The Narrows(104)

There were noises out in the hallway. Brandy sobbed and held the useless UV lamp against her chest like a shield. Her mother said, “Shhh…”

“He’s coming back,” Brandy said breathlessly.

“Okay, baby,” Wendy said, smoothing back her daughter’s sweaty hair. Some semblance of her old self had returned, though Brandy was only vaguely aware of this. “Okay. Shhh. Okay.”

The bedroom door swung open and slammed against the desk. The figure out in the hallway grunted. Another arm appeared and found the desk, gave it a good shove away from the door. A second later, a man appeared in the doorway, the badge at his chest glimmering like salvation in the moonlight coming in through the window.

“Someone in here?” he said.

“Help us,” Wendy called.

The man stepped into the room and looked around. He held his shotgun at the ready. “Where are you?” It was dark.

“Here!” Brandy shouted, struggling out of her mother’s embrace. “We’re right here!”

The man clicked on a flashlight and located them in its beam. Brandy winced. She wondered how much of this was actually happening and how much of it was a horrible nightmare.

The man settled down before them on one knee.

“Okay,” he said. The weariness in his voice was all too evident. “Okay, now.”

It was Ben Journell.



9



“Are you hurt anywhere else?” Ben asked. They were still in Matthew’s bedroom and Ben had just finished wrapping Wendy’s wound with a gauze bandage he’d located in the medicine cabinet in the hallway bathroom. A woman was with him, too—Brandy recognized her as the older woman who worked in the police station answering phones. Brandy had seen her the day she had gone to the station to talk with Ben. The day they had driven out to the old plastics factory on the other side of the Narrows…

“I don’t think so,” Wendy said. She turned her big eyes up to Ben. “Did you see him? He’s out there.”

“No,” he said flatly. “I didn’t see him. But I know he’s out there. Somewhere.”

“What…” Wendy began…but the crux of it all was too much for her to formulate into coherence and her question died before it ever truly begun. Her face collapsed into tears while her chest hitched with sobs. The older woman from the police station settled down on the floor beside Wendy and slipped an arm around her shoulders and told her that everything would be okay.

Brandy didn’t know if she believed that.

“Okay.” Ben Journell addressed his flashlight onto her mother’s bandaged wound and nodded, apparently satisfied with his work. “That should be okay for now.” Then he turned to Brandy. “How about you? Are you okay?”

Brandy just stared at him. She was trying to think of the most appropriate response, but just considering it rendered her into stagnation. Like a television set when the cable is out, her mind filled with static.

“Hon?” he said, and placed a gentle hand on her leg.

She said, “The light.”

“What’s that?”

“I scared him off with the light.” She pointed to the lamp that now lay dark and unused on the carpet beside the toppled bookcase.

Ben looked at the lamp then looked back at her. There was a firm expression on his face that afforded Brandy some indescribable comfort. Then he stood and looked out one of the bedroom windows. His shotgun was propped against the wall and Brandy’s eyes fell on it. She felt a contradictory mixture of respite and unease.

“The whole town’s dark,” he said, still looking out the window. The sight of him standing there with his hands on his hips reminded Brandy of—

(her father)

—a marble statue in some museum somewhere. “It’s the storm,” Ben continued. The badge on the front of his uniform glimmered in the moonlight coming in through the window. He turned away from the window and said, “What’s the GPS say now?”

The woman who had come in with Ben—Brandy believed her name was Shirley—paused while comforting her mother and began digging around in her purse. She withdrew a small device that cast sickly white light onto her face from an electronic screen. The woman scrutinized it then looked up at Ben. “It’s still moving,” she told him.

He went to her and she handed him the device. Ben’s face glowed blue as he held the device up to view it. The screen was doubly reflected in his eyes. “It’s moving toward the center of town,” he said.

“What is?” Brandy asked.

“The bat,” he said. “We put a tracking device on a bat.”

“The one in the cage at the police station?” Brandy asked.

Ben looked at her. Then he said, “Yes. I think you’re right. I think those bats are…I guess—”

“Harbingers,” said Shirley. “They’re harbingers, Ben.”

Although she did not know what a harbinger was, Brandy said nothing.

Ben took the shotgun up off the wall. “I’m going to follow it,” he said to them.

“No,” Brandy said. They all looked at her. “We should wait, is what I mean. Go in the daytime. I think they sleep in the daytime.”

Ben said, “They?”