As Good as Dead

by Holly Jackson

  Pip leaned over and unraveled the tape still binding her ankles, then she stood up, her legs still shaking, almost buckling under her weight.

  Now the room. Now she just had to get out of the room and she would be alive, as good as. She skittered over to the door, treading on something on the way. She glanced down: it was the screw she’d dropped. It had rolled almost all the way to the door through the unknown. Pip rammed the door handle down, knowing it was useless. She’d heard Jason lock her in. But there was a door down at the other end of the storeroom. It wouldn’t lead outside, but it would lead somewhere.

  Pip sprinted to it. She lost control as her sneakers scuffed on the concrete, skidding into a workbench beside the door. The workbench jumped, with a sound of colliding metal from a large toolbox on top. Pip righted herself and tried the door handle. It was also locked. Fuck. OK.

  She returned to the other side, to her vat of weed killer, the dark liquid draining into the gutter like a cursed river. A bright line was reflected in the liquid, but it wasn’t from the overhead lights. It was from the window, high up in front of her, letting in the last of evening light. Or the first of it. Pip didn’t know the time. And her tipped-back shelves, they reached right up to the window, almost like a ladder.

  The window was small, and it didn’t look like it opened. But Pip could fit through it, she was sure she could. And if she couldn’t, she would make herself fit. Climb through and drop down on the outside. She just needed something to break it with.

  She checked around. Jason had left the roll of duct tape on the floor by the door. Beside it was a coiled length of blue rope. The blue rope, she realized with a shiver. The rope DT was going to use to kill her. Was. But would still, if he came back right now.

  What else was in the room? Just her and lots of weed killer and fertilizer. Oh wait—her mind jumped back to the other side of the storeroom. There was a toolbox there.

  She ran to the other side again, an ache in her ribs and a pain in her chest. There was a Post-it note stuck to the top of the toolbox. In slanting scribbles, it said: J—Red team keep taking tools assigned to Blue team. So I’m leaving this in here for Rob to find.—L.

  Pip undid the clips and pulled open the lid. Inside was a jumble of screwdrivers and screws, a tape measure, pliers, a small drill, some kind of wrench. Pip dug her hand inside. And underneath it all was a hammer. A large one.

  “Sorry, Blue team,” she muttered, tightening her grip around the hammer, pulling it out.

  Pip stood in front of the tipped-over shelves, her shelves, and looked back once more at the room where she’d known she would die. Where the others had died, all five of them. And then she climbed, balancing her feet on the lowest shelf like a rung, pulling herself up to the next level. There was still strength left in her legs, moving adrenaline-fast.

  Feet planted on the top shelf, she crouched, balancing herself in front of the window. A hammer in her hand, and an unbroken window in front of her; Pip had been here before. Her arm knew what to do, it remembered, arching back to pick up momentum. Pip swung at the window and it cracked, a spiderweb splintering through the reinforced glass. She swung again, and the hammer went through, glass shattering around it. Shards still clung to the frame, but she knocked them out one by one so she wouldn’t cut herself open. How far was it to the ground? Pip dropped the hammer through and watched it tumble to the gravel below. Not far. She should be fine if she bent her legs.

  And now it was just her and a hole in the wall, and something was waiting on the other side. Not something. Everything. Life, normal life and Team Ravi and Pip and her parents and Josh and Cara and everyone. They might even be looking for her now, though she hadn’t disappeared for long. Some parts of her might be gone, parts she might never get back, but she was still here. And she was coming home.

  Pip gripped the window frame and pulled herself forward, sliding her legs out ahead of her. She held on as she dipped her shoulders and head and maneuvered them out too. She stared down at the gravel, at the hammer, and she let go.

  Landed. Hard on her feet, the force ricocheting up her legs. A pain in her left knee. But she was free, she was alive. A breath came out too hard that it was almost a laugh. She’d done it. She’d survived.

  Pip listened. The only sound was the wind in the trees, some of it finding the new holes in her too, blowing through her rib cage. Pip bent down and picked up her hammer, holding it at her side, just in case. But as she rounded the corner of the building, she could see that the complex was empty. Jason’s car wasn’t here and the gate was locked again. The metal fence at the front was high, too high, she’d never be able to climb it. But the back of the yard was bordered by woods, and the fence was unlikely to encircle those too.

  New plan: she just had to follow the trees. Follow the trees, find a road, find a house, find someone, call the police. That was all. The easy parts left, just one foot in front of the other.

  One foot in front of the other, the crunch of gravel. She walked past the parked vans, dumpsters and machines, trailers with ride-on mowers, and a small forklift. One foot in front of the other. Gravel became dirt became the crunch of dry grass. The sun was close to setting, burning through the clouds to watch over Pip. She was surviving, one foot in front of the other, that’s all it took. Her sneakers and the grass crunching beneath them. She dropped the hammer, she was far enough away now, and carried on through the trees.

  A new sound stopped her in her tracks.

  The distant drone of a car engine. The slam of a car door far behind her. The shrieking of a gate.

  Pip darted behind a tree and stared back into the complex.

  Two yellow headlights, winking at her through the branches, as they pulled forward. Wheels on gravel.

  It was DT. Jason Bell. He’d returned. He was back to kill her.

  But he wouldn’t find her there, only the parts she’d left behind. Pip was out, she’d escaped. All she had to do was find a house, find a person, call the police. The easy parts. She could do that. She turned, leaving the headlights in the unknown behind her. Moving on, picking up her pace. She just had to call the police and tell them everything: that DT had just tried to kill her and she knew who he was. She could even call Detective Hawkins directly; he’d understand.

  She faltered, one foot hovering above the ground.

  Wait.

  Would he understand?

  He never understood. Not any of it. And it wasn’t even a question of understanding, it was a question of believing. He’d come right out and said it to her face, said gently but said all the same: that she was imagining it. She didn’t have a stalker, she was just seeing things, seeing danger around every corner because of the trauma she’d lived through. Even though he’d been part of that trauma, because he hadn’t believed her when she went to him about Jamie.

  It was a repeating pattern. No, not a pattern, it was a circle. That’s what this all was, everything winding up, coming full circle. The end was the beginning. Hawkins hadn’t believed her before, twice, so why did she think he’d believe her now?

  And the voice in her head wasn’t Ravi anymore, it was Hawkins. Said gently, but said all the same. “The DT Killer is already in prison. He’s been there for years. He confessed.” That’s what he’d say.

  “Billy Karras isn’t the DT Killer,” Pip would counter. “It’s Jason Bell.”

  Hawkins shook his head inside hers. “Jason Bell is a respectable man. A husband, a father. He’s already been through so much, because of Andie. I’ve known him for years, we play tennis sometimes. He’s a friend. Don’t you think I’d know? He’s not the DT Killer and he’s not a danger to you, Pip. Are you still talking to someone? Are you getting help?”

  “I’m asking you for help.”

  Asking him again and again, and when would she finally learn? Break the circle?

  And if her worst fears we
re right, if the police didn’t believe her, didn’t arrest Jason, then what? DT would still be out there. Jason might take her again, or someone else. Take someone she cared about to punish her, because she was too loud and had to be silenced in some way. He’d get away with it. They always got away with it. Him. Max Hastings. Above the law because the law was wrong. A legion of dead girls and dead-eyed girls left behind them.

  “They won’t believe me,” Pip told herself, in her own voice now. “They never believe us.” Out loud so she would truly listen this time, understand. She was on her own. Charlie Green wasn’t the one with all the answers; she was. She didn’t need to hear it from him to know what to do this time.

  Break the circle. It was hers to break, here and now. And there was only one way to do that.

  Pip turned, grass bunching, clinging to the white soles of her shoes.

  And she walked back.

  Returned through the darkening trees. A glint of dying sunlight across the surface of the dropped hammer, showing her the way. She bent to pick it up, testing out her grip.

  From grass, to dirt, to gravel, easing her steps, pressing her feet down with no sound. Maybe she was too loud for him, but he’d never hear her coming now.

  Ahead, Jason was out of his car, walking up to the metal door he’d dragged her through, his steps disguising hers. Closer and closer. He stopped and she did too, waiting. Waiting.

  Jason slid his hand down into his pocket, returning with the ring of keys. A rustle of tinkling metal and Pip took a few slow steps, hiding beneath the sound.

  Jason found the right key, long and jagged. He pushed it into the lock, metal scraping metal, and Pip moved closer.

  Break the circle. The end was the beginning and this was both, the origin. Finish it where it had all begun.

  He twisted the key, and the door unlocked with a dark click, the sound echoing in Pip’s chest.

  Jason pushed open the door into the yellow-lit storeroom. He took one step over the threshold, looked up, then took one back, staring ahead. Taking in the scene: tipped-over shelves, smashed-open window, a river of spilled weed killer, lengths of unwound duct tape.

  Pip was right behind him.

  “What the—” he said.

  Her arm knew what to do.

  Pip pulled it back and swung the hammer.

  It found the base of his skull.

  A sickening crunch of metal on bone.

  He staggered. He even dared to gasp.

  Pip swung again.

  A crack.

  Jason dropped, falling forward onto the concrete, catching himself with one hand.

  “Please—” he began.

  Pip pulled her elbow back, a spray of blood hitting her in the face.

  She leaned over him and swung again.

  Again.

  Again.

  Again.

  Again.

  Again.

  Again.

  Until nothing moved. Not a twitch in his fingers, or a jerk in his legs. Only a new river, a red one, slowly leaking out of his undone head.

  He was dead.

  Jason Bell, the DT Killer: one and the same, and he was dead.

  Pip didn’t need to check the swell of his chest or feel for a pulse to know that. It was clear just looking at him, at what was left of his head.

  She’d killed him. Broken the circle. He’d never hurt her and he’d never hurt anyone.

  It wasn’t real and she wasn’t real, tucked against the wall by her overturned shelves, hugging her legs to her chest. Her warped reflection in the discarded hammer as she rocked back and forth. It was real, he was right there in front of her, and she was here. He was dead and she’d killed him.

  How long had she been sitting there now, going backward and forward over this? What was she doing, waiting to see if he’d take a breath and stand back up? She didn’t want that. It had been her or him. Not self-defense, but a choice, a choice she made. He was dead and that was good. Right. Supposed to be.

  So, what was supposed to happen now?

  There hadn’t been a plan. Nothing beyond breaking the circle, beyond surviving, and killing him was how she survived. So, now that it was done, how did she keep on surviving? She repeated the question, asking the Ravi who lived in her head. Asking him for help because he was the only person she knew how to ask. But he’d gone quiet. No other people in there, just a ringing in her ears. Why had he left her? She still needed him.

  But he wasn’t the real Ravi, only her thoughts wrapped up in his voice, her lifeline at the very brink. But she wasn’t at the brink anymore. She had lived, and she would see him again. And she needed to, right now. This was too much for her alone.

  Pip picked herself up from the ground, trying not to look at the flecks of blood up her sleeves. And on her hands too. Real, this time. Earned. She wiped them off on her dark leggings.

  She’d spotted it from across the room, a rectangular shape in Jason’s back pocket. His iPhone, protruding out from the fabric. Pip approached, carefully, avoiding the red river reflecting the overhead lights. She didn’t want to get any closer, scared that her proximity might somehow drag him back from death. But she had to. She needed his phone to call Ravi so he could come and tell her that everything would be OK, would be normal again, because they were a team.

  She reached for the phone. Wait, Pip, hold on a second. Think about this. She paused. If she used Jason’s phone to call Ravi, that would leave a trace, irrevocably tying Ravi to the scene. DT was a murderer but he was also a murdered man, and it didn’t matter that he deserved it, the law didn’t care about that. Someone would have to pay for his broken-open head. No. Pip couldn’t have Ravi tied to the scene, to Jason, not in any way. That was unthinkable.

  But she couldn’t do this on her own, without him. That was unthinkable too. A loneliness too dark and deep.

  Her legs felt weak as she stepped over Jason’s body and stumbled outside onto the gravel. Fresh air. She breathed in the fresh air, but it was tainted somehow, by the metallic smell of blood.

  She walked six, seven steps away, toward his car, but that smell, it followed her, held on to her. Pip turned to look at herself, her dark reflection in the window of the car. Her hair was matted and torn. Her face raw and inflamed from the tape. Her eyes far away and yet also right here. And those freckles there, they were new. Castoffs of Jason’s blood.

  Pip felt her vision dip in and out, knees buckling underneath her. She looked at herself and then looked into herself, through the dark of her eyes. And then past herself: there was something beyond the window drawing her eye, the late sun glinting against its surface, showing her the way again. It was her bag. Her bronze backpack, sitting on the back seat of Jason’s car.

  He’d taken it when he’d taken her.

  It wasn’t much, but it was hers, and it felt like an old friend.

  Pip scrabbled for the door handle and pulled. It opened. Jason must have left the car unlocked, his keys still waiting there in the ignition. He had meant to finish it quickly, but Pip had finished it first.

  She reached in and pulled out her bag, and she wanted to hug it to her chest, this part of her old self before she’d almost died. To borrow some of its life. But she couldn’t do that, she’d get his blood on it. She lowered it to the gravel and undid the zipper. Everything was still here. Everything she’d packed when she’d left the house that afternoon: clothes for staying at Ravi’s, her toothbrush, a water bottle, her wallet. She reached in and took a long draw from the water bottle, her mouth dried-out from all those taped-up screams. But if she drank any more, she’d be sick. She replaced the bottle and stared at the bag’s contents.

  Her phone wasn’t here. She’d already known that, but hope had partially hidden the memory from her. Her phone was smashed, dropped and abandoned in the road down Cross Lane. There was no way Jaso
n had brought it with him for that very same reason: an irrevocable link to the victim. He’d gotten away with this for a long time; he knew things like that, just as she knew them.

  Pip almost sank to her knees, but a new thought caught her in time, and the sun again, glinting on something in the front passenger seat. Yes, the DT Killer did know things like that, that’s why they’d never caught him. And that’s why he must have used a burner phone to call his victims, otherwise his connection to the case would have been discovered right after the first victim. Pip knew this now because she could see it, right there. Discarded in the front passenger seat. A small boxy Nokia, like hers, the screen reflecting the last sun rays to catch her eye, showing her the way. Pip opened the car door and stared down at it. Jason Bell had a burner phone. Paid in cash, untraceable to her, or to Ravi, unless someone found the phone. But they wouldn’t find it; she would destroy it after.

  Pip reached down, her fingers alighting on its cool plastic edge. She pressed the middle button and the green backlit screen glared up at her. It still had battery. Pip glanced up and thanked the sun, almost crying with relief.

  The numbers on the screen told her it was 6:47 p.m. That was it, that was all. She’d been in the trunk of that car for days, in that storeroom for months, trapped inside the tape for years, and yet it had all happened in less than three hours. Six forty-seven p.m.: a normal early evening in August, with a pink-tinged sun low in the sky and a chill in the breeze, and a dead body behind her.

  Pip navigated through the menu to check the recent call list: at 3:51 p.m., this phone had received a call from No Caller ID, from her. And right before that, it had called Pip’s number. She would have to destroy the phone anyway, because of that connection between her and the dead man on the floor over there. But this was it: her path to Ravi, to help.

  Pip typed Ravi’s number in the keypad, but her thumb hesitated over the call button. She backspaced and deleted it, replacing it with the landline for his house. That was better, less of a direct link to him, if they ever found the burner phone. They won’t find the burner phone.