The Narrows(8)

A figure stood within the dark lee of the building, partially shrouded by trees. Matthew discerned the pale flesh of a phantom but could make out no discernible features. Not at first, anyway. As Matthew watched, the figure retreated back into the shadows until it was impossible to distinguish the figure from the weathered stone of the factory walls. It was only after the figure had vanished from view that something clicked over in his head, and he thought, okay, yes, he had seen who the person was. But could it be…?

Matthew felt the tail come away from the carcass—he had been unwittingly pulling at it with such force that its liberation caused him to lose his balance—and he fell backward in the dirt to the score of Dwight’s laughter. Matthew held the tail up and let it blow like a wind sock in the breeze. There wasn’t any blood at all.

“Sweet,” Dwight crooned. “Let me have it.”

“It’s yours,” Matthew said, handing the stiff tuft of fur over to his best friend, who snatched it up with a giddy enthusiasm. Then he stood and looked back over at the factory, and to the hollow of shadow where he’d seen the figure.

But the figure was gone.

It’s not him. It can’t be. Why would he be up there, anyway?

Dwight held the tail up against the sun with both hands, as if trying to determine the authenticity of an artifact, his round, brown face dripping sweat. “Maybe I’ll get one of those flagpole things for the back of my bike and hang this thing from it.”

Matthew was hardly listening to him. He scanned the factory grounds but could no longer make out the person who had appeared to be watching him from a web of shadows.

“I bet this would make some killer fishing bait,” Dwight continued to ramble. Then he looked at Matthew. “What’s the matter with you?”

Matthew pointed. “There was somebody standing up there just a second ago, right by the factory. Now he’s gone.”

“What?” Dwight executed his own quick scan of the area.

“Yeah…and he…he was…”

“What?”

Matthew swallowed an uncomfortable lump and said, “I think it was my dad.”

Silence fell over both boys for the length of a single heartbeat. Then Dwight brayed laughter and punched Matthew in the arm. “Cut it out. You’re just trying to freak me out, right?”

“I’m being serious.” He spit again on the ground. “Swear.”

Dwight stood sharply. “So where’d he go?”

“I don’t know.”

Dwight stuffed the deer tail in his backpack, though he didn’t take his eyes from the old factory on the other side of the Narrows. “Why would your dad be up there?”

“I don’t know. But it looked like him.”

“I think you’re just seeing things,” Dwight said.

“Let’s go check it out.”

“Wait—what? I thought you needed to get home.”

Matthew felt his left eyelid twitch.

“Come on, Matt. It’s just shadows and trees up there.”

But Matthew was already walking back up the embankment and crossing onto the stone footbridge that spanned the Narrows. Dwight stared up at him, his big stick over his shoulder, reminding Matthew of Tom Sawyer, and of all the Mark Twain stories he’d read in English class. Dwight was a year older than him but they were in the same grade. Dwight swore it was because he’d had a talk with his old man—what Dwight called a sit-down—where Dwight professed his desire to stay back a year so that he and Matthew could be in the same class. But Matthew wasn’t na?ve and he knew better: Dwight Dandridge just wasn’t all that smart. As he saw his best friend climb up the slope and cross onto the stone footbridge after him, Matthew was suddenly overcome by a wealth of emotion for his friend—a feeling that was frighteningly and uncharacteristically adult.

“We should go home,” Dwight called to him.

“Come on,” Matthew called back, the sound of his voice already trailing away in a sudden and strong wind as he crossed the bridge and headed up the incline of the neighboring hillside toward the old plastics factory. “Just a quick look.”

They were halfway up the hill and heading toward the old building, Dwight whacking tall grass and reeds out of his way with his stick, when Matthew paused. His eyes bore through the interlocking arms of the trees and he saw the bone-colored fa?ade of the factory beyond. Sweat had suddenly sprung out along his skin and there was a cold needling at the base of his spine now. He felt…strange.

“Maybe I was wrong,” Matthew said. “I mean, maybe there’s no one here and I was just seeing things.”

“What do you call those visions people see when they’re real thirsty in the desert?” Dwight asked.

“A mirage?” Matthew said. He had read a story about mirages in one of his comic books. They were like hallucinations. Sometimes people out wandering in the desert dropped to their knees and downed mouthfuls of sand that their addled minds had fooled them into believing was water.

“Yeah,” Dwight said, “a mirage. Maybe that’s what it was.”

“But I’m not thirsty.”

Dwight shrugged. “Maybe you don’t gotta always be thirsty to see a mirage.”

“Maybe,” he said, though he knew it hadn’t been a mirage, hadn’t been a hallucination. Only people dying in the desert saw mirages and only crazy people had hallucinations. Matthew knew he was neither.