The Dead Girls Club

by Damien Angelica Walters

  “So what’d she do?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The other Lauren? If people are looking for her, what did she do?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “Right,” she says, stretching out the word.

  I don’t bother to wait for her to close the door. When I’m halfway down the sidewalk, an engine revs. An old grayish-blue Chevy that’s seen better days pulls away from the curb across the street with a belch of smoke. I step back instinctively, although my Jeep is a barrier between me and the street.

  Inside, doors locked, I crumple the list of Laurens and throw it on the floor of the passenger seat. I canceled patients for this? What do I do now? Is it worth trying another pay site? What if I get another list with the same names I already have?

  No, somehow I have to convince Alexa Martin to give me the information. If I want to find Lauren, I don’t have a choice. I rub my chin. Maybe I’m running in circles for no reason. Maybe I should step back, do nothing. Let Lauren or whoever it is come to me. Oh yes, that’s brilliant. Just brilliant. Reactive instead of proactive.

  A curtain twitches in the front window of this Lauren’s house, and I start my car. Since Alexa no longer works at the prison full-time, she should be in her office. I could stop by, say I was in the area. Maybe if I catch her unaware, she’ll be more willing to divulge details. At this point I’ll take anything.

  * * *

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Cole, Dr. Martin is with a patient,” Corinne, Alexa’s receptionist, says, her lips set in a way that maintains I should already know. She’s the sort who’d be at home as the headmistress in an English boarding school. Nothing gets past her.

  Nonetheless, I keep my easy smile. “Does she have any free time afterward?”

  “Unfortunately not. She’s leaving soon for Florida and has back-to-back appointments until then.”

  “Oh, yes, of course.”

  This I do know. Alexa goes south to visit her sister every September for a few weeks. Maybe I can use her prevacation chaos to my advantage, get her to drop her guard long enough to give me what I need.

  “Will you let her know I stopped by?” I say. “And have her call me when she has a chance?”

  Corinne says she will, but her gaze is already turning away, and once the phone begins to ring, I’ve lost her.

  Today has been an utter waste of time, and I’m no better off than when I got out of bed. Frustration is a stone in my gut.

  Traffic’s a bitch, but even though I get home late, the lights downstairs are out and the house is silent. I’m not overly quiet closing the door or slipping off my shoes, but I don’t call out in case Ryan’s napping. I called when I was halfway home, and he said he had a long day, his first full day of what I can’t help but think of as The Great Eloise Harding Bathroom Renovation. Awful of me, I know.

  Keeping my steps soft, I pause at the top of the stairs. Our bedroom light is off, but the overhead in Ryan’s office is on, his door half open. I hear the tapping of keys, a pause. The creak of his desk chair. A long series of keystrokes, a longer pause. A sigh. More typing.

  “I’m home,” I say.

  “In here,” he says.

  I nudge his door open all the way. His laptop is now closed, his chair pushed back from the desk. He smiles, but it looks forced.

  “Good day?” I ask.

  “Not bad, just long. You?”

  “Same. Anything in today’s mail?”

  I specifically don’t mention the check for the Kane job, but his eyes pinch at the outer corners.

  “No,” he says.

  “I didn’t mean anything. I was just asking.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Irritation bubbles behind the cauldron of my ribs. “Seriously, Ryan. If I wanted to ask something specific, I would’ve. All I wanted to know is if there was anything in the mail, you know, maybe for me?”

  He blinks. “Okay. No, there was nothing for you today.”

  I respond with a curt nod and head into our room to change. I asked a simple question and he acted like I was the goddamn Spanish Inquisition. I pause with a hand on the corner of my dresser, the other against my forehead.

  Maybe I’m making mountains from molehills.

  Maybe I just wanted to pick a fight.

  * * *

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t see you,” Alexa says. “But I wasn’t expecting you to drop by,” she says. “Things are a little busy at the moment.” I hear her riffling through paper, opening a file cabinet, closing a desk drawer.

  “I should’ve called, but thought I’d take a chance. I had a doctor’s appointment that didn’t take as much time as I expected.” The lie rolls off with ease.

  “When I get back, let’s get together for lunch or dinner. Unfortunately, I can’t fit it in between now and when I leave.”

  I wheel my chair so I’m facing the window. Cross my legs. Here goes nothing. “So, something interesting or maybe just odd happened the other day.”

  “Oh?”

  Her interest is merely polite, I can tell, accompanied by the shuffling of more paper.

  “I saw Lauren.”

  Silence on the other end. A drawn-out silence with a long exhale after.

  “You saw Lauren?” Each word is pregnant with disbelief.

  “Yes, on Saturday. Here in Annapolis.”

  I can even picture the meeting. Me coming round the corner in a store. Target, maybe, or Kohl’s. Her standing in the center of the aisle, eyes widening when she sees me, when she realizes I see her and know who she is … I uncross my legs. Plant both feet on the floor. Enough of that mental fuckery.

  “At least I think it was her,” I say.

  “Did you talk to her?” Her words are tight.

  I regret my subterfuge—I do—but I say, “Is she close to me? I guess that would solve it, wouldn’t it? Or at least help?”

  “Heather.”

  “I’m not asking for anything other than that.”

  I hear a series of faint clicks that might be the tap of her fingernails. “I think you must’ve been mistaken. That’s as much as I’m willing to say. This preoccupation you have with her isn’t healthy.”

  “I know, I’m sorry. I’ll let it go.”

  After we say our goodbyes, I spin toward my desk. I may not know exactly where Lauren is yet, but now I can guess she isn’t living nearby. That’s something. I exhale through my nose. Bullshit. It’s still nothing. Alexa isn’t going to give me anything else, no matter how hard I try. There has to be another way. There has to. But I can’t think of a damn thing.

  I stare out at the parking lot, find my car. No one’s nearby. A woman gets out of her vehicle on the other side of the lot. Her wavy, flyaway hair reminds me of Rachel’s when we were girls. I close the blinds. Peek through the slats.

  What do I do next? I have to do something. But what? What?

  I pinch the bridge of my nose. Maybe stop thinking about Lauren for a minute. Sometimes the best solutions come when you’re not actively thinking. What about Rachel, then? I scoff. As if that’s any better. Blank walls every way I turn, with someone lurking just out of sight.

  I scan Rachel’s social media again, but there’s not a damn thing there to work with. I’m definitely not going to skulk around her house. I can’t exactly sit in the parking lot of the law firm where she works either. I can’t take a holiday from my own life to shadow hers. I got lucky with Gia, but I can’t count on that sort of thing happening twice.

  I pick at a cuticle. Drum my fingers on my chair’s arms. Rachel practices family law. What if …

  My fingers still. What if I make an appointment with her, pretend to be contemplating divorce? If nothing else, it would put me in front of her. Ryan would never know. It’s not a good idea—it’s a terrible one, as a matter of fact—but it’s the only one I’ve got.

  Before I can second-guess myself, I pick up my phone. Ten minutes later, I have a consultation set for next Thursday. I quell the unease in my gut, reminding
myself it’s a fake appointment, merely an excuse to get in front of Rachel, to look her in the eye. I’d never leave Ryan.

  So. Back to Lauren. I find another website advertising INFORMATION ON ANYONE! This one’s a hundred dollars, but I plunk in my credit card information. I can’t think of any other way—short of hiring a private detective—to find Lauren. There has to be something I’m missing. In this day and age, no one can hide completely.

  After, I make a pit stop in the bathroom, and Ellie’s in my office at the filing cabinet when I get back. She turns fast, face pink.

  “I was putting this back,” she says, holding a file. “Trying, anyway.”

  I fish out the keys. I won’t ever tell Ellie, but if she were to yank the top two drawers at the same time, there’s a good chance the whole thing would unlock. A quirk I discovered via accident.

  “Dr. Cole? Your finger’s bleeding.”

  “A terrible old habit,” I say as I fetch a tissue and blot the torn skin. I squirt a bit of hand sanitizer into my palm. It burns when it hits the wound, but I soldier on. Apply more sanitizer. Rub until the wound bleeds anew.

  “What file is it?” I say.

  Ellie closes the drawer hard enough to rattle the files inside. “Sorry?”

  I tip my head toward the cabinet. “The file?”

  “Oh, it was Jacob’s. I forgot to bring it back in this morning, and then it got tucked under some other papers, I’m sorry—”

  “No harm done,” I say.

  I’m about to ask her to add today’s notes to another patient’s file, but my notebook is blank. Nothing from the session? That’s not like me at all.

  Ellie leaves without another word, her steps small and quick. Never mind the lack of notes. Something doesn’t seem right. Ellie returned Jacob’s file this morning. I swear she did. But nothing’s out of place in the cabinet. And Jacob’s file is in order. There are notes dated today, a few anyway. Nothing’s missing from my desk. The necklace is still in the drawer.

  But the color in Ellie’s cheeks, the way she spoke. Am I being paranoid? Or do I need to keep an eye on her, too?

  I sit. Steeple my fingers. An email arrives from the information website, and my stomach lurches with anticipation. I scan the attached list, comparing it to the old. Not even one new addition. The same Laurens. The same information.

  I groan behind clenched teeth. I feel as though I’m a puppet dangling from someone else’s strings. And I don’t like it at all.

  End of day, I shove my laptop in my bag. Check my pockets for keys. My office phone rings and I think about not answering, but I put on my professional voice and say, “Dr. Cole speaking.”

  Silence on the other end.

  “This is Dr. Cole. May I help you?”

  The silence grows even larger.

  “Is someone there?”

  There’s a hint of movement. An exhale.

  “Who is this?” I say, trying for forceful. In control. I can hang up anytime. But I clutch the phone even tighter, ignoring the tension in my fingers, my other hand splayed like a starfish on my desk.

  An inhale. A syllable, unintelligible. The voice feels wrong. My spine turns arctic, my mouth Saharan.

  Who are you?

  What are you?

  Then they’re gone. Hissing through my teeth, I drop the phone as though it’s poison. Bite the side of my fingernail, loosening a bit of cuticle. Bite it again, pulling until it hurts. Until there’s blood.

  We had to bleed.

  My arms are awash in goose bumps.

  When we did the ritual, she said we had to bleed.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THEN

  “Take off your shoes and sit inside the circle,” Becca said.

  One by one, we stepped over the thirteen candles Becca had arranged and sat cross-legged. I sat facing the staircase, Rachel to my right, and Gia across from me. In the middle was a plate with another candle, unlit, matches, a needle, and a bunch of Becca’s mom’s scarves. The room smelled of fruit, baby powder, and vanilla. The corners were all shadowy.

  A couple months ago, I’d read a book where people were trying to summon the devil and they did a ritual inside a circle of candles. Thirteen candles. I’d told Becca about it, too, so I knew that’s where she’d gotten the idea. In the book, the main guy used a knife to cut their palms and they all drank the blood. When the devil came, he ripped off all their heads, but I didn’t think the Red Lady would do anything to us. I didn’t think she’d show up at all, even if she was real. Which she wasn’t, no matter what Becca said.

  Becca took the open spot in the circle, her back facing the shadowed end of the basement, and said, “If you want to see the Red Lady, you have to make yourself bleed, and then you have to be blindfolded and say the right words. You have to prove you can do it, prove you want to see her.”

  Rachel was breathing fast, her lips parted. Really scared, not fake scared. I glanced at the needle and stifled a grin. When we were ten, Becca and I had pricked our fingers to be blood sisters.

  “If we wear blindfolds, how will we see her?” I said.

  “Do you want to accidentally look in her eyes?” Becca said. “And wake up with dirt in your mouth? Or not wake up at all?”

  “I don’t,” Rachel said.

  “But how will we know she’s here if we can’t see?” Gia said.

  “We’ll know. We’ll see her here,” Becca said, tapping the side of her head.

  Yeah, in our imaginations. But I said, “How do you know?”

  Her gaze locked onto mine, and we stared without speaking, like in a don’t-blink contest. I didn’t know why I was trying to make her mad. Rachel and Gia were watching us, but they kept quiet. In the past week and a half, I’d seen Becca once and not even for that long. Every other time I’d called, she’d said she was too busy to hang out. But she wasn’t now that Gia was back from her vacation and it was time for the ritual. She’d even had Rachel call me this morning to tell me to come to the house after dinner; she hadn’t called me herself.

  Becca looked away first and picked up the matches. “I just do. If we’re lucky, she might talk to us, too.” She lit the candle on the plate and turned the needle in the flame. “So we don’t get lockjaw,” she said. “Hold out your hands.”

  Rachel held hers against her chest. “But it will hurt. You never said we had to do this.”

  Becca tilted her head, the way my dog Roxie used to. “Are you scared?”

  “No. I mean, a little, but …” Rachel said.

  A muscle in Becca’s jaw twitched. “If you don’t want to—”

  Gia put out hers. “I’ll do it.”

  “I will, too,” I said. Not that I wanted to, but I wanted it all over with.

  “Fine,” Rachel said.

  I hissed when Becca jabbed my finger, surprised she’d picked me first. Gia made a little squeak, and Rachel yelped.

  “Now squeeze some blood on your palm.”

  “What about you?” Rachel said.

  “I will, but I need to do your blindfolds first. Now rub together, like this.” She mashed her palms together.

  “Gross,” Rachel said.

  “It’s just blood,” Becca said.

  I was the last person Becca blindfolded. After, if I angled my head back, I could see a sliver of candlelight beneath the edge of the scarf. Becca pricked her own finger, blew out the candle stub, and scooted in between me and Gia.

  “Everybody move in so we’re close,” she said. “We have to hold hands tight so our blood touches.” Hers slipped into mine, the blood wet and sticky. “Don’t let go, no matter what. Not until I say so. Don’t take off your blindfolds either. Say exactly what I say and how I say it.” She sat up a little straighter. “Red Lady, Red Lady, show us your face.”

  Rachel laughed.

  “Do you want to do this or not?” Becca’s said, her voice a rubber band snapping on skin.

  “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “Okay,” Becca said. “Red Lady, Re
d Lady, show us your face.”

  She shook my hand, so I said it, too, even though it didn’t make any sense. With our blindfolds on, how could the Red Lady show us anything? And since we weren’t supposed to look in her eyes, it made it even more ridiculous. How could you look at a face without seeing their eyes?

  We said the words once, twice, five times, ten. Each time, Becca squeezed tighter and her voice grew louder. The carpet scratched my legs, but I kept still. After the twelfth show us your face, Rachel fidgeted, and I nudged her knee with mine.

  My nose tickled. I squished it into my shoulder, but the tickle didn’t go away. I sneezed, my hands jerking free. Silence hung in the air. Then Rachel giggled, and Gia joined her. Becca exhaled, more like a snort, and got to her feet.

  “Sorry,” I said as she stomped up the stairs and turned the light on. She stomped back and blew out the candles.

  “I didn’t do it on purpose,” I said.

  “Don’t be mad at her,” Gia said. “It wasn’t even working.”

  Becca grabbed the scarves in a fist.

  I went into the half bathroom to wash off the blood. Gia and Rachel went after me. By the time we were done, Becca had everything picked up.

  “It’s okay,” Rachel said.

  Becca kicked the wall. “No, it isn’t. She was supposed to be here. She should’ve been here. We didn’t do it right.”

  “But we did what you told us to,” Gia said.

  “It was supposed to work,” Becca said, hefting the backpack over her shoulder. The rest of us followed her upstairs.

  Once outside, I tried to walk next to her, but she kept going faster, so I gave up. She didn’t even say goodbye when she split off down her street.

  * * *

  I called Becca after I ate a bowl of cereal but hung up before I pushed the last number. I wasn’t mad at her anymore. Not exactly. I was upset because she was mad, but I was also happy. Maybe now she’d stop being so obsessed. Maybe everything would go back to the way it was.

  When I called again a couple hours later, she said the word hello like homework or I hate you, but I pretended things were fine.

  “Want to come over?” I said. “My mom bought more Ecto Coolers.”