Three Slices

by Kevin Hearne

  “Huh?”

  He taps the folder. “The property. Someone bought it.”

  She reaches out an open palm, waggles her fingers.

  He puts the papers in her hand.

  When she pulls them close, she sees it. The name.

  “Oh, shit,” she says.

  The owner of the property?

  E. CALDECOTT.

  Fuck.

  14. Now: The Stalking Horse

  MELORA TURNS the hatchet in her hand. “I’m not a Caldecott. You know that by now, don’t you?” She hms. “Maybe you don’t. I just needed to get you here. I thought it was... I dunno. Appropriate? At the time you were in the river with Eleanor Caldecott, I was in the bathroom with my boyfriend. He’d beaten me pretty good. My eye was swollen up. Had a good knot on my head. Kyle—that was his name, Kyle—he dragged my butt into the bathroom and conked me on the toilet tank, then tried to drown me in the tub. And I guess he did. Paramedics said I died. I was down there in the water like that, his hand holding a clump of my hair, my blood swimming out in front of me, turning the water red, and I saw someone. I saw you. I saw you reaching for a young girl. I saw a man coming up behind me. It was a heckuva thing, like I wasn’t just there in the tub but like I was at the bottom of that river, staring up from the mud. We connected. And ever since, I’ve been able to feel you out there. Sometimes, I can see through your eyes, too. I know you. We’re sisters. Sisters of the spirit. Of the soul. You can see that, right?”

  Miriam’s mind swims.

  Nearby, she hears John grunting, groaning, weeping.

  “Something else changed for me, too. I can see people who have done bad things. Really bad things. It leaves a...a mark on them. Like these striations of death. Like rigor mortis. When a dog dies, you can see them form first on its belly—these long, gray fingers, like stains on the skin. I’m a vet tech, by the way, and I dosed you with ketamine. That’s why you can still see and hear me.” She breathes loudly inside the mask. “I used xylazine to knock you out first.” She laughs like this is funny, somehow. “I put that in a dart. Had it ready. When you started to come out of it—then the ketamine. I think it’s working. It’s working, right?” Another laugh. Some joke Miriam doesn’t get.

  Miriam tries to struggle. Her body is gone from her. Like it’s somewhere else, like her mind is unmoored and hovering above it all.

  She tries to speak, too. A sound comes out: “Whhha. Mmmmn. Puh. No.”

  “Your friend, John. He’s a bad fella. He’s done wrong. And we’re gonna right those wrongs today—help get some justice for poor girls. See, I’ve been studying that Caldecott case. It hit the news, you know. Some Internet sites and forums even have glimpses of you—they think you’re some kind of avenging angel. Maybe not even a real person but some kind of ghost. Anyway. The Mockingbird Killers, they killed girls. Hurt them. But now, I thought, I can use that. Like, what’s the word? Subvert. I can subvert that. Turn it on its ear. Hurt the men who hurt women. Lay them on the table. Make those wicked fools pay.”

  Miriam feels hot tears creep down her cheek.

  Behind Melora, Not-Louis stands, licking his lips. Then he’s gone.

  “Like my boyfriend. I’ll get him someday, too. He ran. I’ll find him. You’ll help me find him. Because like I said, we’re sisters. I love you. So, so much.” She stoops down, kisses Miriam’s forehead. The kiss is cold and soft. “Now, let’s kill John Lucas. You saw the photos I left for you?”

  15. One Day Ago: Gone John

  WHILE SHE’S out trying to chase down leads on this Mary Stitch character, John leaves a message for her at the motel—literally, a note taped to her front door: Come to my house. Got info. 4040 Durant Gulch.

  She takes the pickup truck—an old beat-ass thing she purchased from some gator wrestler in Florida—and heads out that way after a time to look at the road atlas in the glove compartment. Durant Gulch is a long, winding road that parallels a deep, red-rock ditch. Goes up, up, up, and close to the top, she finds his house: a little rancher. Humble. Not much to look at.

  The door is open. Just a little.

  She thinks, I hope like hell he left it open for me, because the alternative...

  The door drifts all the way wide.

  “John?”

  Nothing. No one answers.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  There, on a little nook table with a simple red tablecloth: two manila folders like the ones he was holding. The first and closest is open. Miriam picks up papers, skims them. The E. Caldecott who owns parcel number 239159184 accepts mail at a different address. Just outside of Collbran, in a town called Fruita.

  John said he’d have his real estate buddy do a little more digging. Was this the result of that? Sure looks like it.

  But then, the other folder.

  That one has a Post-it note on it.

  Her name is written on that note. In a script different from the one left at her motel room, the one from John. This: red pen. Flowy handwriting.

  All it says is:

  Miriam.

  Miriam opens it.

  Her innards clench.

  Pictures. Crime scene photos. Marked at the bottom with Denver PD.

  Dead women. Girls. Teenagers, maybe. Six of them, at least. All beaten so that their faces are unrecognizable. Hair matted with so much blood.

  Miriam doesn’t understand what she’s looking at.

  Her breath comes in fast, shallow bursts. Heart racing. Throat burning with bile. She thinks, This is tied to the Mockingbird Killers somehow, and again she starts concocting a mad idea in her mind about a resurgent Caldecott clan out there killing young women. But she tries to imagine how John ties into it. He dies soon at the hands of one of them, but that doesn’t track: they kill girls, like the girls in these photos—bad girls, Wicked Pollies—not old men from the Army. More theories: maybe John is one of the Caldecotts, maybe he’s been playing her this whole time, and maybe that blows back on him somehow.

  Maybe he killed these girls.

  She turns over the photos. Writing on the back of each. A time and a date. Each written in the same handwriting on the note she found at her door.

  John’s handwriting.

  Miriam slams that folder closed.

  She picks up the other one. The one with the address on it.

  Time to take a trip, she thinks.

  But first, she has a few stops to make.

  16. Now: Death Marks

  MELORA WALKS over to Miriam. Helps prop her up. Miriam’s like a doll: Pose me, place me, use me. When it comes to date rape drugs, the one everyone always talks about is Rohypnol, or roofies. But ketamine is right up there, too.

  Something rattles in Miriam’s boot. Something loose.

  Again, Melora kisses her on the cheek. “You stay there. Watch me. I’m just like you, Miriam. You’re not alone anymore. I know you feel alone, but you have me. Someone to do what you do. To make the bad people pay.”

  Then it all starts to happen like in the vision.

  Miriam realizes, I’m the one standing there. In the back. Just a shadow. The killer’s not talking to somebody. The killer’s talking to her.

  I really am just a shadow. Bodiless, thin, bleak, black.

  Melora goes to John. John, who cries and struggles and bleeds.

  Hatchet in Melora’s hand.

  Do something, Miriam screams inside her own mind. Move. Speak. Something. Anything!

  Melora says, “I’m glad I get to show you this. You need to see this. You need to see what I’ve become.”

  This is happening. You have to stop it.

  Change fate.

  Rock in the river time.

  Melora lifts the hatchet.

  “Wait,” Miriam says—an animal bleat. She lifts her hand. Waves it about.

  The killer stops. Hatchet hanging.

  Melora turns toward her, the beak pointing, the leather hood creaking.

  “We...do it...” Miriam draws a deep breath through her nose. “Tog
ether.”

  “Together,” Melora repeats, the word hollow inside the hood. A few seconds pass. Seconds that feel like minutes. Miriam still floats. Disconnected. The wall behind her barely a presence at all. But then Melora says, “Yeah. Yes. I like that. We should do it together. You can... you can show me the way.”

  She steps toward Miriam. Sisters. Arms out. Helping Miriam to move, one plodding step at a time. Toward John there on the table. His eyes big as dug graves. Fearful as he’s probably ever been. Are these his sins coming home to roost? Does he believe he deserves this?

  Whatever comes next, it has to happen a certain way.

  My boot.

  It’s in my boot.

  Miriam doesn’t have much strength. She still feels off-kilter, unmoored, and so as they get to the table, she lets the weight of her body do the first part—she puts all her weight to her left side and falls that direction.

  Into Melora. A moment of imbalance—

  A moment of distraction.

  Just enough for Miriam to grab the knife.

  The second one.

  The one she bought at the bait shop after breakfast that day. The one she bought just in case. A second knife—because knives are cool.

  This one, hiding in her boot.

  She grabs it—it’s small. Three-inch blade. Serrated.

  Opens with a quick flick.

  A fast plunge and it sticks in Melora’s thigh. The girl howls—and again the hatchet rises. Miriam, still sluggish, still groggy, can’t do anything, can’t be fast, so all she can do is push with all her might—

  Melora falls.

  The hatchet clatters.

  Melora, on all fours, straining for the knife jabbed in her leg. Miriam has nothing, no grace, no dexterity, and even though control of her body is returning, the best she can do is drop down on her “sister” like a felled tree. One hand clumsily wrenching the hood up and off. The other arm snaking around the girl’s neck. Miriam puts all her weight, meager as it is, straight down. Pulling her own arm tight. Grabbing her wrist with her other hand to cinch the noose.

  Melora starts making a choking sound.

  “I’m sorry,” Miriam mutters. “I’m so sorry.”

  You can’t live. You can’t make these decisions. You can’t be me.

  I don’t even want to be me anymore.

  The woman’s legs kick out.

  Her head tries to snap back but there’s nowhere to go.

  And eventually, the fight goes out of her.

  And death enters in.

  17. Now: Time Keeps On Ticking

  REST. NO rescue for John. No resurrection for Melora.

  Miriam slumps against the wall and she sleeps. If it can be called that. Instead, it’s like falling: falling down through the dark, through grave dirt, through a casket-shaped hole carved out of a hill. Rustle of feathers. Clack of beaks.

  Eventually, she jars awake. To the sound of John Lucas weeping.

  Her head feels like someone filled her sinuses with cement. Her body like someone injected molten lead into her bone marrow.

  Somehow, though, she stands.

  “You,” she says. A frog croak.

  John startles. Sniffs. His lip slick with snot. “Miriam.”

  “John.”

  “You killed her.”

  “I killed her.”

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you so much. Those girls, I, I, I didn’t—”

  Miriam sighs. “I know you didn’t. The murders happened in Denver. At times you couldn’t have done it. I stopped by the bar. Spoke to Janice. She confirmed for me that you haven’t missed a night at the bar in... six months, maybe more. Two of those dead girls were in the last three. Wasn’t you.”

  “Good. Good. Please...help me up.”

  She sniffs, clucks her tongue. “Not yet, Big John. Just because you didn’t kill those girls doesn’t mean you weren’t responsible.”

  “What? I...Wait. Wait.”

  But she keeps talking. “You had those photos at your house. And that was your handwriting on the back. Janice told me something else, too, when I went by the bar.” Miriam leans forward, trying not to fall over. “I asked her about your family. She said your son, David, lives out in Denver.”

  “Oh, Jesus. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “You sired a killer. Your son killed those girls.”

  By now, he’s sputtering. Mouth strung with bloody spit. “I wasn’t sure. I had a friend on the force out there. Old Army buddy. He... he got me those photos. But... yes. Yes. It’s him. I think it’s him.” He weeps. “I fucked up. I was a bad father. Never there. My wife...my son. Oh, jeez, god. I didn’t...” His words break apart like rotten bark off an old tree. He just makes a sad, angry sound.

  “You did fuck up, yeah.”

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  “I want to make a new deal with you, John. This one’s not a bet. You won the bet we made already because as it turns out, you’re not going to die like I said. You survived that because of me, and now your fate is again your own. But I own you. I own you right now because I could still cut your head off.”

  “Anything. Anything. Whatever it is, anything.”

  “You need to take care of your boy.”

  “Wh... what?”

  “You need to go to him. And you need to stop him. I would. But I have other things to accomplish. I tire of all this. I want out. But you? You’re just getting in. You promise me you’ll stop your son.”

  “I promise.”

  “Do what’s right, John. This is your circus. He is your monkey.”

  “I will. I will.”

  “Good.”

  And with that, she begins to undo his bonds.

  18. Now: Stitches & Starshine

  SAFIRA ENTERS her home. First thing she does, as many do:

  She flips on the lights.

  “Hey,” Miriam says. The little knife in her hand. Flipping around the way a magician moves a quarter around his knuckles.

  “You.”

  “Indeed. I am me. A profound statement if ever there was one. I am me. A big, badass, ego-fed statement. I am me, and nothing will change me. It’s sick because, honestly? I feel really empowered by that. And yet, at the same time, hamstrung by it, too. Because I don’t want to be me anymore. I don’t want what I have. Thing is, I wanted that so bad that I got roped into your lies. I should be smarter than this. Faster. And yet you snookered me, Starshine.”

  “Miriam, it wasn’t me.”

  “I know. It was your sister.” Fear dashes across Safira’s face. “You’re wondering how I know. It’s not just that you guys looked alike. It’s that, in her wallet, she kept a crumpled-up picture of you. Sweet, I guess, at least until you realize she wanted to be my sister more than she wanted to be yours.”

  “I... I’m not a real psychic.”

  “No shit, Shoeshine. That’s why you puked, isn’t it? You put on too much of a show and... you were in too deep. The blood. The cheese stink. Too gross for you by a country mile, so next thing you know: blargh. Yak chowder.”

  Safira’s silence answers that question.

  “My sister, Melora, she said it had to look good. Melora—”

  “Is dead.”

  That, she didn’t know. The stunned look on her face shows it.

  “...why?” That question spoken with a trembling tongue. Trying not to cry, maybe. Trying to keep it together.

  “Because she was going to kill the wrong guy. She was about to make an epic mistake. And because she was fucked up. Broken. When she died the first time, it cracked that mirror good. And you can’t put a mirror back together again, Safira. There will always be those faint lines, those shatter marks. And because ultimately, I don’t like someone being in my head. Seeing through my eyes. I don’t know how she did it and I don’t care. I didn’t want to kill her. I wanted to help her. But fate, you see—fate is feisty. I let her go, that death she desired—the death she committed to with her actions—would still happe
n. Fate’s a rubber band that way—you can stretch it wider, wider, wider, and as long as it doesn’t break, it’ll always snap back into the same goddamn shape. So, you need to snip the rubber band. The only way to freedom is to cut those bonds.”

  “Please... I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. Not like this.”

  She’s scared.

  Good.

  “I know you didn’t, Sunshine. But what happened, happened. And now your cuckoo sister is dead—your fault for putting this all in motion.”

  “She wouldn’t be denied—”

  “I denied her. And now I’m about to hurt you, too, for making me do that. For throwing this noose around my neck. I’m trying to be good. Trying to be better. And you and your bugshit crazy sister drag me back into it. But I’m going to give you a chance to wriggle out. To go on your merry way—well, probably not so merry, because you’ll always have that albatross around your neck, won’t you? That dead bird with Melora’s face.”

  “Anything. Anything.”

  “I want to know where Mary Stitch is. You probably don’t know. And if you don’t? So be it. But there will be consequences to your unlucky ignorance, Safira. Real, bloody consequences. So, know anything? Will you get lucky? Let’s spin that roulette wheel, see where the little ball lands.”

  Safira’s words are breathy and buoyant with fear—

  But also ragged with relief.

  “I know about her. I do! I do. Not a bluff. She’s... she’s gone, long gone, gone for many years. But her brother, her older brother is here. Weldon. He’s an old man now. No friends, not in the phone book, and the only reason I know anything about him is that I used to clean the cabins he rents—he rents them through a company, not directly, but I did the housecleaning when I was a girl.”

  “He’s still alive?”

  “He is.”

  “And you can give me his address?”

  “I can.”

  “Good. Get a pen and write it down. Because I’m in a hurry.”

  In a hurry to find Mary Stitch.

  And end this curse.

  Read more by Chuck Wendig

  A Prelude to War, Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys, and Interlude: Swallow are works of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.