“What?” It came out in a reverent whisper.
“What I know is my Holly came back last night. She was down by the Narrows, standing right there on the water, Ben, looking up at me. It was going on dusk so it was hard to tell for certain, but I didn’t need to be able to see with perfect clarity to know it was her and that, after all these years of being dead, my little girl Holly had come back.”
Ben felt instantly cold. He opened his mouth to speak but could find no words.
He’s drunk, that’s all,
he thought, though wondering if he actually believed it.
Old Poorhouse Pete’s off the wagon again. Nothing unusual about that.
“But I ain’t crazy,” Pete continued, “and I know nothing good is gonna come from seeing my poor sweet girl down by the Narrows. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I don’t wanna go back out there, Ben.”
Ben stood up. He dragged the chair back behind the desk. “You can’t stay in here forever, Pete. It’s not a motel.”
“I know it ain’t. Just for tonight though, Ben, okay? Please?”
Rubbing the back of his head, Ben said, “Yeah, okay. Sure. Have you eaten?”
“Shirley brought me a sandwich earlier.”
Slowly, as if in a dream, Ben nodded. He went to the door and paused in the doorway. “You want me to turn out the lights so you can get some sleep?”
“No.” Across the room, Pete’s eyes were like twin headlights. “Leave the lights on, for God’s sake, Ben.”
“All right.”
Ben walked back down the hall, suddenly feeling the weariness of the past two weeks pressing firmly down on his shoulders. The goddamn storm, the unidentified boy washed up at the mouth of the river, the slaughtered cattle, and now the missing Crawly boy…
In truth, it was almost comical. But Ben didn’t feel like laughing.
He returned to the Batter’s Box to find Eddie La Pointe settling in his cubicle with some cartons of Chinese takeout. “Hey, Ben. Hungry?”
“Not really.”
Eddie switched on the small black-and-white TV that sat at the corner of his desk and turned it to one of his beloved horror-movie channels. He cracked open the lid of one of the cartons of Chinese food and the smell was instantly overwhelming.
Ben sat at his own cubicle and looked forlornly at the massive amount of paperwork stacked on his desk. His head hurt and his eyes burned from lack of sleep. Absently, he rummaged around the top of his desk for the bottle of Advil he knew was there, somewhere, among the madness.
“Second storm front moving in later this week,” Eddie said around a mouthful of noodles. “Cumberland Public Works already put out their flood warning.”
“Fantastic,” Ben bemoaned. He located the plastic bottle of Advil behind his Rolodex, popped the cap off the bottle, and shook two into the palm of one hand. After brief consideration, he shook out a third tablet. He dry swallowed them, one at a time.
“I just dried out my goddamn cellar from the last flood,” Eddie went on. “Lousy sump pump is fine as long as the power stays on. Well, we both know the score on that.”
Ben leaned forward in his chair. “What are you watching?”
“Huh?” Eddie glanced up from his container of Chinese noodles at the black-and white-TV. On the screen, a disfigured humanoid creature was vomiting acid onto another actor’s arm. “Oh! Man, this is a classic! Well, a remake of a classic, anyway, but it’s a classic remake, too.
The Fly,
with Jeff Goldblum. Ever see it?”
“Once,” Ben said, his eyes locked on the television. On the screen, the actor’s arm sizzled and withered beneath the gout of acid. “That’s what happened to the animals.”
“What’s that?” Eddie said, stuffing more noodles into his mouth.
Ben jabbed a finger at the screen. “That. That’s what it looked like happened to them. Porter Conroy’s cows and Ted Minsky’s goats.”
Eddie turned around and leered at Ben from over one shoulder. Around a mouthful of food, he said, “Are you serious or just screwing with me?”
“The way the flesh was eaten away…the melted look of the bones and the goat’s horns at Minsky’s place…” Ben leaned back in his chair, one set of fingers rubbing circles into his left temple. His head continued to bang like a drum.
“Come on, Ben. Who would do something like that?” Eddie coughed into one fist and swallowed the rest of his food.
“How
would someone do that?” he added.
Ben just shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong, but…”
They both turned back to the television. Goldblum was in full insect mode now, his face having split down the middle to reveal the bulbous hammerhead eyes of a giant fly.
The telephone at Eddie’s desk rang. Eddie set his carton of Chinese food down and scooped up the receiver. “La Pointe,” he said into the phone.
Still watching the TV, Ben reached over and snatched one of the cartons off Eddie’s desk, along with a pair of chopsticks. He had just gotten the chopsticks out of the cellophane when Eddie hung up the phone and looked at him. The blood had drained from Eddie’s face.
“What?” Ben said. “What is it?”
“That was Platt,” Eddie said, switching off the television set. “He and Haggis are over at Bob Leary’s place. Bob’s kid, Billy, is missing.”
4
Bob Leary and his son, Billy, lived out on Town Road 5, a perilous twist of unpaved roadway that wound with the discipline of a jumbled garden hose up into the foothills of the mountains. Their home was a run-down ranch house with a stone façade and chimney that looked about one good storm away from falling down. When Ben and Eddie approached, they found Haggis and Platt’s cruiser already parked in front of the house, its bar lights casting intermittent red and blue light into the neighboring trees.
Inside, Bob Leary sat forward in a tattered La-Z-Boy recliner, a can of Coors Light on one knee. There was a look of hollowed desperation on his face. Across the room, Officers Haggis and Platt sat like matching bookends in their uniforms at either side of a cramped little sofa. Melvin Haggis had a notepad flipped open on one thigh and a look of consternation on his face.
“Where’s the chief?” Bob Leary said the second Ben and Eddie came into the house. “Where’s Harris?”
“Out of town.” Ben took his hat off. Beside him, Eddie swayed from foot to foot like a player waiting his turn to take the football field. “Your son’s gone missing, Mr. Leary?”
“I was just telling the guys here.” He jerked a pointy chin at Haggis and Platt, who looked like they were being punished and had been told not to move. “The boy’s been gone two days now and I’m fixing to worry.”
Ben said, “Two days?”
“It ain’t unusual for him to stay out late or sometimes at some friend’s house. But even then he usually comes home the next day. And see, I been out of work, so’s I been home more. I catch his comings and goings. He ain’t been around and I don’t like it.”
“He says the last time he saw him was Saturday afternoon, Ben,” Haggis said, consulting his notepad.
“He was out in the front yard patching up a tire on his bike,” Leary said. “I went out to Crossroads and when I come back, he was gone.”
“His bike was gone, too?” Ben asked.
“Yeah,” Leary said.
Melvin Haggis scribbled something in his notepad.
“Have you tried contacting any of his friends?”
“Made a few calls.” Leary sounded irritated having to answer the questions. “Nobody’s seen him.”
“Okay. You want to give a list of these friends to one of my guys, Mr. Leary?”
“So you can double-check on me?”
Ben ignored the comment. To Platt and Haggis, he said, “Why don’t you guys check around the area, see if you can find anything.” He knew the foothills could be dangerous, and that danger had little to do with blood-starved carnivores; the sudden drops and unsteady footing were the real dangers. Though nothing of the sort had ever happened in Stillwater, Ben had assisted on a few occasions over in Garrett County when some careless hikers had gotten lost or hurt—and sometimes killed—in the mountains.
“You got it, Ben,” Platt said, rising quickly from the sofa. Haggis struggled to get up and join him.
“I’d like to take a look at your son’s room, Mr. Leary,” Ben said.
Leary set his can of beer on the carpet then peeled himself out of his La-Z-Boy. “Follow me,” he said.
Leary led Ben and Eddie down the hall to the last door on the right. It opened up to a tiny room with one window facing a stand of elm trees. There was an unmade bed wedged in one corner and there were toys and clothes all over the place. Posters of horror movie monsters hung on the walls and some classic Aurora monster models had been carefully arranged on a desktop, bookshelves, and the solitary windowsill.
“Don’t know what you expect to find,” Leary said. “Room’s a goddamn pigsty.”
Ben went to the closet, opened it. He dug through a heap of unwashed clothing, board games, and random toys until he found an empty backpack. He held it up so the missing boy’s father could see it. “Is this the one he uses for school?”
Leary lifted one pointed shoulder. “Beats me.”
“School one’s over here, Ben,” Eddie said. He was peering over the small desk that was pushed beneath the single window at another backpack that was unzipped and loaded with textbooks.
“What’s it matter?” Leary asked.
“When kids run away they sometimes pack some stuff in a backpack. It seems Billy’s are accounted for.”
Leary grunted.
“Is something wrong, Mr. Leary?” Ben asked him.
“Why would Billy run away?”
“I’m not saying he did. I’m just looking around.”
“I got a good relationship with my boy, Journell.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Ben said, tossing the backpack back into the closet. “You mind if I check the papers in your son’s schoolbag?”
Leary made a face that suggested he didn’t care one way or another.
Ben emptied the contents of Billy Leary’s schoolbag onto the desk as Eddie came up beside him. Pencils, erasers, a broken ruler, notebooks, and balled-up wads of lined notebook paper spilled out along with a collection of textbooks. There was also a half-eaten sandwich in a Ziploc bag, so old and festooned with mold that the identity of the lunch meat remained suspect.
“How have your son’s grades been?” Ben asked.
“He does okay,” Leary intoned from the doorway.
Eddie sighed audibly.
Ben knew that sometimes kids ran away instead of having to confront their parents with a bad report card or a failed test paper that needed to be signed and turned back in to the teacher. And while there were plenty of poor test scores among the contents of Billy Leary’s schoolwork, Ben did not think the boy would have worried too much about showing them to his father. Abruptly, he felt like he was wasting time.
“Okay,” he said, dumping the boy’s items back into the schoolbag. “I think we’re done here.”
“You figure anything out?” Leary wanted to know.
Ben offered him a wan smile and said, “Not just yet.”
Back outside, Eddie lit a Marlboro while Ben stood surveying the property with his hands on his hips. Bob Leary remained inside, though he occasionally appeared in one of the windows to stare out at them.
“Explain to me how we got two missing kids in one week,” Eddie said, exhaling a column of smoke.
“I have no idea.”
“And then the livestock mutilations? I mean, how fucking bizarre is all this?”
“Pretty bizarre.”
“It’s all got to be related, right, Ben? It can’t just be a bunch of coincidences, can it? All at once like this?”
Ben had no answer for him. He couldn’t see how they could possibly be connected…though he found the timing of all these seemingly unrelated events more than just troubling.
“And let’s not forget that kid who washed up in Wills Creek,” Eddie added.
“Don’t remind me.”
“Seems to me this whole town is being overrun.”
“Overrun by what?”
“You name it,” Eddie said. “Take your pick. Fuck if I know. But it’s almost like that dead kid who washed up in Wills Creek was the trigger to all this madness.”
This struck Ben as oddly poignant. He looked at Eddie but Eddie was peering casually around at the yard and the rusted vehicles up on blocks around the side of the house, looking infernally bored and exhausted. To Eddie La Pointe, it was nothing more than a passing comment.
Chapter Twelve
1
Amidst a dream of plowing through rich autumn leaves, Brandy Crawly awoke to find it was the middle of the night, the darkness penetrating her bedroom like a sonic shock wave. Her fleeting thoughts still resonated with her peaceful dream—scampering through crunchy, brown leaves in the forest and overturning stones at the edge of Wills Creek to find their undersides fuzzy with moss, horned owls noiselessly circling overhead. The juxtaposition was jarring.
Flipping the sheets off her sweating body, she climbed quickly out of bed and hurried over to one of her bedroom windows. Outside, the road looked like a glowing blue ribbon coursing its way through the valley and up into the foothills of the mountains. She could see the large, black trees crowding the road and the moonlight that dripped from their branches. For whatever reason, she recalled summers spent in her youth when she’d walk up and down that road, searching for toads in muddy puddles after rainstorms. Tonight, the world seemed to close in around her like some constriction, nearly suffocating in all its claustrophobia. In nothing more than her nightshirt and panties, she hurried out of her room, into the upstairs hall, and down the steps that led to the first floor of the creaky old house.