The Fall of Never (7 page)

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.