The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP XXI:

The Final Chapter II

The first sign of trouble is the sign.

Dani’s ranch is near Elizabeth Lake, twenty miles outside L.A. in those flat little hills that always look like they need a bath. Grubby humps with dust-coated trees clogging their folds. It’s a light brown world covered with scrub.

It takes us an hour to find the right road, and half an hour to find the little dirt track that leads from the road onto Dani’s ranch. Out here in the country no one thinks to put up street signs or house numbers. If you have to ask, you don’t belong. I hate the country.

I’m doing fifteen miles an hour when we see the gate.

“Do we just open it?” Steph asks, looking up from the map on her phone.

There’s a ditch on either side.

“I can’t drive around it,” I say.

The engine idles. I scrutinize the gate. The chain is wrapped loosely around the post five or six times to hold it shut. This is where you get out of your car and the monster rises up out of the ditch, where his hand shoots up out of the sand and grabs your ankle.

Nervously, Steph gets out. I lock the doors after her. I watch the ditch, I watch the sand, I check my mirrors. She reaches the post, stops, and turns back to the car. She points to the ground. I pantomime-shrug at her through the windshield. She bends down and lifts one end of an unpainted board. It’s old and someone has carved letters into it and filled them with white paint:

BIG SKY HAVEN RESCUE RANCH

Now that I see it, I also see the post it was nailed to. There’s raw yellow wood snagged on the nails like it was recently ripped down. Dani would never do that. Dani throws out Heather’s coffee cups. Dani uses a lint brush on her flannel shirts. Dani picks up leaves from the parking lot and tosses them back into the bushes when she walks to her truck.

Steph drops the board, unwraps the chain, pushes open the gate.

“Get in,” I call out my window. “We need to get to her house.”

I can’t take the car over fifteen without feeling like I’m about to crack the suspension, so we creep up the road too slow, leaving the gate yawning open behind us. Then we see the smoke.

“People burning leaves?” Steph asks.

A column of black smoke rises up through the stand of eucalyptus trees ahead of us. The car crawls, and sweat pours down my sides, stroking its ghost fingers over my clammy skin.

We drive into the trees and come to the house. It’s a neat little farmhouse in a clearing surrounded by a split rail fence with a big circular parking area out front and a water pump in the middle. Dunes of wildflowers sway around the pump. The soil beneath them is dark black, moist and new. The flowers Michelle wanted to see before she died. Against all this brown dust they stand out like fireworks.

The house is tucked back in the eleven o’clock position on the circular drive. To the right, at about three o’clock, a path leads to a stable. Dani’s truck sits in the drive and the front door to the ranch house stands open.

Neither of us can take our eyes off the bonfire that’s burning in the middle of the parking area. Wooden dining room chairs are piled up, and weak orange flames lick their legs in the sun. A heap of blackened books smolders beneath them, and a few charred magazines blow around in the dirt.

We got here too late.

“Do you see Skye’s car?” I ask.

“I don’t know what Skye’s car looks like,” Steph says, pulling out the .22.

She checks the chamber like a pro. I should have re-armed myself.

“I doubt he’s still here,” I say. “But let’s check.”

We step out into the hot breeze. I look inside the trunk. There’s a cut-rate jack made of pressed aluminum in a greasy cardboard box. It’s barely better than nothing. I let it dangle in my right hand, and the two of us approach the house, instinctively circling from opposite sides.

There’s movement inside, and I plant my legs and tense. Steph snaps her attention to the front door and raises the .22 in both hands. Good girl. A figure comes out hauling an enormous rolled-up carpet. It stomps across the yard, carpet dragging behind it like a dinosaur tail, and I recognize the square shoulders, the solid shape, the lack of curves. Dani looks up to make sure she’s still heading toward the bonfire and sees us, wipes the sweat from her face, then puts her head down and keeps storming toward the flames.

“Dani?” I call.

She drops the rolled-up carpet on the ground next to the bonfire and catches her breath. Even from thirty feet away I can feel the heat chapping my face.

“Dani?” I try again.

She bends over and picks up the carpet by the middle, then hauls it up and shoves it forward in one lunge. It topples the stack of burning chairs and they hit the ground in front of me, giving off great big tumbleweeds of pale sparks in the sunlight. One bites the back of my hand.

“Dani,” I say. “What happened?”

She stops, halfway through the turn to go back to her house. Her hand drops to the Glock holstered on her thigh when she sees Steph coming from the other direction.

“That’s Stephanie,” I say to her. “Camp Red Lake. She’s the one who met Christophe Volker.”

Dani steps back so she can keep both of us in her field of vision.

“What do you want?” she asks.

“Someone knocked down your sign,” I say.

“It’s all gotta go,” she says.

Then she slumps, takes her hand off her pistol, and trudges back to her front door. Stephanie gives me a questioning look, gun lowering, and I shrug. Halfway to her front door, Dani reverses course and steams back at me, fists balled at her sides.

“What’s—” is as far as I get before she punches me in the stomach.

I double over, hands on my knees, and throw up on my shoes, the jack clanking into the dust. Dani stands in front of me, not moving as I cough up bile, and then I force myself upright and she slaps me across the face. My head comes off my neck. She gives me another shot to the stomach and I fall on my knees in my own mess.

“No, Steph!” I say, holding up one hand to stop her from coming at Dani.

It doesn’t help; she’s feeling protective.

“Hey,” Stephanie squeaks. “Hands off.”

Dani doesn’t even turn her head, just straight-arms Stephanie in the chest, sending her backward, arms windmilling, flinging the .22 away in a big arc, before going down hard on her butt.

I try to get to my feet and Dani winds up one leg and plants the toe of her boot deep in my stomach. I stay down.

“You wrote that book,” she says, standing over me. “That goddamn book. What the hell was going through your head to write trash like that? You think I’m in a codependent relationship with my Michelle? My everything? I use her to isolate myself from group? You think that?”

She kicks me again. I’m not fighting back. I rest my swollen cheek in the dirt. I deserve this. Her hands grab my collar and she yanks me to my feet. I hear my shirt rip. I can see her gray eyes. Her pupils are pinpricks.

“You think my guilt over killing my brother has eaten me alive?” she demands, and slaps me. “It’s made me ‘politically deranged’?” She slaps me again. “You think I keep Michelle in my shadow?”

Another slap. I can taste blood in my mouth.

“I’m sorry,” I say through swelling lips, wetness trickling down my chin. “I never meant for anyone to see it. I did everything I could to get Michelle back here to die.”

“Don’t say her name,” she snarls, pushing her leathery face into mine. “You don’t get to say her name.”

She slaps me again, and then there’s movement at her side. Steph has the .22 and is coming back, holding it at the end of one outstretched arm. Dani drops me on the ground like a bag of garbage and grabs Steph’s wrist, twists it, then kicks her feet out from under her. She draws her Glock and aims at the back of Stephanie’s neck. I need to stop this. Now. From the ground I show Dani my hands.

“It was my journal, it was private, the guy stole it off my computer,” I say. “The same guy who’s been manipulating all of us. He got Volker to attack Stephanie and kill Adrienne. He burned down Heather’s halfway house. He shot Julia. He paid Harry Peter Warden to tell the cops he committed Nick’s killings. He’s the one who tried to make you think you killed your brother for no reason, Dani. I saw Chrissy. She told me all of it. He communicated with Walker in code. He’s trying to discredit us in public, and then he’s going to pick us off one by one.”

Dani cocks her head like she’s considering my theory. Steph starts pushing herself up from the ground, ready to come at her again. The two of them lock eyes. Dani adjusts the grip on her Glock.

“Ah, who cares?” Dani says, breaking her gaze, spinning on one heel, stomping back into her house, holstering her pistol, and leaving Steph and me in the dirt.

“I thought you were mentally ill,” Steph says. “But she’s seriously crazy.”

The carpet smokes on the pile, sending out greasy black billows of soot. It smells like chemicals.

“Viking funeral,” I say, sitting up.

I spit out a mouthful of blood. Aside from bruises, I don’t think she did any permanent damage.

“She needs to get her shit together,” Steph grumbles. “This is more serious than her girlfriend.”

“Not for her,” I say.

Dani staggers out the front door of her house, dragging a mattress. It’s huge and floppy and gets stuck in the doorway. She punches and kicks it, hauls it out, then drags it through the dust to us. When she reaches the smoking bonfire she lets it drop. Ashes blast out in a cloud and instantly suffocate the flames. Cold smoke unrolls into the blue sky.

“Shit,” she says, wiping a tie-dyed bandana across her grimy forehead.

“Will you talk to me, Dani?” I ask, standing. I can’t unbend all the way. “I don’t know if you know what’s going on, but things are really bad. We need to know where Julia took everyone.”

She looks at me like it doesn’t matter who I am.

“Her glass of water’s gone,” she says. “The one by her side of the bed. It was the last thing her lips touched. She drank half and every day since she’s been gone the water level’s been getting lower and lower, and I knew what was going to happen but as long as there was even a bit left it wasn’t happening. Then yesterday I looked and it was dry. It used to be her glass of water and now it’s just an empty glass. There’s nothing left, Lynne. It’s all gone.”

Her face goes slack. Her eyes are lifeless. I’ve never felt the way she does about anyone.

“I don’t want to be here anymore without her,” she says. “I can’t be alone again. I can’t.”

She turns and heads to the barn, leaving Steph and me stranded in her wake.

“Can’t you get her to listen to you?” Steph asks.

Dani comes out of the barn with a yellow and red gas can banging against one thigh. She stands on the edge of the dead bonfire, unscrews the cap, douses the mattress, shakes out the last few drops, tosses the can, then pulls a pack of matches from her breast pocket, lights them all and flicks the pack onto the mattress.

FWOOMP!

It goes up in a fireball, and the reek of hot gasoline blasts my face. I feel my nose hairs crisp. Steph and I limp backward a few steps but Dani doesn’t move. Her face shines beet red in the blast-furnace heat.

I motion for Steph to stay where she is and I circle around to Dani, who’s basking in her destruction.

“I never wanted to hurt you,” I say. “I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

“When they found Michelle’s body, some old wino was trying to kiss her,” Dani says.

“That was probably Carl DeWolfe Jr.”

“Huh,” she says, and there’s a long silence. “At least she was outside. She wouldn’t want to die indoors. But when she needed me most, I wasn’t there.”

“Because of Skye,” I say. “Dr. Carol’s son. He’s organized this entire thing. He’s insane. He’s playing us all.”

“I only wanted to be there for Michelle,” Dani says, desolate. “That’s all I ever wanted.”

She’s not hearing me. We both stand there, watching her furniture burn. Steph stares at us through the heat shimmer from the other side of the bonfire.

“Dr. Carol’s son is dangerous,” I say. “You have to believe me. And now he’s with Julia and Marilyn and Heather, and I don’t know where they are. We have to find them.”

“They’re at Red Lake,” Dani says.

Of course.

Adrienne bought Camp Red Lake because she knew the problem with survivors. They detach from other people, they withdraw, they rely on routines rather than actual healing to give the appearance of stability. They go numb.

The irony is not lost on me.

We tend to die, women who’ve been through the fire. Sometimes we choose obvious ways, suicide and overdoses; sometimes we’re more subtle, marrying someone who likes to use his fists, or we drink too much and keep getting behind the wheel until we run out of luck.

Adrienne saw the problem and so she created a solution. She reopened Camp Red Lake with her movie money and tried to save us all. Therapists split campers into teams, and they stick with each other for their entire stay, they do their therapies together, they are held accountable to each other, take responsibility for each other. No one finishes a race or wins a game until the entire team crosses the finish line. The official literature calls them teams and teammates. They call themselves family. They call themselves Sisters.

Adrienne’s follow-up shows that more than sixty percent of these families last, that Sisters stay in touch with each other for years, that they move to be closer to each other, that they stay in each other’s lives. That they rescue each other. The first families left Red Lake in 1991. The women in them are around thirty-six years old today. Two of them are married. Six of them work at Red Lake. All of them made it. None of them died. Adrienne saved their lives.

“Come with me?” I ask Dani. “Please?”

I know what’ll happen if I take Steph and leave. When Dani runs out of things to burn she’ll kneel next to this bonfire, face the hills, take her Glock, and go be with Michelle. I have to save someone.

She keeps staring into the fire.

“Marilyn and Heather and Julia are in danger,” I say. “You’ve always kept us safe. We need you now. One last time.”

When she talks again, her voice is very small.

“I’m done,” she says.

Her back slouches, her shoulders slump, her eyelids droop, the corners of her mouth sag. I can’t tell if she’s sweating or crying or both.

“Please, Dani,” I say.

If we leave, she’ll put that gun in her mouth. Everywhere I go there are final girls dying. I’m sick of it.

Dani shakes her head.

“I can’t do this alone,” I say. “I’ve been trying it that way all my life and it hasn’t worked out so good. I need you, Dani. One is none and two is one, isn’t that what you taught me?”

After a minute she stops swaying and looks at me.

“Let me take care of something,” she says.

She walks toward her barn and I return to Stephanie.

“She’s coming,” I say. “She just has to lock up.”

“Great,” Stephanie says. “Um, what’s she doing?”

Dani is walking into the barn, unholstering her Glock as she disappears into shadows. A few minutes later six horses trot out, riderless and unsaddled, glossy in the afternoon sun. They smell the fire and shy away, milling in a nervous circle, trying to duck back inside. Dani blocks their way, raising her Glock, and there’s a dry slap as she fires into the dirt between their hooves.

My stomach jumps; each gunshot punches me in the heart as she empties her clip into the ground, into the air, sending the horses breaking into motion, galloping away, eyes wide with terror, foaming at the mouths.

“They stand a better chance on their own,” she says, and that’s when I realize she doesn’t plan on coming back.

The loaner is almost out of gas, so we pile into Dani’s truck. It’s got four seats. I take shotgun. Steph sits in the back behind Dani.

“You know how to get to Red Lake?” I ask.

“Since 1991,” she says.

The engine roars, she drops her truck into gear, and we bounce down the road away from the ranch. I turn back in my seat and see Steph looking worried. Behind her I see a dust cloud from the horses as they disappear into the hills and the smoke from the bonfire rising up into the clear blue sky.