The Raptor & the Wren

by Chuck Wendig

  They haven’t found anything about Wren. No unusual murders. Some usual murders, but ones that always had an easy through-line—a big blinking blood-stained arrow pointing to the husband or a burglar or some crazy guy next door.

  As she’s flipping through, Gordy sidles up to Louis.

  Gordy is about as subtle as a firecracker going off in a closed hand. He fishes into his vest pocket and something crinkles as he hastily uncrumples it and passes it to Louis. Since the cabin presently only contains three people, it means he’s trying to do it so she doesn’t see. But of course she sees. She could have both eyes gone, not just one like Louis, and she’d figure it out.

  She decides to play it cool, though. Miriam keeps her eyes mostly on the newspapers in front of her, and then side-eyes Louis for his reaction. He looks troubled. He turns away from Gordy, facing the sink. Head down, shoulders up, a tense hunch to his back. She thinks for a moment, I could get a bird to read it. Wouldn’t that be a thing? Find some errant blue jay out there, have it perch on the window over the sink, use it to read whatever he’s got in his hand . . .

  Now you’re thinking with birds.

  But then, as her eyes drift down to the newspaper, something steals her attention. A small article, not front page but under the crime beat. Reading, PA police officers dispatched to 429 Conifer St where they found the body of suspected heroin dealer and white supremacist, John “John Boy” Bosworth. Farther down: sources say his tongue was removed and shoved down his throat, though whether this was the cause of death remains unknown.

  Her mind hops in the Wayback Machine and goes way, way back. To a motel in North Carolina. Her sitting there on the bed. Del Amico standing near after he just popped her one—the socket around the eye still throbbing.

  The time is now 12:43.

  “You have epilepsy, Del?”

  The question registers, and she knows now that he does. It explains what’s about to happen. A moment of calm strikes the man named Del Amico, a kind of serene confusion, and then—

  His body tightens.

  “And here it is,” Miriam says. “The kicker, the game ball, the season-ender.”

  The seizure hits him like a crashing wave.

  Del Amico’s body goes rigid, and he drops backward, his head narrowly missing the corner of the motel dresser. He makes a strangled sound. He sits upright on his knees, but then his back arches and his shoulder blades press hard against the matted Berber.

  Del Amico. Choked to death on his tongue.

  She didn’t kill Del. He was one of the ones she simply let die, and then she took his shit and hit the road. Less than an hour later, she met Louis Darling, the man standing ten feet away, reading a piece of paper he’s trying to keep secret.

  Another white supremacist dead. And dead in a way that echoes Miriam’s own life once again.

  Or maybe it doesn’t mean shit.

  Or maybe it’s a trap, because Harriet—that impossible monster who shouldn’t even be alive right now—is still hunting your dumb ass.

  Gordy leans into Louis, and the two of them share some quiet words that she can barely make out. Something about didn’t tell her.

  Her who? Her Miriam?

  She stands up suddenly, chair juddering noisily behind her. It startles Gordy, but Louis—it’s like he’s ready for it. Or like he’s still lost in whatever’s on that piece of paper. Gordy mutters something about having somewhere to be, and then he’s out the door faster than Wile E. Coyote chasing the Road Runner. Isn’t long before his mint-colored truck backfires to life and heads back up the road.

  Miriam’s jaw tightens. “Don’t keep secrets from me now, man.”

  “I’m not. I just . . . It’s Samantha.”

  “What about her?”

  “She’s, you know, she’s looking for me. Pinging a lot of my old buddies, reaching out, seeing if they’ve seen me.”

  “And Gordy—”

  “Didn’t tell her, no.”

  Whew.

  “But you’re bugged by it.”

  “I just . . .” His nostrils flare and he runs his hands up across his face and through his hair. “I just left everything. I left her behind. I ran away.”

  “We ran away. And we had to.” Her jaw tightens. “This was your idea.”

  “I know,” he says, holding up his hands. “I know! I’m not blaming you. I’m not even saying this hasn’t been amazing. I’m just saying it’s hard and it’s . . . it’s messed up, is what it is. Samantha . . . she had changed, something wasn’t right with her, like she wasn’t all there. And that thing with the feather . . .” He sighs. “Even still, what I did to her wasn’t right.”

  “None of this is right,” she says sharply, too sharply.

  And there it is. It’s happening. This carefully constructed illusion, it’s starting to fall apart. Like cracks slowly spreading across the glass of a snow globe. Oh, damn. That’s what this is, isn’t it? It’s our little snow globe. Set away from the world, in a perfect little bubble, with snow gently falling on our cabin. She can almost hear the glass popping and crackling.

  “Well,” she says with no small bitterness, “I think our little exile might be over anyway.” She scoops up the paper, gives it one good fold, then marches over and slaps it against his barn-door chest. Whap.

  He takes it, stares down at it. While he does that, she pulls the printed-out email out of his hands—and he doesn’t resist.

  He reads the paper. She reads the email.

  The email is short. Dear Gordon, my fiancée has been missing now for two months, and I know he’s caught up in something. The police said he was a person of interest, but I don’t believe that. If you see him, please help me, and tell me. Blah blah blah. She leaves her phone number behind. And her email address, obviously—

  Louis starts to say something, but Miriam’s mouth goes dry and she nearly drops the piece of paper. The email address.

  Scarlet-tanager99 at pil-dot-net.

  She blinks. In the dark behind her eyes is a new memory, this one recent enough: her sitting in the Florida house with Grosky. Grosky is showing her the subreddit where they’re talking about her, calling her the Angel of Death, and people are discussing her like she’s a myth, a piece of folklore, not a real human being. And one of those Reddit handles:

  Scarlet-tanager99.

  Everything starts to spin. She feels like she needs to press her heels into the floor to hold the world down. Pieces are adding to the puzzle, but they don’t make a clear image—in fact, every new piece of information only creates a stranger picture. Why would Samantha use that handle? Scarlet tanager is, what, a bird, right? She’s been watching. Spying. And she stole Miriam’s feather in the vial, too. Is Samantha with Louis just to find Miriam? Who the hell is this woman?

  Louis is setting the newspaper down, a look of consternation drawing lines across his brow. “We don’t know that this is Wren, Miriam. Question is, if it ends up being her, what do we do about it?”

  But Miriam is barely listening. Her mind is elsewhere.

  Instead, she blurts out:

  “You’re going to kill Samantha.”

  It’s like an axe splitting a log, ka-thunk. This is the one thing she hasn’t told him during their time here. Everything else has been fair game. He knows about her and Gabby. About Jack, about Harriet, about Grosky. She’s kept nothing from him except this one, awful, precious thing: a murder he will soon commit.

  Part of it is because he’s just too damn good. Louis is one of the nicest things in a life that contains almost zero nice things. He’s good people, and there are very few of those—the ones she does meet, the world seems to chew up and pick from its teeth. But somehow, he remains. And he remains with her. Despite all they’ve seen. Despite all of what may come. Up here in this cabin, in the snow, it’s been too damn good, and this one piece of information—you’re going to kill Samantha—ruins it all. Like bloody phlegm spat on van Gogh’s Starry Night.

  She says those words, she sp
eaks that prophecy, and he just looks confused. “I don’t understand.”

  “On the night of your wedding, you choke Samantha in a tub, and you drown her, and that’s how she dies. I saw it.”

  He laughs, but it’s not a happy laugh. It’s nervous and dissolves into a small, troubled moan at its end. “That’s not me. I’m not a killer.”

  She thinks but does not say: Untrue. He’s killed for her before. A sudden spear of panic lances through her: I made him into this. He kills because this is where I’ve led him. She’s like a bad disease, or worse, some kind of parasite. Once Miriam Black is in your marrow, nothing will get me out.

  “I’m sorry.” It’s all she can say. And it sounds like she’s apologizing for just this one thing, when really, she’s apologizing for all the things.

  “Miriam, I . . . I love her. Or loved her, once.”

  That makes her flinch. “And yet you kill her.”

  Now he looks mad. Because she has the temerity to keep insisting on the truth. “Maybe you’re just mad. Salty because I found her and she found me and . . . even if it doesn’t work out, you’re jealous.”

  “I had someone else too. I had Gabby. Maybe you’re the jealous one. Or maybe, just maybe, you don’t really know your precious bride. That email address of hers? I’ve seen it before.”

  Another body blow leaving him confused and reeling. “What?”

  She explains it. How Grosky showed her the forum dedicated to her, how that address was there as a user handle.

  “That’s not possible. Samantha isn’t like that. It’s just a coincidence.”

  “Sure. Just like it’s a coincidence she stole my feather.”

  “Maybe . . . maybe that was an accident.”

  “Louis. Look at me. Look around at all the shit that’s gone down since you and I met. How much of it has been coincidence? Or an accident?” She shakes the email page at him. “The universe is operating with sinister goddamn intent. Something or someone has a plan, and I have no idea what it is. But all of this adds up. I just don’t know how yet. You said she had changed. That she was . . . different.”

  “I wouldn’t kill her.”

  “I hope you won’t have to. But in the thread of fate I tugged on, it sure looks like you do. And maybe it’s because she’s not who she says she is.”

  Anger sparks in his eyes like whole matchbooks going up in flame. “You said no secrets. Right here, you just said it. ‘Don’t keep secrets from me now.’ But you were sitting on this the whole time. You knew where this was headed. Where I was headed. All this time and you kept that from me.”

  “You don’t understand.” She feels tears threatening to boil over. “I didn’t believe it myself. And I didn’t want to ruin any of this—”

  “I’d say it’s good and ruined now, wouldn’t you? I came to you. I’m . . . messing around on her to be with you. And maybe she’s not who she says she is, and maybe Samantha deserves some comeuppance. Maybe she even deserves my hands around her neck for something she did or will one day do. But I damn sure don’t deserve any of this. You’re a tornado, you know that? You just whirl in and tear shit up, and you throw everything and everyone in the air because tornadoes don’t give a shit about anything. They go where they go, drawing a path of chaos across the land like God’s finger.”

  She shrugs. “I told you not to get involved with me.”

  “Right. Because that’s a good excuse. You’ve been selling that one since the beginning, you’re right. And maybe I should’ve listened. But it doesn’t change that you have responsibility, Miriam. You’re obligated.”

  “I know!” she screams—a banshee wail. Hard enough it leaves her throat feeling like she just sucked down a shot of battery acid. “I know. Okay? That’s why I’m trying to help Wren. Because I set her on a path and I didn’t even realize it. I didn’t realize it because I was too damn busy thinking about myself. Or not thinking at all. But I want to fix it. I want to make things right. Or at least better.” She rubs her eyes. The tears are gone now. Dried up as a wave of desperation wicks away the grief. “So, whatever you think of me, I’m sorry. But whatever’s going on with Samantha, with you, with me, right now Wren is out there and she needs our help.”

  He’s silent for a while. Just standing there, arms crossed, the newspaper folded up and held in a crushing grip. Finally, he sighs and says coldly, “Fine. Let’s go help her. You got a plan?”

  “I didn’t,” she says. “But now I think I do.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THE ENEMY OF THE GOOD

  Miriam says goodbye to it. To the cabin, to the forest, to the snow. To these two months seeming to exist outside time and space. She’s not one to be overly wistful, and of course she can’t go letting the cabin thinking it’s all special and shit, so she cuts her meandering mental goodbye short and says out loud:

  “You were too good to exist. Fuck you.”

  She has no idea if they’ll ever come back here, but if they do, it’ll be sullied. Today was a stain, and no amount of bleach will get it out.

  Miriam goes inside, gets the Remington 700 rifle from the closet—the one Gordy keeps in there and told them about. (“In case you want to do some hunting up here,” he said.) She slings that over her shoulder, then heads outside.

  It takes her a moment to rouse Bird of Doom—the owl has found a dead tree in which to hunker down and sleep. But once she does, she rides it back to her human body. It lands on a fallen maple, snow falling as the branch bows.

  “You ready?” she asks the bird. “We got work to do.”

  It trills and chitters in the affirmative.

  She holds out her wrist, and the owl alights upon it.

  Time to go find Wren.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  SERENITY IN REARVIEW

  Day to night. Down here, the snow has already started to melt—and with the coming darkness, a lot of that has frozen on the road. It makes traveling slower, but even with that difficulty, Reading isn’t far for them. It’s a three-hour drive, and by seven PM, they’re parked on a side street at the south side of town, not far from 429 Conifer Street, where John Boy Bosworth died, his throat clogged by his own severed, swollen tongue.

  Miriam unfolds the map awkwardly over the dash. The owl—who sits in the bitch seat between her and Louis—seems irritated at the rustling paper.

  “Look,” she says, pointing at the map. “We’re here. Bottom of the city. Conifer is a few streets up. Residential.” And shittily residential, by the look of it. Little boxy houses stacked next to each other. Chain link fences slick with ice. Lots of streetlights, none of them working. “But this I think is the magic spot, right here.” She taps a green area just south of them—close enough to see out the passenger-side window of the truck. It’s all thick trees that go up, up, up. “They call this area Neversink Mountain.” (Her and Wren drowning in a river, saved by Louis, never to sink. Harriet, unable to be killed. Louis, drowning his bride in a tub.) She shudders. “Wren wouldn’t have gone deeper into the city. She would’ve fled this way. It’s got miles of trails. And any development on this mountain is done and gone. It’s wild, all of it.”

  Like Wren.

  Like me.

  Like Gabby.

  Maybe even like Louis.

  “You think this’ll work?” he asks.

  “Yes. No. I don’t know.” Suddenly frustrated, she says, “It has to.”

  “Cops might be looking for my truck,” Louis says. He’s nervous. They didn’t speak much on the way down here. She doesn’t know what he’s thinking. And a part of her doesn’t—or can’t—care about him and his feelings right now. Her mother’s words echo: It is what it is.

  Miriam nods. “I know. You see a cop, you bolt.”

  “What happens to you if I do that?”

  “I don’t know. If that happens, we’ll find out.”

  He sighs. “We’re doing this?”

  “We’re doing this.”

  “Be careful out there.”

&nb
sp; She smirks. “I’m not the one who’s going to be out there, am I?”

  And with that, she looks to the owl. The owl chirrups and barks. Miriam rolls down the truck window, and a blast of December air hits her. She gets her hands around the bulk of the bird and helps it wriggle out of the window, catching a wingtip up the nose for her trouble.

  When Bird of Doom takes flight, she takes flight with her.

  THIRTY-SIX

  BIRD TV

  The owl is light. Her wings are silent. The transition is quick—she swiftly stops thinking of herself as a person with all the person things, with rubbery fingers and gangly getaway sticks and that strange piggish face that human beings have. Gone is her personhood. Once again, she is a bird. Her humanity is like a memory or, stranger still, like something that belongs to someone else. Someone in another lifetime. Someone on television.

  Television. That word, that thought, it brings her back. Just a little. Not to her body, but to the margins of it. She again recognizes that faint ember flaring in the dark of her own human consciousness—an awareness of being a person in a bird, and not the bird itself.

  And she must remember that she is a person. Because what she wants to accomplish here is not a bird goal but a Miriam goal.

  The owl soars over the night. She takes the animal north, the dark streets of this dead city passing underneath her downy belly. There: two cars, black-and-white cruisers with colored lights on top, parked outside a house. Across the door is a slash of yellow tape. The windows are barred.

  Why would the cops still be here?

  An idle thought: They’re looking for me.

  At Miriam’s behest, the owl opens its cloaca and lets fly with a spatter of white waste. It lands on one of the cop cars with a faintly satisfying splat.

  The owl wheels south once more. She has nothing she can do here. Wren won’t be present. And Wren wouldn’t have gone into the city—Reading has crime, and that means cops. But the trees, the mountain, the trails . . .