The Cormorant

by Chuck Wendig

  “Yeah. They could be anywhere.”

  “Too bad you’re not psychic,” Jerry says, laughing.

  And she starts to laugh with him but it’s a fake, forced laugh. Oh ha ha ha ho ho ho you silly cad I am a psychic except I’m the wrong type of psychic and I can’t just–

  The world plunges into the water.

  It’s like her mind is wrenched out of her body. Dragged down, down, into the deep. Down through a flurry of bubbles. Through a tangle of weeds. Her throat feels full. Something moves in her esophagus. Something struggling. She can’t breathe. Can’t turn around to go up. She’s sinking like a stone.

  Please stop please help

  Below her, a great abyss lit by spears of light – the shine of fish swimming, catching the sun, in and out of brain-shaped bulges of coral. She’s pointed toward it like an arrow falling through open sea.

  I’m the bird.

  Holy shit, I’m the bird.

  But then, down in the coral–

  She sees a body. Fish-eaten. Waterlogged. The gray meat of the skin sloughing off, swaying like seaweed.

  She knows the body.

  She knows that face.

  It’s Eleanor Caldecott.

  The woman’s jaw creaks open. More bubbles unmoor, drifting to the surface. A green eel hides in the well of her throat–

  Impossible. She’s dead. She died in the river, not in the sea…

  But then the woman speaks – rotten jaw opening and closing – and Miriam hears the voice in her mind, words like bubbles rupturing:

  YOU ARE NOT ALONE

  WE ARE FIXED BY TRAGEDY

  DARKNESS AND CLAMOR

  Then, a childish voice, the voice of Wren there in the deep, sliding around bubbles like a curling worm: IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE…

  And then the world shifts, spinning on its axis. Light behind is now above, the liquid jewels of sun on the water’s surface.

  Everything shimmers–

  Miriam gasps, her body jerking like it’s been hit by a King Kong fist. She gags. Chokes. Spits over the side of the boat just as the cormorant launches up out of the bay, throat clogged anew with fish.

  Jerry stares. “Hey, you all right?”

  He reaches out for her arm–

  She tries to pull away. No no no no–

  Seven days from now, Jerry swings a gaff hook at Ashley Gaynes in the parking lot of the Conch Out Inn, and Ashley deftly sidesteps it. Jerry throws everything he has at him – puts all his energy into swinging that hook – but even on a fake leg Ashley isn’t fazed. He moves, almost casually, like he’s just trying to get out of the sun – and with every small and calculated movement the hook cuts through the air, swish, swish, swish.

  Ashley’s like a cat playing with its prey.

  Finally there comes a point when he looks bored and rolls his eyes, and Jerry tries one more time to swing with the hook and Ashley just leans back, lets the hook grab open air only an inch in front of his nose–

  Then he pulls a .357 revolver out from a hip holster like he’s a Wild West shooter, and he puts a round in Jerry’s gut. The hook clatters.

  Ashley grabs Jerry by the throat. Holds him close. Whispers in his ear. “Where was she staying? She had a bag. Full of money. I want it back.” Jerry tries to spit on him. Ashley punches Wu in the throat. Jerry wheezes.

  Ashley turns his head to the sky.

  He’s speaking to her again.

  “You like the show, Miriam? Everyone you touch, I kill. You’re a poison pill, a toxic cloud, you’re the human equivalent to–”

  Suddenly, a black shadow above his head. The cormorant lands on the back of his shoulders, beating him with its wings, stabbing at him with its beak – a clumsy, inelegant attack – and Ashley screams like a woman, lets go of Jerry, backpedals with the gun up–

  The bird keeps coming–

  Bang, bang, bang–

  The cormorant drops to the ground, squirting blood.

  Jerry clutches his middle, staggers forward and falls to his knees and paws on the ground for the hook–

  And finds the .357 pressed against his temple.

  His life disappears in a flash of powder and furious thunder.

  Miriam bats his hand away and recoils to the far end of the boat, which is not very fucking far but right now she doesn’t want to be touched, doesn’t want to look at this poor bastard whose life is now hitched to hers just because she chose his motel, doesn’t want to look at the bird and its freaky gemstone eye, doesn’t want to look anywhere but in her own lap.

  She fidgets with a cigarette.

  Fumbles with her lighter.

  Drops it. Growls.

  The vision lingers, like how if you recorded over one VHS tape, you might still see the ghost of the old recording still haunting the screen.

  In the vision, Ashley shows up at the motel. Kills Jerry. Kills the bird. But seven days–? That happens after her mother. He’s doing cleanup. He just wanted the money. The money she took from “Steve Max?”

  Jerry stares. The cormorant looks up at other birds – pelicans – flying overhead. A millstone grinds in Miriam’s head. It feels like it’s pulverizing her to dust. But then something clicks–

  …too bad you’re not psychic…

  …you are not alone…

  She knows that others exist like her. People with powers that don’t add up, that don’t fit into any boxes. She met a storefront psychic – Miss Nancy – who told her she was the hand of death. Then Eleanor Caldecott had her own strange power: the ability to see the consequences of a person’s life, chained together in a single vision.

  That’s how she’ll find Ashley.

  She needs to find a goddamn psychic.

  Another psychic, at least. A real one, she thinks with no small irony. Someone with an ability that does something worth a damn.

  “I need to go back to shore,” she says.

  “Yeah, you got it,” Jerry answers. Then he fires up the motor. Never taking his eyes off her. Like he’s afraid she might bite.

  If only he knew what it meant to be caught in her gravity.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  PSYCHICS AT SUNDOWN

  The drive back down to Key West feels like she’s being chased: hounded by a massive wolf, pursued by a hungry shark, stalked by a beast of death whose shape transforms but whose teeth are ever-sharp.

  The Malibu passes the Torch Keys and she thinks of that poor Parrothead fucker, sliced up on a patio table as a message for her.

  She thinks of her mother, stabbed to death on a boat.

  Of Jerry Wu, shot to death in his own parking lot.

  She keeps her lead foot from falling. Just barely. Can’t have a cop stop her. Not now. Has to keep clean and clear. It’s the only way. Her base urges – those reptilian urges – want out of their bottle but if she wants to save lives she’s going to have to stopper them up and bury it in the sand.

  Just before she hits the Land of Mile Zero, she stops off at the impound yard a mile north of the jail. The guy lets her in and she navigates an uneven, mostly empty lot until she finds the Fiero parked toward the back. She pops the door, doesn’t even bother with the ignition yet–

  Most important thing is the money.

  She looks in the back, under the seat.

  Nothing. No money.

  Cold fury cuts through the sweat. No money was on her “voucher.” They didn’t list any bag of cash. Which means one of those cops took it.

  Her first impulse is to get back in the Malibu and drive it through the jail wall and up every ass of every cop in the joint until one of them starts spilling money like a hammer-struck slot machine.

  But that won’t get her anywhere.

  Except, you know, thrown in jail again.

  Calm. Breathe. Cigarette. Yes.

  She pops the trunk. With a trembling hand she flips up the flap to expose where the spare tire would usually go–

  And there sits a bag. Full of money.

  They found the firs
t bag, not the second.

  Which means she still has five grand.

  She laughs around her cigarette, then on a lark tries to start the Fiero. The engine sounds like an old woman gasping before she dies. That answers that question, then. Miriam throws the keys far as she can and heads back to the Malibu, and takes the Malibu into Key West.

  Key West is packed. People all over the streets. Same mix of miscreants and deviants: the rich white Jimmy Buffet fans, the sailboat hipsters, the freakshow pirates. Tourists and locals and aliens.

  Miriam parks the car and makes a hard-charge toward Mallory Square and, in particular, the sign she saw the last time she was here: PSYCHIC READINGS I WILL TELL YOU YOUR FUTURE. The whole square is in some kind of sunset celebration. People gathered to watch the blob of orange sherbet melt into the creamsicle ocean – drinking and singing and watching all the little shows and buying all the kitschy tchotchkes (Say that ten times fast, she thinks) they can find. Mimes with trained cats, pirates juggling rum bottles, freaks breathing fire and lifting barbells with chains hooked to nipples stretched like taffy–

  The psychic’s not here.

  She orbits, wanders, can’t find her.

  Damnit. Damnit.

  Ah. Wait. There. There! She’s at the far end. Near the pier. Just setting up. Wrapping her platinum-blond head in the gypsy scarf. The woman sees Miriam coming and says, “Hey, doll. Not open yet. Sorry.”

  “Don’t care. Take my money.”

  “Eager, are we?”

  “Time is ticking.”

  “Time is always ticking, isn’t it?”

  “Dispense with the banter. Take my cash.” She waves two twenties – twice as much as the woman charges, per her signage. “Read my… aura or my cards or sniff my pheromones or whatever it is you do. I need help.”

  The woman shrugs as if it’s not worth fighting. Then sits down cross-legged. She whips a tie-dyed cloth off a crystal ball and opens up a carved wooden box to reveal a deck of Tarot cards.

  The Death card leers up. Ragged woodcut skull behind an ink-black cloak. Scythe reaping wheat that looks like people.

  It’s a good start.

  “My name is Miss Gina. I can look into the ball,” the woman says. “Or I can read your cards or your palm. Your call, doll.”

  “I’d rather you not touch me. Unless it’s necessary.”

  “It’s… not, no.”

  “Then whatever. Don’t care. Chop-chop. I got a bug up my butt here, lady. I’m hankering for a hunk of psychic karate.”

  She flings the two twenties at the woman.

  The bleach-blond psychic scoops up the money with the aplomb of a practiced stripper. Then gets out the Tarot cards. She pulls out a small satchel, and Miriam smells the heady stink of something herbal. “This is a purification satchel in which I’ve placed sage and angelica and anise–”

  “Mmmnope,” Miriam says, waving her arms in a way that might suggest the bridge is out, turn back around. “Move past all that stuff. Get to the juicy-juice, please.” Lives are on the line, bimbo.

  The woman looks suddenly nervous. She clears her throat and begins to shuffle the Tarot cards. Then she hands the deck to Miriam. “Cut it, doll.”

  Beyond the edge of Mallory Square, the sun has melted into a gloppy napalm line pooling at the horizon.

  Miriam bisects the deck, slaps it back together.

  The woman takes it. Begins to spread out the cards. “This is called the Celtic Cross–”

  “No Occult 101 please, just… read, interpret.”

  The woman flips the first card.

  “The Seven of Staves,” she says.

  The image on the card is of a man with a pageboy haircut standing on a hill and holding a staff that looks like the knobby cock of a cave monster. He’s trapped in a prison of similarly shaped knob-cocked staves.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means you’re facing great difficulties on all sides of you–”

  “Everybody’s facing great difficulties. That’s called hey, look, reality. We’re all besieged by assholes and inadequacies. Next card.”

  Flip.

  On the card: A naked nymph gazes up at a six-pointed star in the night sky above a meadow. Sheep graze nearby.

  “The Star,” the woman says with wonder, as if Miriam just won the metaphysical lottery. “Hope and faith are your allies in life’s difficulties, and you’ll find that clutching optimism to your bosom as this woman does with the light of the star–”

  “No, no, no, none of that sounds right. Here.” Miriam reaches across and begins flipping each card herself. Three of Cups. The Lovers. Four of Swords. Something called a Hierophant, which sounds but does not look like a type of elephant. After each flip, Miss Gina tries to explain what the card is, but she doesn’t get in more than a few words before Miriam is flipping the next. Finally, at the end, Miriam flips over The Hanged Man. “There!”

  “There?”

  “What’s that card?”

  On the card another page-boy asshole is hung upside down by his heel. Dangling from a tree. “That’s the Hanged Man. He means you’ll need to look at your problems from another angle–”

  “You are my other angle. You.” A carpenter’s nail of anger hammers through Miriam’s heart. She swipes her hand across the blanket and knocks all the cards out of their cross configuration. “Goddamnit! You’re not a real psychic, are you?”

  Tourists look over, alarmed.

  “What? Of course I am.” She laughs nervously, like this is a joke, a show for the marks all around. “I have been blessed by the–”

  “Cut the hokey horseshit, Gina. You’re just looking at cards and interpreting them with the most milquetoast, mediocre interpretation. And you’d do the same by looking into that gaudy crystal ball or by looking at the lines running across my palms. Am I right?”

  “I think you ought to leave.”

  “I think you ought to give me my forty bucks back.”

  “Fine.” The woman crumples up each twenty and throws the little capitalist boulders back at Miriam. “Take them and go.”

  Miriam stands up. Sticks her index finger out like she’s trying to dissect her with the power of her pointing. “You just wasted my time. I need a real psychic. You get it? I need someone who can help me find something, and time is breaking apart in my hand like a chip of once-wet sand. Thanks for nothing.”

  She moves to storm off.

  “Wait!” Miss Gina yells after her.

  Miriam keeps walking. But the woman catches up, steps in front of her, hands up. A little white business card sits slotted between Gina’s index and middle finger. She levers it toward Miriam.

  “You need to find something, Sugar is your gal.”

  “My gal?”

  “She’s the real deal. She’s not a…” Gina gestures with her eyes toward the whole of Mallory Square, to all the freaks and performers and tourists. A gesture as if to say, Not a fake like me. “Take the card.”

  Miriam takes it.

  On it is handwritten one thing: MM 47.5.

  “I don’t understand,” Miriam says.

  “Mile marker forty-seven-and-a-half,” Gina says.

  “Mile marker. Key West is at mile zero, right?”

  “Got it.”

  “Thanks, Gina. You’re not as awful a person as I thought.”

  Gina shrugs. “You’re Sugar’s problem now, bitch.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  NEW OLD FLAME

  Purpose has its leash and collar on her. It drags Miriam forward through the streets of Key West toward the car. Through the drunks and the pot-smoke haze and the clouds of suntan lotion and Axe body spray. She’s trying desperately not to touch any of them, not because she can’t handle the visions (or so she tells herself) but because they’re a distraction from the task at hand.

  And then:

  Gabby crosses the street in front of her.

  Miriam thinks to hide, thinks to dart into the crowd but it’s too late.
Gabby’s not crossing the street all casual-like. She too is a woman with a mission, and hers is to cross paths with Miriam.

  She’s got the tips of her blond hair dip-dyed pink, and Miriam thinks, A girl after my own heart. Can’t settle on a single hair color. But then that momentary ember of affection is cast away in the wind of Gabby’s anger.

  “You’re here,” Gabby says.

  Miriam tries to juke past her but sees the crowd has closed ahead of her, sealing shut like the wall in that Edgar Allen Poe story. The Cask of… something-or-other.

  “I’m here,” is all Miriam can think to say.

  “And you weren’t going to call.”

  “I kinda thought we’d reached the culmination of our time together.” She clears her throat. “Also, I forgot to actually get your number.”

  “You can’t just do that to a person. I like you. Liked. Whatever.”

  “Listen, we’re both adults and adults do this sort of shit all the time. They… they crash into each other and they rub their genitals in and around one another and then they move on–”

  “No, adults do the adult thing and take responsibility for when they have somebody else’s heart in their hands.”

  Miriam winces. Still looking for an exit. “Bad news: I’m not a particularly good adult.”

  Gabby grabs her hands – Miriam flinches, a knee-jerk reaction whenever somebody touches her and she doesn’t expect it. But then she remembers: whatever death is in store for Gabby is lost to Miriam, sucked under the raging rapids of a rum-drunk.

  “Come home with me,” Gabby says.

  Miriam smells the alcohol coming off her.

  “You’re drunk,” she says.

  “And you’re not,” Gabby answers. “So get drunk with me.”

  “Gabby–”

  Gabby runs her hands up Miriam’s arms. She gets close. Miriam smells not just alcohol on the woman’s breath but wine – red wine, lush and assertive, wine that darkens her lips, wine that stains her teeth. “I could make you feel good again. We had a pretty good thing going. I like you. You like me even though you won’t admit it. We do fun things naked.” Her knee presses up against Miriam’s thighs, trying to tease them apart.

  It starts to work. A deep heat spreads.