by Chuck Wendig
You've been lying to cover up this filth. This is not God's work in this box. This is not how your Mother raised you.
The room beyond the living room – what a normal family might use as a den or a sitting room – tells a different story.
Lights dim. Tarp on the floor.
An old wooden doctor's table.
A small card table. On it Miriam sees an array of objects. Some she doesn't recognize, some she does: her clothing, her bag, Katey's phone.
A coil of barbed wire sits in the corner and, atop it, a pair of wire cutters.
Annie Valentine is strapped down. The wire wound around her mouth.
And there stands Carl Keener.
Facing away from Miriam, toward the girl. His right bicep is wrapped in dark, wet gauze where she stuck him with the blade.
He holds the axe with one hand. With the other, he grabs a Zippo lighter from the card table. Flicks it open, gets a flame. Lifts it under his mask's beak.
She can hear the crispy sizzle of flame consuming dead flowers.
He inhales it, then exhales – two oily plumes of smoke like the smoldering breath of a conquering dragon.
He sings:
"When I am dead, remember well, your wicked Polly groans in Hell."
He raises the axe.
"She wrung her hands…"
Miriam creeps forward. Raising her own weapon, the cement block, high above her head. It's a cavewoman's weapon, no finesse, only brutality.
"And groaned and cried…"
You have work to do.
"And gnawed her tongue before she–"
Miriam smashes the cement block hard against the back of Keener's hooded head.
He staggers forward, using the base of the axe to prop himself against the doctor's table, preventing his fall.
Miriam brings the block back again. She feels slow, like her whole body is caught in molasses, a mosquito stuck in cooling amber. But where she is slow Keener is fast, and he brings the base of the axe handle in a wide arc, connecting with the side of her face, opening her cheek. She reels.
The block falls from her grip, and she staggers against the doorframe.
Stars–
Exploding–
Dark shadows like birds between the bursts of hard light–
Keener's hand winds around her throat.
She smells burning funeral flowers. A fog of rose. A fume of carnation. Little embers burning bright beneath the leather-punched noseholes.
Keener rears back a fist. Snarls.
Hits her once. In the mouth. Rocks her head against the frame. Everything hurts and everything tastes like a mouthful of copper.
He rears a fist back again.
A phone rings.
Katey's phone.
It's enough. He flicks his gaze toward it, startled, irritated, confused. His grip on her throat relaxes.
He breathes in the smoke of those flowers because he does not want to be tainted by your impurity.
Miriam gets her own grip–
On his beak.
She plants her numb and bloody mouth against the two noseholes of his plague doctor mask, draws the deepest breath she can muster, and blows all her air into those two cavities.
Oxygen stirs the embers to fire and blasts a searing whirl of ash into his mask. She sees orange cinders like fireflies swirling behind the glass and suddenly he's flailing, knocking over the card table, screaming inside the beaked leather hood, trying desperately to pull it off his bare shoulders–
And when he finally does, there stands Miriam.
With a pair of wire cutters.
She plunges them into his throat.
Again.
And again.
Until there remains no throat to ruin.
PART FOUR
The Mockingbird Echo
Hush little baby
Don't say a word
Mama's going to buy you a mockingbird
And if that mockingbird won't sing
Mama's going to buy you a diamond ring.
Child's song
FORTY-TWO
Missed Call
Don't tell anyone I was here.
Louis, please… come get me.
You're safe, now – safe.
Hurry.
Don't tell.
Hurry.
Midnight in the harsh light of the hospital. Antiseptic stink. Making it smell so clean somehow makes it smell all the filthier.
She's not in a room. There's no need to be. For her, it's all here in the ER. This cubicle isn't much more than a closet. When the attending examined her, he sat down on a blue medical waste bin like it was a chair.
They tell her she has a concussion. No brain bleeding. Just beaten up pretty good. They took out a tooth, too. In the back. So she doesn't look like some kind of hillbilly whistle-britches.
No fracture. And to her surprise, no stitches. Instead, something called Dermabond. "Skin glue," the attending said. The cuts on her hands and feet and face are smeared with yellow-brown iodine. Reminds Miriam of being a child. Holding a grasshopper and the bug spits a brownish goo. Some kind of defense mechanism.
"Hospital again," Louis says. His heavy hand rubs circles around her back. His hand feels good. Warm. "You have to stop making a habit of this."
"I hate this place," she says, her voice throaty and rough, like she's been eating fiberglass insulation with a whisky chaser. "This is my last time." But she wonders: is it really?"
He kisses the top of her head – where no wounds wait. She can't tell if it's brotherly, fatherly, or the gentle kiss of one lover to another.
She doesn't give a shit. It's nice.
"Your call saved my life," she says. "And the girl's."
"What do you mean?"
She tells him: If he hadn't called, Keener wouldn't have been distracted. That moment was critical. Even that half-second gave her the upper-hand.
Louis cups her chin in his hands. Pulls her face toward his.
"Are you okay? That was pretty… messy back there."
It was. Her blood flecked on the walls. Annie's blood dripping to the floor, purple dots on a blue tarp. And Keener…
He stands behind Louis. Tall and mean. He's not real. Miriam knows that. But he looks as he did back there, at the house. Throat a pile of red ambrosia salad. Miriam doesn't remember how many times she stuck him with those wire cutters. Not enough to take his head off. But not far from it.
The manifestation of the Trespasser tilts its head back like a Pez dispenser, speaking out of the ruined esophageal hole.
"Go get 'em, killer," the throat-hole burbles.
She hears the excitement of wings. Then Keener is gone.
"I'm good," she says. Once the phrase that plagued her was it is what it is. Now, though, she feels like it has become I am who I am.
Go get 'em, killer.
"You sure you don't want to speak to the cops?"
Miriam called Louis first. She called the police once he got there – but she called anonymously.
"Real sure. I've been at too many crime scenes already. Eventually they're going to think that's a bit strange. I don't need cops sniffing around and making trouble." Especially if this is who I am and what I do. "I feel bad, though. Just leaving that girl behind."
"That's all right. The police will help her out."
"Still. Her being alone like that. Even for five, ten minutes. In that house. She's already messed up. Physically. Mentally." Mind like a plate of scrambled eggs."
"She'll find peace. You saved her life. Give yourself that. I've been there, remember." He kisses her cheek. She's not sure what it means. "And you saved those other girls, too. I just wish you would have looped me in."
"You were gone. You seemed to want to be gone." Maybe I wanted you gone, too, if only for a little while.
"I won't let that happen again. I'm here to protect you. You've got your mission, and I've got mine. My wife…" His voice trails off.
She can't imagine what he
's thinking. Something about how he lost one woman and now might lose another? That's not healthy, him tying his dead wife's memory to her. A psychological boat anchor like a boat anchor. But healthy or unhealthy, Miriam likes the feeling. She's sinking into it. Drowning, maybe, but the drowning feels good.
"We'll figure out all the other stuff," Louis says. "Just know that I have your back. From here on out."
"Thanks," she says. She offers him a smile.
There's a commotion. Down the hall. A familiar voice rises, a voice slightly panicked.
Katey appears at the door. Out of breath.
"Oh, Lord," she says, flying into the room and wrapping her arms around Miriam.
Miriam grunts and clears her throat and gives an awkward hug back.
"Kind of sore all over," Miriam mumbles with a wince.
"Sorry, sorry." Katey backs away. Gets a good look at Miriam. "I'm glad you called. And I'm glad you're okay."
"Here's your phone," Miriam says, grabbing the cell off a nearby counter near a jar of swabs. "Saved my life."
"Louis came to me, desperate as a starving dog," Katey says, "said he looked up and down, went to your old motel, tried calling your old cell, and couldn't find you. Good thing he decided to check in with me." She frets at Miriam like a mother monkey picking mites off her baby. "Heavens, you got banged up pretty good."
Miriam shrugs. "At least I didn't get stabbed in the boob this time."
"At least you made it out alive."
"Keener sure didn't." A sick swell of pride rises inside her. Like a red balloon inflating. Floating above her head.
"And that other poor girl. Amy Valentine?"
"Annie. Yeah, I don't know if she'll ever be the same."
The look on Katey's face strikes Miriam then. The way her brow furrows, the way her lips move to form words that don't yet come. When they finally do, Katey says, "You sure you're okay? You have a concussion. Is that right?"
"I know what year it is. And I know how many fingers and toes I'm supposed to have. Why?"
"Then that wasn't a funny joke."
"Joke. I wasn't making a joke."
"That girl, Annie Valentine. She's dead, Miriam. It's all over the news."
FORTY-THREE
Black Valentine
They find a room nearby. A proper hospital room. An old guy sleeps in the bed like a broken doll, a ruined puppet with his leg lifted and his hip propped up.
In the corner, a TV. Miriam hobbles over, grabs the remote off the old guy's nightstand, flips on the tube. The patient mumbles but doesn't stir.
She flips, flips, flips.
There.
And she doesn't believe what she sees.
It's a whole scene. A whole fucking nightmare of a scene.
Cops. News vans. A helicopter. All over Keener's property.
Which is, in fact, on fire.
The house burns despite the rain. So too do various pockets of the labyrinthine junk-land. Fire and black smoke bellow from a shipping container, a few cars, and the long decrepit bus.
She tries to put it together. Maybe the girl flipped her shit. Maybe whatever tiny little thread was holding her sanity together just snapped and she went and found a… a gas can and started burning everything.
But then they say they found two bodies.
Carl Keener, fifty-six. Body burned up.
And Annie Valentine, eighteen.
They found her outside the house.
Shot in the head.
Miriam grabs the waste can, throws up atop the remnants of hospital food.
Maybe she found a gun. In the house.
Killed herself.
That's what it has to be.
Something pecks at the back of her mind. A bird catching a bug.
A phone rings.
When Miriam pulls her head out of the trash, Katey is there. Holding the phone. "It's for you."
Miriam takes it. Clears her throat. "Hello?"
"You said to call you if anything strange is going on," Wren whispers.
Miriam clears her throat, wipes her mouth. "What? Tell me. Are you all right?"
"I'm fine. I snuck out to use the hall phone. The guards haven't seen me. This isn't about me. It's about you."
"What are you talking about?"
"Someone left something under my door. A white piece of paper with something… something written on it."
"What does it say?"
"It says, 'Wicked Miriam, turn from your sins lest you despair, or the Devil take you without care'."
An ice-pick of fear drives sharp and cold through Miriam.
"Go back to your room," she hisses. "Go. Now."
"I'm… a little scared."
Miriam draws a deep breath. Tries not to puke again.
"Lock your door. I'll be there soon. I promise."
FORTY-FOUR
A Bad Time for Confessions
The cab of Louis' truck feels tight, like Miriam's stuck in a body bag that's been dragged under dark water. The rain cascading down the windshield does little to help. It's not just because they've got one more passenger – Katey, who sits behind them on the bunk – but because Miriam can't parse what's happening. Too many questions. This mystery a clock with broken parts.
Annie Valentine's death. Self-inflicted? Maybe. Her sanity was a doll without stuffing, and Miriam feels a twist of guilt for leaving that poor, empty girl behind. And her sores: Those weren't fresh. Couldn't have been from Keener. Meth addict? Maybe. That might explain the suicide.
But the paper left under Wren's door…
Turn from your sins, lest you despair.
The Devil take you without care.
Keener's song. "Wicked Polly."
Except here it's "Wicked Miriam."
Someone knows. Could it have been Keener? She was unconscious long enough for him to go back to the school. If he's been watching Wren all this time, premeditating her murder all the way back to now – it tracks. Maybe.
Still. Something doesn't feel right.
Peck, peck, peck.
Miriam turns on the radio. Scans stations, listening for news.
"Phils are out of it this year but with all that pitching power–"
"–rain intensifying for another four days as we catch the edge of Tropical Storm Esmerelda–"
"And now a jazz selection from Mumbai Xochitl as part of our Sounds from the Global Café program– "
She turns the radio off. Rubs her head. It feels like her sinuses are wadded up with bloody cotton. The Dermabond pulls her face tight. Tugging and biting and burning.
"Maybe we should have stayed at the hospital," Louis says. "They wanted you to stay overnight. Keep an eye on that concussion."
Miriam grunts. "Fuck that noise. It's not that bad. In fact–" She taps out a cigarette, opens the window and lets a blast of cool night time air wash over her. "This is just what the doctor ordered. Spoonful of sugar." And 37 types of carcinogenic chemicals. Yummy.
"There's something I have to tell you," Louis says.
"This isn't the time for confessions."
"Maybe it is."
Katey watches the exchange. Miriam sighs, lights the cigarette with her injured hands, blows a plume of smoke outside.
"Fine. Then I get to confess first." Before Louis can interrupt she blurts it out. "I had… something go on with one of the teachers. The coach. Or sensei. Or whatever the hell you'd call him."
Katey is the first to speak. "Beck Daniels?"
"I… I know him. I met him. Once." Louis straightens in his seat. "Delivered some gym mats."
"We didn't fuck," Miriam says.
"All right."
She can see his hands tighten hard around the steering wheel. Were the wheel a man's shoulders, that man would fall to the floor with shattered collarbones.
"We fought. Literally. And then – we collided together and we almost – but we didn't and – you know what? I should have just kept this to myself. Like I said, this is a bad time for confession
s."