The Narrows (48 page)

She turned off the light. “Time to go home,” she said.

2

But he had lied to her. He
wasn’t
careful. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Shirley had been right—the battery on the GPS lasted for nearly seventy-two hours. When the signal finally died, it had already stopped moving for several hours, coming to rest in the green hills of the Shenandoah Valley.

Ben arrived in the Valley around dusk of some afternoon. He guided the Packard into a parking space in front of a small mom-and-pop diner. Outside, the air tasted crisp. Someone was cooking pork in a smoker out back. It would be a harsh winter here in the mountains.

In the diner, Ben sat at the counter and ordered only a cup of coffee. The few other people in the place ate in solitary silence, crowded protectively over their plates like prisoners in a prison cafeteria.

“Anything besides coffee?” a middle-aged waitress asked him after he’d finished half the cup. “Charlie makes one hell of an omelet.”

“An omelet for dinner?”

“Sure,” the waitress said. “Why not?”

Why not, indeed. “Okay,” he said. “Sounds good.”

She looked him over. “You new in town?”

“Just got in now.”

“Looking for work?”

“Maybe.” He finished his coffee and the waitress refilled his cup. “You folks been having problems with bats lately?” he asked.

“You some kind of exterminator?”

“Something like that,” he said.

She shrugged then looked instantly miserable. After a moment, she said, “I’ll go tell Charlie to put on an omelet for you.”

“Thanks.”

She hurried away, as if his question about bats had troubled her. He brought his coffee to his lips, sipped it. It was hot, strong, and good.

A few stools away, a burly man with a gray beard and a hunting vest cleared his throat and said, “You say something about bats, buddy?”

Outside, the sun began to set.

About the Author

Ronald Malfi is the award-winning author of the novels
The Ascent, Snow, Shamrock Alley, Passenger,
and several others. His ghost story/mystery
Floating Staircase
was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel in 2011. Most recognized for his haunting, literary style and memorable characters, Malfi's dark fiction has gained acceptance among readers of all genres. He currently lives along the Chesapeake Bay where he is at work on his next book.

Look for these titles by Ronald Malfi

Now Available:

Borealis

Evil can look so innocent.

Borealis

© 2009 Ronald Malfi

On a routine crabbing expedition in the Bering Sea, Charlie Mears and the rest of the men aboard the trawler
Borealis
discover something unbelievable: a young woman running naked along the ridge of a passing iceberg. The men rescue her and bring her aboard the boat. But they will soon learn her horrible secret. By the time they find out why she was alone on the ice—and what she truly is—the nightmare will have begun, as one by one she infects them with an evil that brings about unimaginable terrors.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Borealis:

Twelve years ago, a man named Bodine checked into a Las Vegas motel under the name Thomas Hudson with a young girl who was of no relation to him. She was a pretty little thing, perhaps eight or nine years of age, dressed plainly in a simple cotton dress embroidered with tiny red strawberries around the waist. To glance casually upon the pair, one would assume they were father and daughter. But on closer inspection, anyone with a knack for detail would see that the man was no one’s father. Tall, gaunt, haunted—looking at him was like staring infinity in the face. With his black, hopeless eyes recessed into deep pockets and an air of chronic fatigue surrounding him like a cloud of Midwestern dust, this man was no one’s father.

“What’s wrong?” the girl said. “Why did we stop?”

Bodine’s grip tightened on the Bronco’s steering wheel. The sodium lights from the motel fell against the Bronco’s windshield. A light rain had begun to fall.

“We’re getting a room here,” he said, his voice low. “We’re staying here for the night.”

The girl leaned toward the dashboard to peer out the windshield. She wasn’t wearing her seat belt. “Looks dirty,” she said, sizing up the motel.

It was one of a million nameless joints he’d passed on the drive from the mountains of Colorado and across the equally anonymous desert highways. There was nothing distinguishable about it. After a while, on the road, everything started to look the same.

“We call this comfortable digs,” he said.

“What’s that mean?”

“Means we stay here tonight.” He shut the car down and popped open the door. Paused. “You wait here,” he said, an afterthought.

“Can I play the radio?”

He didn’t think there was any harm leaving the keys in the ignition. Unless she’d been lying, judging by her simple questions about what the pedals on the floor were for and why he had to turn a key in order to start the “growling”, as she called it, he didn’t think she knew how to start the vehicle let alone drive away in it. Bodine turned the switch over until the door chimes sounded. The girl, whose name Bodine did not know, smiled and switched on the radio. One tiny white hand ran through the dials until she located an oldies station while Bodine watched.

“How come you need to turn the key to play the radio?” she asked now.

“Because it runs off the car’s battery. I need to turn it on to use the battery.”

“Cars have batteries?” She sounded almost incredulous.

“Yes.”

“Is that how they drive?”

“They drive on gasoline.”

“Like from the last time we stopped,” she said. “How you put it into the gas tank, like you said.”

“Yes.” He suddenly felt like an imbecile. What the hell was he doing talking to her like this, anyway?

“Are you going to shoot somebody?” the girl asked before he could step out of the Bronco. The statement caused him to freeze, caused the fingers of his left hand to tighten on the doorhandle.

“Why would you say something like that?”

“Because you have a gun in your pants.”

His throat was lined with sandpaper. “How do you know that?”

The girl didn’t answer.

“How do you know that?” he repeated, one foot out on the blacktop, his fingers still strangling the doorhandle.

The girl just smiled and stared straight ahead out the windshield. She swung her legs to the rhythm of the music, her face radiating a sickly glow beneath the wash of sodium lights. “I like this song,” she said after a bit.

The motel lobby was run-down, filthy, and haunted by cigarette smoke. A flickering black-and-white television was mounted to the wall on brackets behind the night counter.

“One room,” Bodine said at the counter. “One night.”

“Just you?” said the grizzled cowboy behind the counter. No stranger to midnight characters of peculiar design, the cowboy did not give Bodine a second glance. And that was just fine by Bodine.

“Just me,” Bodine said.

“Name?”

“Thomas Hudson,” said Bodine.

“Credit card?”

“Cash,” he told the cowboy, who did not raise an eyebrow.

The room was tomblike. Peeling alabaster walls and an oatmeal-colored carpet, the single bed, wide as a coffin, was dressed in a fleur-de-lis spread, heavily starched. The bathroom reeked of mildew, and the shower curtain was curled at one end of the shower into a filthy plastic sleeve. In the tub, a bristling brown spider did pushups by the drain.

“It smells bad in here,” said the girl, wrinkling her nose. “Gross.” She stood clutching the empty cardboard cylinder that had moments ago contained a milkshake.

“Go turn down the bed,” he told her, carrying his nylon duffel bag into the bathroom. He set it beside the sink and unzipped it. Inside: fresh sneakers and a change of clothes. Brand spanking new. The sneakers were too bright and the clothes still had the tags hanging from them.

The girl did not move. She watched him through the open bathroom doorway. When he turned and saw her staring at him, he nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Thought I told you to go turn down the bed,” he said, his voice quiet and level. Nearly monotone.

The girl shrugged and stepped away. A moment later, he heard the mattress springs creak.

A skeleton stared back at him from the mirror.
Jesus Christ, is that me? Is that really me?
He grimaced, inspecting the way his purplish gums had begun to recede from his teeth, the teeth themselves discolored and patchy with calcium deposits.

Bodine peered out into the room. The girl had turned down one corner of the bed and was now sitting on the edge, staring directly at him. She’d set her empty cup down on the nightstand.

“Did you want another milkshake?” he asked. His voice shook.
Stop it,
he thought.
Stop it, stop it, stop it.

“Why did you tell the man at the counter your name was Thomas Hudson?”

Sweat stung his eyes. “There’s a soda machine down the hall. Do you want a Coke?”

“Your name’s not Thomas Hudson,” she said, swinging her legs.

“I don’t like playing these games.”

“What games?”

“These games where you ask all these questions and expect me to answer.”

The girl shrugged her small shoulders. “Your name’s Frank Bodine,” she said.

Bodine swallowed a hard lump of spit. Seconds ticked by. His own heartbeat was like a drum in his ears. “How do you know my name?” he said finally. He’d never told her.

Again, the girl shrugged.

“Yes,” he said after a moment, blinking the sweat from his eyes. “Yes, my name’s Bodine. Frank Bodine.” Sour, shaky exhalation. “You think you’re ready to tell me your name yet?”

The girl shook her head. Grinned.

“Why not?”

“I told you,” she said simply. “I don’t have a name.”

“Yes you do. Everyone’s got a name.”

“Nope. Not me.”

“Sure you do. You just don’t want to tell it.”

“You’re silly,” said the girl.

“What about your parents? Didn’t they give you a name?”

“I don’t have any parents.”

“You don’t have a mom or a dad?”

“No.”

“Everyone does.”

“No, silly.” She giggled.

Withdrawing back into the bathroom, Bodine toed the bathroom door shut. He lifted his pullover up, which stank of perspiration. The butt of the .9mm protruded from his waistband.

Can you do this?
a voice spoke up toward the back of his head. It was the same voice that had followed him all the way from Durango.
Are you really sure you can do this?

He plucked the .9mm from his waistband, set it down beside the duffel bag, and turned the water on in the sink. Just the hot water. He waited as the entire bathroom steamed up before shutting the water off. With one hand he carved an arc through the condensation on the mirror before him. Dead eyes stared back.

Can you do this?

Bodine removed his pullover and tossed it on the floor. Took a deep breath. A chill accosted him, pimpling his flesh with goose bumps. Grabbing the handgun, he eased open the bathroom door and stepped out into the room.

The girl hadn’t moved. She grinned at him as he took a single step toward the bed. His nostrils flared with each inhalation of breath. He stood unmoving, no more than ten feet from her, peripherally aware that the digital clock on the nightstand counted through several minutes while he simply stood there.

“You’re skinny,” she said after a while. “Your chest has red marks on it.” She said, “I can see your ribs.” As if this was funny, she giggled. “Your bellybutton looks funny.” Legs still swinging.

“Tell me who you are,” he breathed. Leveled the gun at her. His hand shook. His whole fucking arm shook. “Tell me.”

“Your hair,” she said, wrinkling up her nose as if she suddenly smelled something awful—the room itself, perhaps. “It’s too long. Like a girl’s.”

He lowered his arm. The .9mm suddenly weighed fifty pounds. Without a word, he turned and retreated back into the bathroom. He felt cold, clammy, made of vulcanized rubber. The soles of his work boots creaked with each step.

In the bathroom, he set the gun down in the sink basin, which was still streaked with water. Staring up at his reflection, he thought the girl was right—that somewhere along the way, his hair
had
gotten too long. Like a girl’s.

Wearily, Bodine grinned at himself. Skeleton-faced, too-big teeth protruding from retreating purple gums…

Can you—

Grinned.

Next morning, a Puerto Rican housekeeper would discover Bodine’s body in the bathtub, a dried spray of blood on the tiled shower stall behind his head. Bodine’s hand, still limply holding the .9mm, was nestled into the thatch of black pubic hair between his legs.