The Final Girl

by Kenneth Preston

  And she began to cry.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Darlene and Harry had been sitting in the waiting area outside the ICU for...hours? Had it been hours? Had it really been that long since she'd uttered a word? She supposed it had. Well, the first rays of dawn were beginning to peek through the windows, and Harry had been doing all of the talking, his hands around hers. She hadn't caught all of what he'd had to say. She'd been borderline catatonic for much of their one-sided conversation. But she'd caught the important parts.

  Jill had been operated on.

  She was expected to make a full recovery.

  And Harry was proud of Darlene.

  “I saw her face,” she mumbled. Her own voice sounded strange to her ears. It wasn’t the fact that it had been a few hours since she’d heard it. She’d gone longer without speaking. It was the raw honesty in her voice.

  “Who?” Harry asked.

  She hesitated. “Brittany.” A confession of sorts, but one that felt good, so she kept going. “When Jill had the knife to her mother’s throat, I looked into her face, and for just a moment, I saw Brittany.” A pause. “I knew it wasn’t her. I knew it was just the heat of the moment, my mind playing tricks on me, but all I wanted in that moment was to do for Jill what I couldn’t for Brittany. I just wanted to save her. So I aimed for her leg, and I...”

  “Saved her,” Harry said.

  “Missed. I’d never fired my gun in the line of duty before, and the first time I fired it, it was to save the person I was shooting. And I missed. I almost killed her.”

  “But you didn’t kill her. You wanted to save her, and you did. She’s gonna be okay.”

  “She’s gonna be far from okay. Physically, yeah. But emotionally? Psychologically?”

  “It’s gonna be a long road,” Harry said.

  “A long and winding road...with no end in sight.” A pause. “Whether it’s prison or a psychiatric hospital, she’ll be in an institution of some sort for the rest of her life.”

  “The girl is severely damaged,” Harry said. “She’s not going to prison.”

  “You’re right, I’m sure. But it’ll be a prison nonetheless. And it won’t be much of a departure for her. She’s been in a prison her entire life. She doesn’t know anything else.”

  “In a hospital, she’ll get the help she needs. She’ll have a chance. Maybe someday...” He trailed off, as if he couldn’t bring himself to finish the thought, as if he didn’t believe it.

  “Maybe someday...” Darlene echoed, but she didn’t believe it, either. But Jill did have a chance; that much Darlene was sure of. A chance to walk the streets again? Not likely. Not for the foreseeable future, anyway. But Jill would have a chance for something else, a different kind of freedom.

  ―

  Darlene nodded and offered a wan smile to the two uniformed officers stationed outside Jill’s room. She peered through the door’s vertical slat window. Jill’s head was turned away. She could have been sleeping, but Darlene suspected that she was wide awake, gazing through the window, wondering what the hell had happened to her and where she would go from here.

  Darlene was nervous, of course, her hand trembling as she reached for the doorknob. She took a deep breath and eased the door open.

  Jill was indeed wide awake. Her head turned as Darlene stepped into the room. She was looking at Darlene as if she were awakening from a trance, the way she had when they first met...four days ago? How could so much happen, how could so much change, how could so many lives be destroyed in such a short period of time?

  Seeing Jill in this bed, with that distant look in her eyes, it was so similar to that first day, but it was so different. It was a mirror image of that day. Jill was the victim that day. Now, she was...what? Darlene didn't know how to see her now. She supposed the girl was still a victim. She was the victim of years of psychological trauma and abuse. She was the victim of mental illness.

  And this time around, she was shackled to the bed. A prisoner.

  “You shot me,” Jill said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Jill shook her head. “Don’t be. You did what you had to do.”

  Darlene approached her bed but kept a respectful distance. “I didn’t mean to shoot... I was aiming for your leg.”

  “You’re a terrible shot.”

  “I was nervous. I didn’t want...” She trailed off.

  “You didn’t want me to die.”

  “Yeah,” Darlene said. “But you’re right. I’m a terrible shot.”

  “Most cops would have killed me.”

  Darlene hesitated. “Well, I’m not most cops.”

  “I know.” A pause. “I tried to stop him.”

  Darlene nodded. “I know you did.”

  “I did everything in my power to stop him.” A pause. “But it wasn’t enough. People are dead. And I killed them.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Darlene said. “You weren’t in control.”

  “They were killed by my hand. I was weak. There were times...” She trailed off.

  Darlene hesitated. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the rest of that sentence. “What?”

  It was Jill’s turn to hesitate. “There were times when... I stopped fighting.”

  Darlene shuddered.

  “I gave up,” Jill continued. “Because part of me wanted―”

  “Stop,” Darlene interjected. “You don’t have to say it.”

  “I do. I need to say it. You need to hear it.”

  “I don’t need to hear it.”

  “Part of me wanted―”

  “Please don’t say it.”

  “Part of me wanted them dead.”

  Darlene closed her eyes.

  “And I sympathized with him,” Jill continued. “He was my guardian angel. He killed to protect me, and part of me understood. And so yes, I fought him, but I didn’t fight him hard enough. Because I wanted it to happen.” Tears formed. “I killed them. I killed them all. I killed my father. I killed my mother.”

  “Your father," Darlene said, "or the identity of your father, was a part of you. I'm not a mental health professional, but that must have had a tremendous impact on the way you felt about him." Even as the words were leaving her mouth, she knew her argument was flawed.

  “But he wasn’t a part of me when I killed him,” Jill argued.

  Darlene hesitated. “But he was. Even when he was alive, when he was abusing your mother, he was in your head. What he put your mother through, what he put both of you through, no one should have to endure that. And you were just a child, much too young to understand. A child's brain is like a sponge. It just sucks up everything around it. You saw your father beating your mother and internalized it. Your mother told me you began mimicking his behavior...before he died."

  Silence. “He was a part of me, but he’s gone now. And he’s left me broken. I’ll have to spend the rest of my life in prison trying to put the pieces back together.”

  “You’re not going to spend the rest of your life in prison. You’re more than likely going to spend time in a hospital. You’re going to be treated by the best doctors. And...you’re going to get better.”

  Jill furrowed her brow. “But I’m not sick.”

  “Jill, you are sick, and you need help.”

  Jill shook her head.

  “What do you think happened to you? Why did all of those people die?”

  Jill hesitated. “My father―”

  “Is dead, Jill. Your father is dead.”

  Jill appeared stunned, hurt even. “I know he’s dead. I killed him.” A pause. “Then I brought him back.”

  Darlene shook her head. “That’s not reality, Jill. Yes, you killed your father, but you didn’t use telekinesis.”

  “I did,” Jill argued.

  “You didn’t. And I think deep down inside, you know you didn’t.”

  “I have a gift,” Jill persisted.

  “Like Carrie White? That’s fantasy, Jill. You were traumatized. You
didn’t want to deal with the reality of what was happening at home. And who can blame you? So you escaped into the pages of that book. And like the little sponge that you are, you soaked it up.”

  Jill looked away. “I don’t want to hear this.”

  “But you need to hear this.” She waited. “Jill, look at me, please.”

  A moment’s pause before Jill looked at her. Her eyes were filled with tears, threatening to spill down her cheeks. She knew it. She knew the truth. But she was afraid to say it.

  “Tell me what happened, Jill.”

  Jill looked away again, and a moment of silence passed, a moment of silence so long that Darlene doubted that the girl would bring herself to say it. “I shot my father,” Jill said, so low that Darlene wasn’t certain that she’d heard her correctly. But she continued: “I shot him with one of his own guns because he was going to hit my mother again. I was protecting her. And after he fell to the floor, dead, my mother ran from the room. It was just me and my dead father. I didn’t like the way he looked. I didn’t like the look on his face. It was blank. His face was blank. His eyes were open, and there was nothing there, no life. I hated that face. I hated that it existed like that. I didn’t want that blank, lifeless face to exist in this world.” A pause. “So I grabbed a hammer, and I hit him on the face, hard, again and again and again, until there was nothing left, until his face was...pushed-in...all the way in.”

  Jill took a deep breath and shuddered. The tears began to flow.

  “You were so overcome with guilt,” Darlene said, “that you unconsciously invented a story.”

  “The Man with the Pushed-in Face.”

  “Right, The Man with the Pushed-in Face.” A pause. “I know this is difficult for you to hear and even more difficult for you to accept.” Another pause. “You’ve spent years, most of your life believing that you were another Carrie White, that you had a gift, that you used that gift to save your mother, that you raised your father from the dead. But it’s not real, none of it.”

  Jill hesitated. “I saw him. I spoke to him. I saw through his eyes. I saw him...kill.”

  Darlene hesitated. “You saw him kill?” A pause. “Tell me.” Another pause. “Tell me the truth. Tell me everything.”

  Jill closed her eyes, and the words spilled out. “I used to watch him in the hallways. Richard. The others used to pick on me, but not him. He was interested in me. He would ask me about myself. Nobody ever asked me about myself. So I told him. I told him that I loved horror, especially Carrie. And as it turned out, he loved horror too, especially slasher movies. We had something in common, and we connected. I thought I was in love with him, and I thought he was in love with me. I wanted to open up to him, tell him everything. So I told him about my father, that I killed him with my mind, that I raised him from the dead. I told him that my dead father was stalking me. That’s when he told me about the game.”

  Silence. Jill was staring off, her eyes unfocused, like she was looking into the past, seeing it all again, or seeing it for the first time.

  “I wasn’t me,” Jill said. “I was him. Richard knew it, and he liked it. He liked me better when I was him. He was fascinated by him. He knew my father was inside of me, and he encouraged him to come out.” A pause. “He went with me to the gravesite, helped me dig him up.”

  Darlene winced.

  “It was his idea,” Jill continued. “He was fascinated by the whole thing. He was fascinated by me. He talked to me about the movie Psycho, told me that Norman Bates kept his dead mother in the basement. So we brought my father back to the house when my mother was working and put him in the basement, just like Norman.”

  “When?” Darlene asked.

  “Monday, the Monday before...”

  “The Monday before the murders.”

  Jill nodded. “Yeah.”

  Darlene waited for Jill to continue. She didn’t have to wait long.

  “He thought it would all be perfect, the perfect horror movie scenario. The final girl keeps her father’s body in the basement, and she’s revealed to be... to be...”

  Silence.

  “You say you were him when you were digging up his body,” Darlene said. “And you believe you raised him from the dead. What do you mean by that? You raised him physically? Spiritually?”

  “Both.”

  “Both?”

  Jill furrowed her brow. “Well, I suppose I didn’t raise him physically. Richard and I dug him up, but his body was dead.” A pause. “But I did raise his spirit. I conjured him.”

  “And you believe he was a part of you?”

  “Sometimes he was a part of me. Sometimes he was outside of me. When I first started to see him, he would just follow me, watch over me. Then he started stepping into me. He would take control of my body. He would step in and out of my body. He would come and go as he pleased. That night, at the park, he stepped into me. He took over. And there was nothing I could do about it.”

  “So he was a part of you when you and Richard dug up the body,” Darlene said. “And he was a part of you when you put the body in the basement. And you saw all of this happening?”

  Jill nodded. “From deep inside of myself. My father and I, we saw through the same eyes.”

  “In the days that followed, before the murders, was he a part of you?”

  “Sometimes. I would go down there, down to the basement, night after night, to see the body, to convince myself that it was real. I thought about telling somebody what we’d done, that we’d dug up the body, but my father wouldn’t allow it. He would take over to remind me that he was in control.”

  “Tell me about the night of the murders, Jill.”

  Jill took a moment. "I would be the perfect final girl, he said. But with a unique twist. So we went to the campsite. We were drinking beer. We were drunk, but the others weren’t drunk enough, not for Richard. He needed them to be falling down drunk, so drunk they couldn’t defend themselves.”

  Darlene shuddered.

  “So he pulled out a bottle of whiskey, Jack Daniels, and he dared them, taunted them, told them they couldn’t handle it. And we watched as they did shot after shot. It wasn’t long before they could barely walk. And then it was time.” A pause. “He asked my father to come out, and he did. And Richard handed my father the knife and told him what those kids had done to me. But my father already knew. He knew because I knew. And I watched… I watched as he brought the knife to their throats with my hand, hacked them up with my hand.” Another pause. “Richard didn’t really want to be the killer; he wanted me to be the killer, the final girl. That was his twist. Everybody suspects the guy in the ski mask, but the final girl is revealed to be the killer. So he put on the mask and told me to stab him. And I did. I stabbed him in the chest.” Another pause. “My father killed the others that night. My father killed Katie and Diane. But I killed Richard.” She looked at Darlene, her eyes pleading. “But I killed them all, didn’t I?”

  Darlene didn’t respond, didn’t know how to.

  “What is wrong with me?” Jill asked.

  Darlene took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Have you ever heard of dissociative identity disorder?”

  “Multiple personalities?”

  Darlene nodded. “Like I said before, I’m not a mental health professional, but I think dissociative identity disorder can explain at least part of what’s going on here.”

  “And the rest?”

  “You’re going to spend some time in a hospital, of course, and you’re going to have doctors who are going to help you figure that out.”

  Jill nodded. “If I do have...”

  “Dissociative identity disorder.”

  “Dissociative identity disorder, that means my father isn’t really gone.”

  “The personality of your father. But probably not. Again...

  “You’re not a mental health professional.”

  Darlene suppressed a smile. “Right, I’m not a mental health professional, but I’m guessing that whatever
it is your struggling with isn’t going to go away overnight. You’re probably going to have a long road ahead of you.”

  “A long and lonely road.”

  Darlene stepped up to the side of the bed and rested her hand next to Jill’s. She considered taking her hand but wasn’t sure if Jill would be comfortable with that. “No,” she said, “not a lonely road. I’m going to be with you every step of the way...if you’ll let me.”

  Jill hesitated. “Why?” A pause. “Why would you want to help me?”

  Darlene was taken aback by the question. This girl had never known love, had she? “Because I care,” she said. “Because I care about you.”

  Jill looked away. Tears were forming in her eyes, threatening to spill over her cheeks.

  “I can be there for you,” Darlene continued. “And maybe you can be there for me.” She paused a moment before opening her soul to the girl. “My daughter’s gone, as you know. And I’m not okay.” She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I haven’t been okay for a long time. There’s a hole in my heart so deep, I don't know if there's any filling it." She looked away, emotions she'd kept hidden for so long pushing their way to the surface. "Maybe... Maybe you can..." Her voice cracked, and she stopped.

  Then she felt the soft touch of a hand on her own. She looked down to find Jill looking back at her.

  “Maybe I can help,” Jill said.

  Darlene smiled. “Yeah, maybe you can.”

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Darlene dreaded letting Harry and Molly into the house. But they’d insisted, and the part of her that knew it was time to move on had insisted as well. Still, as 6 am became 7 and 7 became 8, she found herself tackling some of the mess on her own. She knew she wouldn’t have the place cleaned before they arrived, but if she could just put a dent in the madness, maybe she wouldn’t be mortified when they walked through the door at 10 am. Embarrassed, certainly. But not mortified.

  She should have tackled some of the mess the night before, but then she wouldn’t have needed Harry and Molly, would she? The truth of the matter was that she was shackled by the part of her that still wasn’t ready to move on. She was strong, she knew. But sometimes, even the strongest need a helping hand. She was ready to step out of the shackles. She just needed a couple of friends to help her turn the key.