My Heart Is a Chainsaw (The Lake Witch Trilogy #1)(121)

Holmes. And Misty Christy. Gliding past on a paddleboard is Lucky, the school bus driver, using a long blue paddle to pull himself ahead, ahead. He locks eyes with Jade for a second or two, pleading with her to be still, to be quiet, to let him sneak away, through all this, but then he thunks into the green canoe, over here already somehow, and loses his balance, has to step over the side, slip into the water.

On the way down his chin connects with the paddleboard and that leaves his tongue jumping on that gritty surface.

When he comes up gasping for air, chin bloody, eyes panicked, Stacey Graves is standing right there, the holes in her chest and shoulder not even bleeding, just black at the edges of those craters.

She hauls Lucky up to her level by what hair he has and, moving slowly, deliberately like an experiment, she pushes her other hand into his chest, rotates it left and right to ease the insertion. Instead of pulling Lucky’s heart back out, she holds it, it looks like, holds it in her small hand until he sags, becomes even deader weight.

When she drops Lucky’s body back into the water along with his heart, she’s already staring at Jade, treading bloody water, Jade’s friends and enemies all dead around her, and— but it can’t be, she’s not a final girl… she hasn’t been a virgin for six years now, almost seven. But she’s the only one left who can do this, isn’t she? The only one who can stand against the slasher?

Is she the final girl?

Jade shakes her head no, but Stacey Graves lived before movies, lived before John Carpenter and Wes Craven, before Jason and Ghostface, so she doesn’t even know what Jade’s saying no to.

I’m not ready, Jade wants to tell her. I don’t—I can’t—I’ve never— It doesn’t matter.

Stacey Graves lunges ahead to take Jade by the hair the same as she just took Lucky, but Jade has no hair for Stacey Graves to grab on to. Her little fingers scrabble on Jade’s stubbly scalp and Jade slips under, away from them. She drops into a quieter world. Up above it, Stacey Graves is clawing at the surface of the water, clawing and, it looks like, screeching, the same as she was about Hardy. At least until her jaw cranks out of place and she has to stand, line it back up again.

Jade uses that to drift away, under some boat melting paper down.

She comes up as quietly as she can right alongside that boat —it’s the librarians’. She can tell because Connie is hanging over the edge, her face in the water like she’s looking for something she just dropped.

Jade breathes deep and slow, not sure when she’s going to have to go under again, but she’s fighting blind panic, too. It can’t be her! It’s supposed to be Letha! Letha could have done this.

Jade, she’s—she’s just the horror chick, the fan.

But then she hears a commotion, looks up. It’s Lee Scanlon, trying to wade-run through the shallows, escape up Main Street.

Stacey Graves surges ahead, her bare feet on the surface making little sucking sounds, part of her dress ripping away behind her, clinging to the shape it caught on: the machete. It’s stuck point-down into the high side of the green canoe, just as Quint left it—no, no, as Theo Mondragon dropped it.

This is no time to lose the line between movies and the real world, Jade tells herself.

With Lee’s first, maybe last, scream, Jade reaches up from the water, grabs on to the handle of that machete, works it free —not as easy as it looks—sheathes herself back into the water.

You can do this, you can do this, she’s telling herself. You can take down Stacey Graves. You have to. She killed Mr.

Holmes. She killed Theo Mondragon. She killed Letha, the actual final girl.

Making no waves, Jade dog-paddles to the side, just away from where Stacey Graves knows she’s supposed to be. The first body she comes to, she grabs on for purchase, to pull ahead, and it’s Jocelyn Cates, playing possum, making hot eyes to Jade about just keep moving, I’m not really here, don’t say anything.

Jade can’t help it, she flinches away, surprised to have someone she thought dead making eyes at her, and only realizes the mistake after she’s made it: Stacey Graves keys on that flurry of motion, is already coming over, is that hag from Curtains, moving so soft and perfect across the top of the water.

In the movie, though, it’s slow motion, it’s beautiful, it’s serene.

In real life, in Indian Lake, it’s all of about two terrible seconds.

Jade tries to duck under again, but this time Stacey Graves has her by the shoulder, her sharp little fingers pincering in through the skin, latching onto tendon and bone.

She hauls Jade up, and now her rancid scent—rot, decay, elk —assaults Jade’s nose, her mouth, her lungs.

She lifts Jade higher, higher, maybe not sure where her feet are going to be, and Jade’s shoulder is screaming, her neck too even though it’s higher up, and her first instinct, it’s that little-kid response: reach up, grab Stacey Graves’s wrist, take some of that weight that way, just like Letha tried to do.

But that didn’t work out so well for her, did it?

Instead, Jade takes the handle of the machete in both hands, knows this is a one-shot-only thing, and slices from right to left with everything she’s been holding inside for the last six years, with every ounce of anger and rejection, all the unfairness and resentment, and she hears herself screaming exactly like a final girl when she does it, and it’s not even on purpose, it’s just coming, it’s pure rage, it’s having so much inside that it’s got to come out, she’s Constance in Just Before Dawn, she’s finally turning around to fight, is insisting on her own life, is refusing to die, isn’t going to take even one more moment of abuse, and, and— The machete is factory sharp, and her grip is solid, and Stacey Graves’s side is stretched tight from having to hold Jade up and up—she’s short, never got past eight years tall.