The Fall of Never (30 page)

“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.