My Heart Is a Chainsaw

by Stephen Graham Jones

  “Already doing it,” Jade says, and reaches under to undo the knot her laces are in, slither her foot up and out, just making it past the teeth when the trap springs shut with a hard clack.

  “Where are we going?” Letha asks, handing Jade’s boot over.

  “The long way around to Proofrock,” Jade says, lacing up, standing with Letha’s help, giving her right leg what weight she can.

  It’s not broken, she’s pretty sure, but she’s not running anymore. Or hiking the long way around the lake.

  “Shit,” she says, trying to take another step.

  “Here,” Letha says, ducking under to be Jade’s too-tall crutch, and Jade lets her for a hopping step or two. Until she stops them.

  “What?” Letha asks.

  “Do you know how to recock it?” Jade asks about the sprung trap.

  Letha looks behind them, must not see the headlamp. She is sensing this danger, though. It’s palpable. Anything can happen, and’s probably about to.

  “Why?” she asks.

  “Why do you think?”

  Letha considers, considers, then gently lets Jade stand on her own. Together—but mostly Letha—they wrench the steel jaws open again, this time far enough to click the trigger in place.

  “Worst mousetrap ever,” Letha says, stepping away, the trap practically humming with tension.

  “Best,” Jade says, then lowers in her unbalanced way to grab the trap’s chain, drag it over from where it was, moving slow so it doesn’t spring, chomp into her thigh this time.

  “Why move it?” Letha asks.

  “Maybe he knows where it used to be, right?” Jade says.

  Letha looks at the tree it was at and then at the one it’s at now, like clocking for difference, then shrugs whatever, steps under Jade’s arm again. When Jade sneaks a look back, the headlamp is closer now. Though she’s seeing it now as the mining light on Harry Warden’s helmet.

  “Go, go,” she says to Letha, and they hop-crutch ahead, moving so much slower now. Jade knows that if she were even ten percent as wholesome as a final girl, she’d push Letha ahead, tell her to save herself, that her survival is what’s important here, that she shouldn’t endanger herself for someone whose timer’s about up.

  But the thing is, Jade’s discovering, she doesn’t want to die. Not really. Not out here in the dark, with whatever new and terrible construction tool Theo Mondragon’s swinging.

  Speaking of…

  Jade peers behind Letha, across the lake. Not to the barge that makes a daily crossing, but to the idea of it.

  Right?

  Except tomorrow’s a holiday, and the lake’s closed to all powered watercraft. Only paddles and oars. Because everyone not checked into Pleasant Valley is going to be watching the movie from innertubes and canoes and dressed-up rowboats tomorrow night. Unless of course word of this massacre in Terra Nova makes it across the water. Then the staties will break Hardy’s injunction, and the media won’t be far behind.

  Jade hitches along with Letha, looking behind them again—no light, which is fifty times worse—and reaches into her pocket, comes out with her phone. With her dunked phone. Her phone with the case still leaking lake water.

  Jade holds it out to the side and drops it, says to Letha, “Breadcrumbs.”

  Letha nods about the solidness of that idea, pats her pajama bottom pockets for the phone she doesn’t have.

  “Oh,” Jade says then, when they stumble back out into the moonlight of… of the meadow Mr. Holmes was showing them. Sheep’s Head, something like that?

  “Too exposed,” Letha says, looking around like a prairie dog with a hawk complex, and Jade agrees, is letting Letha turn them around to hug the treeline, but then… there’s that light again. Even closer.

  At their new rate of speed, he’s going to catch them inside two minutes, maybe less.

  “No, no,” Jade says, turning them back the other way, to cross the meadow. Which no way can they do.

  “Is that my dad?” Letha says, then comes up onto her toes, waving one arm. “Dad, Daddy!”

  Jade winces and Letha feels it, comes around, her eyes questioning.

  “It is him,” Jade says.

  Letha studies Jade’s face about this, then looks up to the light drawing closer, making more of a straight line now that it can echo-locate. Maybe Theo Mondragon can even see them now, for all Jade knows. One wounded duck with a shaved head, one improbably-alive daughter.

  “You don’t mean…?” Letha says. “He would never—he couldn’t—”

  “He is,” Jade says. “And he has been. Sorry. I saw.”

  “But Tiara.”

  “I don’t know why yet,” Jade says.

  “Mr. Pangborne, Mr. Baker,” Letha says. “Ladybird, Mrs. Todd, Mr. Singleton—”

  “Deacon Samuels,” Jade adds. “Those two Dutch kids.”

  “Two?”

  “The other one… she’s still out there somewhere.” Jade tilts her head lakeward.

  “And that—in the propeller?”

  Clate Rodgers.

  Jade blinks, looks behind them again, to the light bobbing in.

  “Wave again,” Jade says. “You’ll see.”

  Letha stares into Jade’s face again, harder, deeper, then turns to call her dad in but this time with hesitation, and not as loud: “Dad! Daddy!”

  The light keeps on coming, keeps on, and then—

  Snap!

  Yes.

  The bear trap.

  Letha turns to Jade and pushes her hard enough Jade spills into the tall grass. “You used me!” she nearly screams, getting what just happened. “You used me to hurt my dad!”

  “To keep him from hurting us.”

  Out in the trees, her dad is bellowing.

  Letha steps forward but Jade grabs her by the knee.

  “If it is him, and it is,” she says, “then we approach, we’re dead. If it’s not, and we stay here, then… my leg is a lot wimpier than his, right? He can’t be hurt bad?”

  “No, I—”

  “Five minutes,” Jade says, not letting go.

  Theo Mondragon is free in two, standing again.

  The chainsaw he’s carrying rips awake and Letha steps back involuntarily.

  “What was that guy’s name in the stairwell?” she asks, even though she knows. Just, Letha needs to be seeing the two halves of Ross Pangborne up and down the stairs right now, and what might have made him like that.

  “It can’t be,” Letha says, but she’s talking to herself now.

  “Do you want to stay and find out?” Jade asks, Theo Mondragon slinging the chainsaw back and forth before him like Leatherface’s last dance. He’s cutting the brush and limbs out of his way, and kind of lurching now from the bear trap’s bite.

  “Shit,” Letha says, looking around for what to do, where to go, how to live.

  “This is gonna suck the big one,” Jade says, standing with Letha’s help, then pointing with her lips to where she means.

  Letha looks across, doesn’t get it at first, then does.

  “No,” she says.

  “Only way,” Jade says.

  “We can—” Letha tries.

  “Not enough time,” Jade says back, not letting her finish because whatever she’s going to say isn’t taking her hurt leg into account.

  “You’re sure he won’t look there first?” Letha asks.

  “Would you?” Jade asks.

  When Letha has no answer, the two of them lunge ahead to the pile of rotting elk. That’s what it is now. Not a killing field anymore, but a mound of corpses, which Jade guesses must be some stage of cleanup: pack them tight enough that a front-end loader can scoop them up in as few runs as possible, since heavy machinery leaves deep ruts in the national forest.

  “How are we going to—?” Letha asks, then they both see the answer: there’s a sort of tunnel in, held open with fresh-cut lodgepole pine. Which explains why the chainsaw was handy. But why would Theo Mondragon have been boring a temporary
tunnel into all this rotting meat and bone, all this horn and hoof?

  There’s no time to figure it out. He’s almost to the trees now, his chainsaw already ripping the night in two, its pungent exhaust seeping in ahead of him.

  Jade pushes Letha in first, not because she’s suddenly valiant or anything, but to be sure Letha doesn’t chicken out, start running.

  But would that really be so bad? She could stay ahead of her dad, scary limp and all.

  This is already happening like this, though. For better or worse.

  Jade still has her open hand to the small of Letha’s back when Letha’s muscles contract in a way Jade’s are already starting to: the smell in this tunnel, this literal hell hole. It’s almost sweet, but it’s oily on the roof of Jade’s mouth, too. Thick and oily and there’s not a clean breath anywhere. Worse, they can’t see what they’re touching, can only hear it squishing, feel it between their fingers, and on their lips, against their eyes.

  It’s warm, too.

  Because… Jade tries to remember, isn’t sure she can: does decay kick off some sort of methane gas, maybe? She becomes extremely aware of the lighter already in her hand, that she was about to spark into light for them.

  Shit. Shit shit shit.

  They’re only about ten, twelve feet in, too. And hunched over, the only thing keeping the pile up is two X’s of cut tree trunks.

  Is this his evil lair, what? At least Jason had the decency to have candles. At least Freddy’s kind of fit a theme. Jade doesn’t have time to wonder anymore, as Theo Mondragon’s headlamp is washing across the elk, the chainsaw idling. Jade lunges across, clapping her right hand tight over Letha’s mouth, pressing her back into the wall of flesh and skin.

  Letha’s tears drip down over Jade’s skin, but, instead of fighting free like she could, Letha covers her mouth as well, both her hands over Jade’s one.

  The light peers in but the stubby tunnel’s not a straight line, is more like a comma curving to the right. Theo Mondragon makes a retching sound, and now Jade understands why he really had that gas mask. This is even gross to him.

  “Hold on, hold on,” Jade whispers to Letha, and Letha nods, and when the light flashes over her perfect face for a tenth of a second, what Jade sees to either side of her is the reason Theo Mondragon was prospecting into these elk: Cody’s pressed into the meat and bone to Letha’s left, and Mismatched Gloves is impaled on sweeping antlers to her right, one of the tips coming out through his mouth, the velvet horn dark black with gore, now.

  And then Theo Mondragon’s gone, calling his daughter’s name elsewhere.

  Jade lets Letha’s mouth go and Letha sucks air in.

  “Now we can—” Letha says, pushing off either Mismatched Gloves or Cody to escape this fetid pit, but Jade blocks her in, whispers, “What slashers do is make you think they’ve left.”

  Letha stiffens, is maybe going to make a break for it, but then she falls back, sobbing.

  It’s the proper response, really. And why Jade isn’t best friend material, even if she’d ever had one? It’s because she’s not thinking about consoling Letha right now. What she’s running through her head is that paper she wrote for Mr. Holmes, about how final girls curl up into a chrysalis before emerging as their true killer self. And what is this elk pile but a custom-made transformation chamber, right?

  Everything’s working out. It doesn’t smell good, it’s dangerous as hell and twice as hot, but it’s also just what Letha needs in order to become her truest self.

  “We need a high school annual,” Jade says. “Henderson Hawks, 198—when did your dad graduate?”

  “You’re trying to distract me,” Letha says.

  “No—”

  “Keep going, please.”

  “He must have passed through here for a year, a semester,” Jade says. “And—and I don’t know. Something happened while he was here. Maybe he took a history class, maybe one of those four kids who bought it at Camp Blood back when were related to him, maybe he was there when Hardy’s daughter—”

  “I wasn’t looking for you,” Letha says.

  “Say what?” Jade says, trying to see through the darkness.

  “I told you I was looking for you earlier, in the Pangbornes’ house,” Letha says, sobbing now, but quietly, thank you. “I—the sheriff did call, but, but—”

  “Shh, shh,” Jade says, reaching across for Letha’s mouth, finding her shaking shoulder instead. Letha’s hands immediately clamp onto Jade’s own.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Letha’s saying.

  “You were looking for your dad?” Jade asks, trying to give her a way out—trying to be sort of a friend, anyway.

  “I was going to burn it all down.”

  Jade tries to process this, finally says, “With that candle?”

  She feels Letha nodding.

  “Why?”

  “We shouldn’t be here,” Letha says, shuddering now, holding the back of Jade’s fingers to her mouth, speaking warmth right onto them.

  “In Proofrock?”

  “This side of the lake,” Letha whispers, the hush of her words rushing up Jade’s arm to the base of her jaw, the center of her chest.

  “But—”

  “People, I mean,” Letha goes on. “This side of the lake isn’t for people.”

  “Why do—why?” Jade asks.

  “I’ve seen her,” Letha says, barely able to get it out before pulling Jade closer all at once.

  “No, no,” Jade says, letting herself be drawn in. “This isn’t the Golden Age, that’s—it was your dad in a wig. I saw him too, from the water. That’s how these things—”

  “On the water,” Letha says.

  Jade’s skin prickles.

  “Paddleboard,” she says.

  “He doesn’t know how,” Letha says back.

  “Where’s your mom?” Jade asks, her lips right against Letha’s neck, she’s pretty sure.

  Letha stills, then pushes Jade’s hand away from her lips.

  “You think she can paddleboard?” she asks, and like that, the possibility crystalizes for Jade: Letha’s real mom, the left-behind ex–Mrs. Mondragon, the left-for-dead Mrs. Mondragon, follows her philandering husband and spirited-away daughter out to this mountain retreat, and she—she starts taking her revenge throat by throat, maybe even boiling a rabbit in the process.

  It fits. No wig necessary.

  “Could it be her?” Jade asks.

  “She’s… I went to her funeral,” Letha’s barely able to get out, make real.

  Like slashers can’t rise from the grave.

  “Next you’ll think it’s me,” Letha says, but Jade can still see her in her bedroom, unsure how to hold the machete.

  The machete she… left behind? Not “dropped on purpose.”

  Jade forces her eyes shut, won’t allow that to be true.

  “And it’s not him,” Letha says, her voice more sure now.

  “I’m just saying—” Jade starts. The reason she doesn’t finish is that Theo Mondragon is close.

  “Lee! Lee!” he’s calling, his throat ragged.

  “That’s him,” Letha says, in little-girl wonder.

  “It’s not your dad,” Jade tells her. “Not anymore.”

  The silence that follows is Letha trying to process this, Jade knows: is Jade saying that the killer’s impersonating her dad, or that her dad is no longer who he used to be?

  “But that’s what he calls me,” Letha says, sitting up, Jade sloughing off.

  “Lee!” Theo Mondragon says again, closer still.

  “I’ve got to—” Letha says, surging forward, and Jade doesn’t need eyes to see what happens half a second later: instead of darting easily through the drippy wet tunnel of gore, Letha conks almost immediately into the two lodgepole pines crossed beside them, holding the elk up.

  It’s enough to dislodge them.

  “No!” Jade says, trying to stand now herself, but it’s too late. The ceiling of meat is already coming dow
n onto them. A full-grown elk is six, eight hundred pounds, and… how many did Mr. Holmes count? Nineteen of them? However many are directly above Jade and Letha come down like judgment, hardly any sound, and in the small breathing space Jade has directly under her face—air thick with rot—there’s at least Letha’s fingers to her cheeks.

  Except those fingers aren’t moving. And they’re too thick anyway, are either Cody or Mismatched Gloves—probably Cody, then, since Mismatched Gloves would have gloves on, wouldn’t he?

  Jade breathes the decay all the way in, forces it back out in all the scream she can manage.

  It’s not enough.

  SLASHER 101

  How about we just consider this the very end of my extra credit career if that works for you, Mr. Holmes. And before I start, first let me say that I know you're honor bound to not believe me, to believe Manx and Tiffany K and also Gretta who was only there at the end, but me standing on top of the toilet in the last stall wasn't me reaching up through the ceiling to find something to tie my neck to. What about the black robe and Ghostface mask I was wearing? If I have to divulge a secret it's that I was standing on that toilet in the Scream stall to pre honor the coming holiday, Mr. Holmes. Not Spring Break and not tax day two weeks after that, though that would make the perfect slasher, "The Tax Man Cometh" -- ka-ching, my idea, thank you -- but the SLASHER one that's here this week: Friday the 13th. And yes I was reaching into the ceiling, but it was only for my emergency cigarettes, from the stress of the day and the week and the year, which is a habit I think you of all people can understand.

  Anyway since you'll be watching it with the rest of us this summer 1 more time, let me add an extra credit to the kitty here for my tragic absence in the nurse's office yesterday, which is feeding a shark to the cat, yes, when really it would be the other way around.

  I'm talking about Jaws from 1975 here, sir.

  It's a monster movie, but it's got the beating heart of a slasher. You can tell from memory of having seen it every year probably since 1975 and probably even having been on the Indianapolis with Quint that it has these characteristics of the slasher, which I'll list now. Just like with Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees, there's a signature THEME, those 2 piano keys going back and forth. Just like those 2 but also Freddy Krueger, Jaws also has a SIGNATURE WEAPON, which is in the title, that being Jaws and teeth. Jaws also has kids partying it up with beer and a bonfire for the BLOOD SACRIFICE, and it also has the COPS who are useless at least until the very end and it also has a BIG PARTY like Scream, which is July the 4th, and a REVEAL that results in that line about a bigger boat, and it even has a RED HERRING, that being that license plate eating tiger shark.