The Narrows(103)

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…

It would only be a matter of time before—

A set of fingers curled around the door, which had opened a crack.

Beside her, Wendy struggled to stand up. Brandy pulled her back down. “No, Mom. Please.”

“Mattie!” Wendy shouted at the bedroom door. Tears streamed down her face. “Oh, Mattie!”

“No, Mom.” Brandy’s hands were slick and red with her mother’s blood. “Mom…”

“Mattie!”

The door bucked again. An arm appeared.

It was then that a part of Brandy Crawly’s mind threatened to break apart and sail up out of her body, dissolve right through the ceiling and up through the roof, and float unanchored out over the house. From there, it could disappear into the storm, leaving the husk of Brandy’s body to whatever fate awaited it. At the last moment, Brandy clamped down and held strong to her sanity, astounded by the sheer practicality of such a feat, as if it were no different than wrapping a fist firmly around a doorhandle.

The desk screeched across the floor as the bedroom door shoved open a few more inches. Matthew’s pale face flashed within the opening, eyes blazing. That single arm shoved blindly against the back of the desk, kicking it forward a few inches more. A moment later, Matthew was in the room. He climbed up on top of the desk, his back arched like a bow, his small face now only vaguely human.

“Stop!” she shouted to the thing that had once been her brother. She was crying freely and uncontrollably now, her body shaken by sobs. “Matthew, please! Stop! Stop!”

Matthew did not stop. He climbed down from the desk and was in the room with them. His white legs were marbled with bruises and streaked with filth. Dried blood clung to his bare stomach and chest. As she stared at him, a tuft of blondish hair liberated itself from his scalp and wafted like a cobweb to the floor.

Brandy screamed and wedged herself into the corner. Her mother wrapped her up in her arms, blood oozing over both of them now from her wound. Panicking, Brandy shoved the bookcase down to the floor in an effort to provide one last obstacle for her brother to tackle before he tore into them. The bookcase cracked when it hit the floor and items blew everywhere. Three plastic cups filled with soil on top of the bookcase flew across the room and one of them landed on Matthew’s bed. An ultraviolet lamp that had been on top of the bookcase struck the floor as well, the light blinking on and casting an arc of radiant white light across the bedroom.

Matthew hissed and backed away from the light.

It took Brandy a moment or two to realize what had happened. Mopping the tears away from her eyes, she reached down and snatched the UV lamp off the floor, then held it out, her arms fully extended, the light shining directly on Matthew. In the garish, overly bright light, Matthew’s body was a hideous mockery of a human being.

He cried out then backed away, crawling behind the desk. Brandy saw the dome of his head retreat back into the hallway where silver eyes stared back out at her from the darkness. Those eyes hung there in the black like stars piercing the night.

“Please, Matthew,” she sobbed. “Please…”

“Brandy,” her mother whispered into her sweaty hair. She repeated her daughter’s name over and over again, as if in prayer against the undead. “Brandy, Brandy, Brandy…”



7



Out along U.S. Route 40, the water of the Narrows rose up to overtake the highway, sending a cascade of cold, black water down into the heart of Stillwater, Maryland.



8



The UV lamp, along with the bedroom light, blinked and fizzed then finally died. Out in the hallway, Brandy heard the smoke alarm beep once then fall silent. The power had gone out.

“Shit,” she said beneath her breath.

Wendy gripped the lamp in Brandy’s hands and shook it, as if such an act would restore its power.

How much time had passed? How long had they been sitting here? Brandy did not know. Her whole body ached and she was rank with sweat. The wound at her mother’s arm still leaked black blood onto the carpet. There were crimson smears along the wall, too.