I’ve just dumped 11 pages of the original draft of ‘Final Girls Part Two’. I’d started it as a continuation of the first one, telling the tale of what happened in the immediate aftermath of the finale of the original short story. But the more I thought of it, the more I think it devalued the cliffhanger ending of the original story. There’s definitely a lot more to do with the Final Girls idea, but I think it would work better if each story focused on a different girl, and the broader picture was built up from the background information provided in each story.
So, with that in mind, I’ve kicked off the next story in the sequence. It’s entitled Ragazze Finali and is a pastiche of Italian Giallo movies such as The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Profondo Rosso, Strip Nude for Your Killer (possibly the only film to end with the hero making a joke about anally raping the heroine) with a bit of Argento’s more supernatural work – Suspiria and Inferno – in there. But, of course, all giallo have to start off with an abstract flashback murder scene which hints towards the culprits (usually painfully Freudian) motives and so will Ragazze Finali. Indeed, by way of teaser for my imaginary audience (or are you all just very quiet), this first section is posted below. Like the rest of the story, each sub-section will have Giallo-esque multiple titles. After all, it’s never a truly great Giallo unless it has about four different names in each territory.
I’m planning to skip back and forth between Final Girls stories and more classical weird tales over the next few months, although it depends on my mood. The next FG story will probably be Final Girls UK, which is self-explanatory, followed by Final Girls 1976 – an ‘origin’ story for the characters in the first story. Not sure what’ll come after that – though the title Final Girls Go Wild keeps sneaking in to my head. Oh dear…
Anyway, here’s the first section of Ragazze Finali, with the rest to come at some point in the next few days (time permitting).
In the Garden of the Violated House (AKA Then Came The Whistling)
Eyes hardening, Mother pulled the black leather gloves over her long fingers, whistling all the while. “Does this mean that we’re going for a drive, mama?” asked the little girl in the summer dress, standing in the kitchen doorway.
Mother looked at her, a gentle smile on her face. The whistling had finally ceased. It felt as if Mother had been droning out that same tune since the moment she had woken up that morning. The woman crossed to her child and lay one gloved hand on the small one’s cheek. Despite the coolness of the clammy leather, the little girl leant her head in to it and smiled.
“No driving today, child. Mama just doesn’t want to get her hands dirty, that’s all.” She nodded to the chalk stairway on the other side of the kitchen. “Why don’t you go and play with your dollhouse while I spend some time with Papa?”
“Okay,” said the child, running off across the stone floor of the kitchen. Various herbs and garnishes hung from the rack above the great wooden table by which her mother stood, and in one corner long strips of freshly slaughtered meat hung amidst a cloud of flies. The stairwell was dark and cool, a relief after the warmth of the day. When she reached her bedroom she fell to her knees before the large dollhouse, a crude depiction of some southern mansion, and swung open its front. The little wooden dolls stood amongst intricately carved and tiny pieces of furniture. The Mama stood in the kitchen, the Papa in the living room. In one of the bedrooms was a little girl in a violet dress and in a neighbouring room, a little boy is short pants. She moved him first, to the landing at the top of the stairs, and then reached around the side of one wall to produce a fifth figure, hitherto hidden from the rest of the occupants.
He was her favourite. Not much more than a long peg wrapped in black cloth, he nonetheless stood tall over the rest of her tiny wooden dolls. His face was crude – a couple of lines for the eyes, a jagged line for the mouth and teeth – but still somehow conveyed a sense of cruel jest. Last summer she had fashioned for him a brimmed hat out of some off-cuts of her mother’s cloth, but it had refused to sit on his head. Now it was held tight by a pin, driven from one side of his skull to another.
She brought him to the kitchen door first and tapped him against the wood. In a deep voice the girl said, “Let me in. Let me in.”
Then she moved the mother to the kitchen, taking care to keep her far from the door. In a higher, shrill voice, she said, “No, Signore, no. I will not let you in.”
“Why? Why will you not let me in?”
“Because I have heard of you and your cruel deeds, Signore. I will not let you in.”
Deep concentration on her face, the little girl left the mother where she stood and walked the dark figure to the back of the house. She held him up by the window of the brother’s room.
“Let me in. Let me in,” she said, nodding the peg to indicate speech.
Another voice for the brother, not as deep. “Ah! Mama, Mama!”
“No, little boy. Do not cry for your mama.”
“But Signore, you are the bad man. They tell such stories of you. They speak as if you are the Devil himself.”
“Ah, child. Can you not see that I am but a travelling man in search of shelter and, if your kindness permits, a small bite to eat? I do not know why these lies are told about me, but I assure you I am harmless.”
The girl paused for a second, brow tightening, and then again she manipulated the brother. “No, Signore. Your face is bad and frightens me greatly. I cannot allow you to enter. Please go away and scare me no more.”
Now she moved him to the window of the little girl’s room, and could not help but allow a tight smile of anticipation cross her face. She moved the sister doll to the window and held the black-clad peg close.
“Let me in. Let me in.”
She spoke normally. “But who are you?”
“Dear child, I am but a traveller who seeks food and shelter before tonight’s storm. But your family has shaken my faith in the good of my fellow man by thusfar refusing me access to your warm and comfortable home. Won’t you help them see the sense of their ways and permit me to enter?”
“But my mother is a good woman, and my brother a kind and helpful boy. If they did not allow you to come in then I am sure that they must have had good reason. Why, pray, would they refuse your entry?”
“Lies,” said the peg. “Black lies have been spread around the countryside about me. By men who dislike me greatly.”
“What lies have they told?”
“They have said that I am a thief, and a villain.”
“That is all?”
“If only it were. They have said also that I am of low standing and that I covet married women.”
“Truly these are awful lies, if lies they are. What else have they said?”
“I cannot say, young lady. It disgusts me to think of such things.”
“But I must know these lies, lest I cannot convince my parents that they are untruths.”
“I see your wisdom, child, and though it pains me I will recount the lies they tell of me.”
“Go on.”
“It is said that I would steal into a house of an evening, when all are asleep, and commit terrible misdeeds.”
“What misdeeds are these?”
“That I will take from a family their hard-earned food. That I will drink their beverages.”
“That is all?”
“No, lady, it shames me to say that I stand accused also of stealing their money and other valuables.”
“Dreadful. This is all they say about you?”
“I desire that it was, but alas… they say that I will find the young lady of the house and have my way with her and then slit her throat like that of a pig.”
“Oh my!”
“Yes, and that I will find the young man of the house and do likewise if I can.”
“How awful.”
“It is! It is! And more, that I will display to the parents that which I have done to their children. That I will tie them up and take a long and slow time over carving up the woman while her man watches.”
“I should hear no more, and yet I feel that I cannot stop you speaking.”
“No, lady. No, you cannot. What else do they say about me? They say that when my cutting is finally done that I will feast on the flesh as if it were that of an animal. That I will cavort in the spilled entrails of those I have slaughtered. That I will dance naked in the garden of the violated house draped in the skin and viscera of the dead in tribute to my one and true lord, The Great Beast.”
The child took a breath, then continued in the deep voice. “So you see, I must shelter from those who would do me such harm, who would drag my name to such terrible deaths. Let me in, child. Let me in.”
“Signore, I see that you are hated and despised by many and that to leave you out in the cold of the night would be to leave you to the mercy of those who would see you stabbed and drowned. I will let you in,” and with that she reached out a single finger and pushed open the tiny bedroom window.
Clumsily, she pulled the peg through and stood it in the bedroom. Its head almost touched the ceiling. “Pray tell,” she started. “Where might I find the lady of the-”
The lady was talking. Not in the voice of the child, but in her own firm Mama voice. It was muffled by the floor, but loud enough to be audible. The girl reached down and moved the mother doll in to the living room with the father doll. Then she crouched down and placed her ear to the cold stone floor and tried to listen to the conversation. There were two voices then, both growing louder, but the stone was too thick for them to penetrate. The scream came after a moment or two, a long and masculine howl. Something smashed and thumped down. Then quiet. The girl waited a second and then stood up and looked to the dollhouse. Delicately, she pinched the dark figure in her fingers and used it to flick over the father doll.
The silence was momentary. The next set of screams were smaller, high-pitched and panicked. The slap of bare feet on stone ran from one side of the house to another, followed by harder, heavier steps. The girl heard a voice, “Mama! Mama, no!” and then the scream dwindled into a thick gurgle and was gone.
The girl moved the black peg higher, and knocked over the brother doll.
It was quiet now. The little girl sat before the dollhouse, twiddling the peg between her fingers. Then came the whistling, her mother striking up the tune from earlier. There were footfalls on the stairs, a scuffing, dragging sound. The girl kept her back to the door, reaching out one hand to move the mother doll to the stairs. Then up to the landing. The scuffing grew louder and the girl became aware of the shape behind her, filling the narrow wooden frame of the door. Its breath was strained, hissing, barely human.
The little girl turned to her Mama, lips moving, though the voice that came from her was not her own.
“Let me in,” she said. “Let me in.”