Mockingbird

by Chuck Wendig

  His father used to do that, too. Always saving for retirement. Always talking about retirement. How glorious it would be. Shangri-La. The Seventh Heaven. The day they open the cage door, let the animal run free.

  The man died a year before retirement. Forklift accident.

  Louis ended up with the old man's savings, what with his mother having died from emphysema only a few years before that.

  With that money Louis paid for CDL class. Bought his first truck.

  And now here he is, doing the same thing. Saving, saving. Waiting for something.

  Or maybe, just maybe, running away from something.

  Miriam.

  Even now he's running from her but he can't avoid her. She's like a ghost that haunts the person, not the house. No matter how far you run, there she is.

  He's not sure that he loves her. Not sure you can love a person like that. But he knows he cares about her. Deeply. Completely. Whether he likes it or not (and right now, he most certainly does not).

  The itch. He lifts the eyepatch, scratches at the margins of an eye he no longer has. Whenever he thinks about Miriam, the ruined socket itches.

  It's her fault that he lost his eye, and it's also because of her that he's not dead.

  That's the real twist of the knife, right there.

  He doesn't blame her. At least, that's what he tells himself. Some nights like tonight, when it's just him and the white reflective margins of the big slab of highway and the dotted yellow line that looks like the stitching of an autopsy incision, he's not so sure.

  Still. He can't stop thinking about her.

  It makes him feel like an addict. This trip was to help him get clean.

  It's not working.

  He turns on the radio. Sets it to scan for something, anything. The stations warble between static and country music and religious broadcasts until he finally settles on a night flight of Art Bell and his Coast-to-Coast AM, on which the commentator talks about conspiracies and UFOs and all manner of American weirdness. Art Bell: a trucker's best friend.

  Driving like this feels like being on a boat in the fog. Drifting aimless.

  It's then that his high beams catch something. A shape.

  A shape that slowly resolves into a car. A wreck. In trucker lingo, a "broken crayon."

  The cars sits in the middle of the lane.

  He has time enough to react, apply brakes, slow the Mack. He could probably drive around it – the car is turned perpendicular to the highway's edge, but there might be enough room on the other side. But he should call this in. It's dangerous. And somebody might need his help.

  The lights are on inside the car.

  Steam or smoke rises in coils from under the hood.

  He stops the truck. Leaves the lights on. Peers out the windshield.

  Honda Accord. Five, six years old. Maybe it's not a wreck. He can't see any structural damage. Both tires on this side are flat.

  He leaves the truck idling. Beams on bright.

  Louis gets out of the cab.

  The smell hits him: that acrid tang of anti-freeze, like bitter green blood running on the asphalt, pooling around the front flat.

  Louis orbits the car. The tires on the other side are flat, too.

  Nobody's inside the car. But the interior lights remain on.

  Louis hears something behind him.

  A shuffle. A scritch, a scratch.

  He wheels on it–

  And his breath catches in his chest.

  It's like something out of that Hitchcock movie. The whole road, blanketed with birds. Blackbirds. Starlings. Grackles. Crows. Shifting uneasily. Claws clicking on asphalt. Click click. Click click.

  Beaks pointed away from him.

  Eyes pointed toward him.

  Some of them murmur. Or caw. Or make a low chirrup in the backs of their throats. He thinks, any minute, any one of these birds could come at him. Or hell, all of them at once – wings and beaks and talons. A fear runs through him, a fear in which the birds swarm and come for his face and he loses his last remaining eye, leaving him blind and in the dark forever.

  Get away from them. Get away from them now.

  His truck, though – it's too far away. Twenty feet isn't much, but having to cross that space covered in creepy birds is twenty feet too many.

  The car. Get in the car.

  He eases toward the vehicle. Pops the door as slow and quiet as he can. Slides his large frame into the Honda.

  The steering wheel presses tight against his chest. The seat's up too far.

  He feels around, looks at the side of the seat and then beneath it for the lever that lets him pop the seat back–

  And when he looks up again, a fat crow stands on the dashboard. Inside the car. With him. Louis resists the urge to freak out – his first thought is grab grab grab it, twist its head off like a bottlecap – but he takes a deep breath and waits.

  Little curls of smoke rise from the crow's beakholes.

  Smoke that smells like a smoldering Marlboro.

  What's up, Lou?" the crow says, speaking with Miriam's voice

  Louis about pisses his pants.

  Outside, the birds are hopping up onto the car hood. Worse, he hears the scratching of talons above him on the roof and behind him on the trunk.

  "Hey," the crow says again, still perfectly mimicking Miriam's caustic tongue. "One-eye. Captain Darling of the S.S. Cyclops. You listening?"

  "This isn't happening," Louis asserts.

  "Oh, it jolly well is happening, cupcake. Like it or not. I have a message for you. Open your big dopey ears and listen. Are you listening?"

  "I'm… listening."

  "Miriam's in trouble. Hip-deep in it and sinking fast. She's not just up Shit Creek. She's up Shit River. No paddle. No boat. Not even a pair of those little inflatable arm-floaties. The forces of darkness are aligning against her, Lou. They don't like that she's been stirring the soup. She's a fate-changer, and fate has a funny way of pushing back hard. Real fucking hard."

  "What are you telling me?" he asks. Then he squeezes his eye shut and mutters, "I can't believe I'm talking to a bird."

  "I'm telling you she's dead meat on a stick unless you go to her. Now. Put away all the bullshit and the bad feelings and go. She isn't invincible. If you don't pull her up out of Shit River, I can promise that she's going to drown." The bird's beak clacks. "The river is rising, pal."

  "Who…" He can't bear asking the question.

  The bird can. "Who am I? I'm a friend, Lou. A friend."

  And then the bird takes flight.

  In the car.

  At his head.

  He swipes his arms in front of his face and grabs for the bird before it claws his eye out–

  And when he lowers his arms he sees.

  He's not in a Honda Accord.

  He's in his own truck. Still sitting there. Engine idling with a low thrumming growl. The "broken crayon" – the Honda with the flat tires – is sitting there in the beams of his headlights.

  Just a dream. You fell asleep. Long haul. Long night. Low fog. Hypnotic. You zoned out and drifted to sleep and that's bad, that's real bad, but damn, it's better than the alternative. What you saw wasn't real. Wasn't real at all.

  But then he sees the crow walking atop the car. A gawky, Charlie Chaplin walk. It looks up into the truck and flies away into the night.

  Louis pulls the truck back onto the road and drives. Hell with the abandoned car.

  It's then he feels it: an itching sensation.

  Behind the eyepatch. Normal itching, he thinks. Like whenever he thinks about Miriam. He lifts the patch. Scratches beneath it.

  But the itching gets worse. It burns.

  Five miles later he pulls off at an exit, finds a gas station, and parks the truck.

  He flips the patch like a mailbox lid and starts going to town on the fleshy eyeless pucker – scratch scratch scratch – until suddenly his index finger brushes against something sharp. Something sticking out of the hol
e.

  A sick feeling shoots through him.

  He pinches his fingers. Feels for whatever it is.

  Begins pulling it out.

  He feels something wet brush against the sides of his sockets, and then he feels a horrible feeling like a thing moving through him, out of him–

  It's a feather. A wet, blood-slick feather.

  But he's not done. He keeps pulling because there's more, more, more.

  Hair. Wet hair. Wound around the far end of the feather. It smells strong, fetid, like–

  Like river water.

  Louis opens the door. He throws up in the parking lot. Nobody's around to see.

  When he's finished and composed, he goes and unhooks the flat bed.

  He's got to get to Miriam. There's no time to mess around. No time to deliver the trailer, and taking it with him is tantamount to stealing.

  Leave it here, then. He calls into dispatch, tells them it's an emergency, lets them know where they can grab the load. They won't hire him again after this. This is a black mark. One he hopes won't get around to other companies.

  But he has to do it.

  He can't shake what the bird told him.

  He tries Miriam's phone number. It goes right to voicemail.

  The forces of darkness are aligning against her, Lou.

  "I'm coming, Miriam."

  TWENTY-SIX

  A Bird in on the Hand

  Blood on the carpet. That's what Katey wakes to in the morning. That, a cracked coffee table, an overturned pint of chocolate ice cream, a spoon stuck to the couch, and Miriam hunkered down in the middle of the floor like a gargoyle. Perched over an old-school phonebook.

  Katey blinks. She looks like nine kinds of Hell stuffed into a ratty pink robe. "There's… blood," she says, throat froggy.

  Miriam doesn't look up. Instead she holds up the back of her hand: carved upon it is a swallow.

  Nearby sits the knife that did it. The tip, rusty red.

  Miriam's finger traces another phone number. Scribbles it down on a pad of paper next to the open phonebook.

  Katey's voice gets quiet. "Oh, Lord. You're a cutter."

  "What?" Miriam leans her head almost backward, seeing Katey upside-down. "I didn't do this."

  Well, that's not entirely confirmed. While her nose isn't busted, the coffee table is, and the swallow on her hand sure is there. The lines of the bird are already crusting over with a fine crumbly ridge of scab. She's not sure how it happened. This isn't the first time one of her visions has gotten grabby, but it's the first time one's left this kind of mark.

  That should be freaking her out.

  Right now, though, she just doesn't have the time.

  "I'll clean up," she lies. "I just – I have these visions and sometimes they get out of control."

  "If you didn't do this, then who did?"

  "Like I said, the visions."

  "That's… that's crazy."

  "Yeah. Duh. I know." She flips the page. Begins writing down more numbers. And addresses.

  Katey stands next to her. Staring down. Shell-shocked. "I don't know that…." Her words trail."

  Miriam can hear the apprehension in Katey's voice. Like the unsettling hum of a television in a distant room. Time to get ahead of this.

  "Listen. You don't like this, say the word. I'll get out of your hair. But I'm the vampire and you invited me in. And I warned you. This isn't going to be fun. You drop a tempest in your teacup, you better expect a little blood on your carpet and some crazy-ass conversations at five o'clock in the morning. You want me out, no harm, no foul. I'm gone. I'll pack my bag and you will never see me again." Now she stands, and she holds Katey's face so that the teacher's gaze meets her own. "This might be your last chance to get off the ride. The Miriam Black Experience is about to depart the gate, and you're either strapped in or left behind. Time to commit, Miss Wiz. The lady or the tiger."

  "I… need coffee."

  The teacher stumbles away, zombie-like.

  Miriam calls after her. "Make me a cup too. A big cup. Black as the Devil's seed. Thanks!"

  Eventually, Katey returns with a bowl full of black coffee and sets it down in front of her. "Biggest thing I could find."

  Slurp. "Nice. I feel very… Asian."

  Back to the phonebook.

  Katey says, "Did you sleep?"

  "I did not."

  "Oh."

  The teacher goes around the room, picking up the mess. The ice cream pint, the spoon, the knife. "What're you doing with my phonebook?"

  "I was going to use your laptop, but I don't have your password. And it took me awhile even to find the phonebook – I mean, do people even use these anymore? Guess it's good you do. I'm looking up tattoo artists."

  "About the swallow."

  "Mm-hmm." Miriam wraps both hands around the bowl, takes a long pull. She gives in to coffee's warm embrace, the black comforting oblivion of bean juice. "Ah. I like my coffee like I like my men. Hot, black, and coming down my throat."

  "I'm just gonna ignore that and ask, is there anything I can do to help you?" Katey asks. "With the… girls."

  "Got the phonebook. Now I need the phone."

  "It's in the kitchen. Cordless on the charger."

  "Yeah, I kinda need your cell phone."

  Katey pauses, then nods. Again unsure. "I'll go get it for you. I don't much like having it anyway. Always felt like a bit of a leash."

  "Thanks, Katey."

  "You're going to stop the killer, aren't you?"

  "I am," she says. Whether she believes it or not.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Valentine's Day

  Fuck fuck fuck fuck, rent is due and it's not paid and this shitty closet Annie Valentine calls an apartment isn't going to even be hers anymore if she can't put up the money somehow. Already this morning they came to her door and the sun's just coming up. Pounded on it. Left a red slip – not pink like the last one or yellow like the one before it – under her door. Eviction. Eviction. Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

  In her head, her mother's voice, a chiding invisible presence: You never want to work for anything, Annie. Even as a baby you never wanted to hold your own bottle.

  That's Mom's favorite thing to say.

  When you were a baby…

  You didn't hold the bottle.

  You didn't talk early, not like your brother.

  You didn't learn how to use the potty until after all the other girls learned.

  You couldn't fix the car or grout the bathroom tile or do Mommy and Daddy's taxes like a good little girl.

  They never called her stupid. Never said a mean word. But the insults were always there. Hiding beneath other words like monsters under the bed.

  She's eighteen. Just eighteen years old, and she's supposed to have her life figured out. They invited her to move back home but she's not going to do that, oh hell no, she'd much rather snap her tits in a bear-trap than go back to that hell.

  Which means she's got to keep this apartment.

  But she doesn't have a job. She got fired from the Wendy's. Got fired from the U.S. Gas – the Yemeni guy accused her of embezzling from him, which sounds like a fancy way of saying she was stealing. Which she was. Not that he could have known that. That cow Marjorie – the old cranky bitch with the frizzy wig – must have told him even though she was dipping into the till, too.

  Now what? Now what now what now what fuck fuck fuck.

  Calm down.

  They're not kicking you out until the end of the week.

  It's all cool. You just need to find your focus.

  She opens up a WalMart bag near the rat-trap pullout couch and snatches from within its plastic depths a pair of pliers, a screwdriver, and a burned-out light bulb whose frosted glass is smeared with carbon-black soot.

  The first time she did this she broke the light bulb. Little pieces of glass stuck in her palm. She had to pull each piece out with tweezers. With shaking hands. Some of them she accidentally left in there until her
body pushed them out.