The Wall

Kelly looks down at the hastily spray-painted black line across the path. It’s not straight or particularly bold. It doesn’t even go across the whole path; just one thin, lazy swipe. Like a vandal, on his way home from scrawling “Mike wuz here” on the backside of Wal-Mart, was looking for one final canvas to mar with the last bit of paint in his can. Scrawled above the line in chicken-scratch capital letters are the words DO NOT CROSS.

Kelly snorts, mutters to herself, “Idiots.” On the whole, she doesn’t have a problem with graffiti. Yeah, yeah, gangs, defacing property, illegal, blah, blah. But a lot of graffiti is just as beautiful and intricate as anything you’d see in an art museum, and many of the true graffiti artists of the world don’t do it for money or recognition, but for the simple love of art, for the love of sharing it with all eyes who care to notice, for free. But this purposeless scrawling by bored teenagers, tagging stupid shit like bike paths is a waste of paint and brain cells. She shakes her head and starts walking again, striding confidently over the line and its warning without giving it any credence. Later, she won’t be able to recall just how many steps over the line she’d taken before she felt a vague sense of unease.

It’s a balmy late summer evening with a light breeze, and she’d left her apartment for her daily walk in a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt. The sun hovered just above the horizon as she started down the forested path, aglow in the early evening light with leaves that are just beginning to change from green to bright orange. She estimated she had about twenty minutes before the path became too dark to be safe for a lone young woman. Now, past the line, she feels an autumnal chill in the air she wasn’t expecting. Goosebumps pimple her skin. She looks around the path and realizes she can no longer see the sun’s light breaking through the trees. In the absence of the yellowy light, the forest takes on a grayish sheen that reminds her of foggy mornings on the river where she grew up.

“Huh…” She says to herself. The sense of unease grows stronger, tickles the hairs on the back of her neck. Did I misjudge how much time I have? Did the sun set beyond the horizon? She slows her pace. It isn’t just that things are grayish, but everything seems less vibrant, less there somehow. She stops in the middle of the path. Something else bothers her, but she can’t quite put her finger on it.

Kelly sniffs the air, lightly at first, but then she inhales deeply, expecting the heady, earthy scent of the forest around her, a scent which had always relaxed her, but… She smells nothing. There’s absolutely no scent in the air. And that’s not all. There’s no sound either. And no breeze - no moving air at all. No birds in the trees nor the sweet chirps of their goodnight calls. No crickets singing in the weeds. No squirrels chasing each other up tree trunks. No gnats buzzing around her face. It’s as if the forest itself has suddenly died.

The unnerving stillness smothers the evening like a heavy blanket. The abrupt silence of the woods puts Kelly on edge, as if some predator might suddenly leap from the woods and attack her.

Maybe you don’t really need to go for a walk tonight, she thinks. You can take a night off. No one will know; no one’s keeping track of those 10,000 steps but you. Just go home and have a salad for dinner. Then you won’t feel so guilty. Right. And you can sit on the couch and watch Friends reruns until you feel this whole thing is really quite silly.

Just the thought of going home makes Kelly feel lighter. She turns on her heels to walk back toward her apartment and is immediately halted in her tracks by the sight before her.

Where previously there had been nothing more than trees and a strip of blacktop, there is a wall. A very, very large wall.

Kelly is so stunned that she steps back, peering at the gray cinderblock in shock. The wall sits there, completely unaware of its incongruous appearance in the middle of a popular bike path. It stretches off to the left and right for twenty or thirty feet before the trees block it completely. The wall rises so high Kelly can’t even see where it stops. She feels the coldness of its massive shadow fall over her, as if it goes right on up into the heavens.

Kelly spends a long time just staring at this new wall. She lets her eyes rove over every part of it. Tries to wrap her brain around this completely impossible development. She tries blinking it away as a hallucination. Then her eyes are arrested by something she didn’t notice before - or something that maybe wasn’t there before.

Words. On the wall. Eye level and centered over the path. They’re scrawled in a familiar black chicken-scratch, screaming in capital letters across the surface.

I TOLD YOU NOT TO CROSS.

A burble of laughter escapes Kelly’s lips before she can tamp it down. It’s an odd reaction, but the only one she’s able to muster over something so impossible. She should be looking at a ribbon of paved path snaking through the forest. Just at the edge of the visible path would be a glimpse of its end and the sidewalk to her building beyond. But it’s not there. What is there, is this enormous, ridiculous wall.

Kelly clamps her hands over her mouth, tries stuff her hysterical laughter back down her throat, but it’s several minutes before she regains control. How? Why? She can’t fathom the answers.

Kelly stumbles toward the wall, thinks, If I’m hallucinating, if I’m losing my mind, maybe confronting this wall, touching it, will make it disappear, make this false wall dissolve right in front of me. Makes sense… right?

Kelly approaches the wall, stares at the words scrawled there. She reaches a hand out, touches them. The wall is quite solid, not like a hallucination at all. The blocks are the same rough, porous kind that make up countless shopping centers and parking garages. As she runs her hands over the wall, she makes an even more disturbing discovery; the wall isn’t new. It’s covered in patches of dirt, scratches, and pockmarks you’d expect to see on something that had been built many years ago. But that’s impossible as far as Kelly is concerned, because five minutes ago, the wall had not been here. The wall had not been.

Kelly squats close to the ground and runs her fingers over the crack where wall meets path and discovers more unsettling news. She’d been expecting a clean surface where the wall and the path met. After all, it’d just plopped down out of the sky mere moments ago. What she finds, however, are weeds and grass growing from the crack between the wall and the path, as if the wall had been there for years and nature had already grown around it, already accepted it as part of the forest. Looking behind her, she sees the rest of the bike path is in a similar state. Bumpy and uneven asphalt, wrinkled by snaking tree roots. Tufts of weeds growing through cracks in the worn path. It’s as if this path has run through this forest for ten years or more. The path Kelly knows, the one she has walked a hundred times before, was only built last summer, and it’s painstakingly maintained by the homeowner's association. This path looks like it hadn’t been tended to for a long time. For decades maybe.

Kelly laughs again, longer and harder. So hard her throat hurts and her eyes water. I’m going crazy, she thinks. Jerry was right - I’m crazy and I’ve finally had that psychotic break. Really, I’m sitting in the middle of this path, laughing hysterically, and there is no wall. Instead, an old married couple out for an evening stroll has stumbled upon this mad woman laughing maniacally in the middle of the path. They’re saying things like “Ma’am, are you alright? Do you need help?” “Maybe we should call for an ambulance.” Only I can’t hear them because I’ve just gone insane.

It’s a long time before Kelly gets control of herself again. Even when she does, the laughter’s still there. It burbles beneath the surface, ready to burst out at any moment. She’s afraid if she starts laughing again, she’ll never stop.

Kelly gets up and wipes off her hands. She takes a few steps back and stares at the wall again, trying to figure out what the hell to do.

“This is a delusion, Kelly,” she tells herself, knowing that talking to oneself is not necessarily a good sign. It’s something that had always bothered Jerry, her husband - well, ex-husband. The more upset or anxious she became, the more she talked to herself. Sometimes it helped her get a handle on things, work things through - but sometimes not. Sometimes she became more than a little hysterical. It usually happened during an argument, and Jerry would get so upset because he couldn’t tell who she was talking to - Him? Herself? A figment of her imagination? Of course, that hadn’t happened for a long time; it’s hard to have an argument by yourself. Although, she’s learning, not impossible.

“This is a delusion,” she repeats. “You know it is. What you have to do right now is get control of yourself. Talk it through. Work it out.” She takes several deep breaths and sits facing the wall. She takes the lotus pose and breathes deeply for several minutes, keeping her eyes closed. She locks out the cold sensation of the ground and the cooling air, fighting the natural urge to shiver.

“There is no wall, Kelly,” she says quietly. “There is no wall. The path home is there, just ahead of you, as it has always been. There is no wall. You have imagined this wall for some reason, but that reason is not important right now. What is important is that you get home safely. Then you can ruminate all you want on what this delusion is supposed to represent. And you can tell Dr. Ross all about it tomorrow - at the emergency appointment you’re going to make the minute you get home. Okay? Everything’s fine. You’re fine. There is no wall. There is no wall. There is no wall.” She silently chants this mantra: Thereisnowall. Thereisnowall. Thereisnowall. She breathes deeply. She continues for ten minutes before her pulse finally slows and the urge to laugh dissipates. She repeats her mantra one final time out loud.

“There is NO WALL.” And then she opens her eyes.

And sees the wall.

This time she doesn’t laugh. She screams. She jumps to her feet, beats on the wall with her fists and screams. “What are you? Why are you here? What the hell is going on?!”

Predictably, the wall doesn’t reply. But the words remain.

I TOLD YOU NOT TO CROSS.

The words look more substantial this time. Darker and more there. Kelly reads them as I. TOLD. YOU. NOT. TO. CROSS.

Kelly huffs angrily, like a bull in the arena staring at that infernal red cape. But even she knows that beating the wall and screaming at it won’t accomplish anything. So, she stops. She needs to do something more logical - ahaha! Logic! - to solve the problem of the wall.

Okay. So, the wall’s real. Now what?

Investigate further.

        
Kelly is back on her hands and knees at the base of the wall. She pulls at the weeds and grass, ripping them away from the wall, her fingers searching, searching, searching. There has to be a weakness, an opening, a crack - something! - somewhere. Sure, people built walls to keep things in or keep things out, but there’s always a door somewhere. She just has to find it.

Kelly’s fingers move over the wall in all ways and manners she can think of. She reaches from the ground to as high as she can, with her fingertips stretched out while standing on her tiptoes. She moves left and right, up and down, over and over again. She goes over each brick until she knows all its nooks and crannies. She runs her fingers between each gap in the mortar, looking for any minute detail that will help her find a way past this monstrosity.

She eventually leaves the path, first veering off to the right, making sure she doesn’t miss even one square inch of cinderblock within her reach. She moves further into the woods. She ignores the crunch of dead leaves under her feet, barely feels the scratches that the increasingly wild bush and branches leave on her exposed legs and arms. Up, down, over. Up, down, over. She goes forty feet away from the path before turning back and going to the other side.

How long Kelly searches is unclear; she’ll never be able to account for this time. She is heedless of its passage, of the continued gray sheen over this world, of the night’s blackness that never comes.

Beyond frustrated, Kelly drops to her knees and digs with her hands. When her hands are tired and caked in mud, she grabs a fallen branch and uses it to dig. If she can’t go over this wall or through this wall, then she’ll go under it.

Kelly digs two feet before she finally gives up. Her arms are exhausted, her hands are sore, and so far as she can tell, there’s no end to this wall. It doesn’t sit on top of the path, as she’d thought, but rather comes up out of the ground. Every inch she dug revealed only more cinder blocks, more mud-stained wall. There’s no through, no over, no under. The wall is impermeable.

So now what? She wonders, tired and despondent. You could walk along the wall, couldn’t you? Pick a direction, left or right, and just walk along it, walk until you find the end. Walk until you can’t walk any more. Even the Great Wall of China has an end, right?

But Kelly doesn’t think it’s a good idea. Leaving the path behind, walking along the wall, would mean venturing deeper into the forest. Deeper into the dead, silent woods. What’s out there? In the gray? Behind the trees, behind their leaves, behind the bushes? No animals, but something… some thing.

“Oh, yes,” Kelly whispers to herself as she retraces her steps to the path. “There is something out there. There is danger out there.”

Kelly doesn’t consider herself a dangerous person. Stubborn, odd, neurotic; these are words that describe Kelly. That’s probably why Jerry cheated. She’d often wondered why he’d married her to begin with. They were polar opposites, but Jerry pursued her anyway. He was gregarious and funny, popular with everyone, especially women. He was no Adonis, but his openness and outgoing nature made his average looks unimportant. She supposed she’d been swept up by the romance of it all and had never stopped to consider that Jerry had taken her on as a kind of project, as a blank slate he could shape into his vision. It was little things at first, uttered in a passing, neutral tone. Suggestions really. After they were married, his suggestions became more like requirements. Every other sentence began “You should…”

You should give rock music a try.

You should try to be more outgoing.

You should try out pole dancing.

You should learn to cook.

You should lose some weight.

YoushouldYoushouldYoushould.

She’d given in to every last one of those You Shoulds. Despite all of them, Kelly loved Jerry. She did all the things he wanted because she loved him. And because a lot of them actually did make her a better person, which she felt could only benefit their relationship. She went to cooking classes and made friends. She went out, even traveled some. She did things an introvert like her would never have done without someone like Jerry pushing her. But it seemed that Jerry always ended up disappointed because none of these You Shoulds ever changed who Kelly really was. You Shoulds couldn’t make her more attractive, more popular, more someone else. She was still Kelly. And apparently Kelly wasn’t what Jerry wanted.

Apparently, Jerry wanted danger. He wanted sexy and young and vivacious. No amount of You Shoulds could ever make these words describe Kelly. And the woman Jerry’d chosen fit those words so well. Her hair was an artificial shade of black that was almost blue. She had fake breasts larger than a woman with a waist that small could support. And she had a tattoo in black cursive on her right butt cheek: Daddy’s Little Girl. All of these things Kelly noticed in the split second after she’d opened their bedroom door. Then they’d argued but she couldn’t remember much of it. What she does remember is the sensation of White. Hot. Rage.

During the argument, Jerry told Kelly she was too tame for him, too safe. That’s when her memory becomes clear again. She was the safe choice, he’d said. But he didn’t want safe anymore. He wanted someone wild, outgoing, and interesting. Someone spontaneous who could surprise him. Someone dangerous.

“Dangerous?” she’d screamed at him. “Dangerous! You want someone dangerous?!” She strode away from him then, down the hall and into the kitchen.

On the counter was a knife block full of expensive knives. They were too exorbitant for the wedding registry in Kelly’s opinion, but Jerry had insisted. It’d led to their first big fight. She grabbed one of the ebony-handled knives now, the largest one. The zing of the knife as she slipped it from the block delighted her - she felt actual delight. She brought the knife up high as she rounded on Jerry, who’d followed her, yelling all the way.

“I’ll show you dangerous!” She screamed as he came through the doorway. And then lunged at him.

Dangerous! The thought made her laugh now. Me? I’m no more dangerous than any other woman who just came home to find her husband in bed with someone else. The same husband whom I tried to become a different person for, yet failed no matter how hard I tried. I gave him years of dedication and hard work, and that’s what I get? That’s what I come home to? What woman wouldn’t grab a knife in that situation? Jerry’s just lucky he didn’t like guns or things might have turned out much differently.

Instead, Jerry reacted quickly to her clumsy slice at him. They fought - a rolling on the ground, biting, kicking brawl - but Kelly lost.

Kelly didn’t think that one incident made her a dangerous person, but the judge disagreed. She’d received a fine, an assault charge, and divorce papers. Jerry had returned to a normal, semi-dangerous life afterward, but not Kelly. She’d spent six months in jail. She’d been out about three months now, but being a felon makes returning to a normal life difficult. While her apartment was still there when she got out, her job wasn’t. She’d had to get a waitressing job at a dive downtown that paid shit wages, but she can just make all her bills each month if she works double shifts, makes good tips, and doesn’t eat dinner. But each day is harder than the one before, and she’s slowly circling the drain. An increasing sense of desperation and anxiety has made her life unpleasant lately.

And now this wall.

Kelly had returned to the path and now sits cross legged in front of the wall, hugging herself and trying to warm up over the memory of her rage. She’s been stuck on the wrong side of the wall long enough that dark should have fallen, although there’s no way to be sure. Just as everything around her had become grey and lifeless, her sense of time is equally indeterminate. The air seems to be getting colder, as if the night is out there just the same as always, only Kelly can’t see it.

How long have I been here? she wonders. Several hours at least. And, she thinks ruefully, I’ve gotten nowhere. Leaving the path for any reason is unsafe. Whatever world this is, of the creatures in it, she has no idea - and no desire to meet them. So, if she isn’t going to venture right or left, and she can’t go back, that only leaves...

Slowly, Kelly looks behind her, down the path that unrolls through the grey forest as if it had been laid out by a drunk blind man. She looks down this path that appears to have been here for ages, even though she knows this is impossible. She gazes into it, staring hard, looking again for any sign that this is a wild hallucination. For some sign this delusion might end.

Suddenly, a sound meets Kelly’s ears. It’s been so long since she’s heard anything other than her own breathing that she nearly screams.

Footsteps, she realizes. Feet pounding the pavement hard. And fast.

And, it dawns on Kelly, the footsteps are heading right for her from the other side of the wall.

Raymond Denton is running. He’s running as fast as his feet will carry him. He isn’t sure if he’s still being pursued, but he doesn’t view that as a reason to slow down. If The Goons aren’t still behind him, they’ll find him eventually. The only shot he has is to get out of town as fast as he can. He’ll go home, grab his dog Bobo, a box of mementos and hand-me-downs from his father (which included his emergency stash of cash), and his car - and even that he’ll have to ditch soon. That’s regrettable; he really loves his Shelby.

Where to go is the only uncertainty. Ray can’t contact anyone he knows - they’ll be looking for him with his family and friends first. That’s okay. He isn’t particularly attached to anyone anymore, except for his mother. He feels kind of bad about that, but there’s nothing he can do about it now. It’s as much for her safety as it is for his. He needs to go somewhere unpredictable. Somewhere he can get lost, disappear, become someone else. A place where people don’t ask uncomfortable questions. Maybe Alaska. Some remote Alaskan village. You don’t need a lot of money to live there, if you don’t care too much about comfort.

Ray spies a path in the woods to his right. He’s in an unfamiliar neighborhood of apartment buildings and townhouses. When he’d seen The Goons outside the diner where he’d had his secret meeting (which was evidently not a secret), he just started running. He took every turn he saw, heedless of the direction, trying to be unpredictable. As long as he remains unpredictable, he has a chance.

A small chance.

Ray darts down the path just after nightfall. There are no streetlamps to light his way, but he isn’t afraid of the dark. He relies on his senses to light his way. The darker blackness is the path rolling out before him. A branch brushing by his ear means he’s straying too far to the side.

After about thirty seconds’ sprinting on the path, Ray sees a looming black mass to the right that he assumes is a large tree. He ducks behind it and bends over, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. The last thing he wants is one of The Goons to shine a flashlight down the path and see his yellow hide streaking into the woods.

When Ray finally opens his eyes, he sees an unexpected brightness and backs into the tree as if trying to become part of it. They are still behind me! Shitshitshit!

But as Ray searches for a way out of this Situation, he realizes he isn’t standing in the beam of a flashlight, but rather the forest around him is lit up with a sort of gauzy grayness that reminds him of a cloudy afternoon. He also realizes he isn’t alone.

Across the path, crouching behind a tree, is a woman. She trembles like a leaf in her t-shirt and jogging shorts, both caked with dirt and grass stains. Her arms, which she wraps around herself like a vise, are dirty and scratched. Her eyes, bright green and wild as a predator’s, stare at him from behind a tangled mass of red hair. Her expression reveals a strange mixture of emotions. Fear is evident, yes. But also, strangely, relief. For a moment, they just stare at each other.

Suddenly the woman springs at him. She’s across the path in a blink, her fingernails digging into his arms as she shakes him.

“How’d you do it?” She demands. “How’d you get through it?”

Ray, who was thrust back into the tree, grabs the strange woman by the shoulders in an attempt to control her. She’s far stronger than he expected. She invades his bubble, attacks him with her words.

“Tell me!” She shouts. “Tell me how to get through it!”

“How to get through what?” Ray shouts back, bewildered. “What are you talking about, lady?”

“The wall! How did you get through the wall?”

Ray has no idea what the woman’s talking about, which she must realize. She raises a dirty arm and points behind him, behind the tree. He follows her trembling finger and gasps because now, now he sees the wall.

“What the fuck?” He mutters to himself, and his words come from far away. He’s so stunned he’s become temporarily removed from his body. His head bobs along above him like a balloon. Where did it come from? It wasn’t there a moment ago. He’s sure. He would’ve plowed right into it in the darkness. But now, now it’s here just as sure as he’s standing here.

“Is this a dream?” He whispers, unaware he’s speaking.

Although Ray can’t take his eyes away from the wall, he senses the woman’s disappointment. She sags to the forest floor. Her soft weeping is white noise; he can’t process it right now. His brain is stuck on the wall, skipping like a record. Where did it come from? Why is it here? Where did it come from? Why is it here?

Kelly watches the man approach the wall just as she had. She watches him touch and caress the wall, as if he really was in a dream and it might just disappear - poof! - any moment. But she knows this isn’t possible, and he will realize the same soon enough.

Now the urge to laugh returns. Kelly gives in to it, allowing her sobs to turn into a wave of giggles. How absurd she’d been! She’d seen this man, however briefly, as her savior. She’d hidden behind a tree at the sound of the footsteps, unsure if they signaled friend or foe. She didn’t peek out until the footsteps stopped and she heard his ragged breathing. When she saw him leaning against the tree, she was shocked. He’d clearly come from the other side of the wall! But how? A door! A hidden door, of course! It made sense! But then she saw his confusion and the same awestruck expression she must’ve had when she’d first seen the wall. A new wave of desperation rolls over her and pulls her under.

Sometime later (he could not be certain how long), Ray returns to the woman with the same dirt caked clothes and scratched arms. He’d only given up when he saw the hole she’d dug and realized that going through, over, or under the wall, was impossible. At first, he’d felt relief. He’s safe from The Goons, for now anyway. But this wall means a quick getaway is not in the cards either.

Well. Fuck.

Ray leans down in front of the woman, who’d finally stopped her disturbing laughter and returned to crying. He reaches out and takes her shoulders gently in his hands.

Kelly looks up into Ray’s handsome face, into his soul-deep brown eyes that are just a shade darker than his short, gelled hair. She sees both fear and compassion there, and wonders how a nice man like this had ended up here with her.

“What’s your name?” Ray asks.

Kelly takes a second to wipe her nose and dry her tears with her shirt collar. “Kelly,” she whispers.

“Hi Kelly,” he replies. “I’m Ray.”

“Ray,” she says with a nod.

“Ray,” he repeats, still holding her tearful greens with his big browns. “Do you know where we are, Kelly?”

The question is almost enough to send her into tears again. Kelly shakes her head as if trying to rid it of something unpleasant. “I don’t know! I don’t know where we are or what that is or where it came from! I don’t know anything!”

“Okay, okay, shh,” Ray whispers, willing her not to get hysterical again. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen, but he knows he needs Kelly on his side. Whatever’s coming will be much easier if he doesn’t have to do it by himself. A raving madwoman clinging to him won’t be much use. “Don’t get upset again. We’re going to figure this out. You and me, we’re going to get out of here together, okay?” It isn’t a false promise necessarily, but it sure as shit ain’t a guarantee.

Kelly nods and sniffs, wipes her nose on her arm. It’s unattractive and unladylike, but Ray supposed he could forgive her for that. This is, after all, an unusual Situation. And although Ray is used to unusual situations, this is far outside his experience. He needs information, and the sooner, the better.

“Kelly, can you tell me what happened?” he asks, keeping his voice low and gentle, as if comforting a child. “How did you get here?”

Kelly begins slowly but is able to give Ray all the details of her story in the span of a few minutes. When she’s done, Ray is just as confused and frustrated as he’d been before. Nothing she says was of any real use in figuring anything out. Nothing except for the fact that there’s no way past the wall.

“I had just about decided to start walking down the path when I heard you coming,” Kelly says. She’s gotten control of herself. Something about laying everything out to another human being calms her. She feels better knowing she’s not in this - whatever this is - alone.

Ray nods as if he’s been thinking the same thing. “Alright,” he says finally, standing up. He holds out his hands to her. 

“Let’s start walking.”

“Just like that,” she asks, still looking up at him from the ground.

“Yep. Just like that,” he says. “It’s our only option so far as I can see, and sitting here thinking about it isn’t going to accomplish anything. We both know that, eventually, we’re just going to have to take the path.”

Kelly supposes Ray is right. But she’s still terrified.

Kelly and Ray walk down the path. They don’t hold hands, but walk close together, each ready to grab the other should something awful come to meet them. They don’t talk. The only sound is their quiet breathing and the sounds of their shoes on the path. Kelly laughs inwardly; if it weren’t for the wall, they might be a couple out for a romantic after-dinner walk.

Kelly hugs herself for warmth. Although the grey light filters through the trees, the temperature continues to dip as if night has fallen. Ray had given her his windbreaker, revealing nicely toned arms and a fitted t-shirt over his blue jeans. She appraises him now, wondering again what had brought this handsome stranger to the path. She’d been out for an evening stroll, but Ray had come barreling through the trees as if he were being chased.

“So,” Kelly says, looking away from Ray and at the faded oranges and browns of the leaves and trees, “What brings you here?”

Ray turns his head only slightly, arching an eyebrow.

“I mean, why were you on the path? I was out for a walk, but you seemed like you were…in a hurry.”

Ray snorts and shoves his hands into his pockets, offering nothing more.

Kelly persists. “Come on, Ray. I told you my story. What’s yours?” When he remains silent, she prods him with an elbow and gives him a patient look. If he can’t carry on a conversation, she might just go insane from the oppressive silence of this place.

Ray huffs, irritated. He knows she isn’t going to let up.

“I was in a hurry,” he says finally. “I had a meeting tonight. An important meeting. A secret meeting… or it was supposed to be. When I left, I saw a couple of guys. They saw me. They saw who I was with. I ran.” He shrugs.

“Wow,” Kelly says sarcastically. “You really know how to tell a story.”

“It’s a long story.”

Kelly snorts. “Gee, I wish we had more time to talk. I mean, we’re in such a hurry.” She hooks her arm through his and they naturally fall into step. “Come on, Ray. Open up a little bit. If we’re ever going to get out of this place, we’ll need to work together and trust each other. Besides, I’m not going to tell anyone your dirty little secret, whatever it is. What am I going to do, whisper it into the trees?”

Ray sighs. What did he have to lose? What did he care what this stranger thought of him? Kelly’s right - although he wouldn’t be surprised if these trees actually are listening to them. Despite his misgivings, and given the rather unusual Situation they’re in, he supposes it couldn’t hurt to tell Kelly his story. So, he does.

Before Ray met Kelly, before he saw the dark path in the trees and thought it’d be a good place to hide, he was at a diner about a mile away from Kelly’s apartment complex. It’s a small operation in an area that most people avoided. There’s too much crime and innumerable homeless badgering you for change. The sludge that passes for coffee and the greasy fries with a mysteriously brown gravy at Old Sal’s isn’t a trip worth making for most people. Mostly people end up here by mistake, choose it because it’s the only food joint around and they’ve been lost for the last two hours, and the kiddies are screaming for something to eat and Jesus what can we do to shut them up? Old Sal’s still there too, has been every day since 1967. He stands over the same open grill that hasn’t been cleaned since the early nineties, frying up whatever you order with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, dropping ash all over your scrambled eggs, a little extra flavor for you wink-wink heh heh. This isn’t a place for good food, good people, or good conversations. Which is exactly why Ray had chosen it for his meeting.

He arrives early, unable to wait around his apartment any longer. He’s had three cups of Sal’s muddy sludge before McNair finally shows up, squeezing his gut through the door. Sal, at the grill, grunts without turning around to acknowledge the new arrival. McNair spots Ray across the tiny and otherwise deserted restaurant, nods, and then makes his way over. His footfalls make the salt and pepper shakers clink together. He pulls a chair up to Ray’s booth, unable to fit into the booth. At least the chair gives him breathing room if he sits far enough back from the table. Ray had almost forgotten how huge McNair is. He fights to hide his disgust.

McNair leans a large elbow on the Formica table and puts two stubbled chins in his palm. He shoots Ray a smirk. 

“I’m all ears, princess.”

Ray hates McNair. Hates this man more than he’s ever hated anyone or anything. He’s been stuck under the fat fuck’s thumb, but now he thinks he’s finally found a way to wriggle himself out of this Situation, which has been completely out of his hands from the beginning. He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a large Ziploc bag. It makes a ponderous clunk when he puts it on the table.

McNair’s beady eyes slip down to the gun and then back up to Ray. He raises an eyebrow, and Ray realizes that even McNair’s eyebrows are fat. “What’s this?”

“A peace offering.”

“Well, let’s see,” McNair says, and then proceeds to mumble to himself, noting the make and model of the gun, the type of bullets it holds. To Ray, McNair sounds like he’s speaking in math equations; he doesn’t know anything about guns. As long as it shoots, right? But he knows McNair recognizes this gun. Ray knew he would “Looks...unique.”

Ray nods. “The kind of unique that would stand out in a bullet comparison. That might open a lot of doors for a lot of cases.”

“That so?”

It takes an immense force of will to keep the sneer off Ray’s face. McNair knows what this gun is. He’s been asking Ray about it for months, needling him to rat on the only man that’s ever looked out for him, the only friend he really has left. That this friend also happens to be high up in the Italian mob and is rumored to possess an extremely rare handgun connected to several murders over the last three years, is completely coincidental.

McNair had latched onto Ray about a year ago, after catching him selling coke in the city. Rather than haul Ray off to jail (which would’ve been preferable in hindsight), McNair offered Ray a deal: fork over information on the Di Natale family, and Ray didn’t go to jail tonight. Keep forking over information on the Di Natale family, and Ray didn’t go to jail in the foreseeable future. But say no? Well, then there’s a pound of drugs lying around the police evidence room just waiting for a home. An amount like that could send someone like Ray to jail for a long, long time.

Asshole. For a second Ray’s afraid he’d said it out loud, but McNair doesn’t react.

McNair makes a move for the gun. Ray slaps a hand on top of it, pinning it to the table.

“This is legit, McNair,” he says. “It has Fabrizio’s fingerprints all over it. He babies the stupid thing, won’t anyone else touch it. And the bullets are an expensive kind that will be easy to trace. This might close up several cases for you, detective. I want something in return.”

McNair narrows his eyes and takes his time responding, as if he’s carefully weighing how much this gift is worth. He gives a very slight nod. “What do you want?”

“I want out of this deal, this informant shit. I’m done giving you information. I’m done with the family, and I’m done with this whole fucking city. And I’m for damn sure not going to jail over planted drugs.” Ray had started off in control, but with every word he feels his anger rise, until he’s shouting. Even Old Sal turns in their direction. Ray takes a calming breath. “I won’t even be hanging around the family anymore, not once they get wind of this.”

“Aw, whatsamatta princess,” McNair quips. “You and the boyfriend break up?”

“Shut the fuck up, McNair,” Ray spits, and McNair stops smiling. Ray’s pissed because it is like a break up. He and Fabrizio had known each other for years, had palled around together as boys even, before he was a made man. But everything’s different now. Fabrizio had thrown Ray to the dogs, so fuck Fabrizio. “Just let me move on and you can have the gun. No more informing. No testifying. Just let me get on with my life.”

“Fine,” McNair says finally. “I’ve grown tired of our little meetings anyway. Consider your request for freedom granted. But don’t expect any favors in the future.”

“Fine,” Ray says through gritted teeth. He lets McNair snatch the gun out from under his hand, watches him tuck it into a pocket in one of his many folds.

“What about protection?” Ray asks.

“From what?”

“From the family! You know how important that gun is. Fabrizio loves that gun. He keeps it locked up and out of sight unless he’s using it or cleaning it. It won’t take them long to know it’s gone, and they’ll figure out it was someone close to the family even faster. I’ll be a dead man when they figure out it’s me.” Saying it out loud lets Ray’s panic loose. He hadn’t been thinking about the future when he made the decision to steal the gun and give it to McNair. He was motivated by his anger at Fabrizio and in this state of red blindness, he hadn’t considered all of the consequences.

It wasn’t the first time. “You and your damn Situations,” his father used to complain. “Consequences, Ray, consequences”

McNair responds with a falsely cheerful mall Santa laugh. “You aren’t worth anything to me, Denton. This?” He indicates the gun in a coat pocket. “This is worth something. This is worth a lot, and gee willikers, I sure am glad you turned it in. But I don’t really need you anymore, not with this in my pocket. It’s like you said, Denton. This gun will open a lot of doors, close a lot of cases.”

Ray doesn’t bother responding.

“Well, Denton,” McNair says as he pushes his chair away from the table with a loud screech, “fuck you. I hope Fabrizio fills you full of holes and tosses you in the river. I ever see you again, I’ll find a reason to do it myself.” He lets out another burst of laughter and stalks out of the diner, the salt and pepper shakers trembling in his wake.

Ray sits at the table a few minutes longer, anxiously tapping his hands and bouncing a knee, trying to decide what to do. He thinks about Fabrizio, about the family. He wonders if they’ll be surprised he betrayed them, or hurt. He’s as good as Fabrizio’s brother as far as the family’s concerned, until recently anyway. But maybe they won’t be surprised or upset. Maybe they even expected it. Do they know him better than he knows himself?

Ray carries his mug to the bar. Old Sal turns away from the grill with a grease-bleeding burger and gravy fries on a plate that had once been part of a set.  Now it’s the only remaining relic, just like the rest of Sal’s mismatched dinnerware. Just like Sal.

Ray slaps a twenty on the bar next to the mug. “Keep the change.” He doesn’t even have time to turn around before Sal speaks up.

“I wouldn’t go out the front, kid,” he mumbles, staring down at the burger as if he’s talking to it instead of Ray. He stuffs a fry into his mouth and wipes gravy off his chin with the back of his hand. “Coupla guys been standing out there since your pal walked in. Cross the street there.”

Ray turns his head almost imperceptibly. He sees them through the filmy windows. The Goons stand below a streetlamp not yet triggered by the gloam, but there’s enough light to see these are two of the family’s usual enforcers. They’re all about six feet tall, about as wide and hairy as gorillas, and have a penchant for expensive black suits and greased hair. They carry cash for bribes in one pocket and brass knuckles for conversations (“Yo! I gotta have a convasation wit you!”) in the other. They’re such stereotypes that Ray can only think of them as The Goons. These two stand still as statues, their hands folded across their guts, sunglassed eyes staring into Old Sal’s dirty windows with a practiced nonchalance.

“Fuck,” Ray hisses.

“I don’t know what they want with you, kid,” Sal says, still talking to his plate, “but I’d guess they ain’t wishing you happy birthday. Nothing good ever comes with them. Been hustling me for years, the bastards.”

Ray’s been to Old Sal’s many times over the years because the food’s cheap and fast, but he’s never actually said more to Sal than “Coffee,” or “Burger no mayo,” or “What do I owe you?” Never heard the man say more than a garbled estimate of a bill (for there is no menu here) or laugh when a customer complained about the cigarette ashes on their plate. But he reevaluates the man now.

Sal’s shirt is littered with set-in grease and ketchup stains. His apron is similarly splotched and yellowed with mustard and time. His gray hair has been rejected by the top of his scalp and runs wildly toward his ears and neck. His face is lined with deep wrinkles and he wears a permanent grimace from glaring down at a hot stove for sixteen hours a day. His hands, Ray notices as Sal picks up the burger for another bite, are callused, burned, and scarred all over. His fingers are crooked, the knuckles gnarled and swollen, as if they’ve been broken many times over and never been treated by a doctor. And Ray knows that this is an accurate assumption if the family has been hassling Sal for years. He wonders if Sal would’ve warned him if he knew Ray worked for the Di Natales.

“Go back towards the end of the bar, round the corner. Office is back there. There’s a door to the alley out back. I’d go that way. And I’d go fast, kid. Real fast.”

Ray bolts for the back door just as The Goons step off the sidewalk, heading for Sal’s front door. As he bursts into the alley, dark with shadows as the sun dips closer to the horizon, he hears their shouts behind him, followed by the sound of their expensive shoes slapping on the tiled floor. He doesn’t look back. He just keeps running, turning, ducking, turning, running. He just keeps going…until he sees the path.

“I can’t believe you work for the DiNatale family!” Kelly says after Ray finishes his recount. She’s heard of them, although her understanding is that they’re more of a gang than a high-class mob. They deal drugs, shoot up the projects and whatnot. Nearly every member of the family and their close associates has been arrested at least once for one crime or another. This alone is enough to garner local fame, but what really gets people fired up is that no one in the family has ever been convicted of anything more serious than loitering. It seems they have enough money or dirt to grease all the squeaky wheels and therefore can conduct their business with relatively little hassle. A little probation here, a little community service there. Pfft. Big deal. But it’s certainly no secret that Fabrizio DiNatale has been named a person of interest in several disappearances and murders. Kelly was even able to conjure up a mental picture of his mug shot from the newspaper as Ray talked about him. She remembers his pale complexion and pinched face, all his features crammed together in the middle of it.

“Worked,” Ray reminds her. “Past tense.”

“Why is that?” Kelly asks curiously. She’s adjusted to this strange place enough to feel boredom as they walk through the trees toward something. Toward some thing.

Ray doesn’t answer, doesn’t actually hear what she’s said. He’s focused on the path ahead. A dread, so powerful he nearly turns and runs, overtakes him.

Kelly’s about to jostle Ray’s arm for a response when she, too, is arrested by the sight ahead, and they both stop.

Their stroll through the fading autumnal woods has come to an abrupt end. Everything around them is now charred and blackened. The trees are twisted together, their naked boughs raised high above their heads as if caught in the middle of a silent scream. Above them lay a ceaselessly gray and cloudy sky. The soft ash of blackened and dead leaves is squishy beneath their shoes and a layer of white mist. The path is still there, as if someone has just plowed through with a leaf blower. But ahead, the path becomes darker and murkier, the vanishing point a dull black pupil in the distance. A permeating cold pulsates from it so strongly that Kelly thinks she can almost hear it in this foreign world. Kelly and Ray cling to each other for warmth.

“What happened?” Kelly wonders.

Ray shakes his head but doesn’t reply. How did things change so quickly? One moment all the colors of fall were there (albeit faded), and the next they weren’t. All color has been replaced with a black and white nuclear wasteland in an instant. Instinctively, he looks behind him, and starts.

The wall is there! They’ve been walking an hour at least (Ray’s best guess). The wall should be buried in the distance, invisible. But it’s about two hundred feet behind them, as equally sooty and singed as its surroundings. Silhouettes of gnarled, dead trees are ghosted onto its bricks as if the wall has been in this spot for ages, at the very moment of the forest’s death. One clear spot in the middle bares a message in large black spray paint. This is the first time Ray sees the capitalized scrawl, but -

Kelly turns around. She sees the wall, sees its message. She lets out a scream so shrill and full of fear that Ray feels her terror to his core. He covers his ears and looks back to the wall, reading its message again.

YOU CAN’T TURN BACK.

NOT NOW.

NOT EVER.

“The wall! What is it doing here?” Kelly grabs at Ray’s hands, pleading with him for answers she knows he doesn’t have. “How? How did it follow us? Where does it come from?”

Kelly jerks away from him and screams at the wall. “Where do you come from? What do you want? What the hell is this about?!”

Ray grabs Kelly’s arm just as she’s about to throw herself at the wall, determined to beat it with her fists in frustration until one of them crumbles to dust. She folds into him and sobs. He wraps his arms around her, not sure what else to do, and lets her get the crying out.

“What does it want?” Kelly asks Ray between sobs. “What does it want from us?”

“I don’t know.”

A silence falls between them, and then -

Kelly lifts her head. She looks down the path. “Did you hear that?”

“What?”

“Listen,” Kelly insists, stiff as a statue in his arms.

Ray closes his eyes. After a moment, he hears a laughter so faint that he might’ve made it up, but -

“There!” Kelly says. “Did you hear the laughing?”

“Yeah…” Ray admits uneasily.

Less than a minute goes by before they hear it again, but this time it’s louder and more distinct. Kelly thinks she can even sense the direction it comes from, as if there’s a straight line from them to the laughter.

“Come on.” She grabs Ray’s hand and starts walking toward the laughter.

Ray resists. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“What are you talking about?” she replies, a sudden hope rising in her like the dawn of a new day. “It’s the first sign of life we’ve seen since…since it.” She refuses to name the source of her fear or look behind her. But the wall is there; she can sense it, stalking them like prey.

“Look at this place,” Ray insists. “Does it look friendly to you? I don’t think so. This place looks dead. It feels dead. I don’t have a good feeling about meeting anything from this place.”

The laughing comes floating to them again, like a scent on the wind. Kelly feels that line between them and the laughter again, and for a reason she cannot name, feels that she must go toward the noise. The noise is good.

“We can’t just stand here,” she tells Ray. “We can’t leave the path - we’ve both decided it’s too dangerous. So, if we can’t leave the path and we can’t… We can’t turn back, so we’ll have to confront whatever is on the path sooner or later. Right?” She looks into his handsome face. “What else are we going to do? Do you have a better idea than just standing here?”

Ray doesn’t and bows under her authoritative gaze. She’s determined to get her way and he senses that she’ll go toward the laughter with or without him. And though he would never admit it out loud, he’s terrified of being left alone in this dead forest.

Kelly starts walking. Ray allows himself to be pulled forward, but he keeps a tight grip on her hand, prepared to stop her at the first sign of danger… He laughs to himself. This whole place is danger.

Kelly leads them down the path. The strange laughter is more frequent but not any louder, as if the source of it moves away from them just as quickly as they move toward it, like a game. The longer Kelly walks, the more sure her steps become, and she quickens her pace. It’s as if she knows exactly what’s ahead. Despite being surrounded by this black wasteland of dead trees, she feels lighter with each step. She’s filled with an overwhelming sense of goodness, of benevolence. But the further Ray walks, the closer they draw to this force, the more sure he is that whatever dwells here is evil, that it’s out there laying it’s trap, and they’re walking right into it.

“There!” Kelly shouts, pointing ahead.

Ray follows Kelly’s outstretched arm and is surprised to see a figure ahead.

An old woman materializes out of the mist. She sits on a stool at the edge of the path. Her back is hunched with age and her feet are tucked up beneath her dark skirt. A black scarf covers her hair, gray strands peeking out here and there. She doesn’t turn her milky eyes toward them as they approach, but stares straight ahead, as if she’s both deaf and blind. She wears a worn grey smock and a motheaten shawl over bony shoulders. Two ancient, gnarled hands are clasped in her lap, like she’s been patiently awaiting their arrival. And as they hear the laughter again, they both know this old woman is the source. Strangely, her mouth doesn’t open. Instead, the woman sits like a statue on a pedestal, a kind of dopey grin on her face as the laughter echoes around her.

Kelly leads them straight up to the woman. She gasps.

“What?” Ray hisses, his nerves on edge.

“It can’t be,” Kelly whispers.

“What, dammit?” Ray demands, his eyes staring hard into the old woman’s, waiting for her to strike out with a monstrous claw at any moment. The woman, however, remains prim and still, shows no sign of noticing their approach, though they stand only a few feet away.

“Meemaw?” Kelly whispers, her disbelief giving way to a soft warmth in her chest.

“Meemaw?” Ray repeats, feeling stupid.

“It’s my grandmother,” Kelly says, her voice still the hushed whisper of disbelief.

Ray looks back and forth between Kelly and the woman on the stool. “Kelly, you can’t be serious!”

Kelly turns to Ray, her tearful eyes joyful and sad at the same time. “It is,” she insists. “I’d know her anywhere, and that laugh… yes, that was her laugh we heard! I’d recognize it anywhere.”

“That isn’t possible! How could she be here? Have you forgotten where we are?”

“I don’t know where we are!” Her outburst startles Ray and he takes a step back. “And that’s exactly why it is possible.” Kelly gestures to the old woman. “My grandmother has been dead for fifteen years or more, but now here she is. Here! Of all places! It’s a miracle, Ray.”

Ray stares back into Kelly’s earnest face, incredulous. “A miracle? Kelly! Look around you! What, you think this is heaven? Get a hold of yourself! Maybe this woman looks like your grandmother, I’ll give you that possibility. But it can’t be your grandmother if she’s dead because that would mean that - that…” Ray trails off, feels the implications of what he’d been about to say, of what Kelly must be thinking.

Kelly quietly finishes his sentence for him. “It would mean that we’re dead too.”

Ray stares back at her, desperate to find a reason to disagree with Kelly, but rather unsettlingly, finds himself unable to. Can she be right? he thinks as a cold shiver tuns through his core. Am I dead? That might explain this place, but… No! It isn’t possible. I’d know. I’d know if I was dead...wouldn’t I?

“And no,” Kelly says, “I’m not saying this place is heaven. But I don’t think it’s hell either.”

“Then what?”

“Purgatory. Or something like that, I’m not really a religious person.” Not anymore, she thinks. But now might be a good time to reconsider. “Maybe this is a place designed to help people come to terms with their own deaths.”

“This is insane!” Ray rubs his fists against the sides of his head, trying to understand what’s happening. But his head suddenly feels very full, his brain swelling with implications that sends his mind into a panic spiral so deep that he feels he’ll never come out of it.

But then that strange laughing begins again, louder, and more real than ever. Ray and Kelly turn to see that the woman on the stool has opened her mouth, is actually laughing now.

“Meemaw?” Kelly slowly reaches for the old woman’s hand.

Ray wishes with every fiber of his being that she’ll stop, that Kelly will realize she doesn’t want to reach out and touch this woman, this thing, because no way is this her grandmother. But he suddenly feels powerless to either move or speak. He feels like he’s staring at the wolf, lying in wait for Little Red Riding Hood in her grandmother’s bed. Where Kelly sees the vestige of beauty that had once been her grandmother, Ray sees that the old woman’s teeth are the yellow of horse teeth, sprouting unevenly from black gums. The rosy color of the lips is a papery gray to Ray’s eyes. A purply black lines the edges of each of her nails, which are broken unevenly, as if she’s just clawed her way out of her grave. He watches as Kelly’s hand inches closer to the crone, feels suddenly sure that she’ll reach out and bite Kelly’s fingers right off with her awful, crooked teeth.

The old woman’s laughter becomes more hysterical. She throws her head back on her shoulders so far that Ray thinks it’ll roll right off. Ray and Kelly both see the unnatural paleness of the skin of her neck and chin, see the strange scars trailing around her neck and down into her shirt, red and ugly. The shawl falls off her shoulders and her headscarf dissolves.

No, Kelly realizes with horror. No, this is not Meemaw, had never been her. This is something of the dead forest in disguise. She begins to see the true hideousness of the woman and realizes that she’s fallen prey to an evil trick. The spell of benevolence is broken but Kelly pulls her hand back too late.

A great black claw bursts from where the old woman’s hand had been and pinches down on Kelly’s retreating wrist like a vulture. She cries out in surprise. The claw is hard and slimy against her skin, covered in a thick red paste that could only be blood. Flecks of pinkish skin litter the monstrous arm as evidence of the deceit.

Kelly tries to jerk her hand away, but an intense tearing sensation won’t allow it. She can neither retrieve her hand nor move away from the stool. The old woman’s face fills her entire field of vision, and as she watches, the skin on the crone’s face begins to bubble and boil. She wants to look away or close her eyes, but she’s paralyzed, helpless while she watches the woman’s face melt away, watches the wrinkled skin slide off in drifts to reveal a mud-caked skeleton beneath. The shawl and clothes drip away, and it now appears that the entire body of the woman - no, thing - has been engulfed in an invisible flame and is melting. The skull and revealed bones turn a purplish black and develop a raised, bumpy skin. Panic surges up from Kelly’s gut and she renews her attempts to get away from the developing monster before her, but again gives in to the pain, afraid she’d pull back a nub instead of her hand.

Just when Kelly thinks the monster will fully materialize out of the remnants of the old woman that had once sat on the stool, the face becomes human again. The reptilian skin fades away as the features of another woman’s face come into view. She has gray hair pulled back into a bun so tight that her eyes, a haunting bluish gray, are slightly slanted, but she’s not elderly. Her thin, pale lips press together, and her black painted eyebrows carve a carefully blank but severe expression.

Kelly looks into this new woman’s eyes and knows her immediately, yet the recognition is incomplete. She understands that she knows this woman but doesn’t know who she is or where they’ve met. She simply knows her. And it’s this knowing that nearly pulls the final strands of Kelly’s sanity apart.

“Purgatory!” The woman shouts derisively with a devilish grin. “You think this is purgatory?” She laughs, but the laughter is now a deep and unearthly sound full of malevolence.

“Dead!” The voice now roars in evil relish. “You will pray for death!”

Kelly remembers something else about the face of the woman in front of her, still gripping her in the vulture’s claw. Whomever this woman is, Kelly is utterly terrified of her. The terror the wall had previously inspired in Kelly pales in comparison to the horror she now experiences as she stares into the cold steely eyes of this woman that she knows and yet does not know.

She screams then, and everything goes black.

Kelly comes to, finally, and Ray is filled with a relief more powerful than any he has ever known. He thought she was dead - really dead - and that he’d have to face whatever horrors remained in this place alone. After what he’s just witnessed, he knows what the monster said will prove to be true; he’ll wish for death, especially if he has to continue alone. He still might.

“Kelly,” he says as her head rolls and he lightly pats her cheek. “Kelly, wake up. You’re alright.”

She opens her eyes and sees Ray’s face floating above her, perfect and handsome. For the briefest second, she forgets where they are and who he is, and is comforted by the sight of a handsome stranger. Then reality comes crashing back and she sits up so quickly that she nearly headbutts him. Her eyes dart around, see the path and its blackened, dead forest around them, and her panic returns.

“It’s gone,” Ray assures her with a gentle hand on her shoulder to stay her. He doesn’t add that after Kelly fainted, he’d watched the rest of the monster bubble and melt into the ground, its hideous body seeping down the stool and soaking into the ground beneath it in one black, sludgy puddle. He doesn’t tell her that he was unable to tear his eyes from the sight, as if the monster was somehow forcing him to watch, relishing Ray’s horror as if it were the monster’s lifeblood. And he definitely doesn’t tell her that he’d screamed too, and that he wished he’d been lucky enough to faint.

Kelly’s eyes land on the stool, still sitting on the side of the path a few feet away from them. She sees the black splotches, some still dripping from the stool into the steaming puddle underneath as it’s slowly absorbed by the ground. She looks at Ray, opens her mouth to ask what happened to the monster, but his lips press together so tightly that the edges of them turn white, and he shakes his head very slightly. He doesn’t want to tell her, which means she doesn’t want to know.

“How long was I out?” she asks instead as Ray helps her to her feet.

He shrugs. “I dunno. Do you feel okay?”

“As okay as I felt before,” she replies, rubbing her sore wrist, grateful it’s still attached. “What now? Keep going?” Kelly looks down the path, at its cold blackness in the distance, filled with reluctance and fear.

“Not yet. I think we’re supposed to check that out first.” He nods at something behind her.

Kelly turns around and sees a small clearing that she’s sure hadn’t been there before. The grey light falls into the clearing uninterrupted, neither good nor bad. However, the edge of the clearing is ringed with green vegetation and tall living trees. Their leaves sparkle in the grey light, and Kelly realizes she’s seeing their true, vibrant colors, and not the faded autumnal ones from before. The rest of this other world of the wall remains dead, but this little clearing is alive.

Ray is reminded of the ubiquitous Thomas Kinkade paintings from the framing store at the mall. At the center of the clearing lay a small brick cottage that Kelly knows will have a luxuriously carpeted and furnished first floor with a small dining room. There will be a bay window with lots of pillows and cushions where her mom curls up on Sunday mornings with her coffee and the crossword puzzle. Upstairs will be a simple attic bedroom with one lone window overlooking the modest front lawn, painstakingly fertilized by her father every year. At the back of the first floor will be one small bedroom, shared by two sisters, with a window overlooking the river beyond, which will be a foggy bog in this early evening light.

“What?” Ray asks when he sees the look on Kelly’s face.

“This is my childhood home,” she replies. “This is where I grew up.”

Ray lets out a frustrated sigh. Hasn’t she learned anything? “Kelly, I -”

“No, this time I’m sure,” she interrupts. Kelly takes his hand. “I promise. When I saw, or thought I saw my grandmother, I had this weird-good feeling inside. It was overpowering and I felt like I was being compelled to believe I was seeing my grandmother. When I saw the claw, I realized that I’d been tricked, but this,” she turns and points, “this is my house. It really is. Don’t ask me how it’s possible, Ray. It just is.”

Ray huffs, still disbelieving, but doesn’t object. “I guess we better check it out then.”

“No. You wait here.”

“What? You can’t go in there alone!” Ray’s real objection is that he doesn’t want to stay out here by himself, but he certainly isn’t going to tell Kelly that.

“I think that I’m supposed to go in there alone,” Kelly explains. “Think about it. That old woman looked like my grandmother. And that other face...whoever it was, I knew it somehow. And now, here’s my childhood house. I think that it’s here for me. I think it has something to do with the purpose of this place.”

Ray admits that Kelly’s train of thought makes some sense, but he isn’t satisfied. “It doesn’t matter. I’m with you in this place. If you think this house is here for a reason, then I’m also here for a reason. You aren’t going in there alone.”

There’s an intense stare-off before Kelly blinks and looks away. “Fine.” If she didn’t feel so guilty about leading Ray to the terrifying monster-woman, she might continue objecting. Besides, maybe he’s right; maybe she needs him.

Together they walk through the clearing toward the cottage. A set of narrow tire tracks leads to a natural balcony of trees next to the house. A stone pathway, lined with fragrant hollyhocks and rose bushes, leads from here to the door, painted a soft blue. Beside the door, a large honeysuckle bush climbs up the side of the cottage and has begun eating at the bottom of a window frame. Although Kelly and Ray walk slowly, they reach the front stoop in a matter of seconds, and stand stupidly beneath a brick porte-cochere just large enough to protect visitors from the rain.

“Um…,” Ray says, “do we knock or…”

Kelly shrugs and reaches for the knob. It’s unlocked. She pushes the door open and steps into the musty dimness of the cottage. Ray follows, leaving the door open in case they need to make a quick escape. Despite the overwhelming sense of life coming from this cottage, he cannot escape the dread that’s settled in his gut.

The front door opens onto a small sitting room carpeted from wall to wall in a lush red, save for the patch of dark stone beneath them. Ray notices three sets of boots here, sitting below three jackets hanging on the wall. Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear he thinks before he can stop himself. A cushy, pale yellow loveseat sits against the same wall as the door, just below a picture window, which opens over a flower box of colorful wildflowers. On the adjacent wall are a brown leather recliner and a second loveseat. Directly before them a wooden staircase leads into the darkness of the second floor. The far wall is completely taken up by a large stone hearth where a roaring fire blazes. For the first time since arriving in this strange world, Ray and Kelly feel warmth. But this isn’t a pleasant sensation. The heat in here is stifling, making the air thick and hard to breathe, and each of them imagines the large tongues of flame reaching out for them, beckoning them to climb in.

“Come on,” Kelly says. She leads Ray past the staircase. In the space beneath the stairs is a narrow doorway. 

Ducking under the jamb after Kelly, Ray sees they’ve entered the kitchen. It’s small and full of the organized chaos of a person who likes to cook, but not cleaning up. The appliances are old and out of date, but the yellow paint makes the room cheery and comforting. Opposite the kitchen is the dining room, which lay on the other side of the fireplace so that both rooms can take advantage of the same fire. The room is just large enough for a table to seat four and a small China cabinet where the wedding set rests between special occasions. The cushioned bay window makes the room feel less claustrophobic. In one of the back corners is an old wooden highchair that some may have thought out of place, but which fit within this cottage perfectly.

Kelly walks between these two rooms to a short, darkened hallway at the back of the house. The floor is uneven on the threshold so that they step up into the hallway, a sign of its later addition to the cottage, and Ray trips into Kelly. 

She turns back and glares at him, perturbed.

“Sorry.” He shrugs and looks past her, into the hall.

There are two doors. One leads to a small, unremarkable bathroom. The other opens onto the cozy back bedroom shared by Kelly and her sister. At present, the door is closed. A small plaque hangs on it. Painted white with decorative beveled edges, it reads “Kelly and Cynthia’s Room” in pink calligraphy.

“Cynthia…” Kelly whispers, and the name sounds foreign to her. She hasn’t thought about Cynthia in a very long time, had in fact, forgotten she’d ever existed. She can conjure up no memory more recent than when she was four and Cynthia was one. And she knows it’s this memory that lay on the other side of her bedroom door. Cynthia is waiting for her in there, waiting to be remembered.

“Well,” Ray says when Kelly doesn’t open the door.

Kelly nods and grabs the knob. Like a Band-Aid, she thinks, tear it right off. She throws the door open.

The room is painted baby pink. Directly across from them is a windowed back door with lace curtains, the frame painted a complimentary mint green. On the adjacent wall is a window painted in the same colors and with matching lace curtains. Below the window is a crib where the sleeping Cynthia lay, a little lump under green Tinkerbell sheets. Only the top of her head peeks out, her soft hair aglow in the grey half-light.

Opposite the crib is Kelly’s daybed, bedecked in blankets and pillows covered in the faces of Disney princesses. An identical window allows more of the grey light to filter in, and a shaft of light lay over the bed like a blanket. Sitting in the middle of this slice of light is a little girl.

Ray jumps backward into the door jamb, startled. “Who the hell is that?” He darts his eyes around and realizes with a sinking feeling that Kelly has disappeared. She’d been standing just in front of him a moment ago, just before he saw the little girl, but now she’s gone.

“Kelly?” he calls, trying to keep the rising panic out of his voice. “Kelly!” His voice falls flatly in the room, with no power to echo to other parts of the house. When he hears no response, Ray turns back to the girl, still sitting silently on the bed.

Her red hair is a long and frizzy mess, tangled in her sleep. Her intense green eyes focus on the crib across the room, glaring at it as if she hopes it’ll burst into flames, and radiating hate into the atmosphere of the room like heat. Her pale lips press tightly together and some of her freckles almost disappear in the resulting pallor. Her jaw moves slowly back and forth as she grinds her teeth, the sound nearly intolerable in Ray’s ears as he watches her clench and unclench her fists.

Ray takes a few tentative steps toward the girl, who continues to stare at the crib as if he were invisible. He kneels in front of her and studies her features. He gasps. It can’t be…

“Kelly?” he whispers.

The little girl shifts her eyes to him, and Ray nearly cries out, falling back onto his hands. Something about the look in her eyes strikes fear into him, and he backs away from her like a crab until he feels the wall behind him.

Yet there’s also recognition in those eyes, and there’s no mistaking his conclusion; this little girl is four-year-old Kelly. And adult Kelly is now inside this little girl, traveling back to her childhood.

Little Kelly rubs her eyes, waking from a fitful night’s sleep. Vague images of teddy bears and teacups are interspersed with the constant sounds of a baby’s torturous wailing and the near blinding light of the hall as the bedroom door is opened and closed repeatedly, her parents taking turns trying to soothe baby Cynthia during the night. Neither parent took notice of how well or not well she’d been sleeping. When she asked her father for a glass of water, he’d replied impatiently, “You know where the bathroom is, Kelly,” and then settled down with Cynthia in the rocking chair, hugging the little girl to his chest in a way that made Kelly’s stomach hurt.

How Kelly hates that rocking chair. Whenever her parents are in that chair with the baby, cooing to her and smiling at her, Kelly becomes invisible. She sometimes wonders if her parents had ever been like that with her, if her mother had ever held her in that rocking chair and cared for her the same way, looked at her with endless love and forgiveness; she doesn’t really think so. She’s begun to think that maybe her parents don’t even like her, much less love her, and maybe never had.

Kelly looks at her bedside table and sneers at the Minnie Mouse clock with the cracked plastic over the face. She hates Minnie Mouse more than she hates the rocking chair. She’d never taken to Mickey and his crew, but the theme for the baby shower had been Minnie Mouse and the entire room had been decked out in familiar white and red polka dot pattern that had spilled over into the rest of the house with the baby’s clothes and her toys, even her diapers. Kelly had tried to express her dissatisfaction to her parents by ripping the eyes out of one of the Minnie Mouse doll given to her at the shower, a pity gift from one of her mother’s friends. Her parents had thrown the doll in the trash and never mentioned it again. A few weeks later, after Kelly scratched some of the eyes out of the little Minnies on the wallpaper and thrown the clock at the baby’s crib while the baby napped, her parents finally conceded to tearing the wallpaper down and repainting the room. It was a small improvement, but it didn’t placate Kelly, who constantly takes all of the baby’s things, especially the ones with Minnie Mouse on them, and meticulously places them on the other side of the invisible line in their shared room. Sometimes she thinks about destroying these things too, but with each of her little outbursts, her parents pay less and less attention to her. She’s fearful they might send her away and forget about her forever if she destroys anything else.

It’s nearly six in the morning now and the sun is just beginning to brighten the back windows, but it’s Saturday. Her parents are in their bedroom upstairs, catching up on their interrupted sleep. Without the threat of work or church looming, they’ll sleep in and probably can’t hear the baby’s stupid whining. In fact, they probably won’t hear anything until closer to eight, when Kelly knows Spongebob Squarepants comes on. She likes to watch it at full volume because it will usually rouse her parents.

The baby makes another simpering noise and Kelly’s attention returns to the crib with irritation. She throws her covers back and stomps across the room. Thinking of all the times in the night when the same noises had woken her up and drawn her parents to the baby, Kelly becomes angry. After all, they never come when she calls. Or if they do, it’s to tell her to be quiet or she’ll disturb the baby.

Peering into the crib, Kelly sees the baby still laying down with her eyes closed. As she watches, the baby’s mouth opens and makes another whining noise. Kelly realizes the baby is dreaming. The baby smiles and giggles in her sleep. Anyone else might have remarked how adorable this is, but not Kelly. Kelly only becomes angrier. To get the baby to stop the noise, she’ll have to wake her up. But then she’d have to entertain the baby and be responsible for her until her parents get up, or else the baby might just start crying, which makes it all worse. What she wants is for the baby to be quiet so she can go back to sleep. Actually, what she really wants is to go back to a time when there was no baby, no Cynthia, when the world still felt good and right, and when she wasn’t woken up in the middle of the night just to be ignored. But she’s old enough to know this isn’t possible.

Kelly stares down into the crib for a while, watching the baby sleep and make stupid baby noises. The baby lay on her stomach, her head turned to the side and her nose only an inch or so from the corner of the crib and the soft bedding. She stares hard at the baby in her little pink and white polka dot onesie, watching her breathe as the fabric of the baby’s clothes expands and falls. And as Kelly continues staring down at Cynthia, she wonders if the baby is real, if she is really alive. Though the baby is breathing, Kelly has a lifelike doll that coos and drinks from a bottle, just like the baby in the crib. Her doll has the same rosy cheeks, the same pudgy hands, the same little fat rolls in her legs. What makes this baby in the crib so different?

The baby stirs then and starts crying, perhaps having a nightmare. Her cries become louder and more tortuous with each intake of breath, as if she’s in real distress, and Kelly jams her hands over her ears. Cynthia cries and cries, but her parents don’t come, still dead asleep upstairs. The baby props herself up on her arms and looks at her big sister expectantly. As Kelly watches, the baby’s mouth opens wider than Kelly thought possible, and she sees the tiny uvula at the back of her throat vibrate with the shrill cry. Kelly is again reminded of her doll. A few months ago, the doll had malfunctioned, continually cooing uncontrollably. She’d buried the doll under a mound of pillows to muffle the sound until her mother yanked it from Kelly and pulled the batteries out of a compartment in its back, silencing the doll. Kelly looks at the cushiony corner of the crib again.

Kelly’s anger and frustration suddenly break over her at the continuous sound of this doll-like crying, and she lurches down into the crib. She puts a hand on the baby’s head and pushes it down into the corner. She doesn’t push too hard, just enough to muffle the sound of the crying until one of her parents comes to the rescue and takes the batteries out. But they don’t come. And the longer the baby cries, the louder and more shrill the sound becomes. The baby struggles a little, tries to lift her head. Kelly pushes more firmly, until the sounds of the crying are deadened.

Kelly doesn’t know how long she stands there, holding her sister’s face against the bedding. Time seems to pass slowly, but she holds her sister’s head down until the baby finally slows her movements and breaths, until she finally stops crying, and then stops moving.

With relief, Kelly finally lets go. She looks at the baby in the crib again and notices that it now looks even more doll-like than before, the skin more plasticy and the face very still.

Without another thought, Kelly walks back to her bed, crawls under the covers and falls into a deep sleep. She doesn’t hear another thing until her mother’s screaming wakes her.

Kelly pops up like a spring, alarmed by the sound. Her father rushes into the room a moment later.

“Karen, what’s wrong?” he demands as he rushes to his wife. “What’s wrong?!”

“She’s dead!” Kelly’s mother screams as she turns to her husband, cradling the now cold, still body of Cynthia. She falls into him, sobbing uncontrollably. “Our baby is dead!”

Immediately, her father turns to Kelly, the whites of his eyes suddenly a blinding white compared to his black, hatred-filled eyes. “What did you do, Kelly? What did you do!”

Kelly, who had started crying as her mother’s heart-wrenching screams filled the room, looks at her father. “You didn’t come,” she says. “The baby was crying, and you didn’t come to take the batteries out. Why didn’t you take the batteries out, Daddy? Why?”

Ray observes the entire memory like a fly on the wall of Little Kelly’s mind. He’s not part of what happens before him, but merely an invisible witness. Although he’s aware of his corporeal existence, his body disappears into the background of Kelly’s memory, blends into the wallpaper as though he’s not there at all. This allows him some small measure of detachment. This is good, because as he watches this nightmare unfold, he becomes more and more disturbed and afraid. He’s never considered himself the fatherly type, and doesn’t have the kind of special affinity for children other people seem to inherently have. But watching Kelly murder her own infant sister simply because she found her annoying is just as horrifying to him as it would be to any parent. So strong is the primal sense of protection of all that is innocent, he tries to get up, to stop her, but his body is rendered as immobile as it is invisible. And just as he’d been unable to look away or run from the melting monster outside, he cannot avoid this horror either.

As Ray continues to watch and listen to the scene before him, his body slowly returns to existence. His senses heighten as feeling returns. The mother’s screams are amplified until he feels them, echoing inside his head, and he clamps his hands over his ears to try and shut them out. The woman’s heartache is strong; her anguish is his anguish, and the tears come. It’s as if it’s his child who lay dead, killed by a little girl who can’t even understand what she’s done.

How long he sits there listening, trying not to listen, Ray isn’t sure, but finally the sound of the heart-wrenching sobs fades. In fact, as Ray unclamps his ears and opens his eyes, he realizes everything is beginning to fade. The bright green of the walls is less distinct, a cooler mint than before, faded like the leaves on the path. Then the pink polka dots and the Tinkerbell sheets follow, and then the shafts of sunlight filtering through the fading curtains dissipates. The wall behind him suddenly disappears, and as he watches, Kelly’s parents mist away like a disturbed reflection on water. Everything pixelates and disappears until only he and little Kelly remain in a sea of pale, mixing colors.

Little Kelly looks at him then, but no. No, this isn’t little Kelly anymore.

As Kelly remains seated, the fading toddler bed is replaced with a grey leather couch cradling her in its sumptuous cushions. Her arms and legs lengthen. Her features mature and become more defined. Her toddler chubbiness retreats, and her freckles darken and spread. The green in her eyes brightens to the emeralds Ray recognizes from their first meeting. Her red hair is untamed but beautiful, like a glass of spilled wine cascading over her shoulders, and she twirls a strand of it around long fingers with sharp manicured nails. She’s both beautiful and repulsive; her beauty is tainted by the ugly expression she wears like a permanent mask, a kind of grimace. Her lips are pressed so tightly they’re beginning to turn white, and he hears her grinding teeth as she works her jaw back and forth. One arm lay across an attractively feminine form, those sharp nails digging into the flesh there. Her eyes, hard and angry, stare straight ahead. There’s nothing open or friendly here, nothing of the friendly woman who coaxed him into talking on the path. But…but he does see a hint of the frantic woman he first met hours (or days?) ago.

Her parents materialize on either side of Kelly, though they’ve aged considerably and, Ray thinks, not very well. Her father has gained a substantial amount of weight and lost most of his hair. What few wisps remain are prematurely grey. He sits, his shoulders slumped forward over his gut, like a man defeated, while he picks at his cuticles in silence. His arms bare jagged parallel scars from elbow to wrist, and Ray bets there are more like that under his clothes, the kind you might get as your teenaged daughter rakes her nails over your skin while you fend her off.

In contrast, Kelly's mother is unnaturally thin and pale. Her once beautiful face is as equally marred as her daughter’s, but instead of mean hate, her features are rife with sorrow. Her graying hair is a matted bird’s nest, as if she hadn’t bothered to look in a mirror on the way out that morning. Her neck and left cheek both have the unmistakable scratches of Kelly’s manicured nails, and they’re red and angry, fresh. She wrings a heavily used and wrinkled handkerchief in her dainty hands.

Daughter and parents sit together on the couch, but with perceptible gaps between them, as if there’s an invisible force field around Kelly, propelling all away from her. As Kelly’s mother begins to speak, Ray feels that strange sensation again, as if he’s become part of the wallpaper.

“I don’t know what else to do,” Kelly’s mother says. “It’s been… It’s been ten years since Cynthia… But every year it gets worse. Every day it gets worse. She’s been kicked out of every school. She has restraining orders and arrests for assault - it’s by the sheer grace and forgiveness of God that she hasn’t been sent to prison or an asylum. What are we supposed to do? Tell me, what can we do?” Her voice is desperate. It’s the voice of a woman who has grown to both hate her daughter and fear her, and yet remains unable to abandon her. “Her anger is just out of control. It’s only a matter of time before she kills someone else… Lord knows she’s tried…

“We keep her home to protect others, you understand,” Kelly’s mother continues. “It’s not safe for her to be around other people. It’s not even safe for us. There have been times, more and more lately, that I’ve - we’ve - considered… But, no. It isn’t right! No matter what, it isn’t right!” She gives into her tears then, buries her face in her handkerchief and sobs.

Kelly’s father startles, as if his wife’s sobs disturbed him from a daydream. He looks to his wife, and for a moment he seems not to recognize her. As his consciousness returns to the room and the situation at hand, he considers reaching behind Kelly to comfort his wife. At the last second, he thinks better of it, as if worried he might pull back a nub, and puts his hands in his lap.

Across from the family, a woman in a high-backed leather armchair leans forward. She has grey hair pulled back into a bun so tight that her eyes, a haunting bluish gray, are slightly slanted. But she’s not elderly. Her thin, pale lips press together, and her black painted eyebrows carve a carefully blank but severe expression. She leans her elbows in her lap and clasps her hands, clicking the bright red nails of her index fingers together, as if in deep thought. She smiles then. It’s not a pretty smile, not a happy smile. It’s a smile that can only be described as...devilish.

Ray knows this woman. He met her a bit ago. This is the woman who crawled out of the monster’s skin on a stool, on a path, in a very strange forest.

“Have you been doing as I asked?” the woman asks in a faintly admonishing tone that’s both feminine and deep at the same time. “Have you been following my advice at home?”

“Of course!” Kelly’s mother insists. “We have done everything you’ve said, exactly as you instructed. Nothing works. We can’t fix her, Doctor Aubrey. It isn’t possible! Look at us. Look at me!” She points to the ugly marks on her face. “You have no idea how hard it was just to get her in the car this morning to come here.”

Kelly’s lips twitch, stifling a cruel smile. Doctor Aubrey twitches an eyebrow in return. She’d noticed.

“I understand your frustration,” Doctor Aubrey says carefully. “And I feel it also. It’s been a long time since I’ve met such a... difficult patient as your Kelly. I do wish you would reconsider signing her over to my care…” Both of Kelly’s parents shake their heads. They aren’t willing to expose anyone else to the danger that is their daughter, half convinced that this is some kind of cosmic punishment for what they had allowed to happen to Cynthia, for the mistakes they’d made with Kelly when she was still young and malleable as clay.

Doctor Aubrey continues, “I must say that I do not understand your reluctance…but as you wish. What I would like to ask of you today is that you leave Kelly in here with me, alone, just for a little while.”

Kelly’s parents exchange an uneasy glance.

“There is nothing to be worried about - well nothing to be too worried about, I assure you.” Doctor Aubrey chuckles. It’s unsettling rather than reassuring. “It will be perfectly safe. I am going to try a hypnosis session with Kelly today. Although she may shout or cry out, her body will be essentially paralyzed under the hypnosis.”

“I don’t know…” Kelly’s mother twists her handkerchief.

Kelly doesn’t object. Somewhere inside, she understands that she’s a dangerous person. She doesn’t know why she’s this way, doesn’t want to be this way. But she can’t get her body or mind to cooperate with her all the time. This morning was a perfect example.

Kelly never enjoys going to the doctor - any doctor. The dentist, the general practitioner, the psychiatrist - they all do the same thing. They all poke at you and prod you, all trying to find some orifice they can use to get inside you, see inside you. And Kelly doesn’t like that. She doesn’t want anyone to see what’s inside her, to read her thoughts or watch her dreams. It’s no secret that she’s a dangerous person, but no one knows that she’s also a bad person. No one but Kelly. Although it’s true there were times when she hurt someone even though she hadn’t wanted to, there are far more times when she hurt someone because she wanted to. Because she enjoyed it. Because she relished all sounds that came from another person’s pain. And she doesn’t want anyone to know that. If anyone knew that it would mean the wrecking of the last barrier between her and being institutionalized. The last barrier between her and the pokers and the prodders. The last barrier between her and Doctor Aubrey.

Kelly’s parents have been bringing her to see Doctor Aubrey, their most recent cry for help, every week for the last six months. From the very start, there was something about the doctor that unnerved Kelly. She couldn’t really put her finger on why. She sometimes wondered if Doctor Aubrey was lighting up some kind of invisible radar inside her head - like Hello Dangerous Bad Person! Another Dangerous Bad Person has appeared at two o’clock! Beware! It’s for this reason that she puts up a fight when her parents try getting her into the car for one of their appointments. Because if her radar is right, then she’s also pretty sure Doctor Aubrey will see through her, will be able to look right into her head and into her brain and know that she’s a Dangerous Bad Person, and then her parents will leave her here, in Doctor Aubrey’s “care” - a horror which fills Kelly with a powerful fear. Her parents had tried lying to her about where they were going to make it easier, but she’d caught onto that fairly quickly. Bad. Dangerous. Not stupid.

This morning, however, Kelly had been in a good mood. Seeing Doctor Aubrey would suck, but only for an hour, and then she could go home and do as she pleased. But as her parents were leading her to the car, walking beside her like they were escorting a prisoner to the execution chamber, she’d looked over at her mother. Something inside snapped. It was the hollow expression in her mother’s eyes, the deadness there that Kelly saw. The deadness that reminded Kelly how much her parents hated her, still mourned for their lost Cynthia ten fucking years later, like fucking crybabies. Kelly’s the one who’s still here, and all they care about is Baby Cynthia. Kelly’s anger surged over her, a red tsunami of emotional pain. Baby Cynthia was dead, dead and rotting and full of worms. But Kelly is right here! Just as she has always been. Just as she had been before Cynthia, and during Cynthia, and after Cynthia! Look at me! She’d wanted to scream. Look at me and see me! Stop seeing what I did and just see me!

That was when she’d lunged at her mother, tried to scratch those dead eyes right out of her pale, sad face so that she’d never have to look into them again. Even after her father restrained her, Kelly huffed furiously, like a caged animal. Eventually the wave of anger ebbed and faded away, taking all the heightened emotion with it. When her father finally let her go, she felt remorse – that he’d stopped her before she’d succeeded.

So now here she sits in Doctor Aubrey’s office, silent and petulant between her parents. When Doctor Aubrey suggested that her parents leave the two of them alone, Kelly felt a small seed of fear, but pushed it away. This woman hasn’t given up on her yet, and her parents haven’t had her committed to the doctor’s care. Yet. If a few minutes under hypnosis could avoid that, could perhaps even make her better, then it’s worth it. Whatever bad feelings Doctor Aubrey inspires in Kelly, it’s worth it. Right?

“Well, I…” Kelly’s mother says slowly, trying to decide if she can leave Kelly with the doctor, if the both of them would be safe. Just the two of them in a small room, together.

Kelly’s father finally speaks up. “It’s just hypnosis.” He shrugs at his wife. “What’s the harm? And we’ll be right outside if anything…” He steals a glance at Kelly, still a statue between them and his voice trails off.

“Exactly,” Doctor Aubrey says in her soothingly deep voice. She gets to her feet then, Kelly’s parents feeling compelled to stand as well. Doctor Aubrey puts a hand on one shoulder each, leading them to the door. “It’s just a little hypnosis session. However, I must caution you. You might hear some disturbing things coming from this room, but you must not come in, no matter what. It could be extremely dangerous to interrupt a hypnosis session, might even cause some patients to become violent, and we certainly don’t want that.”

“No,” Kelly’s mother looks back at her daughter and then to Doctor Aubrey. “We certainly don’t want that.”

“Good.”

They reach the door and Doctor Aubrey ushers Kelly’s parents into the waiting room. “Denise,” she says to her assistant just outside the door, “would you please get our guests some tea or coffee while they wait? And turn up the radio a bit please.” With a nod, Doctor Aubrey turns back to Kelly and closes the door. There is a soft click that Kelly knows is the lock being engaged, and it’s this portentous sound that makes the panic rise up inside her. It’s so strong that she nearly rockets off the couch and puts a Kelly-shaped hole in the wall.

“Now,” Doctor Aubrey says with her devilish grin and a glint in her eyes that Kelly swears is red, “Let’s begin.”

“Can you hear me, Kelly?” Doctor Aubrey’s voice is a menacing echo, coming from a long way off. “Kelly?”

“Yes.” Her own voice, quiet and dreamlike.

“Open your eyes, Kelly,” Doctor Aubrey’s disembodied voice orders. “Open your eyes and look at me.”

Kelly doesn’t want to open her eyes, does not want to look at Doctor Aubrey, but she is compelled. The harder she tries to keep her eyes closed, the more they want to open. She can’t hold out, and when she opens her eyes, she sees Doctor Aubrey, and only Doctor Aubrey.

She’s sitting a few feet away, in front of Kelly, in her tall wing-backed chair that’s always reminded Kelly of a throne the way Doctor Aubrey places herself in it, rigid and straight as a drill sergeant. And though she knows the chair to be made of a leather that can only be described as shit brown, she sees that the chair is now a black shiny leather, and it’s larger, nearly swallowing the doctor up in its creases and buttons. Instead of her customary white blouse and knee-length pencil skirt, the doctor herself is bedecked in all black. She wears a tight turtleneck, buttoned and sealed all the way up to her chin. Her black skirt bleeds into black knee-high boots with ankle-breaking heels. Her normally pale lips are painted with black lipstick to match her black eyebrows. Her salt and peppery hair remains in a tight bun, pulling at her eyes. She taps a long black fingernail on the armrest, the tap, tap, tap echoing off the walls.

Except there aren’t walls here. They’ve vanished, leaving behind a ceaseless white. An institutional whiteness in which Doctor Aubrey and Kelly are utterly alone.

“Can you see me, Kelly?”

Kelly’s eyes are forced back to Doctor Aubrey. “Yes.”

“And how do I look to you, Kelly?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t understand.”

“Well,” Doctor Aubrey says with an amused smile, “do I look like I always look? Do I look like me? Or do I look different now?”

Kelly stares back at the doctor, who seems to know some secret that Kelly does not. “Well, you do look a little different.”

“Different how, Kelly?”

“Well, the walls are gone,” Kelly says. “And all of the furniture and your office things.”

“Not the room, Kelly,” Doctor Aubrey admonishes. “Look at me. How do I look to you?”

As Kelly observes the doctor again, she notices that her appearance has changed. It isn’t that her outfit is different or that she wears black lipstick instead of red. This time there is a change in her skin. It’s become dry, large skin cells becoming visible, like the scales of a lizard.

“You look old,” Kelly says, uneasy. How would the doctor feel about what she’s seeing? Would the doctor be insulted? Or would she change Kelly’s diagnosis, finally convince her parents to turn Kelly over to her care?

“You can be honest, Kelly,” Doctor Aubrey says. “It’s important to tell the truth, or I won’t be able to help you. So, go ahead. Tell me how you see me. I look old. What else?”

“You’re dressed in all black,” Kelly continues, “and your skin is really dry. You have black make up on, and your chair, your chair is… it’s huge.” In fact, as she speaks, Kelly watches the chair grow even larger, until it looks like a giant’s chair and Doctor Aubrey is comically small.

“Good,” Doctor Aubrey smiles again, but it’s a cold smile, a knowing smile. A smile that makes Kelly afraid. “Allow me to explain, Kelly. While you were being put under, I gave you some suggestions. Do you remember what they were?”

Kelly shakes her head. She remembers her parents leaving the room and the fear the sight gave her. She remembers leaning her head back as Doctor Aubrey began to count down from one hundred. But things got blurry after that, and all she remembers is this endless, white room.

“I asked you to be honest with yourself and to be honest with me. Say what you really feel. Express what you really think. And to see me how you really see me.”

“Really see you? I don’t—”

“You don’t like me, Kelly,” Doctor Aubrey interrupts, “do you?”

Kelly hesitates, but again she is compelled. The more she tries to avoid the truth, the more compelled she is to speak it, until it finally bursts out of her mouth with more force than she expected. “No.”

“Why don’t you like me, Kelly?” Doctor Aubrey leans forward with her hands on her knees, her grey eyes boring into Kelly so hard she can feel the woman’s pinpoint gaze. And as Kelly thinks about her response, she sees that Doctor Aubrey is larger, seeming to take up more space in her giant leather chair.

“I don’t know.”

Doctor Aubrey laughs. “You know, Kelly. You know, but you are afraid. Stop being afraid to tell me the truth. I won’t punish you for being honest. After all, if you aren’t honest with me, then how can I help you?”

Kelly knows Doctor Aubrey is right, so she stops holding back her real thoughts, and the words flow like water from her mouth. “I think that you might be a bad person. I think that you like your job not because you want to help people, but because you like to hurt people.”

As Kelly talks, Doctor Aubrey’s smile widens, and she grows larger still. And the larger her smile, her body becomes, the more Kelly fears her.

“Keep going,” Doctor Aubrey encourages. “I know there’s more in there.”

“It’s something about your eyes,” Kelly says. “Your eyes and your smile. My parents trust you, but I… There’s something there, in your eyes, that you’re trying to hide. There’s something black and shiny and oily there. My parents don’t see it, but I do.” And even as Kelly lets the truth flow between her lips, she watches the doctor grow larger still. Doctor Aubrey’s eyes grow darker, and her smile grows wider until Kelly thinks it might rip her face right in half.

“And?” Doctor Aubrey prompts, her voice deepening as she grows and grows and grows. “Don’t stop now, Kelly. You’ve almost told me the truth this time.”

“I think,” Kelly says, the words building up behind her mouth. Her fear of Doctor Aubrey is writhing under her skin like a heap of maggots. But her fear doesn’t trump the hypnosis suggestions.

“I think,” she says again, looking into her lap to avoid the doctor’s intense gaze. “I think...that you’re a bad person. I think that you hurt people, and that you enjoy it.”

“You know what I have to say to that, Kelly?” Doctor Aubrey asks, towering over Kelly in her wingback chair, leaning down over Kelly, her huge pale face and black lips and painted eyebrows hovering over little Kelly.

Kelly, trembling, shakes her head, looking back up at the giant before her.

“It takes one to know one.”

Kelly isn’t surprised. She’s not dismayed or confused. Instead, she feels like a missing piece has fallen into place. 

Just as Doctor Aubrey had ordered her to tell the truth, Kelly knows that Doctor Aubrey is also telling the truth.

“I gave you another suggestion as you were being put under,” Doctor Aubrey says now, a snakelike tongue darting between her lips. “Do you remember?”

“No.” Kelly begins to cry.

“I told you not only to see me as you really see me, Kelly,” Doctor Aubrey explains, “but also to see yourself as you really are. To see your true self.”

Kelly looks at Doctor Aubrey. Her skin is no longer pale or dry. Now it’s black and scaley, hard as an alligator’s skin. Her broad reptilian smile spreads from one side of her flattened head to the other, sharp teeth decorating bloodred gums. As Kelly watches, her hair falls out and Doctor Aubrey’s transformation from woman to dragon is complete. She points a long black claw at a mirror.

“See yourself as you really are, Kelly,” Doctor Aubrey says, her voice matching the hiss of the creature she’s become.

Kelly looks toward the mirror. She doesn’t get up.

“Look in the mirror Kelly,” Doctor Aubrey commands. “See who you really are. See what your parents see, what the world sees. What I see.”

As before, Kelly is unable to resist the doctor’s suggestion. Her legs lift her out of the chair without her permission. She walks haltingly to the mirror, fighting each step, until at last, she stands before the mirror.

At first, Kelly sees her familiar reflection staring back at her. But then a small scar snakes across her forehead, at first faint. It grows larger and darker and begins to protrude from her skin. She gasps, reaching her hand up to touch it, and then she screams. Because her hand is not a hand, but a claw.

“What’s happening?”

“You’re going to see yourself for what you really are, Kelly,” Doctor Aubrey says from behind her, a strange satisfaction tainting her hissing voice.

Kelly looks at her reflection. The scar on her forehead splits open, a purple goo seeping from it like sap. As she watches, it opens wider and longer, until it splits her beautiful face in two. A bulbous new head begins to emerge from her split skin, black and scaley and covered in purple slime. The creature wriggles out of her body like a snake shedding its skin.

Kelly closes her eyes and screams. “Make it stop! I don’t want to see! Don’t let the monster inside me get out! Oh god, don’t let it get out!” No matter how hard Kelly tries, she’s unable to keep her eyes closed, unable to look away from the horror in the mirror, unable to stop the realization that what she sees in the mirror is not just in the mirror. It’s a reflection of her, and what happens to her in this strange hypnotic world of Doctor Aubrey’s creation. She feels the pain now, the pain of her skin as it continues to rip open, to separate from muscle and bone. As this black scaley thing crawls right out of her skin costume. Her terrified screams echo around her until they become a hiss of her own.

“Is this what you want Kelly?” Doctor Aubrey asks in her powerful and terrifying voice. “Is this the monster you want to be?”

“No!” She screams. “No, please! Make it stop! Make it go back inside.”

But it does not go back inside. Kelly falls to all fours, realizing her legs are those of some giant lizard, with giant black claws digging into the white floor of this world. When she opens her mouth to scream again, a long black tongue falls out, flickers at Doctor Aubrey like it’s tasting the air. She can no longer speak or scream, but her all too human eyes still leak tears. She turns to face Doctor Aubrey, pleads with her eyes. Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop.

Doctor Aubrey glares down at Kelly as if she plans to squash her under her enormous dragon’s foot, like a nuisance insect, like the cockroach that she is. But then Doctor Aubrey leans down and picks up Kelly’s empty skin sack, pinches it between two enormous claws.

“Is that what you think, Kelly?” the doctor asks, her voice both amused and menacing. “Do you think that I’ve let the monster out? Do you think all this time, the person you truly are, has been in hiding?” Kelly can’t reply to the pitying look Doctor Aubrey lays on her then. “This thing you see in the mirror? That’s you. It has always been you.”

Kelly can’t speak. Please, her eyes beg. Please.

Dr. Aubrey grabs Kelly by her neck, tight enough to choke her. She lifts this human-sized lizard monster that is Kelly so that they are eye-to-eye.

“Do you want to be better, Kelly?” Doctor Aubrey asks. “Do you want to finally be… good?”

Kelly can’t move in the doctor’s iron grip, but her eyes say yes, yes, yes. Please.

Doctor Aubrey holds Kelly’s empty skin in front of her.

“Do you see this, Kelly?” she asks. “This, bloodless, human-shaped mask? This is the new you. This is the good you. 

This is the mask that you will wear. And I’m going to stuff this violent piece of shit that you are, inside it. I’m going to bury this monster that you are deep down inside. And it will be on you to keep it there, to lock it up tight. To keep the mask on.” Doctor Aubrey’s eyes are piercing and alive. After a beat, she adds with clear enjoyment, “And it’s going to hurt. A lot.”

Kelly whimpers, the sound a pathetic mewl that shames her.

Slowly and methodically, but not gently, Doctor Aubrey begins stuffing the monster that is Kelly into her human mask. Doctor Aubrey never speaks, never stops, until like a woman dressing her daughter, she zips up Kelly’s back, seals the monster inside the human costume.

Doctor Aubrey was right.

It hurt.

A lot.

Suddenly Kelly is back in Doctor Aubrey’s office. Doctor Aubrey sits in her chair, a satisfied grin across her face. Kelly remains on the couch, where she lay down to begin the session. Kelly doesn’t remember being hypnotized. She doesn’t remember what happened during the hypnosis. There are no monsters or human-shaped sacks in her memory. Instead, she is left with the memory of unbearable pain, and a potent fear, a fear she can’t quite name. But she knows it is Doctor Aubrey she fears, and it was Doctor Aubrey who caused the pain. Who might cause it again one day. If Kelly doesn’t get better. If she doesn’t stay good.

Without a word, Doctor Aubrey opens the door and collects Kelly’s parents. She’s surprised to see that nearly two hours passed during the hypnosis. In a blur that Kelly hardly remembers, Doctor Aubrey tells Kelly’s parents in not so many words that she’s…cured. And that unless Kelly suddenly returns to her violent behavior, she doesn’t need to return to Doctor Aubrey. Her parents are floored – and dubious.

That evening at home, Kelly doesn’t feel like herself. She supposes it’s a result of the hypnosis, that blank of time that she both fears and has forgotten. Her parents watch her carefully, warily, as if expecting an outburst any moment. But for the first time in her life, Kelly’s evening is…normal. She watches TV with her parents. She doesn’t throw a tantrum when they watch the news instead of Wheel of Fortune. They have a nice, quiet dinner in the dining room. The small talk they make is uncomfortable. Her parents still aren’t sure who they’ve brought home – the old Kelly, or a new one.

Before she goes to bed, Kelly locks herself in her bathroom. She stands naked in front of the full-length mirror on the back of the door. She doesn’t feel like herself, but she still looks like herself…doesn’t she? For more than an hour, Kelly examines her reflection. She pushes at the skin around her eyes, the skin of her cheeks, over her collar bones and hips. She counts each of her fingers and her toes, pays attention to the sensation of the soft, human skin under her fingertips. She turns to examine her backside, looking for…a tail? She doesn’t know. But she has to be sure, has to be sure that she’s still…good. That there’s nothing strange lurking under her skin. Like a monster, perhaps. Although where she got that idea, she doesn’t know.

After that final day with Doctor Aubrey, Kelly’s life was a version of normal. She returned to in-person school her senior year. She didn’t make friends, but she graduated and attended a local college. And though her relationship with her parents became less contentious, and she had no more violent outbursts, they never became close. After she moved out, there were occasional phone calls for birthdays or Christmas, but that was it. And all communication ended after what happened with Jerry – although her parents did pay for her lawyer (but refused to bail her out).

And what about what happened with Jerry? Well now that Kelly remembers who she’d been, what Doctor Aubrey had done…now it makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? What happened with Jerry had been a crack in her human mask. And now that crack? That crack is wide open. And the monster that Doctor Aubrey had bound all those years ago…is free again.

Kelly comes to in the grassy clearing. She’s lying in the middle, right where her old house had been when this strange turn down memory lane began. The house, the vibrant colors of the clearing, all gone. She sits up in the gray light of what might have been a late autumn afternoon, but of course she’ll never know. Time remains out of her grasp here.

Kelly feels different, of course she does. She feels whole. Complete. Like the missing piece of a puzzle has finally been found and placed. She takes a deep breath, as if enjoying the fresh air that doesn’t exist here. And when she exhales, it’s as if she has re-centered, has fit her memories back where they belong, has become who she was meant to be. Then she remembers she isn’t alone.

Ray stands about five feet away, watching her warily. His gentle brown eyes are alert, suspicious. His forehead is covered in sweat. He looks like he’s about to bolt – except, of course, there’s nowhere to go. But there’s no rule book for this, for whatever this is. He’s stranded in a strange world with a complete stranger – who he’s just discovered is both dangerous and a murderer in some kind of trippy flashback that, as far as he knows, isn’t actually possible.

What happens now that Kelly remembers who she really is, he wonders. What will she do? Something dangerous. Something violent. Well, that’s okay, he thinks as he rolls his neck around his shoulders. Two can play that game, right? He’s no saint, either. He is not, however, an opportunist. Not like Kelly.

Kelly sits, looking at Ray with her bright green eyes. She leans back on her hands, crosses one long leg over the other. Her posture is relaxed, but those eyes… She’s not just looking at Ray; she’s watching him. Calculating something, planning. Like perhaps the idea of spilling his red, red blood all over this bland canvas forest.

“What’s the matter, Ray?” Kelly asks, her voice sweetly innocent. “Are you afraid of little old me?” Then she tilts her head and winks.

It’s the wink that finally forces movement into his legs. Ray begins to back away, slowly with raised hands, as if he’s trying to calm a rabid dog.

Kelly stands and walks toward Ray. He stops, she stops. He takes another step, Kelly takes another step. Then she barks a laugh.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Ray.”

“Yeah, pardon me if I don’t believe you,” he replies, still backing away.

“You don’t even know me, Ray.”

Ray’s laugh is humorless. “I know enough.”

“Do you? Well, what about you? Maybe it’s me that should be afraid of you. I mean, after all, I don’t know you any better than you think you know me.” She continues moving slowly forward, dogging Ray’s steps as he tries to retreat to the path.

Ray points to where Kelly’s house briefly sat. “You killed your sister. You tortured your parents. The only reason you aren’t in jail is because you had one crazy fucking psychiatrist.”

“Where is it you think you’re going, Ray?”

“Away from you.”

Kelly shakes her head. “I don’t think that’s going to happen, Ray. We need to stick together, remember?”

“What do you know?”

“You and I were brought here together, Ray.”

“Coincidence.”

“Coincidence?”

Ray shrugs. “We both found some strange…doorway to another world. Or something.”

“Two complete strangers just happen to take the same wrong bike path? That leads to the same new world?” Kelly shakes her head again, smiles. “I don’t think so, Ray.”

“What do you know?”

“I know I’ve had my judgment, Ray,” Kelly replies. “I’ve had my judgment…and you haven’t.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Ray suddenly tips backward, his heels tripping over the raised edge of the path. He falls hard on his back and before he can get up, Kelly is there. She straddles him and his hands shoot up to protect his face.

“It’s your turn, Ray,” she says, her stale breath invading his nostrils as she leans over him.

“For what?” he asks through gritted teeth.

Kelly shakes her head, gives him a pitying look. Then she reaches for his chin. He can’t get out from under her fast enough and she grips his chin so hard her nails draw blood. Then she slowly turns Ray’s head, turns his face back to the wall. Because it’s still there. Of course, it is. But now the message is different. When they’d last looked at the wall, it read:

YOU CAN’T TURN BACK.

NOT NOW.

NOT EVER.

But the words Ray sees now make his blood drain away. Because this message is personal. It reads:

IT’S YOUR TURN, RAY.