The Narrows(105)

“There’s something else out there,” Brandy said. “Something had to do that to my brother.”

“She’s right, Ben,” Shirley said.

“Don’t hurt my boy,” Wendy Crawly said, her voice just a hair above a croak. It hurt Brandy’s heart to look at her, to hear her plead like that. “Don’t hurt my boy, Ben Journell.”

Brandy said, “He’s not—”

“I ain’t hurting no one’s boy,” Ben said, cutting Brandy off while shooting her a sideways glance.

“The fake sunlight scared him off,” Brandy reminded him, pointing to the UV lamp again. “And I think he’s been sleeping in the daytime.” With a sinking feeling in her stomach, she added, “In the garage.”

Slowly, Ben nodded. He glanced back down at the GPS device…then set it down on the desk that sat slantwise across the bedroom floor. He lowered himself to the floor and set the shotgun back against the wall. When he drew his knees up and rested the back of his head against the wall, Brandy heard him release an audible sigh. She could see his hands shaking in the moonlight.



10



“That boy we found down at Wills Creek,” Ben said after the silence became too great. “He had a series of puncture wounds going down his back.”

“Like Matthew’s shirt,” Brandy Crawly said, not missing a beat.

“And the hair had fallen out with both boys,” Ben volleyed. He was disgusted. Tired. He couldn’t stop thinking about how similar both boys had appeared…

“What happened to my little boy?” Wendy Crawly whispered. Shirley was back at her side, her arm around her shoulders again, their heads nearly propped against one another.

“I’m not sure,” Ben admitted. He exhaled loudly. “Something got to him. The same thing that got that other boy.” After a pause, he added, “I think the same thing happened to Bob Leary’s kid, too.”

Brandy said, “Billy?”

“Yeah. He went missing, too.”

“When?”

Ben shook his head. The days all blended together. It could have been yesterday or six months ago for all he knew.

Then young Brandy said something that caused a chill to radiate through the center of his bones: “How many more are out there, do you think?”

Ben did not answer. He took the GPS off the desk and set it in his lap. The battery still registered as full. He asked Shirley how much time they had before the batteries in the GPS and the tracking device went dead.

“Seventy-two hours,” she responded, sounding sleepy and very far away.

“Isn’t that something,” he muttered to himself. “That’s a smart idea,” he told Brandy, “waiting for daylight.”

“It is,” she said. “And I’m coming with you.”

He was too tired to argue.

At some point, he slept.





Chapter Eighteen


1


Official sunrise for Allegheny County on Thursday morning registered at 6:29 a.m., but the sun did not begin to peek over the eastern mountain and cast its predawn light onto the town of Stillwater until ten after seven. Ben had woken up around five and had sat in the silence of the bedroom, listening to the others sleep, thinking the same catalog of thoughts over and over while keeping one eye trained on the bedroom windows. The rain had let up to a light drizzle, but he knew it was too late. The Narrows had already flooded and the power would be out for some time yet.

What does it matter? he wondered. What will be left after today? What happened to Stillwater while I sat in this house, waiting out the night?

Waiting for daylight had seemed like the smart move last night, but now he felt as though he’d allowed some virulent strain to work its poison, sickening the veins, ruining the body, corrupting the heart. Had his hometown died quietly in the night while he slept and waited?

Someone stirred across the room just as the eastern sky began to change. It was Brandy. She stretched and made half-sleep sounds before crawling over to Ben. She leaned against the wall beside him.

“I should go now,” he said.

She looked warily out the window and due east. “It’s still dark.”

“It’ll be daylight soon enough. Besides, I can’t sit here and wait any longer.”

“What does your thing say?”

“Huh?” he grunted.

“Your whatsit,” she said. “That little screen.”

“Oh.” In the night, he must have kicked it under the nearby desk. He slid it out and looked at it. The red dot was no longer moving. It appeared to have roosted at the far end of town, in the abandoned section of town beyond Gracie Street.

“Where is it?”

“Off Gracie Street,” he told her.

“What do you think we’ll find out there?” she said, her whispery voice dropping even lower.

Ben grinned with half his mouth and said, “We, huh?”

“Yes. I’m not going to let you shoot my brother.”

He nodded, but thought, It would be doing him a favor, I think, darling. Yet even thinking that made him feel horrible.

Brandy pointed to something on the carpet between them. “What’s that?”

He picked it up and turned it over in his fingers. “A lighter. It was my dad’s. It must’ve fallen out of my pocket while I slept.”