by Ronald Malfi
“Cars have batteries?” She sounded almost incredulous.
“Yes.”
“Is that how they drive?”
“They drive on gasoline.”
“Like from the last time we stopped,” she said. “How you put it into the gas tank, like you said.”
“Yes.” He suddenly felt like an imbecile. What the hell was he doing talking to her like this, anyway?
“Are you going to shoot somebody?” the girl asked before he could step out of the Bronco. The statement caused him to freeze, caused the fingers of his left hand to tighten on the doorhandle.
“Why would you say something like that?”
“Because you have a gun in your pants.”
His throat was lined with sandpaper. “How do you know that?”
The girl didn’t answer.
“How do you know that?” he repeated, one foot out on the blacktop, his fingers still strangling the doorhandle.
The girl just smiled and stared straight ahead out the windshield. She swung her legs to the rhythm of the music, her face radiating a sickly glow beneath the wash of sodium lights. “I like this song,” she said after a bit.
The motel lobby was run-down, filthy, and haunted by cigarette smoke. A flickering black-and-white television was mounted to the wall on brackets behind the night counter.
“One room,” Bodine said at the counter. “One night.”
“Just you?” said the grizzled cowboy behind the counter. No stranger to midnight characters of peculiar design, the cowboy did not give Bodine a second glance. And that was just fine by Bodine.
“Just me,” Bodine said.
“Name?”
“Thomas Hudson,” said Bodine.
“Credit card?”
“Cash,” he told the cowboy, who did not raise an eyebrow.
The room was tomblike. Peeling alabaster walls and an oatmeal-colored carpet, the single bed, wide as a coffin, was dressed in a fleur-de-lis spread, heavily starched. The bathroom reeked of mildew, and the shower curtain was curled at one end of the shower into a filthy plastic sleeve. In the tub, a bristling brown spider did pushups by the drain.
“It smells bad in here,” said the girl, wrinkling her nose. “Gross.” She stood clutching the empty cardboard cylinder that had moments ago contained a milkshake.
“Go turn down the bed,” he told her, carrying his nylon duffel bag into the bathroom. He set it beside the sink and unzipped it. Inside: fresh sneakers and a change of clothes. Brand spanking new. The sneakers were too bright and the clothes still had the tags hanging from them.
The girl did not move. She watched him through the open bathroom doorway. When he turned and saw her staring at him, he nearly jumped out of his skin.
“Thought I told you to go turn down the bed,” he said, his voice quiet and level. Nearly monotone.
The girl shrugged and stepped away. A moment later, he heard the mattress springs creak.
A skeleton stared back at him from the mirror. Jesus Christ, is that me? Is that really me? He grimaced, inspecting the way his purplish gums had begun to recede from his teeth, the teeth themselves discolored and patchy with calcium deposits.
Bodine peered out into the room. The girl had turned down one corner of the bed and was now sitting on the edge, staring directly at him. She’d set her empty cup down on the nightstand.
“Did you want another milkshake?” he asked. His voice shook. Stop it, he thought. Stop it, stop it, stop it.
“Why did you tell the man at the counter your name was Thomas Hudson?”
Sweat stung his eyes. “There’s a soda machine down the hall. Do you want a Coke?”
“Your name’s not Thomas Hudson,” she said, swinging her legs.
“I don’t like playing these games.”
“What games?”
“These games where you ask all these questions and expect me to answer.”
The girl shrugged her small shoulders. “Your name’s Frank Bodine,” she said.
Bodine swallowed a hard lump of spit. Seconds ticked by. His own heartbeat was like a drum in his ears. “How do you know my name?” he said finally. He’d never told her.
Again, the girl shrugged.
“Yes,” he said after a moment, blinking the sweat from his eyes. “Yes, my name’s Bodine. Frank Bodine.” Sour, shaky exhalation. “You think you’re ready to tell me your name yet?”
The girl shook her head. Grinned.
“Why not?”
“I told you,” she said simply. “I don’t have a name.”
“Yes you do. Everyone’s got a name.”
“Nope. Not me.”
“Sure you do. You just don’t want to tell it.”
“You’re silly,” said the girl.
“What about your parents? Didn’t they give you a name?”
“I don’t have any parents.”
“You don’t have a mom or a dad?”
“No.”
“Everyone does.”
“No, silly.” She giggled.
Withdrawing back into the bathroom, Bodine toed the bathroom door shut. He lifted his pullover up, which stank of perspiration. The butt of the .9mm protruded from his waistband.
Can you do this? a voice spoke up toward the back of his head. It was the same voice that had followed him all the way from Durango. Are you really sure you can do this?
He plucked the .9mm from his waistband, set it down beside the duffel bag, and turned the water on in the sink. Just the hot water. He waited as the entire bathroom steamed up before shutting the water off. With one hand he carved an arc through the condensation on the mirror before him. Dead eyes stared back.
Can you do this?
Bodine removed his pullover and tossed it on the floor. Took a deep breath. A chill accosted him, pimpling his flesh with goose bumps. Grabbing the handgun, he eased open the bathroom door and stepped out into the room.
The girl hadn’t moved. She grinned at him as he took a single step toward the bed. His nostrils flared with each inhalation of breath. He stood unmoving, no more than ten feet from her, peripherally aware that the digital clock on the nightstand counted through several minutes while he simply stood there.
“You’re skinny,” she said after a while. “Your chest has red marks on it.” She said, “I can see your ribs.” As if this was funny, she giggled. “Your bellybutton looks funny.” Legs still swinging.
“Tell me who you are,” he breathed. Leveled the gun at her. His hand shook. His whole fucking arm shook. “Tell me.”
“Your hair,” she said, wrinkling up her nose as if she suddenly smelled something awful—the room itself, perhaps. “It’s too long. Like a girl’s.”
He lowered his arm. The .9mm suddenly weighed fifty pounds. Without a word, he turned and retreated back into the bathroom. He felt cold, clammy, made of vulcanized rubber. The soles of his work boots creaked with each step.
In the bathroom, he set the gun down in the sink basin, which was still streaked with water. Staring up at his reflection, he thought the girl was right—that somewhere along the way, his hair had gotten too long. Like a girl’s.
Wearily, Bodine grinned at himself. Skeleton-faced, too-big teeth protruding from retreating purple gums…
Can you—
Grinned.
Next morning, a Puerto Rican housekeeper would discover Bodine’s body in the bathtub, a dried spray of blood on the tiled shower stall behind his head. Bodine’s hand, still limply holding the .9mm, was nestled into the thatch of black pubic hair between his legs.
The woman’s screams would bring the grizzled cowboy who would in turn alert the local sheriff. Suicide, the sheriff would say, and the grizzled cowboy would nod while he chewed on an unlit cigar stub no longer than a grown man’s thumb and greenish in color, and would recall nothing special about the man from the night before. There were all breeds of stranger who passed through his place, after all—all species of outlaw and lummox and daft buffoon—and who could reme
mber one from the other?
“Name’s Hudson,” the cowboy would tell the sheriff, handing over the log from last night where the man had signed in. The sheriff, a grizzled old cowboy in his own right, took the log without so much as a grunt while fishing out a pack of menthols from his nylon coat with the faux fur at the collar.
There was no sign of the little girl. But, of course, no one had seen her come in with the man and therefore never knew to look for her.
Anyway, that was twelve years ago, and in a whole other part of the country.
The Narrows
Ronald Malfi
The town of Stillwater has a very unwelcome resident.
The town of Stillwater has been dying—the long and painful death of a town ravaged by floods and haunted by the ghosts of all who had lived there. Yet this most recent flood has brought something with it—a creature that nests among the good folks of Stillwater...and feeds off them. The children who haven't disappeared whisper the same word—“vampire.” But they’re wrong. What has come to Stillwater is something much more horrific.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B
Cincinnati OH 45249
The Narrows
Copyright © 2012 by Ronald Malfi
ISBN: 978-1-61921-073-8
Edited by Don D’Auria
Cover by Scott Carpenter
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: September 2012
www.samhainpublishing.com
Table of Contents
Dedication
Author’s Note
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Part Two
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Epilogue
About the Author
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