The Final Girl Support Group

by Grady Hendrix

  There’s movement inside, and I plant my legs and tense. Steph snaps her attention to the front door and raises the .22 in both hands. Good girl. A figure comes out hauling an enormous rolled-up carpet. It stomps across the yard, carpet dragging behind it like a dinosaur tail, and I recognize the square shoulders, the solid shape, the lack of curves. Dani looks up to make sure she’s still heading toward the bonfire and sees us, wipes the sweat from her face, then puts her head down and keeps storming toward the flames.

  “Dani?” I call.

  She drops the rolled-up carpet on the ground next to the bonfire and catches her breath. Even from thirty feet away I can feel the heat chapping my face.

  “Dani?” I try again.

  She bends over and picks up the carpet by the middle, then hauls it up and shoves it forward in one lunge. It topples the stack of burning chairs and they hit the ground in front of me, giving off great big tumbleweeds of pale sparks in the sunlight. One bites the back of my hand.

  “Dani,” I say. “What happened?”

  She stops, halfway through the turn to go back to her house. Her hand drops to the Glock holstered on her thigh when she sees Steph coming from the other direction.

  “That’s Stephanie,” I say to her. “Camp Red Lake. She’s the one who met Christophe Volker.”

  Dani steps back so she can keep both of us in her field of vision.

  “What do you want?” she asks.

  “Someone knocked down your sign,” I say.

  “It’s all gotta go,” she says.

  Then she slumps, takes her hand off her pistol, and trudges back to her front door. Stephanie gives me a questioning look, gun lowering, and I shrug. Halfway to her front door, Dani reverses course and steams back at me, fists balled at her sides.

  “What’s—” is as far as I get before she punches me in the stomach.

  I double over, hands on my knees, and throw up on my shoes, the jack clanking into the dust. Dani stands in front of me, not moving as I cough up bile, and then I force myself upright and she slaps me across the face. My head comes off my neck. She gives me another shot to the stomach and I fall on my knees in my own mess.

  “No, Steph!” I say, holding up one hand to stop her from coming at Dani.

  It doesn’t help; she’s feeling protective.

  “Hey,” Stephanie squeaks. “Hands off.”

  Dani doesn’t even turn her head, just straight-arms Stephanie in the chest, sending her backward, arms windmilling, flinging the .22 away in a big arc, before going down hard on her butt.

  I try to get to my feet and Dani winds up one leg and plants the toe of her boot deep in my stomach. I stay down.

  “You wrote that book,” she says, standing over me. “That goddamn book. What the hell was going through your head to write trash like that? You think I’m in a codependent relationship with my Michelle? My everything? I use her to isolate myself from group? You think that?”

  She kicks me again. I’m not fighting back. I rest my swollen cheek in the dirt. I deserve this. Her hands grab my collar and she yanks me to my feet. I hear my shirt rip. I can see her gray eyes. Her pupils are pinpricks.

  “You think my guilt over killing my brother has eaten me alive?” she demands, and slaps me. “It’s made me ‘politically deranged’?” She slaps me again. “You think I keep Michelle in my shadow?”

  Another slap. I can taste blood in my mouth.

  “I’m sorry,” I say through swelling lips, wetness trickling down my chin. “I never meant for anyone to see it. I did everything I could to get Michelle back here to die.”

  “Don’t say her name,” she snarls, pushing her leathery face into mine. “You don’t get to say her name.”

  She slaps me again, and then there’s movement at her side. Steph has the .22 and is coming back, holding it at the end of one outstretched arm. Dani drops me on the ground like a bag of garbage and grabs Steph’s wrist, twists it, then kicks her feet out from under her. She draws her Glock and aims at the back of Stephanie’s neck. I need to stop this. Now. From the ground I show Dani my hands.

  “It was my journal, it was private, the guy stole it off my computer,” I say. “The same guy who’s been manipulating all of us. He got Volker to attack Stephanie and kill Adrienne. He burned down Heather’s halfway house. He shot Julia. He paid Harry Peter Warden to tell the cops he committed Nick’s killings. He’s the one who tried to make you think you killed your brother for no reason, Dani. I saw Chrissy. She told me all of it. He communicated with Walker in code. He’s trying to discredit us in public, and then he’s going to pick us off one by one.”

  Dani cocks her head like she’s considering my theory. Steph starts pushing herself up from the ground, ready to come at her again. The two of them lock eyes. Dani adjusts the grip on her Glock.

  “Ah, who cares?” Dani says, breaking her gaze, spinning on one heel, stomping back into her house, holstering her pistol, and leaving Steph and me in the dirt.

  “I thought you were mentally ill,” Steph says. “But she’s seriously crazy.”

  The carpet smokes on the pile, sending out greasy black billows of soot. It smells like chemicals.

  “Viking funeral,” I say, sitting up.

  I spit out a mouthful of blood. Aside from bruises, I don’t think she did any permanent damage.

  “She needs to get her shit together,” Steph grumbles. “This is more serious than her girlfriend.”

  “Not for her,” I say.

  Dani staggers out the front door of her house, dragging a mattress. It’s huge and floppy and gets stuck in the doorway. She punches and kicks it, hauls it out, then drags it through the dust to us. When she reaches the smoking bonfire she lets it drop. Ashes blast out in a cloud and instantly suffocate the flames. Cold smoke unrolls into the blue sky.

  “Shit,” she says, wiping a tie-dyed bandana across her grimy forehead.

  “Will you talk to me, Dani?” I ask, standing. I can’t unbend all the way. “I don’t know if you know what’s going on, but things are really bad. We need to know where Julia took everyone.”

  She looks at me like it doesn’t matter who I am.

  “Her glass of water’s gone,” she says. “The one by her side of the bed. It was the last thing her lips touched. She drank half and every day since she’s been gone the water level’s been getting lower and lower, and I knew what was going to happen but as long as there was even a bit left it wasn’t happening. Then yesterday I looked and it was dry. It used to be her glass of water and now it’s just an empty glass. There’s nothing left, Lynne. It’s all gone.”

  Her face goes slack. Her eyes are lifeless. I’ve never felt the way she does about anyone.

  “I don’t want to be here anymore without her,” she says. “I can’t be alone again. I can’t.”

  She turns and heads to the barn, leaving Steph and me stranded in her wake.

  “Can’t you get her to listen to you?” Steph asks.

  Dani comes out of the barn with a yellow and red gas can banging against one thigh. She stands on the edge of the dead bonfire, unscrews the cap, douses the mattress, shakes out the last few drops, tosses the can, then pulls a pack of matches from her breast pocket, lights them all and flicks the pack onto the mattress.

  FWOOMP!

  It goes up in a fireball, and the reek of hot gasoline blasts my face. I feel my nose hairs crisp. Steph and I limp backward a few steps but Dani doesn’t move. Her face shines beet red in the blast-furnace heat.

  I motion for Steph to stay where she is and I circle around to Dani, who’s basking in her destruction.

  “I never wanted to hurt you,” I say. “I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

  “When they found Michelle’s body, some old wino was trying to kiss her,” Dani says.

  “That was probably Carl DeWolfe Jr.”

 
“Huh,” she says, and there’s a long silence. “At least she was outside. She wouldn’t want to die indoors. But when she needed me most, I wasn’t there.”

  “Because of Skye,” I say. “Dr. Carol’s son. He’s organized this entire thing. He’s insane. He’s playing us all.”

  “I only wanted to be there for Michelle,” Dani says, desolate. “That’s all I ever wanted.”

  She’s not hearing me. We both stand there, watching her furniture burn. Steph stares at us through the heat shimmer from the other side of the bonfire.

  “Dr. Carol’s son is dangerous,” I say. “You have to believe me. And now he’s with Julia and Marilyn and Heather, and I don’t know where they are. We have to find them.”

  “They’re at Red Lake,” Dani says.

  Of course.

  Adrienne bought Camp Red Lake because she knew the problem with survivors. They detach from other people, they withdraw, they rely on routines rather than actual healing to give the appearance of stability. They go numb.

  The irony is not lost on me.

  We tend to die, women who’ve been through the fire. Sometimes we choose obvious ways, suicide and overdoses; sometimes we’re more subtle, marrying someone who likes to use his fists, or we drink too much and keep getting behind the wheel until we run out of luck.

  Adrienne saw the problem and so she created a solution. She reopened Camp Red Lake with her movie money and tried to save us all. Therapists split campers into teams, and they stick with each other for their entire stay, they do their therapies together, they are held accountable to each other, take responsibility for each other. No one finishes a race or wins a game until the entire team crosses the finish line. The official literature calls them teams and teammates. They call themselves family. They call themselves Sisters.

  Adrienne’s follow-up shows that more than sixty percent of these families last, that Sisters stay in touch with each other for years, that they move to be closer to each other, that they stay in each other’s lives. That they rescue each other. The first families left Red Lake in 1991. The women in them are around thirty-six years old today. Two of them are married. Six of them work at Red Lake. All of them made it. None of them died. Adrienne saved their lives.

  “Come with me?” I ask Dani. “Please?”

  I know what’ll happen if I take Steph and leave. When Dani runs out of things to burn she’ll kneel next to this bonfire, face the hills, take her Glock, and go be with Michelle. I have to save someone.

  She keeps staring into the fire.

  “Marilyn and Heather and Julia are in danger,” I say. “You’ve always kept us safe. We need you now. One last time.”

  When she talks again, her voice is very small.

  “I’m done,” she says.

  Her back slouches, her shoulders slump, her eyelids droop, the corners of her mouth sag. I can’t tell if she’s sweating or crying or both.

  “Please, Dani,” I say.

  If we leave, she’ll put that gun in her mouth. Everywhere I go there are final girls dying. I’m sick of it.

  Dani shakes her head.

  “I can’t do this alone,” I say. “I’ve been trying it that way all my life and it hasn’t worked out so good. I need you, Dani. One is none and two is one, isn’t that what you taught me?”

  After a minute she stops swaying and looks at me.

  “Let me take care of something,” she says.

  She walks toward her barn and I return to Stephanie.

  “She’s coming,” I say. “She just has to lock up.”

  “Great,” Stephanie says. “Um, what’s she doing?”

  Dani is walking into the barn, unholstering her Glock as she disappears into shadows. A few minutes later six horses trot out, riderless and unsaddled, glossy in the afternoon sun. They smell the fire and shy away, milling in a nervous circle, trying to duck back inside. Dani blocks their way, raising her Glock, and there’s a dry slap as she fires into the dirt between their hooves.

  My stomach jumps; each gunshot punches me in the heart as she empties her clip into the ground, into the air, sending the horses breaking into motion, galloping away, eyes wide with terror, foaming at the mouths.

  “They stand a better chance on their own,” she says, and that’s when I realize she doesn’t plan on coming back.

  The loaner is almost out of gas, so we pile into Dani’s truck. It’s got four seats. I take shotgun. Steph sits in the back behind Dani.

  “You know how to get to Red Lake?” I ask.

  “Since 1991,” she says.

  The engine roars, she drops her truck into gear, and we bounce down the road away from the ranch. I turn back in my seat and see Steph looking worried. Behind her I see a dust cloud from the horses as they disappear into the hills and the smoke from the bonfire rising up into the clear blue sky.

  —Dr. Philip Decker interview with multiple homicide survivor Danielle Shipman, November 8, 1980

  THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP XXII:

  The Final Nightmare

  Dani barely talks on the three-hour drive, but I manage to pry the story out of her. Julia called yesterday, told her that she and Heather were heading to Red Lake in one of Marilyn’s big armored SUVs. They could pick her up or meet her there. She told them not to wait.

  “What about Skye?” I ask.

  “They had a big fight with his mom,” Dani says, shifting lanes to pass a slow-moving Subaru. “Told her they had a safe location but couldn’t tell her where it was. Told her the kids could come but she couldn’t. Made up a story about keeping people spread out. She told them her kids weren’t going anywhere without her. She couldn’t stop the older one from leaving, though. Her little one stayed behind.”

  “That’s something,” I say.

  Other cars are passing us. If I were in the driver’s seat I’d have it floored, we’d be flying, we’d be screaming forth to rescue our people, but Dani drives like she’s on her way to pick up some hay. I wrote down Julia’s, Marilyn’s, and Heather’s numbers and gave them to Stephanie. She’s been calling since we left the ranch.

  “Any luck?” I ask, looking in the back.

  She’s hunched over her cell phone, texting away.

  “Keeps going to voicemail,” she says. “I’ve tried texting but none of them show as being read. I requested a delivery report but it doesn’t look like they’re going through.”

  “Is there a landline at the camp?” I ask.

  “Googled it, called, got voicemail,” Steph says.

  I really want Dani to step on it. He may have already started, although it’s still light out. Most monsters wait until dark.

  “We need a plan,” I say. “So we don’t fall all over each other like the Three Stooges. You want to try to put something together?”

  “Nope,” Dani says.

  And that’s pretty much that. I want to press my foot down over hers on the gas pedal but I have to get on Dani’s wavelength if this is going to work. So I wait.

  Twenty miles later she asks me the big question.

  “What’re you proposing to do with Dr. Carol’s boy?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt. I’m sick of people dying.”

  “Before sunrise tomorrow, people are going to die,” Dani says. “Pretty sure of that.”

  It’s so cowboy I almost laugh, but I don’t because in my gut I know she’s right. She always is.

  We hit traffic outside Bakersfield, and by the time we’re headed up into the mountains it’s late afternoon. We’ve all been lulled into a stupor by the long drive, and as the truck starts to wind up the switchbacks I feel the adrenaline draining out of my veins. I’m feeling wrung out.

  “There,” Steph says. “Is that it?”

  Up ahead we see the sign for Camp Red Lake, and
Dani slows. It’s small and discreet on the side of the road, the way Adrienne wanted, just yellow paint on dark red boards spelling out Camp Red Lake. Dani rotates the wheel and the truck splits off the road and glides onto the blacktop leading up the hill where Red Lake lies. The county isn’t responsible for this road, Red Lake is, and it’s paved with seamless black asphalt so new it sparkles.

  Halfway up the mountain, shadows getting long, Red Lake up above us, Dani takes a turnoff.

  “What are you doing?” Steph asks.

  “Gotta piss,” Dani says. “Better get it over with before we get there. Gotta get the guns out of the back, too.”

  She parks in a pull-over that looks out over the valley. There’s a picnic table with an empty Diet Coke can on it, a scenic view sign, a running path heading off into the brush. It’s paved with chalky white rocks.

  “Wait here,” Dani says.

  She gets out of the car, detours to take the Diet Coke can and throw it away, then walks into a row of scrub about thirty feet in front of us. I notice that Steph is rustling through her backpack in the seat behind me.

  “We really do need to come up with a plan,” I say, starting to turn around.

  A sledgehammer hits me in the back of my head and my eyeballs compress, then go black. When my vision returns, my head is halfway outside the car, sunlight stabbing my eyes, and it feels like my skull’s the size of a beach ball. I want to lift my head to look back into the truck and a sheet of shattered safety glass rains down on my neck, falling down into my shirt. Steph crawls over the seat and settles behind the wheel. There’s my little .22 in one of her hands. I can’t smell anything. My face won’t move. My body doesn’t work.

  She looks at me and reaches over my shoulder. I try to lift my arms but they have pins and needles running up and down them. Steph yanks the door handle and it swings open, dumping me out on the rocks. I’m tangled in my seat belt and then it comes free and I sprawl on the ground.

  In my peripheral vision I see Dani coming out of the bushes, buttoning up her jeans. I want to scream and warn her but I can’t even do that. The car door slams far above me, and an engine starts. The truck rolls over both my legs but it doesn’t feel like anything compared to my head. The tires roar over the gravel and there’s a metal crack and the sound of broken glass as it slams into Dani and then she’s sailing backward. I see her smash into a tree, midway up the trunk, and her body bends in a way it shouldn’t, and then she bounces forward and lands facedown on the edge of the parking lot.