by Chuck Wendig
She demos her blood-encrusted face like Vanna White showing a prize.
"Ta-da."
Louis's jaw sets. It's like a bear trap clanging closed.
"That sonofabitch.".
"It's all right. I gave worse than he gave me. I stabbed her – sorry, him, my brain maybe got rocked around a bit – I stabbed him in the leg with a butterfly knife."
This actually seems to satisfy him, and she loves him for that.
"Well. He deserved it. What about your brother?"
Miriam waves it off. "Worthless shit. Sided with the boyfriend. Done with both."
"Good for you. You need to come on in here so I can get you cleaned up."
"I know. Faded black eye. Bloody head. Cut cheek. America's Next Top Model, right?"
The faucet runs. Louis has the washcloth wet with tepid water, and he runs it over her forehead. She's amazed at how gentle he is. He's huge. Those hands could crush her skull like it was a beefsteak tomato, and yet his touch is soft and slow – almost intricate, like a painter's. Like this is somehow art to him.
"You don't suck at this," she says.
"I'm trying to be careful. You might could use stitches for this cut on your cheek. It's not long, but it's deep."
"No stitches. Just the Band-Aids will cover me."
"It might scar."
She winks. "Scars are sexy."
"I'm glad you came back."
"Shouldn't have left in the first place."
With his teeth, Louis uncaps some generic brand Neosporin, blobs a little on his broad finger, and applies it to her forehead and then her cheek. She enjoys the touch. It's simple and it's intimate. It puts her in a Zen state; it's a mindlessness she embraces.
It does not embrace her, however. Not easily.
He's going to die, a nagging voice reminds.
She takes a deep breath, and she tells that voice, I know.
And it's true. She does know it. This is all one big roller coaster, she thinks. Everybody's buckled in for the ride; no getting off it early. The hills and valleys, the sharp hairpin curves and the long straightaways. The screams. The rush. The terror. The finality as it slows to a finish. Fate designed the experience. Fate's got its hands all over everything.
But, she thinks, maybe there's something fate can't touch. Maybe what's not yet decided is how you think about things, or more important, how you feel about them. Maybe fate doesn't control how easily you come to peace. She hopes that's true. Because she wants to find a little bit of peace.
Louis is going to die in a lighthouse in less than two weeks now.
She can't stop that. That's where he gets off the ride.
Maybe, she thinks, that's where she gets off, too. Because the truth is, she doesn't know what designs fate has for her. She's not privy to the map. Miriam can touch others and see how they die, but the same isn't true for herself – her demise remains a mystery. And it will until she meets that end, it seems. She likes to image it'll be a violent death. But now, with Louis's touch, she maybe thinks – or at least hopes – otherwise.
"I have a favor to ask," she says.
"Too hard?"
"Just perfect. You're leaving soon."
"On a run, yeah."
"Take me with you."
He pulls his hand away, surprised.
"You want to come with me?"
She nods. "I like you. I want to get away from this. Plus, I might be in danger. From the boyfriend. From the brother. Who knows? You're safe. I like safe."
Louis smiles as she lies.
"We hit the road in the morning," he says.
She kisses him on the chin. It makes her whole face hurt to move like that. It's pain she endures.
PART THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
This Is Where Randy Hawkins Dies
Nobody knows who Randy Hawkins is, because he is a big old nobody.
He's certainly not an attractive man: pig's nose, curly red hair, a denim jacket that was in style maybe two decades ago. His shoes are still on, but if one were to see his feet, one would note that they match his nose: pig hooves. They totally look like pig hooves.
His job isn't notable. Right now he works the meat counter at the Giant supermarket, but that's a pretty recent gig. Last job was as a gas station attendant, and his job before that was as a gas station attendant for a different gas station. Once he thought he could be a rock drummer, but he eventually puzzled out that it really helps to have drums and to know how to play them.
Maybe it's his attitude? He's mild, despite his habits. Quiet. In his own head, he's the furthest thing from boring, but to everybody else, he's dull as primer paint.
If he were a bagel, he'd be plain.
What is it, then, that makes Randy Hawkins special? Special enough to be hung by his hands in a meat locker, dangling next to cold slabs of beef?
Two things.
One, it's one of those "habits" mentioned previously.
Two, it's who he knows.
See, Randy does meth. Mostly, it's so he can stay up late and watch cartoons or bad movies. One might argue that Randy fears death and sleep to him is a neighbor of death – moreover, sleep wastes life, which only ushers one more swiftly toward death. Really, though, Randy isn't even aware of this fear of his. Besides: who doesn't fear death?
Problem is, Randy's meth habit – perhaps unconsciously meant to afford him a stay of execution – is only going to get him killed a lot sooner. See, Randy's dealer has been tweaking prices. The cost of crystal meth has ticked up, up, up. Randy's not the type to rock the boat, and he's definitely not the kind of guy to be proactive enough to seek out a new dealer…
…but what if a new dealer sought out Randy?
This new guy comes along. He says he has product. He says he's ready to sell, and for bargain-basement prices, prices lower than a worm's belly in a wheel rut. This new guy, he's smooth; he's smiling like he's come to wheel and deal. Even though Randy thinks the guy's a bit too smiley, like maybe this dude's been using his own product, that's fine. Randy likes low prices.
Randy stops going to his old dealer and starts hooking up with the new guy.
And that's where Randy's exceptional nature ends.
At least, as far as his captors are concerned.
The door to the meat locker rattles hard, then opens. It startles Randy, and he blows a snot bubble – a bloody one – and almost shits his pants.
The two people who kicked the crap out of him – the squat woman (who Randy can't help but find a little attractive) and the tall man – enter, but now they've got a third.
The third man is broad-shouldered, but thin – too thin, like a skeleton used to hang a white suit – and weirder still, he's hair less like a skeleton, too. Bald head given a gleaming spit-shine. No eyebrows. No eyelashes. Every part of his skin – which has a faint, unhealthy tan, not chemical but more like the color of spoiled chicken – is smooth, slick, glistening as if oiled.
"Randy Hawkins," the man says, but his accent definitely isn't From Around Here, especially if "around here" is meant to include, say, the entire North American continent. Maybe the man is German. Or Polish. Or from some other nebulous Eastern European country. Randy Hawkins does not know the term Eurotrash, but if he knew it, he'd use it. The man points and asks, "This is him?"
Randy tries to say something but can't, because his own bloody sock is stuffed in his mouth and sealed there with electrical tape.
Harriet nods. "I worked him over."
Ingersoll nods as if admiring a painting. He runs a spidery finger up Randy's jawline, through the crust of blood there, to the ear that's swollen like a cauliflower, and then across the forehead where a number of horizontal hash-marks (made with razor, not pen) line up.
He lifts Randy's head. Sees the chewed up skin on the back of his neck.
"This is interesting," the thin man says. He rubs his fingertip across the scabby, abraded flesh. Scritch, scritch. "A new technique?"
"New tool," Harriet
explains. "I went to Bed, Bath and Beyond and picked up some items from the kitchen department. That's from a cheese grater. I also broke three of his fingers with a garlic press."
"Innovative. And culinary."
"Thank you."
Ingersoll looks Frankie up and down. "And what did you contribute?"
"Donuts."
Ingersoll gets a sour look on his face. "Of course." It is not an unfamiliar look.
"He's ready to talk," Harriet says. "I knew you wanted to be here for it."
"Yes. It's time I am involved fully. This has gone on too long."
Ingersoll pulls a small satchel from his pocket and kneels by Randy's feet. He presses his face against the beef slab hanging to the right, feeling the cool sensation against his forehead. Then Ingersoll opens the pouch and upends it onto the floor.
Little bones – most no bigger than marbles, some like long teeth – spill out. These are hand bones: carpals like driveway gravel, metacarpals like Lincoln Logs, phalanges like dog treats or the tips of umbrellas. All pale, bleached, clean.
Ingersoll does not touch them. His own finger drifts above them, as if he is following along with the text of a children's book or a Bible page. He nods and mumbles something in the affirmative. To everyone else, it's inscrutable, but to him, it's something as plain as day, no less clear than the big, white, fluffy letters of a sky-written message.
"Good," he says, obviously satisfied. He scoops the bones back up and places them in the pouch once more. He kisses the pouch the way he might kiss his mother.
He stands again, and looks in Randy's red, raw eyes.
"You stopped buying from us," Ingersoll says. He licks his lips, shaking his head. "That is a shame. I like to think we offer a solid product for reasonable prices. But you can save yourself here, you know. You will whisper in my ear all you can tell me of your new supplier. If I am satisfied, if you tell me what I want to know, then I will spare your life and instead take only one of your hands. Are we clear?"
Whimpering behind his own blood-caked sock, Randy nods.
Ingersoll smiles, plucks out the sock between his delicate thumb and forefinger, and presses his own ear to Randy's mouth.
"Speak," Ingersoll says, and Randy spills it all.
Outside the meat locker, Ingersoll towels off.
The white towels, handed to him by Harriet, swiftly grow red.
Ingersoll hands over a plastic baggie. Contained within are two hands severed at the wrists.
"Boil them," Ingersoll says, "till the meat falls off. Like osso buco. Once you have the bones free from the meat, bleach them. Purify them with sage smoke. Then give them to me. I will choose which ones if any belong in my satchel."
Harriet nods, takes the bag. Frankie has a look like he's already tasting bile.
"You," Ingersoll says, thrusting his finger against Frankie's sternum. The finger is thin, delicate, like an insect's leg, but it still feels to Frankie like it might punch through his breastbone and puncture his heart. "Dispose of the body."
Swallowing a hard knot of what might be puke, Frankie nods.
"Now we know where Ashley Gaynes lives," Ingersoll says.
But he knows now that Gaynes is only the secondary prize. The girl. She's the one he wants. He reaches in the pocket of his white jacket and gently runs his hands across the binding of Miriam's diary.
He has some questions he'd very much like to ask her.
INTERLUDE
The Interview
It's a while before Miriam speaks again. Paul waits quietly, hesitant, pensive, as if any motion from him might shatter everything, might snap the fraying thread holding the sword that dangles above her head.
"I got pregnant," she finally says.
Paul blinks. "By who?"
"By whom, actually. You're a college student, learn your grammar. By Ben."
"Ben?" He looks puzzled.
"Yes. Ben? The one I had sex with? The one who shot himself? I'm sorry, did I tell that story to someone else just now? I admit, I fade in and out."
"No, sorry, I just thought, he's dead, how could he–"
Miriam snorts. At this point, she is three-quarters drunk. "We're not talking zombie sex; he didn't come lurching out of the grave dirt to fill my living body with his undead baby batter. We had sex one time, and that one time resulted in a pregnancy. That's the circle of life, Paul."
"Right. Got it. Sorry."
"Don't apologize, it's fine. I came back that night, escorted by the police, and my Mom already knew what was up, and the weeks after that – and after Ben shot himself – were spent cloistered away in my room with the Bible. I'm surprised she didn't duct tape it to my hands. She found all my comic books, which I kept under a loose floorboard with some CDs. She took it all away. If she could've stapled my vagina shut in the name of the Lord, I'm sure she would've."
"At what point did you know?"
She squints, thinks about it. "The morning sickness started… not quite two months after we did the dirty deed? Something like that. I woke up one morning and lost dinner from the night before, then ate some toast and lost that, too. I knew what it was because I'd been terrified of it. My mother's a big fan of consequence, always playing up how one's sins will be repaid by result, like poisonous fruit grown from a bad seed. Oh, you eat too much? That's gluttony, so here's some bowel cancer. What's that? You can't stop banging all those desperate housewives? Oops, looks like syphilis is rotting your cock off. Good luck!"
"That's an oddly karmic outlook."
"Don't tell her that. She'd put a knife to her own throat." Miriam mimes the slitting of her throat, her finger playing the role of knife. "Kkkkt! Kill the heretic."
"So how'd she react to the pregnancy?"
"I hid it for as long as I could. I just said I was getting fat, and that was a lie I couldn't back up, because I was barely eating enough for one, much less two. My belly swelled but the rest didn't, and so I ended up looking like one of those African kids on TV with flies crawling all over their bloated bellies."
"So she found out."
"She found out."
"And… what? She threw you out? She doesn't seem like the nicest mother."
Miriam takes a deep breath. "No. It was… totally the opposite. She changed, man. It's not that she became this sweet, adoring mother, but she really changed. She became more protective. She stopped with calling me names and blaming me for everything. She'd come into my room, check on me, see if I needed anything. Christ, she even made me foods I really liked. It was strange. I guess she figured you can't put the snakes back in the can. All that time she'd been treating me that way to stop me from making a mistake, and there I went ahead and made one anyway. Plus, maybe she really wanted a grandchild. Deep down, sometimes I wonder: maybe that's how she had me. Maybe that's why she was the way she was. Not that I'll ever know, of course."
"But…" Paul says. "You never had the child."
"Oh, I had him. He's been hiding behind your chair this whole time."
Paul actually looks.
"You're very gullible, Paul," she says. "No, I didn't have the baby."
"So, what happened? How did you lose the–" Beep beep beep. Paul's watch beeps. He lifts his wrist, and Miriam sees it's one of those old-school calculator watches.
"I didn't think anybody had those anymore," she says.
"I think I meant for it to be ironic," Paul explains. "Turns out, though, it's actually kind of useful. Who needs a Palm Pilot when you have an awesome calculator watch? Plus, it was, like, five bucks."
"Thrifty and practical, with a bad-ass calculator watch. Good for you. So what's with the alarm? Got a hot date?"
"Yeah," he says, lost in thought, but then he shakes his head. "Uh, though, it's totally not a hot date. I have to go to my mom's house, have dinner, explain to her for the thousandth time why I chose to go to college closer to Dad's house, even though it's only closer by, like, ten miles."
"Sounds like fun," Miriam says.
"Not really. We'll pick this up tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow," she lies. "Same time, same channel."
Paul clicks off his recorder and pockets it. He gives a wave, then an awkward handshake, and then he leaves Miriam alone.
She waits. Not long. Thirty seconds, maybe.
Then she follows out after him.