The Narrows(92)

A pair of silvery eyes flared up out of the darkness. Eddie’s bowels clenched. Even as he tried to convince himself once again that this was a deer, a f*cking whitetail—all the f*ck over the place this time of year, swear to God they are, all the f*ck over—he knew that this was no goddamn deer. To begin with, the eyes were situated right next to each other and faced forward, faced him. They were the eyes of a predator, not the eyes of prey.

“If…” he began, attempting to address the owner of those eyes, but he wound up choking on his words.

Just as quickly as they had appeared, those silvery eyes vanished…then reappeared a few yards to the right, shining like dimes through the space between two trees. Eddie tried to swing the flashlight over to it but was too slow. The thing repositioned itself yet again, toying with him it seemed, and the sounds of its footfalls seemed to come from various locations all at once, audible all too clearly over the storm.

“Fuck this,” he muttered, sidestepping around the side of the house yet unable to take his eyes away from the stand of trees.

Something stretched forward out of the tree line, the barest hint of moonlight illuminating what looked like the small, pale arm of a child. The tattered sleeve of a dark-colored flannel shirt hung from the thin white arm in ribbons.

“Who’s that?” he called, his voice a reedy whine. “Who’s there?”

The arm withdrew back into the shadows. He could make out the silhouette of someone back there—slight, narrow, frail, childlike.

“Come out.”

The shape ambled out of the trees. A tattered flannel shirt hung drenched from small shoulders. Eyes like silver discs.

“Jesus,” Eddie breathed.

It was Bob Leary’s kid. Yet it wasn’t…

The kid took a shuddery, uncertain step toward Eddie and Eddie felt himself flinch. In an unsteady voice, he called out, “That you, Billy? You okay, son?”

The boy did not respond. There was a feral look in the kid’s eyes, which looked unnaturally large. When the Leary kid cocked his head quizzically to one side, the way a curious dog might, Eddie could make out striations along the kid’s scalp where tufts of his dark hair had fallen out.

Billy Leary’s eyes shimmered with an unearthly light.

“Christ…”

Eddie lowered the flashlight, the world spinning out of view. Coldness ran through his veins like arctic wind. To say he made it halfway to his squad car would be an exaggeration; Eddie La Pointe staggered backward a few steps, never taking his eyes off the pale-skinned boy who was not actually a boy at all. When the boy lowered his head and charged at him from the thicket, Eddie turned and started to run. Yet he made it only a few feet before one foot snagged on the exposed root of an oak tree arching out of the earth. He came down hard as stars exploded before his eyes, all his weight driving him down into a puddle of freezing water. His campaign hat flipped backward off his head and disappeared into a whirlwind of sightlessness. He sensed rather than saw the thing as it closed the distance between them, Eddie’s heartbeat rising and his head screaming before any actual sound could manage to escape his throat. When he rolled over on his back, the thing was suddenly upon him, pinning him down to the earth with impossible strength. The face that looked down upon him was not of some snarling beast nor some vaporous phantom, but the soft, white face of a child, only with eyes like glass balls and flesh the color of candlewax. Water traced down the contours of the child’s face, glittering like diamonds and pouring into Eddie’s open mouth and spilling into his eyes. The child’s mouth unhinged, snakelike, revealing a corrugated tubular void of ribbed, quivering flesh. The child’s blackened tongue lashed out.

In a fit of fury, Eddie swung his head to one side just as a belching sound emanated from the boy. A second later, a molten hot gout of fluid spilled onto Eddie’s upper shoulder and bicep.

Eddie screamed and bucked his hips. The Leary boy hung on, his small, bony fingers planted firmly in the flesh of Eddie’s arms. His vision blurry, Eddie turned his head again and managed to make out the hideous white face with its mouth agape and inching closer to his face. Pale foam dripped and sizzled from the open mouth. Eddie screamed and bucked his hips some more, managing to pry his arms up off the ground and roll onto his side. Distantly, he heard a second belching sound and was faintly aware of a thick, warm fluid splattering down the shaft of his right arm.

He rolled onto his stomach, splashing again in the icy water, and shoved himself to his feet. Through his bleary eyes, he could see the squad car only a few yards away, parked at a slant at the front of the house, rain tap-dancing across its hood. He staggered toward it but quickly lost his footing, driving his face down into the cold, hard, compacted mud. He felt his jaw crack. Somewhere behind him, a wicked shriek echoed through the night.

Then came the pain. It came in a hot molten swelling, all along his right fist and arm, straight up to the shoulder and the right pectoral muscle. He made the mistake of glancing at his pained appendage and found that a greenish sludge was oozing down the length of his arm. Where the fingers of his right hand should have protruded up through the muck, there was only the fast-melting sludge of muscle and tissue, along with the startlingly bright nubs of bone. Acid burning through his flesh, Eddie La Pointe howled in pain.

Static buzzed over his radio. He hardly heard it. With his good hand—his left hand—he managed to drag himself a foot or two closer to the squad car before his attacker leaped onto his back, driving him down. He made a pathetic uff! sound as the wind was knocked out of him. Uselessly, he tried to claw through the dirt with his right hand only to realize that he no longer had a right hand. The pain caused fireworks to explode before his eyes.