Pretty Little Dead Girls

by Mercedes M. Yardley

  His feet hit the ground like pistons, cold and mechanical, and he held the knife tightly in his grip, blade down.

  Oh, oh, how tragically this shall unfold.

  CHAPTER FIFTY SEVEN

  The Chase

  The first drop of rain hit Bryony beside her eye, and ran down her face like tears.

  No, she thought. No!

  She knew Peter was behind her, and her mind went cottony with despair and panic. More time! She needed more time.

  Bryony picked up her pace. It would deplete her energy faster, but if she didn’t outrun him, her reserve of energy certainly wouldn’t do her any good.

  She scrapped her earlier plan of hiding in the library and phoning for help. Plan B consisted of running to the closest house and screaming hysterically for help. Unfortunately for her, that was still a good four miles. Loneliness consumed her, biting at her cheeks like the stormy air. It was all catching up with her. It was catching up.

  It was catching up. Already Peter could see her pale hair gathering and reflecting the weak light that somehow managed to filter through the harsh clouds. She was glowing, an ethereal will-o-wisp, and thoughts of the old tales flitted through his mind. If he followed her, what would he find? Treasure? Tragedy? Ooh, he was hoping for tragedy.

  “Bryony, why are you running?” he called. He hoped he had the right note of concern in his voice. “I’m worried about you! Wait for me!”

  She didn’t stop, didn’t even slow. If anything, she kicked it up a notch and ran faster. Well, so much for that tactic, Peter thought, and really it was quite a relief to him. Pretending to be thinking one thing when actually he was thinking another was far more difficult than one would imagine. What a relief to be who he really was.

  Now he was able to fully enjoy the chase.

  p

  Bryony was not enjoying the chase. She was terrified. Her muscles were starting to hurt, stiff from lack of use and proper stretching. Her bruised ribs ached; her eye was still tender even though the blackness was fading. She was breaking down. She was broken.

  Something happened then. Either she tripped over something half buried in the sand, or it rose up malevolently in the dark to catch her foot. She went flying, landing hard on the ground. Her body screamed out, and she felt stitches burst. The desert threw a net of desolation around her, and nearly caught her fast, but Bryony was on her knees, crawling. Then she was on her feet. Although limping, she started to gain speed again. She set off, ignoring the water falling from the sky, chilling her. She could almost taste her freedom except

  for the hand

  reaching from behind

  and wrapping itself in her hair.

  CHAPTER FIFTY EIGHT

  Fight

  “Bryony,” Peter huffed. “I wish you were feeling better, that you were whole. You have no idea how much I wish this for you. Alas, it is not meant to be, because it is time. You and I have a dance to finish, don’t we?”

  The wind picked up, blowing the storm their way, blowing Bryony’s hair around her white face like a flag signaling for help. But no help was to be had, and she was stuck fast while Peter pressed behind her, his hand fisted in her hair.

  Bryony’s head was pulled sharply back, and the wind caressed her vulnerable throat in a way that unnerved her.

  She tried to keep her voice calm when she said: “I wish that you wouldn’t kill me, Peter. It would disappoint Eddie. It would disappoint my father.”

  Peter shrugged. “We can’t change who we are, can we? No, we cannot. I was born to live and you were born to die, my beautiful Bryony.” He coughed. “This wind, it’s blowing sand in my face. However do you get used to it? I can’t breathe.”

  “Just give yourself a little while, for it is unsettled now. It anticipates the rain, and they do not get along. The sand is fighting but soon it will lose, at least for a while.”

  The rain, emboldened by her confidence, pounded itself to the earth. Peter groaned.

  “This is unlike anything that I have ever seen. It almost makes me want to rush the killing process, but I won’t, because you’re special, Bryony, and you’ve waited for me just as I have waited for you. I won’t hurry it, because that wouldn’t be fair to either of us. I want you to be happy and free, and to think of me fondly as you die. I almost lost you to that idiot on the trail, and I sent you gifts, like the star pendant on the body you found in the water. You missed the necklace, didn’t you? That’s okay, I’m not mad at you, so please don’t worry about it. And I sent you all of those flowers, and I got rid of that fishy man at the market who was always annoying you. Do you see how much I have done for you?” He smiled. How kind and benevolent of him. He blinked the rain out of his eyes and pressed his lips to her wet hair.

  Bryony went still, then.

  When she spoke, her voice sounded strange, unfamiliar, as if the ghost inside of her had risen up and taken over while the real Bryony sank to the floor to catch her breath. It took on the sound of the rain.

  “Chad? Are you saying you hurt my Chad?”

  Lightning struck somewhere on the far off mesa, and Bryony reflexively threw her arms over her head. The stars on her wrist glittered.

  Peter stepped around so he faced her, his hands still in her hair. “Oh, my little Star Girl, are you ready to go back home?” He showed her his knife, and Bryony’s reaction startled him.

  “Peter Culpert, you put that knife down and let me go, do you hear me? I am not for you! Didn’t you hear what my father said? I am not for you!”

  And suddenly she was thrashing, kicking and punching unlike anything he had ever seen. Her hair flung water into his face and she threw her body at him. Surprised, he loosened his grip on the knife and she knocked it cleanly from his hand.

  She wanted to live. She wanted to live. She was going to fight like she ought to fight, like the women used to fight way back when. She didn’t read the magazines; she didn’t subscribe to the television shows. She was going to give it her all, and although beaten and bruised with blood coursing down her face from the burst stitches, Bryony Adams was going to go down swinging.

  What joy! What delight! His little bird wasn’t going to disappoint him after all.

  Peter threw his head back and laughed.

  CHAPTER FIFTY NINE

  Blood and Wind and Rain

  There comes a time in everyone’s life when a decision must be made.

  There are always decisions being made, every second of every day, and sometimes that decision is simply not to decide. However, it needs be said that one day every living thing on this earth will make The Utmost Decision, the decision that will change the rest of their existence one way or the other. What is this decision, you ask? It is different for everybody, and you will not know what yours will be until the time comes, and perhaps even then you will not realize the importance of your choice.

  But as for our dear Bryony, when the time came and she was faced with her Utmost Decision, she realized the ramification of that instant with serene clarity. In fact, as she stood there in the blood and wind and rain with a killer and his brightly shining knife, the terror subsided for a perfect moment and she had amazing presence of mind.

  She thought, “He has found me, and I am caught. It is time.”

  She thought, “I will never see my husband again. I will never see my friends or the flower shop. How very disheartening.”

  She thought, “How I long to live. I want to live.”

  And that was it.

  The magic words: “I want to live.”

  Not a difficult thing to understand, not really. Not an unachievable desire, not too much to ask for. She wanted what others were fortunate enough to take for granted. She wanted a future. She wanted a life, things to look forward to. Despite everything thrown at her, despite what had been ripped away, she planted her feet firmly in the desert sand and challenged fate, challenged the universe. It was as if the cosmos stopped, and fate blinked its eyes quickly.

  What, Bryony wanted t
o survive, really? Could her will be as strong as the will of the universe? Should she get a sporting chance? She wanted to live.

  So, if one wants something very, very much, then what does one do to achieve it? One fights, of course.

  And fight she did, everything Rikki-Tikki ever taught her, everything they carefully practiced in her living room, and everything she practiced on her own. She ripped away from Peter, leaving a handful of hair in his hand, and threw a left hook and some amazingly well-placed jabs, and an uppercut, and a few roundhouse kicks. When she knocked the knife to the ground, she felt a small thrill of victory, but only for a few seconds, because there was still fear. There was also still anger, so much anger. And when the killer started laughing, her anger only rose until she turned into a beautiful nuclear holocaust. He had no right. She was not meant for him.

  Bryony threw herself to the ground, scrabbling for the knife. The torrential rain hit hard between her shoulder blades. It ran down the back of her neck and alarmed her with its brazenness, the way it sought out the vulnerable areas of her body—behind her ears, in the crooks of her elbows—without her permission. Never, never again without her permission. It was her life, her body, her soul. The ghosts of herself billowed around her with the clouds. She couldn’t see the knife through the rain, couldn’t feel it in the frozen mud.

  Peter’s laughter mixed with the shrieking of the wind, and it galvanized her. They had become one and the same, a desert of terrors, and she refused to lie down and lift her throat to the knife. She deserved this life.

  Bryony saw a faint glimmer in the mud, and reached for it.

  Peter kicked her out of the way so hard she slid in the mud. She clutched at her side in agony but then crawled back. The mud was freezing, a grudging mix of hateful sand and rain, and it sucked at her strength.

  Peter bent down for the knife.

  “No!” Bryony screamed, and threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his knees. He slipped and went down, and Bryony was past him in seconds. The ground couldn’t soak up any more water, and it was starting to stand in the divots pushed up by their feet. Lightning struck closer, hitting the bare ground atop another mesa. There was nothing out here to protect them, nothing to shield them from the lightning. When it moved away from the mesa, she and Peter would be the tallest things in the desert. Stop had warned her about this, had taught her not to make herself a target, but how could she avoid it when she needed to flee for her life? How?

  Bryony grabbed the knife at the wrong end, and the blade sunk deep into her frozen fingers. She flipped the knife around, ignoring the blood that dripped from her hand and fed itself to the mud. The anxious, hungry mewing sound of the desert made Bryony’s stomach turn.

  I am not for you, she thought, and slowly got to her feet. She held the knife on Peter.

  “Let me go, Peter. Or I will kill you, I swear I will. Neither of us has to die.”

  Peter pulled himself to his knees. He was covered in mud and his hair was plastered by the rain, which ran in rivulets across the ground. His eyes were wild with need, a kind of desire Bryony had never seen. For the first time he looked like a monster to her, not the imaginary monsters that appear in stories with faeries and witches, but the kind you run into at a bank, and then they ask you out for coffee, and then a movie, and after a few weeks of this, you trust them enough to invite them over for dinner. And when you are lining your mouth with red and slipping especially pretty shoes onto your feet, they are donning rubber gloves and making sure everything is ready. After he is temporarily satiated, he then boxes up what he loves best about you—your lovely ring finger, for example, or that fine part of the unusually high and delicate arch on your foot—and wraps them away for himself as a lovely gift to open later.

  “You want me,” Bryony said, and the realization of it nearly made her crumble. The power of that wanting was devastatingly strong, and she felt the weight of it on her slender shoulders, beating on her back like the rain. She took a step back and splashed in the water that was now almost to her ankles. The wind rippled it and pushed it downhill with aggression. Bryony saw something wriggling wash by. It was beginning.

  Peter laughed again, but his eyes were on her and they were dark, nailing her to different pieces of wood in his mind. “Of course I want you. I want you more than anybody ever has, not even your husband. How does that make you feel, Bryony? I need you, I crave you. I know how the desert has been feeling all of these years. I am going to have you, do you understand? I am going to knock you to the ground and hold your face in the mud and water until you stop fighting. Do you have any idea how that will feel? For both of us? I will stroke your hair as you die, and tell you that you fulfill me, that your death somehow makes my life complete. I will kiss your face and your hair in gratitude, and then I will take that knife you’re holding on me so shakily, so clumsily, and I will show you how it is done.”

  He slowly stood up, and Bryony twitched the knife in his direction, but her throat went sour. She blinked water out of her eyes and realized there were tears, as well.

  “Don’t make me hurt you, Peter,” she said. Her voice wavered, so she tried to make it strong. “Please don’t make me use this on you. I don’t want to, but I will.”

  Peter took a slow step forward, and red ran across Bryony’s vision. She would have to slash, to tear, she would go for his face or his chest, and it would pull against his skin, ripping, and the blood would flow. She knew how it would be, hadn’t she lived through it herself? Feeling her skin shred. Feeling it flay and fall away, her life leaking out, everything she had fought so hard for, everything she had tried so hard to save. She had spent her entire fragile existence running, and for what? To have her tender skin slashed to ribbons? Could she really do that to another human being? Could she stand so close to him and cause him the same panic she had felt herself? She pictured the gash across his face in her mind, and gasped.

  She couldn’t do it. It made her faint to think of it, imagining the look that would cross Peter’s face. The agonized look of surprised betrayal.

  Peter saw this immediately, and he smiled. “Give me the knife, Bryony. It is a burden to you, but to me it is a joy. There is nothing like feeling metal puncture the flesh, sliding through the fat and moving under the skin. It’s . . . like heaven. It’s worth the time, worth the effort of stalking and attacking and hiding. I could flay myself off a nice little patch, couldn’t I? I could cut myself a lock of your hair and keep it forever. I could remove your pale gray eyes and keep them near me. It’s not such a bad thing, really. You will be with me forever. You will be the standard to which I hold up every other woman, every other kill. Others will forget you. You will fade in their minds until they only remember what they choose to remember. They’ll forget the weight of your impending death and the weariness that nearly crushes you, but me? I will remember you wholly. It’s love, my sweet one. Yes, it’s a different love than you have ever known, but it is love all the same, and dare I say it? It is a truer and purer love than you have ever experienced. Look at your husband. Look at your father. Look at how they have left you. But have I left you? No.”

  He took another step closer, and Bryony trembled. She did not lunge at him with the knife. She did not turn and bound away. The water rushed faster past her feet, tugging at her with desperate urgency, trying to pull her to the ground.

  “Yes,” it told her. “Give him the knife. Let him do what everybody wishes. I will have you, he will have you, and you will be truly loved. He accepts you, not in spite of who you are, but exactly for who you are. Isn’t that what you always wanted? He will remember you after you’re gone.”

  Peter reached out his hand. “Who is here with you at your last moments, my beautiful Star Girl? Who is here? It is me. It is me. It is me.”

  The thunder roared, battling the sound of the wind for dominance. Peter’s words were caught in the noise, tossed in it like the tiny skeleton of a bird, ripped apart and put back together in haphazard and grotesqu
e ways. The wriggling around their feet had grown intense. Rattlesnakes, scorpions. Habitants of the desert panicked from being driven out of their homes. Badgers and mice cringing from the lightning that lit the sky. Bryony’s hair crackled on the back of her neck despite the weight of the water.

  “Peter,” she said softly. He was still approaching her as though she were a beaten animal. He was so careful not to spook her, moving slowly, speaking gently. There was a loud crack and lightning flashed again, illuminating his face, but not his eyes. Somehow they seemed to illuminate themselves.

  “What, Bryony?” he asked, and reached for the knife. His eyes sparked.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and plunged the knife into his shoulder, deliberately missing his heart. He screamed and grabbed at the wound, but she had already pulled the knife out and hurled it as far as she could into the darkness. She smacked at his bloody shoulder with her fist, and as he doubled over, she kicked him hard in the head, sending him down into the water. Then she turned and ran.

  Her feet splashed through the flooded desert, and they cried: “Victory! Victory! Life!” She didn’t dare look over her shoulder. She didn’t have the time. She ran, zipping through the water as though she were skating on top of it. The euphoria almost made her think she was.

  She heard shrieking behind her, and tried to block it out. Perhaps it was the wind, that ever mischievous wind, making sounds that would ordinarily entice her gentle heart to go back and see if somebody needed help. For they were, you see, screams of the most horrible kind, the type of screaming that makes one shudder and wish they had never heard them, for now they will lie awake at night thinking about the tragedy that befell the screamer. And not one night, but many, many nights, for there is a shame inside when one doesn’t help another, and it grows into an all-consuming worm. It is fairly easy to identify who suffers from this worm; they are always wrapped in blankets and warm cable knit sweaters to shield themselves from the cold, because they don’t deserve to feel the sun, they don’t deserve for their blood to run comfortably at a nice, predictable temperature. They are the ones who let somebody die, they heard the screams and never looked, never helped, and therefore gave up their chance at being a Real Person. Now they are an unfortunate ghost, a lost phantom.