Blackbirds (30 page)
Authors: Chuck Wendig
Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #Supernatural, #Fantasy, #Paranormal, #Urban, #Suspense, #Horror, #road movie, #twisted, #Dark, #Miriam Black, #gruesome, #phschic, #Chuck Wendig
By the time Miriam steps into the lantern room, the knife tip is already in Louis's left eye. It's not buried to the hilt. Not yet. That's a killing blow. That comes next.
It's good that she's here, he thinks. So she can see. She'll have the proof. It strikes him; he should have had her come here all along, to stand as witness to his glory and his cruelty.
Louis sees her with his one good eye. Perfect.
"Miriam?" he asks, but Ingersoll already has the knife out and is stabbing it into the trucker's second eye and brain.
It happens so fast. After all this, it feels like it should happen leisurely, in slow motion.
Things don't seem right.
The gun in her hand feels warm.
She smells something bitter, acrid. Smoke stings her eyes.
Ingersoll holds the knife tight. His hand starts to shake.
He turns and reaches up to touch the hole in his temple. A thin rivulet of blood dribbles down from the entry wound, like rusty water from a busted spigot.
Louis blinks his good eye.
He's not dead
, Miriam thinks.
, Miriam thinks.
This isn't how it happened in her vision. This isn't how it's supposed to play out.
Her heart skips a beat. She feels sick. Woozy. Queasy. Greasy.
The gun is in her hand. Her arm is extended.
She drops the gun and it clatters against the floor.
"I–" she starts to say, but she's truly at a loss for words.
Ingersoll teeters.
And then he lunges like a tiger, knife in hand.
He's on her, his one hand closing on her throat with fingers like mandibles, and she's carried backward with the momentum. She slams against the metal steps, and she feels him go up over her, and then she goes up over
him
, and the world goes topsy-turvy. Black bricks and white lines smear into an abyssal spiral, and again and again she's greeted by a face full of hard yellow metal –
him
, and the world goes topsy-turvy. Black bricks and white lines smear into an abyssal spiral, and again and again she's greeted by a face full of hard yellow metal –
Her muscles cry out, her bones feel chipped and cracked, and she thrusts each limb out from her body as hard as she can, and it slows her tumble –
She comes to a stop about thirty feet down.
Fresh blood marks the wall next to her.
Beneath her, Ingersoll's eyes stare up.
His head is cocked at an impossible angle, the chin tucked over the shoulder, the vertebrae pressing so hard against his hairless flesh that it looks like his neck will split like an overripe fruit. His dead gaze seems affixed to her. A painting whose eyes always watch.
Miriam almost laughs.
But laughing – even almost laughing – hurts. Real bad.
She looks down and finds a rusty fishing knife sticking out of her chest. It goes clean through her left tit, right to the hilt.
Miriam tries to draw a breath. It's like sucking in a lung full of fire.
"Shit," she says.
Darkness takes her, and she continues her tumble down the lighthouse spiral.
The Dream
"Do you get it now?" Louis asks, walking alongside her.
Together, they cross a black sand beach, each granule catching the sun in a way that makes it shimmer. The sand is warm beneath Miriam's feet. A tide licks at the shoreline. The air smells salty, but not briny or fishy.
"I get that I'm dead, and thank Jesus this doesn't look like Hell."
"You're not dead," Louis says, itching at one of the black Xs across his eyes. "Though, I should note that you
are
dying."
are
dying."
"Great. So this is some kind of mid-surgery fever dream. Just show me the light already so I can go running toward it."
"You're missing the point."
"I am?"
"You are. Think about it. What just happened?"
She really does have to think, because she'd rather not look back. She'd rather just be here, in the now, on this beach. In the bright sun.
It doesn't take too long, though, for her to remember.
"I beat the game," she says.
"You did," Louis answers.
"For once, it didn't happen like it was supposed to. It almost did. But I changed it."
"You sure did. Spectacularly so. Good job."
"Thanks." She smiles then. For real. Not a half-smile, not a bitter smirk, not a snarky grin, but a real, can't-stop-it-fromspreading smile. "I don't know what I did differently. I sure tried real hard. Maybe it's because I love you. Or him. I guess you're not him."
Louis's smile fades. "I'm not him, and you're still not getting it. You know why it happened. You know how you broke the cycle."
"I don't! I really don't."
"Want a hint?"
"I want a hint."
She blinks, and Louis is now her mother. Pinched face, small, puckered body.
"And thine eye shall not pity, but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot."
Then, poof – back to Louis with the X-eyes.
"I still don't–"
No, wait. Yes, yes she does.
"I killed somebody."
Louis snaps his fingers. "Ding, ding, ding. Give this girl a panda."
Miriam stops walking. Clouds drift in front of the sun. Somewhere out over the water, a storm brews, and rain clatters against the tides.
"I'm usually just the… the messenger. The vulture picking at the bones. But not this time. This time, I… I changed things. I killed Ingersoll."
"You balanced the scales. The scales always want to be balanced. You want to make a change, a big change, a change
so cosmic
you're unwriting death and kicking fate square in the face, then you best be prepared to pay for it."
so cosmic
you're unwriting death and kicking fate square in the face, then you best be prepared to pay for it."
"With blood," Miriam says, her mouth dry, her bones cold. Lightning licks at the ocean way out there under the steel sky. "With blood and bile and voided bowels."
"Who are you?" Her voice is quiet.
"Don't you mean, what am I?"
She doesn't respond.
Louis again becomes her mother. Then he becomes Ben Hodge, the back of his head blooming like a bloody orchid. Then Ashley, hopping in place on one foot.
Then back to Louis.
"Maybe I'm fate," he says. "But maybe, just maybe, I'm the opposite of fate, the way that God has His opposite in the Devil. Maybe I'm just you, just the voices in your head."
He grins wide. His teeth are each little skulls.
"One thing I do know, though. We've got so much more for you to do."
"We?" she asks, her heart frozen –
Fate's Foe
She gasps awake, feeling like she's tangled in seaweed. She starts tugging off the choking weeds – the ones that wormed their way down her throat, the ones that have burrowed into her arm and chest – and suddenly there's all this beeping, some fast, some slow, some a steady drone, and the world swims into view just as an antiseptic stink crawls into her nose, nests there, and has babies.
Louis is on her, holding her down.
"Whoa," he says, "Hold on, bucking bronco, hold on. You're okay. You're okay."
A white cotton pad sits over his left eye, held there by a yellow elastic band.
"Fuck you," she hisses. "You go to hell. Answer my question. Who are you? What do you mean, we? Get out of my head. I want to die or wake up. I want to die or wake up!"
"You are awake," he says, and strokes her hair. "Shhh."
She blinks.
This Louis smells of soap.
And he has one working eye.
And her chest hurts like someone just stabbed her there. Which, last time she checked, is exactly what happened.
"I'm not asleep?" she asks in a small voice.
"Nope."
"This isn't a dream?"
"I don't think so, though I can say it still sometimes feels like one."
Miriam doesn't know what to say. She blurts, "I'm sorry."
"Sorry?"
"This situation is… complex. And it's my fault."
He sits down in the chair next to the bed. "It's complex, all right. Not too sure it's your fault, though."
"You can't really understand, and you wouldn't believe me if I told you–"
"I read your diary," he says.
She stares.
"What?"
He pulls it out from the back of his waistband and rests it on her lap. "I'm sorry. I know that's not a real nice thing to do, but you left me needing some answers. I hope you understand that. I thought you were just trying to rip me off – and maybe, once upon a time, you were – but next thing I know, I'm in a lighthouse and some bald weirdo is trying to cut out my eyes, and then you're there, and you're half-dead at the bottom of the lighthouse and the bald weirdo is
all
dead in the middle, and… I needed to know what was going on. You were gone from this world, so I couldn't ask you anything. All I had was this book – it had fallen out when you took your tumble."
all
dead in the middle, and… I needed to know what was going on. You were gone from this world, so I couldn't ask you anything. All I had was this book – it had fallen out when you took your tumble."
Miriam draws a deep breath, and it hurts like hell. "So you know. You know what I am. What I see."
"I do."
"Do you believe it?"
"I reckon I do. Either that, or you just performed the longest, weirdest con in the history of con-jobs."
"Do I see a hint of a smile?"
"You might. Even after all this, you might."
She hesitates, but she's never been known before for traipsing around touchy subjects.
"Did they save the eye?"
Louis bites at his thumbnail. "Nope."
"I'm so sorry."
He waves it off. "Things happen in this life. Sometimes they're good things, and sometimes they're bad things. You have to come to terms with the bad things, especially when you can't change them."
"And when you can change them?"
"Then you do your damnedest to make those changes."
An image of Ingersoll, blood bubbling up out of the bullet hole, flies before her eyes.
"I guess you do," she says.
"Heck," he says, leaning back. "At least I got this cool eye-patch."
"That you do. If they don't let you drive a truck anymore, maybe you could be a pirate."
"It's the pirate's life for me."
She laughs.
"You going to stick around?" she asks. "I know you probably have places to be, but I'm guessing that they're going to keep me here a little while longer."
"They are. At least another week. You fractured some bones, and there was this funny thing about a knife sticking out of your lung."
"It's just, I think I need somebody right now."
He nods. "I do, too."
"So you're not going anywhere?"
"Only wherever you're going. You saved my life – kind of. For that, I figure I owe you my time."
She smiles. "Can you do me one more favor?"
"Name it."
It hurts to do so, but she picks up the diary and pitches it at him like a Frisbee. He almost doesn't catch it, but he fumbles it a few times before getting a grip.
"Still working on that depth perception thing," he says.
"Oh. Sorry."
"What's the favor?"
"Throw that away," she says.
"How about I just throw it in the ocean?"
She frowns and makes an "uck" noise. "I wouldn't do that to the poor fishies. Plus, I always hate that scene in the movies. Throw it in the ocean, it's always out there. Or it'll wash up on the shore for someone to find. Get rid of it. All the pages are used up. It tells a story I don't want to tell. Find a trashcan and throw it out. Better still, a dumpster, and better than
that
, a giant belching furnace, the kind that burns up bodies."
that
, a giant belching furnace, the kind that burns up bodies."
He stands and kisses her. His lips are dry, but that doesn't stop them from being soft, or it from being the best damn kiss she's ever dreamed could be kissed.
"I'll throw it away," he says.
"I hurt."
"I know."
"I think I need to sleep."
"I know that, too. You going to be okay for a while? You look a little sad."
Miriam shrugs as much as she can manage. "It is what it is, Louis. It is what it is."
Chuck Wendig is a novelist, screenwriter, and game designer.He is the author of the novels Double Dead and Blackbirds.He is a fellow of the Sundance Screenwriting Lab. His short film (written with co-author and director Lance Weiler) Pandemic showed at the Sundance Film Festival in 2011. That same year, Collapsus – a digital transmedia drama, also co-authored with Weiler – was nominated for an International Digital Emmy and a Games 4 Change award.He has contributed over two million words to the game industry, and was developer of the popular Hunter: The Vigil game line.He currently lives in Pennsyltucky with his beautiful wife Michelle, their taco terrier Tai-Shen, and his son (known as "B-Dub").You can find him at his website, Terrible Minds, where he remains busy dispensing dubious writing wisdom. Said dubious wisdom is collected in eBook form, such as in the popular 500 Ways To Be A Better Writer.
Authors all look like we lone wolf it, like we are
ronin-ninja-without-clan
, like it's just us out there traversing the icy creative sea in our little tugboats. The book has our name on it and nobody else's, and at the end of the day, that's a big face full of nonsense.No book comes to term without a whole ecosystem supporting the birth of that book. Like Soylent Green, a book is made of people, and I'd like to thank those people, now.Thanks first to Stephen Susco for helping me hammer this thing in shape.Thanks to Jason Blair and Matt Forbeck for suggesting Angry Robot as a potential home for Miriam Black.Thanks to my agent, Stacia Decker, for helping make that happen, and further, thanks to all the great folks – Lee, Marco, Darren – at Angry Robot who are the nicest cuddliest steel-and-circuitboard overlords an author guy like me could ever have.Thanks too to Joey HiFi for offering up one of the coolest covers I could've ever imagined. Have you looked at that cover? Seriously. Take another long. Stare at it. Go ahead. You can caress it. I won't tell anybody.Thanks to my many readers at
terribleminds
.And thanks to my wife, Michelle and my newborn, Ben. Both of which keep me sane when I need to be sane, and encourage me to be crazy when I need to be crazy. Love you guys.
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