The Raptor & the Wren

by Chuck Wendig

  Is her gourd finally and truly cracked?

  She stands up. It’s still night outside—the black bleeds past the blinds. Her toe nudges a wine bottle. It rolls away.

  Miriam staggers out into the living room.

  “You’re awake.”

  The voice damn near gives her cause to pee.

  It’s not Rita.

  “Grosky?” she asks, genuinely surprised.

  The big man fills a recliner. He rocks forward on it, leaning so that he can put his hands on his knees. Next to the chair is a leather briefcase. No—a computer case. Like for a laptop, she thinks.

  “You had a little adventure tonight, huh?”

  She says, “Why, Special Agent Thomas Richard Grosky, I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Few doors down. Mervin Delgado.” He thumbs toward the window. Through the curtains, Miriam spies the strobe of red and blue police lights.

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re here for him? For that? How long was I asleep?”

  “I’m not here for that,” he says, grunting as he stands up. “That happened a few hours ago, best as I can tell. I was parked in a rental car outside the house when an old woman came up with you. You were on your way to being passed-out drunk by the look of it—she was helping you walk. I asked her where you were coming from and the lady told me to go fuck myself with a plastic flamingo.”

  Sounds like Rita.

  “I, ummm.” Miriam winces, scratching at her head, messing her hair up further. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Saving your ass, for one.”

  “I doubt that very much.”

  “Ye of little faith,” he says with a chuckle. “I went and talked to the cops real quick over there at Mr. Delgado’s house. Did you know the patio door was smashed with a rock? Volcanic rock. Had a little blood on it. Funny, too, because when you take a look at your hand, looks like you got a little boo-boo.” He shrugs those beefy shoulders. “But I’m sure that’s just a coinkydink, hm?”

  She looks down. The palm is scabbed over in a pattern roughly consistent with running your hand over a cheese grater. “Yeah. That.”

  “So, you don’t want me to, say, discourage them from running a test on that blood? Because I could do that. I got pull down here. I used some of it the last time you and I tangoed down here in Florida. You didn’t kill Merv?”

  Her jaw sets a hard line. “I didn’t kill Merv.”

  “He die naturally?”

  “Hemorrhagic stroke. Natural as spring water.”

  “Let’s have a conversation. I’ll make a deal with you.”

  “I don’t do deals.”

  “Not even for keeping your bacon out of the fire with Delray PD?”

  Miriam grouses, then pulls out one of the breakfast nook chairs with the toe of her foot before sitting down. In a monotone robot voice she says, “No, please, let us talk. I am very excited to hear your proposal, especially at—” She glances at the microwave clock. “At three thirty in the hell-fucked morning.”

  Grosky sits. He’s out of his suit. He wears a pastel polo that might be described as “seafoam” in color, as if seafoam is ever so pretty. In Florida, seafoam is often a grotty, muddy, jizz-colored froth.

  “I’m writing a book,” he says.

  “Bully for you. Lemme guess: self-help? Weight loss?”

  “Sure, go ahead, needle me about my weight. My doc says it doesn’t matter how big you are. Just how healthy you are.”

  “Who is your doctor? Ronald McDonald?”

  “I’m fit. Okay? All my numbers are good. I’m healthier than you.”

  She winces. “Nnnyeah, okay, that’s probably true.”

  “The book,” he continues, “is about fringe-case serial killers. Not the big cases everyone knows. But ones that fell off the books. Plus some cold cases and other mysteries.” As he talks, he gets out a notebook computer from his leather satchel. He pops the screen open. His face is icy from the blue glow of the monitor. “You see that Making a Murderer? True crime is big now.”

  “Great. More power to you. Hope you get a TV deal. But watch out: Hollywood can be pretty fickle.”

  “I want you in the book.”

  “Pressed like a butterfly?”

  “As a topic. Maybe an interview. Maybe a whole chapter or more.”

  “No.”

  “Hear me out—”

  “I’m not a serial killer.”

  Grosky hesitates. The smile on his face strikes her as eerily predatory. Less like he wants to kill her and eat her and more like I know something you don’t. “By some metrics, you are.”

  “Carl Keener was the serial killer.”

  “And you?”

  She swallows. Just a regular killer, she thinks but does not say. Instead, she answers with “I don’t want to be in your book.”

  “So, you can tell me about Carl Keener, then. Or whatever was going on here in Florida the last time. Or whatever happened with that fella, Weldon Stitch, in Colorado. We focus the book more on them, less on you.”

  “Oh, it’s a whole book now? Go pound sand, Grosky. I’m not public. I’m not a known quantity. I’m a nobody and I like it that way.”

  “Then I got bad news for you, Miriam.”

  She gives him a quizzical stare.

  He spins his laptop computer toward her and shows her something.

  FOUR

  UH-OH SPAGHETTIOS

  “You know what a subreddit is?” he asks.

  Miriam arches an eyebrow. “It’s a sex thing?”

  “It’s not a sex thing. Look, there’s a site called Reddit and people create forums, message boards, public spaces centered around different topics. These forums are called subreddits.”

  “And that has fuckall to do with me.”

  He clucks his tongue. “Don’t be so hasty. Look at this one.”

  Still blinking sleep and wine haze from her eyes, Miriam squints and leans in toward the screen. She sees a word that makes no sense at all.

  “ ‘Creepypasta’?”

  “Yeah. That’s the forum.”

  “Okay, I’m still thinking that maybe I’m stroking out here and none of this is real, because pasta is not, and never will be, creepy. Further, that has nothing to do with me except that I like to eat pasta occasionally. Not even that creepily.”

  “No. Creepypasta—it’s like, some kinda Internet thing. Spooky stories that started on the Internet and get copy-pasted around social media. Like Slenderman or Ben Drowned. Folklore for the modern age.”

  “Whatever. I don’t care. The Internet is dumb.”

  “You should care, because you’re in here.”

  Grosky taps the screen. Underneath the pad of his index finger is a header: ANGEL OF DEATH VIDEO – TUSCON CREEPY AF.

  “They misspelled Tucson.”

  “I know. That’s not the point. Click it.”

  “I don’t wanna click it. I wanna go back to bed.”

  “Miriam, you’re the Angel of Death they’re talking about.”

  Dubious, Miriam clicks the mouse. At the top is another link to a video and a forum full of comments beneath it. She goes to the video first.

  It’s portrait view. Filmed on a cell phone, she guesses. The whole thing is just twenty seconds long. It’s blurry and pixelated. It’s filmed from someone looking down from a vantage point—a second- or third-story window, maybe. It takes her a second to even realize what she’s looking at: a man with a shock of ginger hair standing there, his gun pointed. A woman enters the view of the camera: a haggard, ragged slip of a woman that Miriam suddenly realizes is her. There’s a flash of something black, a flutter of wings, and it whips across the area underneath the man’s chin. Red sprays. He drops his gun and Miriam watches herself go pick it up as the air fills with birds.

  The video ends.

  Her hand shakes.

  Her heart hammers against her breastbone like it’s trying to escape.


  She wants to say something—but what? Her jaw works but no words come out. Instead she pulls the laptop closer and starts reading the comments.

  killervamp: looks fake to me—has anyone run this by an expert?

  Jackhole99: This is not fake. This is real. And it ties into a government conspiracy too—Google THE COMING STORM. Fringe militia, taken out behind the scenes by government agents not wanting this to turn into a Waco Ruby Ridge shitstorm. But someone there took video and this emerged. Which, in case you’re not paying attention, could mean our Angel of Death is working for the US Government. Any hackers out there? Chinese, Russian, domestic? Could try to hack gov servers, see if we can find proof of this. This is MK-Ultra stuff upgraded. Nazi, KGB shit.

  scamspikes: STUPID VIRAL VIDEO FOR SOME DUMB UPCOMING FOUND FOOTAGE HORROR MOVIE PROBLY

  scarlet-tanager99: the angel of death will save us all and I know who she is

  UncaFester: can’t be her—ANGEL OF DEATH sighting at the same time in Lock Haven, PA

  FentanylFrank: Newer sighting in Falls Creek, PA. Last week.

  pyroclast: hey what is this—is there more to it or what

  Jizzwailer42: yeah, start here, got an archive going

  A new link. Which Miriam clicks.

  It opens a text page. White background. Basic black font.

  Her heart feels like it stops beating altogether—held fast in her chest like a bird caught in a closing, crushing fist. She sees names and places that walk backward through her own life: Tucson. Collbran. Miami. Peter Lake. An ATM camera from Philadelphia. The Caldecott School. Interspersed are just as many—or even more—misses among the hits. One post reads: ANGEL OF DEATH—ALASKA? Another says, SANDMAN AND ANGEL TOGETHER: LOS ANGELES? Below that: ANGEL SIGHTING AT THE EL MAR.

  Time slips through Miriam’s fingers as she hunkers down over the laptop, the world narrowing to just her and the glow from the screen. The archive is an endless parade of bullshit and speculation mixed in with actual facts. She’s left a trail. That much is clear now. It’s not a trail that’s easy to find, but for a gaggle of amateur sleuths on the Internet, it’s a trail of ants leading to a forgotten, forbidden picnic. The archive takes her back to Reddit, where she digests theory after theory about who she is: Is she merciful or malevolent? Some of them think she’s human. A serial killer. Maybe a government assassin or spy. A genetic experiment gone wrong. Or like one of those nurses who ushers the sick and dying to a quiet death. There are other, fringier theories: omg she’s a vampire, holy shit she’s a real angel, or a demon, or a goddess, or a ghost, or a “glitch in the Matrix” manifesting itself in the code of our “VR reality.” They talk too about how her hair changes color—one poster says that’s a sign she’s trying to hide her identity, and like a half-dozen other ding-dongs chime in to call that crazy, instead offering the more “plausible” theory that it’s proof she’s a series of clones like in some show called Orphan Black. “Clones? Clones? I’m an A-1 original, bitch,” Miriam mutters.

  All the while, Grosky comes and goes—he heads out, checks in with the Delray PD, sends them on their way, pokes through her fridge. All of it is background noise to her as she falls down the rabbit hole.

  Through the blinds is the searing magma line of the coming sun. Miriam leans back in the chair. She’s shaking. Trying not to cry.

  She feels suddenly, grotesquely exposed. All that she is and has done—it’s always felt precious and illicit. The subreddit makes her feel like a blood diamond: all her work, all the blood spilled, all the lives lost, are now just something for other people to enjoy.

  She’s become conspiracy wank-fodder for a gaggle of amateur-hour Internet detectives.

  Worse, it used to be hers and hers alone. Something grotesque, yes. But precious, too, in its way. All this was something she fought for. Killed for. It belonged to her, and only a few others ever even witnessed it: Louis, Gabby, Agent Grosky. In a way, she did feel like a ghost, passing through this life and affecting it in ways unseen and unrealized—nudging fate this way and that, cutting a thread here and letting another unspool far longer than destiny had decided to allow. But her passing was invisible. Or so she thought.

  They don’t know who she is. And they don’t know all that she’s done—or what it all means. But given enough time, they’ll be able to tie these ropes together into a clumsy knot. Then again, maybe she doesn’t know who she is, either. Maybe this is all one big delusion. Maybe she is a government assassin. Maybe Grosky’s been her handler this whole time and it’s why he keeps showing up.

  One broken cookie.

  With a grunt of rage and a sniffle, she shoves the computer away.

  Grosky snorts awake in the recliner. “Huh? You, uh—you done over there?”

  “I’m done. You snore.”

  “I got sleep apnea.”

  “The pinnacle of health, you are.”

  He ignores her barb and comes to sit at the table. “You okay?”

  “Just zippity-doo-dah dandy,” she lies, wetting her lips with her tongue and blinking back tears.

  “You didn’t know.”

  “No.”

  “It’s gotta be upsetting.”

  “I feel fucking . . .” She bats at the laptop like a bear taking one last angry swat at a wasp’s nest. “I feel pissed. I don’t like being . . . ripped open and shown to the world. I don’t like it one little goddamn bit. They don’t know who I am. This isn’t for them. I’m not for their fun.”

  “There’s more.”

  “Do I want to know?”

  “No. But yeah.”

  She closes her eyes: rising in her is the feeling of slowly clicka-clacking to the top of the first rollercoaster hill, everything clenching and cinching in her guts as she knows full well that going up slow means coming down fast. Part of her wants to just hold on to the chair and grit her teeth and go silent and still until all this is over. Leave it alone. Get in a car or a plane or on a boat and hightail it the hell out of here. Find an island somewhere. A mountain. A cave.

  Instead, she says: “Show me.”

  So he does.

  FIVE

  FALLS CREEK

  Grosky goes back to the subreddit and shows her the comment about a sighting in Falls Creek, PA. Just last week.

  Then he closes his browser window and pulls up a file folder on his notebook. Inside Miriam sees photos and documents.

  He pulls up one of the photos.

  It is an image of a dead man slumped against an interior wall. The wall is wood paneling—old, water-stained, dinged up. The man’s blue denim shirt is soaked through with so much blood, it looks like he spilled a gallon of grape juice on himself. The shirt is vented with little slash marks, each a couple inches wide.

  “Stab wounds,” she says.

  Grosky nods. “Yeah.”

  She leans in. Something’s written on his forehead. Wait. No. Something has been carved into the skin there. Grosky taps the mouse and goes to the next photo.

  It’s a close-up.

  Four words, though the first is half-buried under a mat of sweat-stuck hair:

  THE RIVER IS RISING.

  Miriam fails to stifle an animal-like sound—a moan of shock and bewilderment. “Jesus. Shit.”

  “That familiar to you?”

  She blinks. “Yeah. Yes. This was last week?”

  “Yup. You wanna go get a coffee?”

  “Fuck, yes. Let’s get some coffee.”

  SIX

  BLACK COFFEE

  “Not hungry?”

  “No,” she says. Steam frames her face above the cup of black coffee held in her hand below.

  Grosky shrugs. “Your loss; this is good.”

  He cuts into his veggie omelet like a connoisseur. Miriam is a glutton. Usually, if you put breakfast in front of her, she’ll have to restrain herself from faceplanting into the meal and eating it the way Pac-Man eats a line of glowing dots. Grosky, though, is delicate in how he eats: a knife urges food to the fork, the fork carries
it to his mouth with an airiness of movement, and then when he sucks it off the tines, he closes his eyes just for a moment, gently rocking his head side to side. Little sounds emerge: mm, ahh, oh. A savoring act. Every bite.

  So annoying.

  She watches him eat with the intensity of an irritated mantis. All around, the diner is a clamor of noise: forks scraping plates, coffeepots clinking against mug rims, the murmur of many voices gone mushy together. The diner itself is pretty standard for Florida. The décor is a cobbled-together monstrosity, like if you took a pink flamingo and a powder-blue lawn chair and then melted them together under a hot flame.

  Finally, she can’t take it anymore.

  “Stop face-fucking your food,” she snaps.

  He pauses, midbite, then gently swallows before setting his fork down. He dabs at his face with his napkin, giving her the side-eye. “Fine. You recognized something. Something in that photo.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What was it?”

  She hesitates. She doesn’t know Grosky’s game. Why he’s here all of a damn sudden. Miriam wants to trust him, but she is afraid to trust anybody anymore. Even herself.

  Finally, she commits to it. She says: “The phrase. I recognized the phrase.”

  “ ‘The river is rising,’ ” he says.

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s it mean?”

  She eyes him up. “This for your book?”

  “No. Not unless you want it to be.”

  “Isn’t the FBI pissed you’re writing books about current cases?”

  He laughs it off. “I’m not with the Bureau anymore.”

  “What?”

  “I quit. Retired. Whatever. They’ve been refocusing for a long time on different threat management profiles. Putting more men on terrorism—domestic, if you believe it. Like those whacknuts in Arizona you tangled with.” He leans back, possessing a level of comfort she finds surprising—and troubling. As if he’s let a heavy burden slide from his shoulders and the freedom from it has buoyed him. He’s not as bothered by this as she is. He’s too easy about it. “They still got me here and there doing consultant work. After all, there’s still serial killers to catch, just less focus on catching them.”