In fact, there were a great many things that had happened in Stillwater that no one would ever know, although some folks would come close to knowing them. Ben himself had come close to learning that the unidentified hairless boy who had washed up along Wills Creek had spent the weeknights prior sleeping in a semicatatonic state up in the trestles of the Highland Street Bridge. He was the troll that Jim Talbot’s seven-year-old sister thought she had glimpsed while traveling along Route 40 with her father. He would have also never been found had the Highland Street Bridge not been washed away in the previous flood, casting his hibernating body into the muddy reeds where it was discovered the following day by a group of drunken watermen.
On this day, the Narrows itself continued to gurgle and roil and spill over its concrete barrier. It took some things with it and deposited others as it saw fit, just as it always had throughout the years. Ben pulled over onto the shoulder of Route 40 and climbed halfway down the embankment toward the rushing gray waters. It was a difficult climb and he nearly lost his footing twice. He decided not to descend any farther and merely remained halfway down the embankment, clinging to the old Witch Tree as he watched the risen waters moving at a quick clip. On the other side of the Narrows and up the hillside, the plastics factory held court over the town, the mummified corpse of a king presiding over an abandoned kingdom. Ben turned away with a feeling of dread crawling around inside his belly.
He stopped by Hogarth’s Drugstore on Hamilton but the place was dark and locked up tight. The storefront hadn’t been properly sandbagged, and peering into the darkened front windows, Ben could see rubber masks, Halloween decorations, and various other sundries floating about in what looked to be fifteen or so inches of murky brown water. A three-eyed toad was perched on a box of tampons that floated by the window while Ben peered in. He left and drove out to Hogarth’s place on Trestle Road. The front door was unlocked and there was rubbish, sodden and mildewing, strewn about the front porch. He entered the house, calling out the old man’s name, but no response greeted him. Eventually, he found the old man’s body in the back bedroom. He lay in repose on his back, his hands balled together on the swell of his stomach. A St. Christopher’s medal was clenched in both his hands. By Ben’s estimation, the old fellow appeared to have died of a heart attack sometime in the night.
He stopped by Shirley Bennice’s house out on Truckhouse Road to say good-bye. Yet he found the place dark and locked up, Shirley’s Grand Prix gone from the driveway. He nodded, as if confirming her decision to run away from Stillwater, and turned back to his car.
When he arrived at the police station, he didn’t bother to go inside. Instead, he locked the front doors then put a note in the mail slot that read:
This station has been abandoned.
Contact the Cumberland Sheriff’s Department or 911 for assistance.
He thought about adding something about the three dead bodies inside, but in the end, he decided against it.
5
It was closing on dusk when he finally made it around to the Crawly house. He knocked several times on the front door but no one answered. Wind chimes tinkled in the cool breeze. After a while, he climbed back down the steps and headed toward his police car before pausing then cutting around to the rear of the house.
Brandy sat on the top step of the back porch in a sweatshirt and jeans. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her face looked stoic and clean. When one of his boots snapped a twig, she looked up at him without an expression on her face at first…but then she smiled softly at him.
She’s going to be a beautiful woman someday,
Ben thought, surprised and a bit frightened by the fatherly nature of such a thought.
“Hi,” she said. “You look different in regular clothes.”
He was dressed in jeans, an old Towson University T-shirt, and a lightweight windbreaker. Her comment caused him to smile, too. “How are you feeling?”
She shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”
“How’s your mom?”
“She’s getting better. She spends most of the time asleep, but I guess that’s best.”
“Her arm?”
“It’s healing.”
“That’s good.” He followed her earlier gaze out across the yard and beyond the Marshes’ cornfield. “You out here waiting for someone?”
“Not really,” she said…and he knew instantly that she was lying to him.
He didn’t press the issue. “Well, I just wanted to say good-bye.”
“So you’re really leaving?”
“I am,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to do it for a long time. Got no reason to stay now.”
“I guess not,” she said. “Mom says we’re leaving too.”
“Everyone’s leaving. They’re blaming the floods and maybe they even believe that, but these families put up with the flooding for generations without batting an eye. Whether they know it or not, they’ve sensed what happened here. And now it’s time to go.”
“People are gonna want to know what happened,” she said with genuine worry in her voice.
He sighed. “Probably. But there won’t be anyone around to tell them.” And he winked. “You dig me?”
Again, that smile. “I do,” she said. There were other thoughts flitting around just behind her eyes that Ben could see clear as day. “What do you think happened to the other boys?” she asked. “To my brother and Billy Leary?”
He had given this much thought, too. “I don’t know, hon.”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
He walked over to her, fishing around in the pocket of his jeans. “Here,” he said, handing her his father’s Zippo lighter. “I want you to have it.”
She looked at the lighter then looked up at him. Tears were already welling in her eyes. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. You just take care of it, okay?”
“I will.”
“Thanks.” He slipped his hands in the pockets of his windbreaker. “You stay safe, okay?”
“I will. Are you leaving tonight?”
“I am. But you hear me about staying safe, right?”
“Yes.”
“Promise me.”
She spit in the ground and said, “I promise.”
Ben smirked. “That’s some habit.”
“You stay safe, too,” she said. “Don’t do foolish things.”
“I won’t,” he promised her…though he was already thinking foolish things.
“Go on, now,” she told him. “Get lost.”
He got lost.
6
At the farmhouse, he exchanged the squad car for the dusty old Packard that had sat idle in the barn for several months. It took a few cranks of the ignition to get the Packard started, but when it awoke, it did so like a lion rousing from a deep and restful slumber. He drove it around to the front of the house and popped the trunk. For the next hour, he loaded some items into the Packard’s trunk—some clothes, toiletries, his father’s war medals, some other items. Midway through packing up the car, Ben was startled by his cell phone ringing in his pocket. He answered the call and found it was Paul Davenport calling with the number to the Fish and Wildlife folks he’d promised Ben earlier in the week. Ben just laughed, wished Paul Davenport well, and hung up the phone. Then he powered the phone off so as not to be disturbed.
Before leaving the old farmhouse, he paused in the front hall and surveyed the place. The halls were musty with deepening shadows, the windows gilded with fading daylight. For a brief moment, he could see himself as a small boy playing with Tonka trucks on the living room floor while his father, old Bill Journell, sat in his recliner reading a newspaper with a pipe propped in his mouth. The image was so clear it was as if it were a stageplay going on right before his eyes. Watching it, Ben felt something solid and heavy clench quickly at his heart and squeeze. His breath came in labored gasps. He had stayed to take care of his father and that had been noble. But there was no need to hold stewardship over old ghosts.
Ben left.
7
Fifteen minutes later, at the intersection of Cemetery Road and one of the unnamed service roads that wound up into the hills, Ben stopped his car and rolled down his window to get a better look at the rubber vampire mask—surely some kid’s Halloween costume—that had gotten snared by a low-hanging tree limb. Ironic laughter threatened to burst from his throat. He drove quickly away, leaving the town of Stillwater behind him to die its silent death.
Epilogue
1
But she had lied to him. She
wasn’t
careful. Quite the opposite, in fact. The nights that followed saw her on the back porch while her mother slept soundly in the master bedroom, her grandmother’s silver cross in her lap, her brother’s UV lamp beside her, trailing an extension cord back into the house. The most recent storm had brought with it the frigidity of winter. Trees shook loose the rest of their leaves and the sky appeared gray and brooding no matter the time of day. Bundled in heavy sweaters and two pairs of socks, she spent every night on the porch, keeping watch.
One by one, the people of Stillwater picked up and left. Ben had been right. They blamed the storms and the flooding…but Brandy recognized a deeper, darker truth in their eyes. Even the folks who hadn’t been affected by the terror still smelled it on the wind, like dead things hidden and rotting. Deep coils of stink perfumed out of the ground. You couldn’t go anywhere in town and escape it. Anyway, there were no places left to go. The shops along Hamilton were all dark now and filled with water.
Once, Dwight Dandridge stopped by while she was sitting on the back porch. They talked for a while about nothing in particular and then Brandy went inside only to return with two steaming mugs of hot chocolate. Before Dwight headed home, Brandy hugged him. He shied away at first but then let her do it. Matthew’s name never came up.
Matthew…
He came back in the middle of one night, though he did not approach the house. He lingered just beyond the shrubbery that bordered the property, his pallid ghost-face seeming to hover like the moon. Brandy stood and walked halfway down the porch steps. She even called out his name, her voice dull and flat in the cold night. The sound of her voice appeared to have startled him, for he turned and rushed off through the Marshes’ cornfield. Expressionlessly, Brandy turned back around and reclaimed her seat on the porch.
He returned twice more. The next time, some brazenness urged him into the property where he wavered like a ribbon of steam in the space between the detached garage and the hedgerow. This time she did not call his name, not wanting to frighten him away. This time she just waited for him, sitting motionless in the darkness of the porch. He moved now with a humanity that recalled the child he truly was—the
brother
he was—and it hurt her heart to see it. Yet she was silent. She said nothing.
He fled back out into the night.
The final time, he appeared with another figure whom Brandy guessed was Billy Leary. Both boys trod through the corn and crept into the yard, just as Matthew had done the previous time by himself. By this time, however, the power had been restored to Stillwater, and the boys’ movements caused the motion sensor light above the garage to wink on. Bright-white light spilled out across the yard, spotlighting the two frail little figures who quickly retreated into the darkness where they disappeared almost as silently as they had come.
The following morning, just as daylight seeped up into the sky over the eastern mountains, Brandy took the pickup truck out to Route 40 and then down to the turnabout where the stone footbridge crossed over the Narrows. She parked the car and zippered up her jacket then got out. The air was stingingly cold. With her grandmother’s crucifix in her jacket pocket and a flashlight leading the way, she crossed the footbridge and ascended the hillside on the opposite side of the Narrows. Toward the plastics factory.
The shrubbery was denuded, making it easier for her to locate the double doors at the rear of the old building. In fact, one of the doors had been left open a few inches, revealing a vertical sliver of darkness. She shone the flashlight into the sliver while she eased the door open with one sneaker. Its hinges squealed.
Inside, only the vaguest shafts of early morning light permeated the milky windows at the far end of the building. Industrial machinery loomed like prehistoric creatures frozen in time. The air smelled unused and musty, coating the back of her throat like dust. The flashlight’s beam washed back and forth. Muddy footprints stamped trails about the concrete floor.
She found them in a back room, asleep on a mound of sawdust and dead leaves. Matthew lay curled on his side, his thumb propped in his mouth just as he used to do when he was a toddler. Even in the limited light of the flashlight, Brandy could see his hair had started to grow back. His flesh had taken on some color, and his face even looked rosy. Beyond Matthew, Billy Leary lay on his back, asleep. There was sawdust and dead leaves in his hair.
“Matthew,” she whispered.
He sat up, blinking into the light. Dirt streaked his face. His eyes focused on her and warmed instantly.
“Brandy,” he said, already beginning to tremble…already beginning to cry. Behind him, Billy Leary stirred and woke, too. “Brandy.”