by Ronald Malfi
Brandy’s grandmother had been a devout Catholic. Inside the box, Brandy located a silver crucifix, nearly seven inches long. It was heavy and cold and felt strangely powerful in Brandy’s hand. There was also a rosary in the box. Brandy didn’t know if rosary beads harbored the same power against vampires that crucifixes did but she didn’t think there was any harm in taking that, too.
She hung the rosary beads from the doorknocker on the front door. Beside the back door, she slipped the silver crucifix into the rusted eyelet beside the doorframe where Hugh Crawly used to plant an American flag when he was feeling patriotic. She knew vampires couldn’t enter someone’s home unless they were specifically invited, but she wasn’t so sure if that rule applied if the home had previously belonged to the vampire. Better safe than sorry.
There were garlic cloves in the refrigerator. She broke them apart, getting stink on her fingers, and scattered the remnants around all the windowsills throughout the two-story house. Once she’d finished, she deliberated on one final precaution. While arguably the most vital, she did not know if she could actually bring herself to do it.
Stakes. Wooden stakes. You were supposed to drive them through the vampire’s heart.
There were brooms and mops and all sorts of things with wooden handles in the laundry room. It wouldn’t take much effort to whittle the handles into points with a kitchen knife. The hard part, she knew, would be summoning enough courage to actually use the stakes if and when the time came. Could she do it?
She didn’t realize she had fallen asleep until a clash of thunder jarred her awake. She was sprawled out on the kitchen floor, a broom handle angled across her lap. The tip of the handle was sharpened to a point and there were curled bits of shaving scattered around the tiles. In her right hand, Brandy still clutched the kitchen knife.
Something was wrong. She felt it in the center of her animal brain.
She got up and checked on her mother, who was still asleep on the sofa in the living room. Rain slammed against the windows and lightning briefly lit up the sky. The lamp beside the sofa dimmed but stayed on.
She went through the house a second time, methodically checking the locks on the doors and windows. In the kitchen, she picked up the telephone to make sure there was still a dial tone in the event she needed to call the police. There was.
With the kitchen lights off so that nothing could see inside, she cleaned up the wood shavings off the floor then shook them into the kitchen trash. Then she systematically lined up the brooms and mop beside the laundry room door like rifles in an armory. Her hands reeked of garlic.
Hungry, she took out a dish of cold chicken from the refrigerator and poured herself a cold glass of milk. In the dark, she sat at the kitchen table and ate. Around her, the house creaked and moaned. The storm was unforgiving.
The epicenter of her animal brain remained on high alert. Her skin tingled. After only a few bites of chicken and a few sips of milk, she broke down, crying silently into her hands. Wake up, she told herself. Wake up, wake up! You’re dreaming. This is all one bad dream. But it wasn’t a dream. The tingling intensified as thunder shook her bones.
She waited, a blood-sense promising her that something would soon happen. The way parents know when something bad has happened to their children…the way twins sense each other’s pain and grief and happiness…the way dogs know when their master is about to arrive home…
All those things.
She waited for her brother.
3
Wearing a pair of rubber gloves, Ben carefully extracted the small bat from the birdcage. The thing struggled futilely in his grasp, its one free wing batting uselessly in the air. High-pitched squawks funneled up from its throat as its blind head bobbed like some windup toy. Even through the gloves, Ben felt the heat radiating off the tiny creature, and the power of its struggle to break free. He held it delicately but firmly.
“Don’t let it bite you,” Shirley said. She seemed calmer now, more like her old self. “Rabies City.”
“Thanks,” Ben grunted.
With Shirley’s assistance, he secured the tracking device to the bat’s back by Velcro bands, tight enough so that it wouldn’t fall off but not too tight as to restrict the bat’s mobility. Shirley switched on the battery-powered GPS and waited for the signal to load.
“Are you sure this is gonna work?” Ben asked.
Shirley smiled her grandmotherly smile at him. There was terror in her eyes. “I have no idea, Ben. I really don’t.”
The GPS beeped and a red dot appeared on the screen. A map of Belfast Avenue and the surrounding streets blinked on. The red dot appeared just off Belfast on the map—right where the police station should be.
“Well, look at that,” Ben marveled. “It’s pretty damn accurate.”
Shirley’s hands trembled as she held the GPS. “What now?”
“We let the little fella go,” Ben said, looking around. Rain lashed a small porthole window inlaid in the wall. He went to it, carefully holding the bat in two gloved hands now. Shirley followed him, footfalls nearly silent. Ben shoved the window open several inches, allowing the cold wind to spear through the crack and chill his bones. Rainwater wasted no time spilling over the sill and pooling on the concrete floor.
“Wait a minute,” Shirley said. “Can bats fly in weather like this?”
“I have a feeling this one can,” he said, holding the bat up to the opening in the window. The creature’s tiny head bobbed and its triangular nose sniffed the air. Its little black eyes were like two dollops of oil. “Godspeed, little buddy.”
He released the bat and it took off like a shot into the night.
Shirley held the GPS closer to her face.
“I hope the rain doesn’t wreck the electronics,” Ben muttered, more to himself than to Shirley.
“Seems to be working.” She handed the GPS over to him. “Look.”
On the screen, the red dot moved in jerky increments across the digital map, heading northeast from Belfast toward the copse of trees that separated Belfast and Susquehanna. Just before the red dot hit Susquehanna it darted left and arced across the digital screen. Ben watched it run parallel to Susquehanna, moving farther north.
Then suddenly Ben knew where it was going. Again, Brandy Crawly’s voice surfaced in his head, this time sending shivers down his back: He’s been staying in the garage the whole time. He’ll probably come back tonight. I’ll be waiting.
Susquehanna ran directly in front of the Crawly house.
“I think I know where the boy is,” Ben said.
Shirley said, “He’s no boy. Not anymore.”
4
She cried out, startling herself in the process. Her eyes blinked open and the first thought that shuttled like a locomotive through her brain was, I fell asleep!
She was on the kitchen floor, half-propped against the wall beside the table. There was a crick in her neck. She rubbed her eyes and immediately felt them burn as the garlic from her hands bit into her. Then the reality of it all rushed back to her in one destructive tidal wave.
There was someone out on the back porch. Rather than seeing or hearing anything, she felt things, the way wild animals sense the approach of a predator. Across the kitchen, the rank of broom handles filed into points caught her attention and caused her hands to tremble and her feet to grow cold.
Footsteps moved from one end of the back porch to the other—this time she could hear them. A shape passed briefly behind one sheer-curtained window. Matthew. He was moving toward the door.
Her heart thudded loudly in her ears. Brandy rose quickly and went to the sharpened broom handles, picking two of them up and holding them both together in her unsteady hands. Right then, she knew there would be no way for her to drive these through her brother’s chest…and wasn’t that just the stupid stuff of horror movies, anyway?
The shape behind the window vanished. She heard more footsteps treading the creaky floorboards of the porch just on the other side of
the wall. Rain sluiced down the windows and thunder boomed in the distance, threatening to send her screaming. Somehow, she kept it together.
The doorknob jiggled.
“Brandy…”
Then she did scream, dropping both broom handles. They clattered at her feet and one of them rolled underneath the kitchen table.
It was her mother, the vague impression of confusion on her groggy, sleepy face. She had wandered in from where she’d been sleeping in the living room, her hair a frizzy hive, her expression one of bleary incomprehension.
Brandy clung to her.
“What is it?”
Again, the doorknob jiggled.
“Someone’s at the door,” said Wendy.
“Don’t open it,” Brandy said, looking back at the door from over her shoulder as one arm clung to her mother’s waist. “Don’t let him in.”
“Let who in?” She spoke with an eerie calmness that troubled Brandy. “Who is it?”
The doorknob stopped moving. Except for the storm raging outside and their own ragged breathing, everything went silent.
Then the glass window in the door exploded, sending glittering shards in a dazzling burst into the air and raining down onto the floor. Both Brandy and her mother screamed…but they were too paralyzed by fear to move.
A small, white arm snaked in through the broken window. A child’s grimy hand, tiny fingers splayed, searched for the dead bolt. Found it. The fingers turned the dial and across the kitchen, Brandy heard the tumblers turn and the bolt click open. With mounting horror, she watched as the hand then found the slide lock. Those small white fingers delicately—almost lovingly—slid the bolt back into its housing.
You have to invite vampires in! her mind screamed at her. Wasn’t that part of the folklore? But what if they return to the place they previously lived?
What if—
As if on a gust of strong wind, the kitchen door blew open.
Matthew’s silhouette stood framed in the open doorway. Rainwater dripped from his pale, unclothed body, the left side of which was silvered with moonlight. The boy’s mostly bald head cocked slightly on the thin stalk of his neck, his eyes glittering like jewels in the darkness. As Wendy uttered the boy’s name, the silhouette executed a single footstep through the open doorway. The sound of the bare and wet foot striking the kitchen tile was sickening.
“Matthew?” Wendy repeated, taking a step toward her son.
“That’s not Matthew,” Brandy warned.
The silhouette took another step into the house…then another…then another…
“Mom!” Brandy cried, attempting to grab the back of her mother’s shirt as Wendy rushed across the kitchen toward her son. Wendy dropped to her knees before the boy and wasted no time wrapping up his small, wet frame in her arms. As if nature disagreed, this act was underscored by a flash of lightning then a boom of thunder.
“Where the hell have you been?” Wendy cried at her son, holding him out now at arm’s length. If she noticed the horrid state of the child—if she could see him clearly enough in the poor lighting—she did not seem to register it. “What happened to you, Mattie? Where did you go? Where did you go?”
Brandy backed up against the wall, one hand groping blindly for another one of the sharpened broom handles propped against the laundry room door.
“Oh, Mattie,” Wendy sobbed, and hugged the boy against her again.
Matthew’s pale, ghostlike face watched Brandy from over their mother’s shoulder. His eyes probed into her like drill bits, a faint greenish light radiating far back in his pupils. He reached one of his hands out toward her, his arm a colorless, formless shaft, the tine-like fingers of his tiny hand splayed like a starfish. The stink of ammonia filled the kitchen.
Brandy’s hand closed around a sharpened broomstick.
Matthew’s body shuddered. His eyes rolled up like window shades.
“Mattie,” Wendy said flatly, separating herself from the boy just as his small body started to buck. His frail chest appeared to slowly expand, as if he were taking in a deep, deep breath, and his mouth slowly unhinged and dropped open like a glove compartment in an old car. The stink of ammonia grew stronger, stinging Brandy’s eyes and tickling her nose.
The bulge in Matthew’s chest ascended up into the boy’s neck, stretching it impossibly wide. The mouth gaped, drool spilling out in copious torrents.
“Mom!” Brandy cried out. “Get away!”
Wendy skidded backward on the floor, still on her knees. Her arms were still frozen in a mock embrace.
A sound not dissimilar to the croak of a bullfrog ratcheted up Matthew’s throat. A second later, a web of snot-like liquid burst from the boy’s mouth and pattered across Wendy’s right forearm. Brandy could smell the stuff—an insulting, medicinal smell that reminded her of cleaning products—and her eyes watered.
Brandy took a step forward, instinctively holding the broomstick like a baseball bat instead of a stake. As Matthew’s chest began to expand a second time, Brandy rushed beside her mother and knocked her over and out of the way. Matthew’s pallid face turned in Brandy’s direction. His eyes blazed with an inhuman, predatory light. Foam dripped from his agape mouth.
Brandy swung the broom handle and cracked her brother against the side of his head. She felt it connect—a sickening whump! that resonated up her arms—and immediately dropped the broomstick. The thing that had once been her brother toppled over on his side against the kitchen floor. His limbs scrambled for purchase on the tiles, to no avail. As she stood over him, his face turned and scrutinized her with those soulless eyes that were as black as coals.
Her mother began screaming. Brandy looked and saw steam rising off her mother’s arm, right where a slab of dark slime clung to her shirtsleeve. The stuff was eating through her mother’s flesh like acid.
On the kitchen floor, the thing that had once been her brother began climbing to its feet. He wore nothing but a filthy pair of underwear, covered in mud or blood (or both). The boy settled into a crouch. His head pivoted in Brandy’s direction. The boy hissed like a wildcat.
Brandy groped for her mother, who was rising unsteadily to her feet. Wendy sobbed her son’s name again but Brandy was already dragging her backward through the kitchen and into the adjoining living room.
“He’s—”
“Mom! Come on!”
Matthew appeared in the doorway that connected the kitchen to the living room. He looked strikingly like himself again, except for the bloodless skin and the patches of scalp that gleamed through missing patches of hair. Ropes of saliva dangled like entrails from his lips. Her mother paused and Brandy had to yank her backward to set her feet in motion again.
Matthew crossed into the living room, the moonlight coming in through the windows making his face look like that of a corpse. He is, Brandy thought wildly. He is a corpse. He is undead.
In the hallway, Brandy feigned for the front door. Matthew took the bait and charged the door, his small frame slamming hollowly up against it. Brandy turned and shoved her mother up the stairs, shouting, “Go! Go!” Wendy used her hands and feet to scramble up the steps like a child. Brandy urged her along, two hands against her buttocks. When they reached the landing, Wendy rose, trembling on legs that threatened to send her toppling back down the stairs. Brandy looked down the stairwell and saw Matthew at the bottom, looking up. He was awash in shadow; only his eyes, like two searchlights, radiated through the darkness.
“Matthew!” Wendy Crawly shrieked down at her son. It caused Brandy’s heart to lurch.
Matthew set one naked foot on the first step. One white hand gripped the handrail.
Brandy grabbed her mother’s hand and tore down the hallway toward the nearest room, Matthew’s bedroom. Inside, she slammed the door and flipped on the light. Wincing at the brightness, she glanced around as her mother stood motionless against one wall. Her forearm bled through her shirt and blood dripped onto the floor.
“Help me move the desk in front of
the door,” Brandy said, out of breath.
“What’s going on?” Her mother’s voice possessed the detachment of someone recently roused from a coma. “Let your brother in.”
“He’s in,” Brandy assured her, “and he’s not my brother, Mom. He’s not Matthew. Not anymore.” Grunting, she slid Matthew’s desk away from the wall. A Superman lunchbox clattered to the floor. “Please help me with this, Mom.”
Her mother didn’t move.
5
Siren blaring, Ben raced through the empty streets of Stillwater toward the Crawly house. The streets were already beginning to flood, torrents of water and debris rushing down toward the center of town. The storm raged.
In the passenger seat, Shirley stared nervously out the windshield. She held the GPS in her hands but did not look at it. “Where is everyone?”
“The storm’s keeping them at home,” Ben said…though he worried that the storm wasn’t the only thing. He was thinking of Matthew Crawly and of the hairless, unidentified boy that had washed up along Wills Creek…and subsequently disappeared from the morgue in Cumberland. How many others were out there, stalking through the night?
“Ben,” Shirley said, her voice just a hair above a whisper. “What’s going on here, Ben?”
Something evil came in on the storm, he thought. Just like Godfrey Hogarth said—strange things wash up in the Narrows. Crazy things. Unnatural things.
“I don’t know,” Ben told her…yet he wasn’t so sure that wasn’t a lie.
6
The banging started on the other side of the bedroom door. Both Brandy and her mother cried out. They had scooted to the far end of the room and huddled now in one corner between the wall and Matthew’s bookcase. With each bang, the bedroom door shook and slammed against the back of the desk Brandy had shoved in front of it. As she watched, the desk jerked forward an inch…then another inch…
