Three Slices

by Kevin Hearne

  On a resume, one of Miriam’s talents would be seizes opportunities. Which she does now, launching herself up like a starving housecat. Claws out. Teeth bared. She slams into Melora. Her arms around the psycho’s hips, head slamming right into the woman’s middle.

  The two of them topple.

  Miriam pistons a fist—Melora turns her head, takes it on the cheek—

  A roar of river water, a flurry of bubbles, rushing, gurgling. Like being smothered by it. In her ears. Up her nose. Overwhelming. Pulling Miriam down—

  No vision. Just noise. Melora is psychic.

  Real deal psychic.

  Sister.

  Oh, god.

  Miriam’s distracted, and Melora takes her shot—she flings her own elbow up, catching Miriam in the same place where the hatchet hit her moments ago. The ringing of a gong: everything vibrating, banging, cymbals going off in her head like someone sat an orangutan at a drum kit.

  “We’re... not supposed to be fighting,” Melora stammers. She sounds sad, desperate, panicked. “We’re sis—”

  Miriam pins her with her knees and then backhands her.

  Whap.

  “We’re not fucking sisters,” Miriam hisses. “I don’t have a sister.”

  “No, not like that,” Melora says, the fight gone out of her. Her hands fall flat to her sides, thudding against the floor. “You fell into a river. Down there, in the dark. I was there, too. I was drowning, too.”

  Miriam almost laughs. “Jesus Christ on a Creamsicle. You really are nuts.” She remembers being down there in the dark of the river. The shadows moving. The water rushing. All the world sounding like blood rushing in a giant’s ear. Eleanor Caldecott there in the deep. Holding Lauren Martin—Wren. Other bodies down there, too. Ghosts. Visions. Not real. Right?

  Beneath her, the woman makes a low, keening, grief-struck sound. “I’m so sorry, Miriam. I’m so, so sorry.”

  For a half second, Miriam is like, Sorry for what? She’s about to ask, about to say, This is what you wanted. This is who you are, some crazy Caldecott remnant who thinks she can hang with...whoever the others were to her. Cousins, uncles, distant relations, lost brothers, blah blah blah.

  But then—a sharp stick in the top of her thigh, just south of her ass cheek.

  A needle prick.

  Her gaze darts. She sees Melora’s hand there. Holding a small, disposable injector. She tries to read what’s on the side. Can’t. Vision already going smeary.

  If I’m going dark, you’re coming with me, she thinks, and reaches down to wrap her hands around Melora’s neck. The psycho’s eyes bulge. Tongue out. But then it’s like Miriam’s hands go soft. Disconnected. Like gloves that someone staple-gunned to the end of a pair of pool noodles. Can’t get a grip.

  Everything starts to go slack.

  Melora gives her a gentle urging. Protects her landing.

  She doesn’t go out. She doesn’t fall unconscious. Her eyes stay open. Everything feels like it’s floating. The floor disappearing beneath her. The ceiling and roof drifting up into the star-scattered sky. Her breathing goes slow. Shallow.

  Melora stoops down. A small, soft smile. “It was the only way,” she says.

  10. Six Days Ago: Trespassers

  MORNINGS, MIRIAM thinks, can go eat a dick. They can go eat a dick salad with a few extra squirts of smeg-sauce. Topped with cock-waffles. Further topped with jizz syrup. All served in a roasty-toasty bowl of crispy, deep-fried dog shit. Mornings can eat all that, then jump off a cliff and into the mouth of an alligator. An alligator with a righteous case of irritable, inflamed, prolapsed bowels.

  Fuck mornings.

  For real.

  Mornings mean the night is over. Mornings mean sleep is done, game over, goodbye. Mornings are the consequence of your actions, the culmination of the twenty-four–hour equation. They’re like being born all over again. Emerging into a bright, nasty, stupid world. Mouth tasting of ash. Eyes seal-coated with sleep-boogers. Hair looking like you just went ten rounds with the Devil hisownself.

  The curtains to the rinky-dink motel room—a room that smells of must, and dust, and mold, all of it with a strange minerally tang like she’s down in the bowels of a silver mine somewhere—whip open suddenly.

  They do this by someone’s hand other than her own.

  A dark shape stands by them.

  Which means, Oh, god, did I fuck somebody last night?

  It happens. It happened with Gabby. Drinking plus visions often means...

  The dark shape steps forward, at first framed by the light—just a tall, broad-shouldered shadow. But it’s a shape she knows. One cut from big cloth.

  Louis.

  “Wake up, muffin,” he says, singsongy.

  His voice is rich, loamy. Wet, too. Like he’s speaking through a mouthful of moist cake and earthworms. His laugh is rocks in a cup. His breath is wind through dead trees.

  “Fuck you,” she tells the Trespasser. “Close the curtains.”

  “What are we doing here, Miriam?” he asks, sitting down. It’s been a while since she’s seen him. Now he’s in the light. She sees the black Xs of electrical tape crossing his one eye. Sees the scabby knuckles and the cracked lips. She blinks, and then he’s different: the young black boy from Philly. One untied shoelace. A gun in his hand, shaking with ego and fear. Blink again and now it’s Gabby with her cut-up face, blink again and it’s Miriam’s mother sitting there in the chair with empty eyes and a mouth frozen in an eternal howl.

  One last blink and it’s back to Louis.

  Or Not-Louis.

  “You know what I’m doing,” she groans, and hides under the pillow.

  Suddenly, he’s there. Standing over here. He whips the pillow off her head. The light’s bright—too bright. She smells his breath: the smell of rank river water, the stink of fish washed up on a muddy bank. “You can’t get rid of me,” he says.

  “I can. And I will. I’m getting close. I can feel it.”

  “Is this what you really want? To be shut out from your power?”

  She squeezes her eyes closed. Hard. “It’s not power. It’s a curse. Somewhere out here is the start of a thread. A thread named Mary Stitch. I’m going to pull on that thread and I’m going to follow it. At the end of it, I’ll have a way out. An exit from all this—” And here she thinks but does not say, An exit that doesn’t include me putting a gun in my mouth or opening my wrists in a hot tub. “Now fuck off in some other direction and let me sleep.”

  “You are sleeping,” he says. “And it is a power. I could’ve died. I would have died—up there in that lighthouse, a fillet knife in my brain.”

  “Maybe you wouldn’t have been in that lighthouse if I hadn’t climbed into your rig in the first fucking place. Oh, and you’re not you. You’re not him.”

  “Yes. That’s right. Louis isn’t here with you, is he?”

  The way the Trespasser says it, petulant, mocking, some real nanny nanny boo boo bullshit. It ticks her off. She snarls. Launches herself out of bed, claws out, raking them across his face—

  Skin peels away. Underneath: mealworms squirming, pill bugs tumbling.

  He laughs, reaches for her, gives her a hard pull—

  Wham. She slams against the carpet.

  A hard, sucking gasp.

  The room is dark. The curtains closed.

  The phone is ringing.

  Not her cell. The motel phone.

  She grunts. Stays on the floor and paws upward, hand feeling along the bedside table. Thump, thump, scrabble—ahh, the phone. Off its cradle, into her hand, against her ear.

  “Wuzza,” she mumbles.

  “It’s me,” says a voice. A voice that clarifies: “It’s John. I guess we don’t know each other enough to get away with it’s me.”

  “Muzza.”

  “You wanna get some breakfast?”

  “Bruhfuss. Yah.”

  He’s still talking, but she plops the phone back on the cradle. That one word—breakfast—is enough t
o wake her up. Because mornings may suck, but they are redeemed by the power of motherfucking breakfast foods.

  11. Six Days Ago: Bruhfuss, Yah

  BREAKFAST JOINTS—cafes, coffee shops, diners—are her thing.

  But this is the first time she has dined in a bait shop.

  Because that’s what it is. A bait shop. Rods and reels hanging from hooks emerging out of wood paneling. An old, dusty, wood floor. An actual refrigerator case of bait just three feet to her left: earthworms, minnows, little cups of chum.

  When they enter, she makes a joke: “You know I’m not a largemouth bass, right?” And John laughs a little, and then she says, “You’re supposed to make a joke back at me like, ‘You’re no bass, but you sure got a large mouth.’ Or maybe ‘With as big a mouth as you have, I got confused.’” And he just looks at her like she’s got a dick for a nose, and then they sit because, as it turns out, this bait shop also serves breakfast. One kind of breakfast: breakfast sandwiches.

  Which are some of Miriam’s favorite things.

  Because breakfast is amazing.

  And sandwiches are amazing.

  And when the two of those things have a warm, cheesy, carb-swaddled baby? Well. It’s probably why mankind evolved at all.

  So there they sit, near the bait case. Eating sandwiches.

  “You guys don’t have pork roll out here,” she says, cheek bulging with food. The words come out more like You guysh don haf pork roll out here.

  John shakes his head. “No, I don’t think we do.”

  “Scrapple, either.”

  “We do have elk burgers. And great tacos. And Rocky mountain oysters.”

  “Those are testicles.”

  He shrugs. “Bull balls. Yep.”

  “You’re gross. You’re lucky I got a stomach like a cast-iron cook pot.”

  He’s staring out over a bagel sandwich. Not eating it. “You still owe me.”

  “Hunh?” She swallows a cheesy, meaty, eggy clot. “Oh. Your death.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I, ahh. I haven’t figured out what I want to do about that yet.”

  He arches a fuzzy, gray eyebrow. “I don’t follow.”

  You die in a week, John, she thinks. And you die by a hand that is somewhat familiar to me. And I don’t want any part of it. I want to eat this sandwich and I want to run away. I want to leave you to your doom.

  Cold. Horrible. Makes her feel bad for thinking it; and Miriam, she’s not super-used to feeling guilty or shameful. But this is that. John dies on that table, beheaded by some amateur-hour Mockingbird Killer and... c’mon.

  But still? This isn’t why she’s here. She’s here to get rid of this power. Not get tangled up in someone else’s net. Her getting involved is complicated. Maybe it’s time to just let one slide. Let the rope slip her grip.

  The voice of the Trespasser whispers:

  You thought you killed the Mockingbird, didn’t you?

  Doesn’t that make this a little bit your fault?

  “I’ll cut you a new deal,” John says, cutting off her awkward, thinky silence. “Maybe I help you in a way and you still tell me about my death.”

  “Help me? How?”

  “That number.”

  “The number from Madam Safira Scooby Snacks?”

  “Safira’s her real name, though obviously Starshine isn’t, but yeah. That’s the number I’m talking about.”

  She leans forward, chin in her tented hands. Gaze suspiciously narrowed.

  “Go on,” Miriam says.

  “It’s nine digits. I worked for a little while at GVP—Grand Valley Power. Meter reader. And out here—hell, maybe in a lot of places—we would go by this thing called the APN: assessor’s parcel number. We didn’t worry about addresses because the APNs were more accurate and meaningful. Out here? Those digits are nine numbers. I thought maybe...”

  “Hm. Shit. Maybe.”

  “Gimme the number,” he says. “I’ll run it through a real estate friend.”

  “And then?”

  “I get you what you want, you tell me about my death.”

  “I’m in. But be honest: you don’t even really believe I have the power. I can see it in your eyes. You think I’m selling you a case of snake oil.”

  He chuckles. “Not exactly. I think you believe it.”

  “So, why? Why even ask.”

  “Honestly? I’m bored, for one. Two, I’m used to getting what I want. I don’t mean that in a childish, petty way, though that’s probably part of it and probably part of why my wife left me and my son...” Here his face twists up like a wrung mop. “Why my son is such a fuck-up.” Way he emphasizes that must mean the kid is a real mess. “I haven’t seen my boy in forever and he’s just on the other side of the state—I’m getting off track here. What I’m saying is, you’re dangling something in front of my face. And I want it. That’s what they teach us as interrogators. To go and get, at any cost.”

  “So, this is the carrot.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “But we haven’t seen the stick.”

  He grins. “I’m too old to give you the stick, sweetheart.” But she’s not sure. There’s a glimmer of something dark there. Like the shine off black hematite. “You want me to call my friend?”

  One last bite of sandwich popped in her mouth. Chew, chew, chew. She nods as her jaw works the sandwich. “Do it, dude. Do it up.”

  On the way out, she heads to the counter to pay—her treat, she says.

  She looks at the extra bits for sale on the counter. Tic-Tacs and keychains and fisherman bric-a-brac. And little knives, too. Huh.

  12. Now: K-Hole

  WE ALL float down here. A line from a book. A book about a clown that wasn’t a clown. Staring out from under the street, underneath a sewer drain. A giant spider. A preteen orgy. It. One of the books that Miriam kept hidden from her mother: that, The Shining, a book called Swan Song, another one called Lost Souls. A Ramones album. A stack of Batman comics. Little secrets kept under floorboards in her closet, some kept hidden in a stump out back of the house. They’ll corrupt you, Mother said. All you need is this. She handed Miriam a Bible as she burned the books, the CDs, the comics—the smell of paper crisping, the smell of plastic melting. The taste of tears and snot. Precious gifts of sounds and story carried away by tongues of flame, and here she thinks, Why am I thinking about this? and then, Oh, right, because I feel like I’m floating.

  Her head thumps against each step. Brought downstairs on a comforter dragged by a woman named Melora. Miriam can’t feel the stairs hitting her at the back of her neck, the base of her skull—like riding marshmallows, like pillows and clouds and other soft things. The woman speaks as she drags Miriam:

  “You drowned and I drowned and that’s when we became one. That’s when the door opened and I could see things. I could see through your eyes. I could see the stains of sin on people.”

  Miriam tries to speak, but what comes out is a mushy gabble.

  “We have to kill him,” Melora says. “I want your blessing. I need it. He’s a bad man. Everyone knows you’ve been seen with him, but this is my chance to do right. To fix broken things. John Lucas is a killer. And a rapist. I have proof. He would’ve done you, too. But I’m saving you. I’m saving us both.”

  You bitch, you stuck me with a needle. She tries to say that but, again, it’s just her mouth working and nonsense sounds coming out. Like she had a stroke and her mouth isn’t connected to her brain. Nothing is. All her limbs have the puppet strings cut. She tries to move. They twitch. Not much else.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  Bottom of the steps.

  Louis, Not-Louis, now hovering above her. In the air like a ghost—arms gone to vapor at the ends, blood-slick hair drifting and splaying like seaweed swaying. His mouth moves but the words don’t speak out loud so much as they appear inside her mind, echoing: You tried to run away from us, Miriam, but you ran right toward us. Funny how you do that. You think you can avoid going lef
t by going right, but you always come back around, don’t you?

  She tries to say, I have a choice. I am the one with all the choice. I’m the riverbreaker, I’m fate’s foe, I’m—

  But Louis just laughs inside her mind.

  Then, Melora returns. Didn’t know she was gone but now here she is again, tugging on a hood over her head. A leather hood with a metal beak. Eyes barely seen behind the shine of glass goggles.

  “I had this made special,” she says. “Do you like it?”

  13. Four Days Ago: Buzzard Creek

  THE DAY is warm. The sun is bright and bold, like a fist on the back of Miriam’s neck. She stands on the side of a road, a road without a name, a road with just a number because as John put it, That’s just what they do here. Here, on 58 6/10 Road, she looks out at an open property. No house. No driveway. Just a mess of trees—white aspen amongst some scrubby pines—on a bulging berm. In the middle of it, an ill-seen, bubbling creek.

  John says, “This is it. This is APN 239159184. That’s Buzzard Creek cutting its way through the ground out there. Running hard right now with all the snowmelt coming down.”

  “It’s nothing. There’s nothing here.”

  “That’s mostly true. It is pretty, though.”

  “I don’t give a monkey’s balls about pretty. This wasn’t it, then. Your theory didn’t work.” Her hope is a bird shot out of the sky: kablam.

  John shrugs. Sighs. “Sorry.” He flips through some pages in his hands, pages sitting in a manila folder. “You sure your psychic friend is the real deal?”

  “I’m not. I don’t even know that she’s really a psychic.”

  “She didn’t used to be. Used to be an actress in Denver.”

  An actress? Doesn’t that figure. All those theatrics. Still, though—that was more than what she expected when it came to commitment to the role. Killing a pigeon and smashing its guts into a glob of cheese? And she knew things. Things that almost no one is privy to. She knew Miriam. Or part of her, at least. “Worthless woman,” Miriam says. “Nothing here. And no one.”

  “You wanna know who owns it?”