The Cormorant

by Chuck Wendig

  She has no idea what direction to point the car.

  She finds her foot tamping down on the accelerator.

  Her speed ticks upward: 55, 65, 75…

  She’s pissed. Him. Him. Ashley. That asshole. They screwed and she got screwed. Getting tangled up with him was like getting snared in a ring of thorns. Hard to get out of, and when you do, you bleed.

  Now he’s gravitating toward her once more.

  He’s the one who kills that asshole at the Torch Key house.

  He’s the one screwing with her.

  He knew she’d be at that club. How? How?

  Was he watching her?

  He had to be.

  Was he watching her down in the Keys, too?

  Could be, rabbit, could be. And that tracks, doesn’t it? If he’s here messing around with Tap-Tap’s drug biz, he’s doing it locally. They didn’t send a cocaine submarine to Canada. It would have been here. Somewhere along the coast.

  Maybe even down in the Keys.

  That means he’s here. In Florida.

  Right now.

  Good. That helps. It doesn’t fix the problem, doesn’t deliver him in a bolt of lightning into her passenger seat, but it narrows down her choices from the Entire Known World And Maybe The Moon to Somewhere In Florida. He’s here somewhere. Laughing at her.

  75… 85… 95…

  He wants to punish her.

  She gets that now. He blames her. Doesn’t he? He thought they had something. Last time they were together, he said, You love me. She told him he was dreaming. He said she wanted him. Needed him. And then Hairless Fucker and his two thugs showed up and that was that. They took them. Cut his foot off. Probably would have cut more off too but Miriam lashed out, started kicking – Ashley tumbled out the door, leaving his foot behind.

  She probably saved his life.

  But that’s not how he sees it, is it?

  He thinks she took something from him.

  And now he wants to return the favor.

  How far would he go?

  She tops the car out at 100.

  Oh, God.

  Miriam suddenly knows where to point the car.

  THIRTY-TWO

  A TALE OF TWO MIRIAMS

  It’s early. Sun’s not even up yet. Miriam comes in the door and finds her mother sitting at the breakfast nook, hands steepled, the note Miriam left sitting in the corral of her arms.

  Evelyn Black starts to protest, thrusts her finger up in the air and starts to say something about betrayal and lies, something about running away from your debts and obligations, but Miriam can barely hear the words – it’s like she’s one of the kids in a Peanuts cartoon listening to an adult talk, wah wah wah waaah wah.

  She storms over to her mother.

  Her mother stands, frustrated, that finger still waggling, a castigating inchworm wriggling–

  Miriam reaches out.

  She captures the finger and the hand in her own and–

  The ocean moves beneath them. The boat bobs in the surf. Mangroves line a nearby island, the trees standing in water like spiders on tippy-toes, like they don’t want to get their feet wet.

  Mother sits bound to a folding chair and to the deck railing behind it. Her nose is busted, streaming twin swallowtails of blood. Her lips are stretched around a tennis ball duct-taped into her mouth – the skin cracking, splitting, bleeding.

  Evelyn Black watches her daughter behind a cabin porthole window. Fear courses through her like it’s a living thing.

  Poor Miriam pounds on the glass. Her hands are bloody, leaving greasy ketchup streaks behind. The window is unfazed, unbroken.

  Ashley walks forward with an unsteady gait.

  His knee dead-ends into a black rubber support cup from which protrudes a narrow flagpole of metal. The metal disappears into a dirty gray sneaker. The fake metal leg utters small squeaks and hisses as he walks.

  He goes up to the porthole windows where Miriam on the other side screams and punches the glass. He waggles his fingers as if to wave at her.

  “A tale of two Miriams,” he says. He points to the bloodied handprints. “This is for you, the Miriam who’s here.” Then he sweeps his arms across the sky. “And this is for you, the Miriam who’s touching her mother and seeing her death. You came for a show, so I sure don’t want to disappoint!”

  He stoops his head. Whispering. Murmuring words unheard. As if conferring with an invisible conspirator.

  He laughs. Then he pulls a hunting knife from his belt.

  “You know what they did?” he asks suddenly. Each word is laced with vibration – shot through with black veins of fear and giddiness. “They went to my mother. I don’t know if you knew that. That’s how they found us. They went to her and I’d sent a postcard to her and that was how they knew where to start looking. You know what they did to my mother? They shot her. Then they flipped one of the burners on the stove. Then turned up the nozzle on her oxygen tank.” He claps his hands. “Whoosh. My mother was a hoarder. Lot of junk in that house. Tinder for the biggest campfire the town of Maker’s Bell ever did see.”

  He takes the knife, sticks the point up under Evelyn’s chin. Evelyn tries to scream around the tennis ball. She thrashes. It’s no use.

  “I’m going to take your mother from you, and you’re thinking, but why? And I’m saying to you, it’s because of a thing you already know. Don’t you? An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. Your mother for my mother. And I hear your screams from behind that window and I know we’ve already had this conversation but we’re going to have it again for the benefit of–” once more he addresses the sky with the knife before returning it to the pricked skin beneath Mother’s chin “–and I want you to know that I blame you for my mother dying. I put a lot of faith in you. It was because of you that I was even in the Ass-Crack of Nowhere, North Carolina. With all the Waffle Houses and rebel flags and fixin’s and y’alls. I went to you because I thought you were the one for me. A partner. A real partner. And you fucked me, then you fucked me over, and they fucked me up. My mother died and what did I get out of it? You fawning over that bull-headed trucker. Me losing my leg and getting dumped on the road. And you left me!”

  Miriam inside the cabin screams. Her shrieks are dulled by the glass.

  She begins to bring her elbow against it.

  Slowly, it cracks. Kkkkk. Kssshhh. Like the ice of a frozen lake beneath someone crossing it. A ribbon of hope twists inside Evelyn: she’s doing it. Miriam’s breaking free.

  Ashley shouts, “But now I have my own gift, you dumb cunt. Now I have a machine gun too, ho ho ho. And now I’m going to take what’s owed to me.”

  Tears spill down over Evelyn’s broken nose, down over the wrinkled tape, around the margins of the tennis ball. Please, Miriam, please.

  Miriam’s elbow crashes through the porthole, her arm studded with glistening, blood-slick glass.

  Ashley laughs. And pounces.

  He stitches the hunting knife in and out of Mother’s chest. He stabs her so hard it sounds like he’s punching her. The hilt of the knife and the base of his fist pound against her chest, whump whump whump. Again and again. Mother’s body spasms, the pain is cold and bright–

  Then Ashley stops–

  Gets under the chair–

  Grabs both front chair legs–

  And lifts her up over the edge of the boat and into the water.

  The water is dark. It grabs Evelyn, pulls her down. Cold water shoots up her nose. Streamers of blood drift into the blue, diffusing. Above her the boat floats like a white whale clouded in red–

  Miriam, I’m sorry–

  Evelyn Black dies in the water.

  THIRTY-THREE

  THE TIDE IS RISING

  No no no no–

  Miriam jukes left, lurches toward the sink.

  She dry-heaves. Strings of spit that taste like Red Bull and salt water. Copper blood and vodka burn and the grit of sand.

  “Miriam!” Mother chirps in alarm. She comes
over to her daughter’s side and it’s like there’s a barrier gone between them. The woman now touches Miriam’s arm, rubs her back, takes a washcloth, wets it over Miriam’s shoulder, and presses it to the back of Miriam’s neck. “It’s OK. OK. Shh. If you’re drunk, it’ll pass. Every hangover goes back out to sea eventually–” And here Miriam waits for the judgment to come, a drop of poison in a glass of refreshing water. But then Mother says, “I used to have mornings like this. It’s OK.”

  Jesus, Mom, who are you?

  Eventually Miriam sits down. She feels clammy. Queasy. Like she’s out there on that boat rocking back and forth. Watching her mother die.

  It strikes her then: even as she was watching her mother die, someone else was watching her. Ashley. Talking to her like he knew she’d be here with her mother, here to touch her. Is he here now? Is he following her? She lurches up out of the chair, almost knocking it over.

  “Miriam, it’s okay, sit back down–”

  “Have you seen anyone?” Miriam asks. “Anyone suspicious? Particularly someone with a fake leg. Talking to you. Watching you. New neighbor. Weird guy on the sidewalk. Anyone?”

  “No, no, what is this about?”

  Miriam growls, charges through the house in denial of her nausea and heads out onto the street. Everything is quiet. The air so humid you could gargle it. Little bungalow houses darkened by fat-bellied palm trees. Down the block an old coot in a pink v-neck and noisy Hawaiian shorts pulls weeds from a flowerbed around his mailbox – and Miriam storms over, her mother trailing behind. The silver-haired retiree looks up, startled.

  “You,” Miriam barks. “You see anyone around here?”

  “What? Who are you?” His eyes dart toward Miriam’s mother. “Evelyn, is that you? Who is this? What’s happening?”

  “Ernie, this is my daughter, Miriam.”

  “Oh, hello, Miriam.” He offers a hand clad in gardening gloves.

  She bats his hand away. “Don’t hello, Miriam me, you old shriv. I need to know if you’ve seen anybody strange around here. Anybody at all. One-legged guy? Maybe smells like cat piss, looks like he’s on meth? Got a pair of binoculars, probably.”

  “No, I – I swear.”

  “Don’t lie to me, dude. God’s watching. And with your advancing age you’re a lot closer to Him than I am. God doesn’t like liars. You don’t want to get to Heaven and he’s all ready to fuck your ass straight to hell–”

  Suddenly, her mother is tugging on her arm. “Oh, Miriam, let’s go.”

  She hesitates. But then she sees the pleading look in her mother’s eyes. Since when do I care about what my mother wants?

  That answer comes easy: Since you saw that she’s going to die in three days. Three days. Murdered by Ashley Gaynes.

  Ernie says goodbye as she allows Evelyn to draw her back to the house. Once inside the foyer, Miriam thinks, Okay, Mom, I’m going to tell you something now, and she’s about to tell her mother what happened after Ben Hodge’s own mother beat her down with a snow shovel in the school bathroom, about to tell her the truth about her curse, her power. She thinks, Maybe I need to give it a godly spin, like tell the woman that this is something God gave to her or took from her or, or, or–

  It’s then she realizes.

  She looks around the kitchen.

  Looks beyond it, to the living room.

  To her own mother’s neck.

  No pictures of Jesus on the walls.

  No cross on a gold chain.

  No prayers muttered. No entreaties to Christ to save her, save her daughter, save the world. Not a single religious utterance.

  “You lost God,” Miriam says suddenly.

  “What?”

  “You don’t… you don’t go to church anymore.”

  “How’d you–” But then she nods. “It’s true. I suppose you’re looking around and seeing something missing. I didn’t think you’d notice, honestly. But it’s true. I don’t… I don’t believe in that anymore.”

  “Why?”

  “I lost my child. I lost my grandchild. God did nothing to stop it. Which left me to believe He was either horribly cruel or simply not present at all. Believing in his cruelty was too painful. It was more comforting to instead suspect it was all just a fantasy.”

  “The Bible shows a very cruel God, Mother.”

  “Yes,” her mother says, short and clipped. “But it never felt pointed at me. I couldn’t handle it. I’m not Job. I cannot abide the stress test of faith on trial.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “You think it is.”

  Here, Mother is silent.

  “I have something I have to do,” Miriam says. I have three days to save your life. I have three days to find Ashley Gaynes and sink his body below the surf. “I need your car again.”

  “Miriam, my car is–”

  “This is important. This is everything. If you want to make up for lost years, then I need this.”

  Mother pulls away. Bristles. “How do I know you won’t run away again? Steal my car and leave me high and dry.”

  “Because I came back. Tonight. I’ll come back again.”

  “I suppose I can have Helen next door take me places.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Will you at least eat a sandwich first? You look… rough.”

  Miriam breathes. Feels the nausea wash back out to sea, pushed there by this small kindness offered by a mother she hasn’t seen in a long time.

  “I’ll have a sandwich, yeah. Thanks, Mom.”

  Evelyn gets out the bread.

  PART FIVE

  LOS MARTIRES

  INTERLUDE

  NOW

  “That’s a nice necklace,” Miriam says, halting the story. She levels her gaze at Catherine Vills and the gold chain around the woman’s neck, a neck thin and fluted like the stem of a champagne glass.

  Vills scowls, her woozy grin becoming a bridge to disdain. “You can’t even see it.” All that’s there is a whisper of gold disappearing beneath the high collar of her blouse. “It’s nothing special.”

  “You sound defensive.”

  “I’m not defensive.”

  “When you say it like that – I’m not defensive – you just sound doubly defensive. Like, when a guy loudly protests how he doesn’t gobble donkey cock, you can be pretty sure that guy totally gobbles donkey cock any chance he can get. Can I see the necklace?”

  Vills hesitates. Now Grosky is watching them with increased interest – one brow arched. His curiosity is a fish on the line: hooked right through the cheek. Finally, Vills draws the necklace out with a spidery finger.

  The diamonds glitter. They almost look like a halo – an angel born in the counter case at Saks Fifth Avenue.

  Grosky whistles.

  “That watch is nice, too,” Miriam says. “It’s a Movado, right?”

  Vills tucks her wrist away under the table, which only makes it look like she’s hiding the evidence.

  Miriam says, “I had a watch, too, once. A really spiffy calculator watch. I didn’t do much mathematizing on it, but you could spell BOOBS on it if I turned my wrist upside down. I really loved that watch. I once sat across from a guy – just like we’re sitting across from each other right now – and he… gave it to me.”

  “You kill him?” Vills asks.

  Miriam sneers. “I did not.” But he is dead.

  Grosky interrupts: “Focus up. I want to get back to it, not talk jewelry with a bunch of hissing cats. I don’t get it, Miriam.”

  “Don’t get what?”

  “You just bailed on her. Your mother. You learn she’s gonna suck seawater through stab wounds in – one two three – days and all you do is bail on her. Why didn’t you stick around? Check the house for bugs or hidden cameras? This prick was spying on you. So he had to be nearby.”

  Every inch of her goes taut like a strangler’s rope. “He wasn’t. I had a hunch.” She sniffs and stares. “I wanted to be the hunter, n
ot the hunted. So that meant leaving my mother to find him.”

  “Maybe things would’ve been different had you stayed.”

  She flinches. “Maybe they would’ve. I’m fond of bad decisions.”

  Everything feels off-kilter. Like she’s trading power to these people and getting nothing back. Offense, not defense. Hunter, not hunted. So before the fat fuck or the bony bitch can say anything else, she steers the conversation right back where she wants it. Looking right at Vills, she says: “So, shiny watch, pretty necklace. Where you getting the bling, Miss Thing?”

  “We’re talking about you, not me,” Vills says.

  But Grosky’s lip twitches again. There’s that fishhook again…

  “I’m not saying,” Miriam says, “but I’m just saying. You don’t look like the type who can afford that kind of shiny. You got a new love in your life, hmm?”

  Vills hesitates.

  Grosky must detect Vills’ reticence, and he’s clearly not the type to let voids go unfilled. “You got a man, Vills?”

  She nods. “I do.”

  She’s lying. Miriam knows this.

  That will come out in time.

  “Good for you, Vills,” Grosky says, clapping her on the back like she’s a fellow player who just scored a touchdown for the team. “I always said you needed to get a man and get laid.” He gets a playful look on his face. “Oh, wait. It is a man, isn’t it? You going scissoring like Miriam here? That’s OK, I don’t judge. I think they should be able to get married. And I always wondered if maybe you had a thing for the bearded taco.”

  “For the record,” Miriam says, “I’m a supremely vulgar human being and even I think bearded taco is a disgusting term. My vagina is a beautiful flower, thank you very much, not a pube-shellacked burrito. Uck.”

  Grosky just shrugs.

  Vills says, “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  The agent shifts in her seat, looking uncomfortable.

  Which is exactly what Miriam wants from her.

  Discomfort.

  THIRTY-FOUR