Vultures

by Chuck Wendig

  And then he does it. He reaches out.

  He has no glove on.

  He touches her forearm and

  INTERLUDE

  THE DEATH OF NEVER-DICK

  Richard Beagle, Richie, Rich, Never-Dick, no longer a doctor, is in the stirrups. He’s naked as a mole rat. His cock and his balls twitch and try desperately to hide inside his body. His asshole twitches too, like it’s puckered from a lifetime of sucking lemons. He’s mostly in the dark but for the spear of illumination coming from a halogen exam lamp angled in his direction—it’s like he’s the main event, the actor in the spotlight, the trapeze artist at the center of the circus stage.

  Black electrical tape covers his mouth. A line of blood, now crusty, decorates his brow, drawing a squiggly zigzag line from an injury on the top of his head down between his eyes, down to the end of his nose. Those gray ringlets of hair are scabby with blood too, the ends matted and plastered to his cheeks and to his temples.

  A shadow passes over Richard Richie Rich Beagle. Someone moves in front of the very bright desk lamp.

  Beagle thrashes about. But his feet are bound to the stirrups by black Velcro straps. And his hands are flat against the padding of the table, wrists shackled with a long chain bound up under his flabby ass-cheeks.

  His killer comes revealed.

  It’s a woman with a scarred-up face, like a vase that broke and was clumsily put back together again with pink puffy scar tissue instead of glue.

  Gabby says to Beagle, “Miriam, I bet you can hear me in there. Miriam, darling, light of my life, I’m hoping you get this message. I’m going to kill him. I’m going to kill Never-Dick here. I’m going to—”

  Gabby whoops and laughs madly, then crisscrosses a scalpel blade across Beagle’s chest a few times—slice, slice, slice, erratic lines that immediately open up and drool blood. Beagle screams behind his gag. Sweat beads around the scabby crust on his brow.

  “Yeah, I’m gonna kill him,” she continues. “As you’ve figured out by now. This is his last day. His last few moments. I could torture him—”

  She twirls the scalpel deftly in her hand, lets it tickle a path across his paunchy stomach, down past the sweat-slick line of gray hair, to the nest of his pubes, to the top of his dick. She gives the scalpel a little jab, like she’s a kid trying to pop a balloon with a pin—Beagle shudders hard, moaning as a bead of red swells up from where the scalpel poked the end of his cock. She drags it down, down, down, occasionally stopping to do the same—little pin-pokes, little stitches, balloons of blood blowing up and going from beads to strings as they run down his manhood, down his sack, to the exposed tract of taint, to his puckered shithole. Stick, stick, stick. Thrash, thrash. Gabby chuckles as she gently encircles his asshole with the tip of the knife—not cutting in, not drawing blood, but scraping the skin there, kkkkk, kkkkkk.

  “I should torture him, probably. He has holes his soul, too. I can feel them there. He’s a bad man. Got shame coming off of him like steam off a pile of shit. You know how he lost his medical license? Well, darling Miriam, he was coked up out of his gourd, gonzo on the white stuff, and he tried to deliver a baby—key word: tried. The baby belonged to a nice lady named Paula, but boy, did he fuck up. Good news: he delivered that baby and that baby lived. The bad news? Oof. The mom didn’t do so hot. Baby came out in a c-section, which by the way you should know means they slit your belly open, vshht vshht—” And here she slits Beagle’s belly open with a long, vicious, dragging cut. He wails behind the gag as blood bubbles out and the gray shine of his guts bulges from the slit like earthworms from a frog’s mouth. “And then they lifted all those guts up and out of the way so they can grab the kid and rescue him from the womb. Only problem, Beagle nicked the bladder and didn’t even realize it. Because, again: coked up out of his gourd. They stitched her up. Her insides bled like a stuck piglet. Postpartum hemorrhage led to sepsis led to oopsie-daisy, Dead Mommy.”

  The next part comes fast. Gabby stabs the scalpel into his bulging bowels, then sticks it into him once, twice, three times, again and again—up his middle, to his chest, into his throat, and into his face. Stab, stab, stab. The pain radiates through him as he’s punctured, perforated like he’s a potato prior to baking, until one cut finally hits something vital—

  A spray of blood gushes from a hole in his neck, spattering across Gabby’s face. She leers into his own ghost-white visage with her own:

  “I’m doing you a favor, because I’m sure you didn’t want him delivering your little maggot baby anyway, did you? But better yet, consider this yet another message, this one from the future, dear Miriam. We have work to do. And until you decide to do it, I’ll be here, rattling your chains, reminding you that you aren’t off this leash yet.”

  SIXTEEN

  RUNNING ON EMPTY

  Miriam wants to puke, but there’s nothing left. She wants to cry, but that well has gone dry too. So instead, she stands there for a few seconds, feeling disconnected from this life, this world, like she’s the audience held fast by a horror movie unfolding on the screen in front of her. But this isn’t a movie. This is real. This is happening—or, rather, it will happen.

  It happens in three months.

  “You okay?” Beagle asks her.

  “Fine,” she says, her voice hoarse from all the vomiting and crying. Gabby runs the flat of her hand across Miriam’s back in gentle reassurance.

  “It’ll all work out in the end,” he says.

  Your ass is writing a check that reality won’t cash, doc.

  She doesn’t say that, though. Instead she just nods.

  “Thanks for seeing me. I’ll make sure you get the rest of the money.”

  He waves her off. “Don’t sweat it. I’ll call you with the results of the tests. Maybe a couple weeks. I gotta send this stuff in under the radar, since, well. Not a legitimate practice anymore.”

  “It’s fine. Lemme ask: why’d you lose your license? You did lose it?”

  He hesitates. “I did.”

  “Something happen?”

  She’s expecting him to lie, because everybody lies. Nobody wants to cop to their own failures. It’s one of the hallmarks of humanity. It’s also one of the reasons most humans aren’t worth a good goddamn.

  But he surprises her.

  “A lady died giving birth under my care.”

  Miriam shrugs. “People die. That’s life. No reason to kick you out of Doctorland, right?”

  “I was on drugs at the time. She died because I was out of my head.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You on drugs now?”

  “Clean and sober since that day, eleven years ago.”

  “Good for you.”

  He frowns. “I guess. So, when the time comes, I can deliver yours, but maybe you wanna get back in the good graces of the law so someone with a steadier hand than mine can bring that kid into the light.”

  “I’ll think about it. Thanks, doc.”

  “You’ll hear from me.”

  “I know.”

  I’ll hear you scream every time I close my eyes, doc. Every time Gabby—Gabby taken by the Trespasser—sticks you with that scalpel.

  SEVENTEEN

  THE LITTLE BOX

  It is a struggle to seem normal.

  Miriam is not feeling normal, not at all. Not that she ever feels particularly normal, of course, but right now she feels deeply disconnected from any sense of normalcy—she’s an impostor, a stowaway, a castaway, flung far from any sense of ordinary. Her head feels like it’s literally bursting with bad thoughts, like a mosquito who drank from the jugular. Louis is dead. He left her with a baby whose fate is to be born and then immediately die. She’s a fugitive. The doctor she just met will one day be killed by Gabby, Gabby who can be taken by the Trespasser, Gabby who may yet kill herself because life is too hard or now, Miriam realizes, because she is vulnerable to being possessed by whatever the fuck the Trespasser is.

  She’s ants in a bo
ttle. A colony of crawling ants desperate for escape.

  The houseboat bobs and sways underneath her.

  Gabby sidles up. In her hand is a present, wrapped. It’s smaller than a breadbox, and in fact, fits in the palm of her upturned hand.

  “So, it’s Christmas,” Gabby says.

  Miriam’s about to do the Miriam thing. She’s about to go off on Gabby. It’s not Christmas to me. Christmas is just some bullshit holiday the hypocritical Christians stole from the pagans anyway, and I’m not really in the Yuletide Fucking Mood over here, and it’s not like I got you anything anyway, and it’s not like I deserve anything, but then, the twinkling lights she hung earlier now twinkle and dance along the margins of her scars. And it’s beautiful. It’s innocent. It’s perfect. And Miriam realizes she can’t do it. She can’t unload with both barrels. She has to grow up. Has to be better than this. Turn it around, she tells herself.

  So, this time, she does.

  She smiles a small smile and takes the box.

  “I . . . didn’t get you anything,” she tells Gabby.

  “I know. You’ve got a lot to deal with, and this isn’t to make you feel bad. You can get me something later. And before you start, no, I’m not looking for a speech about how good I am and how bad you are. We’re both as good as we can be, and as bad as we are. No speeches.”

  “You know me very well.”

  “I do. Or I think I do. We’ll see when you open your gift.”

  “Let’s get to it, then.”

  Miriam wants to do the childish thing and rip the paper off the box, tearing the thing open with the fury of a dozen badgers. But she doesn’t. She is methodical and slow and takes her time with it. At first, she does this as a show for Gabby—see, I can be better—but as her fingers work the bow and gently unmoor the tape from the paper, she starts to enjoy it. No, she starts to savor it. Patience and care: two traits that are so far out of Miriam’s wheelhouse, she may very well be seen as their opposite, but that suddenly manifest in her, and in a way that is oddly comforting to her.

  The box reveals itself.

  It is a jewelry box.

  With the pad of her thumb she lifts the lid of the box and finds that inside, on a pillow of cotton, rests an owl. It is a shiny metal—“Silver,” Gabby says as Miriam picks it up and regards it—and portrays not some adorable owl looking moon-eyed, but rather, an owl in flight, claws out, beak open, as if flying toward the one looking upon it.

  “You said you had an owl,” Gabby explains.

  “Bird of Doom. I did. I miss it.”

  “Well, I know it’s not the same thing as a real owl, but . . .”

  Miriam kisses her on the cheek. “Thanks.”

  “The lady I bought it from—a little store down in Key West—said that the owl represents seeing what others do not see. She said it was a bird of chaos and change, and that the bird excelled at seeing through lies and through people’s masks. Sounded a lot like you.”

  “I don’t know about all that, but I am definitely Chaos Girl. And I do see shit that other people don’t.”

  “You like it?”

  “Fuck like. I love it.”

  “Merry Christmas, Miriam.”

  “Merry Christmas, Gabs.”

  They embrace. And for a time—a little while, at least—Miriam actually does feel normal, like it’s not a sham, not some mask. Like she’s someone else and her life is not in fact crazier than a coked-up chimpanzee.

  EIGHTEEN

  AWAKE IN THE DARK

  Miriam is awake and alert even though the clock ticks over to midnight. The silver owl pendant sits cold and heavy against her chest, and sometimes her hand moves to it and presses it there so hard into her skin, it almost hurts. (But it also feels strangely satisfying, the way it feels when you tongue a bit cheek or poke at a loose tooth.) Outside she hears the gentle lapping of water against the houseboat. She tries to clear her head of all the ants that crawl there, all the spiders and all the snakes, and it works, for a time. She focuses on her breathing. (God, I want a cigarette.) She empties her mind. (The Trespasser is out there and could be anyone, and holy hell, what is its game, who is it, why won’t it just leave me the fuck alone.) She cuts loose all her earthly ties and desires. (I miss Louis, I want to fuck Gabby, I love my owl necklace, nobody will take my owl necklace or I will cut them with a broken whiskey bottle and drink their blood.) None of that works, of course, and mostly she lies there, staring up at the dark.

  Eventually, Gabby rolls over.

  She’s still awake, too.

  “You can talk to me, you know,” Gabby says.

  “Yeah, no, I know.”

  “You miss him.”

  “Miss who?” she asks, even though she knows who.

  “Louis.”

  She sighs. “Yeah. I mean . . . Yeah.” Even though it’s dark, Miriam presses the heels of her hands against her eyes hard enough that she sees a laser light show there in the dark behind her lids. “He was too good for me. He was too good for this world. I don’t know what to do with him gone. I feel like a house without a front door.”

  “I’m sorry. You saved him, though. You did something good.”

  “Let’s not congratulate me too hard,” Miriam says. “Only reason I had to save him was because I brought evil to him. My version of saving him was hip-checking him off a cliff and then catching his hand before he fell to his death. Meeting me was the worst thing that ever happened to him. And I don’t just mean that to be some kinda self-defeating boo-hoo woe-is-me thing—though, also, it is. I just mean, legit, that guy had a better life before I showed up and fucked it all up.”

  Gabby’s hand found her bare shoulder and rested there. “You don’t know that. Maybe fate had it in for him anyway. Maybe you bought him a couple extra years.”

  “That’s a generous read, and I hope you’re right.”

  “I won’t get in the way, you know.”

  Miriam sits up. “In the way of what?”

  “Of you and him.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “But he’s also not. He’s still alive in your mind. In your heart.”

  “I just need time to deal with it all.”

  “I know.” Still, Gabby sounds sad when she says it.

  “It’s nothing to do with you. It’s just—this is hard. Okay? These are rough waters full of jagged rocks, and I don’t want to drag you through those rocks with me.” What she thinks but does not say is And I don’t want you to be one of those jagged rocks I have to navigate.

  “Okay. Yeah.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “I’m not mad.”

  “You’re hurt.”

  “I’m not hurt.”

  “People who say they’re not mad or hurt are usually mad and hurt.”

  “And if I said I was mad and/or hurt?”

  “Then I’d know you were.”

  Gabby sighs. “I can’t win here.”

  “It’s not about winning; I just don’t want you to worry about this right now.”

  “You mean you don’t want to worry about this now.”

  “Yes. No! Not exactly. But also, wait, yeah, yes, I don’t wanna worry about this right now. My head’s full-up on crazy.”

  “So, now I’m crazy.”

  “Gabs, c’mon—it’s Christmas.”

  “It was. It’s past midnight. Christmas is now officially over, and with it, the holiday cheer.” She rolls over. “Good night, I need to sleep.”

  “Gabs—”

  “Good night, Miriam.”

  Gabby pulls the blanket up over her head.

  Miriam, meanwhile, lies awake in the dark, cursing herself, even though she knows she is already cursed in so many ways.

  NINETEEN

  BLOOD IN THE CUT

  Later, after Gabby’s gone to sleep, Miriam grabs a serrated steak knife from the kitchen drawer and heads out on what passes for the houseboat’s front porch—really just an area with a couple beach chairs and a railing overlook
ing the moon-slick waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Or maybe up here it’s Florida Bay, she’s not sure.

  As the boat bobs, she ponders where to cut.

  In movies, idiots always cut into their palms. Why you’d ever do that, she has no idea, because that’ll fuck up your hand. You need your hands.

  The cut has to be somewhere out of sight. And it has to be somewhere that won’t affect her very much. Fingers, toes, feet, face. Has to be out of the way, somewhere incidental.

  Miriam decides that her left bicep can suffer the injury.

  She rolls up her sleeve, pressing the knife against the skin.

  She draws a breath. Sucks it in and holds it. Thinks idly how great it would be to smoke a whole pack of cigarettes right now.

  In her head, she counts to three.

  One.

  The water laps at the boat.

  Two.

  The stars above watch and wink.

  Three.

  She pulls the knife across her arm. Miriam stifles a cry so as not to wake Gabby. The blood wells up and drips down her arm in streaks.

  “Merry Christmas to me,” Miriam says, singsongy, as she bleeds.

  TWENTY

  STITCH

  By morning, the wound is gone. It leaves nothing behind but the stain of blood and the ghost of pain still haunting the skin.

  TWENTY-ONE

  THE GREAT UNBURDENING

  It takes a week to spill her guts.

  Not literally, of course. Not like poor old Dr. Never-Dick.

  It’s night and it’s raining outside. It’s a heavy Florida rain, which sounds like ball bearings pelting the houseboat on the top and on the sides. This rain, like all the rains here, will come and go, leaving humid air in place so thick you couldn’t cut it with an axe. But for now, it’s pouring down with the wrath of a drunken, vengeful god.