The Narrows(36)

“No, Tom. It’s not cool.”

“He’s already gone, right?”

She closed her eyes. The cold air came through the open windows and washed over her tired body.

“Maggie? Hon?”

“Yes,” she said, her eyes still closed. “He just left.”

“Did you get my texts?”

“What do you want, Tom?”

“I want you to come over again tonight.”

“I can’t.”

“Don’t be like that, Maggie.”

“I’m not being like anything. Evan’s too suspicious. I have to lay low.”

“Evan’s at work. What will he know?”

He’s supposed to be your goddamn friend, you *, she wanted to shout at him. But on the heels of that, she thought, He’s also supposed to be my goddamn husband.

Something pale and quick darted across the backyard. Maggie felt her blood freeze.

“Mags?” said Tom. “You there?”

The curtains billowed out in the wind. She leaned closer to one window and, squinting, peered out into the darkness.

“Hey, Maggie, come on. What’s the problem, doll?”

A figure moved along the perimeter of the property. She could see the whiteness of its flesh—it appeared naked—and the quick, jerky, animalistic way it moved. The figure scaled the perimeter of the yard then ditched into a bay of shadows beneath a weeping willow tree. The wind blew hard, rustling the tentacular branches of the willow tree and stirring up little tornados of dead leaves in the yard.

“You mad at me, Mags?”

“Tom, I have to go.”

“Come on, doll. Don’t be—”

She hung up the phone and dropped the cell onto the sofa. Leaning forward, she tried to see into the shadows beneath the willow tree but she was too far away to make anything out. For one stupid moment, she was living in an alternate universe where all her lies were truths and the things Evan had told her to watch out for were real. She imagined the shape to be the Codger kid, slinking like a vampire in the darkness of the yard, intent on smashing the shit out of Evan’s Pontiac, just like how Evan had smashed the shit out of Codger that night at Crossroads. The kid had been drunk and flirty and had been staring at Maggie’s chest all night. Evan had grabbed the kid around the collar, dragged him out into the parking lot, and kicked his ass. Not that the Codger boy didn’t have it coming—the kid was a complete degenerate who had served time up in Jessup for robbery and assault.

But then reality washed back to her and she knew Ricky Codger hadn’t had anything to do with the damage to Evan’s car.

Maggie went out onto the patio. The town had been wracked by storms recently, and downtown had flooded and lost power; the sky still threatened its wrath, the clouds trembling with thunder, and she could almost taste electricity in the air. The wind bullied the branches of the distant willow tree. The overlong grass undulated like the surface of the sea.

“Come out!” she shouted across the yard toward the willow tree. For all she could tell, the figure had already vanished. “I see you!”

Thunder rumbled directly overhead. She thought she could make out the shape of a person behind the waving branches of the willow tree.

A cold dread overtook her.

Evan kept a shotgun in the basement, bracketed to a lacquered plaque on the wall. There were shells in a cardboard box in the bottom drawer of his workbench. She’d never fired it before and wondered now if she’d know how. Would she even be able to load it?

There’s no one out there, she attempted to tell herself. This is just my guilt and my fear messing with my head.

The whitish figure darted out from beneath the tree and scurried across the yard. It hid behind the Pontiac, the figure itself vanishing but its shadow lengthening along the dirt turnabout in the cast of floodlights. Terrified, Maggie watched the shadow retreat along the ground until it disappeared completely behind the car.

She turned and hurried back into the house, shutting and locking the door behind her. Then she went to the bank of windows over the living room couch, shutting each one and locking it, then drawing the curtains. She was breathing heavily, her heart paining her as it slammed against the wall of her chest. For whatever reason, she thought now of the Creedence Clearwater Revival song that had been on the Pontiac’s radio after leaving Tom’s place last night—John Fogerty crooning about something that had fallen out of the sky and into some farmer’s field.

That’s what is out there now, she thought. The thing that fell out of the sky, just like in that song. The thing I hit with the car.

It had come back for her. She was certain of it.

No…please…

She hurried up and down the halls, closing and locking the windows and turning off all the lights. Whatever was out there, she didn’t want it seeing into the house. After she had locked up all the windows, she returned to the door that led to the backyard and peered out the crescent panel of glass. The floodlights were still on. She looked frantically around the yard but couldn’t see anything.

That wasn’t a child you hit, said that evil voice in her head. That was something else. That was the thing that fell out of the sky.

She shook her head, clearing it of the voice. She’d suffered the voice when she was younger, right after high school, and for whatever reason, it had returned to her now. No, she thought. Get out of my head.