The Final Girl by Kenneth Preston

Author:Kenneth Preston [Preston, Kenneth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-08-05T22:00:00+00:00

―

The sun was just setting when Harry walked through the door. Molly rose and gave him the requisite kiss, but his eyes were on Darlene.

Molly said, "I'm gonna get dinner started."

Harry waited until she was in the kitchen to say, "Let's step out into the backyard for a minute."

"So I interviewed Jill today," Darlene said as they stepped out onto the back patio. "She was being bullied, like we suspected."

"By the victims, I'm assuming."

Darlene nodded. "And..." She trailed off.

"And…?"

"And she claims her father did it."

A pause. "Claims he did what?"

"Showed up at the campsite and killed those kids...and framed Richard Caulfield, apparently."

"Well, that's...interesting."

Darlene chuckled. “You don’t know the half of it. She claims she killed her father, that she used telekinesis to bash his face in and that she raised him from the dead.”

A pause. “Telekinesis?”

“Yeah, can you believe that?”

“I can,” Harry said.

“You believe in telekinesis?”

Harry shook his head. “No, I just meant… When I spoke to Diane Wright today, she said that Jill was obsessed with the book Carrie.”

Darlene shrugged.

“Seriously?” Harry said. “Carrie, the Stephen King book, or the movie with Sissy Spacek and John Travolta?”

“I’ve heard of it. I don’t remember what it’s about.”

“Carrie White is a shy, lonely teenage girl with a religiously fanatic mother. Ring a bell?”

“It does,” Darlene said.

“Carrie is bullied by her classmates. Ring a bell?”

“It does, and I’m guessing you’re gonna tell me that Carrie has telekinesis.”

“Bingo.”

“Shit,” Darlene muttered. “So she’s obsessed with this book, and she thinks she has telekinesis.”

“And she used it to bash her father’s face in.”

“And raise him from the dead. Don’t forget that part. Now, The Man with the Pushed-in Face is out there killing kids.”

“The Man with the Pushed-in Face?”

“That’s what she calls him.”

“It has a ring to it,” Harry said.

Darlene managed a smile. “Yeah.”

“She’s not well...obviously.”

“Obviously. If anything, she’s getting worse. She already told us that Richard did it.”

"What does her mother have to say about all this?"

"She says the same things that we've been saying, that Jill's traumatized, that she's not thinking clearly. Her husband ran out on her years ago. She hasn't seen or heard from him since." She paused. "I was thinking..." She trailed off.

"I'm all ears."

She took a deep breath, let it out. "I was thinking that we should try to track down her father."

"Why? You don't think—"

"You said yourself that she's holding something back. What if this is that something?"

Harry looked at her askance.

"I'm not saying that she killed her father and brought him back from the dead," she clarified. "But she called her father her guardian angel. What if her father, despite having run out on his family, has been watching over her?"

Harry shook his head.

"What if he followed her to the campsite that night, saw that she was being bullied, and decided to...protect his daughter?"

"What if you're reaching?" Harry said. "We have the knife from Richard's kitchen, the artwork, his plans for the game on the Final Girl forum. And I spoke with Katie Beckham and Diane Wright today. They both confirmed that they had a game planned for Saturday night.

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