My Heart Is a Chainsaw (The Lake Witch Trilogy #1)(105)

“In Proofrock?”

“This side of the lake,” Letha whispers, the hush of her words rushing up Jade’s arm to the base of her jaw, the center of her chest.

“But—”

“People, I mean,” Letha goes on. “This side of the lake isn’t for people.”

“Why do— why?” Jade asks.

“I’ve seen her,” Letha says, barely able to get it out before pulling Jade closer all at once.

“No, no,” Jade says, letting herself be drawn in. “This isn’t the Golden Age, that’s—it was your dad in a wig. I saw him too, from the water. That’s how these things—”

“On the water,” Letha says.

Jade’s skin prickles.

“Paddleboard,” she says.

“He doesn’t know how,” Letha says back.

“Where’s your mom?” Jade asks, her lips right against Letha’s neck, she’s pretty sure.

Letha stills, then pushes Jade’s hand away from her lips.

“You think she can paddleboard?” she asks, and like that, the possibility crystalizes for Jade: Letha’s real mom, the left-behind ex–Mrs. Mondragon, the left-for- dead Mrs.

Mondragon, follows her philandering husband and spirited-away daughter out to this mountain retreat, and she—she starts taking her revenge throat by throat, maybe even boiling a rabbit in the process.

It fits. No wig necessary.

“Could it be her?” Jade asks.

“She’s… I went to her funeral,” Letha’s barely able to get out, make real.

Like slashers can’t rise from the grave.

“Next you’ll think it’s me,” Letha says, but Jade can still see her in her bedroom, unsure how to hold the machete.

The machete she… left behind? Not “dropped on purpose.”

Jade forces her eyes shut, won’t allow that to be true.

“And it’s not him,” Letha says, her voice more sure now.

“I’m just saying—” Jade starts. The reason she doesn’t finish is that Theo Mondragon is close.

“Lee! Lee!” he’s calling, his throat ragged.

“That’s him,” Letha says, in little-girl wonder.

“It’s not your dad,” Jade tells her. “Not anymore.”

The silence that follows is Letha trying to process this, Jade knows: is Jade saying that the killer’s impersonating her dad, or that her dad is no longer who he used to be?

“But that’s what he calls me,” Letha says, sitting up, Jade sloughing off.

“Lee! ” Theo Mondragon says again, closer still.

“I’ve got to—” Letha says, surging forward, and Jade doesn’t need eyes to see what happens half a second later: instead of darting easily through the drippy wet tunnel of gore, Letha conks almost immediately into the two lodgepole pines crossed beside them, holding the elk up.

It’s enough to dislodge them.

“No! ” Jade says, trying to stand now herself, but it’s too late. The ceiling of meat is already coming down onto them. A full-grown elk is six, eight hundred pounds, and… how many did Mr. Holmes count? Nineteen of them? However many are directly above Jade and Letha come down like judgment, hardly any sound, and in the small breathing space Jade has directly under her face—air thick with rot—there’s at least Letha’s fingers to her cheeks.

Except those fingers aren’t moving. And they’re too thick anyway, are either Cody or Mismatched Gloves—probably Cody, then, since Mismatched Gloves would have gloves on, wouldn’t he?

Jade breathes the decay all the way in, forces it back out in all the scream she can manage.

It’s not enough.

SLASHER 101

How about we just consider this the very end of my extra credit career if that works for you, Mr. Holmes. And before I start, first let me say that I know you’re honor bound to not believe me, to believe Manx and Tiffany K and also Gretta who was only there at the end, but me standing on top of the toilet in the last stall wasn’t me reaching up through the ceiling to find something to tie my neck to. What about the black robe and Ghostface mask I was wearing? If I have to divulge a secret it’s that I was standing on that toilet in the Scream stall to pre honor the coming holiday, Mr. Holmes. Not Spring Break and not tax day two weeks after that, though that would make the perfect slasher, “The Tax Man Cometh” — ka-ching, my idea, thank you — but the SLASHER one that’s here this week: Friday the 13th. And yes I was reaching into the ceiling, but it was only for my emergency cigarettes, from the stress of the day and the week and the year, which is a habit I think you of all people can understand.

Anyway since you’ll be watching it with the rest of us this summer 1 more time, let me add an extra credit to the kitty here for my tragic absence in the nurse’s office yesterday, which is feeding a shark to the cat, yes, when really it would be the other way around.

I’m talking about Jaws from 1975 here, sir.

It’s a monster movie, but it’s got the beating heart of a slasher. You can tell from memory of having seen it every year probably since 1975 and probably even having been on the Indianapolis with Quint that it has these characteristics of the slasher, which I’ll list now. Just like with Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees, there’s a signature THEME, those 2 piano keys going back and forth. Just like those 2 but also Freddy Krueger, Jaws also has a SIGNATURE WEAPON, which is in the title, that being Jaws and teeth. Jaws also has kids partying it up with beer and a bonfire for the BLOOD SACRIFICE, and it also has the COPS who are useless at least until the very end and it also has a BIG PARTY like Scream, which is July the 4th, and a REVEAL that results in that line about a bigger boat, and it even has a RED