The Final Girl

by Kenneth Preston

  And that’s when she realized that the best strategy, the only strategy, was to get to his would-be victims before he did. The only problem with that strategy was that he was way ahead of her, and she wouldn’t know which of the names on his list he was targeting until he was close enough for her to narrow his targets down. When her father was close enough to narrow the targets to one, she would call that target and warn her.

  With the exception of Richard, she’d never been friends with any of the kids on her father’s list, but she’d done her homework, compiling addresses, phone numbers, and other handy bits of information for just such an event.

  She was bending over backwards to save two girls who had bullied her. She didn’t like them, of course, but they didn’t deserve to die. She believed in redemption; these girls deserved a chance to grow and mature, to look back on the mistakes they’d made and learn from them.

  No, these girls didn’t have to die, not when she had the power to save them. And who knew? If she did manage to save them, maybe they would find it in their hearts to stop treating her like their own personal emotional punching bag. Would it be too much to imagine that they might accept her, like her, even?

  But she was getting way ahead of herself. She had to save them first, and in order to save them, she had to convince them that the girl they’d been picking on for the better part of the school year wasn’t playing a practical joke on them.

  Katie Beckham was one block south. Diane Wright was two blocks north. Her father’s psychic scent trailed off to the south.

  She ran toward Katie’s house. She knew she wouldn’t make it, but she had to try. She acknowledged that the best course of action would be to head in the opposite direction, toward the home of the next victim on his list, but the compulsion to stay on his trail wouldn’t let her.

  She pulled her phone from the front pocket of her jeans, pulled up Katie’s name, and tapped it. The girl picked up after the second ring.

  “Hello?” Her voice was understandably groggy.

  “Katie? This is Jill Turner from school. Get out of the house.”

  “What?” Katie groaned. “Who is this?”

  “Jill Turner from school,” she huffed and puffed into the phone. “The girl you and your friends have picking on all year? Now, listen to me. The man who killed your friends at the campsite the other night? He’s coming for you. He’s on his way to your house right now.”

  A pause. “I don’t know who the hell you are, but you’re not Jill Turner. Jill Turner would never call me. She doesn’t even have my number.”

  “Are you kidding me?! After what happened the other night, is that really a chance you’re willing to take? I’m telling you that the guy who killed your friends, he’s a monster, and he’s on his way―”

  “My house has an alarm, and my father has a shotgun. Bye.”

  The call disconnected.

  Damn it!

  She considered placing a second call, but she knew it would be useless. She considered turning and heading toward Diane’s house to save at least one of the two. But that compulsion, that psychic umbilical cord that tethered her to the monster, was pulling her.

  So she ran harder, faster than she thought possible for someone recovering from an abdominal stab wound. And she felt that psychic connection growing stronger. She was actually gaining on him. And she entertained the possibility that she might actually make it.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Katie Beckham placed the iPhone on her nightstand. She didn’t know who she’d just spoken to, but whoever it had been, she’d done a mighty fine impression of Jill Turner. Jill didn’t talk much, but she’d heard the girl’s voice enough when she’d been called on to answer a question in calculus. Mr. Reinhardt made it a point to call on each student at least once per forty-minute period, but Jill inevitably had to answer twice, the second time after Mr. Reinhardt prompted her to “Speak up.”

  The girl didn’t speak unless forced to, making the crank call that had just ended not much of a crank call at all. Jokes were funny when there was a semblance of truth in them; there was no semblance of truth to Jill Turner calling her at this ungodly hour―or any hour, for that matter.

  The most likely suspect? She couldn’t even begin to imagine. Who would call her pretending to be Jill Turner? The answer? Nobody she knew. Most of her closest friends were killed three days ago. Nobody she knew would be sick enough to call her pretending to be the one girl who’d managed to survive.

  Somebody else. Yes, somebody else. Somebody she didn’t know was pranking her. It didn’t seem likely, but she had to believe it because there were only two possibilities: Either somebody else had been pranking her, or it really had been Jill Turner.

  Her heart was beating faster, forcing her to acknowledge that the second alternative was scaring the shit out of her, and the second alternative wouldn’t scare the shit out of her if it weren’t a possibility.

  Lying on her side with the comforter over her head, she took a deep breath, in through her nose and out through her mouth. Her heart rate was picking up. She had to get it under control. In through her nose and out through her mouth.

  It wasn’t working. Her heart rate was accelerating, faster and harder. That meant she believed it; she believed that the girl on the phone had been Jill Turner, and she believed what Jill Turner had said. The man who killed her friends was coming for her.

  No, she couldn’t do this to herself. Deep breaths. Deep breaths.

  This is what fear does to a person. She thought she’d heard that somewhere. Fear makes people irrational, makes them believe the impossible. Like Jill Turner calling her in the middle of the night to tell her that a mass murderer was coming to her house to kill her.

  Ridiculous. Yes, it was so damn ridiculous.

  Then why was her heart pounding? Why was she shaking? Why was she afraid to pull the comforter from her head?

  She'd left the shades wide open. And the window was unlocked. She had to get out of the room, get to her dad’s room. But that would mean pulling the comforter from her head, and she didn’t want to see what was out there.

  Irrational fear. There’s nothing out there.

  She could close her eyes and run from the room. Irrational fear or not, her mind was made up. Eyes clamped shut, she threw back the comforter and bolted from her bed, from her room, and down the hallway, opening her eyes briefly and intermittently along the way.

  She barged through her father’s bedroom door, grabbed her father by the shoulder, and shook. “Dad.”

  He was a light sleeper and came awake at once, reaching for the bedside lamp and switching it on. “What’s the matter?”

  She was suddenly embarrassed, at a loss as to how to explain that she may or may not have received a call from Jill Turner, the lone survivor of the campsite massacre. But she couldn’t just drop it. She decided to keep it simple. “There’s somebody outside.”

  Her father sat bolt upright. “What?!”

  “There’s somebody outside,” she repeated.

  Her father was on his feet, pushing past her, heading for the closet where he kept his shotgun. “Where?” he asked, pulling the gun’s carry case from the shelf above the wardrobe.

  She watched him set the case on the floor, open it. He reached into the case but stopped suddenly, looking up at her. “Katie?!”

  “Outside my window,” she lied, or half-lied. She was afraid there was someone outside her window. Didn’t that count as a half-lie? Or a partial-truth? Yes, that sounded much better. She wasn’t exactly thrilled about sending her father outside to face the boogeyman, but he had a shotgun, he knew how to use it, and he was her daddy; it was his duty to protect his little girl. Besides, there really wasn’t anybody out there. She hadn’t actually seen anybody. It was all in her head. Jill Turner or some asshole pretending to be Jill Turner had put this idea in her head.

  Her father loaded the shotgun, jumped to his feet, and said, “Stay here.”

  She did as she was
told, though she hated being left alone in the house. But she never disobeyed her father. He would be back momentarily, anyway, because there really wasn’t anybody out there. He would do a quick round of the house, come marching into the room, and tell her that there was nobody out there, that she’d had a nightmare, that it was perfectly understandable after what had happened to her friends at the campsite three nights ago.

  Now, she was alone in her father’s bedroom. She heard the front inner and outer doors opening and closing. Then silence.

  And that scared her more than anything. No noise. No distractions. She was alone with her thoughts, her fear-based imagination, and her anticipation. And that was the worst. The anticipation. Waiting for it. Waiting for her father to come back and tell her that everything was okay, or waiting and worrying that he was taking too long to come back and thinking that he might not come back even though it had only been a minute, two at the most, but really, how long does it take to run around the house. They didn’t have a fence. It really shouldn’t have taken more than a couple of minutes, and it had been two minutes now, and her knees were starting to shake.

  Her breath coming in short bursts, she squeaked, “Daddy,” like she did when she was a little girl and knew for sure that there was a monster in her closet or under her bed. But there really was a monster this time. It had killed her friends. The police thought Richard had killed them. She’d thought so, too. But she’d been wrong. She knew that now. She knew it because the monster was out there somewhere. Jill Turner had told her so.

  No, not Jill Turner. Some asshole playing a joke on her. No monster outside her window. It was all a sick joke. Who would joke around about something like this? What the hell was wrong with some people?

  Just a joke. Just her imagination.

  Okay, it had been three minutes. Where the hell was he? It shouldn’t have taken this long.

  “Daddy,” she squeaked again, so low that nobody outside of the room would be able to hear her. If her knees and hands weren’t shaking, if her heart weren’t racing like she was on speed, she would feel ridiculous. She would have plenty of time to feel ridiculous about it later.

  Four minutes and not a peep. No, this was just...no. Something was seriously wrong. And seriously wrong in this situation meant one thing: He was dead. He never even got the chance to fire off a shot.

  No, that was just her imagination again.

  If she wasn’t panicking before, she was panicking now. She was perched headlong on the edge of a full-blown panic attack. Pounding heart, quivering limbs, heavy breathing, sweat, the whole-nine-yards.

  Five minutes. She couldn’t stand still a moment longer. She took a tentative step toward the door, then another. She was actually going to do this. She was actually going to disobey her father and go out there, into the darkness and the silence, where open doors to dark rooms lingered, where anything or anybody could jump out at her at any moment. And she wouldn’t see it coming. And she would be defenseless. That’s probably what happened to her father. He never saw it coming. The killer was that good at what he did. He sliced through her father and never made a sound. Her father probably never felt a thing. She hoped it would end as quickly for her.

  She stopped a step from the open door and grabbed the sides of her head, digging her nails into her face. She brought her right hand back and slapped herself hard. It stung, bringing back a semblance of reason. She took a deep breath, in through her nose and out through her mouth, then another. She was close to full-blown panic mode and was working hard to keep herself from tumbling over.

  Her exercises were having the desired effect; she was terrified, but she wasn’t panicking.

  She stepped out into the hallway, turned right, and stopped. The dark and empty spare bedroom ahead on her left. The living room at the end of the hallway. She made her way up the hall. Each step was slow and cautious. Her eyes were fixed on the spare bedroom’s open door. The monster could have been lying in wait for her in that darkened room.

  And as soon as the idea was planted in her brain, it grew rapidly, seizing her senses and every nerve-ending in her body. Once again, she shook; her heart accelerated; her breath came in short bursts as if she had just run a fifty-yard dash. And once again, she fought to keep the panic away. She stopped, dug her nails into her face, felt the pain, took a series of deep breaths, in through her nose and out through her mouth, and continued, each step methodical.

  The shaking subsided; her heart rate slowed; her breaths were long and controlled, though audible. She could hear each inhalation and exhalation, so her breaths weren’t as controlled as she would have liked―She should not have been able to hear her own breaths―but she wasn’t approaching panic mode.

  It would probably help her nerves if her eyes weren’t glued to the darkened spare bedroom, but her eyes remained fixed there with each slow-motion step. It would probably help her nerves if she just got it over with and ran past the room, but her fear-ravaged body just wouldn’t allow it. She may have been a few steps back from the edge of a panic attack, but in her mind’s eye, she could just see herself running right into the killer’s chest, waiting for her in the living room after making it past the bedroom, like a horror movie cliché; the victim checks the closet, finds nothing, thinks everything’s okay, then walks right into the killer standing behind her. Damn those horror movie clichés!

  The door was just a few steps ahead of her on the left. Her breathing was louder than it had been two slow steps earlier. Strangely enough, there seemed to be some kind of echo effect, like each inhalation and exhalation was bouncing off the walls and coming back to her. She’d heard this kind of an echo effect in empty houses, but never here in her fully lived-in, fully-furnished home, and she’d never heard her own breathing echoing back at her. And this out-of-sync, echo effect of each terrified breath didn’t surround her. It came from two steps ahead and off to her left―from the spare bedroom.

  She stopped. And it all came back―the shaking, the rapid heartbeat, the short staccato breaths, which no longer resembled the long, heavy breaths she clearly heard beyond the line of darkness that separated the hallway from the bedroom.

  And it all suddenly became very real to her. There was somebody standing in the bedroom. Her father?

  “Daddy?”

  No response.

  She squinted, and she could make something out in the darkness, the faint outlines of a silhouette.

  She wanted to run, but panic seized her and held her firmly in place. She was rooted to the carpet.

  She hoped against hope that the figure in the darkness was a trick of light and shadow with a bit of overactive, fear-based imagination thrown into the mix, but the figure moved. It approached. It lumbered, swaying side-to-side as it moved toward the open door. It stepped out into the hallway and stood before her. It was too dark. She couldn’t make it out. But she knew it was a monster.

  It waited, as if relishing the moment. It didn’t want to kill her right away; it wanted to savor her fear. No, not savor it; feed off of it. This thing was devouring her fear.

  And suddenly, inexplicably, despite the torrent of fear washing over her, she felt something else: Indignation. She was pissed. This thing had killed her friends, probably killed her father, was surely going to kill her, and it was taking its time. It was mocking her.

  The torrent of fear washing over her washed away. She was just angry now.

  She gritted her teeth. “Do it.”

  The thing didn’t move.

  “Kill me!” she barked. “Get it over with!”

  Nothing.

  Her feet weren’t rooted to the carpet anymore. She was free to run, but she didn’t want to run anymore. She was feeling defiant.

  “What are you waiting for?!”

  She took an aggressive step toward the thing. It didn’t flinch. It just breathed, its silhouetted shoulders rising and falling.

  She should have been frightened, as frightened as she had been moments earlier. More so. But no, s
he was done being afraid.

  She balled her right hand into a fist, pulled back, swung at the thing’s face―and was blocked. She felt something along the outside of her right wrist: Sharp, searing pain. Something warm running along her forearm.

  The thing had sliced her.

  She tightened her bloody fist, pulled back, and…

  “Katie!”

  Her father. He was outside, banging on the door.

  He was alive.

  And now she had something to live for.

  “Daddy!” she screamed.

  “Katie!” he yelled back. “Open the door!”

  But she couldn’t open the door. Opening the door meant getting past the thing, and there was no getting past the thing.

  Her only chance now was to get as far away from the thing as possible.

  She turned away from the thing and ran. But the thing was running, too. And she only made it a few steps before it caught up to her, piercing her back with whatever weapon it was carrying. Pain seized her. She screamed, collapsed. The thing was on top of her, pulling the weapon from her back, and piercing her again and again and again.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  They had just dropped Amanda off when the call came over the radio. A man named George Beckham had called 911 to say that there was an intruder in his home.

  Darlene and Harry exchanged glances.

  Darlene hit the lights and siren and gunned the engine.

  There were several patrol and emergency vehicles on the scene when they arrived fifteen minutes later. Darlene took one look at the man sitting in the backseat of the cruiser parked in the driveway―head dipped, shoulders slumped, face buried in his hands―and knew that they were already too late.

  A flash of lightning. A roll of thunder. The sky was about to open up, the third storm in as many nights.

  She raced across the front lawn as the rain descended.