Mockingbird (Miriam Black), by Chuck Wendig
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Mockingbird (Miriam Black), by Chuck Wendig
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Miriam Black is trying to live an ordinary life, keeping her ability to see how someone dies hidden...until a serial killer crosses her path. This is the second book in the Miriam Black series. “Visceral and often brutal, this tale vibrates with emotional rawness that helps to paint a bleak, unrelenting picture of life on the edge.” —Publishers WeeklyMiriam is trying. Really, she is. But this whole “settling down thing” just isn’t working out. She lives on Long Beach Island all year in a run-down, double-wide trailer. She works at a grocery store as a checkout girl. And her relationship with Louis—who’s on the road half the time in his truck—is subject to the mood swings Miriam brings to everything she does. It just isn’t going well. Still, she’s keeping her psychic ability—to see when and how someone is going to die just by touching them—in check. But even that feels wrong somehow. Like she’s keeping a tornado stopped up in a tiny bottle. Then comes the one bad day that turns it all on her ear.
Mockingbird (Miriam Black), by Chuck Wendig - Amazon Sales Rank: #1076630 in Books
- Published on: 2015-10-20
- Released on: 2015-10-20
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.25" h x 1.00" w x 5.50" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 368 pages
Mockingbird (Miriam Black), by Chuck Wendig Review "Balls-to-the-wall, take-no-prisoners storytelling at its best." - Bill Cameron, author of County Line
About the Author Chuck Wendig is a novelist, screenwriter and game designer. He's the author of many published novels, including but not limited to: Blackbirds, The Blue Blazes, the YA Heartland series, and the New York Times bestseller Star Wars: Aftermath. He is co-writer of the short film Pandemic and the Emmy-nominated digital narrative Collapsus. Wendig has contributed over two million words to the game industry. He is also well known for his profane-yet-practical advice to writers, which he dispenses at his blog, TerribleMinds.com, and through several popular e-books, including The Kick-Ass Writer, published by Writers Digest. He currently lives in the forests of Pennsyltucky with wife, tiny human, and dog.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Mockingbird ONE SHIP BOTTOM Boop. Suntan lotion. Boop. Pecan sandies. Boop. Tampons, beach towel, postcards, and, mysteriously, a can of green beans. Miriam grabs each item with a black-gloved hand. Runs the item over the scanner. Sometimes, she looks down and stares into the winking red laser. She’s not supposed to do that. But she does it anyway, a meager act of rebellion in her brand-new life. Maybe, she thinks, the ruby beam will burn away that part of her brain that makes her who she is. Turn her into a mule-kicked window-licker, happy in oblivion, pressed up against the walls of her Plexiglas enclosure. “Miss?” The word drags her out of the mind’s eye theater and back to checkout. “Jesus, what?” she asks. “Well, are you going to scan that?” Miriam looks down. Sees she’s still holding the can of green beans. Del Monte. She idly considers braining the woman standing there in her beachy muumuu, the worn pattern of hibiscus flowers barely covering a sludgy bosom that’s half lobster red and half wood-grub white. Two halves marked by the Rubicon of a terrible tan line. Instead, Miriam swipes the can across the scanner with a too-sweet smile. Boop. “Is something wrong with your hands?” the woman asks. She sounds concerned. Miriam waggles one finger— a jumping inchworm dance. The black leather creaks and squeaks. “Oh, these? I have to wear these. You know how women at restaurants have to wear hairnets? For public health safety? I gotta wear these gloves if I’m going to work here. Rules and regulations. Last thing I want to do is cause a hepatitis outbreak, am I right? I got hep A, B, C, and the really bad one, X.” Then, just to sell it, Miriam holds up her hand for a high five. The woman does not seize the high-five opportunity. Rather, the blood drains from her face, her sunburned skin gone swiftly pale. Miriam wonders what would happen if she told the truth: Oh, it’s no big deal, but when I touch people, this little psychic movie plays in my head and I witness how and when they’re going to die. So I’ve been wearing these gloves so I don’t have to see that kind of crazy shit anymore. Or the deeper truth behind even that: I wear them because Louis wants me to wear them. Not that the gloves provide perfect protection against the visions. Nobody but Louis is touching her anywhere else, though. She keeps covered up. Even in the heat. Behind the woman is a line seven, eight people deep. They all hear what Miriam says. She’s not quiet. Two of the customers— a doughy gentleman in a parrot-laden shirt and a young girl with an ill-contained rack of softball-sized fake tits— shimmy out of the queue and leave their goods on the empty checkout two rows down. Still, the woman hangs tough. With a sour face, she pulls a credit card out of nowhere—Miriam imagines she withdraws it from her sand-encrusted vagina— and flips it onto the counter like it’s a hot potato. Miriam’s about to grab it and scan it when a hand falls on her shoulder. She already knows to whom the hand belongs. She wheels on Peggy, manager here at Ship Bottom Sundries in Long Beach Island, New Jersey. Peggy, whose nose must possess powerful gravity given the way it looks like the rest of her face is being dragged toward it. Peggy, whose giant sunglasses call to mind the eyes of a praying mantis. Peggy with her gray hair dyed orange and left in a curly, clumsy tangle. Fucking Peggy. “You mind telling me what you’re doing?” The way Peggy begins every conversation, it seems. All in that Joisey accent. Ya mind tellin’ me what y’doin’? The lost Rs, the dropped Gs, wooter instead of water, caw-fee instead of coffee. “Helping this fine citizen check out of our fine establishment.” Miriam thinks but does not say, Ship Bottom Sundries, where you can buy a pack of hot dogs, a pack of generic-brand tampons, or a handful of squirming hermit crabs for your screaming shitbird children. “Sounds like you’re giving her trouble.” Miriam offers a strained smile. “Was I? Not my intention.” Totally her intention. “You know, I hired you as a favor.” “I do know that. Because you remind me frequently.” “Well, it’s true.” “Yes. We just established that.” Peggy’s puckered eyes tighten to fleshy slits. “You got a smart mouth.” “Some might argue my mouth is actually quite foolish.” By now, the line is building up. The woman in the floral muumuu is holding the green beans to her chest, as though the can will protect her from the awkwardness that has been thrust upon her day. The other customers watch with wide eyes and uncomfortable scowls. “You think you’re funny,” Peggy says. Miriam doesn’t hesitate. “I really do.” “Well, I don’t.” “Agree to disagree?” Peggy’s face twists up like a rag about to be wrung out. It takes a moment for Miriam to realize that this is Peggy’s happy face. “You’re fired,” Peggy says. Mouth twisted up at the corners in some crass facsimile of a human smile. “Oh, fuck you,” Miriam says. “You’re not going to fire me.” It occurs to her too late that saying fuck you is not the best way to retain one’s job, but frankly, the horse is already out of the stable on that one. “Fuck me?” Peggy asks. “Fuck you. You bring me nothing but grief. Come in here day after day, moping about like someone pissed in your Wheaties—” “Do people even eat Wheaties anymore? I mean, seriously.” “— and I don’t need a grumpy little slut like you working in my store. Season’s over after this weekend anyway, and you’re done. Kaput. Pack up your crap and get out. I’ll send you your last paycheck.” This is real, Miriam thinks. She just got let go. Pink-slipped. Shit-canned. She should be happy. Her heart should be a cage of doves newly opened, the free birds flying high, fleeing far and away. This should be a real the-hills-are-alive-with-the-sound-of-music moment, all twirling skirts and wind in her hair. But all she feels is the battery-acid burn of rage and bile and incredulity mingling at the back of her throat. A rising tide of snake venom. Louis always tells her to keep it together. She is tired of keeping it together. Miriam yanks her nametag off her chest— a nametag that says “Maryann” because they fucked it up and didn’t want to reprint it— and chucks it over her shoulder. The muumuu lady dodges it. She goes with an old standby—her middle finger thrust up in Peggy’s juiced lemon of a face— and then storms outside. She stops. Stands in the parking lot. Hands shaking. An ocean breeze kicks up. The air brings with it the smell of brine and fish and a lingering hint of coconut oil. Serpents of sand whisper across the cracked parking lot. A dozen gulls fight over bread scraps. Ducking and diving. Squawking and squalling. Drunk on bread crust and victory. It’s hot. The breeze does little for that. People everywhere. The fwip-fwip-fwip of flip-flop sandals. The miserable sob of somebody’s child. The murmur and cackle of endless vacationers smelling a season drawing to a close. A thudding bass line booms from a car sliding down the slow traffic of Long Beach Boulevard, and she can’t help but think how the beat sounds like douche-douche-douche-douche and how it echoes her hammer-fist heartbeat dully punching against the inside of her breastbone. And Walt the “cart boy,” who’s not really a boy but in fact a developmentally handicapped fifty-year-old man, gives her a wave and she waves back and thinks, He’s the only one here who was ever nice to me. And probably the only one she was ever nice to, too. She thinks, Fuck it. She peels off one of her gloves. Then comes the other. Miriam pitches both over her shoulder—her hands are freakishly pale, paler than the rest of her body, the fingertips wrinkled as though she’s been in a long bath. If Louis wanted her to keep it together, he’d be here. And he’s not. Miriam goes back inside the store, cracking her knuckles.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful. Bigger and blacker than Blackbirds By Dave Versace I adored the squirming rank guts out of Chuck Wendig's Blackbirds - its spiteful arch protagonist Miriam Black with her malign visions of death, its black comedy, its psychopathic bad guys. I loved its bruised and buried but still-beating sense of hope unquashed and fate defied.The sequel, Mockingbird, somehow manages to find darker places to drag poor Miriam. Unable to face the compromises of an ordinary existence, she reluctantly takes an opportunity to make some semi-legitimate money from her unfortunate affliction - the ability to see how a person she touches will die, in precise and vivid detail. But Miriam being Miriam, she sees more than she wants to and finds a way to make a bad situation worse. Before long she is trying to save the students of a "school for bad girls" from a very sick serial killer. Worse than that, she's suffering increasingly regular visitations from something dressed up as the ghosts of her past, which may or may not be the thing that gave her the death-visions. And worse than that again, she may have to confront the mother she walked out on years ago.The actual plot is terrific - a serial killer hunt more tense than a tow cable and twisting like a cut snake - but the real meat of the story is in Miriam's confrontations with what could be a spirit guide or a taunting revenant or her own guilty conscience. Her self-doubt, dark sarcasm and a regular one-two punch of instinctive lying followed by the telling of blunt unpalatable truths keeps friends and allies at arm's length, but she can't avoid the uncomfortable revelations that come out every time she closes her eyes (and even a few times when she's awake). She is faced with the horrible realisation that there might be more to her visions than just some spiteful curse; she may be burdened with the unbearable horror of having a purpose.Mockingbird dashes along like a fox with the hounds at its heels, though many of its worst horrors are reserved for the moments of breath-catching contemplation. The antagonists of Blackbirds were vicious and deranged, but like cartoon monsters compared to the monumental sickness that Miriam has to deal with here. The characters are rounded and distinct, but often defined more by their flaws than any possible virtues. Miriam remains a compelling lead, wounded and sharp-tongued and incapable of surrender, but thankfully this time out her truck-driving man Louis gets a bit more depth as well.The smart dialogue and prose rolling out with belligerent ease make it easy to read even the more confronting scenes, many of which are more emotionally than physically brutal. Wendig reserves some of his best, most evocative writing for the death-vision sequences, which are even more beautiful and dreadful than in the previous story. There is worse stuff than red balloons in this one. The language is, of course, Wendig-esque - the man loves a colourful turn of phrase, and his palette favours blue.Mockingbird is a supernatural thriller that wanders close to the border with horror more than once, but never commits itself fully to hopelessness and despair. For all her darkness, Miriam Black is a survivor with a streak of nobility to go with her self-loathing and remarkable instinct for making the most destructive choices in life.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. An enchanting read By Lakis Fourouklas "Power and wisdom are born of trauma." Mockingbird is the story of a young woman who is gifted, if one could say so, with a weird kind of power, a power that feels to her more of a curse than a blessing.This is the story of Miriam Black, who's a psychic. When she touches somebody she can see how and when he or she is going to die. For quite some time now she's been living in a trailer park with her best friend and occasional lover, one-eyed Louis.Miriam is a very unhappy woman. She tries hard to adapt in a life that really doesn't suit her. Being normal is not something she can make happen, not when she can sense things the way she does. "She wants to go home. If only she knew what that really meant."Louis is trying to bring some balance in her life, make her realize that if she tries hard enough she can become happy, or at least, kind-of-happy, but she knows all too well that that's not true and she snaps at him: "You want me to be someone I'm not."She's sick of her everyday life, so she decides to leave and "commit to her lack of commitment." She's not afraid of the life on the road, she's tough, she can handle any situation; she cannot listen to Louis and his down-to-earth logic and get stack in that place anymore.The road though is long and the first car that stops to pick her up belongs to no one else but Louis himself. They travel together for awhile, they fight, she gets off the car and then they meet again. And it's exactly then that she's convinced to follow him to a boarding school to meet a teacher, who feels certain that she's going to die soon. The woman is willing to pay Miriam just to tell her if she's right.However, when she gets there, things start to get really complicated, because she has a very bad feeling about the place. She may be "a poison pill," as she calls herself, but she doesn't like to see people die, especially young people. She's quite certain that there's at least a murderer loose on the premises and she's determined to find out who that is and save the victims' lives.Of course that will not prove such an easy thing to do. She'll find obstacles rising in her way time and again, she'll have to fight her inner demons and the evil of men, and she'll even have to confront her own past in order to make sense of the things that bother her.Hers will be a long and dangerous journey, but as she's, at some point, going to find out she's not alone in this. The teacher, whose worst fears, or rather hopes she confirmed, will be there to give her a hand and so will be Louis - always her friend, until the very end."The only way to divert death is to give it a life," we read. And Miriam is determined to do just that; to sacrifice the guilty in order to save the innocents. But, will she make it? And if she does, will that help her find some sort of peace within herself?A great novel that combines the genres of urban fantasy and crime fiction and which gives the reader quite a few thrills with its twists and turns, as well as some rare moments of pure poetry and magic. Highly recommended.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. Dealing with Dirty Birdies By Andrew S. In certain respects, Stephen King's 'Misery' came to mind as I read this follow-up to 'Blackbirds'. I won't go into detail as to why, exactly, because it's better to read it for yourself. Needless to say, though, bad girls are getting punished by a homicidal lunatic wearing a plague doctor mask, who warbles a disturbing little limerick each time he kills. Being a bird of a feather with these kind of girls, Miriam intends to end his series of slayings before striking again. And believe me, If you liked 'Blackbirds' as I did, then you will likely find this to be an easy and enjoyable sequel to pick up. The style and storytelling carry the same feel, if not improving some on its predecessor.While 'Blackbirds' is about trying to defy fate, kicking and even raging against it at times, 'Mockingbird' first tries submission, but then a somewhat subdued form of acceptance. Here, Miriam finds that she simply can't tuck death away into a closet to live a more ordinary lifestyle with Louis. It's an itch that has to be scratched, a call that has to be answered. And as she begins to pick up the trail of this serial killer, and has further encounters with the Trespasser, she begins to accept her role as an antithesis to fate, which, in a sense, is almost another form of fate in of itself. But I digress.Again, if you found 'Blackbirds' a good read, then you will likely feel the same towards 'Mockingbird'. I can readily admit that I expect the third book with eager anticipation, just as I did with this novel after reading 'Blackbirds'. Miriam Black is definitely going places and I intend to come along for the ride.
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