by Chuck Wendig
And then Miriam.
Sitting in the back.
Earlier, after the school, she waited at the bus stop. Just making phone calls. Tattoo parlors and artists all over the tri-county area. From Bloomsburg all the way down to Harrisburg.
Every call, the same question: You ever give someone a swallow tattoo?
Turns out, the answer was yes. Dozens. Hundreds. The swallow tattoo? Hugely popular. Totally common. Sailor Jerry, they say. Ed Hardy. Suddenly it's not a needle in a haystack: It's a needle in a basket of needles. Shit.
She tried to describe it.
She told them it was plain. Nothing fancy. Mostly just the shape of the bird – like a silhouette with the eye cut out. Inked on a man's chest. Not above some girl's tit. Not on some flabby bicep.
No, they said. Nothing like that.
But then she talked to Bryan. Guy who ran a joint called Ink Monkey. He said he'd done some like that. Real simple. He echoed her words: nothing fancy.
She hung up with him.
Then she got on the bus.
The thing is, this guy's tattoo studio is in a town called Ash Creek.
Miriam knows that town. Because it's where she grew up. Or, rather, just outside of it – but Ash Creek was their mailing address.
That's why everything's starting to look familiar.
The bus drives past an old farm stand, The Honey Hole! She knows that stand. She used to walk there sometimes – she'd bring a buck, drop it into the box, and take a few honey sticks.
The stand was once brick red, red like a freshly painted barn. Now it's got a rotten cock-eyed lean. Paint's peeling and most of the color is gone. The letters of the sign have faded. Now it just says, he Honey Ho.
Get your head in the game, Black.
The feeling inside is tight, like her internal organs have been cinched up in a series of binding knots. A breeding ball of snakes.
Someone tries to sit next to her. The bus hasn't even stopped but someone's jostling for a new seat. Skinny bitch. Probably forty, looks sixty. Crazy cat lady. Or maybe an art teacher. Or both. Big earrings. Tie-dye frock.
Miriam flicks open her spring-loaded blade, begins using it to pick at her fingernails – makes sure the woman sees what she's doing before planting roots. Miriam adds, "If any part of you touches me, I'll cut it off."
Skinny Bitch hovers but doesn't sit. She flees to find another empty space.
Outside, everything's coming together. She knows these trees. These mailboxes. Close now.
"No, no, no," she tells herself. "Don't you even think about it."
But she's thinking about it.
Not just thinking about it. Doing it.
In the battle of fate versus free will, she's not sure who's doing what or whose side she's even on; all she knows is she's standing up.
Reaching up.
Grabbing the emergency brake cord.
And giving it a hard yank.
The bus brakes. Everyone lurches forward.
Don't do this, don't do this, don't do this.
She walks to the front. The bus driver is looking at her like she's got a third eye, one arm, a pair of tits on her chin: freak, mutant, disruptor.
Just sit back down, you stupid twat.
"I need to get off," she says.
"What?" the bus driver, a big black dude with liver spots on his shorn head, says.
"Open the fucking door!" the hipster-hobo with the piss-and-nachos scent shout-mumbles.
Miriam scowls. "You heard the… whatever that guy is."
The door hisses open.
And Miriam steps out into the rain.
THIRTY-THREE
Dark Hollow
Dark Hollow Road.
A long, single-lane road. Halfway down, it turns to gravel.
Miriam stands at its mouth. Staring down its length she sees a long asphalt tongue pitted with holes and plastered with leaves, the trees bending over it like they're trying to smother it, rip it apart, erase it from the world. From here she can't see any homes – this never was a road with many people on it – but she'll see them soon enough, old farmhouses like hard white teeth, windows like eyes, all ready to swallow her up and spit her out.
The rain has upgraded itself – no longer a curtain of mist, it's leveled up into a deluge. Wouldn't be the first time she's looked like a soggy dog.
As she walks, she hears footsteps to one side or the other.
Leaves, usually. Falling. Scraping across the ground in the wind before finally being pinned to the road by rain.
Another time it's just a squirrel: a gray flash of fur across open ground and up a tree. Shaking his tail at her as though to threaten her, or warn other squirrels away.
Then she looks and there he walks. Hands stuffed in his pockets.
Ben Hodges. The back of his head blown out, a red gummy crater. Skull bone like a broken cereal bowl.
"No bird picking at your brains this time," she says, speaking over the shushing rain. A small act of defiance.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he says, but then he smiles. And it's Ben's smile through-andthrough. It's like an arrow through her chest, the shaft broken off at the breastbone so the pointed tip stays forever lodged. "Oh, don't look so sad. It's not your fault I killed myself. Not all your fault, anyway."
Her jaw locks. "Don't fucking pretend you're really him. You're not."
Another smile. "No, I suppose I'm not."
"So. What now? Why are you here on this perfectly lovely not-yet-autumnal day?" As though to answer her compliment, the sky grumbles with distant thunder – like the sound of a tractor trailer bounding over a bump in the interstate. "You here to kick my ass again? Break a coffee table? Carve another bird into my other hand?"
"Nah, I just thought you looked lonely. You're so close now. But this going home thing, it's just a distraction. Why bother?"
"Fuck you. I want to."
"Do you?"
She doesn't answer. She doesn't know.
"You know, you could just tell me what to do." She hurries in front of him, walks backward as he walks forward. She offers him an open palm. "Put a name in my hand. On a slip of paper. Give me the address, since you're Mister All-Knowing Trespasser. Point me towards the killer and I'll go give him a stern talking-to."
"Talking won't do it. And I don't have a pen. Or paper."
He smiles. Now she sees the worms winding between his teeth.
In her head, the cries of a whimpering infant.
Another arrow in her heart.
"So manifest one," she snarls. "You're not real anyway. Reach into your gooey brain pocket and pull one out. Or have a bird bring it to you."
"Doesn't work like that. I don't know any more than you do."
"You lie."
He shrugs. "Do I?"
Fuck it. She takes a swing for him – but her fist finds open air. She hears the rustling and flapping of wings, as though a whole flight of birds just took off – and the sound grows louder and louder until it's a deafening roar – and yet she sees no birds, no birds at all. She spins, looks up, looks around, but all that's here is the rain and the leaves and yet that noise won't stop, and her ears are ringing and–
It stops. Gone. The sound doesn't fade away – it just hits a wall.
And when she turns around, she sees where she is.
She's home.
Jesus, the house looks like hell.
It's an old farmhouse – a narrow two-story stone home, the outside with four corners but the inside with countless more, all tight channels and odd turns and what Miriam used to call little gnome doors.
Once upon a time her mother kept the place impeccable – come autumn she'd have pumpkins and gourds on the front stone steps; she'd have mums in all colors potted in baskets. Birds would play at the feeder. The shutters might get a fresh coat of paint. Everything in its place. A speck of rogue pollen would hit the ground and there would come Mother with a pair of tweezers, ready to pluck the invading tree-sperm f
rom her immaculately groomed property.
It's an exaggeration. But only barely.
Now, though…
No flowers, no feeder, no mums. No pumpkins, no gourds, no nothing. The shutters don't look like they've seen a coat of paint in years. A couple of them hang from their moorings below the windows to which they belong.
The stone steps are crumbling around the edges. A few pots sit off to the side, all broken and cracked.
Weeds have claimed this place for their kingdom. Agents of entropy, these plants – committing a tireless assault on this old house, breaking the stone walkway, creeping up through cracks in the steps and slowly but inevitably widening the fissures. Fingers of ivy threaten to pull the place down. Not now, not soon, but one day.
Gutters, rusted. Stuffed with leaves and nests.
One window, cracked.
The mailbox, a downward-facing dog. Sad Snoopy nose pointed toward the earth.
In fact, the whole building seems to have a slight lean to it. As though it's creeping toward collapse, toward what passes for a house and home's demise.
Miriam thinks, Just walk away. Now you've seen. Now you know.
But there's more to know isn't there?
Just another ten feet to get onto the porch. A simple knock would suffice.
You can see your mother again.
And that's the problem.
Does she want to? Is she ready? Will it be worht it?
The phone rings. Katey's cell.
A blocked number.
Fuck it. She answers.
"Hey, Mom," says the voice on the other line.
"Wren?" she asks.
"I got your note."
"Did the note say to call me Mom? Because that's fucking creepy, little girl."
"No, but I told them I was calling my mom and that's how I got phone privileges. It's fine, they're not listening anymore. I won't call you Mom again. Jesus."
"Good."
"So what do you want, psycho?"
Miriam stares at the house. Did she just see the curtains move? No. Maybe. Not sure. "I want to save your life."
"This again. Where are you?"
"What? Uh. Standing outside my old house. My mother's house, ironically."
"I thought you didn't like your mommy."
"I don't. I didn't. I dunno. I haven't seen her in years."
The girl pauses. "That's sad."
"Maybe. Maybe it's a good thing, though. I'm not good for her. She's not good for me. Why go through life with that kind of stored-up conflict?"
"Just the same, I'd love to see my mom. I kinda hate her. But I want to see her."
"Good luck with that."
"Thanks." A long inhale. "So are you really psychic?"
"You bet."
"Prove it. What am I wearing?"
"What are you, a phone sex operator?" Miriam says. "Besides, that one's a slow-pitch softball. You're wearing your school uniform."
"Oh. Yeah. Duh. Okay, then. What am I holding?"
"I dunno. Teddy bear? Dead squirrel? Soup can full of human teeth? It doesn't work like that. My voodoo is about one thing and one thing only. Death. I see how people are going to die and that's it. Game over."
Wren hrms. "That sounds like a sad life."
"Well, it is, thanks for bringing it up. Guess I'll just go and find some toxic mushrooms in the woods and eat enough to kill me. And then my corpse will be raped and eaten by bears."
"That's a real nice thing to say to a young girl. Filling my impressionable head with images of non-consensual ursine love-making."
"Ursine. Good word."
"Thanks. So cut to the chase, psycho."
"Psychic."
"Uh-huh, whatevs. Why did you want to talk to me?"
"I just want to tell you to keep your eyes out. The killer – he's not coming for you now, but I think he kills other girls before you. And who knows: Maybe he's out there watching you already. Maybe it's someone you know. Just… let me know if you see anything weird."
"This whole place is weird."
"Yeah, I know."
"Did you know the school nurse actually owns the place?"
"I did know that."
"Also, there's a catfish in the river. Big enough to eat a person. Or at least a child. Some people say it's just a rogue manatee from Florida, though."
"I'm pretty sure none of this is what I'm talking about, nor do I believe it to be true. Just do as I ask and keep your eyes peeled. Okay? Call me if you see anything."
"Fine. Whatever, psycho."
"I hate you so bad, little girl."
"Sure you do. That's why you keep crawling up my butt. Say hi to your mommy."
Miriam starts in with, "You can't tell me what to do–"
But the girl hangs up.
What a little bitch.
Again, Miriam's left alone with the house. The rotten house. The ruined house. Has her mother gone rotten? Is she ruined, too?
Say hi to your mommy!
You can't tell me what to do.
And with that, she turns and walks away. Walks back to the road.
Turns right.
And keeps going.
Not today, she thinks, not today.
But behind her, she hears a click and a squeak as the front door opens.
A voice calls after her.
"Hey! Who's that?"
A male voice.
Huh.
She turns, squints, holding up an impromptu visor made of her flattened hand to keep the rain out. A man stands in the doorway of her childhood home, wearing a ratty white T-shirt and a pair of pin-striped boxers. He's got a bowl of cereal in his hand. A scraggly goatee collects milk. He's older. Mid-fifties, maybe.
Miriam creeps back toward the house.
The dude holds the spoon like it's a shiv.
It's then that she recognizes him.
"Do I know you?" he says, scrunching up his face and pointing with the utensil. More milk drips from his beard, and he drags the back of his wrist across it. "You look familiar."
"Hey, Uncle Jack," Miriam says. Gives a little wave.
"Oh." Blink, blink. "Miriam. Look at you"
"Yeah. Look at me."
"You, uh, here for your mom?"
I don't know. "Sure."
He frowns then. Shrugs. "Well, come on in, I guess."
THIRTY-FOUR
What Happened to Mother
It almost breaks Miriam's heart.
She's not a neat freak. But her mother was. And here the house sits, rundown. Filthy. A place pigs wouldn't be comfortable calling home.
Right off the front door, the kitchen is a holy terror. Bowls and plates stacked up. Food dried onto Formica countertops. A dirty microwave – the same microwave Miriam grew up with – with the clock blinking 12:00. Empty cans, dog food cans, and she thinks, Oh, god, Uncle Jack is eating Alpo.
But just then a little dust-mop dog scurries up, claws clicking and sliding on the wooden floor – pink tongue obsessively licking Miriam's boot.
Uncle Jack nudges the dog with his callused big toe.
"Go on, Pookie, get out, leave her alone. I said, go on!"
The dog paws scrabble on the floor, get traction, and the beast shimmies away.
"Come on, then." Jack waves Miriam in.
The smell of the place matches the look. Mold, must, dust, dog, and an underlying layer of–
Oh, god, Mother.
Death.
It's that faint piss and shit smell. And the deodorizer spray used to cover it up. The smell of hospitals and nursing homes. Miriam's smelled that hundreds of times in visions. She knows the odor intimately and it's here, now, not in a vision but right in front of her. She feels woozy.
Jack plods into the living room, collapses into a puffy blue second-hand recliner that wasn't there ten years ago, and begins finishing his cereal – Fruity Pebbles or some cheap facsimile – in earnest.
Water stains on the ceiling. Paintings hanging askew.
