by Chuck Wendig
Underneath the table, Miriam feels someone grab her hand. Gabby.
“What’s your plan, then? Why am I here?” Miriam asks.
Ethan leans back. Like he’s suddenly comfortable. “I want this to be our family. Special people. Different. Folks who can see how things really are, and then move to change them.”
“And everyone here is . . . like that? They all have the curse?”
David’s eyes twinkle. “We sure do.”
“But nobody said it’s a curse but you,” Ofelia says.
“You’re different too,” Ethan says. “Isn’t that right, Miriam?”
She wants to say: You don’t know me. But in a rare moment of restraint, she keeps her lips zipped and the words tucked. “The boy. What about him?”
“Isaiah? Oh, he’s very special, indeed. Isaiah, the child that never should’ve lived. The premature child of a drug-addicted prostitute mother.” Way he says these words, it’s like the boy is some kind of prophet. Some savior. “Died twice in the NICU at Cardon Children’s Hospital. Brought back to life both times. In and out of foster homes until he came to us via a very kind set of foster parents: Darren and Dosie Rubens. But his mother . . . Grace.” He clucks his tongue, shakes his head. “She came to take him back. We invited her to join us, but.” He shrugs.
“What can the boy do?”
He grins. “I would hate to spoil that for you. We’ll get him back. And then you’ll see. But he’s a very powerful child.”
“He is a . . . weapon,” Karen says, her voice muffled as she stares down at her lap. Her shoulders hitch and twitch as she speaks.
“Well, I’m no weapon,” Miriam says. “Nothing I can do will help whatever . . . this is. I think we’re done here.”
She stands up. Gabby follows suit. And then the two of them just stand there. Ogled. Ofelia snickers. David frowns. Miriam feels a presence behind them— it’s a good bet it’s Jade, Ethan’s soldier. Gun ready.
Ethan picks at his teeth with a thumbnail. “I have not yet returned your keys. I think before I even consider giving them back, you ought to do us the favor of enjoying the food we’ve cooked. I hate to waste it. And I don’t want you to sell yourself short, Miriam. I think what you can show us will be profound. To peer into our lives. To see our deaths. That’s powerful business.”
And there. An opportunity.
“You want to know,” she says. A statement, not a question.
“Know what?”
“Don’t play coy. You act like you’re a straight shooter, so shoot me straight, cowboy. You want to know how you die. It’s okay. Everybody wants to know. It’s like the world’s most morbid party trick.”
Ethan licks his lips. It comes off him in waves: the eagerness, the interest. She knows it well. He has a taste for something he hasn’t even tasted yet. The most forbidden fruit— rotten and sweet. A glimpse at the end of the road and what waits there in the last light before darkness.
Good. She can use that.
He stands up. “How’s it work?” he asks.
“I can’t do them.” She points to the others at the table. “I can’t see what becomes of others with the curse. Their fates are on a roulette wheel that’s still spinning. But for you? Oh, for you, it’s simple. Skin on skin will do it. A little touchy-touchy. I see how you die. I see when. I don’t see where, so that’s one variable in the equation that will have a big blinking question mark over it. But the rest is on me. You really want to know? It’ll shake you up like a soda can.”
Ethan kisses the top of his wife’s head. Karen moans. He nods.
Miriam pries her fingers from Gabby’s. Poor Gabby. She doesn’t know what’s coming. Maybe she can sense it, though. Hopefully she does, because I’m going to need her to be ready. But she can’t risk giving it away, so . . .
Everybody’s flying blind here. Everyone but Miriam.
She steps around the back of Gabby.
Ofelia and David watch her with dark eyes. Ofelia looks bored. But David— he gets it. He understands that something’s happening. He just doesn’t know what.
Miriam creeps around the table, stands on the far side of Karen’s wheelchair. Ethan opposes her. He puts out his hand.
She starts to put out hers.
Karen’s head lolls back and she stares up at Miriam with white eyes gone suddenly bloodshot— spider webs of little red veins. “You,” Karen says in a loud whisper. “Death touched you. Killed something inside you. And now. Now he’s passed you by. He can’t see you at all.”
Killed something inside you.
Somewhere out over the desert, Miriam’s sure she hears a baby screaming. A loud squall like from an infant that’s starving, cold, or hurt.
It’s not real. She knows that. It’s the Trespasser fucking with her. Well, fuck him. Or her. Or whatever the Trespasser is. She grits her teeth and looks down at Ethan’s waiting hand.
Miriam takes it in her own and—
THIRTY-TWO
BROKEN KEY
Ethan Key stands naked and alone in a cement block room. No lights above. Just a small Coleman camping lantern sitting nearby. His mouth is taped shut. He is bound to a pipe above his head. His fingers are broken. His toes, too. His nose. He’s been like this awhile, and his nude body shows dozens of bruises. Bruises like the shadows cast by clouds drifting lazily overhead.
A murmur of voices somewhere nearby. Spanish. Ethan speaks it but can’t understand what they’re saying— too far away, behind too much cement.
Footsteps. Coming closer.
A door opens. Metal. Ratchets open with a squeak, shut with a bang.
A man enters. He’s tall, handsome, in a bold white suit. The way he walks is almost rigid, robotic, like he’s a department store mannequin. When he speaks, he does so with a voice of burned caramel, with words of warm whiskey. An accent waits there: Central or South American, maybe. The man saunters forward. Something’s in his hand.
That something flits and flips from finger to finger. A card, like a playing card. Bowing and arching as he moves it from knuckle to knuckle.
With a flourish and a flip of the wrist, he faces it forward. Toward Ethan.
On the card is a crude drawing of a spider. Inked in, all the way black— all of it except for a circle on the spider’s back. A circle with three lines spinning out from the center. “Is this your card?” the tall man asks.
“Wuh. Wuh. Who. Who are you.” Ethan’s words are mushy, muddy.
“You know who we are. You had to know the cartel would be coming for you eventually.”
“Please. No. Let me go. We left you alone . . .”
The man draws a deep, satisfying breath through his nose. “Life. Existence. Presence. It is decided at the moment of inception. A length of string carefully meted and measured out, then cut. All things, predetermined. Destiny: from the Latin, destinare. Meaning, to make something firm. To establish its permanence. As if carving it in stone. Fate: a thing ordained. Fate. Fatal. Death. Nona, Decima, Morta. You established your fate when you built your little town.”
A low animal whine rises from Ethan. A whine of fear and uncertainty. Tears run. He’s a man broken: a stick snapped over someone’s knee. “Puh— puh— lease. Lemme . . . just lemme . . .” He doesn’t finish. He can’t. Words swallowed by the whirlpool of tears.
“Creation is thought to be a gift, but it is not,” the man says, barely paying attention. He stares up into the shadows of the ceiling. Or past them. “It is not a thing given but rather a thing bought. Purchased. A debt incurred at the moment of becoming. All things must end.”
The man flips the card and it disappears.
He pivots now, walking from Ethan to the door and back again. Feet echoing.
“I don’t I don’t I don’t understa—”
“It is not just a person’s life that incurs this debt. All things that exist must make the purchase and owe the payment. Everything that exists will one day not exist. That can be troubling for some, but I
find it freeing. Our presence here is given margins. A start and an end. Everything in this way has a story; some stories are long and boring. Others? Short and exciting. Yours was exciting, I think. And good for you. But it will be shorter than you like.”
“My wife. Just leave her alone.”
“She is with us now. She will be kept safe. I think she could bring some value to our organization. Don’t you?”
“You fucker. You fucker.”
“You toyed with things you did not and do not understand. You played with the length of string. All because of some . . . what? Visions? Delusions? Well. You interrupted our business. The cartel can only stomach so much troublemaking. Things were going to go the way things were going to go; fate was to have its course, and yet here you are, acting like you didn’t expect this.”
The man’s hand flips again.
A knife is in it now. Out of nowhere? Or always up his sleeve?
He drags the tip of the blade up Ethan’s thigh. Past his balls, his cock, up his belly. Drawing a tiny line— like a thorn-scratch. Circling a nipple. Up the neck. Under the chin. Ethan whips his head around now, an eel on a fishing line, but no struggling will change what’s about to happen.
The man turns the knife so that the hilt is down and the blade is up. He cups his hand almost lovingly underneath the hilt. And he slowly begins to press upward. The blade enters the rough skin there under Ethan’s jaw. Ethan’s eyes go wide. He struggles, shakes, but it only makes it worse. Blood on the man’s hands. Blood wetting the rim of his white sleeve. Up, up, up the blade goes. Into Ethan’s mouth. Spearing the tongue. He gurgles. Screams. Legs kicking. Elbows locking.
A little resistance now.
So, the man drops his hand and jams the knife back up again with the heel of his palm. A crunch. The resistance is done. The blade into the brain.
Ethan Key is dead. Body slack. Naked. And bleeding.
THIRTY-THREE
BUSTED LOCK
Time is a fraying ribbon. Cut up into loose threads. Every second on the clock a strange and uncertain misery. Her hand slides out of Ethan’s grip. She hears him asking, eager, needy: How do I die?
Karen stares up. Eyes wide. Mouth frozen in a silent moan.
Ofelia sneers. David looks bored. Gabby tenses— she knows.
With every blink, Miriam sees Ethan Key’s death. Cement room. Spare lantern. A playing card with a spider and a circle. The knife. And she tries to feel the strings of this thing and where they lead: Mary Stitch and a little boy named Isaiah and the Trespasser. None of that means anything in this moment.
She tells Ethan: “The cartel kills you.”
It’s not a lie. She just doesn’t tell him all of it. Devil in the details, and all of that. Why give him the details? Why offer him the Devil?
The look on his face is one— oddly— of comfort. Like he always knew this was the way. Well, fuck him for that. Fuck him for his satisfaction.
She plays it up:
“You’re naked when they do it. They kill your wife in front of you. They cut off your dick and your balls and make you eat them—”
The look on Ethan’s face is like hot chocolate on a cold day: so pleasurable to watch his mask of satisfaction crack. His smug mouth turns down and his eyes go wide and she sees his eyes actually get wet from coming tears—
But then David, pouty fucking David, ruins it all.
“Liar,” he says. Singsongy.
Ethan turns toward David, who gives a small nod. Anger and disappointment war on Ethan’s face.
What, then, is David’s curse?
Best guess: he’s a human lie detector.
Shit.
Ethan’s hand moves. She sees the gun at his hip— the pistol from earlier, sitting there in an unclipped holster.
It’s time.
She gives a hard hip-bump to the table. Glasses spill. Lemonade all over. It’s a distraction— small but vital. Everyone’s eyes turn toward the thing that’s moving more than she is. They’re all looking at the pitcher and the glasses and the table shaking, and as their eyes move, Miriam’s hand darts out—
The steak knife, Ethan’s steak knife, is in her hand.
She moves backward, bringing Karen’s wheelchair with her— and just as everyone turns to see what’s happening, she brings the knife to Karen’s throat.
Jade is screaming, rifle up.
Ethan is shaking his head: no, no, no. Hand waving to Jade: put it down, put the fucking gun down.
“I’ll kill her. I’ll kill your goddamn wife. Your prophet.”
“I can take the shot,” Jade barks. “I have a clean shot.”
“Don’t!” Ethan yells at him. “Don’t you dare, Jade. Put it down.”
“Better yet, give it to Gabby,” Miriam hisses.
Jade, though. Jade’s a maverick. He doesn’t give a shit.
He gives her the gun, all right. He raises the rifle, points it at the back of Gabby’s head and—
No, no, god, what have I done, no—
But Ethan points his own pistol.
At Jade.
“You shoot her,” Ethan says to his soldier. “Then I shoot you.”
“Let me play this my way, Ethan,” Jade says— not angry but pleading. Like he thinks he can do this. Gabby cries out. Her face scrunches up as she tries not to sob. She’s holding it in, keeping it together, but barely. She’s ready to come apart at the seams. Miriam is too, but she can’t let that happen.
“Jade, goddamnit—”
Miriam yells, “Shut the fuck up! I count to five. Jade, give Gabby that rifle. Ethan, I want that pistol. If I get to five, I cut Karen’s throat.”
David, from behind clasped hands, says, “She’s not lying.”
Miriam: “One—”
Jade: “Ethan, let me pop this bitch.”
Ethan pulls back the hammer on the pistol. “Pop her, I pop you.”
Miriam: “Two!”
Ethan: “Karen, baby, it’s gonna be okay.”
Jade growls. But the rifle stays pointed. He jabs it into the base of Gabby’s head and she almost breaks— her teeth clench, she whines through them.
Miriam: “Three!” Her hands tighten around the blade. Karen bleats.
Jade roars.
He throws the rifle on the table.
Ethan exhales.
But Miriam, she’s still on the clock: “Four!”
“Whoa, okay, now, okay.” Ethan sets his own pistol down, nudges it toward Miriam. She reaches over Karen’s arm and wheelchair wheel and snatches up the pistol. She points it at Ethan and flings the knife to the side. Karen gabbles and screeches, her head whipping around on her neck like she’s a parakeet on fire.
“Gabby, point that rifle at that muscle-bound sack of meat.”
She does. She gulps and turns. The gun rattles as her hands shake.
Jade sees it. He knows she’s not ready for prime time with that thing. He presages his movement— all parts of him tense up. Gabby doesn’t see it. She doesn’t see him roar and reach forward, grabbing the barrel and stock and turning it away, raising a fist—
Pop.
His brains disappear into the darkness.
The recoil from the pistol vibrates Miriam’s arms.
He drops. Gabby screams. Ethan starts to move but Miriam trains the gun back on him. “I told you I was fast like a rattlesnake.” Grotesque satisfaction fills her, blooming like a heart full of black flowers. She thinks the courthouse will still suffer an attack in three weeks’ time, but at least that fucker won’t be there. He won’t be the one to put a bullet in that old man’s head.
“Miriam, you have made a terrible mistake,” Ethan says. He’s mad now. Nostrils flaring like a bull seeing a matador. “This is gonna come back on you. Like the recoil of that pistol.”
“I can handle the pistol. I can handle you. Keys. To the van. On the table.”
“What if I say ‘no’?”
“Then it all ends here. You. Your wife. Those
two mental midgets—” She gestures toward Ofelia and David. “You have a chance to keep your weird fires burning, but me and mine, we’re getting the hell outta here. So: keys. Now.”
He holds up his hands. “I don’t have them.”
“Lying,” David says. Then gasps and covers his mouth.
“David—” Ethan snarls.
Miriam pulls back the hammer on the pistol. “Last chance.”
Ethan Key roars and then acquiesces. He fishes the keys out of his pocket with a jingly-jangle and slams them down on the table.
“Good,” Miriam says, and reaches forward.
But as she does, Karen looks up and whispers:
“Death doesn’t see you. But I do.”
Miriam growls: “I don’t need to see how you die, Karen. Way I figure it, you sneeze too hard one day and that bullet lodged in your brainmeat will pop free and come back out the hole it came through.” She shakes the keys. “Gabby.”
Gabby, still holding the rifle, gives a terror-struck nod.
Together, they flee.
PART FOUR
* * *
DEAD BIRD DON’T FLY
INTERLUDE
THE TITMOUSE
The titmouse is a friendly bird, the park ranger said.
Miriam just laughed, because, c’mon. Titmouse. Titmouse. The ranger just stood there, annoyed— blink, blink, blink— and Miriam of course explained because Miriam of course enjoys digging holes and jumping in them. She said, “Because first you imagine a mouse, a little squeaky mouse, and then you imagine a tit— a boob, a breast, a sweater monkey that has escaped its underwire cage— and now it’s attached to the mouse? Like, on its back? Or the top of its head? Flopping around like a damn Jell-O mold? Huh? Right? Oh, come on. That’s funny. That’s just . . . that’s just good humor, lady.”
