by Chuck Wendig
Everything is dark. The cover of the trees above blots out the moon and stars. She draws the pistol. Checks it for ammo. Pops the magazine back in, then thumbs off the safety.
She creeps into the tree line. The island isn’t big – but it’s big enough. Walking its circumference might take her a half-hour. Better to cut through the middle. Sugar said that Ashley was on the far side.
Miriam descends into the brush. Gentle steps through sand and tide pools. Water soaking boots, socks. Clouds of flies parting like mist.
It’s then she smells it: food. Something sweet and savory.
Baked beans. Like her mother used to make.
She follows the scent like it’s something out of a cartoon, the vapors tickling the underside of her nose and drawing her closer, closer.
By some small favor, she’s as quiet as a priest’s whisper.
Ahead: an orange, fickle glow.
Firelight.
Now the smell of food is joined by smoke. The firelight plays off metal – the bottom of a small boat. A boat brought to shore and overturned. The boat Ashley must use to get to and from this island.
Gently, carefully, slow as a praying mantis, she parts a nest of mangrove branches with the side of the gun–
And there sits Ashley Gaynes.
His back is to her. A small campfire crackles and pops ahead of him.
The gun feels suddenly heavy in her hand.
Gingerly, she raises the .45.
The back of his head lines up between the two iron teeth of the pistol’s sights. Her finger coils around the trigger.
“I see you got my messages,” he says, setting down a can of baked beans swaddled in foil. He drops a spoon into it with a clank-and-rattle.
Her hand shakes.
“Go ahead,” he says, still facing away from her. “Pull the trigger. Lemme make it easier on you.” He scoots on his butt in a circle until he’s finally facing her. It’s him. Just like in the visions. The fire lights him from behind. He’s just a shape – the silhouette of a paper target she wants to perforate with bullets. So why won’t you shoot?
“You just couldn’t leave well enough alone,” she says.
He smiles. Runs his hands down along his jeans, then pulls up the hem on an ankle to show off a glimpse of the metal prosthetic beneath. “I was going to. I really was. But I’ve given myself over to it. This isn’t my idea, Miriam. It really isn’t. I’m content to live and let live here. My hands, though, they’re tied.” He holds up both hands. He wiggles the fingers. Taunting her.
“I could just shoot you.”
“And I’m sure you will. You’ve got the jump on me. I’m just a crippled asshole, can’t outrun a bullet. So why not take a second? Let’s have a conversation. I’ve missed you.”
She bares her teeth. “Die in a car fire.”
“We were good together, you and I.”
“You were a manipulator.”
“Like you’re any better.”
“I am. I’m honest.”
“Like when you told Louis that I was your brother?”
“That was your idea.” She punctuates the last two words with a thrust of the pistol. “I came clean. I’ve changed.”
“You have. You’re right. You figured it out.” He starts patting the side of his jeans and she growls, waves the gun. He holds up his hands in plaintive surrender. “Just looking for my flask. Got a little rum in it if you want. I see you like rum now.”
“When in Rome,” she snarls.
“When in Rome, eat Roman pussy?” he asks.
Gabby. Of course he knows about her.
He pulls a flask. Spins the top off and takes a swig. He offers it to her. Part of her wants a taste. She wants that fire in her belly.
She shakes her head.
“Here’s what’s changed,” he says. “You’ve started to figure out your gift. After years on the road, watching people die, you’ve suddenly become illuminated.” He licks the top of the flask and makes a small yum sound. “You went from being the thief robbing fresh graves to the killer filling them. So now you’ve got your grim purpose. Good for you.”
“You’re the killer. Not me.”
He ignores the comment. “What surprises me is how long it took you to figure it out. Nobody gave you an instruction manual. And that’s sad. Me, though, I’m playing for the home team. I didn’t have to wander around, pulling on my dick, hoping I’d get some epiphany shined in my eyes. They told me everything I needed to know. They still tell me. They’re talking to me even now.” He swats his arm. Smack! The short sharp shock of the sound almost makes her blow his head off. “The bugs here. They’re bloodsuckers. What was it you used to say? It is what it is.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Who is they?”
“The voice, Miriam. The gods. The fates. I fell out of that car, my leg carried farther and farther away by a white SUV and…” He takes a deep breath. “I bled. I could smell it. The blood. The piss. Christ, I shit my pants. How awful is that? One leg gone, the stump pouring blood, and all you can do is roll around on a New Jersey back road with shit in your pants. Eventually someone found me, but I’d lost so much blood by then I must’ve looked like your toes after they spent too long in wet shoes: pale and wan. Sad little things. Some campers found me and got me to the hospital but the storm wasn’t over. Weeks of infections. Scraping bad tissue. Trying to grow good tissue. The fevers. The hallucinations. And the pain – whoof. I couldn’t click that little morphine rocket booster button fast enough. But then in the midst of all that… They started talking to me.”
“You’re telling me you’ve got some… power?”
“Like C&C Music Factory, baby.”
“And what power is this?”
“Oh, you’ll see.”
“Not if I put a round between your eyes.”
A wicked grin cuts across his face. “That’s exactly when you’ll see.”
Fuck this.
She pulls the trigger.
FORTY-SEVEN
THE HANGED WOMAN
The stink of gunpowder. The high-pitched whine like a fly caught in the bell of the ear. The taste of mud and seawater.
The gun is no longer in her hand.
Miriam tries to breathe through pancaked lungs. Her hands claw at the wet ground beneath her, only pulling up dirt and sand.
What the hell happened?
The memory of only moments ago comes back in fits and starts–
She pulls the trigger but Ashley’s fast – too fast, shockingly fast. He jerks his head to the right before the bullet even leaves the gun, and it throws up sparks and punches through the bottom of the overturned rowboat behind him–
She does a clumsy push-up, but Ashley presses down between her shoulder blades with the base of his prosthetic foot. He laughs. Says something about being like the Terminator.
–Already she’s tracking him again, following him with the gun barrel, but it’s like he’s ready for her. He jerks left and then lunges backward, scooping up a fistful of hoary ash from the campfire’s margins and flinging it toward her. Suddenly she can’t see, her eyes stinging, her mouth tasting of char and cinders. She starts coughing, fires the gun once, twice, bullets biting off bits of trees but finding no part of Ashley Gaynes–
The knife. She needs to get to her knife. In her pocket. But before her hand can even twitch, Ashley kneels on the small of her back. His hand thrusts deep into her back pocket, snatching the blade like a thieving magpie. He says, “Miriam loves her little knives, doesn’t she?”
–She steps forward and even before her foot hits the ground, Ashley says, “Watch your step.” But it’s too late. Of course it’s too late. Her foot falls into a short hole dug out and covered in leaves; the ankle twists and a sharp pain pistons up through her leg to her knee, to her hip. Miriam cries out and starts to fall–
“Is this a knife in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?” Ashley says. He follows that with a mad cackle. He flicks the bla
de open and thrusts it up under her chin. “I could kill you now, you know. But that’s not the point of all of this. The point is to teach you a lesson first. The point is to make an example of you. You don’t die here. But I’m sure nobody will mind if you get a little hurt, right? By the way, I’ll need this back later–” And he plunges the knife into the back of her thigh. Miriam screams.
–As soon as she hits the ground, Ashley swings out with a kick from his good foot, kicking the gun out of her hand. She scrambles fast, grabbing at the lip of the boat and giving herself the leverage to stand, but he pumps a fist into her solar plexus once, twice, a third time, the breath robbed from her. In its place blooms a mushroom cloud of terror–
His hand curls under her chin and clamps her jaw shut hard enough that she bites her tongue. Blood fills her mouth. “Fuck you,” she growls through gritted teeth, and in response he shoves her face into the sandy mud. She tries to breathe but can’t. You’re not ready for this. You pushed and pushed and pushed. And now something’s pushing back. Her body spasms. Panic throttles her.
–Gasping for air, she pitches a clumsy fist at him but it’s like he knows it’s coming, because he’s not there when it should land. She snaps a hard kick toward his head but it’s like he anticipates that, too – he’s already dancing out of the way before she even lifts her foot. And he’s having fun doing it, smiling and laughing like a kid on the playground–
He lifts her head back up. She cries out. Then snaps back with her head, hoping to connect with his nose. But when she does, he’s not even there. He’s hobbling around to her front, and he drives a boot into her cheek. All she sees is a rain of stars falling in the dark of her eye and she thinks, He’s gotten me. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t get up. I can’t move. She feels his hands on her ankle, dragging her somewhere…
–He cracks her across the mouth with the back of his hand, her head reeling. She tries another kick but he slaps it away like it’s nothing more than a jumpy dog, and in return he drives his knee up into her gut, again robbing her of breath. He says, “Have you figured it out yet?”–
Her world, upside down. Something around her ankle. She’s going up, up, up, hair dangling, hands reaching toward earth. He’s got her tied by the one foot and she sees him now, using one of the branches of the tamarind tree as a makeshift pulley as he grunts and shows his teeth, hoisting her into the air by one ankle. And there she is. The hanged woman. Dangling. Swinging. All the blood rushing to her head. Her brain is a giant blister, throbbing with each beat of her heart. Ready to split like a snare drum.
Ashley says, “Whew!” then wipes sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. He holds it up, and the hand is bloody. “Yours, not mine.”
“Come closer and you can show me yours,” she hisses.
“You’re being tough-ass Miriam, I know. I get it. Quick with the quips, fast with the threats. And sometimes you can back it up, too. But you have to admit I got you. I got you trussed up like a deer at hunting season. I could do what I want with you. I could come over there. Cut your clothes off. Stick my dick in your mouth–”
“I’d bite it off.”
“You think I don’t know that? That’s why I’d have to knock all those teeth out, first. All gums, baby. Then I’d take your own knife. I’d cut you up. Nothing vital. Just a slash here, a slash there. Blood makes a helluva lube for whatever I want to stick up your ass or your cunt. My fingers. The gun barrel. Your knife, heated in the fire – I could cauterize all your holes shut. Wouldn’t that be something?”
“Men. Always so threatened by women.” She spits out the words with as much acid and iron as she can muster; anything to hold back the tears. “Pretending like you have power. Holding your dick like it’s a gun. It’s barely that. A clumsy little water pistol. The vagina – now, that’s power, boy. Like an oracle’s cave. Heady vapors to bring even the brawniest sonofabitch to his knees. Give him visions. Give him dreams. And give him life, too. Because without what we got going on downstairs, you wouldn’t even have been born. We’re the ones with the power.”
He slow-claps. “Nice speech. You practice that every time some boy has you hanging from a tree?” Before she can say anything he walks over to her like a hunter admiring his kill. “Besides, for all your talk of power, you can’t even have kids, can you? Where’s your power now?”
She swipes at him with her nails out–
And it’s like he’s ready for it. He bows his back, lets her meager swing find nothing but air.
“You still don’t get it,” he says. “You still don’t see what I can do.”
“Your precious power?”
“They tell me what you’re going to do next. I don’t need to see it. I just know. I knew when you were going to pull the trigger. I could see every punch and kick you were going to throw at my head. I knew you’d step forward and so just an hour ago I dug that hole and covered it with leaves. And I knew that when you stepped in it you’d twist your ankle up something fierce. Does it hurt, by the way? I bet it hurts.”
“You can’t hurt me,” she says.
But he’s lost to her answer, swept away by his own thoughts. “Sometimes They whisper what will happen to me. Sometimes I see it written across the sky, or carved into a tree, or dripped on the blade of a knife in little black beads of blood. They send me messages. And it’s not just you. Everybody’s connected. They’re all–” And here he laughs madly, and she can see the tears in his eyes like this is sublime to him. He’s a man given over to the ecstasy of his faith. “They’re all singing the same frequency, these low-level harmonics that my bosses let me hear. I know what everyone is going to do just before they do it. And sometimes I can see much further than that. I knew you’d come here tonight. I knew you’d go to the motel. To Miami. To your mother’s house. It’s like–”
“It’s like you’ve lost your fucking marbles, like you’re crazier than a nest of yellow jackets–”
He talks louder to speak over her. “It’s like I can see the possibilities exploded out, like a mirror shattered into a thousand pieces, and in each little piece of reflective glass I can see what will happen. If I do X, then I see that Y will be the result. If I do A, then B is what happens. I know even before I make my choices what the results will be. It’s amazing. It’s really amazing. I know your power is a curse, but mine, Miriam, mine is a blessing.”
He means it, too. Gone is any pretense of sarcasm. He’s caught in the river of his own power and dragged along by it.
By now every inch of Miriam’s head feels like a balloon – a red balloon full of blood, a balloon not lifting toward the sky but falling toward the earth, heavy with inevitability. Given over to grim, inescapable gravity.
Darkness licks at her vision like black flame.
Ashley rubs his face. He’s smiling so big it must hurt his cheeks.
“I was thinking about something,” he says, “and this is going to really bake your noodle, but here it is. You’re Little Miss Free Will, right? Bucking the chains of fate, standing triumphant against the oppressive tide of destiny. Blah blah fucking blah. You say that things are predetermined. Preordained. And yet, somehow, you got beat to shit way back when. Lost your baby. Got this… curse of yours as a result. Who do you think gave you that curse? If all things are written in the book of fate, wasn’t that a preordained event?” He claps his hands like an excited child. “Fuck, how crazy is that? The fates gave you your fate-breaking gift. It’s like they were setting you up to fail. How sad is that? Pathetic, really.”
Suddenly he swats at his arm. Again and again. His giddy rub-your-nose-in-it rapture is lost beneath a surge of rage – eyes bulging, teeth bared. He swipes at the air, parting the cloud of gnats.
“I thought you were so cool once,” she says. Consciousness bleeds from her like ink from a pen dropped in a glass of water.
“These fucking bugs!”
“But you’re just a lost little boy.”
“I have to go now,” he says. “I lo
ve you, Miriam. I do. I wouldn’t do all those horrible things I said earlier. You’re precious to me. You enjoy your time here. This won’t kill you. But it’ll keep you from stopping me when I go and visit your little dyke friend in Key West. Teach her what it means to get close to Miriam Black.”
And that does it. A surge of adrenalin sets fire to the encroaching darkness, and now Miriam’s the one caught in the throes of rage – she swipes at him, hissing and spitting. “You leave her alone, you motherfucker–”
“Hey, Miriam. I have a joke. Wanna hear it?”
“I’m going to take you apart piece by piece, Ashley, I swear–”
“What do you say to a girl who has two black eyes?”
“Fuck you!”
“Nothing you haven’t said to her twice already.”
He pops her with a fist. In her right eye.
Then again in her left.
She sees fireworks as capillaries break. As her brain rocks against the back of her head. And then the fireworks show is over and all she’s got left is the dark.
INTERLUDE
YELLOW JACKETS IN SEPTEMBER
Everything hurts. Her body is a roadmap of little welts – like her skin is Braille for the blind to read. She tries not to cry. But she keeps crying anyway even as Mother hunches over her, using big cotton balls to blob globs of pink calamine lotion onto the red welts.
“I told you not to run back there,” Mother says.
“They never bothered me before,” Miriam says, sniffling.
“They’re yellow jackets in September. They know their time is coming what with winter approaching. They grow agitated.”
“My fingers feel fat.”
“Because they’re swollen.”
Miriam sees a little rabbit’s tail of goopy cotton stuck to a calamine smear on her arm. Idly she moves to pick it off.
Mother swats her hand.
“Ow!” she cries, pulling her hand away.
“Don’t mess,” Mother says.
“But they stung me there and you hit my hand.”
