The Final Girl

by Kenneth Preston

  Katie took a few moments to take in the images before averting her eyes. "Okay, so he was really into horror movies."

  "I'd say he was obsessed," Harry said, pulling the phone back.

  "Is that a crime?"

  "No, that's not a crime." Harry took a moment before asking, "To your knowledge, did any of your mutual friends share Richard's interest in horror movies?"

  "Maybe. I don't know. I think so."

  "Did you share Richard's interest in horror movies?"

  Katie's eyes shifted ever so slightly. She was searching for that elusive answer. "I like them, not nearly as much as Richard did, but I liked them."

  "What about the game?" Harry asked.

  A moment of silence. "The game?"

  "Yes, the Final Girl game. You did play it with Richard and the others, didn't you?"

  Another moment of silence. Harry studied the girl. She was struggling for an answer, or the best possible answer. "Yeah...I played it...sometimes."

  "Why don't you tell me a little about the game?"

  Katie hesitated, her eyes shifting. "Um...we would get together online, on the Final Girl forum, and we would plan an event, or Richard would plan an event, and we would be assigned roles. Richard was always the killer. One of us would be the final girl. And the rest would be victims." A pause. "We would get together in different places, campsites or whatever. Richard would bring a bunch of props, plastic knives, a ski mask, and some fake blood. He would give us these scripts that he'd written, like a movie script, and we would act it out."

  "So it wasn't actually a game."

  Katie shrugged. "No, I guess not. We just called it that."

  "I got the sense that it was some kind of role-playing game."

  "No, it was just, like, a horror movie scenario."

  "Did you enjoy this...game, as you called it?"

  "Yeah, sometimes, I guess."

  "How many times did you play?"

  She thought for a moment. "Five times. There were other events without me."

  "You say Richard was always the killer."

  A nod.

  "Were you always a victim?"

  "I was the final girl once."

  "What does the final girl do, exactly?" Harry asked.

  A pause. "Have you ever seen a slasher movie?"

  "I've seen plenty of slasher movies."

  "Well, it's like that, kinda. Like Friday the 13th or Halloween. The final girl is the last girl standing. She fights back against the killer and wins."

  Harry nodded. "So give me an example. You were the final girl once, you said. How did that work?"

  Katie sighed. "Well, I stayed away from the scene for a while. We were at a campsite. Blydenburgh, actually. Just like..." She trailed off.

  "It's okay," Harry said. "Take your time."

  "I stayed away. I was in the woods, and when it was my turn, I walked to the campsite, and all the other kids were dead. Pretend dead. And then Richard showed up in his ski mask, and he chased me, and we struggled..." She trailed off again.

  "Are you okay?"

  She didn't answer right away. "Yeah, I was just remembering...how scary it was. It could be so real sometimes." A pause. "Anyway, he brought, like, this fake machete, that when you pushed up against part of your body, it would look like it's going in, but it wasn't really. It just...the blade part would sink in so that it looked like it was going into you. Anyway, he was chasing me with that, and we struggled, and he dropped it, or he pretended to drop it, and I picked it up, and I swung it at his neck, and it looked like it went in. He had a blood packet on this neck. It looked like he was really bleeding. And he collapsed." She shrugged. "And that was it. Game over."

  Harry was furiously jotting down everything that she had told him. He looked up and noticed a slight trembling in the girl's hands as she stroked her arms. He gave her a moment. "Are you okay?"

  "Yeah, like I said, it was really scary sometimes."

  "Because it could be so real," Harry said.

  "Yeah."

  "What made it so real?"

  She shrugged. "Richard put a lot of work into making it as real as possible."

  "And here we are."

  She looked at him, her brow creased. "What do you mean?"

  "He wanted to make the game as real as possible. Now, four people are dead. That's about as real as it gets, I'd say."

  She looked away.

  "You say you knew him pretty well. When did you meet him?"

  She appeared to think about it. "At the beginning of the school year, last September."

  "So about nine months," Harry said.

  "About that."

  "Did you spend a lot of time with him?"

  "Uh... I saw him at school, and I hung out with him on weekends, always in groups. I never hung out with him one-on-one. We weren't friends like that."

  "A moment ago, you said the game scared you."

  "It was just that one time, when I was the final girl."

  "Were you afraid of him?" Harry asked. "Were you afraid of Richard?"

  She looked at him and furrowed her brow, but it was an artificial reaction, Harry knew. "No."

  "In the time you knew him, have you ever had any reason to believe that he was dangerous?"

  She frowned, as if considering the question. "No...I mean...no."

  "No...you mean...no?"

  "No," she said. "I don't think he was dangerous. And I don't think he did this. He's dead, just like all the others."

  Harry wasn't going to argue the point. He'd offered the very same argument to Darlene. But he couldn't shake the belief that Katie was holding something back, a belief that was reinforced by the fact that she hadn't even bothered to ask him if Richard had anything to do with the murders.

  "Is there anything you'd like to share with me, Katie? Anything at all?"

  Her eyes wandered the room before settling on Harry. "Like what?"

  "I don't know. But if you have anything to tell me, now would be the time to do it."

  She hesitated, opening her mouth ever so slightly, like she had something to say, like the words were right there on her lips. "I've told you everything I know, which isn't much. I wasn't there that night, and I don't know what happened."

  Harry rose from the couch. "Thank you for your time, Katie. I'll show myself out."

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Diane was pacing her room when her phone rang. It had been a good twenty minutes since Katie had texted to tell her that a detective was on her doorstep.

  "Hey," Diane answered. "What happened?"

  "He just left. He was suspicious." She sounded frantic. "He was asking all sorts of questions...about Richard."

  "Calm down," Diane said, as much to herself as to Katie. "What kinds of questions?"

  Diane heard her take a deep breath on the other end. "He asked me about Richard's...obsession with horror movies. He showed me a bunch of pictures on his phone of all the crazy shit in his room. The fake blood and the clothes from the games and the artwork."

  "Wait, he knows about the games?"

  "Yeah, he asked me about them."

  "What did you say?"

  "I told him the truth," Katie said. "There was no point in lying about it. He's onto us. He knew about the game on Saturday night. He knew we were supposed to be there. He asked me why we backed out of the trip."

  "And?"

  "I told him that we didn't want to go camping with Jill Turner."

  "Did you tell him about the bullying? Did you tell him that Richard invited Jill along to torment her?"

  "No, of course not."

  "Maybe you should have."

  "Why would I tell him that?"

  "The truth is gonna come out eventually."

  "Not if we don't let it. Besides, we weren't even there. We don't know what happened. We only know what Richard was planning to do."

  "We both know what happened. Richard was a nutcase."

  "The detective is probably gonna talk to you."
<
br />   "I know."

  "He's probably on his way there now."

  She looked out her window. A car was pulling into the driveway. She didn't know the first thing about makes and models, but it looked like the type of car a detective would drive. "He's here."

  "Already?"

  "I think so."

  "We have to get our stories straight."

  The driver stepped out of the car. Despite the June temperature, he was wearing a suit that screamed detective. Diane watched him stroll toward the front door.

  "I'm gonna tell him the truth."

  Diane heard Katie gasp. "No, you can't. I already lied to him."

  "You didn't lie. You just didn't tell him about the bullying."

  "You're gonna get us in trouble. Don't tell him."

  "We should have stopped them."

  "What?"

  "It wasn't enough to just back out of the camping trip. We should've stopped them from doing that to Jill. We should've told somebody."

  "You're right; we should've stopped them. But there's nothing we can do about it now."

  "I'm gonna tell him."

  "Please don't. I'm begging you. We have to stick together."

  The doorbell rang.

  "I have to go." She ended the call and dropped the phone on her bed.

  Her parents were out back by the pool. She hoped that they hadn't heard the doorbell. It would make things easier. Her parents would know the truth at some point, but she didn't need them standing there as she told the detective what she'd done and, worse, what she'd failed to do.

  She opened the door to the detective and slipped out onto the doorstep in front of him before he had a chance to open his mouth.

  "Diane?" the detective said.

  Diane offered the detective a wary smile and eased the door shut behind her. "Yes, that's me."

  "I'm Detective Mitchell. I'm guessing you know why I'm here."

  Diane nodded. "The murders."

  "How are you holding up?"

  She shrugged. "About as well as can be expected."

  Detective Mitchell gestured toward the door. "Can we talk inside?"

  "If you don't mind, I'd rather talk right here."

  The detective hesitated before saying, "That's fine." He pulled a small pad and a pen from his jacket pocket.

  "You just spoke to my friend Katie," Diane said.

  The detective smiled slightly. "That's right. I guess she called you."

  "She did."

  Detective Mitchell opened his pad and moved his pen into position. "And what did you two talk about?"

  "She told me some of what you two talked about."

  "What exactly did she tell you?"

  Diane said, "You asked about Richard and his obsession with horror movies. You showed her pictures of the stuff in his room. And you asked her about the Final Girl game."

  "And is everything she told me accurate?"

  Diane hesitated for the briefest of moments. "Yes."

  Detective Mitchell scribbled in his little pad. "Why did you back out of the camping trip?"

  "We didn't want to go camping with Jill Turner." The words sounded cold and robotic.

  "And why is that?"

  "Didn't Katie tell you?"

  "She did," Detective Mitchell said. "But I'd like to hear you say it."

  The truth was right there on her tongue, and she desperately wanted to give voice to it, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. "She was weird." She almost cringed. "We didn't like the idea of spending an entire weekend in the woods with her."

  "What exactly was weird about her?"

  "She was stalking us," Diane said. "Following us around school. Walking past our houses."

  Detective Mitchell raised his eyebrows. "Walking past your houses?" Apparently, this was news to him.

  "Yeah, didn't Katie tell you?"

  "She told me Jill was following you and your friends around school. She didn't say she was walking past your houses. How often did this happen, Jill walking past your houses?"

  "Once past mine, once past Katie's. I don't know about the others."

  "But you know that she walked once past yours and once past Katie's."

  "Well, I saw her walk past my house once in the middle of the day. And Katie saw her walk past her house once. That doesn't mean that she didn't do it when we didn't see her."

  The detective nodded. "Of course." He wrote in his pad. "And you say you don't know if Jill Turner had walked past any of the others' houses."

  "No, I know she did. I heard Gary, Jessica, and Denise mention it. I just don't know how many times they saw Jill walking past their houses. I'm not as close… Or I wasn't as close to them as I am to Katie."

  "Gotcha," the detective said. "Why do you think she was walking past your houses? Could it just be a coincidence? She lives just a few blocks from you, from all of you. You, Jill Turner, Katie Beckham, Gary Butler, Jessica Lewis, and Denise Richardson, you all live..." The detective paused, like he was searching for a better choice of words. "You all grew up near one another in the same town. Could she have just been strolling through the neighborhood when she was walking past your houses?"

  "Katie and I talked about this, and I heard the others talking about this; she was staring at our houses when she walked past, and she was walking really slow, like she was taking her time, studying our houses."

  The detective seemed to consider this and nodded. "Richard Caulfield lived nearby, too."

  "Yes."

  "Did he mention anything about Jill walking past his house?"

  "No, but Richard was different," Diane said. "Or he had a different relationship with Jill."

  The detective paused. "How so?"

  Diane shrugged. "It didn't seem like it, but Jill and Richard had a lot in common. They were into the same shit. Excuse my language."

  The detective waved her off. "What kind of shit?"

  "Horror movies. I didn't think that anybody could be as into that stuff as Richard was. I guess I was wrong."

  "She was into horror movies, too?"

  "That's putting it mildly," she said. "I didn't spend much time around them, but every time I got close enough to overhear them, they were talking about horror movies."

  "Horror movies," the detective echoed, scribbling in his pad.

  "Or books."

  "They were talking about books?"

  "Well, really just one book."

  The detective stopped scribbling. "What book?"

  "Carrie. You know, the Stephen King book?"

  "Yeah, I know it."

  "Jill was obsessed with it. Like I said, I didn't spend that much time around them, but every time I got near them, they were talking about horror movies or Carrie. And if it was Carrie, Jill was doing most of the talking."

  Diane didn't know how the information about Carrie could be useful, but the detective jotted it down as she spoke.

  "I haven't read it myself," Diane added, "but I saw the movie, the old one from the seventies."

  "They're both good," the detective said, "the book and the movie." The detective stopped scribbling and looked up at her. "Has Richard ever said or done anything that might lead you to believe that he was capable of violence?"

  She hesitated. "Yes, the Final Girl game. We all played it, but Richard was the one who was really into it. He was the leader, I guess you can say. He introduced us to the game. He organized all the events."

  The detective put a hand up. "Wait a minute. When you say 'He introduced us to the game,' who exactly are you referring to?"

  "Gary Butler, Denise Richardson, Jessica Lewis, Katie, and me."

  "All the kids who were either at the campsite that night or were supposed to be at the campsite that night."

  Diane nodded.

  "This camping trip, it wasn't just any camping trip."

  "We had a game planned for that night," Diane said.

  The detective paused, lips parted slightly, and jotted something in his notepad. "This particular
game they were playing Saturday night, is it possible―"

  "Yes," she answered.

  "You didn't let me finish."

  "You were gonna ask me if I think the game went too far that night, right?"

  The detective nodded.

  "The answer is yes," Diane said. "I don't know for sure what happened that night. I wasn't there, and the details haven't been released to the public yet, but I'm pretty sure that Richard was behind all of it." She paused. "Richard was obsessed with horror, and he was obsessed with the Final Girl game. And he was obsessed with making the game as real as possible. Each time we played, he wanted to take it to the next level, make it more extreme. But it was never good enough for him. It was like those drug addicts who need more and more to get high. What do they call that?"

  "Chasing the dragon," Harry said.

  "Yeah, that's what Richard was doing with the game; he was chasing the dragon."

  "And Jill? You said you backed out because she was invited on the camping trip."

  "I backed out because Richard told us he was inviting her on the trip to play a prank on her, to torment her."

  "You said―"

  "I know what I said; I lied."

  The detective waited.

  Diane took a deep breath, let it out slowly. "I can't do this anymore," she said. "I can't lie anymore."

  "I'm listening."

  She sighed. "We were picking on Jill." It felt good to say it. "We all were. I mean, the others picked on her more than Katie and I did, but...we all picked on her."

  "What kind of bullying are we talking about?" the detective asked.

  "Nothing physical. We just...teased her a lot...at school." She nearly cringed as the words came out of her mouth. "Like I said, the others, Gary, Denise, and Jessica, they did most of the teasing. Katie and I chimed in here and there with the occasional remark...about the way she dressed. That was early on. Katie and I talked about it. We started to feel bad about it, so we stopped. But...we should've done more; we should've stopped it from happening. But we didn't. We just stood by and let it happen."

  "You said that Gary, Denise, and Jessica did most of the teasing. What about Richard?"