by Chuck Wendig
At least it's not another motel, she thinks.
She fades out.
Rip.
Miriam's eyes jolt open. The world rushes in with a windy whoosh: a river of blood in her ears, an undertow pulling her back toward full-bore consciousness.
Miriam finds herself hanging in a shower with faded tiles the color of sea-foam.
Her hands are bound above, draped over a shower head.
Her feet, also bound, barely touch the tub beneath her. She has to stand on tippy-toes. She has no traction, only the ability to wriggle like a worm on a hook.
Frankie stands in the doorway, too tall for it. He stoops to fit himself in.
Hairless relaxes on the toilet. Streaks of dried blood – the mascara of a weepy girl – mar his cheeks. In his lap rests Miriam's diary. Gently, he shuts it.
Harriet flaps the electrical tape she's just yanked from Miriam's mouth in front of Miriam's face – a strange taunt – and backs away.
"I have read this book," Hairless says, tapping the notebook against his leg.
"Fuck you," Miriam mutters.
Hairless shakes his head as Harriet squeezes her hand into a black glove. "Such a boring refrain from you. Fuck this, fuck that, fuck me, fuck you. Such a crass little girl. Harriet, I see the ghost of a bruise around this girl's eye. Please, will you wake the dead?"
Harriet steps up onto the rim of the tub and pops Miriam in the eye with the gloved fist. Miriam's head rocks backward.
"There we go, yes," Hairless says. "That will remind you to be polite when you are in such esteemed company. Now, speaking of the dead. You have an intimate connection with the dead, do you not?"
"The dying," Miriam croaks. "Not so much the dead."
"Yes, and we're all dying, aren't we?"
"We are. Well put."
"Thank you. See? That is the politeness I was hoping you might offer. Good." Hairless holds up the book and gestures with it. "I believe what you write in this book is true. I do not think it the fantasy of a deranged girl, deranged as you may be. May I tell you of my oma, my grandmother?"
"Go for it. I'm not going anywhere."
Hairless smiles. A fond remembrance flashes in his eyes.
INTERLUDE
The Witch Woman
My grandmother, Milba, was a witch woman.
Even as a little girl picking cranberries out in the bog, she could see things. Her visions did not happen unbidden, but by her studying the world around her. She would touch things, things of nature, things of the bog, and those things would show her what was coming.
If she found the bones of a snake, she could handle them, let them roll around in her small fingers and watch how the bog water ran off them, and therein she might see what would happen to her father later that day when he went to market, or how her sister might suffer a splinter under the nail of her toe.
She could smash the berries in her palms and read the red guts. They might tell her what weather was coming. By running her hands up the bark of a tree, she might learn what birds nested there, and by breaking the neck of a rabbit kit, she might learn where the rest of the rabbits had their warren.
Later, when I was a child and we had come to this country, my oma would sit out on the front stoop of our house, sharpening her knives across the sidewalk and steps. She would hull peas or break beans and close her eyes to see what they might tell her. By old age, Oma was small and withered, a bent stick with arthritic claws and a nose like a fish hook, and the neighbors thought her strange the way she babbled, and so they called her a witch.
They called her a witch as an insult. They did not know she had visions. They did not know the truth of it.
They would come to learn it.
There came a day when I had been abused at school again. I was a thin child, sickly, and it did not help that I had been born without a single sprout of hair on my worm's body. It also did not help that my English was not particularly good at the time, and I often had trouble speaking as well as the other children.
The boy who bullied me, a boy named Aaron, was a Jew. He was fat in the stomach, and had big muscles and curly hair, and he said he hated me because I was a German, a "fuckin' Nazi," even though I was not German. I am Dutch, I would tell him, Dutch.
It did not matter. At first the abuse was what you would expect. He would hold me down and beat on me until my nose bled and bruises covered my body.
But as the days went on, he did worse things.
He burned my arm with match-tips. He pushed things into my ears – little stones, sticks, ants – until I suffered from infections. He grew more brazen, crueler. He had me pull down my pants and he did things to me – he cut my inner thighs with a knife, and stabbed at my buttocks with it.
So I went to my grandmother. I wanted to know when this would all end. I said to her, show me, show me how it ends. I knew what she was, what she could do, but I had always been too afraid of it – too afraid of her – to ask. But now I was desperate.
Oma told me she would help me. She sat me down and said, "Do not be scared of what I can see, because what I can see is part of nature. It is natural. I read natural things, like bones or leaves or fly wings, and they tell me what is coming. The world has its strange balance, and what I can see is no more magic than how you look down the road and see a mailbox or a man walking – I simply see how everything will balance out."
Oma had a jar of teeth, teeth she had collected from many animals over many years, and she emptied that jar in front of me. She had me open one of the scabs on my arms from the burning matches, and she took some of my blood on her fingertips and ran them across the scattered teeth.
Oma told me, "Your suffering will be over soon. Tomorrow night."
I was excited. I said, "That soon?"
And she said yes. She had foreseen it. Aaron would meet his end.
"He will die?" I asked.
She nodded. I was not sad about this. I was not conflicted. I felt happy.
The next night, I waited in my bed the way that a child might wait for Christmas morning. I could not sleep. I was too excited, and a little scared.
I heard a sound outside. Scraping. Metal on stone.
It was Oma. She took one of her kitchen knives, sharpened it on the stoop, and then went to Aaron's house – which was only down the street by less than a mile. A withered shadow, she crept into his room. And while he slept, she stabbed him. A hundred times.
She came back to my room and told me what she had done, and she gave me the knife.
"Sometimes, we must choose what we see down the road," she said.
And then she went outside to wait.
They came for her in the early morning hours. She made no mystery about what she had done – her gown was covered in the bully's blood. I do not know what they came to do to her, maybe kill her, but it was too late.
She had died there on the stoop.
A bent little shape, a weeping willow, dead.
I wept for her.
I did not weep for Aaron.
THIRTY-ONE
Hairless Fucker Dies
"That's a great story," Miriam says. "I really like the way it proves nothing about your grandmother's magic powers, the way she says something's going to come true and then she goes and stabs a little boy to death to make it true. That's super. I totally see why you believe this stuff."
Hairless's smile fades. His tone is sharp, steely.
"You watch your tongue, or I will bite it off. Oma was a true spirit. She saved my life when I was too weak to do so."
Miriam says nothing. She just feels the pulsing ring from where Harriet hit her.
The small, stocky woman paces back and forth in front of the tub, fist still tightened.
"She also taught me that the universe has rules. Rules that are hidden from men, unless one is willing to look deeper, to kick over the log and see what squirms underneath."
Hairless pulls out his satchel and shakes it. Something that sounds like dice clatter toget
her. "I collect bones. It is what I read."
Miriam coughs. "Great, you've got the voodoo, too."
For a moment, the Hairless Fucker says nothing. Then he nods. "Yes."
Miriam's not so sure. She thinks he's lying. Maybe he convinced himself of it, or maybe he's just hoping to convince others.
"Still," he says, "you have abilities far more precise than most. You have abilities on par with my oma. That impresses me. It thrills me."
"Happy to be entertaining."
"I always need good people in my organization."
"And what organization is that?"
"Acquisition and distribution."
"Drugs, drugs, guns, drugs, sex slaves, drugs."
His eyes twinkle.
"I can't help you," she says.
"You can. You have vision. You're not a moral person."
"That stings," she says. And it does. She says it all snarky, but it genuinely stings. An evil man like this thinks he's found a bird of his feather? "I'm a bad girl, not a bad person."
"There is a difference?"
Miriam's eyes are two knife-holes, out of which pour hatred.
"I did not think so," he says, stroking her diary with long fingers. "You will work for me, then. Welcome to the team. The organization appreciates your unique skill-set."
"I'd like to discuss my benefits."
Hairless chuckles. "Oh?"
"I don't need health benefits, because I drink too much, and I smoke even more. In fact, right now I'm kind of ready to gnaw my hands off for a cigarette. So, in return for saving you some money with those health insurance companies – they're vampires, don't you know – I propose that you simply let my friend, Louis, be. Just let it lie."
"But what of my suitcase?"
"I can get it for you. Let me go to him. I can get the case, no questions."
"You're offering this to me? As a negotiation?"
"I am. I'll work for you if you spare him."
She sees him consider it. The offer passes before his face like a shadow. He cups his chin. He rubs the flat of his hand against his Hairless Fucker head. But then she realizes: He's just putting on a show. Hairless is mocking her.
"Hmm," he says, dragging out the consonance. "No."
"Fine, then I don't work for you."
"You are not in a negotiating position. The lowest, sickliest wolf in the pack does not negotiate with the alpha for a bigger bite of the kill. It is not done. You would not respect me if I gave in to your wishes. I sense you are a, how to put it? A get an inch, take a mile kind of girl, yes? I give a little now, and you walk all over me. I am not your father."
"No shit. Your dull, Eurotrash seed couldn't father a donkey. Though I'm sure you've tried, you froo-froo piece-of-shit donkey-fucker skinhead."
"Besides," Hairless says, ignoring her. "You obviously care about this man in the truck. That is a no-no. I must take away those things you care about, so all that is left is me."
He approaches the tub after setting her diary down on the closed lid of the toilet.
He puts one foot on the tub's edge. He floats his hands above her hips – he does not touch them, but his fingers hover. They hover up over her stomach, her tits.
"I am all that you need to care about. My approval. My smiling face. They know."
Harriet and Frankie – the "they" in question – shoot looks to each other. Frankie looks uncomfortable, but Harriet's dull eyes dance for a half-second; they flash like mirrors.
"Your first task for me–" His nimble fingers, each pointed like it's nothing but bone sharpened to a narrow tip, drift over her collarbone and neck. Miriam has a tiny daydream in which her hands break free and (like she's the Bride of the Incredible Hulk) she brings the shower-head down out of the wall, burying it into the Hairless Fucker's shiny dome. "Is to tell me how I die."
She hawks a looger, spits it at his eye. Bullseye. "No."
He wipes it away with the back of his hand.
"I know that all it takes is skin on skin," he says.
Then he grabs her chin with vice-grip fingers –
Reggaeton bangs a dull Dem Bow beat from the back of a nightclub; the alley is awash in long shadows and the fringe glow of neon from the street. Hairless emerges from those long shadows alone, no Harriet, no Frankie.
Pastel pink suit, black shoes, mirrored shades despite the midnight hour.
His face is marked by deeper lines. Even his scalp is starting to tighten with time, as this is seven years – almost eight, really – into the future.
His black shoes step onto a set of metal steps heading into the back door of the club.
Hairless's gaze flicks imperceptibly: A big black sonofabitch, skin as dark as volcanic glass, emerges from behind a dumpster. Mister Midnight's got a black vest on, open to the front, showcasing an oiled, sweat-slick chest with little afro-puffs of hair dotting the obsidian flesh.
The door at the top of the stairs opens a crack but no more.
Mister Midnight walks without a sound. He's on the steps. One tremendous foot after the other, coming up behind Hairless.
Hairless pretends not to notice.
When Mister Midnight makes his move, the Hairless Fucker is ready.
The big sonofabitch pulls a curved blade, a kukri, out of nowhere. It comes down on Hairless, or that's what it's supposed to do. Instead, it kisses air as Hairless deftly pivots and presses himself back against the railing.
A flash of metal. Hairless's hand dances (a painter's hand).
A straight razor in his grip draws quick Xs across Mister Midnight's exposed chest.
But the big sonofabitch isn't taking it. His elbow crashes against Hairless's wrist. The straight razor spirals away, hits the metal steps, clang, and is gone.
At the top of the steps, the back door to the club creaks open. The beat grows louder.
With his two long-fingered hands, Hairless grabs Mister Midnight's head the way one might hunker down to eat a too-big burger. And eat he does. He bites the big sonofabitch's nose, the cheek, the jaw. He wrenches his head side to side. Blood spatters the wall and steps.
Mister Midnight screams.
Then, two gunshots.
Someone has emerged onto the top of the steps. A spindly drug addict with a knit cap pulled low and meth craters pocking his cheeks.
A .38 snubnose in his hand blows lazy smoke. Two roses of blood bloom on Hairless's back as he lets go of Mister Midnight. The big sonofabitch, clutching his raw meat face, starts to go down – and, as he does, Hairless effortlessly snatches the curved kukri from the man's failing grip.
Hairless turns on the addict, blade raised high.
His face is a grinning, crimson rictus. A skull with bloodstain lipstick.
Hairless lunges at the addict.
The blade cleaves the addict's head right down the middle.
The gun does off.
Hairless's brains fly like someone tossing out muddy washwater.
Blood zig-zags down his face. He looks around. He sits down on the steps as the addict comes tumbling down next to him. The red stuff drips past his nose to his lips, and he licks them and makes a look like he's pondering the taste, seriously thinking about becoming a cannibal. And then he slumps to the side, dead.
– and he presses her cheeks so hard that her teeth bite into the inside of her mouth.
He holds her there like that, staring into her eyes.
"You saw," he whispers. "You saw how I die."
Miriam nods, as much as his grasp will allow.
Beaming, he lets go. He's eager. Excited. "Tell me. Tell me, now."
Miriam grins a rueful grin.
"I kill you," she lies. "Me. I shoot you right in the fucking head."
Hairless searches her face. His gaze is panicked. You can make me have my vision, she thinks, but you can't make me tell you the truth.
"She's lying," Harriet says. "I can see it."
Hairless steps away.
"You'll tell me," he says, still unsure. "
You'll tell me so I can beat it. I will beat fate. I will sidestep death with your help, one way or another."
"Doesn't work like that," Miriam says, tasting the coppery penny-taste from where she bit into her cheeks. "You can't beat the system. The house always wins."
"I am different."
Hairless's phone rings. He holds it up, looks at the number, then snaps his fingers at Frankie. "You. Let our new employee have her rest."
