Final Girls

by Riley Sager

  “But what does this have to do with her?”

  “According to the newspaper, Earl Potash’s stepdaughter confessed to killing him, citing years of sexual abuse. Because sexual assault was a factor, her name was shielded in court records.”

  Now I know why Lisa had the article.

  “It was her,” I say. “Tina Stone. She killed her stepfather.”

  Jonah gives a firm nod. “Afraid so.”

  I gulp down more coffee, hoping it will chase away the headache that’s again blooming in my skull. At that moment, I would likely kill for a Xanax.

  “I still don’t understand,” I say. “Why would Sam change her name to be the same as a woman who murdered her stepdad?”

  “That’s the strange thing,” Jonah says. “I’m not sure she actually did.”

  Out of the folder come several pages of medical records. At the top is the name Tina Stone.

  “Aren’t medical records also supposed to be classified?” I ask.

  “Clearly you’ve underestimated my powers,” Jonah says. “Bribes are a great motivator.”

  “You’re despicable.”

  I flip through the records, which begin with last year and go backward. Tina Stone went to the doctor sporadically, always in the case of an emergency, and usually without health insurance. I see a broken wrist four years ago, the result of a motorcycle accident. A mammogram a year earlier after she found a lump that ended up being benign. An overdose of anitrophylin eight years ago. That one gives me pause.

  There’s a second overdose attempt one page and two years before that. I look at the date. Three weeks after Pine Cottage.

  “This can’t be Sam,” I say. “The dates don’t match up. She told me she didn’t change her name until a few years after Pine Cottage.”

  The realization, when it comes, almost sends me reeling backward into the fountain. I drop the folder, its pages scattering, forcing Jonah to scramble for them before they can blow away.

  I remain motionless when he returns to my side, folder tucked under his arm. “You get it now, right?”

  “Tina Stone and Samantha Boyd,” I say. “They’re not the same person.”

  “Which begs the question, which one is in your apartment?”

  “I have no idea.”

  But I need to find out. Immediately. I stand, legs wobbly, prepared to leave.

  Jonah stops me, an apologetic look pinching his face as he says, “Unfortunately, there’s more.”

  He opens the folder, flips to a page in the back. “There’s an incident where she ODed.”

  “I know,” I say. “It’s from before the alleged name change.”

  “You might want to look at where she overdosed.”

  Jonah points to the name of the facility where Tina Stone was treated.

  Blackthorn Psychiatric Hospital, located just on the other side of the woods from Pine Cottage.

  Looking at it makes me instantly woozy. Worse than when I woke up that morning. Almost worse than the moment I realized I had beaten Ricardo Ruiz to within an inch of his life.

  Tina Stone was a patient at Blackthorn.

  The same time He was.

  The exact same time He went to Pine Cottage and gutted my world.

  PINE COTTAGE

  MIDNIGHT

  The first scream arrived when Quincy reached the cabin’s back deck. It blasted from the forest, swooping toward her as she climbed the stubby wooden steps. Quincy turned toward the sound, too surprised to feel afraid.

  The fear would come later.

  She scanned the dark forest behind the cabin, whipping her gaze from tree to tree, as if the scream had come from one of them. But she already knew its source.

  Janelle.

  Quincy was certain.

  A second scream erupted from the woods. Longer than the first, it became a crackle of noise stretching across the sky. It was also louder. Loud enough to spook an owl from the upper branches of a nearby tree. The bird skated past the deck, wings thumping, vanishing over the cabin roof.

  The sound of its retreat blended with the approach of something else.

  Footsteps. Reckless ones.

  A moment later, Craig burst out of the woods. His eyes were blank, but there was a crazed jerkiness to his movements. His shirt was back on. So were his pants, although Quincy noticed how the fly was undone and that his unbuckled belt jangled and flapped.

  “Run, Quincy.” He stumbled forward, frantic. “We gotta run.”

  He was on the deck by then, making an attempt to drag her along as he streaked past her. Quincy’s arm went limp in his hands. She wasn’t going anywhere. Not until Janelle was with them.

  “Janelle?” she shouted.

  Her voice echoed, bouncing through the woods, creating new calls, each one more faint than the last. They were answered with another scream. Craig yelped when he heard it. He did a little shimmy, as if trying to shake something from his back.

  “Come on!” he shouted at Quincy.

  But a fourth scream lured her forward, to the deck’s top step, the toes of her shoes peeking over the edge. Behind her, Craig tried to get inside, blocked by the others pushing their way out.

  “What was that?” asked Amy, fear slashing her voice.

  “Where’s Janelle?” asked Betz.

  “Dead!” Craig yelled. “She’s dead!”

  But she wasn’t. Quincy still heard her choked breaths hissing in the night. Footfalls as quiet as cats’ paws stumbled through the woods.

  Janelle appeared suddenly, materializing like one of her Indian ghosts along the tree line behind the cabin. She didn’t stand so much as hover, only the instinct of standing keeping her upright. Dark blooms of red dotted her dress at her shoulder, chest, stomach.

  Both hands were at her neck, one clamped tightly over the other. Blood streamed from beneath her palms—a crimson waterfall running down her chest.

  That’s when the fear struck.

  A gut-tightening, body-stilling fear that left the others motionless at the back door.

  Only Quincy managed to move, the fear pushing her forward, off the deck, into grass just starting to gather frost. It crunched under her feet as she moved to Janelle. Cold wetness seeped into her shoes.

  Then she was at Janelle, reaching out, catching her as she drooped forward. Janelle’s hands fell away from her neck, exposing the wide slash across it. Blood poured from the wound, hot and sticky, all over Quincy’s white dress.

  Quincy covered the gash with her hands. The pumping blood tickled her palms. Then Janelle’s body went slack, the weight shifting onto Quincy, making her twist onto her knees. Soon she was seated on the ground, Janelle a rag doll in her lap, staring at her with wide, terror-struck eyes as her breath rattled.

  “Help!” Quincy screamed, even though she already knew Janelle was beyond help. “Help! Please!”

  The others remained on the deck. Amy curled against Rodney, the hem of her nightgown flapping. Betz began to sob uncontrollably, the sound rising and falling. Only Craig looked at them. Quincy felt like he could see into her very heart. Like he knew every one of her awful, awful secrets.

  She stared at him, seeing a new rush of fear in his eyes.

  “Quincy! Run!”

  But Quincy couldn’t. Not with Janelle still dying in her arms. Not even when she felt a new presence in their midst. Something vile, seething hate.

  He was upon them before she could turn around to look. Fingers dug into her hair, collecting a handful, yanking hard. Pain shimmered through her as she was whipped around, seeing what the others saw.

  A figure looming.

  A knife charging.

  A silvery flash.

  The stabs arrived almost simultaneously, one right after the other. Two sharp strikes of pain in her shoulder. Hot ones. Searing through skin and m
uscle. Nicking bone.

  Quincy didn’t scream. It hurt too much. The pain screamed through her instead.

  She slumped over, Janelle rolling from her lap. They lay together on the ground, face-to-face, Quincy staring into Janelle’s dead eyes. Blood pooled in the grass between them, melting the frost, steaming slightly.

  He was still there. Quincy heard the even rhythm of his breathing.

  A hand touched her hair again. Not pulling. Caressing.

  “There, there,” he said.

  Quincy saw him on the far edge of her vision, still a shadow. And as she waited for that final bite of the knife, he began to move.

  Past her.

  Past what had once been Janelle.

  On his way back to Pine Cottage.

  It was the last thing Quincy saw before pain and grief and fear overwhelmed her. Black clouds rolled across her vision, blurring the world. She closed her eyes, welcoming oblivion, letting the darkness take over.

  37.

  Jonah begs me to let him come back to the apartment with me, but I won’t allow it. He says it’s too dangerous, and he’s right. Yet his presence would only complicate things. This needs to be between me and Sam.

  Or Tina.

  Or whoever the fuck she is.

  Once again, I practice caution when entering the apartment. And once again, I wish that she isn’t there.

  But she is. In the foyer, I hear the steady flow of water coming from the hallway bathroom. Sam is in the shower. I go to the bathroom door and hover there until I hear noises from the other side. A cough from Sam. A clearing of her cigarette-agitated throat. The shower continues to flow.

  I hurry into Sam’s room, where her knapsack still leans in the corner. I can’t open it. My hands are shaking too much.

  I take some deep breaths, aching for a Xanax despite knowing I need a clear head. Yet addiction wins out, pulling me into the kitchen long enough to pop a single Xanax into my mouth. I then take several gulps of grape soda, continuing to drink long after the pill has slipped down my throat.

  Properly fortified, it’s back to Sam’s room. My hands are steadier now, and the knapsack opens with ease. I root through it, pulling out stolen clothes, black T-shirts, an array of worn bras and panties. A bottle of Wild Turkey emerges—a fresh one, still unopened. It clunks to the floor and rolls against my knees.

  Inside the knapsack, I swat against items that have slid to the bottom. A brush, deodorant, an empty pill bottle. I check the label. Ambien. Not anitrophylin.

  I find the iPhone Sam took from my secret drawer. The same phone I had stolen from the café. It’s turned off, the battery likely dead.

  At the very bottom of the knapsack, my fingertips skim across a cool slick of glossy pages. A magazine.

  I yank it out, flipping it over to look at the cover. It’s a copy of Time, dog-eared and threatening to rip from its stapled binding. The photo on the front shows a ramshackle motel surrounded by cop cars and scrub pines dripping with Spanish moss. The headline, in red letters slammed over a slate-gray sky, reads: HOTEL HORROR.

  It’s the same issue of Time I devoured as a child, shuddering beneath my covers, dreading the nightmares to come. I riffle through the pages until I find the article that prompted so much childhood fear. It features another picture of the Nightlight Inn—an exterior shot of one of its rooms. In the open doorway, there’s a flash of white. One of the victims covered with a sheet.

  The article begins next to it in a narrow column of text.

  You think it only happens in the movies. That it couldn’t happen in real life. At least, not like that. And certainly not to you. But it happened. First at a sorority house in Indiana. Then at a motel in Florida.

  The passage has the ring of something familiar. A kiss of déjà vu. Not from my childhood, although I had certainly read it back then. This memory is more recent.

  Sam said it to me during her first night here. The huddled girl talk. The Wild Turkey passed between us. Her sincere soliloquy about the Nightlight Inn.

  It was a load of bullshit, lifted word-for-word from this magazine.

  I stuff her belongings back into the knapsack. Everything but the magazine, which I can use as ammunition against her, and the stolen iPhone, which can be used against me. The magazine is rolled under my arm. I shove the phone down the front of my shirt, securing it beneath a bra strap.

  Satisfied I’m leaving the room in almost the same condition as when I entered, I hurry back to the kitchen and grab the grape soda, carrying it with me to my laptop. I take another sip as I crack open the computer and click my way to YouTube. In the search field, I type “samantha boyd interview.” It yields several versions of Sam’s sole TV interview, all of them uploaded by the same freaks who run murder-porn websites. I click on the first one and the video begins.

  On-screen is the same TV newswoman who had slipped the Chanel-scented interview offer under my door. Her expression is benign—a mask of impartiality. Only her eyes betray her. They’re black and ravenous. The eyes of a shark.

  A young woman sits with her back facing the camera, barely in the frame. What can be seen of her is in silhouette. She’s a half-girl, blurred beyond recognition.

  “Do you remember what happened to you that night, Samantha?” the newswoman asks.

  “Sure, I remember.”

  That voice. It doesn’t sound like the Sam I know. Interview Sam’s voice isn’t as clear, the diction less precise.

  “Do you think about it often?”

  “A lot,” Interview Sam replies. “I think about him all the time.”

  “You’re referring to Calvin Whitmer, right? The Sack Man?”

  There’s a tilt of darkness as Interview Sam nods and says, “I can still see him, you know? When I close my eyes? He had cut eyeholes into the sack. Plus a little slit right over his nose for air. I’ll never forget the way it flapped when he breathed. He had tied string around his neck to keep the sack in place.”

  She stole that line too. Saying it to me as if for the first time.

  I go back to the start of the video, slightly dizzy as Miss Chanel No. 5 trains her shark eyes on Interview Sam.

  “Do you remember what happened to you that night, Samantha?”

  I blink, my eyes suddenly tired.

  “Sure, I remember.”

  The voices on the computer become distant and vague.

  “Do you think about it often?”

  Numbness creeps into my body. Hands first, then up my arms like a line of fire ants.

  “A lot. I think about him all the time.”

  The laptop screen goes fuzzy, the interviewer’s face lurching out of focus. When I look away, I see the entire kitchen has turned into blurred streaks of color. I glance at the grape soda, which has brightened into a Wonka-esque neon purple. My hands are too numb to lift the bottle, so I bump it with an elbow, its dregs fizzing. Swirling along the bottom are powdery bits of Xanax that glow blue.

  A voice rises behind me.

  “I knew you’d be thirsty.”

  I spin myself around to see her in the kitchen, dressed and dry. The shower still runs in the distance, as muffled as Interview Sam’s voice trickling from the laptop. It was a decoy. A trap.

  “Wha—”

  I can’t speak. My tongue has thickened, feeling like a fish flopping in my mouth.

  “Shhhh,” she says.

  She’s turned into a shadowy blur, just like her counterpart still talking on my laptop. Interview Sam come to life. Only she isn’t Sam. Even the pills wreaking havoc on my nervous system can’t suppress that. It’s a moment of clarity. My last one for God knows how long.

  Maybe forever.

  “Tina,” I say, fat tongue still flip-flopping. “Tina Stone.”

  She makes a move toward me. I react by reaching for the woodblock knife holder on the cou
nter, my arm moving in slow motion. I grab the biggest knife. In my hand, it weighs a hundred pounds.

  I stumble forward, legs useless, feet as heavy as rocks. I manage one weak jab before the knife drops from my limp-noodle fingers. The kitchen tilts, only I know it’s really me who’s doing the tilting, falling sideways, everything a sickening blur as my skull smashes against the floor.

  ONE YEAR AFTER PINE COTTAGE

  Tina was among the last to go. She sat on her squeaky bed, staring blankly at the one on the other side of the room, most recently occupied by a stringy-haired pyromaniac named Heather. It had been stripped of sheets, leaving only a lumpy mattress with an oblong urine stain. On the wall beside it, not quite hidden under a coat of paint, were the curse words scrawled in lipstick by Heather’s predecessor, May. When she got transferred, she bequeathed her stash of lipstick to Tina.

  All told, Tina had spent more than three years in that room. The longest time she had spent in any one place. Not that she had a choice. The state decided that for her.

  But now it was time to go. Nurse Hattie shouted it from the hallway in that grating hick accent of hers. “Closin’ time, folks! Everybody out!”

  Tina lifted the knapsack that leaned against her bed. It used to be Joe’s. His parents left it behind when they cleaned out his room after he was killed. Now it was hers, and everything she owned was inside, which wasn’t much. Its lightness astonished her.

  As Tina left the room, she didn’t look back. She had moved around enough to know that long last looks didn’t make leaving any easier. Even if you had been dying to leave since the moment you arrived.

  In the hallway, Tina took her place with the other stragglers, lining up for one last head count. Instead of seeing that everyone was there, the orderlies were making sure no one stayed behind. At noon, Blackthorn’s doors were closing for good.

  The majority of Blackthorn’s patients were still too crazy to be let loose upon the world. They had already been transferred to other state facilities, Heather among them. Tina was one of the few deemed mentally fit to be released. She had served her time. Now she was free to go.

  After head count, she and the others were shuffled through the wide and drafty rec room, which was already being cleared of furniture. Tina saw that the TV had been dismantled from the wall and that most of the chairs had been stacked in a corner. But her table was still there. The table beside the grated window where she and Joe would sit and peer out at the woods on the other side of Blackthorn’s scrubby patch of lawn, naming all the places they would go once they got out.