop this, Simon. What is this, what are you doing?”

“No stopping,” he said.

“Why are you doing this?” Scared, she found herself very close to tears.

“All this,” he said, extending his scarecrow arms, tendons knotted and bunched at the elbows, “I did for you. I can’t stop thinking about you, Kelly. I can’t stop it. Because I’m always inside your head. It’s not so easy for me to forget.”

“And you’re changing,” she half-whispered.

“Better,” he said. “I’m more real.”

“No. That’s wrong.”

“Doesn’t matter. Wrong doesn’t matter. It’s what’s here that matters, what’s real.” And he was right. “Come on,” he said, “there’s more.”

“I can’t—” But her legs jerked her forward and she pushed on toward the gingerbread house.

Like Simon, the house had changed. It had once been a beautiful thing, something from a child’s dream, coated in sugar and blooming with colored candies. Now it looked like an old shotgun shack in some remote part of the world. Its walls were stripped wood and bulging with knotholes, crawling with vein-like vines. Its roof was a canted slab of clapboard, hoarded from some dismal junkyard. It windows held no panes—only uneven hollow squares, seemingly cut jagged with a penknife. The door stood open: a black maw. Something hung by a trail of vines from the doorframe, dangling in midair, battered by the wind.

Simon crossed down the walkway and entered the front door, pushing the dangling object aside and setting it in motion. Kelly noticed droplets of moisture fall from it and splatter on the wooden floor of the shack: blood. The thing dangling in the doorway was a decapitated squirrel, gutted and mutilated like the rest, and suspend in the air by a tangle of vines. Again, she felt her gorge rise. Struggling to keep her balance, she planted one hand against the side of the house. It was fibrous and leathery and felt very much like flesh. Repulsed, she drew her hand away.

Simon’s pale form passed before the open doorway. “Do you want this to end?” he said. “Follow me if you do. Or it will just get worse.”

“I…can’t…” She was sobbing freely now.

“You built all this,” he said. “Now you’re afraid to face it, to look at it? Just as you’re afraid to face me? To look at me?” He snickered. There was nothing funny about it. “Just like your parents,” he finished.

From inside the shack she heard what sounded like a muted whimper. Simon’s face, its left side hidden behind the frame of the doorway, moved to face her again. Head cocked downward, the ghost-boy glared at her from beneath the misshapen ledge of his brow. His eyes glowed with calculation, with intelligence. As if she’d been living in a haze of unreality, Kelly suddenly realized the absurdity of this creature’s existence. The realization dawned on her, hit her so hard across the face, that she almost laughed in spite of her surroundings. And at that instant, she thought she saw the shack waver…thought she could actually see the trees on the other side, right through the walls…

That’s what you’re afraid of, she realized. You’re afraid of me eventually destroying you. And the longer I don’t believe, the less you exist.

—You can’t think without me knowing it, Kelly, his voice erupted inside her head like a thousand gunshots. And you’re wrong: the longer you don’t believe, the more freedom I have to become what I want.

Like an opponent, she stared him down in the doorway. He grinned at her, his mouth cluttered with shredded teeth and purplish gums covered in sores. Shaking, she pushed forward down the walk. When she reached the doorway, she pressed herself against one side and brushed by the decapitated squirrel, trying not to look at it. Somewhere in the stifling darkness ahead of her, she heard Simon chuckle to himself.

Inside, she found that the shack was much bigger than it appeared. In the absolute darkness, she found she couldn’t even make out the opposite wall, and sensed that it went back at least fifty feet. Even her slight footfalls echoed all around her. In that echo, she could also sense the height of the ceiling: tremendous…towering above the trees.

Impossible, she thought.

But wasn’t it all?

There was a definite stink here—it seemed to swim in the air, hungry to cover as much ground as quickly as it could. It infused itself inside her nose, causing her to double over and gag. Each gag boomed in repeat throughout the massive room. Though she’d never experienced such a stench, she somehow understood that it was directly related to death, and to the slaughter of small, bleeding things. Just ahead, Simon’s white form slowly faded into the darkness of the room like a ghost. Seeing him in this light, it was easy for her to question his authenticity. Yet this house—and the stink—only reinforced him, made him more real than he’d been to her thus far.

Sick from the smell, she shuffled further into the room, the outside light almost completely gone now. At her back lay a single panel of sunlight coming in from the doorway and reflecting on the ground. That was all.

Again, she heard that soft whimper—an injured animal. And riding above that sound, so low and steady that it had been indistinguishable until now, she could hear a muted buzzing, like caches of electrons slamming into one another. As she progressed into the room the din grew steadily louder. Flies, she thought then. This room is filled with giant buzzing flies.

“What else is here—?” Her voice boomed and shook the walls. She quickly shut her mouth.

—Back here, Simon said in her head.

She took a few more steps. Now, her eyes starting to grow accustomed to the dark, she was able to walk with a bit more confidence. She brushed by something warm and stiff and shuddered. At that moment, a dim red light began pulsing at the center of the room, and she saw that what she’d brushed was another dead animal, this one too mutilated to distinguish. It had been sliced into membranous sheaths and draped from the ceiling, from one wall to the other, its body drying in the autumn heat like sheets on a clothesline. Its furry hide was saturated with a horde of giant flies, each buzzing and clicking and chirping to a solid wave of static. Flailing backward, her right hand shot out and grazed the fleshy hide, painting her with warm blood and causing her stomach to heave once again. The world spinning before her eyes, she went crashing to the floor—

—and for an instant it felt like wet ground, like solid earth beneath her—

But it was flooring. Wood. She could feel it, even as she pulled herself into a ball and forced her stomach muscles to relax. Looking up, her vision refocusing, she could see Simon’s gaunt silhouette pulsing in the sudden red glow of light at the center of the room. The light itself seemed to be coming from the actual floor, most prominent between the slats in the floorboards. Simon, his back to her, was occupied with something. She noticed things on the floor at his feet: more plastic forks, three of the four prongs busted off each of them; several discarded food and drink containers filled with a dark liquid; a collection of tools and utensils, including an old hammer, a screwdriver, a long carving knife, and an unwound wire coat-hanger. And what looked at first like small stones.

Those are skulls, she realized. Those are skulls of small animals at his feet.

Simon stepped aside and Kelly saw something shudder in the gloom behind him. Something big. Some animal.

“Get off the floor and come here,” Simon muttered, not looking at her.

“What is that light?”

“The heart of Never,” he said, glancing at the pulsing red light coming up through the floorboards. “This place is getting stronger. It’s almost alive.”

“No.”

“Get over here.”

She felt herself rise and duck beneath the slaughtered animal veil hanging from the ceiling. The red pulsing light was like a suffocating heat all around her. Sweat broke out across her face and neck, down her arms and legs. The faint need to urinate passed through her like a virus.

“This is how much I’ve been thinking of you,” Simon said. This time when he stepped out of the way Kelly could see that the shifting thing behind him was a dog. A large dog, huddled and tied to the wall, one of its paws up beneath its chin. It was injured; a dark puddle of blood spread on the floor beneath it. “All this planning,” Simon said, “all this thought and work and trouble. All so you could find your way back home to me.”

“What do you want from me?”

He spun and faced her, his features crazy and distorted by the red glow beneath the floor. “I want you to let me have it all,” he seethed. “I want you to give it up to me, allow me to be whole. There’s enough power in your head to give me a life outside of you and outside of these fucking woods. I want you to give me that power.”

“I want to go home,” she managed, her voice trembling.

He turned and crept over to the selection of tools lined along the floor. Bent to one bulbous knee.

“You’re growing and I’m staying the same,” he said. “What do I do when you finally leave? What do I do a year after you leave? Five years? Twenty years?” He selected the hammer, hefted it in his hands. It looked almost too heavy for his brittle arms to lift. “I’ll be stuck here. I don’t want to be stuck forever in these woods. You made me, Kelly.”

“Stop it,” she sobbed.

“You have enough power in your head to give me life. I want that. I want you to do it.”

And although her mind was reeling with thoughts, she found she could no longer speak. Shocked into silence, she could only watch Simon’s disfigured form twirl the hammer over and over again in his hands.

“Speak,” he said.

“I…I can’t do that…I can’t give…”

“It’s nothing you need to know how to do,” he said. “I can help you do it. It’s not something you need to practice. Just let me in your head, in your mind.”

She shook her head. She could still taste the vomit at the back of her throat. “No,” she managed. “That’s not what I mean.”

He glanced at her from over his shoulder, eyes slit.

“I won’t,” she said. “You’re not real. And what you’ve done…Simon, you’re evil.”

Slowly, he rose. He appeared as a skeleton amidst the illumination of Christmas lights. “You create me,” he growled, “then want to throw me away.”

“I’m sorry.” She felt tears spill down her face, felt her hands begin to shake. “Simon…”

“If I’m evil, you made me evil!” he boomed.

“That’s not true!”

“I can make you change your mind,” he said. He took a shuffling step toward her and extended his hand holding the hammer. Instinctively, she flinched. “Take it,” he said. “Do it.”

“No—” But her hand was already out, had already grabbed the hammer. She held it now in her own hand, turning it over and over and over, just as Simon had been doing moments before. “How…?”

“I can do whatever you can do,” he said. Then, in a near-snarl: “Almost.”

“You can’t make me move—”

With a jerk, she raised the hammer above her head, her arm wooden and stiff. She gasped then erupted in a fit of sobs. “God…”

“God has nothing to do with this. You’re my god. When you created me, Kelly, you instilled in me your power.”

“You can’t kill me,” she managed through her tears. “It would kill you too.” She wasn’t sure how she knew this, but somehow knew it to be true.

“I’m not going to kill you,” he said, stepping aside to reveal the injured dog once again. The dog’s head swung from side to side, a deep growl starting in its throat. It was shaggy and huge, its fur dense with mud. “I’ll make you do things, though. Bad things. Things you won’t want to do.”

“No!” she shouted. “I won’t!”

She felt a tension at her legs…felt one leg lift, move forward, drag her across the floor. She closed the distance between her and the injured dog by just a few inches. The dog’s growl intensified.

“Consider what I’m saying, what I want,” Simon said.

“You’re not real! You’re a dream! You’re inside my head!”

She felt her arm tense, felt the muscles tighten. In her head, she could too easily see herself bringing the claw-end of the hammer down on the dog’s head, crushing its skull, splattering blood across the wall, across her own face…

No! her mind screamed, and she felt through the channels of her brain for the handle Simon was holding. Her mind, she found, was a vast maze of corridors and entranceways, of exits and entrances and hallways and windows blocked by bars. Floors shifted or came up to meet ceilings in certain places. Shapes materialized in smoke, dissipated, reappeared. And always ahead of her: the erratic patter of the ghost-boy’s feet as he ran, just out of reach, out of sight. In her mind. She would follow him down one corridor only to find that she had taken a wrong turn and wound up at a dead end. Or her mind-fingers would graze his bony back, and just as she was about to lunge and grab him, he would vanish into smoke.

“You can’t fight me,” he said, suddenly all around her. “Your power is what gave me life, and I have access to it, have some of that power myself. You can’t fight me, Kelly. It would be like fighting yourself.”

Teeth gritted, eyes pressed shut, she could feel a pressure overtake her arm, insistent that she slam the hammer down, that she bring her arm down in one quick, arcing motion. She could still see it so clearly in her head—

Her arm trembled.

No! No, don’t! Stop! Please, stop!

“Do you feel trapped and helpless?” His voice was like a god’s, coming from every direction at once. “Do you feel alone? Good. Because now you are like me.”

“Never,” she breathed through clenched teeth. He face burned with tears. “Never like you!”

At the final moment, she realized she could not fight him and that her arm was going to come down. Yet Simon had not gone for control of her hips, of her legs, and she quickly shuffled to one side as the hammer came down. The claw-end slammed into the wall and dragged down, peeling back fleshy layers of the wall and exposing the sunlight of the outside world beyond. Then the entire wall seemed to waver, to contest its own reality, and she could see the shimmering forest on the other side and suddenly wanted to be there.

Dropping the hammer, she leapt forward and pushed herself against the wall—and passed through to the other side, her body slowing in midleap as if the wall had tried to retain its solidity while she was halfway through. Behind her, she heard the sounds of twine snapping, and then hit the ground with such force she could feel her brain rattle in her skull.

Around her, the world swam in and out of focus, the temperature seesawing from intense heat to bitter cold. Despite her pain, she wasted no time, and scuttled back on her hands and feet, her eyes locked on the house in the woods, her mind reeling nonsense—

(we almost killed)

(somewhere far away four boys find a house like this in the woods)

(blood on a jukebox)

(a hole in the ocean)

—her eyes locked on the place where the house had only stood moments before.

It had vanished.

Everything—the house and Simon. All of it, gone.

Everything seemed to slow. A rustling to her left and she saw the injured dog standing atop the embankment, staring at her. His injured paw was raised, his eyes black and muddy and trained on her. Then it turned and took off into the woods, trailing busted pieces of twine behind it.

Is it over? she wondered. Simon, are you gone? Did I cast you away?

And although he didn’t come right out and say no, she swore she could hear a faint laugh coming from all around her: the laughter of a thousand gods.

Winter and summer came and went with little fanfare. Having stayed away from the forest for some time, Kelly hardly thought of the ghost-boy called Simple Simon and the Land of Never, although she was always faintly aware of the boy’s continual presence at the back of her mind. Still there, but fading. And soon, her mind began rubbing out her time spent in the woods altogether, almost to a point where the name Simple Simon no longer meant anything to her—at least on a conscious level. Forcing herself to forget, as she’d done so long ago when she’d created a stone from nothing. And though her parents remained distant and unresponsive, Kelly found a new diversion in the presence of her younger sister and in the friendship of Gabriel Farmer. For once, these things made her feel normal and accepted. No longer did she dream of make-believe worlds ruled by kings and queens, where knights rode horses and Cheshire cats spoke from trees; such things ceased being important to her.

When she was fourteen, a crushing snowstorm came to Spires in early November. For days, snow piled up outside the house while sleet and freezing rain pelted the windows and ceilings. At one point the furnace in the cellar seized up, and her father’s newly-appointed house-man, a fellow named DeVonn Rotley, spent several hours downstairs in the freezing gloom until the furnace sputtered back to life.

One night during this storm, Kelly was forced awake by a blinding cold. She pushed herself up in bed, her skin hardened into goose-bumps, her teeth rattling in her head, and saw that someone had opened her bedroom window. A crest of snow and ice hung over the lip of the sill, and the carpet beneath the window was wet and frozen. The curtains billowed out like twin phantoms.

For a long time, she didn’t move. It was too cold…and something in the back of her mind had suddenly started to speak up, to warn her. She felt herself struggling for old memories, but the strength of her mind would not allow it.

She pulled herself out of bed and stepped across the room to the window, her body wracking against the freezing air. The carpet was soaking wet and freezing beneath her feet; the coldness stimulated her bladder. Halfway to the window, she stepped on what she thought was a chunk of ice. It cracked beneath her foot and she hopped off it, looked down.

It was a broken plastic fork. All but one of its prongs were missing.

She felt something stir inside her brain, something desperate to be released, but it was down too deep to excavate. Instead, she kicked the fork aside and went to the window, reached up, grabbed the sill, tried to pull the window down. The weather had frozen it stuck. Lightly, she began hammering her fist against the frame, but she feared it was making too much noise and stopped.

Looked out the window.

Froze.

A misshapen white form stood out in the snow against the side of the house, between the house and the steep incline that dipped down into the dark forest. The figure looked up at her, and although she couldn’t make out any details from such a height, she knew the figure was grinning at her.

Around her, a dull blue light began to glow, to fill the room, radiating from her own flesh. A voice boomed in her head: You can’t get away from me, Kellerella.

There was something thick and sturdy and secure at the back of her mind that shattered in that instant into a billion crystallized pixie-dust fragments; with her mind’s eye, she watched the fragments disperse through the air, watched them flutter in impossible directions, watched them slowly waft to the ground and coat her mind in a fine, sparkling mist.

Glenda found her the following morning curled in a ball on her floor beneath her open window, her knees pulled up against her chest, her eyes wide and staring. Frantic, Glenda dropped to her knees and attempted to wake Kelly from her daze. Kelly did not wake up. Soon, Glenda began shouting, her hands on Kelly’s shoulders, shaking her. DeVonn Rotley appeared in the doorway. Gordon Kellow and his wife appeared. Becky, who’d just recently celebrated her fifth birthday, also came to the door, her eyes wide and frightened.

DeVonn Rotley picked Kelly up in his arms. Her body was small and nearly lifeless, her eyes staring and unfocused, and carried her downstairs while Glenda rushed to a telephone. The doctor would not make it up to the house that day because of the storm. Nor the next. Nor the next. And by the time he did reach the house, young Kelly Kellow had retreated so far into her mind that the flustered pediatrician was at a loss.

“She needs a good psychiatrist, I think,” was the only advice he could offer.

Afraid to touch her, to be near her, Kelly’s parents remained in the hallway outside her bedroom, peering in at their daughter as she lay lifeless in bed. At one point, Gordon Kellow turned to his wife as if to say something…then appeared to change his mind at the last minute.

Several times Gabriel stopped by, but he was too frightened and confused to stay long. Kelly never even knew he came.

Nights, Glenda would remain at the foot of Kelly’s bed and read from her favorite storybooks—storybooks that had long since been packed away in boxes in the basement, but had been retrieved at Glenda’s insistence—or sing her the occasional song:

Little Baby Roundabout,

Someone let the Baby out,

And now, Sweet Babe, it’s time for bed,

So close your eyes and rest your head.

If her song reached Kelly, Glenda did not know.

One morning in the fall, Kelly appeared in the doorway of her father’s thinking room. The room had long since been cleaned out of the animal heads, and now resembled the farthest corner of a musty library. Seated in his leather chair with a book propped open on his lap, Gordon Kellow looked up at the sight of his daughter standing in the doorway and found his throat dry, his mind blank.

“Kelly,” he said, his hands beginning to shake. “Well…you’ve come back to us. That’s…” He smiled at her, his lips quivering. He looked nervous and afraid. “That’s good.”

She only stared in silence.

“Your mother will—she’ll be happy to see you’re…well…”

Nothing.

“You know, you had us both worried. We didn’t know what—we called so many doctors—it was…”

She stood there, unmoving—more a memory of herself than an actual person.

The smile faded from her father’s face. “Say something,” he told her. “Damn it, Kelly, say something. Don’t just stand there like that.”

“You’re lucky I stopped when I did,” she said, turned, and continued down the hallway.

Gordon Kellow watched his daughter leave, his heart trip-hammering in his chest. The book in his lap—Travis Glasgow’s Silent River—slowly fell closed and slid down his pant leg to the floor, where it struck with a muted thump.

Doctors came and went but said little. She remained in her room most of the time, refusing to speak with anyone, including Gabriel. And soon Gabriel stopped coming around. And then so did the doctors. One evening, when Glenda asked her if she felt all right, asked her what had happened to her to set her off in such a fashion, Kelly only stared blankly at the woman without saying a word. And there was nothing left in her eyes—anyone who looked at Kelly could tell. They were cold and withdrawn.

Several times during the night Kelly would find herself creeping out of bed to stand before her bedroom window and peer out over the magnificent blanket of forestry that unraveled below. She did this without understanding why. And when she prodded her brain to fill in the missing pieces—and there were many—her brain simply shut down and refused to cooperate.

Following Kelly’s fifteenth birthday, the Kellows took their daughter to the Coopersville Female Institution where they met with several different people—doctors and nurses and specialists and even a dietitian. Kelly felt like a deck of cards, continuously picked up by strange hands and shuffled. Afterwards, on the quiet car ride back to Spires, her father asked her what she thought about the institution—though he didn’t call it an “institution,” he called it a “home.”

Without facing her parents, Kelly said, “I’m setting fire to my room when I get home.”

Her parents exchanged silent glances as the car passed through the quaint, little town. A week later and Kelly was admitted to the “home.”

Cards, she thought, stacked with their faces down, their secrets hidden, their stories untold and forgotten. Hidden books. Storybooks.

“You’ll get better here,” her mother told her and she stood beside her father in the doorway of Kelly’s new bedroom: white walls, bars on the windows, crisp white sheets that felt like construction paper.

“Yes,” agreed her father. “These people will know what to do with you.”

Kelly smiled at them both, causing them to take an unconscious step back toward the hallway. There was no humor in that smile. Her eyes looked dead. “You’re both just afraid of me,” she said, not sure why. “Both of you. See me here?” Her voice remained toneless and flat. “Remember this. And be thankful it ended this easy.”

Visibly shaken, her parents filed out into the hallway and never came back.

Little Baby Roundabout, Kelly thought, eyes wandering around the white room. Someone let the Baby out.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Jarred awake by the sound of shattering glass, Josh opened his eyes. It took him a moment to understand where he was. Not at home: there was an odor here of citrus. And then it hit him—Nellie’s apartment—and he rolled forward off the tiny sofa, barking his shin on the coffee table in the dark.

Is she dying? It was the first thing that crossed his mind. And almost selfishly on the heels of that: Then what about Kelly?

He tore down the hallway and threw open Nellie’s bedroom door. The shattering sound had been Nellie’s bedroom window exploding. Spear-like shards of glass remained like loose teeth in the frame, while triangles of windowpane were now scattered along the carpet and across the length of Nellie’s bed. The sheer curtains that hung at the window now twisted in the wind.

“Jesus!” He rushed to the bed, his bare feet crunching over the broken glass but hardly noticing. Nellie was pitched forward off her pillow, the woman’s eyes bugging out, her good hand hooked into a talon and clawing at her throat. “Jesus Christ, can you breathe?”

Nellie could not see nor hear him. Mere inches from her face, and the old woman’s eyes ran right through to the back of his head. Half her face radiated with the reflection of the neon city, and Josh watched helplessly as her mouth worked but no words came out, and as her hand tore at her neck.

“Nellie!”

He tried to ease her down onto the bed but she refused to be moved. He tried again—yet this time he quickly recoiled, shocked and terrified by the sudden sensation of collapse inside him…as if two invisible hands had grabbed his heart and started to squeeze.

Nellie, his mind stammered, was that you? Reaching out for me?

Scared, he pushed back through the room, feeling the cuts on his feet now, feeling the freezing wind coming through the shattered window, and dashed into the hallway, through the small sitting room, into the kitchen. He’d pasted Carlos Mendes’s beeper number to the telephone. He grabbed the slip of paper now, his heart pumping so loudly he could hear it in his ears, and fumbled with the phone. He attempted to dial the numbers but he fingers were too big. After three failed attempts, he took a deep breath and dialed the number once more.

Paging Doctor Mendes, he thought. Doctor Mendes, you have a patient going into telekinetic fits in the next room. Please report to the emergency room STAT.

And what could Mendes do, anyway?

He waited for the prompt, then punched in Nellie’s number, hit the pound key. Three short beeps rang out over the line.

Jesus, hurry!

From behind him there came a sound like fingernails being dragged along a chalkboard. He turned and saw a hairline crack weaving along the windowpane above the sink. He watched it with numb detachment.

Is that you, Nellie? Is that you? What happened, what did you see? What did you see that’s making your mind tear down this apartment?

The window began rattling in its frame. Josh hung up the phone and began backing out of the kitchen, not taking his eyes from the window. He was mesmerized by it, powerless to look away. He could see his own reflection in the glass, facing him, also retreating, growing smaller…only the reflected Josh had been decapitated by the lengthening crack, his features a jumble of maundering jigsaw pieces.

Nellie—

The window burst from the pane, shooting spears of glass at him and the opposite wall. Bringing up his arms, elbows out, he felt the glass pelt him, felt a sudden stink followed by warm wetness on the side of his right hand. Beside him, he could hear the glass shattering against the kitchen wall. One piece struck a pot on the stove and was deflected with a distinct cling!

Stumbling into the sitting room, Josh scrambled for the light switch but could not locate it. A sharp winter wind struck his back from the kitchen. He pushed around the sofa just as he heard that same fingers-on-a-chalkboard grind. Looking up, he could see the row of windows covered by curtains, lights from the city glowing behind the curtains’ sheer fabric. They looked like flesh…like spread batwings before a blinding light. And he could clearly make out the spider-web fissures progressing rigidly along the faces of the windowpanes.

They’re all going to implode, he told himself. They’re all going to smash open and pepper this place in glass.

And he was in the wrong goddamn spot.

To his left, the old phonograph snapped to life, the sounds of Duke Ellington starting off slow, distorted…then gathering momentum. It was like a nightmare fun-house. And what about Nellie? Was she dead? Dying? In all the commotion, it seemed like he’d run frantic out of her bedroom no less than an hour ago. But surely it hadn’t been more than a minute or two.

The sharp stink of citron stung his nose again, caused his nostrils to flare. And understanding what that meant just mere seconds before the row of windows imploded, Josh dropped to the carpet, his hands laced over the back of his head, and pushed himself up against the foot of the sofa. A second later and he felt the floor rattle, heard a solid crash, and was aware of blades of glass whizzing inches above his head. A blast of freezing air accosted him.

Someone has to hear all this. Surely a neighbor was shaken awake by the racket. Someone—anyone—has to help.

Around him: the sounds of glass striking the far wall and thudding to the carpet in pieces. Some blades drove themselves into the wall, where they stuck like arrows in a target. Some others struck framed photographs, sending them crashing to the floor as well. A crystal vase on the small coffee table was struck with an audible ping! but did not break.

A fading image of Kelly fell across his mind, and he forced himself back to his feet. For a moment, he was pinned with disillusionment before the row of glassless windows like a superhero atop a skyscraper—arms out, clothes billowing, hair blown back—before reality came crashing down on him. Back in the real world, he pushed passed the sofa, the phonograph moaning with Ellington’s orchestra, and back into Nellie’s bedroom.

For one insane moment, Josh saw Sampers—the kid who’d shot and nearly killed him over a year ago—standing beside Nellie’s bed, one hand over the old woman’s chest. He saw this with perfect lucidity—saw the kid standing beside the window in his crushed leather jacket, the curtains billowing out around his feet, his long, greasy hair hanging in front of his eyes. And he turned up to look at Josh too, his skin pockmarked and honeycombed with sores, his eyes lifeless except for the underlying accusatory light that throbbed beneath their surface.

How’ve you been, Cavey? You been doin’ good? You been doin’ real good? I haven’t.

And then Sampers was gone. He’d never really been there: it was just a trick of the light, shadows mixed with the undulation of the curtains. And Nellie’s mind, he thought. That made the most sense. Nellie’s mind, suddenly fired up and running in the red, had plucked that image of Sampers from his own head and had made him see it. She’d made Sampers real, if only for a second.

Real?

“Real enough,” he uttered, his voice shaking, and rushed to the old woman’s bedside.

Carlos Mendes, asleep on his beeper, was awoken by its vibration. Though he’d become accustomed to late-night pages from the hospital over the years, something deep inside him knew this wasn’t the hospital tonight. He needn’t check the number on the pager to know that.

He pulled himself out of bed, casting a glance at the huddled form of his wife, and slipped on a pair of jeans and an old Rangers sweatshirt. Downstairs, he gathered his medical bag and shuffled out into the cold. An absurd notion struck him then: If we just change the baby’s name, Nellie’s prediction will not come true. It is as simple as that.

Could it be?

He took Marie’s car into the city, and was downtown just as it started to snow. It came down in a thick blanket almost immediately, then lessened to a mere flurry by the time he reached the West Side and Nellie Worthridge’s apartment complex. In the darkness, it loomed above him like an omen.

We’re like old friends now, he thought, scaling the building with his eyes.

He parked in an alley and hustled up into the lobby, took the elevator to Nellie’s floor. There, he paused as he stepped from the elevator. The corridor was mostly dark, the row of ceiling lights crackling and flashing intermittently. And with each flash, shadows jumped, colors swam. For one crazy instant, he thought the walls had been spray-painted with words: words from his nightmares. He froze, his bowels involuntarily clenching. Peering through the darkness to the end of the hallway, he expected to see that bizarre, deviled caricature of Peter Pan—

(someone else)

—sketched across the far wall. But no—it was all in his head. He was being too jumpy.

He rushed to Nellie’s apartment, considered knocking, then decided to just let himself in.

He’s first impression was of Blatty’s The Exorcist: lights were blinking, the phonograph was slowly rotating through an old jazz record, and Jesus Christ the goddamn windows had been blown out. Papers and napkins and paper cups—anything the wind was capable of manipulating—bobbed along the floor or gathered in tiny whirlwinds. Directly in front of him, a brass-and-wood wall clock ticked loudly, its minute hand moving too fast. There was a definite fruity stink inside the room, hardly dissuaded by the fresh night air, and as Carlos took a few steps into the apartment, he could feel the hairs along the nape of his neck and his arms prickle and rise. It was static electricity, he thought; that pulsing undercurrent from Nellie’s mind.

He yelled out for Josh, who appeared around the hallway looking like a drowned mutt. He was breathing heavy, his hair in tousled ringlets, his eyes hidden in the deep pockets of his skull. As Josh approached him, Carlos saw that the kid’s hands were quaking, that his right hand was even bleeding. There was also blood wiped in a smeared arc across his white undershirt.

“Doc,” he muttered.

“What the hell’s happening here?”

“What’s the extent of…” Josh cleared his throat. He sounded confused and uncertain as to what he was trying to say. “Nellie’s doing it.”

“How in the world—”

“With her mind.”

“My God…”

“Is it bad, the rest of the building?” Josh’s voice shook. “I didn’t know if maybe it went beyond her apartment, maybe somewhere…I don’t know…maybe some other places…”

“Lights in the hallway are blinking,” Carlos said, his eyes running the length of the room. The jazz record ended and the needle began bumping. “That’s about it, as far as I can tell. Where is she? Is she all right?”

“Bedroom,” Josh said, and turned to lead Carlos down the hallway. “She doesn’t look well and she won’t say anything to me. I don’t know if she can or just won’t. I think she’s scared. Do you think she could have, you know, had another stroke?”

Carlos stepped over a fallen picture frame. I’ve never seen a stroke victim blow out windows just by thinking about it, he thought. “Just let me see her,” he said.

Nellie’s bedroom was in the same state of affairs. The single window here was gone as well, the curtains billowing out like ghosts. The chair Marie had once sat in was now overturned and strewn in a corner, one of its legs busted. As he approached the bed, Carlos sidestepped the larger slivers of glass scattered about the floor.

“Nellie.” He couldn’t bring his voice above a whisper; it simply would not comply. “Nellie…it’s Carlos. Doctor Mendes from the hospital.”

“I’ve seen it,” she breathed. Her words caused him to pause in midstride. Behind him, he could hear Josh sigh with either relief of surprise at the sound of the old woman’s voice.

“Seen it?” he questioned.

“She’s in trouble,” Nellie said. “Kelly.”

“What happened here, Nellie? The windows—the whole apartment. What happened to you? Do you understand what you—”

“Not important!” she half-cried, half-croaked. She sounded as if something had lodged itself inside her throat. Her tongue lolled around inside her mouth: an obstruction. “No time…”

“What is it?” Josh said from the doorway.

“We need to help her now,” said the old woman. “We don’t have time. I need to go in after her.”

Carlos shook his head. To Josh, he muttered, “She’s talking delirious.”

“No, I don’t think so. She’s talking about Kelly.”

“She can’t go anywhere.”

“She can,” Josh said. “In her mind.”

Carlos moved to Nellie’s bedside and pressed a hand to her forehead. “She’s burning up with fever.” He placed his satchel on the bed, unzipped it. “See if she has some plastic trash bags,” he said. “Big ones. And lots of tape, Josh. Get these windows taped up, at least the one in here, okay?”

Josh nodded and slipped back into the hallway.

Carlos shook some instruments onto Nellie’s bed. He had no idea what needed to be done. “Are you with me, Nellie? Stay with me, dear.”

“Not for long,” she said. There was an odd serenity to her voice now. Carlos expected her to start grinning at any minute.

“Don’t say that.”

“Can’t stay here. Kelly…” She repeated Kelly’s name over and over again, as if committing it to memory.

“Nel—”

The old woman’s eyes began to flutter, her mouth silently working over her tongue. A clear strip of spittle ran down the corners of her mouth to her earlobes. For a brief instant, Carlos thought the woman was suffering a seizure, and he was preparing to respond accordingly…but then the wave hit him, stronger than it had been with Marie. It was a warm, electrically-charged current that emanated from her body, passed right up through his own, and diffused throughout the room. In that moment, Carlos was keenly aware of every organ in his body—every cell, every molecule, every sensation. He could feel the rush of blood washing against the walls of his arteries, could see the granulated flints of light at the base of his eyeballs, even now with his lids closed. And he could see his lids, see the insides of them and see right through them…

In a state of near-catatonia, Carlos thought, She’s opening up her mind completely now, searching for this girl Kelly, and opening all her senses. It’s like a wave, a current…but an emotion too, in a way. I can feel it—some of it is actually washing over me, washing through me—and I can almost see what she sees too, I think, and feel what she feels. Almost. It is like being in a wind tunnel, or perhaps being the copper in a network of electrical wires. There is an intensity here, a power here, that goes beyond anything I am capable of describing. Of comprehending, too.

He felt the sensation of rocketing along a skyline toward the horizon, like a bird spread out over a great sea, and he thought his heart might just swell and burst in his chest, that he was suddenly so free.

Josh returned with a roll of trash bags and a spool of masking tape and paused in the doorway.

He, too, felt it.

Chapter Twenty-Five

She wove the Caddy through the streets of Spires in the darkness. The town appeared poised and anxious all around her, as if possessing knowledge of things to come. The streets were dead, empty. And up ahead, now a studded black smear blotting out the stars, stood the wooded precipice on which the Kellow Compound sat. She steered the car off the town road and mounted the lip of the driveway that wound up the massive hillside. She did this with unconscious dexterity, her mind in complete focus, her shirt damp with the tears she’d cried.

Where are you, Simon? she thought. Where are you hiding now? Are you still there, still in the woods?

As she urged the car up the drive, she found that a great bulk of her thought was with her sister. In a sense, this had all happened because of her—Kelly—and now Becky was in trouble. This thought forced her to grip the steering wheel tighter, her eyes stinging with fresh tears. If she hadn’t run away after leaving the institution…if she hadn’t left Becky here alone with her parents, with that boy…

He’s not a boy. He’s a monster from my imagination. I created him—it. It’s my monster come to life.

She braked the car and ran from it, toward the house. And froze.

The house was alive. As impossible as such things were, the vast Victorian mansion had come alive, and now stood massive before her, running invisible yarns of fingers over her body, probing her mind. It had become a puzzle of askew angles, each a slight degree off from perfect; where windows buckled and squinted and stretched; where doorways yawned and grinned; where the spiral peaks of the roofs and eaves curled like fingers and toes. The walls themselves pulsed with respiration—inhaled, exhaled, inhaled, exhaled. She could almost hear it steady in her head, like listening to the din of a reed- and string-less orchestra. Through its doors and windows and chimneys emitted a rank, putrid stench; the cloud of fumes billowed out and around Kelly with each of the house’s exhalations. It immediately corrupted her lungs and stung her eyes, causing flashbulbs to explode in the deepest recesses of her brain. Spinning out of control, her mind summoned the image of those moving animal heads in her father’s thinking room, and of the mechanical rigidity with which they came to life. She’d done that. She’d thought them to life.

Kelly shook her head, slammed her eyes shut.

No, she thought, no, no, no! This isn’t real, isn’t what’s happening! I’m seeing the house alive because when I was younger I used to think it was! This isn’t real! It’s all from my head, all part of my imagination. It isn’t real!

But that was just the problem: if she thought it, it was real, it became real.

“Not this time,” she said, and took a step toward the house. At her approach, the movement of the house appeared to cease, the foul odor suddenly absent from the air. Yet it was fighting her—she could feel it inside her mind, desperate to maintain its consistency, its reality. It was like a soul trapped between two planes, frantically trying to get a foothold somewhere, on some plane or in some world. But she wouldn’t let it. Not this time. No way in hell.

She mounted the steps and reached for the front door. To her chagrin, the door seemed to recoil from her, to buckle inward as a prevention tactic. The beams that held it creaked and groaned, protesting the unnatural act. Above the door frame, the siding panels splintered down the middle…then appeared to undulate, as if seen through the heat of a fire, trying to piece themselves back together. The porch floor also pulled inward; she felt it slide out from beneath her feet. Wood splintered and popped all around her. She heard something snap and seemingly explode, followed by a distant metallic thud: one of the hinges on the door. Could this really be happening? Could she really be this reckless and open, allowing all her bizarre childhood fears come to life on this bitter and dark hillside?

She tried for the knob again but the house refused to let her in.

And what about the people in there? What about Becky?

Backing down the front stoop, she turned and dashed around the side of the house, her hair streaming behind her, her coat open. She was breathing heavy, her breath harsh and dry in her mouth. At the side of the house, she glanced up at the bank of windows that climbed to the roof. Becky’s window was closed.

She turned and faced the forested valley below. At the top of her lungs, she screamed, “You stay the fuck away from her, do you hear me? You leave her alone! You’re not real, you’re part of my fucking brain, so leave my sister alone!”

The world felt like it dropped several feet, and she had to look down to convince herself that she was still standing on it.

Nothing that happens is real, she thought. I just have to remember that. It’s all in my head and nothing that happens can hurt me if I don’t let it.

The hair on the back of her neck pricked up and, for some strange reason, she thought of old Nellie Worthridge.

She took another step toward the back of the house, but collapsed to the ground before she could get far. Something had ruptured inside her body, deep in her groin, and she suddenly needed to urinate mercilessly. The pain was so intense, so unique, that it sent spirals of color capering before her eyes. She clamped them shut. Grotesque images flickered across the screens of her eyelids.

This pain is not real. It’s Simon doing this—that monster. He—it—has just as much power as I do, and it’s using every last bit of it to ward me off.

Why? Because it was afraid.

She lay still on the snow-covered earth, her eyes still closed, and placed her hands down on either side of her body. Wracked by tremors of pain, her teeth gritted together, she forced the feeling to flee her body. It was something she’d never done before, yet she knew exactly how to do it, as if such behavior was natural and she were running off pure instinct.

That’s because it is natural, she heard a voice whisper in her head. Again, she thought of Nellie Worthridge. Natural to some, that is.

She willed the feeling away. It wasn’t a gradual process; instead, the corruption that had suddenly plagued her simply left with equal abruptness. It happened so quickly that she didn’t believe it at first, and remained lying on the ground, her eyes still shut. Slowly, feeling returned in her arms and legs—a welcomed sense of normalcy. She had combated the power and had emerged the victor.

Yes, she thought, but for how long?

Scrambling to her feet, she felt the earth again pitch beneath her. A quake; though it was a quake inside her, and had nothing to do with the outside world. In reality, she was floating on nothing, and possessed every ability to manipulate everything she ever thought permanent. It was a frighteningly powerful comprehension.

“How long have you been hiding down there?” she heard herself whisper. And it was a stupid question because she knew the answer: Simple Simon had been hiding in the woods since his birth. And she’d birthed him. It occurred to her then: she was, in all truth, the mother of the beast.

She pushed herself forward over the edge of the hillside and began to climb down into the wooded valley. It was dark and difficult to see her footing. Several times she nearly spilled to the ground. At one point, she paused because the ground beneath her feet appeared to distort and pull away from her, like a receding carpet. She’d first thought it was a trick of the darkness, and tapped her foot against the dirt. Small stones rolled down the hillside…and vanished over the edge, falling long and deep into the shadow. She listened and never heard them hit the ground. Another childhood fear—the fear of falling over the hillside and injuring herself. Again, this recently remembered rumination became her reality, and she struggled with the reparations as she’d done just moments before when attacked by the sudden urge to urinate. In her head she pictured the earth coming together, the shadows brushed away, and brought down her foot. Solid earth moved up to greet her. And again—another step. And another. And another. She passed trees and bushes, the moonlight fading behind her as the forest grew denser and, after several moments, she touched down on the valley floor.

All was silent. No birds, no insects. The land was in hibernation.

Never, she thought. That was the name of this place. We called it Never.

The forest before her was impossibly black. Anything could come at her from any direction and she’d never see it coming, never—

No, I can’t think about that. If I imagine it, it could happen, could come true. Somehow, Simon has managed to tap into my head and use my ability against me and for his own purposes. I have to be careful not to let prying fingers into my brain.

Wind blew, rattling the trees and causing her to gasp.

I’m not going to be able to find anything down here. Not in the dark…

That said, a dull red glow appeared at the heart of the forest, just barely visible for the trees. It pulsed like a heartbeat, and she could almost hear it breathing in her head. Obeying her instinct, she took a step in the direction of the light, her foot crunching dead leaves hardened by frost. The pulse of the light was steady, unflinching. She a ship in the harbor, and that light her beacon. Home. Coming home. Welcoming her back to the Land of Never.

He wants me to find him, she thought, creeping through the underbrush. He’s been waiting for this confrontation for as long as I have. And maybe all along he was never satisfied with Becky. Maybe he was smart enough to use Becky to get to me. Maybe all those feelings I started feeling back in the city had nothing to do with Becky calling out to me, and everything to do with this monster.

The notion that this creature was capable of such power nearly frightened Kelly into submission. However, she would not curl up and wish it all away. She couldn’t do that, not now. She’d left a door unlocked here when she went away as a teenager, and the thing living inside that room had gotten out, had himself a grand time. But now the cat was back; the mouse would no longer play.

“I created you from nothing,” she whispered as she walked. Even in the densest part of the forest the wind whipped her face and chapped her cheeks and lips. “I made you and now I’m going to put you back.”

—You’ll never do it.

She froze. It was a voice inside her head.

“Simon…”

—You can try but you’ll never be able to make me disappear. You’ve done too much forgetting while I’ve remained lonely and restless, Kellerella. Now I’m strong and you’re weak. Time has changed things.

And could that be true? Or was it just another tactic?

“What have you been up to?” Her throat felt thick and tight. “What did you do to Becky?”

But the voice did not respond. Her eyes, still trained on the red beacon in the distance, forced her to trudge on. Her fear was slowly being eaten by an urgency to reclaim her own mind and body. She felt cheated. That this creature had done terrible things to her in the past, forcing her mind to block out whole lapses of her childhood, she wanted to punish him—it—whatever—and make him pay, make him go away, to shovel him back into the realm of nonexistence.

And then there was Becky. Poor Becky, whom she’d deserted, had been left unknowingly with a monster in her back yard.

I’m sorry, Kelly thought. I’m so sorry.

She stumbled into a narrow clearing, thought she’d gotten somehow turned around, then realized that she was on the path. Though it had become overgrown over the passage of years, the rudiments of the path remained, and she found that she could trace its direction even in the darkness. The beacon was still up ahead of her, but she no longer needed it. Now she was on the path. It would take her home.

Home, she thought. My own warped mind poisoned this place.

Something moved in the shadows a few feet in front of her, and she felt her heart skip. She paused, standing there like someone at the scene of a twisted and gruesome accident, her eyes hungry to focus on the thing before her, to draw it out into the moonlight.

She found herself whispering, “Simon…”

Two eyes locked with hers; they were the first things she saw. They were blue and piercing, deflecting the moon glow like polished ice. Yet they were low, close to the ground…

“Come out.” She wanted to sound forceful but her voice cracked.

The eyes moved and Kelly followed them in the shadows. Briefly, they vanished in the darkness, only to reappear several inches closer. Its body was still hidden in darkness, yet she could sense the enormity of it moving and shifting around her. Like an embrace, its warm, fetid breath accosted her, wrapped around her. Intelligent eyes…yet not the eyes of a human being. Nor the eyes of anything trying to mimic a human being.

“Come out,” she repeated, her voice a bit sterner.

The eyes passed before a bar of moonlight across the path. A silver-gray pelt covered its face, the muscular slope of its back. It was a dog. It was the dog, the injured one from all those years ago. And was what she was seeing even real, or was this some ghost, some memory-induced phantom brought to life by preternatural means?

The beast cocked its head to one side, its eyes thoughtful and frighteningly knowledgeable. Its injured front paw was tucked beneath the billowing fur at its chest. As if trying to communicate, the animal began emitting a high-pitched whine that reminded Kelly of squeaking hinges.

Unable to move, she could only watch the animal as it, in turn, watched her. It was real enough. And she knew that if she reached out to touch it her fingers would be greeted by sleet-dampened fur. Was this another trick?

“Get lost,” she yelled at it. “Go on—you’re not real. Get going.”

The dog swung its head around to the side and hobbled off the side of the path. It disappeared into the darkness of the forest. For several moments after it became invisible, Kelly could still hear it slowly impel itself through the confusing thicket of the forest. She stood there, deep within her own silence, until the labored, stumbling sounds of the dog stopped. And a moment after that, she was already questioning the validity of its appearance.

Ahead, the red beacon seemed to intensify. Yes, there was no doubt about it—she was anticipated, expected and long overdue.

If you think I’m afraid, she thought, then you’re sadly mistaken.

She jumped, a piercing laugh ringing through the center of her brain. Before her, the world began to shift and challenge reality.

—You have no idea, a sharp voice barked inside her mind.

Driven, she pushed forward along the path. Further down, trees leaned in her way, their branches touching from either side of the path. Heedless, she pushed through them, feeling them prick and scrape her face, the back of her neck. A sharpness jabbed at her forehead and she felt a warm slick of blood dribble down her face.

—How much can you handle, Kellerella? How much do you really think you can deal with? Because not all of this is just in your head. Not all of what you’re about to see is make-believe. Not everything here is part of Never. Some of it is very, very real. So how much can you take?

“Fuck you,” she breathed, pushing on.

—It’s been a long time. You’ve changed. You’re not the same little girl you once were. But you want to know something? I’m not the same thing I used to be, either. Like you, I’ve changed.

“I’m not afraid.” But her voice shook. She found she could not think of anything—dared not, for fear that her newfound well of childhood memories might come to life and bring about her own downfall. “I’m not the one hiding. Why don’t you come out and face me if you’re so powerful? Why don’t you show yourself to me right now?”

—A proper reunion. Don’t spoil it for me. I’ve been waiting so long to do this right.

And despite her words, she sensed no fear in its voice, unlike her own.

—You can’t lie to me, can’t trick me, Kellerella. I’m you and you’re me. We’re the same. We share the same mind. I am your mind. You can’t lie to me, stupid girl. You can’t trick me.

Eyes pressed closed, she shook the voice from her head. From behind her eyelids, she could still see the throbbing red light, beckoning her. Almost teasingly. Opening her eyes, she pushed on through the path. Or what was left of the path: this deep, it had become overgrown with forestry and impeded her passage. To her right, she could hear the soft gurgle of the brook, apparently unfrozen despite the cold. She thought of it flowing with blood and felt a mist of shivers rise through her spine.

Close enough now, she could actually feel the heat from the red beacon at her face. She crossed over a deadfall, heard something small and quick scamper off into the shadows, and footed up the small incline slick with ice. Her breath whistled through her tightening throat. Grappling with weeds for a handhold, she pulled herself up and over the incline, and half-slid down the other side, her fingers frozen and numb.

Though still veiled by the arms of many trees, she could now partially make out the house. Its puerile silhouette sat before the black density of the forest behind it, the pulsing red light issuing through the open doorway. She stood and stared at it without moving, almost without breathing. She’d known it would be here…yet found that she was unprepared for it. Dark and ill-defined, it was still possible to convince herself of its unreality, of its nonexistence, of its falsity.

—Welcome home, Simon whispered. And he was hardly alone: she could make out the indistinct jumble of a chorus of voices, all speaking cluttered nonsense in unison. How strong had Simon really become?

She recalled Simon’s words: Not all of what you’re about to see is make-believe. Not everything here is part of Never. Some of it is very, very real. So how much can you take?

She took a step closer and her foot come down on something thick and wet.

It was a body. She knew this before actually looking down and seeing it. Quickly pulling her foot away, she stumbled backward and slammed against a tree, her eyes straining in the darkness to make out the shape on the ground, already visualizing the worst. A shaft of moonlight broke through the treetops and illuminated the irrefutable swell of a human body. It lay slumped and broken on the ground, its limbs indecipherable from the vegetation that surrounded it. Yet, she knew it was a person—could almost make out the shape of a boot protruding from the thicket…could almost see a pale-white hand, dense with frost, curling up out of the ground like a leaf…

“No,” she managed, and sought out that special part of her brain that controlled such hallucinations. She pressed against that part, intent on demolishing this mirage as she had done with the phantom pains of urination, the receding earth and the injured dog. Yet she found only a hollow void in her head—a coldness that could only mean that her mind was not engaged with this mirage, that Simon hadn’t penetrated her, was not siphoning her powers…

Which meant the body was real.

She side-stepped around it, not taking her eyes from it. From this new angle, she caught a glimpse of its face. It was a man. Eyes wide and frozen to crystals, mouth agape, lips frozen in unending agony, she found herself again thinking about the animal heads that had decorated her father’s thinking room. And this strange man…this dead human being lying here in the woods, here at her feet, wrapped in a checkered hunting jacket and—

—It’s not all make-believe, Kellerella.

“No!” The word exploded from her throat like a rocket, shattering in the air. She knew what this was, knew what this dead man represented, and in a fit of tremors, Kelly pushed herself back along the embankment and surveyed the rest of the clearing.

A second lifeless hump was strewn on the ground a few yards ahead of the first one. Again, she could make out the features of its face in the moonlight. Another man. Wearing a flannel hunting jacket and cap. Over his jacket he wore an orange hunting vest. However, this time she could clearly make out the cause of death: the hunter’s orange vest, flannel jacket and, subsequently, his chest and ribcage had been torn down the middle. Dead for some time now, the hunter’s blood had coagulated and gelled. His skin had turned a gray-blue color. A nest of insects had infested his guts; they squirmed in the gore, each maggot as thick as a human finger.

Missing hunters, she thought. There was a third. And there was: several yards beyond the second corpse, closer to the crest of the house and half-buried beneath a plume of bushes. Dead. Dead.

—Do you like what you see? I’ve recreated it all for you, Kellerella. I’ve made Never real for you once again. For both of us. I’ve never stopped thinking about you.

Petrified, she found she could only shake her head. “Why?” she managed, her throat small and clogged with fear.

—Because I need you. Just like you need me. There’s no escaping the truth, Kelly. We’re both the same person. The difference is, you’ve worked long and hard to forget about me. But I haven’t forgotten about you. Can’t you see that now? Can’t you see all I’ve done?

“Killed people,” she said. “You—you killed…people…”

—I wanted everything just as it had been back then. Only better. We’re both stronger now, don’t you see? You just have to learn to go with what you feel, to use your power…

“What else have you done?”

—It only gets better. I promise.

“Come out,” she said. “Show yourself.”

—Why? Are you afraid to come inside the house? Are you afraid to see what’s next? You know, don’t you? I’ve knocked it all up a notch just for you. So come inside our little home. It’s your house, really. You built it.

Three dead men leading the way to the gingerbread house. Knocked it all up a notch, she thought, and remembered the dead squirrel that had been hanging from vines just inside the doorway of the house when she’d followed Simon inside all those years ago. The squirrel, dangling with its belly split open and its bowels hanging out. Knocked it all up a notch just for you.

The image of Becky, prone and helpless in bed and covered in bruises, roused Kelly and forced her to take another step toward the house. The red light was hot on her skin now, and she could see that most of the snow and ice had melted away from the front of the house. Becky—that was what drove her.

“I should have never left her here for you,” she growled. “And I should have never left you here for her.”

—She has the same power, Simon said, but she’s nowhere as strong as you.

“You hurt her. You used her to bring me back here.”

She crested the embankment and hopped down the other side. Now, the house loomed before her, much larger than she ever remembered. It seemed as wide as a school bus, with windows that scaled up past the treetops. Its facade was black as tar, no longer made of sweets, but of stone and wood and moss and rot and blood and bone. Staring at it, she felt something deep inside her give way, like an elevator dropping several floors. She braced herself for the crash, but none came. Not from inside her, anyway; the outside world had crashed, though. Everything around her screamed in agony. The brook ran thick with blood, she knew at that moment. For some reason, that notion left her with little hope.

The front door was open, that burning red light flooding out of it, pulsing like a heartbeat. Something dark and immense was suspended in that light: from her new proximity, she could see that now. Something large and indefinite, hanging inside the doorway, slowly swinging back and forth. Again, her mind returned to the gutted, decapitated squirrel. And to the three dead men out here with her.

“She’s unconscious because of you. What did you do to her, Simon?”

—Now we use the name…

“What did you do?”

—I did nothing. You did it. Can’t you see that yet? Don’t you understand any of this? I would never have existed if it hadn’t been for you, Kelly, and for your mind.

“So what do you want now?”

—More, he said. What else?

“More what?”

—More life. More power. I want what you already have. I want what you have and are too afraid to use. I want, Kelly, what I wanted all those years ago, and what you refused to give me. I want to live.

“Sacrifice myself…”

—No. Join together. Make us one.

“That’s what you tried to do with Becky. Only it didn’t work. Did she fight you at the end? Did she reject you?”

—Don’t give the girl so much credit. She wasn’t strong enough. I wanted you. I’ve always wanted you.

“Show yourself now.”

—Lonely growing up here, wasn’t it? Do you think it was any different for your sister?

“Come out. I’m calling you out!”

—Lonely children are such easy targets. Such fascinating imaginations.

“Out!” she screamed—then felt a surge of electricity slam through her body, scooping her feet out from under her and sending her crashing to the ground. In pain and gasping for breath, Kelly rolled over to one side, her face pressed into the freezing snow.

—I miss our games, Kelly, Simon said, his voice now like a sonic boom in the center of Kelly’s head. I miss all our good times. Again, she was aware of a million voices at once, each struggling for supremacy. Now come inside the house.

She sprung to her feet, her hands shaking, the blood from the gash in her forehead now stinging her eyes, and she began moving toward the house. Closing in, she could feel that pulsing light searing her flesh. The heart of Never.

All in my head, she promised herself. It can’t hurt me if I don’t let it.

But the pendulous shape in the doorway was not part of her imagination.

—Come inside…

“I’m not afraid of you!” she shouted, standing directly before the burning front door. Her hands were balled into fists; her face was flushed, her teeth clenched together. “I made you and I can destroy you! You’re not real!”

—Too late, chuckled Simon. Now I’m as real as you.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Carlos splashed cold water on his face then paused to stare at himself in Nellie’s bathroom mirror.

He thought, With all man’s ability to study and learn and hypothesize answers to our world’s greater mysteries, how is it that we all feel so small? The question of God is not really a question of God; rather, it is a question of how much we’re afraid of and how much we cannot understand for ourselves, despite our test tubes and charts and graphs and awards we present ourselves—all that tells us we understand things that we really do not. We say “theorize” and “solution” and “predict” and think we are intelligent. We read Whitman and Hemingway and Darwin and Einstein and Shakespeare and think we are enlightened. We establish a foothold in the bustle of society and feel we have somehow, by some personal achievement or device, attained a certain piece of land for ourselves, a certain societal slip in which to dock. Yet when faced with the severity of the incomprehensible—the impossible and the terrifying—then why is all rationale lost to us? Is the human race that doomed? Or perhaps in blindness we find comfort, or that nothing behind our faces is of any importance until it attacks us? Have we gotten so arrogant that we no longer want to be protected and informed by our own brains, our own minds? As if they are separate from us—the enemy? In the end, have we shut ourselves off to our own instincts because people as a whole are terrified of the idea that something had to instill those instincts in us, and that we ourselves are truly powerless?

The bathroom door opened a crack and Josh poked his head in. “Am I bothering you?”

Carlos shook his head.

“Sorry. Thought you might have fallen in.”

“You would have heard a splash. How’s your hand?”

Josh shrugged and held up his bandaged right hand. “Flesh wound. I’ll survive.”

“Should have had me look at that before you mummified it.”

“No biggie,” he said. “You can check out the cuts on my feet if you feel bored later.”

Carlos offered Josh a tired smile and dried his face with a towel. “You get those windows papered up?”

“As best I can. I did a double-layer job in Nellie’s bedroom.”

“How is she?”

“Fading in and out. Stepping into that room is like stepping into a microwave oven on high. She’s not really all there, I don’t think. Her mind, I mean. She’s out of herself, searching for Kelly, trying to reach her.”

Carlos dropped the towel and glanced back up at his reflection in the mirror. For the first time in his life he thought he looked like his father. Having left Carlos and his family when Carlos was just a baby, his only memories of his father were from photographs, or quick snapshot-like blurs that occasionally danced through his dreams. The notion of “father” was almost like a religion to him—reverent but fearfully so. Fleeting. And the irony wasn’t lost to him: that he suddenly resembled his own father—or the notion of “father”—now that he was preparing to become one himself. Grinning, exhausted, he wondered if anyone had a textbook explanation for such things.

“This Kelly girl,” Carlos said. “What’s so special about her?”

“It’s the power,” Josh said. “The same as Nellie. She has some gift and now she’s in some sort of trouble. I don’t know the details, Doc, and it just gets confusing. I’m getting this filtered in through Nellie, who’s been pulling it directly from Kelly’s mind. She doesn’t think Kelly even knows, understands—”

Carlos shook his head. “No,” he said. “What’s so special about her to you?”

“Oh.” The tone of Josh’s voice suddenly changed. “I don’t know.”

Carlos raised an eyebrow at Josh’s reflection. “You don’t?” he said.

Smiling, Josh said, “No, that’s not right. I do. I do know.” He pushed the door open a bit more and leaned against the frame, picking at his fingers. “She doesn’t know it, but she helped me overcome a pretty significant hurdle in my life. Like a million years ago we started working on some project together, and I really loved and believed in it…but mostly, I needed her to be there. Like I said, she didn’t know it, but she helped me overcome.”

“Shot,” Carlos said from nowhere, startling even himself. “You…you were almost killed…”

Surprisingly unimpressed, Josh only nodded.

Carlos shook his head. “How…how did I know that?”

Josh twirled a finger above his head. “In the air,” he said. “All that mental charge coming from Nellie. Filters through the entire apartment and lingers. Gets on us too—gets in our minds. What is it? Osmosis? Something…”

“To use her power,” Carlos said, “she has to disperse it all around her. And some of it we collect. We get a little bit of her power. Like dust settling after an explosion.”

Josh nodded. The look on his face was of tired disinterest. “You felt it in the room with your wife,” he said. “That’s when you went gonzo.”

“Do you think it stays with us?” The idea both frightened and enthralled him. “Forever, I mean?”

Josh shook his head. “No,” he said casually, “I think it passes right through us. We’re not the same as Nellie and Kelly.”

“Yeah,” said Carlos, “our names don’t rhyme.”

Grinning, Josh’s eyes dropped to his hands. “Your middle name Michael?”

“Nope.”

“Yeah,” said Josh, “it comes and goes.”

Michael’s my brother’s name, Carlos thought, but didn’t say a word. Maybe we’re all just a bunch of groping hands, frantically dipping into each other’s brains, grabbing hold of the meat, and seeing what it looks like once we yank it loose.

“There’s more to it, you know,” Josh said, though his voice now sounded very far away. Carlos was lost in the memories of his mind…on a bus with a diseased homeless man…

The doctor looked up, forced another grin. I think I’ve used my last smile for the night. “Yeah?” he said.

“To Kelly, I mean.”

“Oh.”

“Never thought about it much,” Josh said, “but I think…you know…” He shrugged, laughed. “How do you know, right?”

“About Kelly?”

“How do you know about anyone?”

“When it’s right,” Carlos said, “you just know.”

“Yeah,” Josh snickered, “I figured you’d say something useless like that.”

Carlos laughed. “Take it to heart, kid. Or throw it away. Do whatever the hell you want with it—”

The mirror above the sink began to rattle in its frame. The wall behind it puffed powdery smoke and the single light fixture in the ceiling started to dim. Carlos and Josh looked up at it in unison, a comparable expression of fear and bewilderment on both their faces. The rattling mirror shook harder. The wooden cabinets beneath the sink creaked and one of the doors split down the middle with a loud popping sound. They both jumped at the sound, Josh nearly spilling out into the hallway.

“There!” Josh cried, the tremors now making their way across the floorboards and vibrating his voice. “This is what it did when I paged you! This is what broke the windows!”

“This is coming from Nellie’s mind?”

“Yes!”

In the confusion, Carlos’s brain shook loose another thought: “Could it not be Nellie at all, Josh? Could it be your friend Kelly coming through?”

“I don’t know. What does it even matter? Let’s get the hell out of this bathroom before the walls come down on—”

That instant, they both heard something that sounded like an aluminum baseball bat slamming against the hood of a car, followed by a spray of pale green tiles from inside the shower stall. The tiles shot like boomerangs across the bathroom and shattered against the opposite wall. One of the tiles caught Carlos in the forehead, gouging him, and he howled and stumbled backward. Following the spray of tiles, a rusted water pipe was forced through the wall of the shower stall, jutting like a displaced rib, and sent an explosion of water shooting across the bathroom.

“God!” Josh shouted, arms up in front of his face. He leaned into the room and clutched the collar of Carlos’s shirt, gave him a steady jerk toward the bathroom door. The doctor’s legs seemed to come out from under him, sending his body crashing against the partially-opened bathroom door. “Come on! Move it or lose it, Doc!”

Carlos stumbled into the hallway and toppled to the floor. In his amazement, he felt a laugh tickle his throat. Laugh now and the world thinks I’m crazy! It was all he could do to keep it at bay.

Josh tore down the hall and flung open Nellie’s bedroom door. But didn’t go inside. Instead, he just remained standing there, staring into the bedroom, the greasy hair forced back off his face by a potent wind. His shirt and pants rippled in the wind. He looked like a skydiver.

“What?” Carlos shouted. “What is it?”

Josh didn’t answer. Once his wits were about him, Josh darted into the bedroom against the wind. Carlos hopped to his feet and took off for the bedroom. He hit the door and was greeted by a cyclone. Inside the bedroom, the plastic had been yanked from the window. Some force beyond nature had forced the outside wind to amplify itself and remain in a steady whirlwind at the center of Nellie’s bedroom. In it swirled dust and old balls of tissues and bits of plaster from the walls.

Josh was at Nellie’s bedside, shouting at her to calm it down, calm it down, goddamn it, Nellie, calm it down. But Nellie wouldn’t calm anything; the old woman was no longer with them. Josh was right, Carlos thought then: Nellie Worthridge was someplace else. Her mind was someplace else. All that was here in this room with them was her lifeless body.

Let’s not forget the tornado, Carlos thought wildly. Sweet Lord, if I make it through this sane, I’ll owe You a lot!

“Can you stand it?”

It took Carlos a moment to realize Josh was shouting at him. “What?”

“Being in here,” Josh yelled back. “Can you stand it?”

Surprisingly, he found that he could. Either the electromagnetic sensation had worn off considerably…or he’d just grown accustomed to it.

He gave Josh the thumbs-up. “I’m okay!” He rushed toward the window and tried to tape the plastic sheet back in place. “Is she out of it?”

“Gone!” Josh yelled.

“Is there any way you’ll know when she…when she finds your friend Kelly?”

“I have no idea, Doc,” Josh said. And after several moments, he could only repeat it: “I have no idea.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Kelly walked through the front door of the gingerbread house.

The enormous shape tangled in vines and hanging from the rafters was another body. She edged slowly around it, her eyes wide and reluctant to look away. A hand, fingers frozen with rigor mortis: a perpetual claw. Beneath the body on the floor was a pool of black blood. As she moved beyond it, she accidentally bumped up against it and cried out in fright. Set in motion, the hanging corpse slowly rotated until the strained and lifeless face of DeVonn Rotley turned to face her, the large man’s eyes ruptured from his skull, his mouth impossibly wide. She screamed again, her own voice echoing back at her, reverberating inside her head. And faintly, beyond that: Simon’s dry laughter.

She closed her eyes and forced herself to back away from the hanging corpse. Keep it together, Kelly, keep it together, girl. You’re stronger than this. You can beat this. You can overcome. And she could, she knew she could—she just had to regain control of her own mind…seek out that alien hand and break its grip…

Backing up, she slammed into something large and gangly and screamed again. Behind her, whatever she’d struck toppled to the floor with a sound very much like a tumble of pumpkins falling down a flight of stairs. And she didn’t need to see it to know this was another dead body, another of Simon’s victims—

—No, she heard Simon say from all around her, I can’t take all the credit. It was your brain, after all.

She shook her head, sobbing freely now. This isn’t happening. This can’t be real. Why can’t I wake up from this nightmare?

The corpse she’d sent in a heap to the floor reached out for her and grabbed her ankle. Too shocked to make a sound, she could only stand there as an icy tract of horror exploded up from her leg and dispelled through the whole of her body. She felt her heart falter in her chest. Throwing herself back and pulling her foot free, she sent herself sprawling to the hardwood floor, nearly face to face with the living corpse—

But it wasn’t alive at all. It hadn’t even grabbed her; she’d just stepped into its hand, and—

And she recognized the face. It was pale, almost bleached-looking, with cobweb hair and small, beady eyes…and then she saw the corpse’s neck: a wildflower sprouting the crooked and busted handles of two-dozen plastic forks, flowering with congealed blood and pasty sinew…a dark pit near the jugular, the carotid…

It was one of the detectives who’d questioned her awhile back at her parents’ house. As if she’d picked up the body’s lingering thought from the air, she was suddenly certain of it. The detective. Raintree, his name had been…

She pushed herself up from the floor…and noticed that the floors were neither earth and sod and grass, nor were they shoddy, termite-ridden planks laid one next to the other. No—this was a floor, an actual floor you’d find in someone’s house…

My parents’ house, she suddenly understood. This is the same floor in the front hall of my parents’ house.

“Are you coming?” Simon said from behind her, his voice now very real and very exact. Still on her hands and knees, Kelly spun around to catch a glimpse of the monster, but it was too dark. She could hardly make out his shape in front of her. Simon laughed at her persistence. “What a waste if you choose to sit around on the floor all evening…”

She pushed herself up. Her body protested, a barrage of aches and pains exploding in every joint.

“I remember it all,” she said, her voice faltering. “I know what’s next. It’s the dog again, isn’t it? Only this, too, you’ve improved on. Am I right? This is something bigger, just like all…all these innocent…”

“You have no idea,” Simon breathed…and she saw his shape begin to weave in and out of the darkness. She followed, her shoes clacking loudly against the floor—her parents’ floor. In the distance, she could see the dull, throbbing red light radiating up through the floorboards like a nuclear silo. And she could hear it now, too, and feel its beat reverberating throughout her body.

The heart of Never, she marveled. Oh my God, it’s real. I can feel it and it’s real.

She imagined the entire forest valley and hillside, including the Kellow Compound, as the camouflaged carapace of some supernatural basilisk now just moments away from exhuming itself from the earth and standing upright for the first time in ten thousand years. And not just the valley and hillside, but all of Spires itself—the schools and tiny houses, the village square and the confused jumble of diners on the outskirts near the highway. All of it. All part of some irrational, awakened beast…some monster that had existed here since forever.

And did I bring it all to life? She couldn’t help wonder.

As the red light grew stronger, Kelly was able to make out Simon’s grotesque, shuffling shape in the gloom. Over the passage of years, and in seeming defiance of Kelly’s struggle to heal, Simple Simon the imaginary boy was now a deformed, troll-like adult. His body suggested a human being in only the most rudimentary ways: two arms, two legs, a head. The knots of his elbow and knee joints had grown to obscene excess, and instilled on him significant lameness. He walked like an elderly woman…although something deep down inside Kelly told her that she was not being permitted to see all there was, and that this creature was only appearing to her this way because he chose to.

She stalled and Simon urged her on, pausing slightly and waving his right hand in a beckoning gesture. She caught a glimpse of the hand in the red light: it was more a web than a hand, the fingers practically twisted and fused together.

Don’t think about it. Don’t think about anything.

As had happened so many years ago, her legs now seemed to be propelled by some extraneous force, urging her along the dark room like a dummy being controlled by a puppeteer. Beneath her feet she could hear the floorboards creak and pop—but not from her footsteps: the heart was slowly pushing up through the floor, starving for exposure and freedom, splintering the manicured floorboards down the middle like balsa wood. Each beat, elucidated by a tremendous throb of red, burning light, caused her entire body to shake, right down to the center of her bones. It was alive, she knew: the house, the forest, the hillside, Spires. And Simon. Somehow, despite everything he’d done, that rhythmic cadence beneath the floor solidified Simple Simon’s existence more than anything.

A shape lay slumped against the far wall, in the exact same spot the injured dog had been bound to so many years back. But this wasn’t the shape of a dog; like the rest, this was the shape of a person. Details were impossible to perceive in the blackness of the room, but of its form she had no doubt. A person, another dead person…

His head turning slightly over his finlike shoulder, Simon passed between the slumped figure and the light, his eyes aglow with a preternatural omnipotence. He watched Kelly with a frightening sense of hunger, of mastery, waiting for her own expression to falter and change—waiting for her to reach that final plateau and look up, only to realize there was no place left to go, and that the body slouched against the wall—wrists tied, hands dangling from pegs, legs spread akimbo—was her precious Gabriel Farmer, now as dead and as pale as the creature she’d created from her imagination.

And she saw this. And she felt the world turn to ice, felt it crystallize all around her, threatening to fracture and break apart on itself immediately afterward. Gabriel. The name no longer made sense, as if the abrupt comprehension of his demise somehow rendered those three syllables meaningless. Gabriel! Her mind screamed this with authority, yet the name’s uselessness did not falter. Gabriel! Gabriel! Gabriel!

“This was the one,” Simon muttered from the darkness, “that I enjoyed the most. This one. This one who dared come and interrupt, to come between anything we had; anything we still have.”

“No!” she sobbed. “No! We have nothing! Nothing! You killed—”

“I did what—”

“You fucking killed him!”

She ran to Gabriel in slow motion, her muscles working as if under water. As she drew closer, the obscenity of Gabriel’s form hit her—his face, crooked and broken; jaw shattered; eyes swollen shut, the lids a dark purple. Crying freely now, Kelly dropped to her knees just inches from the body. Wanting to touch him, too overwrought to know how, she oscillated between placing her hands on him, and pulling his lifeless body into her lap.

“God…”

Images flashed before her eyes: Gabriel as a child; Gabriel wearing his glasses while sketching pictures by the brook; Gabriel’s skinned knees poking through twin tears in his pants. These images whipped by with lifelike clarity, so deep inside her head that if she concentrated long enough she found she could actually go to them, become part of them and live there in the past inside her own head for the rest of her life.

I’m sorry, Gabriel.

It’s okay.

I’m so, so sorry.

Do what you have to do. Finish this.

“You can’t live inside that head of yours,” Simon said from behind her. She spun around and glared at him through the darkness, her hands trembling, her eyes fierce. “He was the best,” the monster continued, “because he truly cared for you. And it felt so good to end all that.” She could hear his skin crack as he grinned. “So good.”

“How can you expect me to give in to you now?” Despite her tremors, her voice was strong, defiant. “How can you expect me to follow you one goddamn step further into this hell?”

“Oh,” Simon whispered, “you will.”

The creature stepped aside, allowing the full heat of the red light to wash over Kelly’s body. Instantaneously, her flesh broke out in beads of sweat. The heat was potent enough to sting the serration at her forehead and feel the heat course through her lifeblood, though she was in a place beyond pain and did not notice.

“Beats,” Simon muttered, no longer looking at Kelly. He had stepped around the floor, allowing the pulsing red heart in the floor to beat between the two of them. “Beats the heart.”

One of the floorboards sprung up at a forty-five degree angle. She heard wood splinter and crack. A plume of dust exploded from beneath it, tinged red from the light beneath the floor. With a crunch, a second board wrenched free of the floor, crossing over with the first to make an X. A welt of steam billowed from the crevice, tinged red from the light. As if there were a busted steam pipe down there. For one wild instant, the vapor appeared to assemble and solidify in midair, creating a meshed veil between her and Simon. In that instant, only the ghost-boy’s eyes were visible through the shroud, alight with wicked desperation. Between them, the floor continued to split apart, to widen; floorboards like spears shot across the room, whizzing through the darkness and landing soundlessly in the black. With a sound like tearing cloth, Kelly could see jagged lightening bolt zigzags weave across the floor, spreading out like runnels of blood in every possible direction.

Around her, the walls began to shake. A cry caught in her throat. She pushed herself back against the wall, struck Gabriel’s lifeless body, and screamed into the confusion. Her eyes moved up and through the rising steam, which was now dispersing through the atmosphere like mist on a lake, and saw that Simon’s eyes were no longer there, staring at her. She couldn’t see him at all.

With a sound like crashing thunder, a number of floorboards exploded from the widening hole in the floor and shot into the air. Immediately, the red light blinded her and she brought her arms up before her face. The heat was oppressive and unparalleled. The stink of sulfur burned her sinuses.

Simon appeared at her side, his face so close now she could smell the acrid fumes of his breath, could make out every minute pock and nick and furrow in his fishlike flesh. His eyes were suspended in deep, black hollows in his skull, the skin around them purple and flaking. His lips were peeling and crusted with dried saliva; his teeth were like the heads of rusted spades.

“Beats,” he breathed over her. Repulsed, she recoiled, her body still wracked with sobs. “Disappointing. You were stronger when you were a child.”

She felt his presence float around her, shift, and move in front of her. Even with her eyes closed she could see him moving across the floor like a phantom, his pale and sickly skin meshing seamlessly with the evaporating steam all around them. She opened her eyes and saw him creep to the edge of the hole in the floor, stare down into the blinding red glow. The light did not affect him: he looked straight at it without wincing. It reflected in his eyes, gleamed in the moisture on his lips and on the surface of his teeth. She felt herself begin to slide across the floor. Her feet skidded against the flooring but did not stop her.

“Get out of my head!” she screamed.

“My head, too,” Simon muttered without facing her. He seemed entranced staring into that gaping maw at his feet. “It’s my head too.”

Kelly’s body shuddered and came to a stop beside Simon. The toes of her sneakers broke over the edge of the hole in the floor, and she felt a blast of heat and steam rush up and over her. Sweat ran down her temples, her neck. Her shirt clung wetly to her chest.

“Look down,” he told her. But he didn’t have to say anything; she’d already dropped her head to look.

She saw the surface of a massive, pumping organ—a heart—slick with membrane and embedded with a network of enormous veins and arteries, each twisted and tangled about one another. White pustules clung to its surface in patchy clusters, like wild mushrooms. At the top of the heart was a large, fleshy, muscular value that opened and closed like a mouth. It was from within this valve, this opening, the red light issued. With each closing of the valve, the light was cut off, though it was strong enough to radiate at half its potency through the walls of the organ; subsequently, each time the valve opened, the red light broke out and flooded the room amidst a billowing waft of steam. It was like an engine, Kelly thought—a living engine, thriving beneath the floor and buried deep within the ground…

The heart of Never, she thought.

“Do you know what the heart is?” Simon whispered beside her. She could hardly hear him now, her mind too focused on the steady pulsation in the pit just beyond her feet. “Do you know what the true heart of Never really is, Kellerella?”

It’s life, she thought. It’s the originator of this whole mess, the catalyst for all this insanity. It beats…

The valve suddenly seized, stretched, and folded back on itself like a sleeve. The intensity of the light seemed to grow. The steady rise in heat caused the splintered ends of the overhanging floorboards to blacken and curl. Tendrils of black smoke spiraled to the ceiling.

Kelly felt a thousand cold hands at her back. Again, she was consumed by the feeling that Simon was all around her—even a part of her—and that he was struggling to control her. She struggled harder to fight his control.

“In,” Simon said.

She could feel her feet sliding toward the mouth of the pit, the hair on her head now being blown back by the tremendous heat pouring from the heart. In her mind she forced herself to remain still, but Simon was too strong. There was truth to all he said: that over time, he’d become stronger while she’d grown weaker. And was there any way of refusing him now? Any way of beating him?

Heart, she thought. Heart.

“Do you know what the heart is?” he asked again. “Do you really understand it all?”

And for one outrageous instant, she thought she understood—that she almost grasped what the heart actually symbolized—but the notion was fleeting, and too quick for her to retain.

“In,” Simon repeated, his voice now infused with a million other voices, a million hands still at Kelly’s back. “Cross through the dream world, Kelly.”

And he shoved her.

The world spun in slow motion. Up and down repositioned perspectives. She saw bright, soundless flashes of memories whip through her mind like subliminal codes, each punctuating a certain moment of her descent. In the air—in the air—in the air—the world turning and turning and turning about her.

She felt a swarming heat overtake her, followed by the cushioned embrace of unconsciousness. Her last thoughts before falling into the black were of hopelessness.

“She seems calm now,” Josh said. He was sitting beside Nellie’s bed in a chair from the kitchen, bent over the side with his hands folded between his knees. “Is there something you can do for her? Something you can check?”

Carlos smoked outside the bedroom door. “Check?” he said. “What is there to check? She’s breathing…”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe she lost the grip on your friend. Maybe it was a false alarm.” But he didn’t believe it himself. The air was still alive with Nellie’s static charge; even breathing felt like swallowing oxygen diluted with battery acid. Perhaps the prior calamity had been the result of Nellie crossing over some mental fence, and now she was safely on the other side, safely nestled in this Kelly woman’s head. Or, he also thought, maybe Kelly had suddenly ceased to exist, leaving the old woman in a deep and harmless sleep.

Leaning his head back against the frame of the door, Carlos closed his eyes and tried to reach for the waves of current rippling in the air. It felt like daydreaming, nothing more, and the deeper he allowed himself to slide, the more potent the current seemed to become—as if his resignation enabled him to become an empty container ready to be filled. Daydreaming…yet with a certain momentum behind each thought. The air was a hallucinogen, capable of undefined manipulation.

He thought of his unborn son. Dreamlike and suspended, he tried to seek out truth in the airborne power. Fueled by the consumption of such power, his mind coalesced poorly defined notions and images into specifics, into unconscious reality. Where are you, Julian? he called. Is there any part of you out here that I can grab hold of? Is there any part of you lingering in all this power that can give me some sort of sign, some sort of reassurance?

“She’s moving,” Josh said, startling the doctor.

Carlos opened his eyes. His cigarette had burned down to the quick, nearly to his fingers. He wondered just how long he’d been meditating. “Waking up?”

Josh shook his head and stood from the chair. “No, I don’t think so. Just…moving.”

Slowly, as if influenced by some outside force, the old woman’s head moved side to side against her pillow. She did not look relaxed; rather, her eyes were squeezed shut and moisture had collected at the corners. The muscles in her jaw flexed. Her good hand quivered the slightest bit, the fingers twitching.

Josh looked nervous. “Do you think she’s gonna have another seizure?”

“I don’t know.”

Carlos moved toward the bed, reached for his medical bag. He produced an ophthalmoscope and bent down, placing his thumb against the old woman’s left eyelid and pulling it open.

He jerked his hand away. “Son of a bitch.”

Josh looked up. “What?”

“Eyes rolled back.”

“What does that mean?”

“Something with her brain,” Carlos said.

“You can’t—”

Both of Nellie’s eyes flipped open, her lips suddenly drawing together. A subdued look crossed her face.

“Jesus,” Carlos whispered. “Nellie? Nellie?”

“Can you hear us?” Josh chimed in.

The old woman just stared at the ceiling. She looked very peaceful.

Carlos went back to his medical bag. “Nellie, if you can hear me, what I’m going to do is—”

Nellie’s voice cut through him: “We’re in the heart.”

Both Carlos and Josh froze, staring at each other. It wasn’t Nellie’s voice; yet it was. Deeper. Resonating from someplace other than her body. No—she was merely using her body as a voice box, as a conduit. She was speaking from someplace else. Someplace distant.

“We’re in the heart.”

“The heart?” Carlos said.

“Did you find Kelly?” Josh said. “Did you find her? Is she all right? Is she there? Did you find her?”

“Heart,” Nellie muttered. Her eyelids began to flutter. Carlos reached his arms out for her…then retracted, suddenly aware of the intense flow of electricity radiating from Nellie’s body.

“Do something!” Josh shouted. “She’s fading!”

“Josh…”

“Goddamn it! Nellie, did you find her? Is she all right? Tell me! Don’t go until you tell me!”

Nellie’s eyes closed, her mouth went slack. Her hand ceased twitching and fell still.

“It’s building,” Carlos whispered, taking a step away from the bed. He could feel the air tightening again, becoming stronger all around him. His stomach groaned, caterwauled, threw punches. “Josh…”

Josh was not listening. He clung to Nellie’s bedside like a child reluctant to leave a place of comfort, his brows drawn together in panic and frustration. “Did you find her?” he shouted repeatedly. “Did you find her? Did you find her?”

“Josh,” he said again, now backing toward the bedroom door. “Damn it, Josh, listen to me.”

Josh shook his head. “Is she dead, Doc?”

“Just the opposite.” He brought a finger up, straight into the air. “Can you feel it? It’s building again.”

Behind Josh, the plastic taped to the bedroom window began to rustle, as if accosted by a harsh wind.

“Oh.” Josh said this almost matter-of-factly, and turned to move away from Nellie’s bedside.

“Come on,” Carlos urged, already feeling his stomach start to cramp. “Let’s get the hell out in the hallway before she blows our minds—”

The bedroom door slammed shut and they both jumped.

“Shit,” Josh said, his voice half-choked.

Carlos rushed to it, grabbed the knob, tried to open it. Stuck. He rubbed his hands down his pants then went for the knob again—only to pull his hands away, tweaked by a spark of blue light. Behind him, dresser drawers began to slam and split down the middle. He felt his stomach edge closer and closer to some invisible hillside. It’s like climbing the first drop of a roller coaster, he thought. Just waiting for the drop.

And he knew the drop could come at any second.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

She is aware of darkness and light; of alternating chemistries, both false and real, and the strain of multiple complexities against her skin, her body. There is a sensation of union here, an impression of spontaneous augmentation. Individuality becomes indistinct. She is aware of propulsion, of moving forward—pushed forward. The heat around her becomes physical and operates as cilia, orchestrating her progression in fluid undulations. She moves toward an ending, a beginning. And though she works at it, she finds there is no thinking here, no contemplation…and it occurs to her that she is in the middle of it all, of everything. Of herself. She is here and she is now. And not alone. That strain presses against her, holds her together, yet threatens to tear her apart at the same time. She feels the walls breathe. She feels another presence…and then another—a third—yet far off in the distance. Again, she tries to think, but finds only that her thinking is now a physical thing and she is powerless to understand anything in this black-and-white void. Her mind is a patterned maze extended before her through which she now falls. Her body feels like a thousand arms and fingers, each of them probing against individual darkness. This cavernous channel, dense with fluid heat, convulses to expel her and donate her body to another world. Yet…a familiar world. This is a passage, she understands. This is a portal, a conduit, a wormhole.

Inside the heart.

Then she was suddenly there in familiar darkness.

At first, she could hear only her breath coming in quick little gasps. As her eyes adjusted, she could make out shapesrancor of rotting citrus fruit. The smell of cloth, of wool, and old clothes collecting dust. Urine. Lilac, though faintly.—familiar shapes—all around her: a door; a bed; a hand-carved rocking chair clogged with stuffed toys; an open window; a figure beneath the bed sheets. Smells came next, almost cloying. Medicinal smells, coupled with the

The room came into focus all around her. It was Becky’s bedroom, she realized, and she now stood in the middle of it. To her left, the single window stood open, letting in cold air. It felt good against her skin. She realized she was covered in sweat and breathing heavy. And her mind—it was confused, muddled. As she stood there in darkness, she could feel it slowly unraveling itself, putting all the pieces back into their proper locations. Nothing felt quite right, quite real. Like she’d been superimposed against the backdrop of this room.

Heart, she thought, remembering it all at the same speed as her thoughts returned to her. This house is the heart of Never.
And that makes sense. And it did: the cold, lonely place where she grew up was what had cultivated her powers, pushed her toward progression, forced her mind to expand. It was this house, indirectly responsible for all she’d become and all she’d created. This house and those who occupied it. How come I couldn’t see that just a moment ago? How come I didn’t realize this is the true heart of Never, that solitude is the birthplace of both creation and madness?

She remembered Simon at the same moment she saw him move against the far wall, beside Becky’s bed.

“No!” she shouted, and the room appeared to waver in front of her eyes. Was the room even real? Was she really inside her parents’ home, or was this just another illusion? Another fabrication brought to life through the powers of her mind? “You don’t touch her.”

“And what is it to you?” Though he was solid and real in front of her, Simon’s voice came at her from numerous directions, pelting her like birds from the sky. “What does she mean to you?”

“She’s my sister.”

“And so what?” He shook his head, his face half-masked by shadows. The inconstant terrain of his face and scalp was almost visible. He was so close to Becky he could reach down and caress her face. “All those years,” he mumbled. “How often did you think about her while you were away?”

The words stung. She felt something well up inside her, but she promised herself she would keep it together. “That wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t think…couldn’t remember anything about this place, including her. But it wasn’t my fault.”

“Then whose fault?”

“I was blocked. I couldn’t remember. My mind closed off all the memories to this place and I never even thought to try and remember.”

“She remembered you.” Then he did reach out his hand as if to touch Becky. Only he didn’t caress her face; instead, he pinched her IV tube between two fingers.

“No!” Kelly shouted again and rushed at the creature. Around her, the room blurred. Colors peaked, sharpened, dispersed into granules. She lunged to grab him, blazing fury boiling just beneath the surface, but was tackled by a rocketing shock that ripped through her head. The force of it sent her to the floor, reeling in agony. She could feel the exact location on her brain where she’d been struck. Not pain—the brain felt no pain—but a frightening bulge.

Embolism, she thought. I die now.

But she didn’t die and the bulging sensation faded quickly. Sitting up on the floor, Kelly scrambled backward until she felt herself slam up against the wall. As if made of rubber, the wall seemed to bend slightly inward against her back.

“You can’t touch me,” he muttered. His eyes were trained on her, his form fading in and out of the darkness. “You can’t harm me, can’t do anything to me. Not now. Not anymore.”

She tried to stand but found herself impossibly weak. Her muscles had become water. A draining sensation flooded her head, the back of her neck, and down into her back. Power, she thought. It’s seeping out of me and he’s absorbing it. He’s taking it.

“What…” Even her voice dried up and died. She tried again: “I don’t want you to hurt her. Tell me what—”

“You know.” He said this with haughty informality.

“Tell me,” she insisted.

“You sister is useless to me,” he said. “I want to live. And that depends on you, Kellerella. The longer you’re gone, the more you forget, the less I become. Look at me.” And with that, he stepped forward into the panel of light that fell through the window. For the first time, Kelly really saw him, and her first impression was that he’d actually aged. His skin had gone the color of sour milk; his eyes, repellent and insect-like, bulged from his head like twin tumors in the middle of extraction; his chest and limbs simply hung, in a parody of human development; the prominent crisscross of ribs pushed his skin taut; a concentration of organs, vessels, and muscles pulsed and flexed too near the surface of his flesh.

She turned away, repulsed.

“You created this,” he said. “You’re the artist. You’re the mother.” She heard his awkward footfalls move around Becky’s bed. “The more you forget about me,” he repeated, “the less I become.”

“That has nothing to do with Becky.” That slipping, vacating sensation continued to work at her brain.

“She’s a bargaining chip,” he said quietly. “She’s an injured dog.”

“Tell me what you want.”

“What I want,” he said, “is for you to give in. I want that mind of yours, Kelly. The whole thing. I want to own it and not worry about you ever leaving or ever forgetting about me again. And for that, your sister gets to live out the rest of her life. Consider it a trade—your mind for your sister’s life.”

He forced an image to appear in her head then: a dark, hidden corner where Kelly sat, curled on the floor with her legs drawn to her chest, her eyes blank and sightless, her mind taken from her. Could she spend a lifetime like that? An eternity?

—This is the extent of the power I’ve taken from you so far, he spoke up in her head. Little by little, I keep taking more. I can’t kill you, but I can kill this little one in the bed here without a second thought…and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.

“You know that’s true,” he said aloud.

She turned to face him and saw that something had materialized in his hand. It was a plastic fork, she saw. Only one of the tines remained. Yet unlike the other forks, this one was exaggerated to three times the normal size, the remaining tine nearly as long as the blade of a knife. Tauntingly, Simon brought the fork up to Becky’s face. Kelly tried to summon a burst of energy to propel her body off the wall and at the creature, but she was powerless to do so. Like a vein, she was slowly being drained.

My life or my sister’s, she thought. There’s no other—

Something slammed inside her head, wracking her body, and causing her legs to shoot out in front of her. There was no pain—just the clear presence of something new flooding into her head, quickly spreading to cover her brain like a web. And with it came thoughts—

(dear you need to use me can you use me can you feel me I am here to help you I am here to help)

—and she felt her strength and control return to her and flood through her entire body like a shock from an electric cable. Again, her nose burned with citron. Her eyes stung and her head felt strangely full, as if filled with more thoughts and emotions and ideas than she was capable of supporting. This wasn’t Simon, she understood. This was something else, some other, and she could faintly recall the feeling of a third mind entwined with the community mind that was hers and the monster’s. A third mind—and she could suddenly feel her lungs stretch and breathe from far away…her ears and eyes hear and see from a place she did not occupy…her hands and fingers and flesh feel from a body that was not hers—

She pushed herself away from the wall and gathered her legs up under her. Like an unsteady sailboat in a raging storm, she waved on her own as the world swam back into focus for her.

Simon felt it, too. “What is that?” There was a tremor of fear in his voice. “In our head—” His words died in midair as his hand holding the fork to Becky’s face swung around and planted the utensil deep into his own chest. It entered his body with a wet crunch. Black ink sprayed his neck and hand, his chest, and across Becky’s bedclothes. In shock, he pulled his hand away, the fork still impaled in the center of his chest, the wound spurting ink-colored blood. He shuddered and brought his eyes up to meet Kelly. His pupils filled his eye sockets, black as hot tar, and equally as sightless.

—How…

“It’s my mind,” she breathed.

A thick rope of syrupy blood dripped from the wound and pattered on the floor. Some of it splashed Simon’s feet. The contrast of black on white looked almost premeditated, like the work of a skilled painter.

Another burst of energy washed through her and she felt herself reclaim some of her mind that Simon had wrapped his mental fingers around. She tugged it back to safety, frightened and amazed at this sudden resurgence of power.

It’s someone else, she thought. Someone else is inside me, helping me.

Her eyes fell on Becky’s lifeless form and Kelly knew it wasn’t her.

Nellie Worthridge bucked once, twice, three times. Carlos, close at her side, pulled away from her, terrified of touching her in such a state. In his mind, he couldn’t help replay the scene of him grabbing Nellie’s arm and pulling the woman from his wife…and the surge of power and thought that rose and crested in him as he did so.

“She found her,” Josh whispered. He looked in a daze, his eyes focused on Nellie’s pained face. “Nellie found her.”

“You can tell—”

“I can feel it. It’s in the air, all around us. I can almost see…”

Carlos too found he could almost see: it hung in his mind like a screen on a wall, projecting the flicker of blurred images eager to solidify themselves. A girl—a shape—a room—darkness—the beating of a giant, invisible heart…

“She’s with her now!” Josh shouted. Something popped behind him, and Carlos noticed a slender crack on the far wall begin working its way from the floor to the ceiling. It struggled at first, gaining momentum.

This place will come down around us, Carlos thought. How long can we keep this up?

Again, Nellie shuddered on the bed, her face twitching as if in pain. Watching her, Carlos became cognizant of his unimportance, or his complete and utter smallness. What could he really do? If this woman died right here in front of his eyes, what could he really do for her? And would he even want to touch her?

He watched the crack creep slowly up the wall. Soon, a second one appeared.

Kelly moved toward Becky’s bed. Simon watched her with the distrust and surprise of a wounded child. His image stuttered—blinked—once, twice, three times. The plastic fork still jutting from his chest, he’d backed himself as far back against the wall as he could manage. She could hear his breathing now; it came in wet, labored wheezes, like a flooded engine trying to turn over.

Behind her, Becky’s bedroom window slammed shut. The pane cracked. Kelly did not notice.

“Get away from her,” she said. Her own voice had taken on a second layer, a mixed tonality, as if she were speaking with two voices at once. With her mind, she slammed Simon’s head against the wall. It hit with a sick thud. The wound at his chest had spread and darkened, the flesh peeling back in curls of carbon-like cloth being burned in a fire. An arrangement of nerves in his upper chest and neck bulged out as if inflated with air, pulsed, expanded, retracted.

Becky jerked beneath the bed sheets. Kelly caught the movement from the corner of her eye and turned to face the girl. In her mind, she barely caught a fleeting thought—

(kellykellyhelpmekelly)

—like a passing wave. She closed the distance between them and hung over Becky’s subtle form like a guardian angel.

Becky…

A wet, wrenching sound made Kelly look up. She saw Simon yank the fork from his chest and stumble backward like someone starving for oxygen. The chest-wound was a blind eye. Again, the bundle of nerves pushed his skin taut, pronouncing the tiny mushroom-shaped nodules just below the surface. He howled.

That’s pain! Kelly’s mind screamed at him. You want to be real? How do you like it?

Simon’s face collapsed in a twist of rage and he swung the pronged fork in an arc toward the bed. Had he been closer, he would have driven the fork straight into Becky; however, the force of Kelly’s mental shove had sent him back against the wall, leaving him out of reach. Instead, the fork slammed into the IV bag that hung beside Becky’s bed, tearing it from the stand and pinning it to the wall. The rubber bag exploded in a gush of clear fluid that splashed in every direction. Again, Becky’s body stirred beneath the bed sheets.

“Out!” Kelly screamed. “Out of my fucking head! Out! Out!”

She dove across the bed, hands hooked into claws and scrambling for the creature, her mind a blotted Rorschach of alien passions and thoughts filtering in from all around her. She struck the floor on the other side of the bed hard but barely felt it, still clawing at the flickering image of the ghost-boy. She leaped to strike, but only hit the wall as Simon’s form disintegrated before her eyes. Like a nuclear charge, she felt his presence pass through her body and exit out the other side.

Spinning around, she saw him coalesce at the foot of Becky’s bed, his injury widening, his skin now flecked with ruptured vessels and protruding bone. Black blood appeared at the creases of his mouth, his forehead, around his eyes. He gnashed his teeth with a sound like crushing gravel. His head, crooked and misshapen, bulged. Kelly felt a tremor in her own head, could feel her own veins throbbing at her temples. Simon’s grip on her brain was strong, his fingers wedged deep and seemingly immune to extraction.

“You’ll never touch me,” he said, his voice ragged and abrasive, cluttered with a mix of emotion neither he nor Kelly ever knew he possessed. In agony, he moaned and brought both his hands up to the gaping crater in his chest. This skin on his hands was pulled like wet bands across his bones; even from such a distance in the dark, Kelly could make out the jagged and tumor-ridden crags of his fingers, his entire hands, and the wasted bands of muscle in his arms.

“I’ve already touched you,” she told him. “I’m doing it right now. You’re dying.”

“You could never kill me.” His voice was breathy and struggling. “You’re not strong enough to kill me. You never were. The best you could do was block me out and forget about me.”

No, she thought, not anymore. That foreign power was still with her, still burning at the back of her head, committed to Kelly’s survival. Who are you and where did you come from? She didn’t know; all she did know was that the upsurge of alien power was saving her life, and slowly eating away at the monster before her. By herself she would have been ineffective against her own creation, weakened by the allocation of a single brain and mind. The manifestation of this other power—this foreign possession from nowhere—was all that was driving her now. And she feared what might happen if she lost it.

“You’re only so strong,” Simon said, the tone of his voice suddenly very much like her father’s. She felt him pull again inside her head with enough force to wrench her neck, and she broke out into a fresh sob, pain shooting down her spine.

I’m fighting you, her mind moaned. I don’t know how I’m doing it, but I am.

She closed her eyes. In her mind, her body was nonexistent.

Pull.

All she could hear was the beating of a heart. It came from everywhere.

Nellie’s nose began bleeding. A minute after that, a white froth pooled from her lips and dribbled down the side of her face. Now remarkably still, the old woman’s entire body hummed with electricity like a live cable. The stink of oranges hung pungent and moist in the air. The tips of her fingers were turning blue, and her ears had pushed back into the sides of her head.

She won’t survive much longer, Carlos thought, and there’s nothing I can do.

From the opposite side of the bed, Josh looked up at him with black-ringed eyes. He’d caught Carlos’s thought as it traveled through the air in the space between them, driven solely by the radiance of Nellie’s power. The room bustled with it.

“She’ll live,” Josh said. “They both will.”

“Josh…”

“No,” Josh said, shaking his head. Pulling a tissue from his pocket, he bent over Nellie to wipe some of the spittle from her mouth, but recoiled as soon as he came within inches of her. “Jesus!”

“It hurt?”

“She’s charged. You wouldn’t believe—”

Nellie’s eyes flipped open. Her mouth worked at nothing; no sounds came. Her pupils the size of pinpoints, the sclera a milky yellow, she stared blankly at the ceiling. The muscles in her face contracted, relaxed, contracted again.

“Shit,” Carlos groaned. The current in the air, all the while unfailing and resplendent, now hitched and seemed to bounce off Carlos’s body in heaving waves. There were patches of weakness: he could feel them like the relaxation of tension against both his body and his mind.

The old woman’s body hitched, as if shocked with current, then fell still. Her eyes appeared to glaze over as they stared at the ceiling. With disturbing quickness, the drone of her power drained from the room, leaving Carlos feeling empty and spent.

Josh felt it, too. “Christ, no.” He moved closer to the woman, now capable of doing so without discomfort, and shouted Nellie’s name inches from her face. “Doc…”

“I don’t know what…” Carlos also moved closer, gently took her wrist to check her pulse. As if bitten, he pulled his arm back. “Still strong,” he said.

“Still…” Josh’s words died in the air. He looked straight at the doctor then down at the old woman. And without pause, he reached down and grasped both Nellie’s hands with his own. He bucked, cried out in pain, his head thrown back and his eyes pressed shut, but he did not let go.

“Josh!” Carlos reached across the bed to grab him. His fingers grazed Josh’s arm and he tried to wrap them around it—

(thegunwatchthegunhehasagunandyou’regoingtodie!)

—his brain suddenly engulfed in a vision: spilled food and drink; tiled floors; a tortoise-shell mirror in the ceiling; a greasy-haired boy with a smoking handgun. Carlos shuddered and pulled away from Josh, his mind still buzzed and reeling. It was like touching fire: after removing his hand, it still burned.

Josh dropped to his knees beside the bed, his hands still clenched around Nellie’s. And like the jarring of a stalled vehicle springing to life, Carlos felt the air grow sharp with static again.

He’s charging the battery, letting Nellie use up his life, Carlos had time to think before a chunk of the ceiling nearly landed on his head.

For an instant, everything became hopeless. The power that had come from nowhere and had been so strong quickly began to drain. In its wake, Kelly could feel the void, the utter emptiness it left behind. She’d been hollowed. And on the heels of that, she was aware of Simon’s grasp around her own brain and felt her own power tighten and pull as her adversary took advantage of this sudden opportunity. She was at the center of some black vacancy, where life was rapidly diminishing from one end, and being taken from her from the other. Once it was over, there would be nothing left inside her. And the only image she found she could summon in those final moments was of her own catatonic, wasted form crouched in a dark corner, mindless and alive only to breathe, for the rest of existence.

At the foot of Becky’s bed, the creature’s chest strengthened and expanded. The wound ceased bleeding, the blackened curls of flesh refolding themselves. The throbbing of his heart against the meager clutch of his ribs intensified. His breathing steadied, became regular, became strong. Even his face reformed, his features perfectly defined now. Actual hair began to sprout at the back of his head.

His walk steady, he moved to the head of Becky’s bed, his eyes cut into narrow slits. He shimmered briefly as his silhouette passed in front of the window. Taking pleasure in her suffering, he examined Kelly with mild curiosity.

“Now you know what it’s like to be a figment of someone’s imagination,” he mused.

A bolt of pain rushed up through her legs and ripped through her groin. She felt her bladder burst, felt a burning heat engulf her. Similarly, she was forced into the awareness of her entire body—felt every crevice of her being, every pore, every spasmodic muscle and throbbing nerve.

“You’re fading,” he said, his voice much stronger now. “Do you see how it is to fade? It’s worse than your pain.”

She gasped for breath but could not inhale. Could not remember. Her arms broke out in welts of burning pain, but the sensation was fleeting, as she quickly disremembered how to pinpoint such pain and transmit it to her brain. Frozen, her brain could process nothing, could do nothing. A second groundswell of pain wracked her groin, this time branching through her pelvis and into her abdomen, her chest, stretching into her shoulders and the small of her back. Yet again, the feeling did not last; it withered to a dim blur before she had time to catalogue it.

Turning from her, Simon moved closer to the bed and inspected Becky’s meager form. “I’ll take whatever’s left in her too,” he said more to himself than Kelly, and began peeling back the girl’s bed sheets.

Like a child shaken and beaten, Kelly opened her eyes and managed to pull her head up high enough to see Simon’s body, bent over Becky’s bed, his body regenerating with the rapidity of sped-up video footage. He was feeding off her mind, sucking the last of her power from her. And with it went everything else: her ability to dream, to think, to rationalize, to recollect, to perceive. At that moment, even the most mundane autonomic reflexes were lost to her, and she found she could not breathe, could not hear, could not force her heart to beat. Fear did not exist; she no longer understood the complexities of simple emotions.

And then it returned.

In a single numbing shudder, she felt her mind flood with energy and sensation, filling in every empty crack and fissure of her mind. It was different, somehow altered in a way, but she devoured it as if starving. Her mind replenished, she wasted no time pushing herself from the floor and righting her body against the wall. Other than her own thoughts, she was faintly aware of the clutter of more foreign ones, bizarre and almost irrational: a smoking handgun; a pack of cigarettes; the contemplation of suicide; an adroit wit; a cultivated sense of compassion. And although she possessed many of these qualities herself, she understood them to be the property of someone else—some stranger who’d somehow managed to slip into her mind and offer her a chance at survival.

And retaliation.

Simon reached down and yanked the IV tube from Becky’s arm. The girl stirred soundlessly in the bed. He appeared to smile—to grimace—to himself moments before looking up and seeing Kelly standing against the wall. A look of perplexed disquiet drew a crease down the center of his forehead. He looked as if he were about to speak, his lips trembling, but no sounds came out.

“I said don’t touch her,” Kelly said. She moved around the side of the bed, her eyes alternating between her sister and the monster that loomed above her. “What do you do now?” she taunted.

Simon slipped around the opposite side of the bed and began pacing slow circles around Kelly, like a lion examining a carcass. The gaping wound at his chest was now nothing more than scarred, raw-looking flesh. “You have no control over me,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do. If you don’t give in to me, you’ll spend—”

Fresh blood began seeping from the wound at his chest.

“You’ll spend the rest of your life fighting me off,” he continued, unabashed.

“No,” she said, “you’re wrong. I can’t touch you…but I don’t need to.”

The windowpane beside the bed popped as more cracks fractured the glass. Despite the stillness of the air, the curtains on either side of the window puffed out, their corners draping lazily overtop the bed. There was the rushing sound of metal—of the bolt sliding shut on the bedroom door—followed by a number of eerie breaks along the bedroom’s ceiling and walls. In the corner, Becky’s rocking chair broke into motion, its wooden runners creaking on the floor. Like a trapped animal, Simon glanced around and backed toward the rear of the room. His face toyed with a smile; his lower lip split down the middle and exuded a dribbling yellow discharge.

“What does it feel like to hurt?” she said, advancing. “What does it feel like to be real? You enjoy the pain?”

His eyes blazed. “I want it all,” he whispered.

The small lamp beside Becky’s bed flickered.

“All,” said Kelly, taking another step forward.

There was a pulling sound, like heavy cloth being torn down the middle, as the carpet buckled beneath their feet, rising in a series of mounds from the floor.

“All,” he repeated. She was close enough to breathe him in now: imaginary stink. “I want it all.”

“Then you get my memories,” she said, and stopped just in front of him. He looked ravenous, his eyes glowing like twin lamps, his grin splitting his face in half. “You get everything I have—my memories, my nightmares, my fears.” She grinned. “My illusions.”

There was a moment of perfect silence then. It filled the room like liquid, heavy and dense, soaking up all sounds, all movements, all stray thoughts. And then, in a single sweeping crash, the silence was obliterated.

A crash.

Simon turned at the sound, just in time to see Becky’s closet door swing open and crash against the wall. Through the exposed rectangle of darkness, a suffocating current of energy exploded, flooding the room. Two sets of arms, like black-blue tendrils of smoke, sprung out and grasped Simon’s arms, his head, around his chest, one of his legs. The suggestion of faces and the outline of bodies appeared within the closet, along with the strong, pungent odor of decay. Strands of seaweed hair whipped. Torn clothes…a bare shoulder, blue and knobby…the smoldering pupils of sightless eyes…

It was Mouse’s voice that filled her head: They died in here, Kelly. Those two girls came up here to love each other and they died. What do you think it would be like to die like that?

Simon attempted a groan, but his mouth was quickly stuffed with a clawing hand. He struggled, turned to pull himself away, but the girls’ hands clutched at him, their fingernails driving deep into his flesh. He hit the ground face-first, his bones rattling inside his skin, and clawed at the carpet. His eyes were blazing and alight, his enormous pupils darting wildly around the room. He met Kelly’s eyes just for a split second—

—hurtsafraid—

Fuck you.

—before the clawing hands defeated him, pressed his face against the rippling carpet, and dragged his squirming body into the closet with a tremendous jerk. The shadows of the closet surrounded him, engulfed him, and when he finally did scream, all Kelly could see of him were the silver pinpoints of his eyes.

The closet door slammed shut and Kelly collapsed to the floor.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Josh fell back against the wall, the sill of the window cracking smartly against the back of his head. His hands slipped away from Nellie’s, his fingers stiffened into fishhooks, the hairs on the back of his hands and lower part of his arms stood up like wire bristles. The bandage that he’d wrapped around his one wounded hand had burned and flaked off.

Timid and afraid, Carlos stepped around the side of Nellie’s bed and bent to one knee beside Josh’s body. The boy’s eyes were closed, his mouth slack. Carlos’s eyes traced down to Josh’s hands, noticed the spiky hairs on his arms. One hand had fallen into Josh’s lap, palm up. The flesh of his palm was scored with dark carbuncles, as if he’d grabbed a live electrical wire and hadn’t let go. Afraid to touch him, Carlos only bent his head to Josh’s face, listened for his breathing. It was faint but there.

“Josh.” Carlos touched his shoulder. Josh’s flesh was warm, burning up through his shirt, but not charged. He felt Josh’s pulse at his neck. It was steady. “Come around, Josh.”

Josh’s eyes fluttered. His lips pushed together, smacked against each other. His face was waxen and sick-looking, as if he were in the throes of a particularly virulent flu. In his lap, Josh’s hands moved, shifted, balled up on themselves. Carlos could hear the charred skin crackle.

“Kelly,” Josh breathed once then opened his eyes. Carlos could see confusion swimming in them as Josh slowly regained comprehension of his surroundings. He turned his head to face Carlos and winced in pain. He had to have one hell of a bump, Carlos thought.

“You all right?”

“I found her,” Josh said. His lips were dried and cracked. He looked as though he’d just spent a week walking through the Sahara. “I saw her, felt her…”

“I’m just glad you came back.”

“I don’t think she’s out yet.”

“Out where?”

“Out of the house.”

“Okay,” Carlos said. “Come on, sit up.”

Stiffly, Josh pushed himself up against the wall to a proper sitting position. He groaned, his body obviously wracked with pain. Situated, he brought his hands to his face, palms up. He stared at the ringlets of blackened skin.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, the pain clearly evident in his voice. “No masturbation for a while, huh?” He brought his eyes up to Nellie’s bed. From the floor, only the woman’s right hand was visible, hanging lifeless over the side of the bed. Josh suddenly tried to push himself off the wall, his body in sharp protest, his muscles popping audibly.

“Easy, Josh.”

“She’s not out of the house yet,” he said, his voice shaking. “She’s still in trouble. She has to get out of the house.” He staggered toward Nellie’s bed. “Nellie has—”

“Josh, she’s dead.”

“She—”

“She’s dead, Josh. Nellie’s dead.”

“Damn it.” He reached down and grabbed the old woman’s lifeless hands, held them tight inside his own. “Damn it, Nellie, come on—bring me back—”

“Josh.” Carlos moved behind him.

“She’s not.”

“Josh—”

He craned his head around to face the doctor. His eyes were blazing. “I’m telling you! She’s weak now, but still there. I can feel it in her.”

Carlos came up behind him. From over Josh’s shoulder he could make out the old woman’s face, skeletal and inert, the creases and lines of her face exaggerated in the darkness.

“Josh, listen to me, she’s—”

Josh grabbed him around the wrist, startling him. His grip was fierce and Carlos was helpless to pull away. And then he felt it—a subtle, lingering charge pulsing like undertow against the palm of Josh’s hand, rippling into his own hand, wrist, up his arm and toward his shoulder. The power was nowhere as intense as it had been with Nellie, but it was still there. He still pulsed with Nellie’s leftover power.

“Nellie’s hanging on,” Josh said. “She’s doing it for Kelly. We need to hang on too.”

Carlos didn’t know what to say. Stammered: “I…all right, okay…okay…”

Josh released Carlos’s wrist and delicately picked up Nellie’s hand again, turning away from the doctor. Rubbing his wrist, Carlos could see a red tincture to the skin where Josh had touched him, and a faint bloody thumbprint. The irritated area tingled. Like a thousand antennae prickling in awareness, the hairs along his arm stood at attention.

Beside him, Josh closed his eyes, his exhalations coming through his flared nostrils as if in meditation, his lips pressed tightly together. Not wanting to be in the way, Carlos stepped back around to the other side of the bed. He groped for his medical bag and held it against his chest.

She was dead at one point, Carlos thought. I’m certain of it. No one looks like that and still lives.

Josh’s head slipped slowly back. He stood there waving like a sunflower in a mild breeze.

Be careful, Carlos thought.

Josh’s body jerked and the stink of burning tires filled the room.

Around her: the soft din of a world about to crumble.

Kelly opened her eyes. Before her, Becky’s closet door remained closed…but she could now make out fine hairline fractures working up through the door toward the top of the frame. Likewise, the frame itself was now splintered and pockmarked. And above the door, the wall appeared to protrude slightly, to bulge, as if someone were pushing on it from the other side. Kelly began shuffling back on her hands and feet, unable to peel her eyes away from the closet door. The image of Simple Simon being dragged to his death by the two imaginary dead girls resonated in her head, like a chord strummed on an electric guitar. Something tickled her face, burned her eyes. She glanced up and saw that the ceiling too was riddled with cracks. Powdered plaster billowed out and floated to the floor, her face, her eyes.

Simon is dead, she thought, but this house is still alive. This house is the heart of Never.

Continuing to back away from the closet door, she could see more places in the walls beginning to bulge, as if infested by living things. The molding around the ceiling cracked and separated. Framed pictures against the walls began to rattle like steady applause. Beside her as she crawled, the windowpane—now a web of spreading cracks and fissures—began to clatter in its frame. The curtain rod above the window pushed from the wall and toppled to the floor, the sheer curtains flaring out and settling to the carpet.

Something was going to happen.

“Help me,” a small voice said from behind Kelly. Startled, she spun around, not knowing what to expect, and saw a moonglow shape half-propped against the wall at the head of Becky’s bed. The shimmer of pale skin and haunted eyes briefly glowed. “Help me.”

“Becky,” Kelly managed, although she wasn’t certain if she had spoken the words aloud or not.

Becky moved slightly toward the side of the bed, struggling to set herself onto the floor but too weak to complete the task.

Kelly rushed to her side, the walls of the room vibrating around her. “No,” she said to the girl, “don’t hurt yourself.”

“Kelly.” Becky paused and stared at her sister, her slight feet dangling like props over the side of the bed. Her nightgown was hitched up to her waist, exposing attenuated thighs peppered with bruises. Seeing her like this now, awake and alive, Kelly felt something flood throughout her body. It had nothing to do with power, hers nor anyone else’s, nor was it residual trauma, lingering about her body, her mind. No, this was something deeper—deeper than she could have ever imagined feelings could reach.

“How could I have forgotten?” she whispered to herself.

“Kelly,” Becky repeated.

Kelly snapped from her daze. “Are you all right? We need to get the hell out of here fast.”

The bedposts began vibrating, knocking against the wall and shaking all the way down to the floor. The mattress started to ripple in waves, from top to bottom, as if attempting to roll Becky off. Becky screamed and pushed herself forward off the bed. Kelly caught her in her arms, thankful the girl did not weigh much, and dragged her away from the bed. The mattress thumped against the frame, the posts trembling like tuning forks. Behind them, the windowpane exploded in a shower of glass shards. Becky screamed again and buried her head into Kelly’s chest.

“Come on!” Kelly shouted and dragged the girl toward the bedroom door. It was closed, and looked as if the frame was eating it, crushing it from the center and spreading to all four corners. Initially reluctant to touch the knob, Kelly finally reached out, grabbed it, yanked. The door came apart at the force of the pull: it splintered into a kaleidoscope of wooden shards and dust, the heavier pieces crashing to the floor, the lighter shreds blowing out in a plume of raining dust.

Kelly pushed her sister through the doorway and into the hall. Even out here the walls were bent and twisted like the corridor of a circus funhouse; oil paintings had been sucked flush against the walls; the floor appeared to be coming apart in sections, with individual floorboards snapping and cracking under some invisible weight. Candelabras flickered and buzzed down the length of the corridor. It was the whole house, Kelly knew. Simon was only a part of it. Over the years and with her mind, with her powers, she had managed to turn her childhood home into what she always feared it might really be: alive. It was the true heart of Never, the one vital organ responsible for keeping the terror alive.

Kelly tried not to look—tried only to make it down the stairwell and out the front door as quickly as possible. But Becky, terrified into submission, refused to move from her bedroom doorway.

“Come on!” Kelly shouted. “Becky!”

Frozen by fear, the girl could not respond. Her eyes seemed glued to the shambling, capering framework of the house coming down all around them.

“Becky, please, you have to come with me! I’m not going to leave you here again!”

She looped her arms around the girl’s waist and hoisted her into the air. As quickly as she could manage, Kelly hustled down the corridor toward the winding stairwell. Becky screamed again just as the wall of closed doors bulged, and the doors sprang open along the hallway, swatting at them as if they were insects, intent on knocking them down. One of them swung with such force that it tore from its hinges and shattered in a spray of wood against the opposite wall.

Peering over the stairwell, Kelly saw the risers themselves were beginning to break apart. Several of them sank in the middle, like grinning mouths. There was no way she’d be able to carry Becky down the stairs.

“Come on, Becky!” she urged.

Becky looked at her face, her eyes wide and terrified. “Is he gone?”

“Becky—”

“The Pie Man!” Becky screamed. “Simple Simon the Pie Man!”

“Yes! Yes, honey, he’s gone! He’s gone! Now come with me, okay? Please, Becky! Please come with me!”

Crying, Becky nodded and quickly followed Kelly as she began climbing down the stairs. At one point, it felt as though the entire staircase would give way, sending them both toppling to the marble floor below. But it held, and Kelly thundered down the steps as quickly and as carefully as she could manage, one hand squeezing Becky’s the entire time.

“Kelly!” Becky’s voice boomed just as a light fixture above Kelly’s head exploded in a display of sparking wires and a spurt of gray smoke.

They both hit the floor and started running down the hallway that communicated with the main foyer. Beneath their feet, the floor bubbled and ruptured. Geysers of plaster and sealant spewed from gaping sores along the floor. At the top of her lungs, Kelly began screaming: “Get out! Get out! Get out!” The echo of her voice slammed back at her face in the small confines of the corridor. The walls protested their escape, grew prong-like extensions and tried to grab at them.

Aside from the vibrating sway of the immense chandelier in the center of the ceiling, the commotion had not yet reached the foyer. The sweeping stairwell along the far wall only groaned under an unseen strain. A shuffle of footsteps came thundering from the upstairs hallway. Glancing over her shoulder as she ran, Kelly saw her parents standing in their nightclothes, peering down at her from the landing. Their faces were blank and colorless.

“Mom! Dad! Get out!” she cried up to them, but they didn’t move. Even the sight of Becky at her side did not appear to stimulate any emotion on their faces. “Get out!” she screamed again. “Get the hell out of the house!”

Beside her, Becky screamed and slammed her body against Kelly’s. The force of the tackle was nearly enough to knock her over. Stunned, Kelly spun around and saw Glenda standing in the broken light of the foyer. She was tying a housecoat about her waist with deliberate slowness, seemingly ignorant of all that was going on around her.

“Glenda,” Kelly breathed, “the house…you have to get out of the—”

“Becky,” Glenda said firmly. Her eyes did not even acknowledge Kelly. “Rebecca Kellow…”

“Glenda!” Kelly shouted. Above her head, the bulbs of the giant crystal chandelier began blinking on and off, on and off. “We need to get out of here!”

A coy smile on her face, Glenda finally met Kelly’s eyes. The intensity of her stare froze Kelly on the spot. There appeared to be a countless ream of emotions behind those eyes, calculating and contemplating…

“Kelly,” Glenda half-whispered, “what did you do?”

“What?” The world was starting to spin out of focus again.

“What did you come back here for? To bring such destruction, such havoc?”

Shaking her head, her heart thudding feverishly in her ears, Kelly could only mouth the word again: “What?”

“Did you kill him?” Glenda took a step closer to her, out from the shadows. Her feet moved in perfect parallel division. “Where is he? Is he dead?”

“Dead?” Faintly, she could feel Becky tugging against her arm. “Glenda—”

“What are you trying to do here, Kelly?” the old woman repeated, her voice rising. “What are you trying to do to me? Do you have any idea what it’s like to live your entire life here, to raise a child only to have her run away from you and never come back? Do you know what that feels like?”

The floor started to shake. A statue atop a marble pedestal near the front door was shaken to the floor. The beams in the ceiling creaked and groaned.

Glenda took another step closer. “And now you take him away from me too?”

“Kelly!” Becky shouted, seemingly from very far away. “Kelly, no!”

Kelly’s mind reeled. “Glenda, what is this?”

“Little Baby Roundabout,” Glenda half-sang. “Someone let the Baby out, Kelly.”

“She’s bad!” Becky screamed, her voice choked with tears. “Kelly, she’s bad! Kelly! Kelly!”

“How do you know about him?” Kelly whispered.

Glenda threw her hands up, her face suddenly red with fury, wetness glittering in her eyes. “Do you see what you leave me with? Nothing! You leave me with nothing! My own daughter—”

“I’m not your daughter.”

“You were more mine than theirs,” Glenda hissed. “You goddamn know it, Kelly!”

“I’m…” She faltered and turned to see her parents still standing on the landing, unmoving. In their silence, she could see a tear trace down her mother’s cheek. After all this time, like a shock from a light socket, she felt a strong urge to forgive her parents, and to almost comprehend where they were coming from. Because in a sense, this house—this thriving, beating heart—had kept the same hold over them as it had kept on her. Only she had power, had strength, had abilities. Her parents did not. Doomed, the house had sucked the life from them since the beginning. Since, she suddenly understood, before she was even born. The image of herself curled into a fetal position in some dark corner—the result had she given in to Simon—returned to her…and only now did she understand that that image was exactly who her parents had been for years. That without her power—and the power Becky undoubtedly carried inside her too—she would have grown cold and empty and beyond emotion just like her parents.

She glanced down at Becky, petrified against her, and back up at Glenda. “You knew about this all along,” she marveled. “You knew what lived in those woods—”

“You two aren’t the only ones who get lonely and afraid!” Glenda cried, tears spilling down her face. “I’ve been here for so long! Do you know what it’s like to have no children of your own? And when you raise the children of others, they just turn around and leave you. Kelly, I didn’t want them to put you away. I wanted you here with me. I tried to stop them.”

“You…you were taking care of Becky here at the house. After the accident, you…it was your idea to keep her home and not at the hospital, wasn’t it? You’ve been looking after her, been—” She shuddered at the thought, her heart breaking, but it needed to be asked. “You were keeping her unconscious, weren’t you? All along. That’s why her door was locked sometimes. You were giving her sedatives.”

“You don’t understand anything!” Glenda cried. Overhead the chandelier flickered. Bits of plaster were dropping from the ceiling now. “You’ve been away for too long and don’t understand anything!”

“Did you keep her this way so I’d come back?”

“Kelly—”

“What did you think would happen? Did you think I’d come home and everything would be like it was?”

“I knew that if you came home, that thing in the woods could make you stay,” Glenda breathed. “I knew there was a way.”

“No.” She shook her head, looped an arm around Becky’s shoulders. “There is no way.”

The weight of the chandelier became too much for the weakening ceiling, and it suddenly plunged several feet before its cables caught, preventing it from crushing them all. Becky screamed and pushed her face against Kelly’s body. Glenda didn’t even look up; her eyes were pushing against Kelly’s flesh, her face and her own eyes.

“If this house comes down,” the old woman said, “then it comes down with all of us in it. Like a family.” She took another step closer to Kelly. “I won’t let you leave. I’m not going to let the Baby out.”

From her housecoat, Glenda produced a carving knife. Kelly followed the blade, her mind unable to comprehend this sudden twist. She felt something nudge her at the back of her mind. It was like the resurgence of power from earlier, only ineffectually faint now. She almost caught a whiff of coffee and cologne and thought: Josh?

“Glenda,” she said, pushing Becky behind her with one hand, “stop it. Let us get to the door. We’re all going to die in here.”

“Then that is how it was meant to be.”

Holding the knife out in front of her, Glenda took a step closer to Kelly, backing her and her sister toward the wall. The floor shook and marble tiles like land mines exploded randomly along the floor.

“Jesus, Glenda, we’re all going to die!”

“Shhhhh! Close your eyes and rest your head, Sweet Babe.”

Behind Kelly, the wall erupted in a shower of plaster and wood. She felt her back pelted with debris and heard Becky shout in pain. A long piece of molding sliced through the air and slammed Glenda in the leg but the old woman did not even notice. Her eyes were blinded by fanatical rage and a mother’s deep abandonment. The knife wavered slightly in her hand.

“Then let Becky go,” Kelly said. “Then it will just be you and me, Glenda, just like when I was younger. All right? You and me.”

“No!” Becky sobbed. “Kelly, no!”

“Glenda!” she shouted. “Come on! You and me, Glenda. Let Becky run out. Let her leave.”

The old woman’s mouth worked, her small teeth biting over her lips. She flicked the knife in the direction of the front door just as a floor tile exploded a few feet behind her. “Yes,” she said, “like before.” She looked at Becky. “Go.”

Becky shook her head, gathering fistfuls of Kelly’s clothes.

“Get out!” Glenda shouted. A mess of blood vessels had erupted across her nose and forehead—dark purple spider-webs.

“Go, honey,” Kelly urged, trying to pull the girl off her clothes. “Becky—go and run. Run straight out of this town.”

“No!”

A sound like a giant elastic band snapping filled the house, and one of the electrical cables suspending the chandelier snapped free of the ceiling and whipped across the air like a scourge. The severed end, spitting electric current, struck the floor in a fireworks demonstration, and slid halfway across the tile, leaving behind a trail of brilliant sparks. The severed end struck a wall, which quickly burst into flames.

Now, Josh’s voice spoke up in her head. Run, Kelly. Now’s your chance.

She grabbed Becky by the wrist and took off for the front door. Beneath her feet, the floor bubbled and shifted and reached out to grab her ankles. Behind her, she could feel the immense and abrupt heat of the fire, could hear Glenda shouting at them in anguished, defeated sobs.

No one wants to be left alone, she thought as she ran.

Seconds before she hit the front door, it blew off its hinges and out into the night, as if scooped up and away by a passing tornado. The faint stink of citron stung her nose and a sneeze exploded from her face. Freezing air rushed into the room. She broke out into a fever sweat.

Hitting the porch, she urged Becky down the steps while fighting off her own hesitation. She could not shake the image of her parents on the landing, staring at her with bitter resolve. That wasn’t them. Just as Kelly had been robbed of parents, they’d been robbed of being parents. This house. This heart. Was this just another thing she was running away from? Was this something that would keep her awake at night, thinking again about the people she’d left behind? I tried, her father had told her that night in the basement. And I’m trying even now. They were both trapped under the spell of the house…

She turned to run back into the house, but was halted by gnashing teeth and a gleaming blade. It went fast—too fast—and her shoulder was suddenly ablaze with agonizing fire, so potent and indisputable that she could taste the presence of pain in her mouth like copper. Before her face, Glenda’s eyes gleamed. Her withered old hand came away wet with blood. The hilt of the knife, protruding like an obscenity from Kelly’s left shoulder, was also covered in blood. As was her shirt. The pain was beyond real. And Glenda’s hand came down again, grasped the handle of the knife, extracted it with painful lethargy. Fresh agony erupted from her shoulder, then it all fell numb. Again, the knife was raised—she could see it so clearly now, as if in slow motion—and just before it completed its arc, two figures emerged from behind Glenda. One grabbed her arm. The second wrapped an arm around her neck, another arm about the old woman’s waist. And at first, like in some wild nightmare, Kelly thought it was the two dead girls from the institution returning for one last curtain call. But no—she caught the eyes of her saviors and realized they were her parents.

She felt herself grow lightheaded and, as strange as it was, felt a tremendous laugh build up inside her and rush out of her mouth. She felt herself whirl around and stagger down the front steps. She moved quicker than her eyes could keep up with: it took a few moments for the scenery to shift with each new perspective. Far off, she could hear Becky screaming, could feel a hand at her back—two hands—and then the world began to get grainy before her eyes.

You have to keep with it, Kelly, she heard Josh say inside her head. Focus and stay awake and this will all turn out fine. I promise you. But you have to fight it off, all right? You have to be strong and fight off the darkness.

But she couldn’t fight it off…

Use me, the voice said. It wasn’t Josh’s voice. Someone else…

There was a strong sense of giving, of exchange, and she could do nothing but accept it in her state. Strength blossomed throughout her body, like the lights of a city slowly coming on after an extended blackout.

She stumbled down the front porch stairs, Becky at her side, and spilled out across the front lawn, her back soaking in the wetness of the snow. Her vision blurry, she looked back up toward the house. In the doorway, she could see Glenda had disappeared.

“No,” she managed. Crying, Becky tried to get her to remain down on the ground. Kelly shook her away and struggled to her feet. “No…I’ll be okay.”

“Where are you going?” Becky called after her. “Kelly!”

In a fugue, she headed back toward the house. She could feel the solidity of the ground beneath her feet and never felt more thankful for anything in her entire life. Out here was real, was solid reality.

The face of the house looked like a scream turning in on itself. The peaked roofs and spires had crumbled inward, smashing through the main roof and third floor ceiling. The windows sprayed glass as if in synchrony. The balconies on either side of the house crashed and folded up into sandwiched bits of concrete and cinder. The massive stone columns that held up the canopy above the front entranceway collapsed, sending the canopy crashing to the earth in a bloom of smoke and ruin.

Kelly stepped around the front of the house and moved to the nearest first floor window. All the windows at this level had gone a brilliant orange-yellow, the flames reflected out into the night. Kelly moved against one of these windows, felt it hot to the touch and backed away. Peering inside, she watched as the spiral staircase collapsed, engulfed in flames, and the lavish drapes and carpets caught fire. Spiraling tendrils of smoke twirled toward the ceiling. Flames licked at the massive framed oil paintings; many had already begun to melt. The canvas caught fire almost immediately, sending the painting ablaze.

On her knees at the center of the conflagration was Glenda, bound on either side by Kelly’s mother and father. Head bowed, Glenda’s compact frame shook as her parents held her respective arms. Her parents’ faces were emotionless, just as they’d always been…but no, not quite…

They’re happy, it suddenly occurred to her. They’re happy and they’re proud. For once.

And on the heels of that: Me too.

Chapter Thirty

Sheriff Alan Bannercon pulled his cruiser up the hillside drive of the Kellow Compound and slammed on his brakes. As he peered through the windshield of the car, he watched in awe as the mansion came crumbling down on itself, its core destroyed by a blazing inferno that lit the night sky. And though it had been his intention to question the Kellows in the disappearance of Felix Raintree, all thought of that quickly vanished from his mind.

He radioed the location to the station, then shoved the car door open and sprinted toward the house. As he ran, he nearly trampled a young girl into the ground, as his eyes were glued to the crumbling house.

“Jesus shit,” he blurted, and backpedaled.

The teenage girl sat sobbing into her hands on the snowy lawn. At his words, she looked up at him with wide, terrified eyes.

“You all right, kid? There anybody still in there?”

The girl shook her head. “He’s dead,” she muttered.

“Christ. Who?”

“Simple Simon,” she said.

“Simple Simon,” he repeated. “Who’s that?”

Looking away from him, she said, “The Pie Man.”

A figured emerged from the darkness and staggered over toward him. He stood, adjusting his belt, and hurried over to the figure after telling the young girl to stay put. The figure stumbled into the moonlight. It was a young woman with an injured shoulder. Blood ran down her shirt and covered her hands. When she approached him, he realized her eyes looked a lot older than her face. Looking at her sent a shiver down his back.

“Ma’am, you’re injured.”

“It’s all right.”

“Is there anyone left in the house?”

After a moment’s hesitation, the young woman started to laugh. And after a while, the laugh only grew in intensity, until tears streamed down her face and her chest hitched. It pained her wound to laugh, he could tell, but she didn’t seem to care.

“Ma’am,” he insisted, “ma’am—is there anyone in the house?”

“Sure,” she said finally. “Just some old ghosts.” And collapsed on the ground, sobbing.

Nellie dead, Josh folded the old woman’s hands atop her chest and took a step back to examine her. Behind him, Carlos stood with his arms at his sides, his mind like an empty tract of land.

“It’s done?” said the doctor.

Josh nodded. “She’s okay. It’s over.” He grinned, though Carlos couldn’t see him. “With any luck, Kelly will be coming home soon.”

Carlos spent some time staring at the corkscrew tendrils of hair at the back of Josh’s head. After a while he said, “I don’t suppose you’re even capable of telling me what it was like? Being there, inside her head, I mean. I don’t suppose there’s any way.”

“None at all,” Josh said, turning to face the doctor. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“How did you know to take her hands like that?”

“I don’t know,” Josh admitted. “I think maybe Nellie willed me to do it, just before she died.”

“Does your chest hurt?”

“Sorry?”

“You’ve been rubbing your chest for the past ten minutes. It hurts?”

“Oh.” A phantom smile played on Josh’s lips. “Old war wound.”

“Where you were shot,” Carlos said. He tried, but couldn’t see it anymore, couldn’t pick Josh’s thoughts and memories from the air. Nellie Worthridge was dead; her power had died with her.

“What will you do now?” Josh asked him.

Carlos shrugged. “Go home,” he said. “I feel like I can sleep a million years. Like that guy from the fairy tale.”

“No,” Josh said, “I meant now as in forever. What do we both do? Just forget this and move on?”

Carlos smiled, grabbed his medical bag from the night table beside Nellie’s bed. “You can try,” he said, “but good luck having any success.” He paused to take in one final glimpse of the old woman. He wondered how a mind as powerful as hers could be so useless in death. Yet who knew? Maybe it wasn’t. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish I could have saved her.”

“Wasn’t your choice,” Josh said. “I was there. I heard what she said to Kelly. She saved Kelly’s life. Whatever life was still inside her, she passed it along to Kelly. That’s when I knew she’d be all right.”

“That’s a fine thing,” Carlos said, making his way toward the door. He stood for a long while, looking at the old woman’s body. After a time, he said, “I should do something. I should make a phone call and not just leave her like that. I’m a doctor.”

“You’re a doctor who’s been through too goddamn much.”

“So have you.”

“Just go home. I’ll take care of it.”

“But I should make a call—”

“Doc, you were never even here.”

Carlos felt himself smile. “If you’d like, I can give you a ride to the police.”

Josh shook his head. “No. I think I’d like to sit here for a while with her. I’ll call the police in a little bit.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m good. You be careful going home.”

Carlos nodded once and stepped out into the hallway. He stepped over a busted picture frame. Josh called to him and he poked his head back into the room.

“Just curious if you felt anything more about your son tonight,” Josh said.

Carlos shook his head. “Afraid not.” Again, he turned to leave, his footfalls crunching on broken glass in the hallway. As he passed through the living room, a strong wind forced its way into the apartment through the broken windows, rattling the taped plastic bags like noisemakers at a New Year’s party. He spied the phonograph, the Ellington record, and noticed that the stink of citron had left the apartment as well.

All a part of the same divine creation, he thought. Some mysteries will never be answered.

And it occurred to him that that was the only true answer concerning God as well: that some mysteries simply remain unanswered, and sometimes that’s the best anyone can hope for.

I can accept that, he thought, and moved out of the building and into the snow.

In the moments before her husband arrived home, Marie Mendes awoke from a terrible nightmare, rolled over in bed to feel her husband’s absence, and mumbled lightly to herself in Spanish. Moving slowly, the weight of her belly a constant reminder, she rolled out of bed and tugged on her slippers. She was concerned about her husband’s poor sleeping habits. At first, she was willing to accept that it had to do with their pregnancy, and the trepidation he might feel in becoming a father for the first time. But this had gone on too long and she was beginning to worry that it might be something else, something more serious.

Downstairs, all the lights were out. Not wanting to wake up Carlos’s mother, she whispered her husband’s name throughout the rooms, flicking on lights as she walked by. Occasionally she’d caught him meditating in a darkened room. But all the rooms were empty tonight. Her husband was not here.

She stepped out to the back porch, half-expecting to find him puffing away on one of his cigarillos he didn’t know she knew about, but he wasn’t there, either. Upset, she paused against the porch door, unconsciously chewing on her fingernails. Had he gone out, this late and in such weather? Perhaps the hospital had called…

Shivering, she moved back down the hallway and began climbing the stairs to go back to bed. Halfway up the staircase, her mind on her husband, she felt the baby move inside her. She smiled. She brought one hand away from the railing and placed it on the swell of her belly. Yes, she could feel him in there…little Julian Mendes…

The baby thumped again and she laughed. In the darkness, she reached out for the railing and took another step before she gripped the banister. Her foot didn’t find the step. She jerked, her hand groping for the railing, but by that time she had started to tip backward and away from the banister. Her foot came down crookedly on the stair below the one she’d aimed for, twisting her ankle, and in one sweeping wave she felt her entire body go loose and give way. The momentum forced her backward, and she felt her heart rise in her throat, saw the stairwell, the wall, the ceiling alternate places, and felt the dagger-like sharpness of a step digging into the small of her back…her head, her shoulders. Her legs flailed and her left foot cracked against the wall. Bright, starry explosions danced in the darkness before her eyes. In her struggle, she managed to turn to one side, to twist her body and avoid further injury to her back and head. But she turned too far, and felt a pain worse than any pain she had ever known—deep and gripping, piercing a lifeline of nerves that ran straight through her body. Something thundered deep inside her.

She struck the floor with frightening numbness, the world growing bleached and gray all around her, and she was faintly aware of a sticky wetness about her body—running down her legs and soaking her thighs. She cried out but could only hear her own heartbeat in her ears. A second wave of pain struck, and she felt her entire body turn inside-out, felt that sinewy lifeline snap and recoil, curl up, shrivel.

Before passing out, she thought she heard herself scream.

Epilogue

Her jacket pulled tight against her frame, Kelly stood outside the Krohn Building in downtown Manhattan, a portfolio under one arm, a look of insufficiency on her face. For what seemed like an eternity, she watched the traffic skirt along the street, watched the bustle of pedestrians weave in and out of each other, until she made up her mind to either enter the damn building or leave. It wouldn’t be difficult to turn around and go home. She could get something to eat and not think about the Krohn Building or the project or the damn portfolio under her arm ever again.

Taking a deep breath, she crossed the street and entered the building.

Back at the apartment, Josh greeted her with a cold beer and an eager disposition.

“Well?” he said.

“Don’t pump me.”

“Hey, this is my thing too, remember? Anyway, I’m just excited.”

“Where’s Becky?”

“Here,” Becky called from the kitchen. Kelly entered, set her portfolio on the counter, and tugged her sister’s ponytail. The girl flashed a beaming smile and for the first time Kelly actually saw how beautiful she was. And everything that had happened—all of it—was gone for her, absent from her mind. The nights she and Josh had stayed up going over and over those strange and frightening events had been their therapy, their way of solidifying the events in their mind. As was the slow-healing wound at her shoulder. And as was the power she still carried in her body and mind. But Becky had none of that. Becky remembered nothing. Several times, Kelly had tried to reach the girl with her mind and stir her memory, to make some sort of contact with her via their shared abilities. But Becky had closed herself off.

“Cooking, huh?” Kelly said.

“Josh made me make dinner. Do you have any idea how lazy he is?”

“Not true,” he said. “Dinner just tastes better when someone else makes it.”

“Such a creep,” Kelly sneered.

“So come on,” he pushed. “You gonna make me do handstands or what? How’d it go? What’d they say?”

“Yeah,” Becky said.

“Well,” she said, “they turned down the series.”

“Shit,” said Becky.

Josh threw his hands up in the air. “Man, I really had a good feeling about those creeps too. Hell, what do they know, right? Their loss.”

Kelly sat down on the sofa and peeled her shoes off. “There is a bright side.”

Josh cocked an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“They were real impressed with Nellie’s segment. They want to release it as a stand-alone documentary.”

Josh broke up. “Are you serious? That’s fantastic!”

“It’s gonna be on TV, Kell?” Becky said, beaming.

“Cable,” she said.

Josh laughed and said, “Rich man’s television. Me like, me like. Really, Kell, that’s great news.”

“Great news for both of us,” she said, sharing a look with Josh. Neither of them had ever commented on the absurdity of Nellie Worthridge’s video footage reappearing soon after Kelly had returned to the city with her sister. There were too many strange things that had happened to linger on any one in particular.

Too many strange things.

On some random Tuesday, Kelly felt the presence of eyes at her back. Several times while on the street she turned, thinking she’d catch someone following her, but there was never anyone there. Shivering, she chalked it up to stress and didn’t think about it again until she was approached by her admirer an hour later while sitting by herself at a coffee shop. The stranger stepped up beside her table, his long shadow looming across her face, and she looked up, startled.

It wasn’t a stranger at all. It was Jeffrey Kildare.

“You,” she breathed, shocked.

“Miss Kellow.” He tightened his lips. “May I sit?”

She didn’t know what to say. “Sure.”

Kildare unbuttoned his black wool coat, tugged at the knees of his dove-gray slacks, and folded himself neatly in the chair opposite Kelly. “No doubt you’re surprised to see me. I’m quite busy, as I assume you are, so I’ll make this quick.” He produced a thick envelope from inside his coat and pressed it against the table. “Your parents left no money and no will,” he said.

“No money? How can that be?”

Kildare frowned and sighed, his eyes dark and unmoving. He seemed annoyed. “Listen,” he said, “I’m not going to sugarcoat things for you, and I don’t suspect you’re the type of person to swallow such things anyway. Your parents were strange people, Miss Kellow. And I use ‘strange’ in the vaguest sense, as I’m sure you can understand. Whatever was the cause of their condition, I do not know. I was merely hired to perform a service and that was all. I asked no questions beyond that, and such a relationship was fine by both parties. I can assure you it was fine by me, in any case.

“Your parents didn’t have any money because everything they ever owned was inside that house. Everything—money included. No bank. According to any number of savings banks upstate, no one’s ever heard of your parents. Gordon and Marlene Kellow did not exist to them.”

“So what you’re saying is that there would be money—”

“If the house hadn’t burned, yes. But money burns just like everything else, I’m afraid. Shame. I imagine it was quite a lot.”

She tapped the envelope. “Then what’s this?”

“The last wishes of Gordon Kellow.”

“You said there was no will.”

“Correct,” said Kildare, “no will. This is simply a deed to the house your father had me reinstate just recently.”

“The house is gone.”

“The property is still there. All of it. For a pair of reclusive eccentrics, your parents understood the value of real estate. Or maybe it was just stupid luck. I don’t know. What I do know is that your father owned a lot of property, not just the house. He owned the entire hillside, the forest valley surrounding it, and all of Spires itself.”

“The town?” The notion seemed absurd. “He owned the entire town?”

“If you’re one for anecdotes, I can tell you that your father expressed to me one evening that after the house was built, he would take pleasure in sitting in the windows of the spires atop the roof and looking down upon the town. After he purchased it, he had the name changed to something more fitting. At least, to him. So he called the town Spires.” Kildare appeared to grimace. “Of course, I’m not one for anecdotes myself.”

“I never knew…”

“I was hired to rework the details of the property ownership. He never expressed why he wanted these things changed and I never bothered to ask. He was a peculiar man, as I’ve said, and sometimes it appeared as if he didn’t consider too much beyond what shoes to put on at the start of the day. But occasionally he’d dip down to reality and pay us all a visit. That’s when we discussed business.

“He left the property to you, Miss Kellow.”

She blinked. “Me? Why the hell me? I could have been dead for all he knew or cared.”

“Apparently he did care,” said Kildare, “not that that’s any concern of mine. He had me rework all the documents claiming you as the sole beneficiary of both the Kellow Compound and the entire town of Spires, New York. As a man of duty, I am now here to fulfill the last leg of my business and inform you about this, and to pass along the requisite paperwork.” He tapped the envelope. “This,” he said.

She opened the envelope and flipped through the paperwork, stunned into silence.

“You’ll just have to sign the bottom form for me,” Kildare said, dipping a hand into his coat pocket. “I thought I had a pen with me…” He held his hand up to attract a waitress. “I’m sorry.”

Feeling a pen suddenly in one fisted hand, she said, “I have one,” and scrawled her signature at the bottom of the last page.

Kildare watched her, almost wanting to smile. For a moment, his eyes lingered on the pen in her right hand. There was something behind his eyes, Kelly saw…and she suddenly wondered just how much her father had told this stranger.

“Very good,” Kildare said, sliding the signed copy in front of him.

“I don’t know what to say,” she said. “What the hell do I do with all that land?”

“That isn’t my problem.” Kildare rose, buttoned his coat, and adjusted the collar of his shirt. “That envelope contains all the information and documentation you will need. I don’t foresee any reason for you to contact me in the future.”

Still in shock, she shook her head, dazed. “No.”

“Very well.”

He turned and strode through the crowded coffee shop. A small overhead bell chimed as he hit the door, signaling his permanent departure from Kelly’s life. She watched him cross the street and disappear into the crowd, her right hand fisted around the pen. And before she could think about it again, she felt the pen vanish within her closed fingers.

She sat at the table for a long time, staring at the envelope.

Cracking the door open the slightest bit, Kelly poked her head into Becky’s room. The girl was sound asleep. That bothered Kelly. It was the forgetting—she didn’t like the idea of Becky’s brain erasing the entire incident as she herself had done. No nightmares. And now that the bruises and scrapes had almost completely healed, what was left to remind her? There were no simple solutions to life. To cheat the evil only meant it would eventually return to cheat you back. The past doesn’t forget, she thought. Sometimes it is more dangerous to forget.

Back in the living room, Josh was seated on the sofa watching the videotape of Nellie Worthridge with the sound off.

Kelly crept up behind him. “Couldn’t find the volume switch?”

Josh rolled his shoulders. “Don’t need it. I can still hear her voice in my head. I think I’ll hear it forever. Loud as thunder.”

She slipped around the side of the couch and sat beside him. Close. Suddenly very tired, she watched Nellie’s image flicker on the screen.

“You remember it all?” she asked him.

“Yes. Do you?”

“I do. Now.”

“And Becky?”

She shook her head. “I’m worried about her.”

“She’s all right.”

“You don’t know.”

“I know you worry.”

“Sometimes there are certain things to worry about,” she told him. “Your doctor friend…?”

“Carlos?” Josh sighed. “He’s all right. His wife’s doing better. She was depressed for a while.”

“I can imagine. It would’ve been their first child?”

“Yes,” he said. “Carlos said his mother recently passed away too.”

“Jesus. One thing after another.”

“He’s okay about it. Said she was in a lot of pain anyway. He’s a smart man. You should meet him someday.”

She rested her head on his shoulder. It pained her own wounded shoulder to do it, but she didn’t care. She could live with the pain. “What do you say to someone who helped save your life?” she said, and slipped her hand into one of Josh’s. His palms were rough with scar-tissue where he’d been burned.

“You seem to do all right around me.” He eased his head back against the sofa. Kelly stiffened against him and he looked up, nervous. “What?”

“It’s Becky.” She stood and went around the side of the couch, moved urgently down the hall. She pushed open Becky’s bedroom door and flicked on the light. The girl was still asleep, her eyes fluttering beneath her lids, her breathing soft and deep.

Kelly crouched beside the bed, pushed her face close to the girl’s. Watched her sleep. And after a few moments, Becky’s eyes opened.

“Hey,” Kelly said.

“What are you doing here?”

“Watching you. You were having a bad dream. Can you remember it?”

“Some of it.”

“They say you remember your dreams better if you’re woken up while you’re having them.”

“You wanted me to wake up and remember it?”

Kelly smiled, smoothed back the girl’s hair. “I just want you to talk about it.”

Becky nodded. Then whispered: “Sometimes I get scared.”

“You want to talk about it now?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Becky nodded. “I want to tell you what I remember,” she said.

“Okay.”

“But first…”

“Yes? What is it?”

Becky shifted beneath the blankets. She brought a hand up to her forehead to ward off the light. “How did you know I was having a nightmare?”

Kelly smiled. “Just something I felt,” she said.

About the Author

Ronald Malfi is the award-winning author of eleven novels, including Snow, The Narrows, Cradle Lake, and the novella Borealis. His ghost story/mystery novel, Floating Staircase, won a gold IPPY award and was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for best novel of 2011 by the Horror Writers Association.  His crime drama Shamrock Alley won a silver IPPY Award in 2009 and was optioned for film. Most recognized for his haunting, literary style and memorable characters, Malfi’s dark fiction has gained acceptance among readers of all genres. He currently lives along the Chesapeake Bay with his wife and daughter. He can be reached via his website, www.ronmalfi.com, and on Facebook and Twitter.

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Borealis

The Narrows

The town of Stillwater has a very unwelcome resident.

The Narrows

© 2012 Ronald Malfi

The town of Stillwater has been dying—the long and painful death of a town ravaged by floods and haunted by the ghosts of all who had lived there. Yet this most recent flood has brought something with it—a creature that nests among the good folks of Stillwater...and feeds off them. The children who haven't disappeared whisper the same word—“vampire.” But they’re wrong. What has come to Stillwater is something much more horrific.

Enjoy the following excerpt for The Narrows:

In the half-light, Matthew listened to the house creak and moan—house-speak, his father had called it on the nights when Matthew was younger, afraid to sleep alone in his room with all the noises of the house surrounding him. Just house-speak: talking to the wind, the moon, the stars. Nothing at all to be afraid of. As it often did, this memory caused his face to turn hot and his eyes to sting. Matthew hadn’t seen his father in over a year, and he’d spoken with him on the phone less than a half-dozen times. He was living now in someplace that had a strange and unfamiliar name. And while no one had ever directly confirmed this bit of information, he had surmised that he was living there with another woman. The few times he had summoned the courage to ask his mother for more details about his father’s disappearance, one look at Wendy Crawly’s worn and beaten face would cause him to change his mind. He did not want to talk about those things with his mother. She had cried enough on the porch by herself in the beginning, just barely within earshot, and that had been bad enough. Matthew didn’t think he could take it if she broke down in front of him. Or because of him. So he never asked questions.

He flipped the sweaty sheet off his body then climbed out of bed. Without turning on the bedroom light, he found the mound of his clothes at the foot of his bed. Snatching his shorts up off the floor, he carried them over to his small desk where his Superman lunchbox sat. He felt around in the pockets of his shorts for the money Dwight had given him, his panic rising when he found both pockets empty. He rechecked them, pulling them inside out, but there was no money in there.

He clicked the desk lamp on. Yellow light spilled out across the desk and half of the desk chair. Beneath the cone of light, Matthew again reexamined the pockets of his shorts. Then he went to the heap of clothes at the foot of his bed and sifted through each article of clothing—shirts, balled-up socks, another pair of shorts. There was no money anywhere.

Retrace your steps, said a voice in his head. He thought of the story of Hansel and Gretel, how they’d left behind a trail of breadcrumbs in order to find their way back home. Stupidly, this made him think again of his father, who had left no trail of breadcrumbs and appeared to have no intention of ever coming back home.

Holding his breath, because he thought doing so would stop his heart from beating so loudly, he crept out of his bedroom and onto the second floor landing. Across the hall, the doors to his mother’s and Brandy’s bedrooms were closed, the doorknobs a shimmery blue in the moonlight coming in through the high front windows. He proceeded to descend the steps, avoiding from memory the risers that made the most noise. It was like sinking down into the belly of a great ship. Over summer vacation he’d read Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and not the dumbed-down version for children either. This had been the actual, honest-to-God novel. And while he did not fully understand everything he’d read, the glory and trepidation and horror of the adventure resonated with him more than any movie ever had. He thought of that book now, and how the underwater light shining through the portholes of Captain Nemo’s submarine, the Nautilus, must have looked just like the swampy, blue-gelled moonlight coming through the windows of the front hall right now.

He’d hoped that thinking about this would alleviate his fears.

It hadn’t.

Around him, the house sounded alive. As he crossed from the front hall to the kitchen, a gust of wind bullied the house and made popping, groaning sounds within the walls. Matthew froze, his heart thudding with a series of pronounced hammer strikes within the frail wall of his chest. On the kitchen counter, silverware and drinking glasses gleamed in the moonlight coming through the window over the sink. Across the kitchen, the flimsy floral curtain that hung over the panel of glass in the upper section of the porch door seemed to radiate with a cool, lackadaisical light. His bare feet padding on the cold kitchen tiles, he went to the door, unlocked the dead bolt, and slid the slide lock to the unlocked position. It made a sound that echoed loudly in the empty, silent kitchen, causing Matthew to once again hold his breath.

There came a knocking on the other side of the door. Matthew froze, his skin suddenly blistered with gooseflesh. He waited for the silhouette of a head to appear on the other side of the sheer curtain. No one appeared. He waited. Outside, the wind picked back up, angry and unforgiving. The sound of the bare tree branches bullied by the wind was a haunted, creaking one, reminiscent of warped and loose floorboards. That knocking sound came again, slightly more muted this time. Again, Matthew expected the silhouette of a head to appear framed in the curtained panel of light. Again, no one appeared.

The door squealed on its hinges as he slowly opened it, though much of the noise was obscured by the rattling, locomotive sound of the whipping wind. Cold air blasted him and the flimsy T-shirt and boxer shorts he wore felt no more substantial than cobwebs. The banging sound, he realized, was the screen door banging against the frame. Beyond the screen, he could see the way the wind shook the bushes alongside the detached garage and, beyond, rattled the chain-link fence. Farther out, a sea of cornstalks undulated in the wind. Whirlwinds of dead leaves and scraps of trash danced across the yard.

It occurred to him that if he’d dropped Dwight’s money out here, it was long gone by now. In his mind’s eye—and not without a sense of utter despair—he imagined the dollar bills flitting like bats through the storm-laden night sky somewhere over the Cumberland Gap. Heck, for all he knew, they could be somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean by now…

Nonetheless, he pushed open the screen door and stepped out onto the porch. The rickety boards complained loudly beneath his bare feet. The strong wind chilled his bones, and flecks of icy rain pattered against the side of his face. He hugged himself as he scanned the yard. There were scraps of paper stuck in some of the bushes beside the garage. Could they be Dwight’s money?

Matthew took a deep breath, steeling himself for the act…then quickly bounded down the porch steps. He hurried out across the yard, the wind icy cold and unrelenting without the confines of the house to serve as a buffer. Bits of flying grit stung his eyes. There was a motion sensor light above the garage doors; Matthew had completely forgotten about it until it clicked on, blinding and startling him. Like someone caught attempting to escape from a prison yard, he momentarily froze in the spotlight. He knew the light was visible from his own bedroom window, but Brandy’s and his mother’s bedrooms were at the opposite end of the house, facing the road. They wouldn’t be awakened by the light; he was safe for the time being.

Someone moved behind the tall hedgerow. Again, Matthew froze. The hedges stood just over four feet tall and ran the length of the yard to the side of the garage. Matthew blinked and tried to discern through the darkness the movement he had just seen a moment ago—a gliding, whitish blur passing just behind the bushes.

“Is someone there?” His voice was as weak as his knees. It frightened him to address the darkness aloud.

From the periphery of his vision, he caught another glimpse of someone—or something—moving behind the bushes, closer to the garage now. Had the motion sensor light not come on he might have been able to see more, but the gleaming halogen bulb caused inky pools of shadow to drip from the hedges and puddle around the side of the garage, blinding him if he looked too closely in its approximate direction. A twisting shape seemed to ebb and flow in the darkness just beyond the bushes, and he was reminded of the twisting shape he’d seen earlier that day when peering in the windows of the old plastics factory. He thought then of his nightmare, and of the flashing expulsions of light going off behind the grimy windows of the factory in his dream. And of Dwight’s voice, now eerily prophetic, saying, It sounds like someone moving back and forth on the gravel driveway. I look but there’s never anybody there.

As he watched, a figure stepped out from behind the hedgerow and paused, facing him, in the shaft of space between the hedgerow and the garage. The figure was a black blur, as indistinct as a distant memory, but Matthew had no question as to its authenticity. There was someone standing right there.

Matthew managed one hesitant step backward.

The figure took one step forward; one bare foot and a slender white shin appeared in the cone of light issuing from the motion sensor. A second foot joined it. As Matthew stared, the whitish legs and feet appeared to waver, and it was like looking at something from behind the distorting waves of rising heat. The legs weren’t bare at all. They were clad in grayish-blue denim, the feet encased in hard, black shoes.

Another step forward and the figure’s face emerged from the darkness. Matthew could see his father’s face, stubble along his cheeks and neck, the crooked part in the man’s prematurely graying hair. Still in his postal uniform, his shirt partway unbuttoned just as he used to wear it on those days after work when he went immediately to the garage to tinker around without changing his clothes first.

It took a moment for his father’s eyes to focus on him.

The motion sensor light clicked off.

Matthew Crawly was aware of a rush of wind, a strong embrace of arms…and then a piercing sensation at the small of his back. For a moment, he thought he could smell his father’s aftershave lotion mingled with the familiar scent of his perspiration. But that quickly was replaced by a sharp, medicinal smell that stung Matthew’s nose and caused his eyes to water. When he opened his mouth to scream, no sound came out. It was like trying to scream underwater.

His last conscious thought was of Captain Nemo’s submarine coasting soundlessly through the tar-colored waters of a frozen sea, silvery fish flitting by like mirrors of dancing light.

The Fall of Never

Ronald Malfi

Come home to the darkness.

Kelly Rich, long estranged from her family, is forced to return home when her sister is involved in a mysterious accident. After years of suppressing the events that drove her away, she must struggle to unlock the mystery of her past in order to save her sister. But nothing is as it seems in her foreboding ancestral home, where cold hearts rule the hearth and deadly secrets lurk in the forest. Plunged back into the dream world of her youth, Kelly will have to face the dark reality of her own role in the horrors afflicting her family.

eBooks are not transferable.

They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B

Cincinnati OH 45249

The Fall of Never

Copyright © 2004 by Ronald Malfi

First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. Edition © 2013

ISBN: 978-1-61921-223-7

Edited by Don D’Auria

Cover by Scott Carpenter

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: March 2013
www.samhainpublishing.com

Table of Contents

Prologue

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Part Two

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Part Three

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Epilogue

About the Author

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