by Adam Millard
“Squeeeeeee!” the mess upon the table said.
“See. Do you see how wrong this is?” Roger Death did. It was a pity he hadn’t spotted it a few minutes ago, before he’d started spouting voodoo mantras as if they were going out of fashion.
“You’ll sit your ass down and wait until this is done!” yelled Edie, and then in a more placid manner, added, “And if you’re lucky, I’ll let you have two slices of bread to dip in your broth.”
“Fuck your broth!” Roger snapped. “I don’t care if I never eat again, I’m getting the hell out of here.” As he ran for the door, his stomach growled, and he was in two minds whether to turn around and apologise, admit he was wrong, and ask if there would be salt and pepper…
He might have done so, had something sharp and hard not thumped into that awkward spot between his shoulder-blades, the place where itches ran amok. “Gnfh!” he said. It wasn’t a real word, but it was a solid eleven in scrabble, if you were playing with an amateur. He turned slowly on the spot, reaching back for the blade embedded in his back, knowing he hadn’t a cat in Hell’s chance of reaching it.
“Look whatcha made me do!” Edie squealed. “You done made me throw a knife at your back!”
“I can…I can see that,” Roger groaned. Blood drooled from the corner of his mouth. The colour drained from him instantly. Perhaps worst of all, he shit his pantaloons. They say that in those moments before death, one’s life flashes before one’s eyes; the only thing flashing before Roger Death’s eyes was the smell of his own—
“Crap!” said Edie. “Crap and fiddlesticks, I din’t want to ‘ave to kill ya.”
Roger dropped to his knees, swaying back and forth like a tree in the breeze. “That rhymes,” said he.
“What does?” Edie frowned.
“Never mind,” Roger said, closing his eyes and smacking his lips feverishly together. He glanced at the thing on the table, saw that it was almost the shape of a man, and shook his head. “He’s going to…he’s going to kill…again,” he said. He had given up trying to reach the blade jutting from his back, which was as elusive as Lord Lucan, Amelia Earhart, and the clitoris combined.
“Squeeeeeee!” said the body as it lunged forward into a sitting position. Roger couldn’t help but smile at how ridiculous the whole scenario was.
“See you in Hell,” said the witchdoctor-cum-carpet cleaner. And then he died, and did so in such a dramatic fashion, Edie Travers clapped her approval.
“Squeeeeee!” said Larry as he examined the room and tried to figure out what was happening.
“Never you mind ‘Squeeeee!’ you idle bastard,” Edie said. “There’s a pigsty outside wot needs a jolly good mucking out. And when you’ve done that, I know of two bodies wot need burying. And when you’re done with the bodies, I…”
Larry pushed the old bag’s voice to the back of his mind as it continued to spout forth orders and menial chores. Typical, he thought. Been dead for fuck knows how long, and now she expects me to dig right in, no warming up, not even a stretch of the old legs. Now he knew how Sammo Hung felt.
There was something in Larry’s right hand. As his senses returned and the nerves knitted back together, he felt it there, enveloped by his gorilla-fist, and when he looked, he saw that it was an axe, and when he realised he was holding an axe, he felt much better, because people with axes are not to be messed with. The same goes for people with guns, hand-grenades, kirpans, light-sabres, Molotov cocktails, machetes, bear-traps, foul-language, religion, dirty syringes, epilepsy, unkempt toenails, STDs, weak bladders, strong bladders, two eyes, four eyes, double-barrelled names, deep trouser pockets, banjos, green teeth, brown pants, boss-eyes, and anyone that tries to push in front of you at a U2 concert (those people have serious issues).
“I’ll take that, thank you,” Edie said, snatching the axe from his languorous grip. “You can have it back when you’ve peeled the first couple o’ layers off of the toilet bowl.”
“SqueeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiIIIIII haven’t even been here making a mess of the place,” he said, his voice slightly cracked. “And who the fuck is that dead fella?” He pointed to the slumped, motionless body of Roger Death – carpet cleaner by trade, voodoo practitioner when there’s not much choice in the matter.
“Why don’t you do everything I’ve asked?” Edie said, “And I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Larry, reaching up and fingering the eyeholes of his mask. “Is this thing on me permanently now, like Jennifer Garner’s mangled toes, or Megan Fox’s clubbed thumbs?”
“I guess it is,” Edie said.
And, “Fuck!” said Larry, because no matter how long you’re dead for, the best words are always the ones which would make a nun weep.
4
Elm Street (Not that one, but still…)
Amanda Bateman fell out of her bed with a meaty thump. When she came to almost fifteen minutes later, she clambered to her feet and ran through the series of events she had just dreamt about.
Larry Travers back from the dead. Some old bag slurping parsnip soup from an oversized spoon. A dead guy who Amanda recognised as the fella who got the red wine out of her mother’s favourite Egyptian rug so many years ago.
Amanda felt sick, for she hadn’t thought about the events from the previous summer for a while. It had indeed knocked her bandy. Three mugs of coffee and a half packet of cigarettes later, she picked up the phone and began to punch in a number. It was, after all, the best way to get through to your desired contact.
“Hello?” said a voice on the other end of the line, though it wasn’t the voice she’d expected. This voice belonged to a man, or one of those really gruff women that stand around outside office buildings, smoking and discussing their favourite Patrick Swayze movies.
“Erm, I was hoping to speak with Betsy,” Amanda said. “Betsy Krueger?”
There was a slight pause, just long enough for Amanda to swallow a fourth mug of coffee, and then the voice came back, all apologetic and delicate, as if there was something wrong. “Who might I ask is calling?”
“My name is Amanda Bateman. I’m a friend of Betsy’s.” That wasn’t quite true. They were acquaintances, at best. You could only get so friendly with a person who had decapitated another person, whether they were in the right, or not. “She told me to call this number if I ever needed to talk.”
“And you did,” said the voice. “Good for you, and have a lovely day.”
“Wait!” Amanda said.
“What for?”
“I need to talk to Betsy,” Amanda said. “It’s extremely important.”
“I’m afraid I have some terrible news for you,” said the voice. Bad news was bad, but terrible news, well that could only be… “Betsy died last night in her sleep.”
The breath caught in Amanda’s throat – it was that horrid morning breath, too, the stuff that tastes like assholes. “There must be some mistake!” she cried.
“Oh, no, she’s definitely dead,” the voice said. “I’m here now, at her place, and I’ve seen the body, all bloated and blue and wet.”
“I thought you said she died in her sleep?” said Amanda.
“She did,” said the voice. “She fell asleep in the bathtub. I reckon it was the drowning that killed her.”
This was horrible, horrible news. Amanda couldn’t believe it, and stood there in a state of shock for several moments while the voice on the other end of the line harked on about rubber ducks and silver pubic hair.
“If it’s any consolation,” said the voice, “she had an expression on her face that made it look as if she’d died of absolute terror, and not because of the water that had filled her lungs.”
How, Amanda thought, could that be considered a consolation? “Terror, you say?” Amanda asked. “What did she look like?”
There was a rustle, and then the man on the other end of the line said, “A bit like that, but without the moustache and ear-hair.”
“You’re going to have
to explain it to me,” Amanda said, shaking her head incredulously. “Explain what she looked like.”
“She looked as if she’d seen the Devil,” said the man. “And there was a nugget of shit floating about in the tub with her. I reckon that thing was literally scared out of her by someone or something.”
Amanda closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Larry,” she said.
“No,” said the man. “Bosher. I live in the apartment opposite Betsy’s. I wouldn’t say I knew her that well, but the police have left the door wide open, so I thought I’d pop in and see what all the fuss was about.”
Amanda hung up, and as soon as the phone was in its cradle, she broke down in tears. After roughly thirty minutes of sobbing and shaking, and precisely three minutes of blowing snot-bubbles, she managed to pull herself together. She reached for the phone again, punched in a different number, one which she had used plenty of times in the last twelve months.
“Huh-hullo?”
“Freddy,” she said, which was perfectly acceptable as that was his name. “He’s back. Larry’s back!”
“Whoa, whoa, calm down,” Freddy Crowley said. “Amanda, Larry died last year. Betsy Krueger chopped him into little pieces with his own fucking axe.”
“Betsy’s dead!” Amanda screeched.
“What? How did she—”
“In her sleep, kind of,” Amanda said, for she wasn’t sure what had happened there. “You have to listen to me, Freddy. I saw him. I saw Larry, and he was up and about, squeeeing and smelling of bacon, just like he was last summer.”
“When did you see him?” Freddy suddenly sounded interested. “Where was this?”
“Last night,” Amanda said. “He was in my dream, and he’d just killed this great carpet-cleaner guy my family used—”
“Did you say that you dreamt this?” Freddy said. “And you’re calling me, why?”
“Look, this isn’t a coincidence,” Amanda said. “I feel different. It’s as if Larry’s resurrection has stirred something in me.” Like a fart, she thought, but less bubbly.
“Okay, I’m going to hang up now, and I want you to go back to bed, okay?”
“I don’t need sleep,” Amanda said. “I need you to listen to me. We knew this day would come, didn’t we? We were speaking about it only last week.”
“Sequel day,” Freddy muttered. “But that was just talk, wasn’t it. I mean, did you really think it was possible?”
“Chopping Larry into pieces was never going to do the trick,” Amanda said.
“We set fire to him, as well,” Freddy reminded her. “I mean, surely that should have been enough?”
“You would have thought so,” said Amanda. “But we’ve both watched enough horror movies to know that the villain is practically invincible. The best we can hope for is that this whole thing doesn’t develop into a franchise.” Amanda could already picture it. Pigface adorning cups, jigsaw-puzzles, mouse-mats, biros, cushions, shower-curtains, stationary, baseball caps, socks, disposable lighters, Zippo lighters, USB sticks, and so on, and so forth.
“I wouldn’t mind being in the third one, though,” Freddy said. “3D is the shizzle.”
“I don’t think you’re taking this seriously,” Amanda said.
“You’re right,” replied Freddy. In fact, he wasn’t taking it seriously to the point that he had drawn several tiny cocks on the notepad beside the telephone. Good cocks they were, too. He was very proud of them.
“So what are we going to do about it?” Amanda said. Her notepad was blank, for she wasn’t equipped with enough knowledge of the male genitalia to have a go at doodling one.
“Well,” Freddy said, sketching a line of tattie water from one of the cocks – an integral part of the design, and something he’d picked up in school. “If he’s back, I would suggest we stay the hell away from Camp Diamond Creek and hope he doesn’t learn to drive.”
“That’s it, is it?” Amanda said, scribbling out her useless attempt at a vagina. “That’s your plan?”
Freddy sighed. “My plan was to take a shower, eat last night’s leftover pizza, and head over to the arcade where I was going to spend the rest of the day feeding quarters into this new game they’ve got there. It’s like Pac-Man, but instead of ghosts chasing you, it’s toothbrushes.”
“Plaque-Man?” Amanda said.
“Face Invaders.”
“Look, we need to do something about this. We need to make sure he doesn’t kill again. He took all of our friends from us, remember?”
Freddy finished scribbling pubes and dropped his pencil. “Of course I remember. How could I forget? There was the geeky one, the black one, that dumb girly one who was lucky to make it as far as she did, in my honest opinion.”
“Oh my God, you’ve forgotten their names! Freddy…”
“Crowley,” he said.
“Freddy Crowley, you should be ashamed of yourself.”
“I am,” he said. “All the time, actually, but I don’t see what that has to do with our little predicament.”
“He’s going to come for us,” Amanda said, though how she knew that, she wasn’t sure. “He isn’t going to stop until he’s rammed his axe so far up our asses that we’re shitting splinters for a month.”
“We could always go to the hospital to get it re—”
“It was a figure of speech, dickwad.” Amanda was growing increasingly frustrated; she’d taken to drawing Pigface on her notepad, a knife jutting from the top of his head. It looked nothing like him, and the knife (banana?) was questionable, but she knew what it was meant to be. “I’m not going to stand by and watch as more innocent people are butchered by that bastard.”
“And the best way to not see any of that butchering going on,” Freddy said, “is to steer well clear of Camp Diamond Creek. How many times do I have to tell you? For a final girl, you really are stubborn.”
Before Amanda knew what she was doing, she’d hung up the phone. The colour she had turned – ripe eggplant, if you were to buy it in a tin from a hardware store – revealed only a fraction of the anger she felt in that moment.
Deep breath… deep breath… calm down…
“I’ll show you final girl,” she said, holding the notepad up so that she was face-to-face with her enemy, Banana-Head Wild Boar. “You’re going to wish you’d stayed dead, you sonofabitch.” And with that she tore the page from the notepad, crumpled it up into a little ball – after she’d wiped her ass with it – and tossed it in the waste-paper basket next to the phone table, where it would eventually rot away to nothing.
5
The Travers Cabin
Edie had just finished lopping the good meat off the sheriff and the carpet-cleaner – waste not, want not – and was about to bury what was left of them when Larry came a-rushing out the back door, squee-ing excitedly, his axe in one hand and a copy of Reader’s Digest in the other.
Edie almost had a heart-attack, for she was at the right age for suchlike. “Can you not do that!” she gasped, swallowing bile and doubling over. “I’m still comin’ to terms with the fact you ‘ave to keep that bleedin’ thing on all the time now.” She motioned to the mask which was now, apparently, his permanent face.
Don’t listen to her, said the mask, in its usual italicised dialect. She’ll be gone soon, if I have anything to do with it. In fact, why don’t you pop back inside and come out again, only this time without your clothes on?
“She’s alive!” Larry said, breathlessly.
“Who?” Edie picked up her shovel and continued digging. “The Queen of England? Zsa Zsa Gabor? Betty ‘The Immortal’ White?”
“That bitch from last year!” Larry said. “The one that got away.”
“I thought there were two that got away,” said Edie, dragging a mutilated body across the glade. “Three if you count the one that got away in 1978. Really, Larry,” – she kicked the corpse into its respective hole and lit a roll-yer-own – “I’m surprised you’re as famous as you are, what with all the one
’s that got away.”
Larry pointed at the cabin. “I was in there,” he said, “taking a shit and reading about dandruff remedies, when all of a sudden I saw her.”
“What’s she doin’ in our fucking bathroom?” Edie said, reaching for the shovel. “I’ll donk her over the ‘ead with this if I ‘ave to. Don’t tell me, you let her get away. Seems to be the order of the day around here.”
“No, I saw her in my head,” Larry said, tapping at his temple with the butt of his axe.
Edie regarded her son the same way one might regard a mentally-handicapped meerkat or a one-legged donkey. The lights are on, she thought, but the bastard’s gone on holiday…
“I’d just crimped off a second wave of nuggets when it hit me,” Larry continued. “She was just standing there, looking at some picture of a wild boar with a banana sticking out the top of its head.”
Edie tilted her head to the side, now regarding him in the same way she would a piece of roadkill, or the Kardashian tribe.
“She’s still out there, Ma, and do you know what she’s doing?”
“Drawing pictures of wild boar with bananas sticking out of their ‘eads, by the sounds of it.”
“She’s mocking me!” There, he’d said it. “She’s out there somewhere, and she’s…she’s taking the piss out of me.”
Edie snorted. “Larry, Larry, Larry.” It was a good job he wasn’t Candyman, or she’d be pulling a hook out of her va-jay-jay by now. “All of that silliness, it’s in the past now. I don’t know why you wanna go dredging it all up again.”
See, I told you she’d say that, the mask whispered. I say we just chop her head off and bury her with those two schmucks.
“She got away,” Edie continued. “Because she’s the final girl, and that’s what they’re there for.”
Seriously, we could clobber her right now and no-one would give a shit…
“I have to go after her,” said Larry. “I can’t just sit around here while she’s out there, taking the proverbial and creating terrible artwork.” He swung the axe in a wide arc through the air. It whooshed, as was its wont, before landing in a thicket with his arm still attached. There was a moment’s silence, as one might expect when something so unexpected happens.