The Narrows by Ronald Malfi
“I feel a wonderful peace and rest to-night. It is as if some haunting presence were removed from me. Perhaps…”
—Bram Stoker, Dracula
Part One:
Stillwater Runs Deep
“We all rose early, and I think that sleep did much for each and all of us.”
—Bram Stoker, Dracula
Chapter One
1
The students in Miss Sleet’s sixth-grade class were reading quietly to themselves when one of the girls in the back of the room screamed. Heads whirled in the girl’s direction—it was Cynthia Paterson, sitting stiff as a board in her chair, her head craned back on her neck—and there was the sound of pencils rolling to the floor. Matthew Crawly, whose desk was just two up from Cynthia’s, followed Cynthia’s eyes toward the bank of windows that looked out upon the football field, a bright green grid mapped with white, spray-painted lines. He could see nothing of significance on the field itself or in the parade of champagne-colored trees that lined Schoolhouse Road beyond the field.
Miss Sleet stood sharply from behind her desk. She was a narrow, hardened woman in her sixties whose body—cloaked in garish floral prints with lace cuffs—looked angular and violent. Her hands were like the claws of a rooster.
“What is—” Miss Sleet began…but then the rest of her words were replaced by a guttural groan as her own eyes flitted toward the wall of windows.
Toward the back of the room, a few more students cried out. A good number of the girls had already popped out of their desks and stood like pageant contestants at the back of the classroom, their backs against the file cabinets and the rank of hooks that held their autumn coats. Cynthia Paterson jumped out of her chair as well, her face suddenly pale, her eyes impossibly wide. Soundlessly, she pointed up at the windows.
Matthew looked again, this time at the windows themselves, streaky with dried soap scum and peppered with Halloween decorations made from brown and orange construction paper. Spotty, gray shades made of thick vinyl were rolled into tubes at the tops of the windows, wispy with cobwebs. As he looked, he spotted a furtive movement at the top of the window closest to Miss Sleet’s desk—a twitching, incongruent thing where the shade met the wall. Something small and black hung from the shade. It was no bigger than the sandwiches his mother packed him for lunch, but even from this distance, he could see that it was comprised of coarse brownish-black hair and vibrated with life.
“A bat!” one of the boys shouted. “It’s a bat!”
The furry thing stirred and, even over the shouts and whimpers of the students, Matthew heard it emit a high-pitched, tittering sound. Its wings cranked open, its movements as seemingly uncertain as those of a newborn baby. A tiny triangular head capped with pointed ears bobbed as it sniffed the air—up, down, all around. Then it dropped from the shade and, amid a collective cry of fear from the students as well as old Miss Sleet, it zigzagged across the room. Its papery wings flapped frantically.
The students standing at the rear of the room scattered. The sound of their shoes on the linoleum was like an adult’s reprimand to remain quiet: shhh. Some of them made it to the door but, in their panic, they couldn’t seem to get it open. Those still in their seats—Matthew Crawly among them—ducked as the winged critter flitted above their heads. The thing screeched as it drove itself into the chalkboard—Miss Sleet screeched too—then it cartwheeled up into the ceiling where it beat its wings against the acoustical tiles with a sound disarmingly similar to tree branches whapping against windowpanes in a strong wind.
“Good Lord,” Miss Sleet croaked. When the classroom door was finally wrenched open and a stream of kids spilled out into the hall, Miss Sleet shouted at them not to let the bat out of the classroom. Then she staggered backward into one corner, snatching her purse from her desk and clutching it to her chest like some protective idol.
Matthew got out of his chair and walked across the room toward the windows. His eyes did not leave the frightened creature vibrating against the ceiling. He’d seen plenty of bats before—at dusk, the sky above the Crawly house was alive with them—but he’d never seen one in the daytime. And he’d never seen one so afraid.
Dwight Dandridge, Matthew’s best friend, was one of the students who’d remained in their seats. The larger boy had his head pressed down on the desktop, his meaty arms hugging his body, a look of petrification on his face. Sweat beaded his reddened brow. As Matthew approached, he gave Dwight a wink that Dwight returned, even in his stupefied state, with a crooked grin.
At the front of the room, Miss Sleet inched her way toward the open door. More kids filed out, though a good number of them remained standing in the doorway, too mesmerized by the thing flitting against the ceiling to look away. Someone pointed at it and murmured nonsense.
Matthew went to the center window, peeled away a grinning jack-o’-lantern made of orange construction paper, and undid the latch.
“What are you doing?” Dwight said, craning his head to watch Matthew but apparently too afraid to lift it off his desk. “You gonna jump out?”
“No.” With a grunt, Matthew pushed open the window on squealing hinges.
“Matthew Crawly!” Miss Sleet half barked, half whispered from across the classroom. She was shoving students out the door and into the hallway, her purse still clutched to her chest. Matthew could hear a lot of commotion going on out there in the hall. “Stop that!”