Last Girl Gone

by J. G. Hetherton

  She considered going inside for a bandage, but in that moment she couldn’t stand the thought of showing her belly even in such an insignificant way. Disgust at her own weakness welled in the back of her throat. All this time people had been looking at her like she’d collapse at the first sign of difficulty, and even when she was alone a sense of self-doubt and a lingering fragility gnawed at her insides. She’d catch glimpses of her face in the mirror and shudder at the frailty she saw written in her expression. Because she wasn’t delicate, not deep down inside. She wasn’t a breakable thing, not before and not now, but nothing she’d done in the last six months had proved otherwise to the people around her, or to herself.

  Right then, right there on her front porch, she started to get angry.

  She studied her hand, and then, before she could talk herself out of it, pressed the drop to her mouth and sucked the cut dry. Her throat started to close up, but she forced herself to breathe through her nose, and then to swallow.

  The taste was just as she remembered it—the same as behind the cabin, when it hung so thick in the air she thought she would choke. Wrapping up all the loose ends had happened faster than she ever would have expected. The mysterious, multicolored twine used to bind the victims was tucked away in the other room of the cabin, a large spool of it, apparently handmade. Olive Hanson and the three girls from 1988 had been bound up in identical sky blues and summer greens. There was no question in anyone’s mind that the physical evidence was a match.

  And they had been able to identify the Kid. His face had been blown off, but his fingerprints were perfectly intact and a match to an old military service record.

  Leon Botton was the one who’d sold the picture to the Raleigh News & Observer, and it dominated the front page. Over the past six months it had been reprinted in magazines and other major dailies more times than she could count. Laura had never gotten the chance to write the article underneath it. After the cabin, she’d spent twenty-four hours in the hospital with a police guard on her room, and once her fingernails and the cut on her hip had been patched, another eight hours in an interview room before they’d allowed her to leave. News traveled fast, so by then it was already too late. Smythe ended up writing the story, packing it with twists and turns and all the navel-gazing speculation about the nature of the human condition that played so well with the general public. It was his name below all the headlines, so when they called, the job offer was for him. They, in this case, turned out to be the LA Times. Two months after it all blew up, Smythe was on a plane headed for California.

  Frank Stuart’s funeral had been exactly one week after that Monday in the mountains. The whole town turned out. Laura had stood at the very back in dark glasses, trying for anonymity and failing miserably. The energy in the cemetery soured the second she entered. Backs went stiff. The crowd went silent.

  Not a single person looked at her; everyone saw her.

  Leaving would be a tacit admission of guilt, and she refused to cry in front of the bastards. So she stayed put until the box was in the ground, never letting out so much as a sniffle. Already she could imagine them gathering after he was buried, drinking and trading stories. Eventually the gossip would turn in her direction.

  That Chambers is an ice-cold bitch. Got him killed and didn’t even shed a tear.

  It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.

  Sometime during the minister’s remarks, the bandage on her hip soaked through and blood started running down her leg. She kept her hand pressed on the wound and thanked God she was wearing black.

  On the porch, cold wind sliced and hummed between the plastic rails of her chair. She pulled the cut out of her mouth and examined it. Her eyes dropped into her lap and found the picture again. She couldn’t escape it. It was like a curse. For perhaps the thousandth time, she studied it.

  This time it was the composition that struck her most, the way things were organized into a perfect triangle. She occupied the top of the space, Frank was in the middle right, and a pair of legs ending in black boots were perfectly visible sticking into the frame at about middle left. The angle was from down low, the dry leaves and pine needles shrinking back into the shot, providing the needed perspective. It made the viewer feel detached, but also godlike, omniscient. Privy to everything, a fly on the wall, the connoisseur of a voyeuristic dream, but powerless to affect any of the players. The figures in the picture looked close enough to touch, but somehow distant too. Beyond saving.

  Leon, Laura later learned, had found his courage up at the top of the bowl. It had taken him a bit longer, but in a way, that only increased her respect. Her reaction had been instinct, nothing more. She hadn’t bothered to dwell on her own mortality before climbing over the edge.

  Leon had done that and more. He had followed her through the woods and into the cabin armed only with his camera. Despite gunfire, he had gone out the back door, taken a knee, and clicked the shutter.

  It was the only picture he took.

  She tore herself away from the figures, but her eyes danced back again. Was this the purpose of sending the pictures? So that she could never look away?

  Frank appeared almost dignified. His face cast down, his arms in his lap, like he’d just discovered the damage to his abdomen. On the other side were the remains of the Kid. Laura hovered above them both, motionless.

  She was the undeniable center of the image, the source of its inherent drama. Feet shoulder-width apart, shoulders back, head erect, back straight, the picture of perfect posture. Blood streamed off the tips of her fingers—they told her later at the hospital that she’d torn off four of her fingernails—and smeared her cheeks with gruesome blush. Clothes clotted and black at her hip. Hair matted, throat stained a darkening crimson.

  Even now Laura couldn’t remember exactly what she had been thinking and feeling. Her head was angled down, the eyes cast up under her brow. She looked directly into the camera, pinning the viewer to a wall, her gaze an unearthly mix of solemnity and rage. Behind her, the last rays of sunset shot through the mist, imbuing it with that preternatural orange glow. She seemed a creature, more mythological than human. The vampire queen. The darkling angel. The avatar of death.

  It was a one-in-a-million shot, so perfect it looked staged. Only police reports convinced the world of its veracity.

  To Laura, the purpose of sending it seemed perfectly clear. The picture was a message, one she was receiving loud and clear. It said: I haven’t forgotten about you.

  She let herself stare at it for another second, then tore it into little pieces and carried them to the garbage can. It was twenty yards away leaned against the side of a shed. She jogged to it, the horizon looming large in the distance, pressing in on her from all three hundred and sixty degrees. That feeling of being watched had returned. A prickly sensation burned on the back of her neck and some ancient reptilian part of her brain roiled with alarm.

  She took a deep breath, tried to shake the feeling, told herself it was nothing.

  She went back into the house and locked the door behind her.

  CHAPTER

  22

  “THAT’S GOOD, LAURA. Keep going, please.”

  “There’s nothing else to say.”

  “That’s all? The story just ends?”

  “It happened quick. Have you ever been in a situation like that? Where time slows down?”

  Jasmine DeVane took a minute to consider. “Well, I’ve been in a few car accidents. I know the feeling you mean, where everything seems to happen in slow motion.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But we’re not in slow motion now. We’re taking it beat by beat. After you found Frank along with—”

  “Don’t say his name.”

  “After you found Frank with—”

  “I asked you not to say his name.” Laura pushed herself up and went to the table by the window. “Please.”

  “I know it’s difficult to talk about.”

  Laura lifted a
glass set out next to a decanter of water. “This clean?”

  Jasmine nodded.

  She poured herself water, drank it down, poured again, and returned to her seat. “I’m sorry, I should have offered you some.”

  “You’re the patient, I’m the therapist. You’re not supposed to get me things. You don’t have to feel bad when you don’t.”

  “I don’t. Feel bad, that is. It’s just a question of manners.”

  “So, you’re behind the cabin.”

  “Like, for example, basic manners would be that if a patient says she doesn’t want to talk about something, maybe you would just let it go.”

  Jasmine tapped her pen against one tooth. “I see your point.”

  “You do?”

  “Absolutely. I mean, that’s life’s endeavor in a way, the avoidance of pain. Why hurt when you don’t have to?”

  “Preach it, sister.”

  “But there are flaws in that point of view. You’re missing some of the nuance of human psychology.”

  “Educate me, oh wise one.”

  Jasmine grinned. This teacher–student shtick had been going on between them for a while, but it still made both of them smile. In truth, Laura was fascinated by Jasmine’s job and by the entire field of psychology. Only when the conversation shifted to Laura’s personal neuroses did things turn icy between them.

  Jasmine said, “You joke, but I’m serious. We’re talking about instant gratification here, something to which all people—and monkeys and other animals—are prone. You don’t talk about this bad thing that happened to you, so you avoid the pain of reliving it. That’s good, right?”

  “Feels pretty good.”

  Jasmine shook her head. “Not right at all. You’re just passing the buck, handing it to the future version of yourself. It’s a lot like procrastination. Every day you put it off until tomorrow. And it never gets done. You never get better. If we can’t even mention—”

  “Don’t say his name,” Laura said again. “I just don’t like hearing it.”

  “Okay,” Jasmine conceded. “Okay.”

  “So can we talk about something else?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Are you sure? My mother’s been a real bitch these past few days.”

  Jasmine grinned again. “Maybe in a bit.”

  Laura crossed her arms on her chest. “I just don’t understand what talking will accomplish. It won’t change anything.”

  “The therapeutic benefits of talking are myriad.”

  “There’s no point blabbing about it.”

  Jasmine made a circle with her hand, a gesture inclusive of the couch and the chairs and the bookshelves and the heavy drapes. “There’s no point in talking about it? All we do in here is talk about things. I mean, that’s a pretty fair definition of therapy, isn’t it? Coming to a place to talk about your problems?”

  Laura said nothing.

  “What’s worse,” Jasmine continued, “is that you believe in therapy, Laura. I’m not your first therapist, and you were seeing me a long time before—”

  She caught herself, didn’t say the name.

  Laura uncrossed her arms. “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning you’re rationalizing. You’re taking issue with the whole therapeutic process, but really it’s a lot simpler than that. You went through a traumatic experience, and now you want to avoid talking about it.”

  “You’d understand if you’d been there.”

  Jasmine sighed. “How are you sleeping?”

  “Fine,” Laura said, and knew the doctor could tell she was lying. The bags under her eyes were impossible to hide.

  “A lack of sleep can only exacerbate your other symptoms. How’s the paranoia?”

  “It’s not paranoia.”

  “Are you still getting the feeling that someone is watching you?”

  “It’s not just a feeling, Jasmine. You know what I got today? Another one of those damn pictures in the mail. Went out to the grocery store, where no one can look me in the eye, by the way, and came back to that shit.”

  “Do you think they’re related?”

  Laura’s brow wrinkled. “What and what?”

  “The fact that you think no one looks you in the eye at the grocery store, and the picture.”

  Laura heard a slight inflection on the word think. You think no one looks you in the eye.

  “No one looks me in the eye,” she repeated. “I’m not being paranoid.”

  “We can talk about that too. But I’m saying, let’s take it at face value, okay? People in this town are eager to gossip and slow to forget. I get that. So maybe it’s all part of the same thing.”

  “You mean someone is sending the picture again and again as some sort of punishment.”

  Jasmine shook her head. “That’s not the word I’d choose. Punishment is deserved. This is harassment. Intimidation.”

  “And you think someone in town is doing that to me?”

  “It’s possible. I also think it’s possible that if we could talk to the person doing it, they would describe it as a prank or a joke. Though that’s just another creeping rationalization.”

  Laura turned and looked out the window. “Maybe,” she said finally.

  “Can I ask you something else?”

  “It’s therapy, Doc, you don’t have to ask me if you can ask me questions.”

  “Well, let me preface this one. I’m not making a suggestion, or encouraging you. In fact, it would make me sad to see you go. But I’m wondering, why are you still here?”

  “I thought we were friends.”

  Jasmine nodded. “We are. But as your friend, I want what’s best for you. And I know you’re not blind to all the adversity you face around here. People didn’t take Frank Stuart’s death very well.”

  Laura snorted. “That’s an understatement.”

  “You have to understand, in these kinds of situations, people look for someone to blame.”

  “He went up there on his own.”

  “I know—you’ve told me that part of the story a hundred times.”

  “I didn’t make him go.”

  “Of course not. You can’t make anyone do anything. We’re responsible for our own decisions.”

  “And I wouldn’t change a thing,” Laura said. “If I could go back, there isn’t a single decision I would change. I did the right thing—I tried to contact the police, but no one believed me. Was I supposed to do nothing? Was I supposed to sit by and let that little girl die? She could have been alive in that cabin. She could have been alive and screaming, waiting for someone to help her.” The words poured out of her. She couldn’t stop them. “She might still be alive. Somewhere.”

  Jasmine reached out and put a hand on her patient’s arm. “You need to cling to that—the fact you wouldn’t change a thing. You need to remind yourself of it every day. You didn’t make a mistake; Frank Stuart did. Take solace in the belief you made the right choices.”

  “It doesn’t feel like I made the right choices,” Laura said.

  “Our choices aren’t everything. Sometimes things in the world just … happen.”

  “Doesn’t feel like anyone else thinks I made the right choices either.”

  “That’s different,” Jasmine said. “That’s about casting blame. And I know this isn’t fair, but they cannot—will not—put the blame on Frank Stuart. No one wants to think ill of the dead.”

  “So it has to be me.”

  Jasmine shrugged. “Who else?”

  And she was right. It was just that simple: who else? Who had set everything in motion? Besides a high schooler armed only with a camera, who else had walked out of those mountains alive?

  “So that’s what I mean when I ask why you’re still here,” Jasmine said. “I don’t think you did anything wrong, but most people around here will never agree. Life will be difficult for you. You left once before. Why not again?”

  Laura craned her head back to look at the ceiling.

  “Laura
?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Your mother?”

  “So now’s a good time to talk about Diane.”

  Jasmine threw up her hands. “I get it, you don’t want to talk about this. But you must. Can we go back to the cabin?”

  Laura squeezed her eyes shut, shook her head.

  “Does that help?”

  “What?”

  “Closing your eyes.”

  “You know it doesn’t help. Not at all.”

  “No,” she said. “If closing your eyes helped, you’d be able to sleep.”

  Laura opened her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about the cabin.”

  “We’ve been over the story again and again. No one believes you, so you drive up there. The bowl in the woods. Going into the cabin. Opening the back door.”

  “Yes.”

  “And then you stop. The story just ends.”

  “That’s what stories do—they end.”

  “That’s not an ending, Laura. Me, and about half the world it seems, read this story in every paper for a month. You find the bodies out back, and then you go back inside.”

  Laura said nothing.

  “To look for Teresa Mitchem.”

  Laura pulled her knees up to her chest, squeezed them too. Maybe if she squeezed long enough, and hard enough, she’d curl up into a tiny ball and just disappear.

  “But you didn’t find her,” Jasmine finished. “Did you?”

  Some hot part of Laura’s brain went cold. It had been happening more and more lately, like flipping a safety switch. The horror and fear and anger and shame would swell in her chest and just when there should have been a climax, an explosion, her insides would turn to ice. She felt like a robot, but that didn’t bother her. Anything to be free of herself.

  When she spoke again, her voice sounded distant and flat.

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore, Dr. DeVane.”

  Jasmine seemed to sense the change in her.