The Narrows(101)

“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?”