My Heart Is a Chainsaw

by Stephen Graham Jones

  It’s best she leaves now, she knows. It’s best she was never here. There’s no corporate tycoon trolling across the lake to rape anybody. There’s no dragon, using its mighty tail to cut through the water.

  Jade turns, her breath heavy and close in her mask, knows that as soon as she’s twenty steps away she’s going to be lighting up, breathing deep, holding the smoke in for as long as janitorially possible—but then she stops, cocks her head back to the lake.

  Someone’s walking through the water?

  It’s Letha.

  “What?” Jade says out loud, on accident, but nobody looks her way. The problem here is that this isn’t on-script, this isn’t in the genre, isn’t a trope. The final girl in the first act isn’t curious. Curiosity is what’s going to get all those other girls killed, not her.

  Jade steps closer, into the dull glow from the dead bonfire, the skin of her neck contracting in the heat, the plastic of her face impervious.

  Letha’s wading out farther now, is getting her borrowed white shorts wet.

  Jade shakes her head no, no, but then she sees what Letha’s after.

  There’s… it’s someone floating out there.

  Her heart thumps once, deep.

  “Don’t,” she says to Letha, not even close to loud enough for Letha to hear, but Letha senses Jade all the same—final girl radar—and looks back for long enough that Jade is aware of each red coal flickering off her mask.

  These are just work coveralls, she wants to whisper across these thirty feet. They’re not Michael Myers coveralls, they’re just work clothes.

  Her white face isn’t so easy to explain.

  Letha, either having seen Jade or not, turns back to her task. Her duty. She steps out again, again, up to her stomach now, then, all at once, her armpits.

  She’s a short pull away from this floating person now.

  “Hello?” she says, splashing water up onto him, or her. It.

  No response.

  This could be a practical joke, Jade wants to warn. Banner Tompkins is kind of famous for them, and this is home ground for him. Maybe it’s a sex doll they keep in the shed for a floatie. Maybe it’s a punching dummy from when he was in martial arts with Mason Rodgers, sophomore year. Maybe it’s a deer some old-fashioned hunter was trying to float across the lake.

  Letha gives herself to the water, pulls with her arms to this body and grabs on, turns around immediately, paddles for the shore.

  Tiffany K is just sitting there hugging her knees now, crying like you do when you’re drunk and you know it’s not over yet. She’s not seeing what Jade’s most definitely seeing: the final girl being a final girl, hauling a corpse in. Finding the first body.

  Inside her mask, Jade smiles wide, with unadulterated wonder.

  This is—this is… this means it’s real, doesn’t it? That it’s not all in her head, but outside it too, for once.

  She almost goes to help Letha drag this dead body in, beach it, announce it, but no, this has to be all the final girl. This is all Letha Mondragon. And she’s athletic and capable and determined enough that she should be able to do it.

  She gets it into the shallows, anyway.

  It bobs in the give-and-take of the lake’s surface, the water cleaning the pondweed from its head at last.

  At which point Tiffany K starts screaming. And screaming.

  Letha, probably having gone through lifeguard training one country club summer, turns the wide-shouldered body over in a way that says she knows how to administer CPR, and is honor-bound to try.

  Except some of the pale skin from the corpse’s back sloughs off onto her right hand, an oozy black welling up where the skin’s torn away.

  The only reason Jade sees the next part is that Letha’s white shorts are wet, but they’re still bright. And they’re right behind this boy’s Dutch-blond head. The head that’s in her lap. The face.

  There’s no lower jaw.

  Jade’s laughter wells up from deep-deep inside, lives inside her mask, fills her head.

  “Well then,” she says, striding fast away before the party can convene over this tragedy, and by twenty yards out she’s running just for the thrill of it, the branches tearing at what would be her face, her coveralls keeping anything sharp from touching her. Once she’s far enough away she skids to her knees in a clearing, in the moonlight, and rips the mask off, leans back pushing the heels of her hands into her eyes, because she can’t stop crying.

  First the final girl. Now the blood sacrifice—proof that the recording on that pink phone was real.

  This is Laurie Strode seeing Michael Myers outside her school. This is Sidney Prescott, seeing that black robe descend in that last bathroom stall.

  And now there are steps that must be taken—a letter that has to be typed in and printed out. But first, first all Jade can do is hug herself tight and shake with gratitude.

  It leaves her panting on her knees, panting and smiling, looking at the darkness all around her.

  He could be anywhere, couldn’t he?

  He already is.

  SLASHER 101

  Hello, Letha Mondragon. You may remember me from the bathroom by the gym. I had blue hair. Enclosed please find A Bay of Blood from 1971 by famed Giallo director Mario Bava, which let me tell you changed my life in 6th grade when I found it. I was in Idaho Falls for a doctor's appointment I couldn't do in Proofrock and I was in the gas station for the bathroom while my mom was having a conversation with herself in the car about will she won't she and then this movie was in the bargain bin like trash. But let me tell you it wasn't.

  The reason I'm selecting to pass that same sacred copy of A Bay of Blood to you in this clandestine fashion is that many including me consider it to be the main grandfather of the slasher genre. When you're watching A Bay of Blood you'll notice the eerie similarity in the opening credits to Indian Lake. The first time I was watching it in secret my heart dropped let me tell you. I thought it WAS Indian Lake.

  But as to A Bay of Blood's ancestoriness, there are many who say that Sean Cunningham the director of Friday the 13th 9 years later modeled his slasher ON A Bay of Blood. The reason for that is partially the set up and mostly the kills. However Sean Cunningham objects that it's really just great minds thinking alike. But one of the main premises of A Bay of Blood is some teenagers going to party at a lake and having sex and then they get killed in the most violent and satisfying ways, which is also the set up for Friday the 13th.

  But what you need to pay attention to with A Bay of Blood isn't that the way to avoid a blade to the face is to leave the lake. What to pay attention to is the 13 ways there are to be killed AT a lake, and also that you can't trust anyone not to be the killer.

  What I'm telling you is that pretty soon, probably at our annual July Fourth party on the water, Proofrock is going to be turning INTO A Bay of Blood, I promise. Instead of explaining pranks and revenge and red herrings and final girls and reveals all right here I'm just going to instead fold in a lot of the papers and interviews I wrote for Mr. Holmes in History Class, including a bonus on Jaws since that matters. Those papers can be your bible and your map and guide and gospel. What I'm telling you is that the Dutch boy you found in the lake is the beginning, not the end.

  As for the end, nobody not even an expert in the slasher genre like me can guess it this early, but the rules say that whoever is already chopping necks is going to use for disguise the thing we're already afraid of. Here in Indian Lake that's Stacey Graves. 2 years ago I 100 percent believed in Stacey Graves. But I realize now that the age of the supernatural slasher was the Golden Age, with Michael and Jason and Freddy and Chucky. This is the age of Ghostface and Valentine, which is mostly people wearing masks for revenge.

  But you should know about Stacey Graves the Lake Witch all the same. That's why I'm including the interview paper about her.

  My number is inside Bay of Blood if you want to talk more.

  SILENT RAGE

  On the way out of the dar
kened library—custodians have keys and keys and keys—when Jade’s using every last bit of her effort and attention to get the glass front door lifted enough on its saggy hinges for the deadbolt to slide home, a man’s voice knifes out of the darkness, straightening her back, flooding her veins with adrenaline, her head with static, and priming her throat with a scream she barely manages to swallow.

  “Thought Connie and her husband were having a dust-up again,” the creaky voice says from the book return alcove right by the door. “That she was maybe sleeping up here for the night, y’know?”

  Jade shuts her eyes in instant regret. She should have gone out the back way. She should have just slept in the breakroom. She should have shrouded the computer monitor she was writing on with one of the big cardboard boxes. She should have remembered that Hardy always finishes his day out with one last cigarette on the bench by the lake, the one dedicated to his daughter. The one just a hop, skip, and gulp from the library—emphasis on the gulp.

  “Sheriff,” Jade says.

  “But then I swung by Connie’s place,” Hardy goes on in his good-old-boy way, “and both cars are there, you know? Living room window’s blue like from a television show.”

  “She watches CSI,” Jade says, finally getting the deadbolt to click over, hold the tired door up for the few hours the night has left.

  “Yeah?” Hardy says, just super conversationally. “Hope you didn’t leave any trace evidence in there, then…”

  Jade doesn’t have to be directed to follow him when he shoulders off the wall, spins his toothpick into the mulch under the bushes, and starts ambling over to his Bronco, so bright white in the darkness.

  “What you got there?” he asks about the sheaf of papers still warm enough from the copier that they’re trying to curl up against the night air.

  When Jade doesn’t answer, Hardy looks back to evaluate, then holds his hand out for them, not even having to snap. Jade surrenders them, sure her life is over now, that this is the end. It was fun, y’all, but I’ve got to go to hell now, see ya. My secret diary’s getting logged as evidence, is probably going to indict me six ways from Sunday on multiple charges, not the least of which will be wishful thinking.

  Hardy stops on the bulging sidewalk, pulls his bifocals up to his face to read the first line of the top page: “And then there was one. Of me, I mean, Mr.… Holmes?”

  The question mark and the exaggerated drama are all Hardy.

  He considers Jade over his specs, flips to the next paper—Jade stapled them all one by one, so Letha wouldn’t get lost: “Don’t feel bad, Mr. Holmes. Not everybody knows about the Final Girl? What’s that, the ‘final girl’?”

  “It’s just a thing for history class,” Jade says, shoulders seriously sagging.

  “Actually the slasher isn’t impossible or just in the movies, sir,” Hardy reads next, hitting “sir” especially hard and dropping his glasses back, his neck strap taking their slight weight, the glasses hardly bouncing. Jade knows because that’s where she’s looking. Not up into his face.

  That doesn’t mean she can’t feel him watching her.

  “Slasher?” he finally says.

  Mentally backpedaling, Jade stumbles into the hole she’d always meant to bury her high school diploma in, and, because that’s all she’s got to save her life here, she uses it. “Summer work for Sherlock,” she mumbles, looking out across the black-black waters of Indian Lake.

  It’s a Hail Mary pie-in-the-sky flying fuck at a rolling donut, but it’s all Jade has in the world right now. Her first last and only prayer.

  “Last I heard, Bea—Mr. Holmes doesn’t let students call him that,” Hardy says, holding her door open because cops are always directing traffic. “Former students either.”

  “I’m not exactly former,” Jade says, her voice dwindling down into the sincere, embarrassed octaves. “Still need a history credit to graduate.”

  “But you were there for the ceremony,” Hardy explains—objects.

  Jade steps up into the truck.

  Hardy, still not sold, still standing there, flips deeper into Jade’s stack of print-outs, spiraling Jade deep into pre-wince mode, since shuffled in there somewhere, she’s not sure where—stapling got complicated—is “Hello, Letha Mondragon,” and that letter’s so damning that Hardy’ll probably just read the whole thing out loud like entering it into evidence.

  “How—how about we just consider this the very end of my…” he reads, having to breathe in for the next part: “Extra credit career, if that works for you, Mr. Holmes.” He looks up to recite the last part: “The end?” he says incredulously, flopping the pages closed and then riffling their edges as if counting, or weighing. “How long has this career been?”

  “He keeps a basket on his desk,” Jade says. “He calls it the extra credit kitty.”

  Hardy’s shoulders shake with some internal amusement and he closes her door, rounds the Bronco, climbs up himself.

  “So you figured to play to your strengths,” he says, firing the truck up. “Blood and guts, werewolves and zombies.”

  “Just slashers,” Jade says, probably not even loud enough to make it across to him.

  Hardy backs the Bronco out, swings them around, only turning the headlights on when they’re on blacktop, and Jade doesn’t know if she’s being hand-delivered back to the hospital in Idaho Falls or down to the holding cell behind his office or what, at least not until he turns onto her street. He pulls up in front of her house, doesn’t take his truck out of gear, so everything in Jade’s mirror is washed red.

  “I won’t tell Connie about the janitorial staff using her ink and copy paper up, I don’t guess,” he says, handing Jade her stolen paper and ink. “But I probably will mention it to Bear next time I see him down at Dot’s, make sure this is schoolwork, not personal.”

  Grady “Bear” Holmes, aka “Sherlock,” the flying history teacher and secret cigarette fiend.

  Fucking Idaho.

  The radio under Hardy’s dash squawks, straightening Jade’s back again, and she of all people is supposed to know jumpscares more or less. But maybe that just makes her more vulnerable to them, not less.

  Meg Koenig’s voice comes through fuzzy and urgent. Hardy dials it down and leans over the wheel with both arms, hugging it to him so he can study the front of Jade’s house without having to stare at the side of her face as well.

  “He working across the lake these days?” he asks, about Tab.

  Jade nods once.

  “All righty then, I guess I’ll see you…” Hardy leads off, pausing to narrow his eyes, do some mental calculations, “Friday to start your community service. How’s that sound?”

  “Can’t wait,” Jade says. “Guessing I should wear clothes I don’t care about?”

  Hardy chuckles like he’d been expecting that, pulls the mic down from its hook by the rearview mirror, says before he thumbs the line open, “Filing for Meg, cleaning the coffee pot, I don’t know. She’ll find something for you to do. Let’s say… hour a day, next couple weeks, get it over with?”

  Meg Koenig, Tiffany Koenig’s mom.

  “Yippee,” Jade monotones.

  “Hardy here,” Hardy says into the mic, either just like a movie cop or… or maybe the movies aren’t that made-up.

  Jade steps down, shuts the door, and Hardy waits until she’s on the porch and really for sure going home to roll away. Jade’s still standing there staring down into her dad’s muddy boots—fresh muddy?—when the door she’s facing flashes red and blue: a few houses down, Hardy’s turned his lights on, is accelerating hard, screeching around the corner to some emergency.

  In Proofrock, at two in the morning?

  Jade steps back down to track him, can’t, so keeps walking to the end of the street, where she can look across the lake, see Terra Nova.

  It’s just the same glittering lights as it’s been for the last few weeks: giant yacht, night construction.

  “Hunh,” she says, and studies her dark n
eighborhood, the darker town.

  It has to be Blondie, she finally decides. The Dutch girl. She finally floated in.

  Jade looks down to the pages fluttering in her hand. She flips to her own random line somewhere in the middle of the sheaf, sees an eight-year-old girl named Stacey Graves living like a cat in some pioneer version of Proofrock, always looking across the rising lake for the mother who abandoned her.

  Who’s to say, though, right?

  Life isn’t like the nature shows. In the documentaries the coaches play in biology, the mother rabbit will stand up to the snake or the coyote or the hawk when it’s after her baby rabbit, will stand up to them when she doesn’t have even one chance in all of hell at fighting off this perfect predator, but she throws her little body into those claws and fangs all the same and kicks for all she’s worth, for all her baby’s worth to her, which is… everything?

  “Not likely,” Jade mumbles, and is glad she doesn’t have a stupid diploma, because that would mean she took some test where she answered yes to “this is how a mother rabbit protects her young,” which would have been a lie.

  But fuck it.

  Not every mom is a Pamela Voorhees, going after all camp counselors because one or two of them let her baby drown.

  And Jade is far from a baby anymore, either.

  She steps forward again, again, drilling her eyes across the lake, trying to picture what Holmes painted for them one seventh period: the fire of 1965, coming right up to the shore over there, Proofrock holding its breath, all of Idaho ready to burn.

  But it didn’t.

  It never does.

  Jade shrugs like just wait, spins on a combat heel, and slouches back up her street almost grinning. All in all, this night’s been almost a win, hasn’t it? Hardy could have confiscated her papers, meaning she’d have had to have broken into one of the schools to reprint them from her email, and, who knows, she might have walked in on Rexall cleaning the lenses of all his hidden cameras.

  No thank you.

  Jade kicks dramatically across her lawn—no, she Holden Caulfields it across her lawn. As far as Jade knows, nobody at Henderson High ever turned that into a way of walking, an attitude of walking, so it can be all hers.