by Ronald Malfi
“What are you doing?” Matthew said. Then, as an afterthought, he added, “You’re not supposed to bring knives to school, Dwight.”
“You’re not supposed to blah blah blah,” Dwight parroted. “You’re such a sissy. Help me cut the tail off.”
“What? No way!”
“Don’t be a baby.”
“I’m not touching it.” Matthew took an unconscious step backward. “Why do you want that tail, anyway?”
“I’m gonna hang it from my bike.” The tone of Dwight’s voice suggested that Matthew was an imbecile for not understanding this.
“You do it yourself.”
“I need you to help.” Dwight stepped over what Matthew estimated to be the ropy, silvered spools of the deer’s entrails, then hunkered down again. Sunlight shimmered along the blade of the boning knife. “Either pull the tail straight out or keep the body steady while I cut.”
Matthew sucked his lower lip. He couldn’t pull his eyes from the dead animal decomposing and crawling with flies in the grass. He could hear their buzzing, an industrial, machinelike drone.
“Okay,” he said finally, “but on one condition.”
Dwight groaned and peered up at him from beneath his brow. It was the same look he shot Mr. Hodgson at school when asked to come to the blackboard and solve a math problem in front of the class. “What?”
“You let me take over your paper route, just until I have enough money so I can buy the Dracula mask.”
“It’s not a fucking Dracula mask…”
“Vampire mask, then. Deal?”
Dwight’s mouth twisted into a knot. He looked down at the dead deer’s tail, his longish hair damp with perspiration and curling over his eyes, then back up at Matthew. Before he even opened his mouth, Matthew knew he would agree to it.
“I can’t give you the route, Matt. I just can’t. But yeah, okay, I’ll lend you the money. You can pay me back through your allowance. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“But then I get to wear the mask sometimes too. Deal?”
“Deal.”
“Swear on it.”
Matthew Crawly spit on the ground then said, “Swear.”
This seemed to suffice. Dwight nodded succinctly then jerked his head at the dead animal’s tail. Matthew tromped through the underbrush and squatted down beside Dwight. This close to the carcass, he could see with perfect clarity the maggots squirming within the pulpy gruel, fat and white, like overcooked macaroni. There was a sticky web of foam spilling out of the rent in the flesh, pinkish with blood and mucus.
“Come on,” Dwight said, prodding the rear of the animal with the point of the boning knife. Agitated flies clotted the air above them.
The tail jutted up at a perfect ninety-degree angle, stiff as a coat hanger. Matthew pinched its tip between his thumb and forefinger then pulled it taut. The fur was incredibly soft and, beneath the fur, he could feel the tapered, pencil-thin tailbone.
“Just hurry up and do it,” Matthew said.
Dwight placed the blade of the boning knife against the tail, at the point where the tail met the creature’s hindquarters, and proceeded to saw back and forth with disciplined alacrity. The sound was like twisting a leather wallet and the sight of the act turned Matthew’s stomach. He looked away, back up the opposite hillside where the undulating fields climbed toward the square stone shell of the plastics factory, partially masked behind a network of dead trees. A cool breeze issued down the mountain, rustling the prickly underbrush and causing the tall, yellow grass to blow.
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 naïve 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 façade 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.
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.
“No way. I’m not going in there.”
Matthew took a step toward the building, ran one finger down the seam between two of the large stones in the façade. The pad of his fingertip was now white with stone dust. “Then maybe I’ll go in without you, Dwight.”
He sensed, more than saw, Dwight shuffle uncomfortably around him. After a few moments of silence, Dwight offered a trembling laugh. He clubbed Matthew on the back and the feel of his hand seemed to break the trance that had overtaken Matthew.
“Good one,” Dwight said. “But let’s quit dicking around.”
Matthew nodded and rubbed his eyes. “Yeah. Maybe you were right,” Matthew said, just wanting to go home now, too. That icy needling at the base of his spine had vanished. “Maybe it was a mirage.”
“Yeah.” Dwight sounded satisfied. Relieved, too. Besides, he’d gotten his goddamn deer tail…
A vision then accosted Matthew—the figure springing straight out of the shadows, its long, colorless arms extending and wrapping around Dwight, then pulling him backward into the murky, black, sunless place until they disappeared together. In this vision, the figure was no longer Matthew’s father, but some indistinct and featureless approximation of a human being. Matthew shivered at the thought.
“Okay,” Matthew said. “Let’s get out of here.”
3
Somehow, the rain managed to hold off until they reached the Crawly house. It was a modest, two-story Cape Cod that looked weather-beaten and exhausted. Shutters hung at awkward angles and the front porch slouched to the left so severely that Matthew had to remember not to leave his baseball on it, for fear that it would roll off, bound down the street, and vanis
h from his life altogether. The storm had wreaked havoc on the place, shoving mud up against the foundation and knocking down some of the smaller trees. His mother had attempted to sandbag the perimeter of the house, just as his father had done all those years ago when Matthew was five, but her work had been hasty and ineffectual, and there had been some flooding. Many of the sandbags had burst as well, leaving damp mounds of sawdust-colored muck in various places around the yard.
Before continuing down the block to his own house, Dwight outfitted Matthew’s hand with a wad of damp dollar bills. “Here. It’s the money for the vampire mask. Just don’t forget,” he told Matthew, staring longingly at the crumbled currency in Matthew’s hand, probably regretting his decision immediately. “I get to wear the mask, too.”
“I won’t forget.”
Dwight nodded then licked the sweat off his upper lip with a small, pink, pointed tongue. His arms were tanned and freckled and his brows knitted together as if in deep concentration.
“What is it?” Matthew asked.
“It’s where they found that boy,” Dwight said. He brushed his curly hair off his forehead and Matthew could see a finger of snot vibrating in the channel of his left nostril. “Down by the Narrows, I mean. Right down there where we saw the dead deer.”
“So?”
“What if…” Dwight’s eyes flitted furtively around before looking down at his muddy sneakers. “Forget it.”
“What?”
Dwight looked up at him. “I hear things outside my window at night.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Like someone moving around in the yard. I keep the window open and I wake up in the middle of the night, sometimes to take a piss, but then I hear someone down there. It sounds like someone moving back and forth on the gravel driveway. I look but there’s never anybody there.”
“Maybe it’s an animal,” Matthew said. “Like a raccoon or a stray cat or something.”
“It’s not.”
“Then what do you think it is?”