FIFTY

THE MONSTER WE MADE

Back at the Malibu she tells Jerry that she appreciates his help. She even leans forward and gives him a small, probably unpleasant hug. Her arms don’t quite touch his, don’t quite complete the embrace, but hugging is not a skill she has practiced very often in this life.

The hug hurts. Literally. Not in the way some people use that word now—literally as figuratively—but literally, actually, honest-to-all-the-gods-and-devils it hurts her body from top to bottom just to give a half-ass hug.

He tells her to go to the hospital.

He tells her to call the police.

She makes all the right noises—mm-hmm, yes, sure, it’ll be fine, right, right. And then she gets in the car and does none of those things.

From inside the glove box, she fetches her cell. She grabs Gabby’s number and starts to punch it in even as her tires are kicking up pebbles and the car lurches forward like a drunk off a barstool.

It doesn’t even get to one ring before someone answers.

“Miriam,” Ashley sings. “That’s such a pretty name.”

“You leave her alone.”

“File that one under too late.”

“Then stay right there. Because I’m coming for you.”

He laughs. “You came for me once already. How’d that work out for you? I admit, you got away much faster than I expected. But once I was done with your girlfriend here my friends gave me a message—I saw it written in her blood across the bathroom mirror. I saw the words drip together and tell me that you were on your way and that I was to expect a phone call. So I sat by the phone. I felt the familiar tickle, heard their little whisper— and sure enough, ringy-dingy. Here we are.”

“I’ll find a way to hurt you. To whittle you down like a stick.”

“You’re on the losing side, Mir. The side of the scrappy underdogs.”

“The scrappy underdogs always win.”

“Only in the movies. In the movies, the underdogs pull it out of the fire in the final game. In the movies, the killer’s victim makes it out alive—the final girl who kills the big bad boogeyman. But this isn’t the movies. This is life. And in life, the monsters prevail.”

She screams into the phone.

But he’s already ended the call.

“The girl is expendable,” says a voice. Miriam turns. Her bowels go to ice water. It’s Harriet. Harriet, the grim assassin. An evil little teapot, short and stout, here is her handle, here is Harriet cutting off all your fingers and toes because she wants to prove her dominance over you.

Miriam knows it’s not her. She tells herself that again and again. It’s not her, it’s not her, it’s not her. But still, she feels her innards loop like a noose at the sight of her. “You’re not real.”

“You should’ve died that day in the Pine Barrens. I gave you a gift. I gave you my gun. Think about it. If you had used it, we wouldn’t be here right now. Gabby would be alive. Your mother would not be next on the chopping block. You have less than two days now, you realize.”

“I chose life.”

“You chose complexity.”

“I chose. You’re always telling me there’s work to do. Well, I choose to do it. I chose that day to put a bullet in your ugly-ass haircut and my life is now my own no matter how you haunt me or mess with my head.”

Harriet smiles. “Good. Then maybe you’re ready for this. Maybe. Because you didn’t listen to me before. I said you weren’t ready but did you listen? The forces working against you realize the power you have. You’re the penny on the tracks— small, but still able to derail a train.”

“That’s a myth. The penny just gets squashed.”

“I prefer my narrative. Though maybe that’s what will happen to you. Maybe you’ll get squashed. Maybe this is all just a trap and I’m not really here to help you. Maybe I’m here to hurt you. Maybe everything I tell you to do has just led you to deeper, wider circles of misery. You’re Dante in Hell. You’re Sisyphus pushing that boulder up and up and up until it falls back again and again and again. Or maybe you’re Prometheus. You stole something precious from the gods, and now they punish you. I’m the eagle pecking out your liver for all of eternity.”

“Just shut up. I’m tired of hearing you speak.”

“It’s like I told you. Nature is brutal and grotesque. If you see yourself as a part of nature— as you must, dear Miriam—then you too must be brutal and grotesque if you are to persevere. Once I told you to be docile. Now is not the time to be docile.”

“I said shut up and go away.”

“Not without leaving you one last gift.”

Then Miriam turns—

Harriet has a gun pointed at her head.

The gun barrel is a dark eye, unblinking.

Trigger pull.

Bang.

The vision hits Miriam like a bullet to the head.