The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

by Stephen Hand

  Erin was pretty pissed that Andy and Morgan weren’t trying to help. At least Kemper was helping with the driving. And then she saw it . . .

  A teardrop.

  Just there, caught in the sunlight. A single teardrop was rolling down the young woman’s cheek.

  Even when Erin had first seen the terrible state the girl was in, she’d known that something was very wrong. And now the girl was quietly crying to herself and Morgan’s big idea was that the poor kid was on a goddamn trip?

  “Stop the van!” Erin demanded.

  “Fuck that!” Morgan replied. “We got a concert to go to.”

  “And we’re still three hours from Dallas,” chimed Andy.

  Damn bastards!

  Erin looked forward at Kemper, but he’d already got to thinking. They’d make Dallas in three hours only if he broke every speed limit in the state of friggin’ Texas. But he also knew better than to argue with Erin when she had that look on her face. Erin had made up her mind.

  The brakes squealed as the van rolled to a gentle halt. Kemper made a mental note to check the wheels when they got back. Probably picked up some dust from that brief excursion off-road.

  Erin and Pepper opened the side door and hurried out onto the road. Jesus H Christ, it was hot! And there she was, the girl with her filthy summer dress, her arms, neck, shoulder and legs all burning in the midday heat. And her skin—God, she was covered in marks.

  Pepper reached out to help when suddenly the girl spun round. She looked deranged.

  She’d changed from expressionless a few seconds ago to wide-eyed and crazy. Erin couldn’t tell if the girl’s wild expression was one of anger or fear, but something about the sight of her resonated with Erin. She made Erin remember something—no, not remember—she made Erin see something. The girl was familiar . . . Erin looked at her watch. They’d been on the road how long? What day was it? Was this happening today or tomorrow? Shit, the heat was confusing Erin. It almost felt as if someone had just walked over her cremated ashes—no! There was no time for this crap.

  Erin tried to take the girl’s hand.

  “Got . . . to get away,” recoiled the shivering derelict, her eyes darting feverishly in all directions—looking, searching, almost as if expecting something to happen.

  “What?” asked Erin, encouraged by this sudden breakthrough. “From who?”

  The girl looked at Erin with her long hair, clean skin, her face concerned.

  Then she looked at Pepper; about the same age as the wandering girl herself, dressed pretty, a real person. Erin and Pepper were both people. Real people. Girls like her.

  The girl tried . . . She tried to . . . She wanted . . . She . . .

  “I wanna go home,” she whispered, her whole body beginning to sag as if under the weight of a colossal release of tension. Her voice was hoarse as if she’d been shouting or screaming and there was dried snot between her nose and upper lip.

  “Do you live around here?” asked Pepper hopefully.

  No response.

  The girl had finally stopped walking but now she seemed in danger of simply stopping altogether. Somehow, God knows how, Erin and Pepper had connected with the teenager but this only seemed to have unlocked something and now the girl was uncoiling to the point of collapse.

  Erin and Pepper looked at each other and silently agreed that the girl needed help.

  “We can’t just leave her out here,” Erin called back.

  Andy shook his head and stared down at his feet. Morgan was back on his beanbag staring off into another dimension. Only Kemper seemed to be paying any attention and even he was scratching his goatee, which usually meant he was in the process of deciding whether or not something was pissing him off.

  Well, tough shit.

  Erin carefully reached out to the girl. “Let us help you.” And soon she and Pepper had the girl sitting on the backseat of the aerosol gray Dodge.

  Time to move.

  Kemper started the engine, slowly turned the van around, and then they were on their way again.

  Morgan remained slovenly decked out on the beanbag, while the others gave the girl plenty of room. Andy and Pepper kept well back while Erin looked round from her place in the front passenger seat. All four of them, five if you included Kemper through the rearview, couldn’t take their eyes off their new, messed-up passenger.

  She was disoriented, frightened and filthy. Her movements were erratic and she would not give in to eye contact of any kind. Mostly she stared down at her battered shoes—though Erin guessed that what the girl was actually seeing was something miles away in the landscape of her traumatized memory.

  “What’s your name?” soothed Erin, only a year or two older than the girl, but feeling maternal all the same.

  “California . . .” Strange name? “Are we going to California? I wanna go home.”

  Big problem. California was completely the wrong way, and in any event the girl was in no fit state to travel. Her lips were cracked and dry, there were deep dark rings under her eyes and she was weak. She needed professional help.

  “Oh, wow!” sang Morgan. “I’m way too stoned for this.”

  By now, Pepper was beginning to think he was a complete jerk and she usually didn’t think ill of anybody. But Morgan’s veggie credentials had long since faded. The guys had been only too quick to pick Pepper up when she was hitching, probably because they thought she was an easy lay—Andy for one had already jumped her. But when they came across someone in trouble, someone who needed their help, they didn’t wanna know. No sex with the crazy girl. Thank God Erin had Kemper under some kind of control. Manage the driver, and you’ve got a winning game plan.

  Erin was taking the lead. “Kemper, let’s find a hospital.”

  That was the best thing they could do. The girl needed professional care, but in case Erin had forgotten, they were pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

  “Give me even the vaguest idea where we can find one,” Kemper sniped, “and we’ll go there.”

  Impasse. Until they heard the girl’s voice—she was crying.

  “They’re all dead.”

  Up front, Erin and Kemper turned to look at one another, both suddenly afraid. Then they turned their heads back in the direction of the girl and what she had just said.

  Pepper was freaked. “Who?” she asked. And she couldn’t help but look out through the window. It was still the same day. The same bright, sunny morning. Nothing had changed outside and there was nobody out there.

  “All the people . . . They’re all dead,” wept the distraught girl wearily.

  What the hell was this? People? Dead? Dead people? Was she talking about an accident, or a car crash maybe? Or perhaps it was something to do with the weather, or some other kind of accident, or—Jesus no . . .

  Morgan laughed, almost hysterical, like it was so damn funny that this beat up girl, this girl in shock was talking about people getting killed.

  He looked over to Kemper and sniggered. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to pick up hitchhikers?”

  Erin ignored him and focused on the girl. Though she was crying and scared, the girl looked real pretty. She still had some puppy fat on her face and her blonde hair had last been cut by someone who really knew how to use a pair of scissors. God, what had gone so wrong for her?

  “We’re people,” Erin said, trying to reassure her. “And we’re not dead.”

  But the girl wasn’t listening. Her attention had suddenly become focused toward the front of the van. She was trying to see out, over past Kemper’s shoulder and through the windscreen.

  Erin turned to follow her troubled gaze. There was nothing much to see, just an old wooden sign by the side of the road. The paint on the sign was faded and worn, but Erin could quite easily read the dubious words of welcome:

  FULLER, TEXAS

  DRIVE SLOW, SEE OUR CITY

  DRIVE FAST, SEE OUR SHERIFF

  Fuller? Where the hell was that? But Erin had no time to ponder th
is further, because behind her the girl had become frantic. She’d seen the sign and the twelve painted words had sent her into a flood of tormented tears. She gripped her head in her hands and bent forward in her seat, weeping.

  Morgan laughed nervously and Andy didn’t know just where to put his face—the day had taken a real bad turn.

  “Nooo!” wailed the girl, her whole body juddering with anxiety. “You’re going the wrong way!”

  Erin was just about to explain why they were going the right way. Yes, it was the wrong way for California, but the right way for Dallas and for getting the girl some help. She just needed to calm down. But the girl rushed up on her feet and dived to the front of the van. Then she reached forward and grabbed hold of the steering wheel.

  Kemper was caught by surprise—she was scratching the backs of his hands and pulling the van out of control.

  “Holy shit! Get her off!”

  This was something Andy could deal with. There was no way he was going to let this crazy kid screw up their journey any more than it’d been screwed already. But the van was already veering left and right before Andy could grab hold of her, and used his strong arms to pull her away from behind the driving seat. He didn’t want to hurt her but neither did he want the van to roll over.

  All the while, the girl fought with Andy and tried to break free.

  “People are out there,” she sobbed.

  Still sitting on the beanbag, Morgan moved his feet out of Andy’s way, then took out his packet of cigarette papers. If Janis Joplin was going to scream and holler all the way to Dallas, he had no intention of being straight enough to hear her.

  “They’re watching!” she cried. “They’re still watching!”

  Who were watching?

  Pepper looked left and right onto the plains but could see nothing but grass and crops and trees. There was no one out there. No one.

  Andy carried the kicking girl, almost lifting her off her feet, before dropping her once more on the back seat.

  “Can’t . . . make . . . me . . . go!” she panted, but he was too strong for her.

  Erin looked back, concerned. She wanted to help. The girl was breaking her heart.

  “I wanna go home now,” cried the girl. “I won’t go back!”

  “Back where?” shouted Andy. From where he was standing, she was just plain crazy.

  Suddenly the girl weakened in his arms and dissolved in a flood of tears.

  Andy slowly, gently let go—ready to make his move if she ran forward again. He didn’t have to worry. She had nothing left. Her energy was gone. Her willpower was in shreds.

  “He’s a bad man,” sobbed the girl, her whole body trembling. “A very bad man.”

  Andy took a step back—the girl looked safe. Then he glanced over at Morgan, who’d been about as useful through all this as a left-handed handjob. The stoner smiled at Andy then nodded over at the weeping girl and silently mouthed two words: “Fucked up.” Then he went back to rolling his joint.

  Up front, Kemper kept his foot on the gas and concentrated on the road. Some weird shit was playing out behind him in the back of his baby, and he didn’t want anything to do with it. Best he could do was get them somewhere fast. Then they could offload Looney Toons and continue on their sweet way to Dallas.

  They’d just passed a sign, the one that made the girl freak, so they must be coming into a town some time soon. As long as his friends kept her away from him, along with her broken scratching fingernails, he’d be just fine. He just hoped that Erin was feeling damned satisfied with her Samaritan gig.

  Erin herself was deeply worried. She didn’t know what to do and was fast running out of ideas. They needed help. They—

  “You’re all gonna die!” wept the girl, her face abject, her eyes little more than two white beaten slits of despair.

  And then she pulled a handgun out from where it had been hidden inside her sundress. The gun was a revolver, a point-357 snub-nose, and just the sight of it scared the shit out of everyone. Even Morgan stopped what he was doing.

  Andy tensed for action. The girl had a gun—THE GIRL HAD A FUCKING GUN! He knew he could take her. She was upset, crying. If he just kept his cool, he could—

  Pepper screamed and jumped back. The girl said they were all going to die. She was going to shoot them. They’d picked up some kind of psycho. If Kemper had just run her over in the first place, none of this would be happening.

  Only Erin held it together. She began to get up out of the passenger seat and held a hand out to the girl, to try to defuse the situation.

  No use.

  The girl raised the revolver . . . and put the barrel inside her own crying mouth.

  No!

  The girl’s cheeks went sallow beneath the tear-filled hopelessness of her tortured eyes.

  No!

  Erin could see the muscles tense on the girl’s dirty, bloodstained trigger finger.

  Pepper, Andy, Morgan; they all looked on in total horror. They each knew that this was a pivotal moment. They were standing on the brink of something awful.

  The girl started to hyperventilate, her lips wrapped round the cold deadly cylinder. She was sucking it.

  Kemper slammed on the brakes, his face pouring with sweat. He was saying something but his words were all but lost in the rising hysteria from the back of the van. People were shouting, screaming, crying out—frightened for the girl, frightened for their own lives. It was a millisecond of chaos that lasted an eternity.

  Standing inside the windshield, the plastic hula-girl jiggled and danced like she’d never done before. Each time Kemper went off-road, she wiggled. Each time he swerved the van, she swayed with her airbrushed smile. And each time he hit the brakes, she danced the fucking hula.

  Down back, the girl’s finger tightened on the trigger . . .

  NO!

  Blood splashed across the entire dashboard, spraying the hula girl with a warm spray of sticky, scarlet liquid and gobbets of gore.

  * * *

  Blood splashed across the back of Kemper’s head, soaking deep into his baseball cap. He turned.

  The interior of the van had become the color of mottled death, the spattering blood tracing a glistening arc up from the backseat to the front windscreen. Kemper’s eyes swiftly followed the spray pattern, tracing its inimitable course past Morgan—motionless, unharmed.

  Pepper—freaking, no bullet holes.

  Andy—helpless but safe.

  Erin. God, Erin; sat beside him in the passenger seat, crying, spots of blood on her tied white tank top, alive—fine. Thank Jesus God, she was fine.

  And the girl. The teenage girl. She’d been afraid, anyone could see that. She’d been in shock. She’d been injured. She’d been exhausted. Her clothes were torn. She’d been hysterical. It looked like she’d been to hell and back, and now she lay there on the backseat of the van with a bullet through her brain.

  She’d shot herself through the mouth, the bullet exiting through the rear of her skull. As she’d died, her blood had splattered against the rear window, painting a deep circular smear on the glass a mere fraction of a second before the bullet had continued on its way and punched a jagged hole through the center of the pane. If the blood was the target, the hole was its bull’s-eye.

  It was a headshot. The girl had killed herself. Not the kind of crybaby stop-me suicide advertised weeks in advance with letters, aspirins, and phone calls. This was the real deal. No messing. No bullshit. Over and done with.

  Kemper managed to park the van inside an area of shade beneath a tall tree. Within the shade, all they could hear was the sound of Pepper screaming.

  THREE

  The facially-disfigured corpse lay slouched across the backseat, hands drooping, legs wide open and askew, letting the smoking gun rest where it had fallen into the dead girl’s lap. The shot had done maximum point blank damage. Those parts of the rear window that hadn’t been blown through were now drenched with blood, bone chips and tiny wet chunks of think-box.r />
  Some of the mess had spattered forward, catching the kids and even reaching so far as to hit Kemper and the front windshield. The backseat was a mess, and the rest of the van didn’t look much better.

  Pepper had stopped screaming but she was now in the grip of panic. She ran across to the side door and tried to open it. It wouldn’t budge.

  “Let me out!” she cried, then she started to pound on the inside of the door. Her hands hit metal and banged against the door windows. She had to get out. She—

  Andy stepped forward, grabbed hold of the door handle and pulled the whole thing wide open.

  Pepper hurled herself out of the vehicle and found herself side-by-side with Erin who’d stumbled out of the passenger seat and immediately thrown up all over the side of the road. Erin had been feeling nauseous for a few hours already—which is why she hadn’t taken the joint from Kemper—but now there was no way she could hold it in, not after what she’d just seen.

  Erin’s sides ached as she retched up more and more acidic vomit onto the ground. It just wouldn’t stop. Her eyes filled with tears, her face turned red and her nose was stinging, but something kept hitting the puke spot at the back of her throat, causing her to hurl until she had nothing left to chuck. Soon all she could do was belch some vile tasting gut gas.

  She felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Kemper.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “No! I’m not okay!” What the hell did he expect? Didn’t he see what just happened back there? She pushed him away and steadied herself in case her stomach went into spasm again.

  Behind them, Morgan slowly stepped out onto the soil. He held his arms outstretched in front of him. They had blood on them—the dead girl’s blood.

  “Christ! I could’ve been killed!”

  Erin shook her head. Some girl goes and blows her head off and there’s Morgan worrying about himself. Okay, Erin herself had been scared when she first saw the gun, but now—

  Kemper thought differently. He could see how freaked out his friend was. It was written all over Morgan’s face, just as the dead girl’s blood had dripped onto the lenses of his glasses.