The Narrows by Ronald Malfi
When he returned to the old farmhouse on Sideling Road, he took a long shower, dressed casually in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and made himself a hearty breakfast of four scrambled eggs, sausage links, toasted Italian bread, and strong Brazilian coffee. Outside, the temperature simmered at around the seventy-degree mark so he carried his breakfast to the back porch that overlooked the southern field. The air smelled swampy from the previous night’s storm and large black crows drank out of puddles in the marshy topsoil. When he was a boy, this field had brought forth countless crops, lush and Edenic in all its greenness. Now, it was a desolate, barren landscape, the only foliage being the spiraling helixes of vines that grew around the fenceposts. Somewhere over time, the soil had adopted a grayish hue, and looked no more fertile than a sand dune. The previous spring, overcome by grief at the loss of his father, Ben had planted some seeds: cucumber, tomato, squash, parsley. Nothing unmanageable. Yet the land had yielded nothing. Some nights, he would dream of the seeds hatching just beneath the soil, the tendrils of their fragile roots seeking out one another like hands uniting, until they formed a firm network under the earth. In these dreams, vines like the tentacles of a giant squid would burst from the ground in a shower of dirt and stones and engulf the farmhouse, wrapping it up like a gift. Then, gradually, the farmhouse would be pulled down beneath the ground, Ben still inside it, screaming, until only the stone chimney protruded from the dirt. And after time, even that too would be sucked down until nothing remained except a flat, empty, desolate plot of land.
After breakfast, he read a book for a bit, but he became too antsy as his mind began to wander and he found himself rereading the same paragraphs over and over again without retaining any of it. Finally he closed the book and went to the bedroom down the hall that, in his youth, had belonged to him. Since then, he had fashioned it into a comfortable little home office, completed with a handsome desk, two leather chairs studded with brass tacks, and a bookcase containing various law books and awards. Some of his father’s medals from Vietnam hung on the wall in shadow boxes.
There was a Rolodex on the desk. Ben flipped through it until he found the card he was looking for. He punched the numbers into his cell phone and waited.
“Lieutenant Davenport,” said the man on the other end of the line after a series of rings.
“Hey, Paul, it’s Ben Journell over in Stillwater.”
“Hey, buddy. How’ve you been?”
They engaged in idle chitchat for a few minutes before Ben asked about the mountain lion.
“Damnedest thing,” Davenport told him over the line. “I mean, it didn’t really look that big when you just saw it out walking, but when you see it up close, well, it’s something else, man. Teeth like carpentry nails.”
“So the rumors are true. Eddie La Pointe told me about it but I didn’t really believe him.”
“Oh, it was true, all right. Damn thing had everybody talkin’, and half the town scared to go out after dusk.”
“It still doesn’t?”
“Not no more,” Davenport said.
“You mean the thing’s dead?” Ben asked. “You guys killed it?”
“Three days ago,” said Davenport. That would have been on Friday. “Wasn’t us, though. We just responded to the call after it had been shot. Turned out the damn thing had gotten into someone’s garage through an open window, but got stuck and couldn’t get out. Some locals went out and fired a few rounds at it with a goddamn Glock, of all things.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, well, I’m guessing they didn’t want to mess it up too badly, figuring they’d take it to a taxidermist and have it stuffed or whatever. Either way, by the time we got there, the sucker’s days of digging through people’s garbage cans was over.”
“Had it been attacking any livestock?”
“Livestock? No, man—just knocking over Dumpsters and shit. Pulled some dead rabbits out of a trap, too, I think. They’re actually pretty timid and don’t like to get too close to humans.” Davenport cleared his throat. “Why? You got livestock being killed out that way, Ben?”
Ben’s laugh held no humor. “Right now, I’ve got two farmers in town looking to hang me up by my suspenders if I don’t figure out what’s going on out here.”
“It’s that bad?”
“It’s just…I’ve never seen anything like it. You know of any animal that goes after another animal’s brain?”
“Shit. You’re talking parasites.”
“No, Paul. I mean cracking the fucking skulls apart and eating what’s inside.”
“Jesus in a sidecar.” Davenport whistled. “You’re putting me on, right? What does something like that?”
“You tell me.”
“Wish I could, Ben.”
“And it’s the way they’re killed. It’s like the flesh around the wound is…I don’t know…”
“Yeah?”
“Dissolved.”
Davenport made a breathy acknowledgment that wasn’t actually a word.
“I don’t know what to do about it, or even where to start, really,” Ben said. “I figured I’d just give you guys a call, see if you were experiencing the same thing.”
“Sorry I can’t help you, Ben.”
Ben sucked on his lower lip for a second. “You think that mountain lion would attack a kid?”
“Wow. I guess it’s possible. If it was provoked or really hungry, I guess. But it seemed more frightened of people than anything else. Why do you ask?”
“I’m probably overthinking things,” Ben said. “We got a missing boy out here. I’m just turning over every stone.”
“Oh boy. When’d he go missing?”
“Between Friday evening and Saturday morning.”
The silence on Davenport’s end of the line was telling.
“About what time did those guys shoot the thing on Friday night?”
“It was late,” Davenport said, knowing it wasn’t the information Ben wanted to hear. “The bar had let out. Two in the morning, or thereabout.”
“Do you still have the carcass?”
“Couple guys from Fish and Wildlife picked it up this morning. Were you thinking about opening up its stomach and seeing what’s inside?”
“If it had eaten anything…suspicious…I would think…”
“Christ, Ben. I’m thinking of that scene in Jaws where they slice that shark open on the pier and that license plate comes out.”
“You have the number to those Fish and Wildlife guys?”
“Sure do, but it’s back at the office. I’m on my cell now.”
“Could you call me back with it when you get the chance?”
“Of course. And I’m sure you’re right, that you’re just overreacting. This kid will probably pop up anytime now.”
“Thanks. You’re probably right.”
“And hey, Ben?”
“Yeah?”
“I was sorry to hear about your old man. I’d been meaning to call out there after I heard but, well, you know how it is…”
“Thanks, Paul. I appreciate it.”
“You take care, all right?”
“You too.”
He hung up the phone, feeling no better and no worse.
Later that afternoon, he went into town to pick up some Halloween candy to leave on the front porch for the trick-or-treaters at the end of the week. He would be working Halloween night and knew from experience that a dark house with no candy on the porch suffered the wrath of neighborhood children scorned. Down at Lomax’s, he picked up a few bags of the pocket-sized Snickers and Butterfinger bars, some M&M’s, and an assorted pack of hard, sugary candies. He’d leave them all out in a big Tupperware bowl on the porch with the porch lights on, bright as day. He had made the mistake of taping a sign to the bowl last year recommending each trick-or-treater take just one candy bar each, but for all the good that did he could have left a sign that said PLEASE TAKE ALL MY CANDY THEN THROW THE BOWL INTO A TREE. He’d learned his lesson on that one.
In his youth, when Stillwater was still a flourishing blue-collar town, the streets would teem with children of all ages on Halloween night. Ben himself had raced up and down those streets, a plastic dime-store mask cinched to his face, an old pillowcase bursting with goodies banging against his shins as he ran. Christ, how things had changed. Nowadays, he was surprised if he came across a dozen kids schlepping their meager satchels of goodies up and down the sun-faded streets. They were sad and derelict in their costumed campaign along the otherwise empty sidewalks. Families had picked up and moved, and the ones who stayed mostly didn’t have children of their own. Stillwater had become a barren womb.
In another ten years, Ben thought, counting out his change at the checkout counter of Lomax’s, this town will be nothing but dilapidated shotgun shacks, paranoid hermits, career alcoholics, and weekend hunters. This is what happens when a town folds in on itself.
If nothing else, the Stillwater Police Department was just a microcosm of the town it served and protected. Just a handful of years ago they had had nine officers, two sergeants, a lieutenant, and a chief. Now, they were left with four officers, a working sergeant (which was Ben), a lieutenant who had recently transferred out East and whose position had yet to be filled, and Chief Lom Harris, who was now—and always seemed to be—out of town on vacation with his wife. True, there was very little in the way of crime in Stillwater to warrant a well-staffed department. Much of the action came in the form of drunken brawls, traffic violations, and the occasional domestic dispute.
He left Lomax’s and walked up Hamilton, enjoying the cool autumn air on his face, the crunch of dead leaves beneath his sneakers, and the smell of fireplaces coming from the residential streets just a couple of blocks over. Many of the shop windows were dark and soaped over. The businesses that remained, like random teeth in a diseased mouth, tried their best to appear upbeat and festive, their windows decorated in seasonal attire and jack-o’-lanterns glowing on the front stoops. In the front window of a liquor store, a cardboard decoration depicted a cadre of skeletons in top hats wielding slender black canes, their fleshless arms intertwined in some semblance of camaraderie.
That’s us, Ben thought morosely. That’s all that’s left of the proud Stillwater PD—a bunch of skeletons marshaling through the streets of a ghost town.
At the corner of Hamilton and Susquehanna, Ben jaywalked in the direction of Hogarth’s Drugstore. The drugstore’s windows issued a soft, yellow glow and Ben could see a variety of Halloween costumes—masks and hats and capes—in pedestals behind the glass. He hopped up the curb and entered Hogarth’s.
It was a cramped little store that had an old-fashioned soda fountain toward the back. Godfrey Hogarth was back there now, toiling away with something underneath the counter. At eighty-eight, Godfrey Hogarth was one of Stillwater’s eldest residents. Despite his age, the man’s memory was as sharp as a tack, and he was known to tell stories about Stillwater’s heyday—or what passed as Stillwater’s heyday—with much fanfare and animation when he was down at Crossroads, enjoying some dandelion wine or Wild Turkey. He’d run the drugstore since Ben had been a kid, though back then it had taken up the whole block and had employed roughly a dozen people.
“Hey, Mr. Hogarth.”
“Hello, Ben!” The old man’s eyes lit up as he peered at him from over the counter. “Haven’t seen you in a coon’s age.”
“I’m either working or holed up at the farm. You know how it is.”
“You want a float?”
The notion struck him as almost comically appealing. “You know what? What the heck, let’s do it.”
“Fantastic!” The old man opened a freezer chest and took out a small container of vanilla ice cream. He opened it and scooped some into a fountain glass then poured cola over it. The drink fizzed and the ice cream bobbed like a tiny iceberg.
“I came in to ask you about a boy named Matthew Crawly,” Ben said as Hogarth slid the ice cream float in front of him. “Do you know him?”
“Sure. He’s been coming around some days after school with another boy, looking at the costumes in the window.”
“His mother reported him missing Saturday night.”
“Oh, no. What happened?”
“We don’t know yet. Do you remember the last time you saw him?”
“I certainly do. It was Friday afternoon.” He pointed toward the front of the store with one hooked, arthritic finger that reminded Ben of a knotted tree branch. “He stood right outside on the sidewalk with his friend and looked at the costumes and masks in the window.”
“Did he come inside?”
“No.”
“Did you go out there and talk to him?”
“I would have, but I was on the cash register.”
Ben sipped the float through an accordion straw. It was delicious and reminded him of childhood.
“Do you think something bad has come down on the poor kid’s head?” Hogarth asked. There was genuine concern in his ancient turtle eyes.
“I don’t know much yet,” Ben said truthfully.
“That’s a shame. He seems like a nice boy.” With speed Ben would have thought impossible for the old man, Godfrey Hogarth jerked one finger up beside his face. He had the tired, drooping face of a scarecrow, capped with a wild nest of thick, iron-colored hair. “You know, I may be a crazy old man, but I haven’t felt right since that other boy was found down in the Narrows, Ben.”
“I know what you mean.”
“I’ve seen a lot of things. I’ve felt a lot of things, too.” Hogarth shook his head, his eyes wise yet distant, like the eyes of an old reptile. “I know when to listen when my heart tells me something.”
This sparked something else inside Ben. “In all the time you’ve lived here, have you ever heard of any animal eating—God, this sounds so stupid—any animal eating the brains out of other animals?”
Hogarth brought his hand back down. His muddy-brown eyes narrowed. “Eating brains, did you say?”
“I know how it sounds.” Like something out of one of Eddie La Pointe’s horror magazines, he thought. “We’ve had two cases of farmers whose livestock have been killed.”
“Since you’ve mentioned the brains, I’m assuming you mean only the brains, correct? Nothing else was eaten?”
“Not that I can tell.”
“Well,” the old man huffed, “that is strange.”
“That’s not something a mountain lion would do, is it?”
Slowly, Godfrey Hogarth shook his shaggy head. “I couldn’t say, Ben. I suppose anything is possible. A mountain lion?”
“Some folks in Garrett shot and killed one Friday night.”
“Would get cougars come down from the mountains on occasion,” Hogarth said. “You know that as well as anyone, having grown up here in Stillwater, Ben.”
Ben nodded. But that didn’t help him. He was trying to narrow things down, not broaden them.
“I’ve heard tell of strange things come down from those mountains in my lifetime, and stranger things pulled from the Narrows,” Hogarth went on. “I’ve seen a few, myself. Mutated toads and tadpoles bristling with more legs than a goddamned centipede, if you pardon an old man his language. Stuff like that. These things happened with more frequency back when the factory was in operation, of course.”
“The plastics factory.”
“Pollutants in the water, runoff, things like that. Used to be a guy up on Yew Drive claims to have caught a rockfish with a fully working eyeball growing right outta its side. Can you imagine?”
“Do you believe that story?”
“Sure. Why the hell not?”
“I’ve never seen anything strange down there.”
“That’s because the factory’s been closed long before you were ever born. And mutations like that don’t breed and they don’t live long, neither. It’s God’s way of making sure nature corrects whatever man done screwed up.” He shrugged, as if the whole conversation was suddenly inconsequential.
“When I was a kid I actually used to swim in there.”
“As did I,” Hogarth said. “Maybe that’s why I’ve lived so long.” The chuckle that followed was a low, rumbling growl clotted with phlegm. “Of course, back then, the Narrows used to flood much worse than it does now, so maybe all the bad that collected in there got flushed out more regularly. Year I was born, most of what was then downtown Cumberland was destroyed when Wills Creek flooded, and all the runoff came right through Stillwater, tearing down bridges, knocking the walls out of homes, and uprooting trees. A baby went missing in that flood, too. The sorry little thing was just pried from its mamma’s arms, was how I heard it told. I remember, when the floodwaters finally receded, there were dead horses and livestock all over the streets. The smell was unbearable. After that, many of the residents moved their farms higher into the mountains.
“It wasn’t until the fifties that the Army Corps of Engineers finally came in and assisted the city in putting in a pump system and retaining walls around the creek down by Route 40 to help alleviate the flooding problems. That was what created the Narrows as we know them now. At the time, it was one of the most costly public works projects in American history. The price tag was something like eighteen million dollars, if I remember correctly.”
Ben whistled.
“Took ten years to finish the project, too,” Hogarth went on. “And while I don’t believe Cumberland has ever had a bad flood since, us folks here in the river valley of Stillwater still get dunked occasionally.”
“I remember one summer when my dad’s entire harvest was washed away,” Ben said. “There were three feet of standing water in the south field. And when the water went away, I remember seeing someone’s front door lying in the mud. Just some random front door to a house, washed up in our yard. It had a decorative oval of glass in its center, completely whole and unbroken. I remember being amazed at how a flood could cause such destruction—destruction enough to tear a door off a house—yet leave the oval of glass completely intact.”