The Final Girl

by Kenneth Preston

  She frowned and shook her head. "No...never. I mean, it wasn't really his style. He was more..."

  "Sullen?"

  "Yeah...I guess. But he never put a stop to it. He just kept quiet about it. But when he approached her in the hallway and started talking to her, and when he started hanging out with her, we were all confused. Then he invited her on the camping trip, and we were all really confused. So we asked him, and that's when he told us that we were gonna play a prank on her."

  The detective nodded his understanding.

  "Like I said before, Richard was always looking to take the game to the next level, so he told us that Jill was gonna be the final girl. But the big twist was going to be that she wasn't going to know about it." She paused. She could feel the tears coming. She fought to suppress them. "As far as Jill knew, she was just going camping with us. And...I think she liked Richard, and I think that she was just lonely and wanted to be friends with all of us." She shook her head and looked away from the detective. "And...you know, the game would start. Richard would be wearing a mask chasing us around, and it would all look so real, and Jill wouldn't know what the hell was going on, and she would start freaking out." The tears surfaced. She wiped them away with her palm.

  After a moment's pause, the detective said, "Are you okay?"

  Diane hesitated, shook her head slowly. "No, not really. I feel..." She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. "I feel guilty."

  "That's when you backed out of the trip," the detective said.

  She nodded. "What a coward, huh? I could've done something. I could've stopped it. I could've told Jill what was gonna happen. Instead, I just backed out."

  The detective gave her a moment before asking, "I just want to get this straight: You believe that Richard decided to take this game to the next level...by killing everyone?"

  Diane shrugged. "Everyone except Jill."

  "Why do you think that is? Why would he kill everyone else and leave her alive?"

  "Well, Jill was supposed to be the final girl, and the final girl always lives at the end of the movie." She paused. "And I think Richard found a kindred spirit in Jill."

  "A kindred spirit? You said that Richard was playing a prank on Jill."

  "No, I said that Richard told us he was going to play a prank on Jill. I think Richard and Jill had other plans."

  The detective furrowed his brow. "What plans?"

  She sighed. "I feel horrible about everything that's happened. About the way we treated Jill, about the murders...obviously. But the more I think about it, the more I'm starting to wonder about Jill's role in all this."

  The detective was gaping at her. She didn't blame him. She could hardly believe the words had just passed her lips.

  "You think that Richard and Jill…?" The detective trailed off.

  "I think that Richard and Jill had a lot in common," she said.

  The detective hesitated before saying, "I want you to be perfectly clear with me, Ms. Wright. Did you hear or see anything that would lead you to believe that Richard and Jill could have planned something like this together?"

  "No, I didn't see or hear anything," Diane said. "But based on the fact that Jill is still alive, I wouldn't be surprised."

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Darlene had been ignoring Harry's calls all day. Whatever he had to tell her, it could wait until she was in a much better place. Her encounter with Jill had rattled her big time, and Harry knew her well enough to know when something was wrong. He didn't have to be in the room with her; he would hear it in her voice. She just needed a little more time.

  Normally, she wouldn't talk to anybody about Brittany when she was in a bad place, but today was different. Today, the bad place was worse than she could have imagined. She couldn't keep it in. She had to talk to somebody about what she was going through, but Harry wasn't the one. Harry's wife, on the other hand…

  It wasn't even a decision. She just found herself on the Mitchell's doorstep. Molly opened the door, took one look at Darlene, and pulled her into her arms. She didn't have to ask. She knew that something was wrong, and she knew what it was.

  "I'm glad you came to me," Molly said, settling on the living room couch next to Darlene.

  "Me too," Darlene said, her eyes downcast. "I think." She smiled slightly.

  Molly waited. When the silence lingered, she said, "What's going on, Darlene? You can talk to me."

  "I can," Darlene said. "You're one of the few people I can talk to...about this. And you know me; when things are really bad, I don't like to talk to anybody...about this."

  "And you know my stance on that," Molly said. "You need to talk about it. If not to me, then to somebody. You can't keep that shit bottled up. It's gonna tear you apart from the inside. And by the looks of things, it already is." A pause. "So talk to me. What happened?"

  Darlene hesitated a moment before telling Molly about her encounter with Jill at the hospital. By the time it was over, she was crying, and Molly had her arm around her. Darlene settled her head on Molly's shoulder and let the tears flow unabated. She would probably be embarrassed about this display later, but in the here and now, it felt damn good to get it all out.

  "Do you realize it's been two years," Darlene said, "two years last month." The tears had subsided, but she was more than content to keep her head on Molly's shoulder.

  "Of course I know," Molly said. "And I know that for most people, all of this would be too much to bear." She stroked Darlene's hair. "But not for you."

  "Tell that to Harry," Darlene said. "He thinks I should step away from the case."

  "Harry's a good man, a caring man. But he doesn't know you like I know you."

  "Sometimes I think I should step away from the case."

  Molly chuckled. "Then as it turns out, you don't know yourself like I know you."

  Darlene lifted her head from Molly's shoulder. "And what do you know?"

  Molly smiled. "That there's not a snowball's chance in hell of you stepping away from this case."

  "I don't know about that. The anniversary just passed. Jill Turner is seventeen, the same age Brittany would have been..." She trailed off. "She even looks a little like Brittany." She sighed. "I need this case like I need a hole in the head."

  Molly shook her head. "No, you don't need this case like you need a hole in the head." A pause. "But you need this case. And you need it, not because you're trying to make up for something that wasn't your fault." She put her hands on Darlene's cheeks. "And no, it wasn't your fault. You hear me?"

  Darlene nodded.

  "You need this case," Molly continued, "because you care about Jill Turner."

  Darlene smiled. "How would you know how I feel about Jill Turner?"

  Molly shrugged. "Call it a hunch. That's what happens when someone you care about is in pain and won't open up to you. You start to pick up on the signs―your body language, that look in your eyes." She paused. "You need this case for Jill Turner, and Jill Turner needs you on this case."

  Silence. She didn't know what to say, and she quickly realized that she didn't need to say anything. Molly was right. As unsettled as she was by everything that had transpired thus far, she was never going to step away. She needed to help Jill because Jill needed her help.

  Her cell rang. She knew who it was before she looked at the screen, and she was finally ready to answer it.

  "Harry...I'm sorry."

  Harry breathed a sigh of relief on the other end. "Are you okay?"

  "I've had...kind of a weird day, but I'm okay now." She glanced at Molly and smiled.

  A pause. "Do you wanna talk about it?"

  "Yeah, but not over the phone."

  "We can meet somewhere."

  "Why don't you just come home, Harry? I'll be waiting for you."

  ―

  The sun was just setting when Harry walked through the door. Molly rose and gave him the requisite kiss, but his eyes were on Darlene.

  Molly said, "I'm gonna get dinner started."
>
  Harry waited until she was in the kitchen to say, "Let's step out into the backyard for a minute."

  "So I interviewed Jill today," Darlene said as they stepped out onto the back patio. "She was being bullied, like we suspected."

  "By the victims, I'm assuming."

  Darlene nodded. "And..." She trailed off.

  "And…?"

  "And she claims her father did it."

  A pause. "Claims he did what?"

  "Showed up at the campsite and killed those kids...and framed Richard Caulfield, apparently."

  "Well, that's...interesting."

  Darlene chuckled. “You don’t know the half of it. She claims she killed her father, that she used telekinesis to bash his face in and that she raised him from the dead.”

  A pause. “Telekinesis?”

  “Yeah, can you believe that?”

  “I can,” Harry said.

  “You believe in telekinesis?”

  Harry shook his head. “No, I just meant… When I spoke to Diane Wright today, she said that Jill was obsessed with the book Carrie.”

  Darlene shrugged.

  “Seriously?” Harry said. “Carrie, the Stephen King book, or the movie with Sissy Spacek and John Travolta?”

  “I’ve heard of it. I don’t remember what it’s about.”

  “Carrie White is a shy, lonely teenage girl with a religiously fanatic mother. Ring a bell?”

  “It does,” Darlene said.

  “Carrie is bullied by her classmates. Ring a bell?”

  “It does, and I’m guessing you’re gonna tell me that Carrie has telekinesis.”

  “Bingo.”

  “Shit,” Darlene muttered. “So she’s obsessed with this book, and she thinks she has telekinesis.”

  “And she used it to bash her father’s face in.”

  “And raise him from the dead. Don’t forget that part. Now, The Man with the Pushed-in Face is out there killing kids.”

  “The Man with the Pushed-in Face?”

  “That’s what she calls him.”

  “It has a ring to it,” Harry said.

  Darlene managed a smile. “Yeah.”

  “She’s not well...obviously.”

  “Obviously. If anything, she’s getting worse. She already told us that Richard did it.”

  "What does her mother have to say about all this?"

  "She says the same things that we've been saying, that Jill's traumatized, that she's not thinking clearly. Her husband ran out on her years ago. She hasn't seen or heard from him since." She paused. "I was thinking..." She trailed off.

  "I'm all ears."

  She took a deep breath, let it out. "I was thinking that we should try to track down her father."

  "Why? You don't think—"

  "You said yourself that she's holding something back. What if this is that something?"

  Harry looked at her askance.

  "I'm not saying that she killed her father and brought him back from the dead," she clarified. "But she called her father her guardian angel. What if her father, despite having run out on his family, has been watching over her?"

  Harry shook his head.

  "What if he followed her to the campsite that night, saw that she was being bullied, and decided to...protect his daughter?"

  "What if you're reaching?" Harry said. "We have the knife from Richard's kitchen, the artwork, his plans for the game on the Final Girl forum. And I spoke with Katie Beckham and Diane Wright today. They both confirmed that they had a game planned for Saturday night. And this wasn't just another game. Richard Caulfield told Diane Wright that they were going to use the game to torment Jill."

  "Okay, so they were playing a cruel trick on Jill, and Richard decided to go all the way with this thing and kill his friends? Why didn't he kill Jill?"

  "Because Jill was the final girl," Harry said. "We've been over this."

  "I know. I'm making a point. So if Richard wanted Jill to be his final girl, we have to assume that he wanted to die that night, that he wanted Jill to kill him."

  "Right…?"

  "Do we have any reason to believe that?" Darlene asked. "We know that Richard was obsessed with slasher flicks, but do we have any reason to believe that he was suicidal?"

  Harry shook his head. "Not yet."

  "So if we're sticking with the theory that this was a game that Richard took too far, we have two possibilities: Either Richard couldn't overpower Jill, or he allowed Jill to kill him."

  "I'm going with option B," Harry said.

  "That he was suicidal, and he allowed Jill to kill him so that he could go out in a blaze of glory."

  Harry nodded.

  "Despite the fact that we don't have any evidence to suggest that Richard was suicidal."

  Harry sighed. "We've barely scratched the surface on Richard Caulfield. Just because we haven't found any evidence suggesting that he was suicidal doesn't mean it isn't there. And even if we don't find a shred of evidence suggesting he was suicidal, it doesn't mean he wasn't suicidal. Everything we have so far suggests that Richard had an unhealthy obsession with slasher flicks and this game of theirs. Is it a stretch to suggest that he took that obsession way too far, that he was willing to die for the ultimate Final Girl game?" A pause. "The knife, Darlene. That was a real knife in Richard's chest, and it came from his kitchen, and his fingerprints were on the handle."

  "Right, but what if Richard brought that real knife along to make the game as real as possible without going all the way with it? You found that plastic knife tossed aside in the woods. What if he was tired of the prop and threw it away in favor of the real thing but had no intention of actually hurting anybody."

  "Listen to yourself," Harry said. "Listen to the mental gymnastics you're performing to try to explain away the obvious. You're so desperate to believe this girl that you're letting it cloud your judgment."

  "You're right," Darlene conceded. "I'm letting it cloud my judgment. And you're probably right; it was Richard Caulfield. But humor me. If it was Richard Caulfield, then most of our work is done. We'll close this case in no time flat. And we have plenty of free time on our hands." She paused. "How long would it take to track down Jill's father? If he had nothing to do with this, and he probably didn't, at the very least, we'll have tracked down a deadbeat dad."

  "We're homicide detectives," Harry said. "We're not in the business of tracking down deadbeat dads."

  "Humor me? Please?"

  Harry sighed. "I guess it couldn't hurt to do a little digging."

  Darlene smiled. "Thank you."

  Harry returned the smile.

  A moment of silence passed, a moment of awkward silence, and Darlene took note of the fact that, once again, when they weren't talking about work, they weren't talking.

  "Well, I should probably get going," she said.

  "Really?"

  She nodded.

  "I thought you were staying for dinner."

  "I was going to but―" A roll of thunder in the distance. "―I wanna get going before the storm hits." Another storm. The second in as many nights.

  "You can stay the night."

  "Thanks, but―"

  "We can make up the couch for you."

  "The couch?"

  "Or I can take the couch. You can sleep with Molly."

  She smiled. "You're gonna let me sleep with your wife? It's a tempting offer, Harry, but my own bed is calling me."

  He put a hand on her shoulder. "I don't think you should be alone tonight."

  She held his gaze for a moment. "Why?" Silence. "Why don't you think I should be alone?"

  His gaze shifted. He was watching Molly through the kitchen window. "There's something I've been meaning to ask you?" He was nervous.

  "So ask me?"

  "I'm not a very good friend, am I?"

  Darlene was taken aback. "Are you kidding me? You're a wonderful friend, Harry." She paused. "But that isn't really what you wanted to ask me, is it?"

  Silence.

/>   She chuckled. "Why is this so difficult for you?"

  He shook his head. "I'm just not good at this kind of thing. I'm sorry."

  "You have nothing to be sorry for."

  "I do."

  She stood on her toes and kissed him on the cheek. "You're sweet, Harry. And I know you care about me." She rubbed his shoulder. "You'll ask me whatever you need to ask me when you're ready."

  Another roll of thunder, closer this time.

  "I'll talk to you tomorrow," she said.

  She turned and walked toward the house as the first drops of rain touched her skin.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Amanda had every reason to be livid, but she'd learned a long time ago to keep her emotions in check when it came to dealing with her daughter. She would have lashed out at Jill for sneaking out of the house to spend time with the sullied. But she didn't dare. Her daughter was holding hands with the devil. She had been from the moment she'd entered this sullied world. Amanda had done her best to keep the monster at bay, but it was time to concede that she'd lost the battle.

  The monster was here.

  And what scared her more than anything was that the monster would be going home with her in a couple of days, as the doctor had just informed her. She would be left alone with her in the house they'd shared for seventeen years. It had never been a problem before because the monster rarely visited. In fact, the monster hadn't visited Jill in the past seven years. But here it was, lying in that hospital bed. Amanda was afraid to be alone with the girl in her hospital room. And she was terrified to take the thing home with her.

  The thing. That's how bad Jill had gotten. She was becoming less of a daughter and more of a thing. Less human, more monster.

  She shook her head. No, monster or not, Jill was still her daughter. Amanda had made a commitment when she'd brought the girl into the world, and she intended to honor that commitment. And if things got bad, if they got as bad as she expected they would, Amanda had her guns. She'd inherited them from that no good, son of a bitch who'd impregnated her.

  What an irony. Her ex-husband and her daughter. One had acted like a monster; one actually was.