by Ronald Malfi
Evan cursed and backed up till his spine struck the Volkswagen’s windshield. His boots scrambled blindly for purchase on the sloping hood of the car while he pawed frantically at his eyes with one hand. The shotgun’s muzzle waved like a white flag back and forth, back and forth. The boy leaned against the hood of the car just as his small and inadequate chest swelled once more. His neck fattened, engorged with the greenish, snot-like substance, and his head tipped back slightly on its thin stalk of a neck.
A second ribbon squirted from the boy’s mouth, splashing against the side of Evan’s face while droplets pattered down into Evan’s lap and along the hood of the car. Again, Evan cried out…and now Maggie thought she could see steam or smoke rising from the snot-like sludge stuck to her husband’s face. Evan screamed and rolled off the hood of the car and, a second later, Maggie also screamed as the shotgun exploded and fire belched from the muzzle. In the sudden flare of firelight, the boy’s profile flashed into quick relief—his pale, almost hairless body and indistinct features reminiscent of the blind creatures that live deep underground or on the floor of the deepest oceans.
Again, Maggie saw the barrel of the shotgun wave back and forth in the air. One of Evan’s boots kicked out from behind the car.
“Evan!” she screamed, suddenly finding her voice.
Evan sprang up from behind the other side of the car, his face a mask of steaming, disintegrating tissue. Somehow he managed a strangled noise that sounded as if he were trying to mimic birdcalls; the sound still hung in the air as a section of his skull slid away in a bloody mudslide, taking the gelatinous white orb of one eyeball with it.
Evan threw himself over the hood of the car. Scrambling like a cat looking for purchase, he bucked and kicked and groped blindly at the windshield wipers. His fingernails sounded like creaking hinges as they scraped down the hull of the Volkswagen’s hood. Bits of Evan’s face puddled in the windshield-wiper well.
That was when Maggie ran back into the house.
She slammed the door then spun the dead bolt. Peering through the crescent of glass in the door, she was horrified to find her husband’s body on the ground now, having been dragged off the car by the pale-skinned boy. Evan had stopped struggling and now lay like a sack of wet grain in the dirt beside the car.
As she watched, the boy walked around the side of the car and crouched down beside the mutilated bulb of Evan’s skull. Just before Maggie Quedentock passed out, she saw the boy dig around inside her husband’s skull and bring a wet and bloodied tendril of gray matter to his mouth.
Part Two:
Sundown
“How sweet it was to see the clouds race by, and the brief gleams of the moonlight between the scudding clouds…”
—Bram Stoker, Dracula
Chapter Ten
1
For the first time in years, Ben Journell showed up late for his shift at the station. He’d spent much of the previous night combing through the case file for the unidentified boy. There were the photos he and Eddie had taken at the scene; there were Deets’s photos as well, taken after the ME had arrived on the scene to officially pronounce the death; there was their official report; the coroner’s report, notification letters and other official documentation. He had hoped that by going through it again he might be able to uncover some previously elusive bit of information that might open some secret door for him. And was there a connection between what had happened to this boy and Matthew Crawly’s disappearance? He was becoming increasingly worried about the Crawly boy. It was now Tuesday and there was no further news.
“Hey,” Mel Haggis said as they nearly bumped each other’s shoulders in the doorway of the Batter’s Box. “You feeling okay?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Looks like you didn’t get no sleep last night.”
“I didn’t.” Ben went over to his desk where he dumped the case file on the unidentified boy. “Anything exciting going on?” He could hear the dullness in his own voice. It made him tired.
“Dorr Kirkland just had Tom Schuler’s car towed from a no-parking zone outside his store,” Haggis said with about the same amount of enthusiasm as Ben’s. “And Poorhouse Pete’s in lockup again. Poor fool seems really out of it today.” Haggis shrugged, looking bored. “That’s about it.”
“You guys ever get in touch with the FBI about the Crawly kid’s disappearance?”
“Oh, yeah,” Haggis said, his small, blue eyes brightening. “They located the kid’s father.”
Ben sat wearily in his chair. “Hugh? Where is he?”
“Salt Lake City. A couple of feds showed up at his place and interviewed him. He said he hadn’t seen the boy since he left Stillwater about a year or so ago and hadn’t been back to Stillwater since. Feds said his story checks out.”
“Damn.” Ben had been hoping the father was involved. It boded better for Matthew that way.
“Guy picks up and leaves his family like that,” Haggis went on. “You think he even cares that his boy’s gone missing?”
“I don’t know, Mel.”
“I mean, how does a guy do something like that?”
Again, Ben said, “I don’t know.”
Haggis looked at his wristwatch. “I’m gonna grab some lunch. You want anything?”
Ben waved a hand at him. “I’m good. Thanks.”
“Suit yourself.” Haggis turned to leave then paused and turned back around. “Oh, I almost forgot. There’s a kid waiting for you in Shirley’s office.”
“A kid?”
“Some girl.”
“Yeah? She’s waiting for me?”
“Says she wanted to talk to Ben Journell. That’s you, last I checked.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“You got it,” Haggis said and sauntered out of the Batter’s Box.
Ben thumbed through the stack of Post-it notes Shirley had left on his desk—she didn’t believe in leaving voice mails—and saw, with much relief, that nothing more serious than the dissemination of a few parking tickets had happened in his absence.
When he pushed open the door to the dispatcher’s room, he saw Shirley talking to Brandy Crawly, who sat in one of the molded-plastic chairs against the wall. She looked small and lost and had her hands clenched between her knees. As he entered, the girl looked up at him. A fierce helplessness flashed behind her large, dark eyes.
“Hey, Brandy,” he said. “I heard you were looking for me.”
Brandy stood, looking as unstable as a foal. “Mr. Journell? Um, I mean…Officer Journell?”
“Call me Ben,” he said. “Is something wrong?”
“Can I talk to you?”
“Sure.” He held the door open and waved her through. Then he shared a quizzical look with Shirley before leading the girl back to his desk in the Batter’s Box.
Brandy walked slowly down the aisle of desks, peering all around.
“You look disappointed or something,” Ben said, pulling an extra chair over to his desk. They both sat down.
“I thought you’d have guns and stuff all over the place.”
“We’ve got guns but we keep them locked up in the back.” He tapped a thumb against the firearm at his hip. “I’ve got this, too.” He folded his hands on his desk and tried to sound casual. “So what can I do for you?”
“I have some…information,” she said.
“About your brother?”
She nodded. “His friend Dwight Dandridge said Matthew might have gone out to the old plastics factory on the other side of the Narrows. Do you know the place?”
“Yes.”
“He said he didn’t tell you because Matthew’s not supposed to go out there and he didn’t want to get him in trouble.”
“Why does Dwight think he went there?”
“Because that’s where they went Friday after school. Dwight said Matthew thought he saw someone inside the factory and he wanted to go in after him.”
“Someone who?”
“Oh,” she said, “Dwight s
aid he thought maybe…well, he thought he saw our dad.”
Ben blinked. “Dwight said he saw your dad go into the factory?”
“Well, outside the factory, not in it. I don’t think so, anyway.” She paused and thought about it. “And no, Dwight didn’t see him, but he said Matthew did. I think.”
“And Matthew said it was your dad?”
“That’s what Dwight said.”
“Did they go into the factory? Dwight and your brother?”
“Dwight said they didn’t. He said he got too scared. But Matthew really wanted to go in there.”
Ben nodded and chewed on his lower lip.
“I drove out there last night,” Brandy said, “and I would have gone up to the factory but the bridge was out.”
“I guess I can drive out there and take a look,” Ben said.
“I want to come with you.”
“Shouldn’t you be in school today, hon?”
“I skipped out.” She seemed nervous admitting this to him, as if she were facing jail time for truancy.
“Why don’t you go home and keep your mom company and I’ll drive up to the—”
“I really want to go with you, Ben. Please.”
“Yeah.” He rubbed his chin, feeling the bristles of his beard that he’d forgotten to shave that morning. He supposed it couldn’t hurt anything having her come along. The poor kid looked terrified. “Okay. You can come. But then I’m driving you straight home, okay?”
She nodded fervently. “Okay.”
Together they walked down to the sally port where Ben switched on the large ceiling light and punched the mechanical button that raised the garage doors. He went to an equipment locker, opened it, and rooted around for the industrial bolt cutters he knew were in there. Finally he located them toward the back of the locker, hidden behind someone’s rain slicker. Ben examined them, noting that they looked like the wishbone of some large prehistoric animal, and put them in the trunk of the cruiser.
Brandy stood in front of the bell-shaped birdcage, staring at the bat.
“Pretty neat, huh?” he said, coming up beside her.
“How come it’s here?” She sounded uncomfortable.
“It got caught in the garage. The guys wanted to keep it as a sort of mascot.”
“Will you keep it forever?”
“No. We’ll let it go soon enough.”
“Does it drink blood?”
Ben laughed. “It eats fruit. Bugs, probably, too.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s get in the car, take a ride.”
They drove out to Route 40, mostly in silence. Ben’s attempts at small talk failed—he had no idea how to make idle chatter with a sixteen-year-old—and it wasn’t until Brandy initiated conversation that things took a more dramatic turn.
“My dad called the house today.”
Ben nodded firmly but said nothing.
“It was early when he called. I heard my mom on the phone with him. She cried.”
“We had the FBI locate him and tell him about Matthew. I guess he wanted to speak with your mom about it.”
“He hurt Matthew the most when he left,” she said. “I mean, my mom cried a lot and I was upset, too, but I was also mostly angry. But Matthew, he was really devastated. He didn’t really understand what was going on, either. He would spend hours sitting in the garage, which is where my dad kept his workbench and did little projects and stuff, like he was waiting for him to come back. It made my mom sad to see him sitting in there and it made me angrier.”
“I can understand that.”
“You said you knew my dad, huh?”
“We grew up in Stillwater together, yeah.” He braced himself for more questions about Hugh Crawly, but she did not ask any more. So he asked one of his own. “Have you seen your father since he left Stillwater?”
“No.” She looked at him and he felt her eyes weighing heavily on him. “You said the FBI found him? My dad, I mean.”
“Yes.”
“Is he…close by?”
“No, hon. He’s living in Salt Lake City.”
“Oh.”
“That’s in Utah.”
“I know where it is.” She turned and faced forward again. “So then Matthew was wrong. He couldn’t have seen our dad, could he?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
When they came around the bend of Route 40 that overlooked the Narrows and, beyond that, the incline of the mountain where the old factory sat halfway up, Ben slowed the car and turned off the highway. The tires crunched over gravel and the ride was bumpy.
“There’s a turnabout down here where we can park,” he told her, craning his neck to peer through the dirt-speckled windshield. “Since the Highland Street Bridge is out, we’ll have to walk across on the footbridge.”
In the passenger seat, Brandy nodded numbly and looked out the window.
The turnabout was halfway down the embankment that led toward the Narrows. Ben parked and stepped on the emergency brake. “Fall out,” he said, attempting to sound jovial, and pushed out the driver’s door. The air was humid this afternoon, the sun a blazing eyelet in the sky directly overhead. He went to the trunk and took out the bolt cutter while Brandy meandered down to the edge of the Narrows and peered down.
Ben came up beside her. “Be careful.”
The tips of her sneakers were overextending the concrete barrier. Inches below the lip of the barrier, the grayish waters of Wills Creek shuttled by. Typically the water was no more than four or five feet deep, but after the series of storms and all the flooding, the water was high enough for someone to lean over the barrier and touch it with their fingertips or graze the surface with a boot heel.
“It’s deep,” she said. “I’ve never come this close to it before.”
Ben knew what the girl was thinking, mainly because he was thinking the same thing. Had her brother come down here on his own and fallen into the Narrows? Christ, he hoped not…
“Listen,” he said then. “You can come along with me but you do whatever I tell you to do. You do it without question, okay? I don’t need to argue with no kid out here, okay?”
“I’m not a kid.”
“Well, you get what I mean, right?”
She averted her eyes from his. “Yeah.”
“Good. Now come on,” he said, turning away from the water and heading across the sloping field toward the stone arch of the footbridge. Brandy followed, her shadow mingling with his in the brownish grass.
“This is where you found that other kid, right?” she asked.
I knew it was only a matter of time before she brought that up, he thought, feeling uncomfortable and unprepared nonetheless.
“A bit farther down,” he said. “Where Wills Creek empties into the river.”
“Do you know who he was?”
“No.”
“But he wasn’t from town, right?”
“He wasn’t.”
They crossed the footbridge. At the apex, Ben peered over one side and examined his smeary reflection in the running, black water.
“What killed him?” Brandy asked. She appeared beside him now, also gazing down at her reflection.
“I assume he drowned.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I’m not sure,” Ben said. He was growing increasingly perturbed talking to this girl about the strange boy’s death. “The autopsy hasn’t been done yet.”
“When will the autopsy be done?”
When they find the goddamn body, he thought eerily. If it just got up and walked away, maybe it will come walking right back. Which made him even more uncomfortable thinking about it…
“Was that all?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Did he have any other injuries or anything?”
“No.” They stepped off the footbridge and began climbing the grassy slope toward the factory. Sweat already ran down Ben’s forehead.
“Are you sure?”
He paused and glance
d at her. He felt himself offer her a crooked smile though it was more out of discomfort than humor. Wincing in the bright light of day, she looked up at him, her face otherwise expressionless.
“Of course I’m sure,” he said evenly. “Was there something else you wanted to ask me?”
“You said my mom already told you about the T-shirt we found in the yard? Matthew’s T-shirt?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “I guess that’s it, then.”
They continued up the incline until the trees parted and the massive stone façade of the ancient plastics factory rose out of the earth. As recently as a few years ago, the factory grounds had been part of the department’s patrol area, in an effort to keep an eye out for potential drug users or neighborhood delinquents who found it exhilarating to throw bricks through windows and spray graffiti on walls. But it seemed no one ever trespassed on the property. When the land eventually reverted back to the county, officers stopped coming up here. There was no landowner to complain if anything ever happened, and it seemed that nothing did ever happen. Quite often, Ben forgot the place even existed.
It seemed to greet him now, however. If buildings could smile, he thought and shivered.
He moved around the side of the building and Brandy followed, her footing as delicate as a fawn’s. The shrubbery was overgrown back here, obscuring most of the windows and doorways. Back when he had still patrolled up here, there used to be a dirt access road that toured the circumference of the building. That road was gone now, and Ben could not even see remnants of it beneath the overgrown grass.
“Where are we going?” Brandy finally asked after the two of them had spent a substantial amount of time stumbling through the underbrush.
“There’s a set of doors back here somewhere,” he told her.
“There,” she said, pointing through a part in the trees.
Ben bent down and peered through a curtain of crispy red leaves behind which stood a set of double doors made of oxidized copper. A thick chain wound itself around the rectangular doorhandles.