by Chuck Wendig
FIFTY-SEVEN
Blood and Feathers
The pond's edge is naught but gray clayey sludge. Miriam's knees sink into it as the cop wrenches her arms behind her back, snapping a pair of cuffs tight, too tight. Her chin falls to her chest. She can barely keep it up.
The pond water shakes and shudders, pocked with rain so hard and so heavy it looks like a hail of pebbles pelting the surface. She cranes her head – dizzy, vision blurry, wondering how much more punishment her poor ruined pumpkin of a skull can take – and can barely see the gazebo at the center.
Behind her, the cop checks his clip, draws back the action, fires a round.
Her ears ring from the shot.
She thinks, I'm dead, he got me. Bang bang.
The stink of expended powder worms into her nose.
He didn't shoot her. Just fired up into the air.
A signal.
"Here they come," he says.
Miriam barely manages to turn her head. She sees two figures crossing toward the pond from the house. Beck holds the umbrella over his mother's head.
His shirt is soaked with blood on the side.
Eleanor steps up next to Miriam. Light as a feather. She doesn't even seem to sink into the mud. Clucking her tongue, the old woman bends her knees and crouches down next to Miriam.
Miriam notices the rain no longer pounds her hair into her scalp. Beck hunkers on the other side of her, holding the umbrella up over her. Ah.
"I find you very disappointing," Eleanor says.
"Sorry, Mom," Miriam croaks.
A voice hissing at her ear. Beck's. "Be respectful, Miss Black."
"Fork you," Miriam hisses. Then she laughs so hard she coughs, almost tumbles forward into the water. It's still a great joke.
"You're going to die here today," Eleanor says.
"I thought you wanted me to join your little family."
"It seems we're past that."
"Yeah, I'm kind of a lone wolf type. I'm also not a psychopathic fuck-faced monster like you lot of lunatics." She hacks again. Spits. Ptoo. There's blood in her saliva. "So. There's that."
The old woman sighs. Looks to her son. "She won't be your bride, then, Beckett. I know you had a romantic connection. I'm sorry."
"Oh, I'd say that connection is broken," he says.
"Bride? You really thought–? Jesus, you fucking people. So what's the plan?" Miriam asks. "You gonna do me here? Where's all the pomp and circumstance? The doctor's table and the fire axe and that fucking creepy song you sing? Don't I rate a bad girl's death?"
Eleanor smiles. Strokes her hair. "You do, dear. But we don't have time for that. Find some peace that your death will be quick. A mercy the other girls did not and will not have, I'm sad to say."
A small column of fire, a sirocco of bitter and petty rage, rises inside Miriam's heart and she licks her lips and says, "Your husband? Carl? That fucking mutant gurgled so loud when he died. You should've seen his throat, Eleanor. When I was done with it, it looked like a road-killed possum. Like an animal on a highway. Hit again and again, tires pulping the fur and the blood and the bones until it's just a pile of red nasty shit."
"You think to shock me," Eleanor says. "I hated my husband. He served a purpose for us, a purpose that my sons will now pick up."
"Oh, but you love your sons."
"Of course. With all my heart."
Fine. She didn't like that story? How about another, you old bitch?
"I saw how your son Beckett is going to die," Miriam says. Grinning now, ear to ear. "He shoots himself, Eleanor. Blows his mind out the back of his head and paints his office walls with brain salad. Boom."
"That's a lie," Beck seethes. "I'd never–"
"Shush," Eleanor hisses, a new serrated edge to her voice. "I won't hear any more of this. Beckett, let's go–"
"It's the guilt!" Miriam yells over the downpour's din. "He can't hack it. Can't deal with what you made him."
From behind her she hears Eleanor's icy proclamation. "We're going inside. I don't want to be here for this. When we're gone, kill her. Weigh her down. Dump her into the pond." To Beck she says, "Earl will handle this. Won't you, sweet Earl?"
The cop says, "I will, Mother."
"Can't hack the grisly bit?" Miriam shrieks as Eleanor leaves. "You're soft, Eleanor! That's where Beckett gets it! You fucking witch!"
A hard pressure at the base of her skull appears: the gun.
The cop – Earl – takes a knee next to her but keeps the gun at her head. "You shut your bitch whore mouth. You say one more thing about my mother and I won't make this quick. I'll blow your fucking feet off. I'll shoot you in the knees. In the hands. In the elbows. One bullet from the side will erase your jaw. But you'll still be alive. Bleeding and screaming. But alive."
Miriam whispers, "Mommy's boy. But I guess she doesn't feel the same about you, huh? You're just the fucking clean-up boy, aren't you? Mommy's least-favorite little shithead."
Earl grunts in rage, then clips her again on the side of her head. She doesn't go down this time. Her knees are mired in the mud.
Answers that question. The thought swims laps in her dizzy head.
The cop stands up. Gets behind her.
Begins to hum that song, "Wicked Polly."
Miriam looks over her shoulder.
She sees two figures under one dark umbrella.
They're at the house.
At the side door.
About to go inside.
This is it, she thinks.
Makes sense. What put her on this path was a gunshot to the head, and now that's how it ends. Such lovely symmetry. Like two grisly book-ends.
It's then she hears a flutter of wings.
Real wings? Or an illusion? She sees, or thinks she sees, a fat-bellied crow fly through the rain and over the pond water, landing at the apex of the gazebo. Miriam can barely see the bird – just a black dot, a shadow on an X-Ray.
But that changes when the rain stops.
It doesn't stop falling. Rather, it stops in mid-air.
Slashes of rain like gray threads. Paused. Frozen in time.
A dream. An hallucination. An impossible reality.
She sees the bird better now. Black eyes, shiny like buttons.
The bird speaks. Of course it does.
"Before Julius Caesar died," the crow says, voice booming loud and rippling over the water and the land like the report from a rifle, "he had a dream. A dream of flight. A dream in which he was a bird soaring high in the sky above the seven white hills of Rome. His soothsayer, Titus Vestricius Spurinna, warned him of his coming death and said that it would be presaged by a king-bird flying into the halls of power with a sprig of laurel in its mouth, but the bird would be pursued by a flock of blackbirds and those blackbirds would attack the smaller king-bird and tear it pieces then and there – and it came to pass as the haruspex suggested."
"I'm done with the fuckin' bird thing," Miriam says. "Seriously. Don't you have any other symbols in that bag of tricks?"
The bird clacks its beak together. Clack clack clack. "Poor Miriam. Railing against that which she understands but does not want to admit. Like Caesar. Even after the signs and portents, old Julius told the haruspex that her words were lies and he could not die, oh no, not him."
"I'm tired. And in pain. Just go away."
"You die today. Here and now." The bird adjusts its wings. "This is the moment fate has marked for your death. Which would be something of a failure, don't you think? Those girls. Not just Wren. Nor Tavena. But so many others. The Caldecotts continue. They'll have children of their own. The snake eats its own tail. An endless parade of pain, a procession of misery."
"Someone else will have to step in. I'm done."
"If not you, then who?"
"Fuck you. Fly away."
"You called me a symbol," the bird says. "Who said I'm a symbol? I'm as real as you. Real as the gun at your head. Here. Look."
It feels like Miriam's consciousne
ss is dragged swiftly from her body and run through a gauntlet of thorns–
And suddenly she can see herself.
Kneeling at the pond's edge. The stocky cop behind her, gun frozen.
Miriam tries to move. She hears the rustle of wings.
Her wings.
She's out of her body. And into the crow's.
And then–
Whoosh.
She's back. Staring at the gazebo and the dark raven atop it.
"Just tell me what to do," the crow says, "and thy will be done, poor Miriam."
Time unsticks itself.
The rain once more hammers the pond.
Thunder rumbles.
The cop clears his throat.
She feels the gun press tighter.
Miriam looks to the crow atop the gazebo. Whispers, "Please."
Feels a part of herself slip away.
The bird takes flight.
"Now the Devil take you," Earl growls.
A dark shape moves fast. A flurry and flutter of wings.
The pressure of the gun barrel is gone. Earl screams. Miriam cranes her neck to see just as the gun goes off by her ear – another ringing, this time so loud it drowns out even the sound of the rain.
All Miriam can see of Earl's face is the bird – black oily wings flapping. He cries out. Bashes at the bird with the gun.
The beak pecks. Stabs. Into his mouth again and again as he screams.
The bird pulls away, talons leaving claw marks on Earl's chin.
His mouth is a red crater, a blood-slick gopher hole–
The bird has bits of his tongue in its mouth. Like strips of stir-fry beef. A spring robin with a wriggling worm in its mouth.
The crow flies.
Miriam seizes her opportunity. She awkwardly buries the fronts of her feet into the mud and pushes off like a swimmer, barreling forward into Earl's knees. He tumbles over her, splashing into the pond.
On her side, she tries inching her way up the bank but the grass is smeared with mud and she can manage no purchase.
A hand grabs her ankle.
Earl rises back out of the water.
And begins dragging her toward it.
She kicks her legs. He turns her over so that she's facing him.
He scowls, his teeth filthy with blood-black clots. Grabs her by the shirt. Points the gun at her face. And she thinks, Why? You stupid bird, what good did any of that do? He has no tongue but he's still got the gun and I'm dead either way.
In her mind, she hears an answer. Because it bought you just enough time.
But just enough time for what?
A gunshot.
Earl's head jerks hard to the right.
He falls across her legs. Dead weight. Rolling into the water.
"I don't understand," she says to the sky, rain washing away her vision and filling her mouth as she speaks.
Big hands find her. Haul her back up the bank.
And a one-eyed truck driver stares down.
"Louis," she says.
"I told you I'd protect you."
"Maybe next time show up a little earlier. This fashionably late shit is for the birds." But then he's gone again. Pulling the cop's body up out of the water. She sees the black hole in the side of Earl's dead face. Sees that Louis has a gun – a fucking hand-cannon, actually – as Louis comes back to her, the handcuff keys swallowed by his massive mitts.
Louis stares down at the body. "Should've shot him when I had the chance. I had him, Miriam. Had him laying there. But I turned chickenshit. Shot the ground beside his head… and, and, and I ran away."
"It's okay," she says. A few moments pass between them as the rain falls. "Louis, I think I telepathically commanded a bird to do my bidding."
"Oh." He gets her hands free and the blood rushes back to her limbs.
"That cop. He's not the only one," she says, gasping.
"I know."
"They've got the girl. Wren."
"I know."
"Will you help me save her?"
"I will."
"Then get me that fucker's gun. We're going to need it."
FIFTY-EIGHT
Chooser of the Slain
"I'm happy you're here," she says as they creep back into the house. They slip in through a side-door: the laundry. Shelves of towels and front-loading machines stand silent.
The whole house is silent.
"Shhh," he says.
They enter back into the hall. Pass by an old gilded mirror. Miriam sees her face. She looks like hot microwaved death. Bruises and scabs and swollen protrusions. First from her encounter with Keener. Then from the brothers Caldecott: Beckett and Earl. She can even see the crusty scar where the gunman's bullet dug a ditch in her head – but that wound is nothing compared to all the others.
"How'd you get here?" she whispers as they creep toward the foyer.
"I saw it was the headmaster's car that brought you here, so I put a gun to his head and made him drive me. Then I shoved his ass into the trunk."
"Edwin's here?"
Louis nods, Colt Python in hand.
"Bring him in," she says.
"I don't want to leave you."
"I'll be okay."
"Wait for me," he says, and she nods.
It's a lie. She's not waiting for him. This is on her, not him.
Louis hesitates. But he finally nods, buying what she's selling. They reach the foyer, and he heads out the front door.
Leaving Miriam alone in the house.
Alone with a pair of monsters.
"Earl's dead!" she yells out. Voice echoing. "But I guess you know that. That's why you're hiding."
Still nothing.
She thinks she hears something upstairs, a creak of a floorboard.
Beck's dangerous. He's like a coiled viper. Hard to see. Fast to strike.
"You wouldn't believe it, Eleanor," Miriam calls. "I cut out his tongue before he died." Not a lie. Not exactly. "He got what was coming. He's been the one covering up all your dirty business, isn't that right? Edwin helps case the girls. Carl did the killing. And Earl made sure the girls were just missing, not murder victims. But Beck… he's your baby. With Daddy dead, he's the one who picks up the axe. Who sings the Mockingbird song."
Eleanor appears.
The old woman is upstairs, walking along the balcony's edge, one hand running along the banister. Miriam tracks her with the pistol.
"They're good boys," Eleanor says. Rattled. Trembling.
"Why is it that you hate girls?" Miriam asks. "You don't look for trouble in boys. You don't kill anybody with a dick. Just young girls. Bad girls."
"Because girls are poison. Whores if you let them be that."
"Like you? Harridans and whores like little Ellie Caldecott?"
"I went by Ella, if you must know."
"Send Beckett out," Miriam says.
Eleanor smiles.
It's then Miriam realizes she's been played. Played by her own damn game: Eleanor's been distracting her.
A flash of movement comes from Miriam's left–
Beck.
She pivots her hip, raises the .380–
But she's slow. And he's got a fireplace poker.
The iron bar whangs against the gun and knocks it out of her hand, leaving her palm and fingers stinging with the reverberation. The pistol spirals across the floor and lands under a stocked art deco sidebar.
Beck starts bobbing erratically – it's hard to get a bead on him. He drives a heel punch into her solar plexus. The wind sucks out of her lungs. He grabs her head, goes to slam it into his knee–
Miriam's not having any of that. She forms her hand into a point and jams it high up into his armpit, right where she scored the blow with the fork.
He grunts but is otherwise unmoved.
Fuck.
Two hard punches to her side. He stomps down on her foot. Throws her to the ground. Her shoulder cracks against the floor.
On her hands and knees, she scramble
s toward the sidebar – the gun sits beneath it, still wet from the rain.
But Beck has other ideas. He grabs her by the waistband of her pants, and as he pulls her toward him he drives wide-elbowed hammerblows into her kidneys. Again and again. He's better than her. In every way.
