The Final Girl Support Group

by Grady Hendrix

  “Drive,” I say.

  “Jesus, you scared me,” she says.

  Thankfully, she picks up speed and we cruise into a maze of suburban houses.

  “Are you all right?” she asks. I don’t answer. “Lynnette?”

  I’m checking to make sure there are no nasty surprises in the back seat.

  “Lock the doors,” I say.

  The power locks clunk shut, and I click on my seat belt.

  “The freeway is better,” I say. “Stick to big streets without traffic lights. Don’t slow down at stop signs if you can avoid it.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “I want to go home,” I say, and it sticks in my throat, so I swallow it again. “But I can’t, so just keep moving.”

  “What happened?” she asks.

  While we get on the 10, I tell her everything. When I finish she’s quiet for a minute.

  “I’ll call the hospitals, see if I can find out what happened to Julia,” she says. “Could it be Billy Walker? Do you know where he is?”

  Hearing his name is like licking an ashtray.

  “Uintas, solitary confinement,” I say. “I check every week.”

  “What about a fan?”

  I shake my head.

  “It’s not just one of mine,” I say. “Adrienne this morning, then me and Julia this afternoon. Someone’s coming for final girls.”

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Dr. Carol says.

  “I told you all earlier,” I say. “We don’t need meetings anymore because it’s over? Someone always wants to kill us. It’s never over.”

  “We need to go to the police,” Dr. Carol says.

  “No way,” I say. “Garrett P. Cannon didn’t do squat for me before, and his buddies won’t do squat for me now except lock me in a cell and make me a sitting target.”

  “I know trusting law enforcement is a scary step for you,” Dr. Carol says. “But they are the right people to deal with this. Someone tried to kill you, Lynnette. Someone shot Julia. This is serious.”

  “I own a lot of guns,” I say through clenched teeth. “I have a dead person in my home. Someone sprayed automatic gunfire all over my building. A cop’s going to think three things: terrorist, terrorist, and terrorist.”

  “I’ll talk to them,” Dr. Carol says.

  “By the time they stop overreacting and start listening it will be too late,” I say. “Don’t you get it? I only get to make one mistake and then I’m dead. They’ve been watching me for months. They knew where I was going to go. The only reason I’m not dead is because I was too fast.”

  I pull my legs up onto the seat and hug my knees. I grip the hair at my temples so hard it feels like I’m going to tear it out.

  “Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead,” I say.

  Dr. Carol puts a hand on my arm. I flinch and she takes it away.

  “They’re in my house,” I say, and I hate how my voice rises to a whine. I press my forehead to the window and start to slowly bounce it off the glass.

  “Do you have someplace to go, Lynnette?” Dr. Carol asks.

  I think about a hotel, or a motel, or a bar, or a church shelter. I can’t go to Marilyn or Dani. Not now. Someone’s out there waiting for us to bunch up again and make their job easier.

  “Can’t we just drive around for a while?” I ask.

  I’ve always thought better in cars.

  “Lynnette,” Dr. Carol says. “Let’s go home, okay? You can come to my house and rest for the night. We’ll call the other girls and make sure they’re informed if you feel that’s important, and in the morning we’ll sit down and talk this through.”

  “Who’s in your house?”

  “It’s just Skye and Pax,” she says.

  “Men,” I say.

  “Pax is eight years old,” she says. “And we’re lucky if Skye comes out of his room once a day. He’s always on his computer. I’ve got an alarm system, a gate, and a guest room. Come home.”

  The only people I trust are the other final girls. We’ll always have each other’s backs.

  Except for Julia. Who had Julia’s back?

  But Dr. Carol understands us. She’s been there for us for sixteen years. If I’m going to trust someone who’s not one of us, it’s her.

  “Is there a room with no windows?” I ask.

  “I have a gym in the basement,” Dr. Carol says.

  It’s not like I have a lot of choices.

  * * *

  —

  Dr. Carol lives in a white two-story hacienda in Sherman Oaks that’s designed to soothe and comfort your spirit, but it’s still got the full complement of rich-person security accessories: motion-activated floodlights, an automatic gate, an indoor two-car garage, ADT stickers tucked discreetly in the corners of its windows, tastefully concealed cameras. Even so, I’m glad I’ll be sleeping in the basement.

  Inside, a blond kid missing a tooth hops from foot to foot in the kitchen while sucking on a Go-Gurt.

  “Mom!” he says. “Mom! Mom! Mom!”

  “Pax,” she says. “This is Lynnette. She’s a patient and she’ll be sleeping here tonight.”

  He stops hopping and narrows his eyes at me.

  “Are you crazy?” he asks.

  “Pax!”

  “Fuck off,” I say.

  “Lynnette!”

  “Mom! She said a bad word!”

  “Pax, hush!” Dr. Carol says. “Lynnette, this is my home and my family. You need to be respectful while you’re here.”

  The windows over the sink look out into the backyard and I see a wall around it, which is good. Still, I put myself out of the window’s direct line of sight.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, trying to make peace with the kid. After all, I need his house at least for the night. “But I’m not crazy and I don’t appreciate being called that.”

  The kid ignores me and hands Dr. Carol a Post-it note.

  “Mom!” he says. “The police called! You’re supposed to call this guy back!”

  Dr. Carol does her best not to look at me, but kids have ESP.

  “Are they looking for her?” he shouts. “Is she a criminal? Is she a terrorist?”

  “Pax, go to the activity room,” Dr. Carol says.

  “No!” he says. “I’m not leaving you alone with a suicide bomber!”

  He’s giving me a headache.

  “Why don’t you show Lynnette your comic book while I call these people back?” Dr. Carol says.

  Not taking his eyes off his mom as she dials the number on the Post-it note, Pax grubs in his backpack and pulls out a sheaf of paper that’s been stapled together.

  “Here,” he says, shoving them at me. “It’s War Ghost. Pay me five dollars.”

  I ignore him and listen to Dr. Carol.

  “Hello, this is Dr. Carol Elliott,” she says on the phone. The comic hangs limp in my hand. “I got a call from this number, from Officer Fuller. Mm-hmm . . . mm-hmm . . . that’s awful. No, I don’t know. Have you found her?” She listens for a while, then: “Please, if you hear anything at all, please call me back at this number at any hour. I go to bed late and get up early. Actually, let me give you my mobile phone number. You can call there twenty-four hours a day. That’s right.”

  She gets off the phone.

  “Pax, go in the other room,” she says.

  “Mom,” he whines.

  “Now!” she snaps.

  He yanks War Ghost out of my hand. I’m staring at Dr. Carol, waiting for the bad news, but she’s waiting for Pax to be totally gone. When she’s convinced he can’t hear, she turns to me.

  “Heather’s halfway house burned down,” she says.

  “I told you!” I say, but she’s shaking her head.

  “They found drug paraphernalia in the baseme
nt where the fire started,” she said. “No one died, but a few people are hurt. Heather’s missing. They think she started it.”

  I would think that, too, if I wasn’t a final girl.

  “They’re coming for us,” I say. “One by one, they’re coming for us. We need to call Uintas and double-check that Billy is still there. We need to find out where all of them are, all the monsters. This is the sequel or a crossover, or I don’t know what.”

  “Lynnette, you need to calm down,” Dr. Carol says. “We don’t know anything right now.”

  “I know everything!” I shout. “I know what’s happening! Why won’t anyone listen to me?”

  “Don’t yell at my mom!” Something sharp hits my leg.

  I look down and Pax is baring his teeth at me, gripping a sharpened pencil in one hand. It didn’t break the denim but I’ll have a bruise.

  “Leave her alone!” he snarls.

  I shove him hard, and he goes down on his butt, his mouth forming a comical O. I look at Dr. Carol and her mouth is making an identical shape.

  “I need to be alone,” I say, and leave the room.

  * * *

  —

  Dr. Carol gives me some bedding and an air mattress, and the gym locks from the inside. There are no windows, and once I drag the elliptical over to block the door I make a nest in the corner and plug in my phone, turn the ringer up loud, and slide my Smith & Wesson under my pillow. Then I try to figure this out.

  Who’s coming for us? A fan? That has to be it. The monsters in our lives are as particular about their final girls as people are about their Starbucks order. Black nonfat camp counselor with high threshold for pain and an extra shot. A double soy lesbian babysitter who’s not afraid to stab someone in the eye, hold the foam.

  But how are they this organized? Final girl fans are lonely and loony. The kind of people who relocate to be near a serial killer and who dream of having a maniac’s baby. The kind of people who dressed up as Ricky Walker and marched around outside my house, who followed my foster mom to malls and tried to steal her used Kleenex for voodoo rituals. These are not logical thinkers.

  Right before I fall asleep I realize I know who it is: all of them. In the darkness of the house around me I can feel all the monsters creeping through the shadows. Ricky and Billy Walker, sneaking down the stairs and shushing each other. Nick Shipman standing at the front door with an absent grin on his big round moon face. The Hansens fumbling around in the garbage by the back of the house. The Ghost coming in through the garage door. Teddy Volker standing in the light of the refrigerator. The pale Dream King lurking in the shadows of the mirror on the other side of the room.

  There’s a sound in the hall, and my heart rate spikes. I take eight deep breaths and tell myself it’s probably that creepy little kid. I’ll have to remember to look at his comic book in the morning, check it for signs of aggression, see if one day I’ll have to worry about him, too. Even an eight-year-old can be dangerous if he gets the drop on you.

  I feel naked. They knew my plans. They knew my exits. They were inside my computer. They’re inside my house. I feel so violated I don’t think I’ll ever feel clean again.

  I left Julia behind. It was the right thing to do. She’d have done the same thing. I didn’t have time to worry about her. I only had time to save myself.

  I put two five-pound barbells next to my bed, just in case. I don’t want to have to shoot Dr. Carol’s kid. I’d rather just stun him.

  When I first came to L.A., I thought I was going to die. Men followed me wherever I went. I stopped leaving the house. I stopped going to group. Then they started ringing my doorbell and I realized staying home wasn’t safe either.

  Dani told me I should learn how to shoot, it’d make me feel safer, but I’d never held a gun before and how could I go to a range? I couldn’t bear to have my back to all those people, facing an empty field, my total concentration focused on a tiny paper target seventy-five feet away. Adrienne told me Red Lake was renovating and it still had its rifle range. She drove me there.

  We were the only two people on the property and we stayed for three days, and every day I unloaded rounds until my wrists went numb while Adrienne sat beside me in her white sweater and jeans, wearing red ear protectors, watching my back. She didn’t believe in guns but she believed in me.

  Adrienne is dead. Julia might be dead. Heather might be dead. In the blink of an eye, half my life is gone.

  The hard thing about sleeping on an air mattress is that when you cry, the water pools. It’s got nowhere else to go.

  —“The Slasher Franchises Ranked” by Russell Thorn, Rue Morgue magazine, August 2010

  THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP VI:

  The Next Generation

  I don’t sleep, I don’t close my eyes, but somehow I go into a trance where time seems to be taken out in chunks. I don’t see the sun come up. I don’t hear birds start chirping. But then it’s morning and someone is trying to open the door, banging it into the elliptical machine over and over like a confused robot.

  donk . . . donk . . . donk . . .

  I’m awake, on my feet, gun in my hand, when Dr. Carol sticks her head around the door.

  “Lynnette—oh, Jesus!” She ducks back around the door, leaving it open.

  “Are you alone?” I ask.

  “Did you bring a handgun into my home?” she calls from behind the door.

  “. . . Yes?”

  “Lynnette, are you still pointing that handgun at me?” she asks.

  “No,” I lie.

  “I appreciate that you feel threatened,” she says. “But my children are in this house. You need to let me lock that weapon in my safe while you’re here.”

  “I’ll put the safety on and keep it in my bag,” I say. “But I’m not locking it up.”

  I put it in my fanny pack but don’t put the safety on. That extra half second might be the difference between living and dying. Then I drag the elliptical away from the doorway. It feels heavier than the night before.

  Dr. Carol stands in the hall wearing a soft charcoal sweater and light gray slacks. She’s already done her hair and makeup.

  “Show me,” she says.

  I unzip my fanny pack and show her the gun. She’s one of those people who has never held a gun before, so being this close to one makes her nervous. She doesn’t even check whether the safety is actually on before I zip my bag back up.

  “I came to see if you want breakfast,” she says.

  Upstairs in the kitchen, there’s a man with blond stubble and bed head standing at the sink in sweat pants, dirty white socks, and a lacrosse T-shirt, trying to open a package of bacon with the tip of a foot-long carving knife.

  “Let me do that, honey,” Dr. Carol says, going over and taking the knife from him.

  He watches her do his work for him and I realize that he’s her other son, Skye. Seeing how old he is makes me feel old. He’s stringy, not much body fat. He probably runs. He’s taller than I am, longer reach, good stamina; I could take him but I’d need to get in my first hits fast and make them count. These are the things I notice, not that he’s attractive for his age, not that he’s got a good chin.

  “Why are you still here?” Pax asks, materializing on the other side of the counter, lipping a piece of toast.

  “Because she is our guest,” Dr. Carol says. “Elbows.”

  He takes his elbows off the counter and goes back to sucking his toast.

  “Not my guest,” he says.

  “Not mine, either,” Skye says from the sink. “I didn’t know you let patients into the house.”

  “You both need to be respectful, Skye,” Dr. Carol says, finally getting the bacon open and taking it to the stove.

  “Make sure you cook it long enough,” Pax says. “Extra crispy.”

  It’s degrading to watch the woman who hauled us
back from the brink reduced to the status of waitress for her children. Eventually they won’t have their mother to be their short-order cook and laundress and maid. They’ll have to trick some poor woman into marrying them to get all that for free again.

  Dr. Carol makes scrambled eggs, bacon, whole wheat toast, and mango smoothies. I stick with fruit. I prefer my food prepackaged and when I’m in an unsafe environment the closest I can get is fruit.

  Everyone sits at the table except Pax, who stays on his stool, spinning lazily from side to side, smacking his toast with his mouth open so I can see gummy brown gobs of bread. He’s looking at his brother when he starts to smirk. Skye smiles.

  “What is it?” Dr. Carol asks, wanting to be let in on the joke.

  “Pax has something to say,” Skye says.

  “No,” Pax says, shaking his head, clapping one hand over his mouth.

  “Don’t be shy, Pax,” Dr. Carol encourages him.

  Pax looks over at me and tries to keep a straight face.

  “Nice rack,” he says, then falls off his chair giggling.

  Something inside my chest tightens.

  “Pax!” Dr. Carol says, genuinely shocked. “That is not nice.”

  I haven’t seen one of those T-shirts in a long time, but clearly someone’s been googling me. I refuse to let this useless little boy get under my skin.

  “It’s all right,” I say to Dr. Carol. Then I level my gaze on Pax. “You want to see the scars? You want to see how funny they look?”

  Dr. Carol doesn’t know how to navigate this situation. Pax senses his mom’s discomfort and stops laughing.

  I cross my arms at the wrist and grab the hem of my T-shirt. “I don’t mind showing you if you’re that interested.”

  “Go upstairs and get ready for school, Pax,” Dr. Carol says.

  We all watch him go. At the bottom of the stairs he looks back, sees us all watching him, then turns and runs upstairs.