The Narrows

by Ronald Malfi

  He stopped by Hogarth’s Drugstore on Hamilton but the place was dark and locked up tight. The storefront hadn’t been properly sandbagged, and peering into the darkened front windows, Ben could see rubber masks, Halloween decorations, and various other sundries floating about in what looked to be fifteen or so inches of murky brown water. A three-eyed toad was perched on a box of tampons that floated by the window while Ben peered in. He left and drove out to Hogarth’s place on Trestle Road. The front door was unlocked and there was rubbish, sodden and mildewing, strewn about the front porch. He entered the house, calling out the old man’s name, but no response greeted him. Eventually, he found the old man’s body in the back bedroom. He lay in repose on his back, his hands balled together on the swell of his stomach. A St. Christopher’s medal was clenched in both his hands. By Ben’s estimation, the old fellow appeared to have died of a heart attack sometime in the night.

  He stopped by Shirley Bennice’s house out on Truckhouse Road to say good-bye. Yet he found the place dark and locked up, Shirley’s Grand Prix gone from the driveway. He nodded, as if confirming her decision to run away from Stillwater, and turned back to his car.

  When he arrived at the police station, he didn’t bother to go inside. Instead, he locked the front doors then put a note in the mail slot that read:

  This station has been abandoned.

  Contact the Cumberland Sheriff’s Department or 911 for assistance.

  He thought about adding something about the three dead bodies inside, but in the end, he decided against it.

  5

  It was closing on dusk when he finally made it around to the Crawly house. He knocked several times on the front door but no one answered. Wind chimes tinkled in the cool breeze. After a while, he climbed back down the steps and headed toward his police car before pausing then cutting around to the rear of the house.

  Brandy sat on the top step of the back porch in a sweatshirt and jeans. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her face looked stoic and clean. When one of his boots snapped a twig, she looked up at him without an expression on her face at first…but then she smiled softly at him. She’s going to be a beautiful woman someday, Ben thought, surprised and a bit frightened by the fatherly nature of such a thought.

  “Hi,” she said. “You look different in regular clothes.”

  He was dressed in jeans, an old Towson University T-shirt, and a lightweight windbreaker. Her comment caused him to smile, too. “How are you feeling?”

  She shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”

  “How’s your mom?”

  “She’s getting better. She spends most of the time asleep, but I guess that’s best.”

  “Her arm?”

  “It’s healing.”

  “That’s good.” He followed her earlier gaze out across the yard and beyond the Marshes’ cornfield. “You out here waiting for someone?”

  “Not really,” she said…and he knew instantly that she was lying to him.

  He didn’t press the issue. “Well, I just wanted to say good-bye.”

  “So you’re really leaving?”

  “I am,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to do it for a long time. Got no reason to stay now.”

  “I guess not,” she said. “Mom says we’re leaving too.”

  “Everyone’s leaving. They’re blaming the floods and maybe they even believe that, but these families put up with the flooding for generations without batting an eye. Whether they know it or not, they’ve sensed what happened here. And now it’s time to go.”

  “People are gonna want to know what happened,” she said with genuine worry in her voice.

  He sighed. “Probably. But there won’t be anyone around to tell them.” And he winked. “You dig me?”

  Again, that smile. “I do,” she said. There were other thoughts flitting around just behind her eyes that Ben could see clear as day. “What do you think happened to the other boys?” she asked. “To my brother and Billy Leary?”

  He had given this much thought, too. “I don’t know, hon.”

  She nodded. “Yeah.”

  He walked over to her, fishing around in the pocket of his jeans. “Here,” he said, handing her his father’s Zippo lighter. “I want you to have it.”

  She looked at the lighter then looked up at him. Tears were already welling in her eyes. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. You just take care of it, okay?”

  “I will.”

  “Thanks.” He slipped his hands in the pockets of his windbreaker. “You stay safe, okay?”

  “I will. Are you leaving tonight?”

  “I am. But you hear me about staying safe, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Promise me.”

  She spit in the ground and said, “I promise.”

  Ben smirked. “That’s some habit.”

  “You stay safe, too,” she said. “Don’t do foolish things.”

  “I won’t,” he promised her…though he was already thinking foolish things.

  “Go on, now,” she told him. “Get lost.”

  He got lost.

  6

  At the farmhouse, he exchanged the squad car for the dusty old Packard that had sat idle in the barn for several months. It took a few cranks of the ignition to get the Packard started, but when it awoke, it did so like a lion rousing from a deep and restful slumber. He drove it around to the front of the house and popped the trunk. For the next hour, he loaded some items into the Packard’s trunk—some clothes, toiletries, his father’s war medals, some other items. Midway through packing up the car, Ben was startled by his cell phone ringing in his pocket. He answered the call and found it was Paul Davenport calling with the number to the Fish and Wildlife folks he’d promised Ben earlier in the week. Ben just laughed, wished Paul Davenport well, and hung up the phone. Then he powered the phone off so as not to be disturbed.

  Before leaving the old farmhouse, he paused in the front hall and surveyed the place. The halls were musty with deepening shadows, the windows gilded with fading daylight. For a brief moment, he could see himself as a small boy playing with Tonka trucks on the living room floor while his father, old Bill Journell, sat in his recliner reading a newspaper with a pipe propped in his mouth. The image was so clear it was as if it were a stageplay going on right before his eyes. Watching it, Ben felt something solid and heavy clench quickly at his heart and squeeze. His breath came in labored gasps. He had stayed to take care of his father and that had been noble. But there was no need to hold stewardship over old ghosts.

  Ben left.

  7

  Fifteen minutes later, at the intersection of Cemetery Road and one of the unnamed service roads that wound up into the hills, Ben stopped his car and rolled down his window to get a better look at the rubber vampire mask—surely some kid’s Halloween costume—that had gotten snared by a low-hanging tree limb. Ironic laughter threatened to burst from his throat. He drove quickly away, leaving the town of Stillwater behind him to die its silent death.

  Epilogue

  1

  But she had lied to him. She wasn’t careful. Quite the opposite, in fact. The nights that followed saw her on the back porch while her mother slept soundly in the master bedroom, her grandmother’s silver cross in her lap, her brother’s UV lamp beside her, trailing an extension cord back into the house. The most recent storm had brought with it the frigidity of winter. Trees shook loose the rest of their leaves and the sky appeared gray and brooding no matter the time of day. Bundled in heavy sweaters and two pairs of socks, she spent every night on the porch, keeping watch.

  One by one, the people of Stillwater picked up and left. Ben had been right. They blamed the storms and the flooding…but Brandy recognized a deeper, darker truth in their eyes. Even the folks who hadn’t been affected by the terror still smelled it on the wind, like dead things hidden and rotting. Deep coils of stink perfumed out of the ground. You couldn’t go anywhere in town and escape it. Anyway, there were no places left to
go. The shops along Hamilton were all dark now and filled with water.

  Once, Dwight Dandridge stopped by while she was sitting on the back porch. They talked for a while about nothing in particular and then Brandy went inside only to return with two steaming mugs of hot chocolate. Before Dwight headed home, Brandy hugged him. He shied away at first but then let her do it. Matthew’s name never came up.

  Matthew…

  He came back in the middle of one night, though he did not approach the house. He lingered just beyond the shrubbery that bordered the property, his pallid ghost-face seeming to hover like the moon. Brandy stood and walked halfway down the porch steps. She even called out his name, her voice dull and flat in the cold night. The sound of her voice appeared to have startled him, for he turned and rushed off through the Marshes’ cornfield. Expressionlessly, Brandy turned back around and reclaimed her seat on the porch.

  He returned twice more. The next time, some brazenness urged him into the property where he wavered like a ribbon of steam in the space between the detached garage and the hedgerow. This time she did not call his name, not wanting to frighten him away. This time she just waited for him, sitting motionless in the darkness of the porch. He moved now with a humanity that recalled the child he truly was—the brother he was—and it hurt her heart to see it. Yet she was silent. She said nothing.

  He fled back out into the night.

  The final time, he appeared with another figure whom Brandy guessed was Billy Leary. Both boys trod through the corn and crept into the yard, just as Matthew had done the previous time by himself. By this time, however, the power had been restored to Stillwater, and the boys’ movements caused the motion sensor light above the garage to wink on. Bright-white light spilled out across the yard, spotlighting the two frail little figures who quickly retreated into the darkness where they disappeared almost as silently as they had come.

  The following morning, just as daylight seeped up into the sky over the eastern mountains, Brandy took the pickup truck out to Route 40 and then down to the turnabout where the stone footbridge crossed over the Narrows. She parked the car and zippered up her jacket then got out. The air was stingingly cold. With her grandmother’s crucifix in her jacket pocket and a flashlight leading the way, she crossed the footbridge and ascended the hillside on the opposite side of the Narrows. Toward the plastics factory.

  The shrubbery was denuded, making it easier for her to locate the double doors at the rear of the old building. In fact, one of the doors had been left open a few inches, revealing a vertical sliver of darkness. She shone the flashlight into the sliver while she eased the door open with one sneaker. Its hinges squealed.

  Inside, only the vaguest shafts of early morning light permeated the milky windows at the far end of the building. Industrial machinery loomed like prehistoric creatures frozen in time. The air smelled unused and musty, coating the back of her throat like dust. The flashlight’s beam washed back and forth. Muddy footprints stamped trails about the concrete floor.

  She found them in a back room, asleep on a mound of sawdust and dead leaves. Matthew lay curled on his side, his thumb propped in his mouth just as he used to do when he was a toddler. Even in the limited light of the flashlight, Brandy could see his hair had started to grow back. His flesh had taken on some color, and his face even looked rosy. Beyond Matthew, Billy Leary lay on his back, asleep. There was sawdust and dead leaves in his hair.

  “Matthew,” she whispered.

  He sat up, blinking into the light. Dirt streaked his face. His eyes focused on her and warmed instantly.

  “Brandy,” he said, already beginning to tremble…already beginning to cry. Behind him, Billy Leary stirred and woke, too. “Brandy.”

  She turned off the light. “Time to go home,” she said.

  2

  But he had lied to her. He wasn’t careful. Quite the opposite, in fact.

  Shirley had been right—the battery on the GPS lasted for nearly seventy-two hours. When the signal finally died, it had already stopped moving for several hours, coming to rest in the green hills of the Shenandoah Valley.

  Ben arrived in the Valley around dusk of some afternoon. He guided the Packard into a parking space in front of a small mom-and-pop diner. Outside, the air tasted crisp. Someone was cooking pork in a smoker out back. It would be a harsh winter here in the mountains.

  In the diner, Ben sat at the counter and ordered only a cup of coffee. The few other people in the place ate in solitary silence, crowded protectively over their plates like prisoners in a prison cafeteria.

  “Anything besides coffee?” a middle-aged waitress asked him after he’d finished half the cup. “Charlie makes one hell of an omelet.”

  “An omelet for dinner?”

  “Sure,” the waitress said. “Why not?”

  Why not, indeed. “Okay,” he said. “Sounds good.”

  She looked him over. “You new in town?”

  “Just got in now.”

  “Looking for work?”

  “Maybe.” He finished his coffee and the waitress refilled his cup. “You folks been having problems with bats lately?” he asked.

  “You some kind of exterminator?”

  “Something like that,” he said.

  She shrugged then looked instantly miserable. After a moment, she said, “I’ll go tell Charlie to put on an omelet for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  She hurried away, as if his question about bats had troubled her. He brought his coffee to his lips, sipped it. It was hot, strong, and good.

  A few stools away, a burly man with a gray beard and a hunting vest cleared his throat and said, “You say something about bats, buddy?”

  Outside, the sun began to set.

  About the Author

  Ronald Malfi is the award-winning author of the novels The Ascent, Snow, Shamrock Alley, Passenger, and several others. His ghost story/mystery Floating Staircase was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel in 2011. Most recognized for his haunting, literary style and memorable characters, Malfi's dark fiction has gained acceptance among readers of all genres. He currently lives along the Chesapeake Bay where he is at work on his next book.

  Look for these titles by Ronald Malfi

  Now Available:

  Borealis

  Evil can look so innocent.

  Borealis

  © 2009 Ronald Malfi

  On a routine crabbing expedition in the Bering Sea, Charlie Mears and the rest of the men aboard the trawler Borealis discover something unbelievable: a young woman running naked along the ridge of a passing iceberg. The men rescue her and bring her aboard the boat. But they will soon learn her horrible secret. By the time they find out why she was alone on the ice—and what she truly is—the nightmare will have begun, as one by one she infects them with an evil that brings about unimaginable terrors.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Borealis:

  Twelve years ago, a man named Bodine checked into a Las Vegas motel under the name Thomas Hudson with a young girl who was of no relation to him. She was a pretty little thing, perhaps eight or nine years of age, dressed plainly in a simple cotton dress embroidered with tiny red strawberries around the waist. To glance casually upon the pair, one would assume they were father and daughter. But on closer inspection, anyone with a knack for detail would see that the man was no one’s father. Tall, gaunt, haunted—looking at him was like staring infinity in the face. With his black, hopeless eyes recessed into deep pockets and an air of chronic fatigue surrounding him like a cloud of Midwestern dust, this man was no one’s father.

  “What’s wrong?” the girl said. “Why did we stop?”

  Bodine’s grip tightened on the Bronco’s steering wheel. The sodium lights from the motel fell against the Bronco’s windshield. A light rain had begun to fall.

  “We’re getting a room here,” he said, his voice low. “We’re staying here for the night.”

  The girl leaned toward the dashboard to peer out the win
dshield. She wasn’t wearing her seat belt. “Looks dirty,” she said, sizing up the motel.

  It was one of a million nameless joints he’d passed on the drive from the mountains of Colorado and across the equally anonymous desert highways. There was nothing distinguishable about it. After a while, on the road, everything started to look the same.

  “We call this comfortable digs,” he said.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Means we stay here tonight.” He shut the car down and popped open the door. Paused. “You wait here,” he said, an afterthought.

  “Can I play the radio?”

  He didn’t think there was any harm leaving the keys in the ignition. Unless she’d been lying, judging by her simple questions about what the pedals on the floor were for and why he had to turn a key in order to start the “growling”, as she called it, he didn’t think she knew how to start the vehicle let alone drive away in it. Bodine turned the switch over until the door chimes sounded. The girl, whose name Bodine did not know, smiled and switched on the radio. One tiny white hand ran through the dials until she located an oldies station while Bodine watched.

  “How come you need to turn the key to play the radio?” she asked now.

  “Because it runs off the car’s battery. I need to turn it on to use the battery.”