The Narrows(9)

At their backs, thunder rolled as angry-looking clouds filled the sky over the mountaintop. The boys cast wary glances at each other as the sunlight retreated from the long lashes of yellow grass that sprouted up all around them.

The old plastics factory, rotting away in a bowl of weeds and scrubland and hidden behind a fence of trees, looked like the forgotten relic that it was. Matthew had never been this close to the building before—he’d never crossed Route 40 and the Narrows before—and just seeing it caused a cool, unbalanced chill to infiltrate his body. That needling icicle drove deeper into his spine.

“It’s bigger up close, huh?” Dwight intoned. He stepped closer to the stone wall and stood on his tiptoes to peer into one of the multicolored windows. The bars on the windows looked rusty and dangerous, foreboding, and Matthew wondered what would happen if someone were to cut their hand open on one of those bars. He’d heard of tetanus and other such infections, and he wondered if touching those angry-looking bars would result in him rotting away in some sterile, white hospital room somewhere, his skin slowly peeling away from his skeleton, his musculature shriveling like paper thrown into a bonfire. What exactly was tetanus, anyway? Tiny microbes that got into your bloodstream and wreaked havoc until your joints disassembled and your limbs fell off? Did it cause you to go blind? Deaf? Would he spend the rest of his miserable life slumped over in a wheelchair?

“Where exactly did you see him?” Dwight asked, moving slowly around the side of the building.

Matthew was frozen and unable to speak. He stared up at the two immense smokestacks that rose up and pierced the gunmetal sky, nearly breaching the low-hanging storm clouds.

“Hey!” Dwight thumped him on the forearm with his stick. “Did you hear me?”

“What?”

“Where did you see him?”

Matthew pointed toward the hollow of shadow against the side of the building, where the trees crowded in and caused spangles of strained sunlight to filter down against the whitish, moss-covered wall of the factory. “There,” he said dryly.

Dwight bent down and dipped beneath the overhanging trees. He faded into the shadows, mingling within the space where Matthew had seen the strange figure he believed to have been his father…but of course there was no one there now. Dwight stomped around, trampling wildflowers and swatting at gnats.

“There’s nobody here,” he said, relief evident in his voice.

“That’s where he was.”

“And then what? Where did he go?”

How could he explain it? “He just sort of…backed up and faded into the background,” Matthew said.

Dwight laughed sharply. “What background?” He placed one hand against the outer wall of the factory. “Is there a trapdoor or secret passageway or something? There’s nowhere else to go, Matt.” Then he looked up at the building, a wry grin on his face that showed he did not find the building as imposing as Matthew did. “You think he went inside?”

“I don’t know.” He looked around but couldn’t see a way into the building; the doorways had been filled in with concrete years ago. Similarly, the windows were comprised of tiny gridded panes overlaid with iron bars and wire meshwork. As he looked, he saw—or imagined he saw—shapes swimming in the warped and colored glass of the windows. Anything could be beyond those milky, opaque cataracts of glass, he realized. Anything. It was an unsettling thought.

“There’s no one here,” Dwight said again, emerging from beneath the shade of the overhanging trees. A cloud of mosquitoes orbited his head and he swatted at them, scowling.

“Boost me up so I can have a look in those windows,” Matthew said.

“There’s nothing to see, Matt. The glass is covered in muck. Anyway, it’s pitch-black inside.”

“Just boost me.”

Grunting, Dwight sidled over, laced his hands together, and held them out for Matthew to utilize as a sling. Placing his hands on Dwight’s shoulders, Matthew stepped one foot into Dwight’s cupped hands and Dwight, groaning, hoisted him up.

Matthew’s eyes rose just above the windowsill. Indeed, the thick glass was cloudy with age, reinforced with industrial meshwork from the inside. With the heel of one hand he attempted to rub away the grime but it was too caked on. Decades of dirt and filth had become solid as cement.

Then, through the cloudy panes of glass, the breathy twist of an image flickered inside the darkened building. It was like watching a candle flare briefly to life before being snuffed out.

“Hurry,” Dwight groaned from below.

“I think I see something.”

“You’re too heavy.”

A second later, Dwight’s hands gave out. Matthew dropped straight down into the grass, instantly lost his footing, and fell backward on his tailbone. Dwight snorted a laugh and leaned, panting for breath, against the side of the building.

“Do you think we can find a way in?” Matthew said, climbing back onto his feet and brushing the mud and grass from his legs.

“A way in? No way. This building’s been locked up forever.”

“We need to go in there.”

“Dude.” Dwight reached out and shook one of Matthew’s shoulders. “Hey. What’s the matter with you? Your dad ain’t here, Matt.”

Matthew didn’t take his eyes from the bank of milky windows above. “Maybe if we went around back,” he muttered, this time more to himself than to Dwight.