The Narrows (25 page)

Her father, Aaron Kilpatrick, had been a brutish factory worker who had believed that anything shy of corporal punishment—for both his daughter
and
his wife—was tantamount to shirking his domestic responsibilities. By the time Maggie was in high school, Aaron Kilpatrick had already fractured her jaw, broken the pinky finger of her left hand, and tattooed a pattern of black-and-blue bruises along her buttocks and upper thighs on so many occasions she had lost count. The man had done similar things to his wife, Katrina, a timid and soulless woman who always seemed to suffer the abuse with the acceptance of the biblically damned. Maggie grew to hate her father because of his behavior but she grew to categorically
loathe
her mother because of her helplessness, her weakness. When compulsion struck—and when her father wasn’t home to mitigate such things—she felt perfectly justified raising a hand to Katrina herself, cracking the woman across the face for piddling bullshit reasons…or sometimes for no reason at all.

When she was twelve years old, she found herself in a car with Barry Mallick, a seventeen-year-old high school dropout who smoked dope and carried a switchblade everywhere he went. At twelve, she was too young to be attracted to Barry’s delinquency—arguably, she was too young to comprehend the intricacies of genuine attraction at all—but she
did
achieve a certain sense of acceptance from him that made her feel good. In the backseat of his car, she had willingly taken her pants off for him. And while she did not believe it had been Barry’s intention to cause her physical pain, he did not seem all that bothered by the fact that it did.

She pretty much lost part of herself after Barry. In high school, sex was the only sword she wielded. It was a sliver of power to the otherwise powerless. Often, she would allow these boys—these clumsy, smelly, greasy, bad-tasting boys—to do what they wanted with her, and she would willingly oblige their requests, too. Most times, they did not even have to ask—she found it thrilling to be the aggressor. Sometimes, in the middle of doing these things, she imagined that whatever smelly, greasy, bad-tasting boy was having her was in fact her father. It had nothing to do with physical attraction or even with sex. It had simply to do with something
she
had that
he
did not. Something he would want, as all boys and men wanted it. Her power over the man who otherwise held her powerless…

At seventeen, when she learned she was pregnant, she went to a boy named Lyle Pafferny and told him the baby was his. (What she didn’t tell him was that, at the time, he had a one-in-three chance of being the baby’s father.) Lyle cried. He was about to graduate high school and he wanted to move to Miami to work on boats with his older brother. A baby would crush that dream, he told her, and yes, she agreed that it would. But he was off the hook, she said, because she didn’t want to keep the baby. She was willing to go to a clinic in Garrett County and have an abortion. She just needed the money for the procedure and someone to take her there to get it done.

So Lyle Pafferny came up with the money and borrowed his old man’s Toyota pickup to drive her to the clinic in Garrett. She’d spent the next three days at home in bed. Her father was easily convinced that she had a terrible fever and was gravely ill. Her mother never said a word, though a part of Maggie Kilpatrick thought the woman knew something suspicious was going on.

And that had been that. She’d never thought about the abortion again.

Until now.

“What are you doing?” Evan said. He leaned in the doorway of the living room, eating macaroni and cheese out of a microwavable container.

Maggie turned away from the window. She was sitting on the couch, an unread book beside her. Outside, the floodlights illuminated the backyard. “I was reading,” she lied.

“Yeah?”

“I mean, I
was.
I thought I heard something outside.” This part wasn’t a lie.

“Yeah?” It was as if he knew no other words. Cocking one eyebrow, Evan sauntered into the living room and peered casually out one of the windows. “I don’t see nothing.” His mouth was full of food.

Maggie pulled the book into her lap. “Was probably just a coyote.”

“Nothin’ there now.”

He backed away from the window, chewing loudly. Maggie knew that something was wrong with him. He had been more subdued than usual, even friendly with her. When she had forgotten to make dinner he had said nothing; he’d nuked some food and had even offered her some, which she had politely declined. Not to mention that today was his day off, which he usually spent down at Crossroads, but for whatever reason he had opted to stick around the house with her. He was like a dark and lingering shadow haunting the periphery of her vision at every turn.

She turned a page and hoped he didn’t notice the way her hand trembled. At her back, she could feel the encroaching darkness pressing against the windows, against her shoulders and the nape of her neck. Even with the yard’s floodlights on, the darkness could creep into the house and get her, like living smoke.

That’s because you can’t escape from the things you’ve done,
said the head-voice. She winced as it echoed through her skull.
The things you’ve done will always come back home to you.

At different times in her life, she’d heard the head-voice. It usually came to her in moments of stress or self-doubt, and it
always
came to her in moments of self-loathing. It had been there chattering away in her head—albeit less pronounced than it was now—as she prepared to meet Tom Schuler at Crossroads. It had been even louder after she had made love to him. And then later that night, out on Full Hill Road…

She had always assumed that the head-voice had belonged, in some way, to her father. Aaron Kilpatrick had found a way to haunt her from the grave, to always be with her and tell her what a pathetic loser she was, and how she would never have a good life because she was not a good person.
You are not a good person, Margaret.
The sound was like a ringing in her ears.

But she had been wrong; the head-voice was not some clinging filament of her dead father.

It was the baby. The baby she had so recklessly dismissed in her jaded youth.

And now, somehow, the head-voice had finally manifested itself in tangible form—in
life.
The child she had hit with her car out on Full Hill Road was
her
child. After all these years, after all the horrible things she had done, it had finally come back for her…

It had come back.

Evan grabbed the remote off the coffee table and turned the TV on. Grunting, he dropped into the armchair and flipped absently through the channels, his half-eaten bowl of macaroni and cheese balanced on one knee. Maggie hardly registered him; she was still worried about the encroaching darkness and the child that was out there waiting for her, probably standing out there just beyond the reach of the floodlights. It had gotten Tom Schuler—she had seen Tom standing beside the smallish figure that night by the willow tree, though not clearly and without definition. And then…when it had come up to one of the windows, its pale and hairless head gleaming like a skull in the moonlight…

I’m home, Mom.

Her moan must have been audible because Evan glanced over and met her eyes. The look on his face was not one of confusion or concern. Maggie thought her husband looked like he knew something was going on with her. Almost as if he knew
specifically
what was going on.

Without saying a word to her, he turned back to the TV. Some old John Wayne movie was on AMC.

Maggie closed the book. “I’m going to take a shower.”

Evan said nothing.

“I can make you something else to eat when I get out,” she added.

“This is fine,” he said, picking up the bowl of macaroni and cheese. “This is dandy.”

He’s making fun of me. He doesn’t talk that way. He knows something is up.

Still trembling, she made her way down the hallway and into the bathroom off the master bedroom before hot and silent tears spilled down her face. She did not turn on any lights. Instead, she went to the small bathroom window and peered through the slatted blinds into the yard. In the dirt turnabout, the VW and Pontiac sat side by side. Shapes capered in the darkness beyond the reach of the floodlights. The longer she stared at the darkness, the more shapes seemed to taunt and tease her.

I’m out here, Mom, but I’ll be home soon. I’ll be inside soon. I’ve come back. Just wait till you see where I’ve been all these years when you thought I was dead, when you thought I was nonexistent. Just wait till you see what I look like…

While she stared out the window, the floodlights went off. At the far end of the house, she could hear Evan moving around, mumbling to himself.

She turned on the shower and waited for the water to turn warm while she undressed. She kept the lights off, for she did not want to allow anything outside to see in through the blinds or even know what room of the house she was in. Her body felt alien, her skin pimpled with goose bumps that felt like braille. Her nipples pained her, engorged and hard for some reason. Her feet felt numb.

In the dark, it was like showering in a coffin. She smelled the mildew between the tiles and felt the needling of the water. When the water turned cool, she wondered how long she had been standing beneath it. She hadn’t even washed—just stood there, weeping silently to herself, terrified.

It was after ten when she got out, toweled off, and dressed in sweatpants and a Crossroads tank top. The house was eerily silent. She went into the living room to find it empty. The kitchen was also empty, as was Evan’s work area in the basement. Back upstairs, she flipped on the floodlights and found the VW Beetle gone. Evan had left.

He knows. Somehow, he knows.

She turned the floodlights back off then went into the kitchen. From the cabinet over the refrigerator, she pulled down a bottle of red table wine. With trembling hands, she uncorked it and filled a wineglass. Dead leaves, curled like clamshells, blew against the window over the sink.

Maggie felt her heart seize at the sight of eyes watching her from the darkness on the other side of the window. Taking two steps back, she reached out one shaky hand and flipped off the kitchen lights. Darkness swallowed her like an abyss. The square pane of glass over the sink radiated with a deep blue moonlight and, in the distance, she could make out the pinpoints of streetlamps lining the road.

No longer able to reflect the light coming through the kitchen window, the eyes vanished. Maggie rushed to the sink and nearly pressed her nose to the glass. At first she could see nothing in the blackness…but then she could see a small, fluid form moving across the top of the wooden fence. Maggie held her breath as the thing glanced back up at her, apparently able to see her just as clearly in the dark.

It was the Morelands’ cat.

Maggie released a shuddery breath. She was aware of wetness on her hands and arms and the front of her tank top felt damp. She turned the kitchen lights back on to find that, in her momentary panic, she had spilled her wine. The wineglass lay on its side on the kitchen counter and there was a blood-colored puddle on the floor. Tearing a length of paper towel from the dispenser on the wall, she hastily mopped up the mess then stuffed the wine-soaked wad of towel into the kitchen trash. She forced herself to laugh at least once to prove that she once again had things under control, but it came out as a sharp, disharmonious cackle.

She filled the wineglass again then carried it into the living room while pulling her hair back with one hand. She could put a CD in the CD player, something melodious and soothing, and try to wade through her book while drinking her wine, not worrying about what Evan might or might not know, not worrying about what might or might not be out—

A slight, pale figure stood in one of the living room windows. As Maggie’s eyes fell upon it, the thing receded into the darkness, the way something will gradually vanish as it descends into a murky pond.

A prickling heat caused the skin to rise on her arms. Again, she felt her nipples tighten painfully into knots. For what seemed like an eternity, she remained motionless. It wasn’t until she saw—or thought she saw—the milky, ghostlike form cross behind the crescent of glass in the back door that she regained control of her body. She dropped the wineglass and ran to the door, double-checking that it was bolted. It was. Peering out, she could see nothing.

A cry that sounded pathetically like steam whistling from a tea kettle issued from her throat. She went to the wall, slammed her palm against the switch that activated the floodlights, and shoved it up with the heel of her left hand.

The face of a cadaver stared at her from the nearest window. It was human, though just barely—its scalp was a hairless dome of flesh, its brow disarmingly smooth above colorless eyes as swollen as jellyfish. The thing’s mouth hung open, and Maggie caught a glimpse of rigid black gums and square, blunt teeth.

I’m home.

Maggie screamed and flipped the floodlights back off.

A colorless hand slammed against the windowpane, hard enough to vibrate the glass.

Her first instinct was to curl into a ball and weep. Instead, she followed her second instinct, which was to run down into the basement and grab the shotgun off the wall. She tripped at the bottom of the stairs and crashed into the basement wall, a sharp, hot pain bursting to life in her right ankle. Using the wall for support, she managed to stand and swing one arm blindly before her in the dark, searching for the chain that turned on the basement light.