by Chuck Wendig
Waiting for it to take her to Miami, Florida.
The countdown is: eighteen hours. She has eighteen hours to get there, and to get to the office of Dr. Richard Never-Dick Beagle in order to stop Gabby from killing him. It happens tomorrow.
Except she’s on the West Coast.
Traveling to the East Coast.
Which means she already loses three hours. Gone. Gobbled up by the time-zone monster. Eighteen hours have lost a vital limb to the amputation, a leg bitten off, and now it’s just fifteen hours.
The flight is six hours.
Which slices it down to nine hours.
Then she needs time to rent a car. Less than an hour, she hopes.
Time to drive south to Tavernier, which is an hour and a half in easy traffic, maybe two in bad traffic. Doable, because it’s 2 PM now, and that means landing in Florida at 8 PM—no! Fuck. At 11PM.
Traffic should be light.
Hit the road at midnight.
Get to his “office” in the Keys by 2 AM.
He dies at 6 AM.
That leaves her with a four-hour cushion.
It isn’t much of a cushion. It’s uncomfortable as fuck, that cushion. It’s a cushion filled with jagged rocks and sharp knives, but it’s better than nothing, and it would be fine if only this fucking plane would take off.
She doesn’t know what they’re doing. They’re all strapped down, buckled in, all their dumb shit in the overhead compartments. They taxied out to the runway and now they’re just sitting here. Sometimes, the engines rev up and play this game, oh oh we’re gonna go, but then they wind right back down again.
Next to her, the seat in the middle is empty. Miriam’s at the window. She looks out over the wing and the ground. She should be seeing sky and clouds, but they’re still bound to the earth like a dumb fucking ostrich.
A quick glance at her phone shows her the last text message she received: this one from Guerrero.
Too slow on the stick; she already made it to Miami.
Guerrero tried to intervene, trying to get them to stop her flight, or stop her from boarding—but by the time they even knew what was happening, it was too late. She’d already boarded the plane. Surveillance showed them that soon as she left Black Star, she must’ve gone right to the airport. She drained their account of what little money they had, bought the first flight, and got on it without a single bag.
No, Miriam thinks. Not she.
Not Gabby.
It.
The Trespasser.
The Ghost of All-Dead.
It doesn’t matter. She told Guerrero it wouldn’t work. It’s why she said no to his offer to have the police or local Federal agents intervene. “They’d only get dead,” she told him. “Fate gets what fate wants.” She knew it sounded narcissistic as fuck, but truth was, she was the only one who could break this chain. Fate’s Foe. The Riverbreaker.
I can break the pattern.
She is the Ruiner.
Right now, she’s ready to ruin this fucking plane. She thrusts an angry finger up to summon the flight attendant, bing bing bing, and the woman hurries over, the attendant’s face puckered up like she’s been sucking on a vinegar-soaked tampon.
“What is it?” she says, trying to sound friendly but failing. “Ma’am.”
“We need to take off.”
“We will be, very shortly.”
“We need to take off now. I need to—” Miriam taps her calculator watch. “I need to be somewhere. I need to get there.”
“Ma’am—”
“Don’t call me ma’am, that’s fucked up, I’m not a ma’am, if anything, I’m a miss, okay?” She feels her words laced with venom.
A shadow passes over the attendant’s face. Her voice is a day darkened by a sudden storm cloud. “We have a number of planes ahead of us for takeoff. Are you going to be a problem, miss?”
Are you going to be a problem?
That more or less defines Miriam.
And she wants to say, Yes, yes, I’m going to be a problem, I am the problem. Someone has already decided that things are the way they are and I don’t like it, so I am the problem that screws up the status quo.
But she can’t do that. Not here. Not now.
She grits her teeth and says, “No, ma’am.”
“Good. Now sit tight.”
The flight attendant hurries back to her seat, checking the overhead bins with the flat of her hand slid along their margins.
Fuck fuck fuck, take off take off take off take off.
She can feel the time slipping through her hands like so much burning rope. Steve offered to come, and now she wishes like hell he would’ve; then, she told him no, because honestly, his life was short enough as it was. She said to him, “Go and get on a different plane. Pick a place you’ve always wanted to visit and visit the hell out of it. And then the next place and the next place after that, and do all the things you’ve wanted to do—zipline over a volcano, jump out of a helicopter, ride a giraffe in Kenya, doesn’t matter, because none of those things are the things that kill you.” She told him that he only had three years, which was a curse, but it was a gift, too—because during those three years, he could do whatever he wanted. He had license to ill, as the Beastie Boys once said.
And he said, “What if what I want to do is come with you? You’ve given me a gift, and I can pay you back.”
Miriam told him to fuck off. She said it as sweetly as she could, and she said it while giving him another hug. But she meant it.
Now she wishes she hadn’t said it at all.
She wishes he was here next to her.
Because she’s not ready for this.
She loves Gabby. Just as she loved Louis. And the Trespasser pulled all the strings and got Louis killed, and now that ghost-fucked motherfucker has even more power. It’s possessing the person she loves, she person she wants to spend her life with, and if she doesn’t get there soon—
Not soon, but now now now.
Then Gabby was going to kill someone.
You’re not taking her away from me, she thinks.
She can almost hear the Trespasser’s laugh in the back of her head.
Over the plane’s intercom: “Folks, we are next in line for takeoff. Please make sure your seatbelts are buckled and your seat backs are in the upright position. We’ll be in the air in a few minutes. Enjoy the ride.”
EIGHTY-FOUR
TIME, BLEEDING OUT ON THE FLOOR
It’s delay after delay after delay. They get in the air, but then there’s a storm system over Texas, so that adds time. They land a half-hour late, but then taxi around the runway again and again because somehow, they don’t have a gate anymore, so it’s like some secret circle of Dante’s Inferno. Then they get a gate and it’s past midnight and all the rental car places are closed even though they’re supposed to be open, so she’s gotta use some emergency red phone and get someone to the desk. That takes an hour.
All the while, she feels the baby kicking.
And worse, she feels like she needs to puke—not from being pregnant, but because she can’t change time.
(And her last . . . meal didn’t exactly help.)
Then she’s in a Nissan Something-or-Other, hard-charging it south, praying to all the gods and all the devils that there’s no cops, no construction, no weaponized bullshit to deal with.
The car carves a line through the Keys. Dark water on both sides. The morning moon oozing toward the horizon.
The clock ticks down.
She’s got two hours to make the hour-and-a-half drive.
I can do this, I can do this.
Long as nothing gets in my way, I can do this.
Just to be sure, she presses a little harder on the accelerator. The rental car moves. Her knuckles are bloodless around the wheel. Her heart is alive in her wrists, her neck, her temples, thudding there like a woodpecker pecking at a dead tree. Go, go, go.
Miami to Kendall to Homestead to Key Largo.
&n
bsp; 60 MPH.
70 MPH.
80 MPH.
No cops, no cops, Jesus fuck, no cops.
And then—
There. Ahead. That’s it. Off Overseas Highway. She almost missed it here in the smeary dark of the predawn morning. She slams the brakes and cuts the wheel, hard-charging into the lot outside the rat-trap office building he calls both a home and a place of dubious business.
She has a half-hour to spare.
I did it.
Gabby, though, might be here, might she not? Miriam glances around; she sees no other cars. She’s alone but for the sound of the water lapping at the shore a hundred yards away.
Just to be sure, she reaches for her knife—
Only to remember she doesn’t fucking have it. No way to bring the knife with her on a plane. She’s without any weapons.
Not that she wants to use them. The Trespasser is a spirit, and the only thing she can stab is Gabby. Still. A blade would make her feel better.
It is what it is.
Into the office she goes.
EIGHTY-FIVE
And Out She Comes Again
The sun burns the edges of the horizon as it rises.
Miriam stands outside once again, in the ocean breeze, shivering as she leans against her car. Her body finally gives up, and she turns and throws up all over the Nissan’s tire. What she throws up is rust-red and frothy, with . . . bits in it. She shudders and turns away from it.
Richard Never-Dick Beagle is already dead.
He has been dead for hours.
She got here before his time, before the date was due, but it didn’t matter. Gabby beat her here—no, the Trespasser beat her here in Gabby’s body—and with its increasing power broke the shackles of fate just as Miriam herself can do. And it killed Beagle before his time.
The presiding question now is Where is Gabby?
But that answer is already known, isn’t it? If it’s true that the Trespasser can do as it wants, when it wants—if it can truly overwrite one’s destiny—then it has gone farther south. It has taken Gabby home.
And there, it will kill her.
If it hasn’t already.
For so long, Miriam was sure that Gabby’s fate was sealed—because who exactly do you kill in a suicide to stop the suicide? The killer in that scenario is the one who is also killed, as if in some mad riddle. The scales cannot be balanced, because in that strange, cosmic way, the scales balance themselves. But then, over time, Miriam became fooled by the idea that Gabby’s suicide could be stopped. . . .
Now the memory of that vision replays in her head—
the air feels like the breath from a panting dog and she tosses and turns but her skin crawls and her heart is a jumpy mouse
another panic attack where she feels oh so small in a world so big, like she’s nothing at all, just a bug under a boot
Gabby gets up and goes to the bathroom and turns on the light and the scars that crisscross her face like the clumsy lacing of a crooked boot are puffy and pink and long-healed but still horrible, Xs and dashes of ruined skin
lines cut into her cheeks
her face is monstrous like when a child breaks a vase, then sloppily glues it back together again
she’s ugly, mauled, nobody will love her, nobody could love her
her breathing goes shallow, she feels woozy, sick with self-hatred
flings open the medicine cabinet
oxycodone, old prescription
and Ambien, her sleeping pills
and Ativan for the anxiety
she puts a bunch into her mouth, not even sure how much
she scoops water into her mouth from the faucet
the pills go down, and she goes back to bed
soon she stops crying
and shaking
and sweating
and breathing—
Miriam thought, I can love her. I can show her that I love her. She won’t end up there. Won’t end up in Florida, swallowing a fistful of strange pills because she is unloved and ugly—no, she’ll turn from that, because she is loved, and she is beautiful, but now Miriam is reminded of that tenet:
What fate wants, fate gets.
It will take its pound of flesh.
And the Trespasser will help it.
What grim fucking irony that is.
As the sun lights the sky above, Miriam sees it—a black cloud moving this way and that. Another murmuration: a flock of birds, hundreds of them, maybe thousands, moving in unison, one never far from the next. For a moment, just one, she closes her eyes and slips into them, ducking, diving, swooping, spiraling. These aren’t starlings like she saw in California, but rather tree swallows. The weather is growing warmer here and soon they’ll migrate north. And they’ve formed this blob—and then a funnel cloud, and then a reaper’s cloak—to protect themselves from the predators here. Predators like peregrine falcons. The birds, thousands of them, form together to save themselves from a single bird.
Miriam blinks, and she’s back in her body.
Gabby may be dead.
Maybe she’s not.
But she has to go. She has to try. She has to see.
And Miriam has an idea.
EIGHTY-SIX
THE REAPER’S CLOAK
The house is quiet, the sun is up, and Miriam finds Gabby in her bed, curled up. Pill bottles lay on the floor; one has rolled into a gummy pile of vomit. A single shaft of sunlight shines through the broken blinds over the window, illuminating Gabby’s broken-mirror face.
Miriam blinks back tears. She kneels down by the bed.
She doesn’t think twice about reaching down and touching the puke.
It’s still warm.
“You’re still in there,” she says, quietly.
Gabby’s eyes ease open. Half-lidded. Her lips twist into something resembling a smile. “Hello, Miriam.”
The voice is Gabby’s, but it isn’t. Miriam can hear other voices behind it, too, like a locust song sung somewhere else, somewhere distant. Those two words, Hello, Miriam, thrum and hum and teem with that fly-wing buzz. Miriam takes Gabby’s hand. Gabby—the Trespasser—pulls it away. But the movement is slow and sluggish, so Miriam grabs the hand again and holds it.
“It’s interesting to be in a dying body,” the Trespasser says, words slurring. “Last time, it was fast, one shot to the head, but this is . . . something special, Miriam. Really something ssssspecial.”
“I’m going to get you out of there.”
“No, don’t. It’s warm in here. And when Gabby dies, I’ll . . . take her with me. Her spirit will be part of my spirit. And that way, she’ll always be a part of you. This is a gift for you, Miriam. A gift from me to you.”
Miriam strokes the back of Gabby’s hand. “You don’t need me anymore, Trespasser. You can break the river all on your own now. You have the ability to change fate. So, leave her. Go do what you will.”
“Nnnno,” the spirit says, bitterly, not at all in Gabby’s voice but rather in Louis’s voice. Then Gabby’s is back as she starts to sit up, vomit slicking her chin. “You don’t understand. It takes a lot . . . for me to do this. I still need you. You’re still my Number One Gal. Bes . . . besides, who am I without you? And who are you without me?”
Miriam takes Gabby’s face. Hands to cheeks. She presses her forehead against Gabby’s—the Trespasser tries to wriggle away, but she’s weak, too weak to resist.
“Gabby,” Miriam says, whispering into the other woman’s ear. “I know you’re in there. And I want you to try now, try very hard, to hear me. This thing can only be in you because it thinks you have no purpose. You have holes in your soul. But I need you. Let me be your purpose. Let me be the reason you’re here. The reason you stay here. I’m alone. I’m going to have a baby and it’s going to live—I’ll make sure of it. But I need you here to help me. Without you, I’m lost. You’re my wings. Help me fly.”
The Trespasser pulls away, backing into the corner, holding a pillow up as a shie
ld. Gabby’s eyes blink furiously, as if irritated. When she speaks, it’s in a discordant hum, the voice warbling from one to the next with each syllable: “What are you doing? She can’t kick me out now that I’m in—you can’t do shit to me, Miriam. I’m roaches in the wall. Only way I get out is to . . .” Her chin dips, her eyelids flutter. “Burn the whole house down.”
Then Gabby’s body ratchets tight. Like all her muscles have gone paralytic. Her teeth grind. She moans through clenched jaws.
“No,” the Trespasser says. “Stay. In. Here.”
Miriam says, “Gabby. You don’t need to push it all the way out. Just a little further. Just close to the surface. That’s all I need.”
Then she stands up and walks to the window.
The Trespasser: “Where are you going?”
“I brought friends,” Miriam answers.
The bit of sunlight through the broken blinds is obscured for a moment by a flitting shadow. Then another, and another. Dark spots dapple the wall. Miriam opens the window.
A tree swallow alights upon the mangle. This little songbird is a male: its face a black-and-white mask, its back an iridescent blue.
A second lands next to it.
Those two come into the room. And then, it’s like uncorking a bottle—a swarm of them floods into the room, a cacophony of fluttering wings brushing past Miriam like bats out of a cave-mouth. They alight upon the lamp, the dresser, the headboard of the bed, the bookshelf.
More wait outside. In the trees. On the roof. Hopping about on the ground, hop, hop, hop.
Gabby laughs. But Miriam can see the look there.
“What is this?” the Trespasser asks. “What are you doing?”
Miriam shrugs. “What can I say? I have a few tricks left.”
“You have no tricks I don’t already know.”
The birds trill and chatter.
“I’m going to take you out of Gabby and put you in these birds.”
“Fuck you,” the Trespasser seethes, leaning forward on all fours like a wolf sitting on its haunches. Her chin thrusts out, tongue bitten between teeth so hard, it bleeds. “You’re no mystic. Lukauskis is dead.”
“I know he’s dead. You killed him. If he wasn’t dead, he probably would’ve objected to me eating his heart.”