The Final Girl

by Kenneth Preston

  Her mother lifted a hand to stop her. "I don't want to hear about that."

  "But you're my mother. You should want to hear about it. You should want me to confess, to unburden myself."

  Her mother's eyes were closed, her face turned away. "Whatever you have to confess, you will not confess it to me. Whatever sins you're carrying, they're between you and God."

  And that was that. They would not be talking about it. They would not be talking about anything for the rest of the day and night.

  ―

  Her mother was sleeping in the chair next to her bed. She was there, but Jill was all alone just the same. And since her mother would not speak to her, Jill would use the time to reflect on what the fuck had just happened to her, and she would be doing it lucidly. Since the event, she had been horrified, traumatized, anesthetized, and unconscious more times than she could count. But now she was awake, and she wasn't doped up. She could finally think about the situation clearly. It wasn't something she was thrilled about revisiting, but she wasn't going to run from it. That would get her absolutely nowhere. Like a Chinese finger trap, it would tighten its grip on her. No, she had to face this thing head-on.

  She revisited the event. She saw it all in her mind's eye. She was horrified once again, but she reminded herself that they were just memories. They couldn't hurt her. And that helped. She was able to take it all in, to remember every detail as if watching a movie for the second time.

  She'd lied to Detectives Moore and Mitchell. She'd told them what The Man with the Pushed-in Face had told her to tell them, that Richard had killed their friends, that Richard had stabbed her in the stomach, that she got her hands on the knife and stabbed him in the chest in self-defense. The Man with the Pushed-in Face had told her that they would believe it. Detective Moore had believed it. Jill thought that she'd wanted to believe it. But Detective Mitchell was another matter. He'd asked her about the game, and she'd lied. Then he'd asked her if she knew that Richard was going to kill their friends. He'd asked her if she'd helped him.

  And she'd told him the truth.

  She hadn't known that Richard was going to kill anybody, and she certainly hadn't helped him. How could she have? Richard was innocent.

  As obsessed as Richard may have been with acting out slasher flick scenarios, it had just been a game to him. Nothing more. He hadn't killed anybody. It had been The Man with the Pushed-in Face. But she couldn't tell the detectives that Richard was innocent, and she couldn't tell them about The Man with the Pushed-in Face because to tell them the truth would be to tell them the whole truth. And she wasn't even sure if she knew what that was. She'd created The Man with the Pushed-in Face, sure. And she'd brought him back. She'd wanted his protection, but she didn't want anybody to die.

  What did he want?

  To protect her? Save her?

  Like a guardian angel?

  No, angels don't kill. Angels protect. But what if this angel had to kill to protect?

  She thought about all the times she'd seen The Man with the Pushed-in Face, her guardian angel. He'd kept his distance for a very good reason. Angels aren't meant to be seen. But this angel was incarnate. So her guardian angel did the next best thing and stayed as far away as possible, far enough so as not to be identified but close enough to keep a watchful eye. She hadn't been in any danger when she'd seen The Man with the Pushed-in Face at a distance, but when she had been in danger, he’d come in for the kill, literally. He'd been forced to kill to protect her.

  And what did she need protection from? A sullied life. That's what her mother had taught her. Boys and girls like that would corrupt her; they would sully her life. She had actually used that word. Sully. And it had stuck with her through elementary, middle, and high school.

  Stay away from those boys and girls. They will sully your life.

  Which ones?

  All of 'em. Some of them are pure, like you, sure. But most of them aren't, and it's so difficult to tell the good ones from the bad. Better just to stay away from all of 'em.

  Okay, Mom.

  But she hadn't listened to her mother. She had fraternized with the sullied. She'd just wanted a taste of the forbidden fruit. She'd allowed them to bring her to the campsite and corrupt her. And her mother wasn't able to protect her, so it was up to her guardian angel, The Man with the Pushed-in Face, to swoop in and protect her. And her friends had paid the ultimate price; they had paid it for her, for her inability to resist temptation. It was all her fault. They were dead because of her.

  She looked at her mother, snoring away in the chair next to her bed. Her mother had taught her right from wrong, and she had heeded her mother's teachings for most of her life, but she had let her mother down, and she had let herself down, and lives and families had been destroyed. She would never let that happen again. Never again would she give in to temptation.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was after 11 pm when Darlene stepped through the front door of her five-room ranch in the town of Holbrook. It was the house she once shared with her husband and daughter, but she was alone now, no one to greet her. It used to feel like home, but it hadn't felt that way in a long time, and it felt even less like a home today. She'd been lonely since losing Brittany, but she'd never been more lonely than she was when she flipped the switch next to the front door.

  Her hot mess of a house was hotter than she remembered. Dirty clothes strewn about. Dirty cups and dishes covering coffee and end tables. A carpet that hadn't been vacuumed in God knew how long. Dust so thick that it was practically fused to the furniture.

  She hadn't cleaned the place more than a handful of times over the past two years. And she had never cleaned it thoroughly. A bit here and a bit there, and she would give up. She couldn't do it; she couldn't live alone in a clean house. The cleaner, the emptier.

  But it was more than that. Cleaning the house was just so trivial, mundane. How could she carry on with trivial, mundane tasks? She had lost her daughter; she had let her daughter die. Cleaning the house was carrying on as usual, and she didn't want to carry on as usual.

  It didn't matter if she cleaned the house or not. Other than herself, nobody was going to step foot in the place. She didn't entertain guests because she didn't have many friends to entertain. She had Molly Mitchell, the closest friend she'd had in recent months. And she had Harry, she supposed. But she and Harry tended to keep each other at arm's length. They talked work, work, and more work and broke up the work-related discussions with small talk.

  Dating? Nope. Never. Not a single date in the two and a half years since the divorce, longer if she took into account that, since high school, she hadn't been with a man other than the one she'd married. Even in high school, they hadn't really dated; they'd hung out, as high school kids tend to do. She didn't even know what dating was anymore. How did people do it? She didn't know, so she didn't try, and she didn't care.

  Two and a half years without a man in her life. Some didn't know how she did it. She found it easy.

  She closed the door and walked to the mantle. She grabbed the small, framed picture of Brittany, held it both hands, and studied it. It was her nightly ritual. She took her time, examining every feature of the fifteen-year-old's face.

  She had mixed feelings about the time the picture was taken. On the one hand, it was the one and only image captured of Brittany at this late stage of her short life. On the other hand, it was the image of a girl she knew so little about, a girl that was begging to be looked at, begging to be seen by a mother who was too blind to see her. Now, it was too late, and a photo was the only face she had left to look at and the only daughter she would ever see.

  Behind Brittany were the trees of the Nassau-Suffolk Greenbelt Trail. It had been the last in a long line of mother-daughter hikes that stretched back to when Brittany had barely been able to walk, and it had been one of the best. Bittersweet now as she was looking at the photo, but there was nothing bittersweet about the moment itself. As troubled as Brittany may hav
e been at the time, the smile in the photo was genuine, and it was infectious. Darlene was sure that she'd been smiling behind the camera. She and Brittany had been smiling most of the day.

  The hiking had been their thing, no husbands/fathers allowed, but it had been a while, a couple of years, at least. Darlene had felt a chasm growing between them, and she'd suggested the hike to close the gap. The first few minutes of the hike had been awkward, and Darlene had been concerned that the chasm between them was permanent, but her fears had been allayed when the two had fallen into their old rapport. They'd talked politics, the news of the day, the state of the world, and when things had gotten too heavy, they'd talked about movies and TV shows. Then they'd gotten to talking about Brittany's father, as they always had on these hikes, and the mood had lightened considerably. Like hiking, making fun of Brittany's father had been their thing, but only on these hikes. The jokes had always been good-natured, nothing that Brittany's father would have found offensive. Embarrassing, maybe, but not offensive. Brittany's father, like most people, had his little quirks, his annoying little habits, and Darlene and Brittany had spent the better part of an hour poking fun at those quirks and habits. They'd been laughing so hard that they'd stopped their hike and plopped down together on the side of the trail until the laughter had subsided. And when the laughter had subsided, they'd joked some more and laughed some more. They'd wrapped their arms around each other on the side of that trail and leaned into one another. Holding the photo, Darlene remembered thinking that it had been one of the greatest days of her life, certainly the greatest hike.

  She had never told anybody about that day, not because she didn't want to. On the contrary, there were times when she was desperate to tell somebody. On the surface, her ex-husband was the obvious choice, but somehow, it would have felt like a betrayal to talk about that day with the man she and Brittany had spent much of the day making fun of. And beyond her ex-husband, there really wasn't anybody she felt comfortable sharing that day with. Molly Mitchell was the obvious choice. Darlene and Molly had talked quite a bit about Brittany, but Darlene had kept that day from Molly, as well. Maybe Darlene just wasn't willing to share that day with anybody. Maybe the time just wasn't right. Someday, maybe, with somebody.

  She touched the smiling face in the photo. She wanted to reach through the glass, into the photo's two-dimensional world, and pull her out. But the futile gesture just brought her more pain, as it always did, so she removed her fingers to give herself an unobstructed view and took the face of her daughter in.

  She used to cry when she looked at the photo but not anymore because looking at the photo now was an exercise. Her goal was to get a clear, long-lasting picture of Brittany's face emblazoned in her head. She wanted to be able to go more than a few minutes each day without the memory of her daughter's face blurring.

  After staring at the photo for a few minutes, she closed her eyes. Brittany's smiling face was there behind her eyelids, and Darlene smiled right along with her. Then the image blurred and morphed into the face of Jill Turner.

  No, she wouldn't shed a tear, but she was beginning to shudder.

  She opened her eyes and placed the photo back on the mantle. She walked back to the wall safe in the foyer, punched in the code, and opened it. She pulled her 9mm Baretta from her shoulder harness and held it, her thumb caressing the safety. Another ritual. The clip was fully loaded, but she would only need one bullet, if she were so inclined. Yes, one bullet would take care of everything, wouldn't it?

  She turned the barrel of the gun toward herself and smiled slightly. She knew she wasn't going to do it, just as she knew she wasn't going to do it last night and the night before that and every night since this ritual began. She wouldn't even go so far as to turn the safety off. She just wanted to point the gun at herself as if she were going to do it.

  The ritual was the same, but this night was different from all the others. She had a reason to live. She had Jill Turner. Well, she didn't have Jill Turner, exactly, but she was committed to helping her. She hadn't been committed to anybody since...well, since before she lost sight of her daughter.

  Her phone rang. She turned the gun away and pulled the phone from her pants pocket. Harry.

  "Hey," she answered.

  "Hey. I hope I'm not interrupting anything."

  She rolled her eyes and suppressed the urge to laugh. "No, I just got home. What's up?"

  "Well, I just got a call from Rodney, the IT guy. He searched Richard Caulfield's laptop. It seems that Richard had been spending a considerable amount of time on a forum called 'The Final Girl.'"

  "The Final Girl," Darlene echoed.

  "Yeah, The Final Girl Forums. It's a forum dedicated to―"

  "Let me guess," Darlene interjected. "The Final Girl trope?"

  "You've heard of it."

  "I wasn't born under a rock, Harry."

  "Right. Well, the forum isn't dedicated to the trope specifically. It's dedicated to discussing horror movies with a focus on slasher movies. The forum has a bunch of sub-forums, one of which is dedicated to live-action role-playing games. Forum members plan and organize horror movie scenarios, they assign roles to each participant, and they act them out. And guess what the most common scenario is?"

  "Slasher movie scenarios."

  "Bingo. And guess where most of these slasher movie scenarios take place."

  "Campsites."

  "And guess who the forum's most active member was."

  "Richard Caulfield."

  "Yep."

  "Son of a bitch."

  "Yeah."

  "So it was a game."

  "A game that Richard Caulfield decided wasn't a game anymore. The event was organized on the forum by Richard himself. Saturday night. Blydenburgh Park. Seven participants."

  "Seven participants. We have four dead and one in the hospital. And the other two would be the girls Jill Turner mentioned."

  "Katie Beckham and Diane Wright."

  "Right. Jill said they backed out of the camping trip for some reason."

  "I'd love to know what that reason is." A pause. "Anyway, the event was originally planned for two males and five females. The roles were assigned. Five victims, the killer..."

  "Richard."

  "And the final girl."

  Darlene closed her eyes. "Jill Turner."

  "Maybe."

  "Maybe?"

  "There were seven participants, but there were only six people participating in the discussion. Rodney read through the entire forum thread for the event. All six people involved in the discussion were discussing their assigned roles in the game. The only person not involved in the discussion was the person assigned the final girl role."

  "It has to be Jill," Darlene said. "I mean, it would make sense. She's the sole survivor. She killed Richard Caulfield." She paused. "If she was the final girl, and she wasn't involved in the online discussion..."

  "She might not have known about the game."

  "It might have been some kind of prank." They weren't my friends, Jill had said. "Do you think Jill was being bullied?"

  "She's a shy kid. She didn't have any friends, according to her mother. She was a loner. Suddenly, she's hanging out and partying with a group of some of the more popular kids at school? Yeah, I'm guessing she was probably being bullied."

  "I'm assuming there wasn't any discussion in the forum about pranking anybody."

  "None. According to Rodney, it's a violation of forum rules."

  "But that's not gonna stop these kids from doing it on their own."

  "The forum's been active for years. I'm sure it happens. Luckily, we have a couple of people we can talk to about that. I'll leave it up to you, but I was thinking we could split up tomorrow. You can interview Jill again, while I talk to Katie Beckham and Diane Wright."

  She hesitated. "Yeah, I think that's a good idea."

  "Okay, good. So I'll talk to you tomorrow, let you know how it goes."

  "Yep."

  There was
a brief pause on the other end before Harry said, "Everything okay?"

  She didn't respond. Her eyes were fixed on the gun still clutched in her hand.

  "Darlene, you still there?"

  "Harry?"

  "Yeah?"

  The gun trembled in her hand. It suddenly became real for her, this ritual of hers. She had just been going through the motions, but one day, she would be hit by something so hard that she would stop going through the motions, and she would act. She wanted to reach out to Harry. She wanted to tell him everything she was going through.

  "Thanks for keeping me up to date," she said.

  Harry hesitated before saying, "You got it, partner."

  "Have a good night."

  "You too."

  She ended the call, slipped the phone back into her pants pocket, and looked at the gun still trembling in her hand. Her heart was hammering. No, this wasn't just a ritual with no endgame. This was an exercise. She was working toward something, and that realization scared the hell out of her.

  She removed the clip, placed the gun and the clip in the safe, and closed it. She walked to her bedroom, sat on the end of the queen-sized bed she'd once shared with her husband, and buried her face in her hands. She wasn't going to cry; she didn't do much of that anymore. She was pretty sure the well of tears had run dry two years ago. But that was the problem, wasn't it? Even if she wanted to cry, she couldn't. Even on a day like today, when the perfect storm was bearing down on her―four blood-covered bodies, a seventeen-year-old girl who reminded her of the daughter she'd failed to protect―she couldn't find the tears.

  She'd cried in the bathroom hospital just this morning, she reminded herself. Proof positive that the well of tears had not run dry. Well, it wasn't good enough. She should have spent the day crying. She should've been crying now.

  She leaned forward, grabbed the remote from the television stand, and tapped the power button. News12 Long Island. She had little doubt what the top story, the only story, would be. At twenty minutes past the hour, the network was profiling the victims. Darlene was met with the class photo of a smiling young woman, Denise Richardson. The image was accompanied by the voice of the network's female anchor singing the girl's praises: "...describe her as smart, vibrant, and caring." The image cut to a woman crying in front of a reporter's microphone. The text at the bottom of the screen identified the woman as the girl's aunt. "I don't understand why somebody would do something like this," she said. "It's not fair." The footage cut to a middle-aged man, a neighbor: "She was a sweet kid. She's gonna be missed."