The Narrows by Ronald Malfi

Author:Ronald Malfi [Malfi, Ronald]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Horror
ISBN: 9781619210738
Google: J3Ay1z0V9ZwC
Amazon: 1619210657
Barnesnoble: 1619210657
Goodreads: 13594352
Publisher: Samhain Publishing
Published: 2011-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

2

A sharp pain raced up her neck as she jerked awake. Somehow, amazingly, she had fallen asleep.

Something had woken her up…

“Evan?” Her voice sounded like the lone wail of a loon reverberating off the basement’s cinder block walls. She waited. No response came.

After several more minutes passed with the lethargy of a steamship on the horizon, Maggie was able to coax herself to her feet. Her entire body was stiff. There were little red welts on her forearms and the tops of her feet that she immediately identified as bug bites.

It seemed to take an eternity to climb the basement steps. Upstairs, the house was as silent as a crypt. Listening, she could hear the hum of the refrigerator and the ticking of the hallway clock. Nothing more. When she crossed through the kitchen and into the living room she spied her broken wineglass on the floor. Shards of glass sparkled like jewels and wine spread from the epicenter like a bloodstain. Beyond the windows the night was still dark, though there was a predawn shimmer of pink light in the fork between the two mountains.

Somewhere inside the house, Maggie’s cell phone rang. She cried out at the sound and felt her heart threaten to push up into her throat. When it rang a second time, she became aware that this had been the sound that had woken her up in the basement just moments earlier.

Having forgotten where she’d put her phone, she wandered quickly through the house, following the digital chirping until she located it on the nightstand on her side of the bed. She snatched it up mid-ring, her blood running cold as she read the name displayed on the screen: Schuler, Tom.

She let the phone clatter to the floor. Though it could have been a coincidence, the ringing stopped. She had the desire to kick it under the bed and forget about it. Or take the battery out first.

She didn’t realize she had backed up against the bedroom wall until the phone rang again, startling her into striking her head on a picture frame. From where she stood, she could see the phone’s display with horrific clarity: Schuler, Tom.

Shimmering in digital light like an accusation.

Too easily she could imagine the phone ringing and ringing forever until it drove her insane.

Grab it, pop the battery out, she thought. And if that doesn’t silence it, flush the fucker down the toilet.

The phone was already in her hands before she’d even finished the thought. Yet instead of prying out the little rectangular battery, she hit the button and accepted the call. It was like someone else was controlling her now.

With an arm that felt like it was made of rubber, she brought the phone to her ear.

“Come out back,” Tom said. It was his voice…but, at the same time, it had changed. Something had turned Tom into something else. My child, she thought frantically. My child did that to him.

The sound she made into the phone approximated a bullfrog’s croak.

“Maggie,” Tom said firmly.

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