The Cormorant

by Chuck Wendig

  “Go away. I don’t want the conversation.”

  “Maybe you need the conversation, though. Maybe it’s time to ask yourself about God. The universe. The Devil. All that.”

  Wicked Polly… May the Devil take you without care.

  “I don’t worry about that stuff.”

  “You oughta. Maybe that stuff is worrying about you.”

  The highway circles down toward Miami. Over bridges. Ahead she sees what first seem like massive white buildings but then she realizes: they’re cruise ships. Epic white whales parking themselves at the dock, one after the next, like skyscrapers turned on their sides.

  “I don’t give a shit about God,” she says, “and here is where you flip it and say that maybe God gives a shit about me but I really don’t think He does and I’m not really even sure He exists. So.” She shrugs. And goes to turn on the radio. A blast of samba music fills the car – chaka boom chaka boom whistle whistle horns–

  But the thug kid turns it back off.

  “Maybe you’re on the side of the angels,” he says. With the end of that feather he picks something red, raw, and meaty from between his teeth and flicks it against the window. Spat. “Maybe God gave us free will and you’re on His side. Or maybe you’re the rebel, yo. Maybe you’re the Devil on our shoulder. Messing up God’s great-ass plan.”

  “This metaphysical talk is gonna make me meta-fist-i-cal you in the mouth.”

  “Lemme put it a different way.” He sucks air between his teeth. “Are you life? On the side of the living? Or are you death? A rogue reaper saving those who were supposed to die and killing those who were meant to live?”

  “Yawn.”

  “I know this shit bothers you.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because it bothers me.”

  “So you’re admitting you’re me.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe I’m admitting that I’m inside you. Or that you’re me. Or that we share brains – especially since you blew mine out, boom.”

  “If you keep talking I’m going to steer this car toward a light pole and shear it in half and leave you in a mechanical heap by the side of the road.”

  He leans over toward her. She smells his breath. It smells of roadkill ripening in a wet ditch. He taps the end of the feather on the dashboard, click click click. “I’m just warning you, Miriam Black. Forces have been aligning against you for a while. You’ve been fucking with this Jenga tower for too long, and it ain’t long before it all comes clickety-clackety falling down.”

  She scowls. “What forces? What the hell are you–”

  A lemon-yellow Maserati cuts her off in traffic, honking its horn as its speeds away. She turns back to the passenger seat.

  The Trespasser is gone.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  DEATH ON THE DANCE FLOOR

  This is Atake.

  The bass is like a Tyrannosaur stomping through the chambers of her heart: the doom doom doom making her blood jump with every hit, up through her feet, vibrating through her bones, her teeth like a teacup rattling against its saucer – ceramic buzzing against ceramic.

  It’s hot. Wet. The throng of bodies moving in tandem forms a single beast made of flesh and sweat and lust. Girls in bikinis. In lingerie. Dudes in stylishly torn vented tank-tops or no shirts at all. Women on raised platforms, pretend-fucking black glossy mannequins – Miriam thinks, this is probably their job, getting paid a hundred a night to come in here and sex up fake men so the real men below get stiff, get hungry, spend money on real drinks for real women with fake tits, and the cycle continues.

  Fingers of light dance above their heads – this way, then that, then both ways. Steam rises from dancing skin, trapped in the beams.

  Miriam moves along the edges. Less of a wallflower and more of a barracuda stalking the shadows of the reef.

  She hates this place. She hates the music. She hates the people dancing to the music. Some buff dude in a hot pink Cuban fedora with his guayabera shirt open down to the tops of his pubes comes up and starts knocking his khaki-clad cock against her like a woodpecker looking for grubs in a tree – grinding on her so hard she’s surprised she doesn’t see sparks. Miriam throws a hard elbow backward–

  Four years from now he’s in a nightclub bathroom, everything black and white and silver and the mirror is cracked but he doesn’t care because he’s drunk and high and buzzing like an electrical current. Outside the music matches the vibration in his veins, the thumping in his chest – this guy just wants to keep the party going so he kneels by the sink and pops open a bindle of cakey white powder and shakes out a generous but zig-zaggy rail of coke. He shoves the tip of a drinking straw up his nose and he dives into the powder; the high hits him like a shuddering wave of high-voltage awareness, but then it keeps going, keeps amping and ramping and suddenly it’s like everything in his body is closed in a vice. His eyes roll, nose bleeds, mouth foams, overdosed and overdone–

  –and the guy in the pink fedora oofs and doubles over. He says something, yells it even, but the words are gobbled up by the hammering bass.

  No time to get into a fight with some cabrón. She’s trying to find answers, not fistfights, and she’s not sure she’d win against that muscle-brain anyway, so she takes a sharp left into the throbbing throng of flesh.

  She does it without thinking.

  It’s a mistake.

  Bodies. Skin. All around her.

  The first vision hits her–

  She’s with her three friends and they’re older now by a few years and they’re crossing at the corner by this old art deco-style café with the horizontal lines like the melting sun and the rounded lemon-yellow corners and they’re laughing and they have hella shopping bags and those little pillow-puffs between their toes like they just got pedicures. Then the girl’s flip-flop gets caught on the curb -- it rips and she tumbles forward, her nose mashing flat against the street just as a pink Fifties Cadillac vrooms up, tire on her head, popping it like a hairy pimple–

  Miriam staggers–

  Twenty-three years from now, guy standing in an empty house with polished floors, the ceiling fan on above his head. Only piece of furniture in the room is a chair, and the guy’s got a big rope in his crook of his arm. He goes over, turns the fan off, already starts to feel the sweat crawling down the tip of his crooked goblin-dick of a nose and with the toes of his bare foot he pushes the chair beneath the fan (the legs of the chair make a comically loud groan on the polished wood) and he unfurls the noose-end of the rope and that goes around his neck. The rest of the rope he winds around the base of the fan. Then he pins a note to his T-shirt that says I LOVE YOU, JENNY and beneath it FUCK YOU, JENNY and before he can even knock the chair out the damn thing breaks beneath him CRACK and suddenly it’s grrrk kkkk thhhhsssss beet-red eyes bulge tongue out head bulging purple like a well-fed tick black nowhere the notes fall from his chest and slip down through a heating register and he paws at the air trying to get them back but he’s seeing stars seeing nothing–

  Miriam cries out but her voice is lost. Backpedal, turn. More skin – doom doom doom–

  –he won’t remember anything because of the anesthesia but the doctor nicks an artery, blood sprays, they can’t clamp it, a red mist ends it all–

  Sweat drips in her eyes. She pulls her arms in, no more, please, no more, but she’s in the thick of it, a prison of skin, emerald lights and a sudden mist of water from pipes above, pssshhh. Someone shoves her–

  –a piece of bagel caught in the throat–

  Someone grabs her hand–

  –the sharp stick of a hornet’s sting – a big fucker, too – big as a thumb, big enough to carry ordnance to bomb a Smurf village. Then comes the swelling, the head-woozy, the thick-feeling, the throat-closing. Anaphylactic shock shakes the guy like a baby, and the seizure–

  Miriam shuts her eyes like that matters. She opens them and spies a bar through spears of light rising through the mist but then the crowd closes in on her again–r />
  –the truck hits her car doing 120mph–

  Holds her breath, starts moving through the jostling bodies–

  –POP POP POP gunshots in the night, hands grab the purse, footsteps recede, dead before she hits the ground–

  She wants to throw up. The sound of rustling wings. A glimpse of a big black bird flying overhead through the strobing lights–

  –the fireworks go off in her hand one after the other and she burns alive in fires that go from red to green, the whistling shrieking in her ears as everyone screams, oh what an Independence Day this is–

  –he touches the wire coming out of the drywall and BZZT full-tilt boogie–

  –the house fire cooks him like a microwaved hot dog–

  –she drowns in her own lung fluids–

  –he chokes on his own puke–

  –the little plane hits the ground and practically evaporates–

  –heart attack–

  –dog attack–

  –blood–

  –no–

  She extracts herself from the dance floor like a splinter. She feels drunk, and not in the good way. Her guts queasy and greasy like they’re slipping around on a blood-slick floor.

  The bar. Behind spires of red light. Hovering in the mist. It would be an oasis but it’s pressed with throngs of people, another wall of flesh. Each touches a doorway into yet another demise: another gateway to Hell. She can’t do that again. She feels like a raw nerve in a cracked tooth.

  Instead, she circumnavigates all the way to the far end of the bar. Where nobody stands. It’s the bartender’s blind spot, but whatever. Right now she doesn’t even want a drink so much as she just wants a place to stop, to think, to breathe. To live, a little voice says.

  This is worthless. A place cram-packed with cock-rockers and clam-jammers lost to the reverie of sex, sound, booze, skin. It’s then she smells herself: she stinks of beer. Someone must have spilled it on her out there. Awesome. She entertains a moment when she sets the place on fire and quietly locks the doors behind her. Firestarter-style. Or maybe she could go all Carrie on them. Two books she remembers her mother burning way back then and it’s only now she grasps the irony there.

  Whatever. Nothing to be learned here tonight. She’ll come back tomorrow. When she can actually ask a question or three.

  She’s about to turn and flatten herself against the far wall and skulk out of here like a darting skink, but then the bartender – a mocha-skinned square-jaw in a too-tight deep-vee – says, “Oye, whatchoo drinking, girl?”

  She hates when people call her girl.

  But she likes when people give her drinks.

  What to do, what to do.

  She holds up a finger. “Shot of vodka. Tito’s.”

  He spins, pivots, she sees the glint of light on the vodka bottle. He turns back around and next thing she knows there’s a highball glass sitting there with a lime on the edge and bubbles, and he says, “Vodka tonic,” before hurrying down to the other end of the bar.

  She didn’t order a vodka tonic – you add tonic, you might as well add water, and if you add water you might as well throw the drink on the ground. Still, she sees the bubbles tickling the side of the glass and she thinks it might be good to settle her stomach.

  So she grabs it. Toasts the air.

  Slams it back.

  The bubbles burn the back of her throat.

  She drops the glass back onto the bar, kathunk.

  Then she gets the fuck out of there.

  Outside, the air is still hot but there’s a breeze and it presses her soaking wet shirt to her chest and she suddenly feels woefully out of place. Everything here is glitzy, glammy, neon-smeared. She sees women with fake, round kickball-tits shoved into short-short dresses that show off the bottoms of their bottoms. Muscle-head dudes who could snap her in half like a candy cane. Then the gay guys – guys who radiate fabulosity, stomping around on big tall heels, swishing around in mesh shirts and sunglasses shaped like hearts, coochie-cooing the air with werewolf fingernails. Miriam doesn’t belong here. (Doesn’t belong anywhere.) She’s a black buzzard in the land of pretty, pretty peacocks. A dirty fingerprint on a colorful dress.

  She thinks, I’ll need a hotel for the night, and she figures she’ll cut back to the car through the alley behind the club. Already she’s feeling the vodka tonic, which surprises her – but maybe it shouldn’t. She’s tired as hell. Hasn’t eaten a damn thing all day. Her body is a romper room for whatever booze she sticks in it.

  She staggers into the alley. Fishes in her pocket for a cigarette but her fingers don’t seem to want to pull out the pack. They finally manage and the pack drops into a puddle, sploosh, and she tries to curse but it just comes out a mushy utterance – the emphasis of vulgarity but without the specificity.

  Miriam looks up.

  And it hits her.

  She’s been here before.

  Which is entirely impossible. Because she’s never been to Miami.

  And yet–

  The alley is awash in long shadows and the fringe glow of neon from the mouth of the alley, metal steps leading to the door to the back, the dull thump of music behind it, mirrored shades, curved blade–

  Oh, God.

  She has been here.

  In a vision.

  Ingersoll–

  She tries to turn, but her knee gives out. Her head feels like cotton soaked in paint, goopy and thick, all the colors starting to run together.

  I’ve been drugged.

  Suddenly, a gloved hand closes over her mouth. She tries to scream but her cry is muffled. A boot kicks her leg out from under her and she falls–

  Another gloved hand over her eyes.

  Someone’s got her ankles.

  Her body, lifted up.

  The sound of duct tape ripping off the roll.

  Someone laughs.

  Then they begin to move her.

  TWENTY-NINE

  MISTER MIDNIGHT AND THE GHOST OF HAIRLESS FUCKER

  Words reach her like murmurs through water:

  “…this is the bitch? I don’t believe it…”

  “…cut her now? I could get the saw…”

  “…want her to see, want her to be awake…”

  The kick-thump of booming bass somewhere beneath her.

  “…how’d this little squirrel steal our drugs?”

  “…she looks like a drowned rat…”

  “…hey-hey, hand me that pipe…”

  Click, hiss. Fire. Smoke. Acrid.

  “Do it.”

  Tape is ripped off her eyes.

  Then her mouth.

  It takes a little skin with it. Blood trickles over her raw flesh.

  Light bleeds in at the edges, washes over everything.

  She’s on her back. Hands belted together. One leg is tucked in and under her. The other leg’s extended out, her boot held in the grip of a man she doesn’t recognize: a pouty Ecuadorian with gold teeth and a pale tongue sliding over the metal.

  She’s flanked by two other men.

  And she recognizes them both.

  Both look familiar, she knows that much. It takes her a second. Her brain’s a heap of meat mush and thinking takes effort, like trying to blow a raisin through a drinking straw. The one is a scabby, crater-cheeked tweaker with a tangle of unwashed hair. The other is a big motherfucker. Black like motor oil. Got a little red vest with gold buttons hanging over his ox-yoke shoulders. Bare, sweat-slicked chest sticking out. Shiny chains nesting in afro-puffs of chest hair.

  That’s when it hits her.

  They’re from the vision. Ingersoll’s death. Hairless fucker. The one who came after her with his killers, Harriet and Frankie. The drug lord who cut off Ashley’s foot. The one who took Louis’ eye.

  The first man she killed.

  When she first met Ingersoll she got the measure of him, saw a vision of his demise. Ingersoll came walking out of a club, down a set of metal steps, and then two men emerged and attacked him. Miste
r Midnight – the big black sonofabitch – at the front with a curved head-lopper blade. And behind Ingersoll, the tweaker – Daddy Long-Legs – with a little pistol.

  Ingersoll took them both out. Bit into Mister Midnight like he was an apple. Cleaved the tweaker’s head in half just as the addict shot Ingersoll right between the eyes, bang.

  That’s what would have happened.

  But then Miriam intervened – the rock that breaks the river, the road nobody was supposed to travel. Fate-breaker. Resurrectionist.

  She starts laughing at the same time she’s almost crying because what a fantastic fucking irony this is. She took out Ingersoll and saved the lives of these two men and now the same two men have her strapped to a table, ready to do whatever it is they want to her.

  Fate has swung back around and hit her right in the face.

  The ghost of Hairless Fucker must be pleased as a fuzzless peach.

  “I don’t know who you are–” Miriam starts to say, her voice fast and throaty, but Mister Midnight presses a tree-trunk finger to his lips.

  “Shhh,” he says. “You are Miriam Black, yes?”

  She hears that Haitian patois in his voice.

  She winces and nods. “And you are?”

  “They call me Tap-Tap.”

  “That’s a dumb name.”

  He raises a hand and brings it down toward her face – and just before the palm connects he slows it down and gives her two little pats. “Tap, tap. Hah. See what I did there? That’s not why they call me that, though. No. Back in Haiti I drive a camionnette, a bus, a taxi-bus, big colorful one. Blue skull on the front. Flowers painted on the side. Lots of people hanging off it. Good way to make a little money as I deliver drugs to those who can afford them.”

  “That’s a very nice story,” she says, trying to hide her fear behind the bluster. “I look forward to the Lifetime movie.”

  “You think you so funny. Can I tell you another story?”

  Christ, is everybody a storyteller?

  He begins before she offers permission. “My mother, back in Haiti, used to come out every morning onto a very small balcony. Small enough just for her. Too small for me, even now. She would stand there with a cup of coffee and pain haïtien and she would dunk the bread into the black coffee. It was a small moment of pleasure, you see? My mother, she was a… how you say it? Consort. Consort for a rich man. A drug lord. Haitian-American man name of Dumont Detant. Man I work for when I become a teenager, driving – ah! You guess it. The tap-tap.