The Raptor & the Wren

by Chuck Wendig

  “I’ll head in, I guess.”

  “I’ll be here, doing my thing,” Rita says, lighting a cigarette.

  “We could switch places. You could go in this time. I’ll stay out here and do the cushy standing-around job.”

  Rita shrugs. “Nah. I’m too good as a lookout. Have fun, honey.”

  “Old bitch.”

  “Young cunt.”

  Fair enough, Miriam thinks with a shrug.

  She staggers across Merv’s back patio. Everything is pristine. Merv weeds everything by hand. Not like he’s got anything else to do. (Not like I’ve got anything else to do, Miriam thinks, pondering momentarily how her mother’s backyard is now sprung up with an infinity of weeds, and how there are bills to pay, and how they already turned off the cable, and, and, and.)

  The patio doors are sliding glass. She goes to open one.

  Locked. Shit. She tries a few extra times, pulling on the door just in case it’s sticky—the humidity around here can do that—but it’s a no-go.

  The thing about a real good inebriation is this: It sands away any predispositions toward caution. It takes the angel on your right shoulder and drowns it in a glass of whiskey, leaving only the devil on the left. What that devil on Miriam’s shoulder says right now is: Go over there, pick up that cool volcanic landscaping rock at the edge of the patio, then smash it through the glass.

  Which she does, la-dee-da.

  The patio door breaks.

  It is loud.

  Miriam doesn’t care, and she totally ignores Rita’s hisses of alarm and anger from the far side of the yard. With a surprisingly steady hand, Miriam reaches through the artisanal glass portal she just made and unlocks the door. When her hand returns, blood shines in the moonlight on her palm.

  Glass cut me, she thinks. But no. The blood is coming up from dozens of tiny little holes in her hand, like water from sponge pores. The skin is abraded. The volcanic stone, she thinks. Sharp like pumice.

  Whatever. She wipes that hand on her jeans, then steps inside.

  Merv’s bird obsession translates to his decor. Above a powder-blue couch hangs a painting of three parakeets in a Roy Lichtensteinian style: heavy cartoon lines and comic book pointillism. The wallpaper clashes: it’s all trees and branches and songbirds perched. She’s not here for the wallpaper or the painting, though.

  Miriam passes by the kitchen. There are Mervin’s heels, jutting out from behind a kitchen island. Blood wanders the grooves of the tile. His legs have stopped moving. Which means he’s gone on to whatever waits beyond.

  (She likes to believe that nothing waits beyond, but given the strangeness of her powers, she holds a great and secret fear that the realms beyond death are myriad and terrible. If there is a Hell, she is bound for it on a fast train. Then again, she’s already in Florida, so how bad can it be?)

  Miriam kneels by the little potato man. His hair is thin, like strands of thread laid across the liver-spot scalp. His skin in this light looks less tan and more yellow. He doesn’t smell like piss or shit, and to that Miriam thinks, Good for you, Merv, good for you. She admires someone who preserves dignity even in death.

  Gently, she closes his eyes, where the whites have gone the red of crushed raspberries. “I’d sing you a bird song,” she tells him, “but it’d be an ugly thing.”

  She knuckles him gently in the arm. An awkward, go-get-’em gesture.

  Now it’s time to work.

  Turns out, living amongst the elderly is an amazing scam, at least for someone with Miriam’s menu of talents. She doesn’t know why she didn’t think of it before. (Maybe, a small voice inside suggests, you hadn’t really hit bottom yet.) Florida is, as they say, God’s waiting room. The people in this neighborhood are old. Many are tap-dancing right on the cliff’s edge of life itself. Some live alone. Many in a neighborhood like this also have money. Or things. Or even better: pills. (Doctors give pills to old people like they’re giving out candy and every day is Halloween.) All it takes is finding out when they’re going to die, and being there not long after it happens.

  All it took was going door to door and introducing herself. She stapled a smile onto her face and injected warmth to her voice and walked from one house to the next, saying hi, shaking hands. (And drinking lemonade, and hearing stories about gout, and going through endless photo books. Many amongst the elderly are very lonely and eager to meet people. Most of them have shitty stories, but once in a while, they have something interesting to say: Frank Wornacki down on Blossom Drive said within the first five minutes of meeting her, “I killed a mailman with a slingshot once.” Miriam paid attention to that story. Because holy shit, why wouldn’t you? Turns out, he was a kid shooting frogs in his backyard and accidentally popped the mailman in the forehead with a rock. Mailman tripped over the lip of a broken curb, fell down, cracked open his skull. Died in the hospital six days later from a resultant brain hemorrhage.)

  She pulled this trick the first week she moved into her mother’s old place. Six doors down lived a woman—divorced—named Meretta Higgins. Meretta wasn’t one of those nice old people—oh, no, she went the other way with it. Rich, nasty little lady. Wrote cookbooks for a living. She wasn’t even that old: sixty-eight. Miriam “accidentally” bumped into her on the sidewalk and saw that in two nights, the lady was going to die from an aortic dissection.

  The old bitch called her a “little slut” when she bumped into her—because sure, why not call some rando on the sidewalk names—and that sealed the deal. Miriam thought, I’m going to be there when you die. Then I’m going to take a memento just to spite you. And she did. She was there the afternoon that Meretta went into the bathroom to take a shower, then died in the tub as her heart ripped like a paper valentine. Once the lady was kaput, Miriam walked whistling into the other room to cherry-pick whatever she wanted. A photo off the wall? Gaudy sapphire earrings off the bedroom dresser? Ooh, ooh! Something from the kitchen. The woman wrote cookbooks, right? Miriam went into a very nice kitchen—granite countertops and white cabinets and everything looking French and provincial—

  And when Miriam was face-down in a drawer, looking through melon ballers and juicers and fancy measuring cups, someone cleared her throat.

  Enter: Rita Shermansky.

  Rita, neighbor to Meretta. Rita, who was coming over to meet Meretta for dinner. Rita, who counted herself a friend to Meretta even though, really, she didn’t like her all that much. But company was company, and food was food.

  Rita asked Miriam what the hell she thought she was doing.

  Miriam answered with the truth, as she was a little bit drunk already.

  “The woman who owns this house died in the shower and I’m robbing her.” She cleared her throat and added, “Just taking one thing. She was shitty to me earlier, so mostly I just want a souvenir?” As all that spilled out of her mouth, it occurred to her: I probably should’ve lied. “She called me slut, so.”

  Rita shrugged and said, “I’m going to go get her pill stash, then.”

  When she saw Miriam’s shocked face, she said, “Don’t look at me like that, honey. You’re already robbing the dead. I’m just following your lead. Besides, when you die, they just take those pills and flush ’em down the crapper, anyway.” Rita waved it off like no biggie, then wandered into the bathroom to root around the medicine cabinet.

  And so began their scam.

  Miriam hasn’t explained how she knows about people dying—but she was able to prove it with Geriatric Dead Person Number Two, Bill Nolan, who lived two subdivisions over. (Bill took a nasty fall after tripping on a garden hose, broke his neck in his own backyard.) That convinced Rita well enough.

  This is the safer, softer version of what Miriam used to do years ago when she was on the road. (She’s a grown-up now, she tells herself. Basically.) They steal cash but no credit cards. They steal jewelry but nothing that looks like a wedding ring or family heirloom, because someone in the estate might miss it.

  Rita takes the pills
and sells them to the other olds who fell into that Medicare gap and have to pay way too damn much for them otherwise. (“We’re providin’ a fuckin’ service,” Rita said, “more or less.” Miriam doesn’t ask questions. She just takes her fifty-percent cut.)

  Merv will be their fifth pillage-and-plunder together.

  Miriam decides to go right for the pills. It’s where they’re getting most of their return, and Merv had so many medical problems, his stash probably looks like it belongs to a pop star.

  On the way to his bathroom, though, she sees something in his bedroom.

  A bell-shaped shadow hangs from a post.

  Miriam enters the dark room, then removes the dark blue cloth draped atop the bell.

  Revealed is not a bell but a bird inside a cage. Little and yellow, the bird chirps and trills, hopping about on a wooden dowel running midway through its domicile.

  A canary.

  For a moment, Miriam’s mind slips away. It’s like a bar of soap held in a slippery grip—one minute you’ve got it, the next it’s out of your hands. She blinks and there’s this faint vacuum sensation . . . then she’s looking back at herself from inside the mind of the bird. Miriam’s human face shows dark eyes set in a porcelain mask, her midnight hair a chaotic tangle spilling across her shoulders. The Miriam-person’s eyes go unfocused, and the mouth opens just a little. She thinks, What if the bird became me and I became the bird? (Miriam imagines her bird-possessed body stumbling around town, flapping her human arms uselessly, trilling fruitlessly with dry, puckered lips, woo, whoo, pfft, pooooft.) But Miriam’s consciousness inside the bird can feel that the bird is in there with her. She can feel its mind. She can feel its stress—trapped here in a cage, trilling not for love or amusement but because it can do nothing else. Every song a plea for escape.

  Then it’s over. Miriam draws a sharp breath, and once more, she’s staring at the bird through human eyes.

  She opens the cage. The bird doesn’t throw away its shot—it leaps for the exit and in a flutter of lemon-yellow wings it leaves the cage and the room.

  Bye-bye, birdie.

  Miriam heads for the pill stash.

  Merv has all the accouterments of an old person’s bathroom: he’s got the toilet with the handles, the shower seat for the tub, the extra step to help him get into the tub, the hemorrhoid cream right there on the sink, the stool softener, the arthritis balms. God, she thinks, what a bite it is to get older. Everything slides downward. Your balls, your tits, your heart, your mind. Nothing stays where it’s supposed to. Even your asshole turns inside out.

  Enough about mortality, she decides. It’s bumming her right the fuck out. She didn’t get soggy on cheap Merlot just to sit here and think about old-ass people and their old asses.

  The medicine cabinet is a standard affair: a boxy, mirrored affair hanging over the sink. She opens it and therein lurks the standard bounty. Rita told her to look for specifics, though, and ol’ Merv, he’s got them in spades:

  Zoloft, Ativan, Percocet. Rita said that her “clients” really want that holy trinity: something for depression, something for anxiety, something for pain.

  Then there’s the lesser pantheon: Synthroid for the thyroid, a high-test proton pump inhibitor for the reflux, Boniva for the bone decay. Little gods in tiny packages. Take your pill and pray its favor outweighs the misfortune of side effects.

  Miriam whistles a little canary birdsong as she pockets the bottles.

  She closes the medicine cabinet. Something has changed.

  In the mirror, she sees a face staring over her shoulder. The revelation hits her slow, too slow:

  I’m not alone.

  There’s a brief flash where she sees Merv’s face over her shoulder—cheeks striated with dark lines, eyes swimming in bruise-black pools—

  Then her head rockets forward into the mirror. Wham. The glass craters in a spider-web pattern. Kssh! Her brain rocks in her head. Behind her eyes, a fireworks display goes off: pop pop pop. Hands, Merv’s hands, grip a hank of her hair and wrench her head back—then slam it forward again. And again. As her head rears back once more, she sees the glass is wet with red.

  Bits of glistening mirror fall away into the sink, tinkling, clattering.

  She gasps. The thought crosses her mind: The doc back in Tucson told me to protect my head, and this is the furthest thing from protecting my head. Another hit and her brain could scramble like eggs in a bowl. Miriam holds the sides of the sink for dear life, then stabs back with a hard foot. Merv oofs, and his breath is a dead-fish stink pushing over her shoulder, and then his face hovers into view as he presses in behind her.

  He leers at her. “You thought you could steal from me?” he hisses.

  Blood fills her mouth as she snarls, whipping her head back. Her skull connects with his nose. It’s mushy, like she’s headbutting a bowl of raw meat.

  “Those are my pills.” He grunts nasally but doesn’t let go, jamming her head forward—

  She resists—

  Her neck tendons pull like taffy—

  He cups the underside of her jaw, pulling down—

  Her arm muscles strain like a hangman’s rope—

  Merv urges her forward so her open mouth is forced around the sink faucet. She tries to close her mouth, but he’s strong, too strong, and the metal slips past her lips and presses past her teeth, cold and insistent. Her tongue bunches up to stop it. It scrapes the roof of her mouth. More blood on her tongue. Tears press against her eyes. She does everything in her power not to gag.

  His soft carcass hands reach past her, going for the faucet handle.

  He’s going to turn it on.

  He’s going to drown me.

  Miriam does her own grabbing then—her hand sliding along the inside of the sink. It’s there she finds a shard of broken mirror.

  She stabs backward, in the space over her right shoulder.

  The glass buries in his face. Merv howls—a gargling, banshee roar. He’s off her now, arms pinwheeling. The dead man’s heel catches on one of the toilet railings and he topples backward into the tub, the back of his head whacking the subway tile there and sending a lightning-bolt crack up through the porcelain. Blood oozes down his scalp and neck as he slumps into the tub.

  “You thought you could leave me,” he says, his voice warping and distorting until it’s not Merv’s voice at all. It’s not one voice she knows but all of them: it’s Louis, it’s Ashley, it’s Ethan Key. Mushy and garbled. Something like black tar runs over his lower lip, feathers caught in that sticky mess. He says it again, louder, this time a question: “You thought you could leave me?”

  It’s him. The Trespasser.

  Her imaginary friend has returned.

  “Fuck you,” she says.

  “Miss me?” the Trespasser asks. Underneath the skin of his face, the bones shift and crackle like a string of firecrackers going off. She sees Louis’s soft, sandy beard. She sees Ashley’s smug sneer. She sees Ethan Key’s eyes staring back at her. The face keeps shifting. Bulging. Deflating. Skin rippling.

  “I’m done with you.”

  “Haaaardly,” he moans. “You know how you get rid of me, and you just can’t do it.” His face puffs up and sinks in once more, like a cake collapsing in the oven. Now it’s Mary Stitch staring at her, stringy hair in her eyes, lips charred like fire-kissed charcoals. When she talks, smoke drifts from her mouth. “Your babymaker is a broken vase, bitch. Can’t glue it back together. Can’t stitch up that wound. You’re the breaker of rivers. You’re fate’s foe. You’re buckled in, baby. And the river, boy howdy, it’s rising, it’s surging, it’s hungry like a dragon.”

  Miriam spits blood at him. Her. It. The Trespasser doesn’t even flinch as the red splatter hits its cheek.

  “Even with this power, I don’t have to do what you want,” she says.

  “Good luck with that, Miriam.”

  “I don’t want you anymore.”

  “And yet here we are.”

  “I’m out
. Suck a dick.”

  She storms to the bathroom door. It’s closed. The knob won’t budge. The Trespasser chuckles: a rheumy, damp sound. Like trying to pull a stuck boot from greasy mud. It’s the sound of sickness and swamp.

  Miriam hammers at the door with her shoulder. Then she kicks it. Still nothing. She cries out, wrenching the knob with both hands.

  “See? You can’t leave me if I don’t want you to.”

  She turns toward the Trespasser with her fist raised—

  The hallucination, or ghost, or demon, or whatever the fuck it is, it sits there in the tub, swelling up. Skin stretching and tearing. Eyes bulging like apples in a pig’s mouth. The belly is the worst, gassily inflating. The belly ripples and rumbles, like it’s digesting something—or failing to digest something.

  One of the eyes pops out and rolls into the tub. Plonk.

  From the socket, a canary emerges. Its feathers are frothy and slick. It chirps a discordant song. Miriam cries out as the Trespasser in its entirety ruptures, filling the bathroom with a hundred canaries, a thousand—everything gone yellow, feathers everywhere, beaks sticking her in the skin, little claws scratching her like rose thorns, and—

  THREE

  ONE BROKEN COOKIE

  Gasp.

  Awake.

  Miriam lurches up in her bed. (My mother’s bed, she thinks.) Instantly, her hands move to her face. Though her skull throbs from where her head slammed into Merv’s mirror, there’s nothing broken, no cuts or abrasions. She still tastes blood, but as she tongues the roof of her mouth, she finds no scrapes there, either.

  Jesus. Did any of that happen? She knows the visions are dubious at best, mired in the worst kind of unreality. But was she ever over there at all? Did Merv die? Is any of this real? She remembers being back in Tucson, the doc there told her she had a TBI: traumatic brain injury. Born of repeated concussions. He told her, You’re one broken cookie! and then laughed.