Final Girls

Tommy attacks!

Slasher!

There were only two of them left now. There had been seven just that morning, carrying on around the mountain cabin, flirting, joking, making plans for the rest of the day. They’d hiked up the old hillside trail the day before, giddy from the height and the rush of finishing off their final exams. The night had passed in a slow haze of passed alcohol and shared weed, and finally the cabin – or rather the motion of Colleen and Warren’s finally consummated relationship – had rocked them to sleep. Morning brought sore heads, fried breakfasts, and sheepish grins.

Craig had gone missing first, storming off into the woods in a huff after realising that Colleen would never be his. When he failed to return, Colleen had insisted in trekking off to find him, taking Warren with her, despite his complaints. By dinner time, neither they nor Craig had returned, and those who remained were growing worried.

“We need to get the sheriff up here,” Alice had said. “Something must have happened to them.”

Peter hadn’t been convinced. “You know those two – they’ll be in the woods screwing somewhere. And Craig? He’ll be in town by now, soaking himself in a bathtub of booze to forget his problems.”

“I dunno,” said Dwayne. “They’ve been gone a hell of a long time. What do you think, Wendy?”

The girl he called Wendy sat by the cabin window, over-sized grey pullover wrapped around her body. Behind her thick glasses, her eyes were turned towards the branches reaching out from the woods towards her. She spoke without turning her head. “I think something is very wrong.”

Peter declared that he was off to the outhouse to “lay a brown baby boy.” He didn’t come back either. The others decided that it was insane to wait around to be picked off gradually and instead ventured out into the woods to make their way down towards the lights of town. They could see them glistening between the trees, stars reflected on the surface of a lake. They were feeling confident, and even Alice who had been close to collapse earlier had managed to crack a smile. That was just moments before they came across what was left of Colleen and Warren, spread across the large flat rocks near the cliff-face. Her head was with his limbs, her torso open wide and his face peering, shocked, from the cavity of her stomach. Both Alice and Wendy had unleashed shrieks of terror, then, loud and long, reverberating up and down the canyon, alerting the entire forest to their presence.

The figure exploded out of the foliage like a shark from beneath the water. Its old football shirt, the number thirteen of course, was in rags, its corrupted skin visible through various large tears. Not one inch of the surface of the football helmet it wore was unscathed – dents and cracks making it look like the surface of some absurd planet. The face guard was down, but behind the grille insane eyes peered from deep sockets of decaying flesh. One hand reached out for them, the fingernails cracked and bloodied. Its other hand was drawn back. When Alice saw what it held there, she let loose with a fresh scream.

The axe sliced through the low hanging branches effortlessly. Too late, Alice threw up her hands. The weight of the blow powered her in to the ground, cutting the scream off sharply. Yelling in alarm, Dwayne grabbed Wendy’s sleeve and dragged her behind him. He strode towards the hulking figure, reaching out to pick up a splintered branch from the undergrowth. It was still bent over, tugging the blade from Alice’s twitching body. The branch splintered as it struck the football helmet, immediately useless. Grunting, the attacker swiped its free hand out at Dwayne, tearing the sleeve of his t-shirt, broken nails scratching the flesh of his bicep. With a cry of pain, Dwayne fell back and then, seeing a fight that he could not win, turned and ran. On his way, he hauled Wendy to her feet. “Come on, Wendy! Run!”

Through the forest they bulldozed their way, hooked and whipped by the branches and twigs. They tumbled down embankments and across streams. Behind them, they could hear their pursuer crash and thunder like a great machine thrashing the forest from its path. Down Wendy fell, and back came Dwayne to pick her up. The lights in the trees were growing, flashing. They were close. Wendy went down again, went limp as Dwayne dragged her to her feet. “Christ – come on!” He shook her hard. “He’s going to catch us.”

Wendy was looking past his shoulder, breath coming in deep huffs, tears running paths through the grime on her cheeks. The shallow breaths became a scream. Dwayne turned his head – following Wendy’s gaze towards a nearby tree. Nailed to its trunk by the palms of their hands were two severed forearms, tendrils of sinew hanging down. Of the body they had once been attached to there was no sign.

Dwayne hung his head. “Craig. Oh god, Craig.”

“How… how do you know?” Wendy choked back her sobs.

“That’s his watch.”

The forest was abruptly still, silent save for the gentle trickle of the stream. Gently, Dwayne cupped one large hand against the side of Wendy’s face, stroked her dirty blonde hair. “I think we’ve lost him, Wendy. We should go now, get to town. The sheriff – he’ll know what to do. Come on,” he said, hardening his voice. “Let’s roll.”

The wind whistled.

Dwayne spun around as the dark shape spread its broad shadow across him. The blade sliced across his chest, opening a wide red slice. With a grunt of pain, Dwayne slapped one hand hard against Wendy’s shoulder. She stumbled away, falling through the undergrowth and tumbling down the embankment, over and over, coming to rest near the edge of the stream. Damp leaves sticking to her face, she turned and looked back to where Dwayne was standing. He looked down on her, concern slackening his face. “Run, Wendy. Run now. I’ll hold him-”

His head came off with one swipe, spinning off to one side and tumbling down the embankment towards Wendy. It stopped near her feet, face turned towards her, the same concerned look on his face. She turned her head up towards the top of the embankment. On the edge stood the butcher, his massive shoulders heaving with exhilaration, the bloodied axe by his side. His head turned towards the small figure splayed out by the stream. When his voice came, it was deep and thick, ruined by the atrocities committed on its body down the years.

It said: “Nice trip?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Wendy picked a dead leaf from her cheek and kicked at the severed head. “Stupid oaf. He had more chance of killing me than you did.”

“It’s not like I was really trying…” Wendy fancied she could hear some petulance in his monotone voice.

“Right – sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your professional pride.” She pushed herself up and reached out one hand. “You going to help me up?”

Tossing the axe away, the immense figure reached out and took her hand, pulling her up to the same level. Even then she was barely eye-to-chest with him. From that distance she could see the tears in his top and, behind them, the pale green hue of his skin, the thin lip cuts long since bled dry. She looked up and saw that he was looking back at her from behind the grille of his helmet, eyes like black orbs.

“Feeling okay, Tommy?”

“Bit tired. It’s been a long night.”

“Figures. Good work, though. Mind you, it’s not like they made it hard for you: ‘Oh, let’s try and walk through the dark woods to get to town instead of staying here safe in the cabin.’ Fucking dimwits. But I’ll hand it to you – you picked them off like a pro.”

“Gee, thanks, Georgie. Or should it be Wendy?”

Though it was good to finally be called by her real name Georgie just shrugged, leant back against a tree. It had been a long night for both of them. “Just Georgie; it’s not like there’s anyone left around to hear.”

Tommy grinned behind his mask, she could see the loose skin around his eyes fold. There was just the faintest hint of the aw-shucks grin he must have had back when he was a high-schooler. Before… before the prank gone wrong that had made him what he was. Not for the first time at the end of a mark, Georgie felt a brief pang of regret. She nodded towards the arms nailed to the tree. “Very creative.” Keeping the conversation running seemed the only way to subdue it.

“You liked it? He nearly got away, you know. Reached the edge of town. He even managed to get a phone call off at that booth at the bottom of the mountain road.” Tommy laughed, the sort of sound something from the bottom of the ocean would make as it was turned inside out by the pressure. “That’s when I got him. I pulled that phone straight off its line and stuffed it right down his throat. The look on his face…”

“He made a phone call? To who?”

“Sheriff, I suppose. He didn’t get much of a chance to say anything, but I guess they’re all out looking for him now.”

“Aw, shit, Tommy. Why didn’t you say so? We better wrap this up then. How do you want it this time?”

Tommy nodded to the discarded weapon, lying in the moss. “Might as well use the axe. One in the head? The old classic?”

Georgie picked up the axe, hefted it in both hands. “That’ll put you down for a while. Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Could do with some time on the bench, coach.”

“All right.” She brandished the axe up and over her shoulder. “To be honest, I reckon I’d rather sleep the sleep of the dead than run the gauntlet of interviews and exclusives I’ve got ahead of me. This is one of your messier ones – I reckon I’ve got a good three or four months before this one falls off the front page.”

“That’s the deal,” Tommy said, hands on the side of his head, raising the helmet. “I do one messy bit, you do the other.”

“The difference is, you enjoy yours.”

“I guess.” He lowered his head, presenting a scalp already patched with dozens of scars. He peered up at her with those black eyes. “See you soon?”

“A pleasure as always, Tommy,” said Georgie. Then, with a mighty swing honed by years of practice, she brought the blade of the axe down hard on Tommy’s skull.

Inappropriate Resurrections

As usual, they didn’t find her until sunrise. Georgie spent the hours before dawn spread out by the stream, practicing her victim’s swoon – head to one side, arm bent so that her fingers were resting on her brow, back flat, hips to one side. Weak, but womanly, presenting her shape to the rescuers. She called it the Three V. The Victimised Virtuous Virgin. The name made her laugh. Tick all that apply. None of the above. For added effect she smashed her glasses on a rock and left them, bent out of shape, by her head. Broken spectacles always helped to up the helplessness factor.

When the rescuers finally arrived they came crashing through the undergrowth like runaways tanks. Shouts, calls and no less than three separate vomits preceded their arrival. Tommy had done his work well, arranging the corpses in such a way that they would be found before her. The less likely it was that there were any survivors, the more attention they would lavish on Georgie when they eventually found her.

The usual set of hats and sheepskin collars gathered around her, peering down as if unable to believe that she was still alive. “Well, I’ll be gosh-darned,” one of them actually said. “This little lady’s still alive. Hey! Matty! You get a stretcher up here!”

Georgie put on her most pathetic of voices. “Ahh, is it over? Is he gone?”

Large arms were around her, sheepskin wool in her mouth. “Don’t you worry there, missy. No one’s going to hurt you. Not any more.”

No indeed, Georgie thought, warming her face against the jacket.

They took her down the mountain to the waiting ambulance. Men with bags of body parts stood around with puzzled looks on their faces, caught in the blue light of a dozen police cars and other emergency vehicles. At the hospital they finally let her shower and get in to a nice clean hospital gown. They fed and tended to her, disinfecting the couple of scratches and cuts that idiot Dwayne had inflicted on her when he pushed her down the embankment. It was hours before the sheriff arrived to take her statement. Not that it mattered; she’d had it ready for months. All the usual words and phrases tumbled out, expertly rehearsed.

“He came from nowhere… We tried to stick together… We thought we could get down the mountain safely…. Who was he? Why us? What did we do wrong? Did I kill him? I didn’t ever kill anyone, Sheriff, but I didn’t have any choice. They ain’t gonna arrest me, are they, Sheriff?”

All the time the Sheriff had just patted Georgie’s hand and said, “Now don’t you worry, little miss.”

Later they left her alone, or at least alone bar the deputy guarding the door to her room. They wouldn’t let her have a television, no doubt reckoning that watching the reports of the massacre come in would set off some hitherto unsurfaced post-traumatic disorder. So instead she lay back and planned out her approach for the coming months. She would have to keep her face off the television, of course. However much she’d changed her appearance from the last time, there was still no guarantee that she wouldn’t be recognised. The grainy photographs that would appear in the newspapers were less of a problem. She would cite her desire to stay private, away from the media for a while, to get over the death of her oh-so dearly beloved friends. Then maybe she’d write a book about the ‘ordeal’. Yes, that was one avenue she’d yet to milk, and she’d always fancied giving it a go. What would she call it? ‘STALKED!’ No, that sounded too much like a gardening manual. ‘THE MOUNTAINSIDE SLAYINGS’ Bleh – too generic. How about ‘FLIGHT FROM MASSACRE’ Hm. “Is departing at 4.15 from Gate 12.” Stupid. Well, it would come eventually. She’d have plenty of time before her next mark. Gradually, Georgie’s thoughts went idle, and she slept a peaceful, dreamless sleep.

A woman was sitting by her bedside when she awoke. Georgie pegged her as trouble immediately. Her sharp grey suit was city cop, all the way. Maybe even federal. Despite the severe clothing and inscrutable expression, she wasn’t a bad looking woman. A bit delicately featured, Georgie thought, too much like the girls she pretended to be. But she had appealingly curious eyes, and good hair, brown and cut just above the shoulders. When she saw that Georgie was awake, she gave only the most curt of smiles.

“Welcome back.”

“I’d hoped it had all been some horrible nightmare,” Georgie said, feeling dumb. “But it wasn’t, was it? It was real.”
Usually this approach evoked sympathy. The lady cop just folded her hands in her lap and looked at her. “Was it?”

Okay, so maybe a new approach was needed. “My friends… they’re all dead.”

“Yes. Yes, they are. Wendy, my name is Amy Freidrich. City homicide. I’d like to ask you a few questions if you’re feeling up to it.”

“I already told the sheriff everything I know.” She was starting to feel a bit desperate. “But I’ll do what I can.”

“Thank you. I’m sure this is very hard on you. Miss Rogers-”

“Call me Wendy.”

That barely-there smile again. “Wendy. Can you let me know how long you’ve known Dwayne Tucker, Craig Bottin, Alice Fa-”

Georgie didn’t need to hear every name. “They were my classmates. We all graduated together just… just…” She milked a single tear.

“I understand that. But can you tell me how long you’ve known them?”

“I don’t know. A year.”

“Since you transferred to UCS?”

“That’s right.”

“Three months then?”

Shit. “Has it really only been three months?”

“Yes, Wendy. It’s only been thee months. Where were you before that? Which school?”

“Uh, ULA.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, Miss Freidrich. That is so. You know-” she choked out a few sobs. “I don’t think I care for your line of questioning. I’ve been through hell in the last twenty-four hours and here you are with your fancy suit and your pissy attitude, accusing me of-”

Freidrich raised a hand to calm her. “Now, now, Wendy. No one’s accusing you of anything. I’m just trying to get a few facts straight in my head. For the record, you know.”

Georgie dabbed at the corner of her eyes with a fistful of bedclothes. “Can’t this wait? I’m very upset right now.”

“Of course. Of course it can. Are your parents on the way?”

“My parents are dead.”

“Yes. I’m sorry.” She seemed neither surprised. Nor sorry. She stood up and straightened her jacket, hand stopping as it reached the pocket. “Oh, yes. I brought you these.”

It was the glasses she had left in the forest, one lens cracked down the middle. Freidrich held them out to her. “I thought you might be missing them.”

Georgie took them. “Well, you know, my eyesight’s not that bad…”

“I noticed. The prescription doesn’t seem that strong at all.” She was by the door, fingers on the handle. She couldn’t leave soon enough as far as Georgie was concerned. “In fact, if I didn’t know any better I’d say that the lenses were just plain glass. But then what would I know?” She pointed to her eyes. “Twenty-twenty. I see everything.”

Georgie just glared at her.

“I’ll be seeing you, ‘Wendy Rogers’.”

Freidrich’s attentions changed things. She’d had to keep an even lower profile than she’d planned in the following months, making her money from a single national exclusive and a few local radio interviews, depositing half as always in the account Tommy had waiting for him on his resurrection. The book would have to wait. Georgie held on to the Wendy persona for as long as she could bear, mousy little shit that she was, and ducked out of view. There were no further questions from Freidrich. Either she’d found nothing new to fuel her suspicions, or some new case had taken up her time. Then, towards the end of the summer, one of the West Coast girls had orchestrated a sequel massacre – ten high school kids, including an entire cheer-leading team, butchered in a single small town night – and the Mountainside Massacre was all but forgotten. It was time to put Wendy Rogers to bed.

And hell, what a relief that was. She abandoned Wendy’s apartment, taking only the few personal things she’d brought with her, and caught a flight back to Denver. Her old apartment was thick with dust, but comforting as only a home could be. She stripped off all of her Wendy clothes, stuffing them into a black bag like dead animals and leaving them by the door. In the morning she’d take them all down to the charity shop (like she’d do with dead animals) and be free of them forever. Naked in front of the mirror, she cut her hair into a ragged bob and then, on a whim, dyed it bright red. She took a while to appraise her own body; pale and freckled, but with good hips and heavy breasts. It felt a shame to cover that body with the chunky knitwear and shapeless skirts that ‘Wendy’ had worn, but that was part of the job. Now that she was allowed to be herself again she let that old slyness to come back in to her eyes, the seductive half-smile that she’d practiced time and time again until it was perfect – a promise and a threat and a dangerous secret. God, it was good to be free of that goody-good persona. In the shower later, she’d felt as if she were washing Wendy away, streak of piss that she was.

She’d gone out alone that night, found some college boy still new to the big city and strapped him to the headboard. In the morning she sent him away. She’d watched from the window as he emerged into the sunlight like a man long buried. She thought of Tommy. The boy didn’t seem to know which way to go, stumbling a few steps up the pavement in one direction before turning around and heading off the other way. Georgie smiled. She was back.

The visions started a few months later, nothing more than a red-tinged darkness accompanied by a muffling pounding. They’d buried him, then. That made life a little easier. Once, some enterprising state trooper – a scarred lunatic with a vendetta who’d chased Tommy across three states – had wrapped him in chains and dropped him to the bottom of a lake. It had been a long winter for Georgie, alone on her little wooden boat trawling a weighted rope up and down that damn lake waiting for Tommy to grab hold of it. In turn, he had shaken his old helmet off and was spending his days biting passing fish in the hope that they would drift to the surface and alert Georgie to his location. It hadn’t worked that way. When, eventually, she dragged him onto the shore, Tommy had been so pruned that he looked like a California raisin. Georgie had played ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’ on the car stereo all the way back to the motel.
It took a few days for the visions to reach a level of intensity strong enough for Georgie to pin-point Tommy’s location. He was talking to himself by then, the usual disjointed rambles about his mother, his sister, blood and darkness. Tommy always grew maudlin when he was alone. He was worse when he was drunk.

She’d packed her spade and headed East, hiring a convertible to make the most of the warm Fall weather. They’d taken Tommy back to his hometown again. He wouldn’t be impressed. She’d enjoyed a few drinks in a bar on the outskirts of town, nailed a young truck driver in the foul outhouse, then drove into town and up to the old graveyard on the hill. No one new was ever buried there, just the unwanted and the forgotten; the vagrants and the criminals. And the multiple murdering undead butchers. Tommy was no one’s favourite son.

She could hear him through the earth, louder the deeper she dug. “Daddy, don’t go. Mommy, let me out. It was Sissy, it was all her fault.” When she pried off the lid of the plywood coffin, he’d leapt forward and wrapped his arms around her with a call of “Mommy!”

Georgie pushed him off. “I’m not your mommy, numbskull. Come on, let’s get you out of here before some courting couple come frolicking through the tombstones.”

“Uh.” Tommy rubbed at his forehead with thick fingers. A few loose flakes of flesh fell in to his lap. “It’s you, Georgie. Sorry. I get confused when they lock me up.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She clambered up onto the grass and held out a hand for him. “One of these days they’re going to cremate you, you know.”

Tommy didn’t say anything. He just took her hand and slowly, stiffly rose up from the grave.

The Sisterhood of the Stalked Eternal

She had separated from Tommy later that same night. The disinterment was the last of of their post-massacre commitments to one another and it was time for them to live their own lives for a while, at least until the money ran out and Tommy’s urges started to grow uncontrollable again. Then they would reconvene to start considering locations and marks. Sometimes, Georgie would wonder how he spent the months they spent apart, how he could live any kind of life with a face like a World War One battlefield and a barely satiated murderous rage, but she never asked.

It seemed, somehow, rude.

The next – and final – time they came together was at a meet for the Sisters and Brothers of the Blade down south at Foster Bannerman’s place. Bannerman ran Hatchets, an off-the-highway bar in East Texas, lost out in a desert of dust tracks and old skeletons. A roadhouse without the road. The girls and guys had been having their annual meet there for years, certainly ever since Georgie had joined the Sisterhood as a girl of sixteen. Bannerman was a giant of a man, one of the finest slashers of the Sixties and still proud possessor of more than one-hundred and twenty authentic hippie scalps, his favourite of which still hung on trophy shields above the bar at Hatchets. At the end of his career he’d spent the money he’d earned with his nefarious virgin on a facelift and a bar, and now presided over his little kingdom with a beatifically benign expression that he couldn’t change if we wanted to.

Car trouble, and an all to pliable and willing deputy who she’d met on the road, meant that Georgie was late to the meet that year. The car park (a grandiose term for the rectangle of dust and scattering of vehicles on the edge of the bar’s porch) was full when she arrived and she’d had to park the convertible around the side. The lit sign above the doorway winked a greeting to her as she walked up the wooden steps to the main door. A tumble of conversation fell out as she pushed the door open. The J. Geil Band’s Centerfold swam in and out of the chatter. It had been a hit a few months ago and refused to go away. The girls and boys were all inside.

There was Dot Farris from north of the border, land girl from a haunted mining town who terrorised British Columbia along with Big Ken LaForge and his band saw. There he was, over by the juke box, still in his grotty boiler suit. Susan Rimmer was angled against the bar, every inch the valley girl, legs long and tanned. She’d be there with nerdy Connor String – chances were he’d be around the other side of the bar, dancing in the clear corner. Even Fiore had made it, all the way from Italy. Georgie was a little envious of her – she could still get away with a little sexiness, even when she was on a mark. She was looking fine with her black pixie haircut and tight roll-neck, false eyelashes that looked thick enough to drag a lesser woman down. Carlo was her man, a less brutish figure than a lot of the other slashers, he stood in one corner of the bar in leather hat and trenchcoat, a half clutched in one gloved hand. He seemed lost in contemplation of the old photos which scattered the wall.

Behind the bar, a young man with dark hair and a slightly alarmed look was serving pouring a beer for a scarred Indian whose skin had a putrid tinge to it. The feathers of his headdress were wilting, and the animal pelts draped across his shoulders had started to wear through, but still he cast an imposing figure – a good foot taller than any of the other patrons. On tiptoes, Georgie crept up behind him and reached high to cover his eyes with her hands. “Guess who – ugh.” One hand came away sticky.

Little Curse turned around and broke his face into a grin so wide that it almost distracted Georgie from the empty ocular cavity she’d just stuck her fingers into. “Georgina,” he said in a voice even deeper than Tommy’s. “It is good to see you.”

“Not as good as usual. What happened to your eye?”

“Kelly and I – we had some… spirited resistance on our last mark. Took out my old left eye with one rifle shot. He died well. A worthy foe.”

“Phew – for a second there I thought Kelly was the one who’d done it to you. Where is she, anyway?”

“She’s around. Somewhere. Have a beverage and I’m sure she’ll be along directly.”

The kid behind the bar passed Little Curse his drink, hand trembling. “Here you go, Mister Curse. Can I, ah, can I get you anything else?”

“No. I thank you, nephew of Bannerman. This lady will require your service now.”

The young guy turned his attention to Georgie. If anything he seemed more daunted talking to her than he was serving the big Indian. Not a bad looking kid, actually, good jaw. Georgie gave him a smile that was intended to put him at ease, but if anything did the exact opposite. “Just a bottle, hot stuff.”

“Ah, yeah, just a…”

“You’re Foster’s nephew then?”

“That I am.”

“What’s your name?”

“Stanley. Uh, Stan.”

She put out a hand. “Nice to meet you, Stan. I’m Georgie.”

“Oh.” Stan grinned shyly, shook her hand. “I know who you are. I know who all you guys are. My uncle’s told me all about you.”

“That so?”

“Uh-huh. Definitely.” He handed Georgie her beer. “You’ve no idea how long I’ve been looking forward to tonight. Finally getting to meet you all. I can’t-”

Foster Bannerman was there behind him, big hands on his nephew’s shoulders. For such a broad man he was remarkably adept at sneaking into your field of vision. Years of stalking had honed his stealth skills. “Hah.” He let out a granite laugh, although his rigid face registered little more than mild amusement. “The boy getting his knickers in a twist? You’re his favourite, Georgie, you know? He likes the stories about you the best.”

“Aw, hell, Uncle Foster…” Stanley hung his head.

“Go see to the gentleman at the end of the bar, Stanley. Let me have a word with the lady here.” Foster watched the boy skulk off then turned to Georgie. “Good kid, he is. Good kid.”

“He been working here long?”

“Nine months or so. His ma and pa asked if I could get him some work before he went to college. He don’t show any urges to follow his old uncle into the business, so I figured I’d put him to work here.”

“Not slasher material, eh?”

“Well, you know I like to say that every man’s just one humiliation, or one horribly disfiguring accident at the hands of his peers, away from picking up the machete of destiny. But nah, the kid’s just too chicken-hearted. Makings of a helluva barman, though. Nice to know I’ve got someone to hand the old place down to when I go to the great co-ed dorm in the sky, blade in hand.”

“Hah. You’ll still be here when everything else is dust, Foster. Probably won’t notice either. Say, have you seen Kelly around?”

“Now she’s here somewhere. Young Stanley was drooling over hear earlier. Check round the corner. You know how that girl likes to dance.”

Yes she did, and round the bar in the clear corner where the girls and the boys liked to dance, Georgie found her. Kelly Tepper was a whirlwind of dark curls and plaid, whipping up hay in the centre of the floor. Around the fringes, the eyes of a dozen scared high-school kids trapped in the bodies of hulking killers watched in a sort of awe. Then Kelly spotted Georgie and broke towards her, throwing her arms around her. “Hey! You made it!”

“Wouldn’t have missed it. How are you, Kel?”

“Outstanding. Hey, I heard about that gig up on Black Mountain, or Dark Mountain, or whatever the fuck it was called. Nice work.”

“Tommy did all the hard work really. Where is that big oaf, anyway?”

“He’s in the outhouse, I reckon. You know he can’t hold his liquor.”

“Typical. Listen, Kelly, there’s something I need to talk to you about. You got a second?”

She wiped her forehead with the back of one arm. “Sure thing. Just let me grab a beer. It’s been too long, hon. Far too long.”

They found a free booth across from the bar. The wall it was against was decorated with a black and white photograph of Foster Bannerman standing outside some commune, holding a severed hippie head high. “If only I’d have made it to Woodstock,” he used to brag. “I’d have broken records, man.”

Georgie smiled at the thought, took a drink from her bottle.

“So, sweetie,” Kelly said. “What did you want to talk to me about? Nothing too serious, I hope.”

“I don’t know. Yet. Does the name Amy Freidrich mean anything to you?”

Kelly drew deeply on her cigarette. “Yeah. Yeah, it does. I haven’t met her personally – all the better for her – but I’ve heard the name from some of the other girls. Sue Rimmer said she was sniffing around that lakeside massacre she did last year, but Sue managed to bail before this Freidrich got a chance to ask her any questions. Then, later, Jenny Farrell said that some lady cop staked out the graveyard where Danny Breen was buried for two whole weeks. By the time she dug Danny up he was half-sane due to quiet contemplation. Weird days.”

“But who is she? How did she get on to us?”

“You think someone’s been careless?”

“Maybe. Or…”

“Naaah.” Kelly sat back, face quizzical. “No way. If you’re going where I think you’re going. No way.”

Georgie shrugged. “I don’t know. But I think we need to let the rest of the girls know, just so they’re a bit more careful next time. And we need to watch everyone, especially the new kids coming through. Just in case.”

“Sure. You’re right. But I can’t believe that any of us would turn on the others. It’s not like this is a just a job, you know. It’s a calling, and you don’t just screw that over.”

“I know. Look, I’m sorry to piss on your night, Kelly, but I thought I’d better talk to someone about this. Listen, let’s forget about this, have a good time and we’ll worry about it in the morning.”

“Hon, in the morning I don’t intend to be capable of thinking about anything, much less worrying about it. But I agree with the first part. Come on, I want to introduce you to someone. New girl all the way from the UK. I think you’ll like her.”

The new girl was named Christina, just eighteen and with large brown eyes trustworthy enough to tempt even Georgie to her doom. Her slasher went by the name of Bertrand Polk, an acid-scarred ex-professor of literature who had specialised in the history of nursery rhymes. Now he wore the cloak and crow mask of a plague doctor and stalked the Oxfordshire countryside picking off ramblers and campers with some vulgar boil-lancing implement. He was over on the other table, doing shots with Tommy, Little Curse and Carlo. Georgie’s night settled into an alcoholic sense of complete relaxation, her worries about Amy Freidrich forgotten for one evening only. She sat with Kelly, Christina and Fiore, sharing stories and swapping tips until it was late, and the bar had started to empty and Foster Bannerman had taken to the corner with his acoustic guitar singing melancholy songs from the sixties. Soon the place was almost empty, the rest of the girls and their slashers heading back off to their corners of the country and the planet and leaving only the hardcore, gathered around their table, surrounded by the debris of the long night.

They started telling ghost stories. It was only a matter of time before someone mentioned Nana Vine.

The Sad Ballad of Nana Vile

Christina sat forward, swayed, then steadied herself. Her long brown hair hung lank around her face. “Who’s-” She hiccupped. “Who’s Nana Vine?”

“What?” said Kelly, her volume control long disabled. “You mean you’ve got in to this business and no one’s told you about Nana Vile yet? Jesus!”

She was up and across the bar in a moment, snatching one of the framed photographs off the far wall. Back at the table, she slid it across to Christina, who picked it up and seemed to struggle to focus on it. Georgie didn’t need to see the photograph, she’d seen it many times before. Black and white, it was a full body shot of a veritable statue of a woman clad in a forties dress, all hips and sensual angles. Her thick hair hung over one eye like Bacall, and falling in waves to her shoulders. She was winking to the camera and holding up in one hand a newspaper of the day. 13 KILLED IN HOLLYWOOD MASSACRE the headline read. Behind the woman, little more than an outline in the gloom, stood a slouched shape, face hidden by the brim of a broad cap.

“She doesn’t look very vile,” said Christina.

“Back then she was just Violet Keel, heiress to the Keel Steel fortune and sometime B-movie actress,” said Kelly. “Ever see ‘The Black Eyes of Count Vargo’? She played victim number three. Yep, even with all of her money and daddy’s influence that’s the most plum role she could land. That’s how foul an actress she was. Gorgeous, no doubt, and usually that’s enough in Hollywood, but it just didn’t work out for Violet.”

“Rumours were,” Georgie added, “that she had a foul temper, wouldn’t take direction and was prone to mouth off to the producers. Bear in mind that this was a time when the producers were on the right-hand of God. And even then only because He was giving them a hand-job.”

Kelly went on. “They say she set fire to a particularly notorious producers casting couch, gutting his entire office. That was the end of her career in the moving pictures – I guess he must have loved that couch. Her final film role was in ‘The Sunset Brute’ alongside Bruno DiMarco. The film was meant to be a villainous vehicle for DiMarco, who’d been making a name for himself in tough-guy and heavy roles. You should have seen him – face like the blunt end of a sledgehammer, and strong. The film wasn’t up to much, a Sunset Boulevard version of The Hunch Back of Notre Dame, and Violet wasn’t even his Esmerelda. It was just another victim role for her. But I guess she was tired of being the victim.”

Georgie now. “The way I hear it, Violet and Bruno hit it off big time. No romance, but they came together like two old friends who’d known one another for years. They say the two of them would spend hours in Bruno’s trailer between takes, playing games and talking about the world and everything they wanted. Bruno was a shy big lunk, but round Violet he was brave and happy and relaxed; and Violet, supposedly she was a different person with him, kind and caring and generous. Even after she’d finished filming her scenes she hung around on the set, and Bruno spent all of his downtime with her. I’ve seen some photos of the two of them on set, huddled away in a corner, smiling. It’s really sweet.”

Kelly took up the story then, more animated. “DiMarco even took her to the premiere, low-key as it was, and the gossip rags picked it up. The usual headlines – beauty and the beast, that sort of thing – followed. Then they got a bit snippy, said some nasty thing about DiMarco, said even nastier things about Violet. They made her out to be some freak who liked to have her way with ugly brutish men, printed vulgar cartoons showing her getting down with Hitler and Mussolini. You know what the press are like when they get something in their teeth. They’ll shake and shake until the blood stops running and there’s nothing left. They chased Violet up and down the West Coast, camped out front of DiMarco’s house hoping for a snap of the two of them ‘together’. DiMarco – he was a gentle man – but easy to anger. He’d rage and rage, try to push them off his lawn, but they’d just laugh at him. No one would take him seriously. You know, I think that was what riled the two of them the most, that they were laughed at when all they wanted to do was be together and enjoy themselves. In the end, both of them withdrew from the public eye entirely, locked themselves away. ‘Sunset Brute’ was a minor hit, but DiMarco wasn’t interested in following it up. He just wanted to hang with Violet. The two of them hid away in one of Violet’s dad’s beach houses and, gradually, started to draw their plans against the world.

“The Sisterhood was different then, smaller, more private. But money opens doors, and Violet found her way to them. Her initiation was far from her comfort zone, taking her and The Brute – as DiMarco had taken to calling himself – over to Europe to learn the craft from one of the Italian girls.”

“Huzzah!” said Fiore, her inherent European cool lost a half dozen cocktails previously. Kelly smiled at her, then continued.

“The two of them came back the following summer, marked out a Hollywood party up in the old Gable Mansion in the hills. Violet set them up, and The Brute just knocked them all down. Final count was seventeen, the strongest first massacre showing of any girl before or since. Then, when it was over, the two of them faced each other across the dining room, the blood of their victims dripping off the walls, and Violet shot Bruno DiMarco down with three shots straight in the heart. I heard that she cried after she did it. Poor Bruno, he was probably the only man she ever really cared for.

“He came back, mind you. They always do. And the two of them worked at honing their craft. Jesus, they were good. Sometimes I read accounts of their marks and my jaw just drops – the set-ups are so audacious, and The Brute so creative with his kills. I swear, there’s no implement that man could not use as a weapon. He cut, he burned, he exploded, he inflated and he sucked dry. When I read what they did in that newspaper building I end up howling with laughter and squirming in my seat. For five whole years they were at the top of their game, upping the body count every single time. Then they got too bold, too clumsy. Started to think that they were unstoppable, untouchable. Violet, she stepped over the line, started to take a more active role in the killings. Their relationship shifted. It wasn’t stalker/victim anymore, it was stalker/stalker. They went off-message, spectacularly. You all know the decrees of the Sisterhood: the victim’s purity will be maintained for the duration of the mark, the stalker’s role is to destroy and then die. And so on, and so forth. That’s the way it has to be. And secret – always in secret. Well, Violet and The Brute broke all of the rules. Slayed together, skipped off at the end of every massacre. They even started leaving their own ‘Vile and The Brute’ calling cards at the scene of their crimes. It was only a matter of time before they were caught. Needless to say, this worried the Sisterhood.”

Christina was sitting forward, bottle of beer clenched between her hands, eyes wide. “What did they do?”

“Sent out The Correctors.”

“Hah. The Correctors aren’t real. I knew you were pulling my leg.”

“This is no leg-pulling,” said Fiore. “The Correctors are real, I have seen them.”

Kelly nodded. “She’s right. The Correctors go back as far as the Sisterhood. Maybe even longer. But that doesn’t matter right now. They were brought in to bring Violet and The Brute to justice. They chased them from one state to the other, across the country from coast to coast. A trail of burnt out motels and churned up graveyards were left in their wake. Every time The Correctors caught up with them it ended in massacre. I once heard they actually managed to kill a couple of Correctors but the Sisterhood seem to have swept that one under the carpet. There’s no records of what happened when they eventually took Violet and The Brute down, but I’ll bet it was epic. Either way, they caught them and hauled them back to the Sisterhood for… punishment.”

“What kind of punishment?” Christina said.

Kelly shrugged. “It’s all hearsay. Needless to say they didn’t want The Brute to rise again, so they strung him up with ropes tied to every extremity and slowly cut him into several pieces. He was still alive, and they made Violet watch. Part of her punishment, I suppose. It must have been horrible for her, to watch her only friend in the world die that way. Then they boxed up all the parts of The Brute and burned them individually. No resurrection for him.”

“What did they do to Violet?”

“Read her the riot act and then stabbed her once in the heart. Dead in seconds. The Sisterhood were always a little more sympathetic to their girls.”

Kelly stopped to drink and Georgie took up the tale again. “Violet didn’t stay dead, though.”

“What? Naah, how is that even possible? Victims don’t get to resurrect.”

“No, they don’t. Not usually. No one really knows how Violet managed it, Some say it was pure rage over what the Sisterhood had done to The Brute, some say that maybe she was slasher material all along. Maybe even that The Brute was the victim and that things had got mixed-up somehow. Who’s to say? Either way, she came back, shot through with a healthy streak of vengeance against the Sisterhood. But Violet was smart enough to know that she couldn’t go up against the Sisterhood, so she skulked around in the background, making her own killings and looking for other victims and their slashers. And when she found them, she took out her anger on them.”

“What? She was hunting us?”

“Yep. In the years after Violet came back more than a dozen of us were killed or disappeared in bizarre circumstances. The slashers too, cut-up and well beyond resurrection. Recruitment levels fell to an all time low. There were strikes, the girls demanding that something be done. But Violet knew the Sisterhood too well, knew how to avoid them. Even the The Correctors couldn’t find her. Over the years her kills became less frequent, but she was always around. She became a boogeyman for the boogeymen.”

“Wow. I can’t believe she killed the slashers. I mean they’re so… unstoppable.”

“Yeah, but look at them.” Kelly pointed over to the table where Tommy and the others were sat, seemingly hundreds of shot glasses piled up before them. One of them was mumbling about what a whore his mother was. “They look big and bad, but they’re just hurt kids inside. Loners who lost control of their anger. They’re used to being the nasty guys, the guys everyone is afraid of, but at heart they’re the scared ones. Frightened little boys, each and every one. And they’re not used to being stalked. Supposedly they just go to pieces.”

Tommy pushed himself up from the table and stumbled off and out the door towards the outhouse. Georgie watched him go then turned back to the girls. Christina was still rapt.

“So, what happened to Violet?”

“What happened to her?” Georgie said. “Nothing. She’s still out there. She got old, her attacks tailed off. She strikes maybe once every couple of years now. Girl over on the east coast saw her a few years ago – only just escaped with her life. According to her, Violet’s got old, fat. All swathed in white cloaks and sheets, like she’s escaped from an old person’s home or something. That’s why they call her Nana Vile. I guess she must be in her late sixties by now. But she’s still fast, still has all the old techniques and some new ones. And she’s still angry, ready to take her chance to cut the throats of any one of us.”

Christina’s face was so pale that it seemed she had already been drained of blood. “Jesus.”

“Just thought you should know, honey.” Kelly reached out to pat Christina on the arm, grinning. “Just thought you should know.”

Final Girl?

The photograph of Violet Keel lay in the middle of the table, and Nana Vile’s spirit hung over it, casting a bitter shadow over them all. Kelly tried to keep the conversation running, but the mood had been cursed by the tale she’d told. “I’m going to the outhouse,” Georgie told them. “And you bunch better be a bit cheerier when I come back.” She swiped the photograph on her way. “That’s enough about her as well.”

On her way to the door she hung the picture back on the wall, taking a second to touch a kiss to the old mistress. Stanley was watching her and she gave him a wink on the way out of the door. He seemed like a nice guy, worth getting to know.

The desert was spread out before her, flat and white under the moon, like a snowfield. The outhouse building, a small chalk hut, sat alone amongst the rocks and the withered foliage. Georgie staggered over to it, thinking of the girls and of Tommy and of what the future held. Halfway there, she realised that she hadn’t seen Tommy come back from the outhouse and a frown creased her face. The door was closed. Gently, she tapped her knuckles against the wood of the door. “Tommy, are you in there?”

No answer came. Maybe he’d gone around the other side of the bar, although she could think of no reason why he would have. Perhaps he’d collapsed in the desert, drunk. It had happened before. He’d woken up in the morning with a vulture trying to pull his tongue out of his mouth and three layers of skin lost to sunburn. She pushed the door open. Unlocked. She’d keep an eye out for Tommy on the way back. Inside, the small tiled hallway was lit by a piss-yellow bulb. The floor was damp. Insects hid from the light between the cracks in the walls. Something – several things – were dripping. She turned towards the ladies’, scanned the sinks with their exposed pipes, the cubicle doors hanging off on their hinges. Was it this bad last time she was here? Quickly, she strode across the floor, keen to be in and out of there as soon as she could. It didn’t feel safe.

She saw Tommy too late, propped up in the first cubicle. His football helmet was on the floor, split and filled with dark liquid. The two halves of his head were hanging apart like the pages of a paperback with a broken spine. It was unlikely that even Tommy could come back from a wound like that. Suddenly exposed, alone and without a weapon, Georgie turned to run. Too slow. The white shape rose up in front of her, robes trailing through the puddles on the floor. An old face emerged from them, insane eyes bedded in a nest of flaking make-up. A toothless mouth, drawn around in deep red, grinned, and a twisted, knotted hand reached out to seize the collar of Georgie’s shirt.

She wouldn’t scream, she refused to scream. But as she saw the machete the old woman held in her other hand come down, she realised that, maybe, someone else would have to be the final girl this time.

Tommy and Georgie - in happier times

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