My Heart Is a Chainsaw (The Lake Witch Trilogy #1)(20)

In Friday the 13th, it’s two blond counselors who get the blade to start the ritual, Barry and Claudette. In Proofrock, in whatever this is going to be called, it’s two blond out-of-towners. Two Netherlanders, Sven and Blondie.

“Thank you,” Jade says to them, kissing the screen then flinching back from the pink phone ringing against her lips.

She rubs the sensation away, and then, on the fifth ring, because the kids flowing past are watching her, wondering if she’s going to, she answers—holds it up to her ear, anyway.

It’s that same language from the video. The one word that’s the same, evidently, is “detective.”

That’s all Jade needs to hear.

Calmly, not in any kind of panic, just another wrong number, she hangs up, bends to attend to her right boot, and when she stands, she’s sliding the pink phone under her chunky sole. When she moves ahead with the surge of kids, she’s sliding the phone out into the road, into a puddle. It slurps the phone right in, but then the phone bobs up to the surface—the case must float, shit. It’s just hanging there like a flat cork, so pink, so obvious, ringing again now, two fourth-graders stopped by Jade to watch this unfolding tragedy.

“Oops,” the taller of the two girls tells Jade.

Jade’s just staring.

“Here—” the shorter one says, stepping forward to retrieve the phone for Jade, who’s evidently too heartbroken, too scared, but Jade, her palm stabbing out to the girl’s chest, stops her, a bus swishing by in that same instant, honking loud and long, close enough that the tips of the girl’s hair rub along the dingy yellow paint.

Behind Jade, a woman screams, the kind of scream that makes Jade feel like she just got punched in the gut, it’s from so deep.

She looks back in wonder, half-expecting it to be the blond girl from the video.

It’s Misty Christy the rhyming realtor, rushing to the shorter of the two girls, pulling her into a hard hug.

“You saved her,” the tall girl says up to Jade, and Jade looks to the retreating bus, to Misty Christy clutching her saved daughter, and then to the puddle. Pieces of the shattered phone are bobbing in the water.

Jade swallows, and then Misty Christy is hugging her too, hugging her and crying, and Jade, unable to speak, doesn’t tell her that it was an accident, that she was only keeping this elementary schooler from getting the phone, she wasn’t trying to save any lives, be any kind of hero—that’s not what she does. Kind of the opposite, really.

When Jade’s finally released from this hug, there’s a half-moon of parents arrayed on the grass, all watching her, waiting to see what the horror girl’s going to do now. Jade presses her lips into a sort of smile, is kind of wondering what she’s going to do as well. Finally she just thrusts her hands in her pockets, shoulders around to hide from them all, and the first step she takes is deep into the puddle that ate the phone.

Her foot goes cold and wet and she keeps moving, and half a block later she finally sputters a breath out, draws another in deep-deep, her hands steepled over her mouth.

Those Dutch kids in the lake. They—what them dying like that means… it means this is— It’s started, Jade knows. It’s finally happening.

SLASHER 101

Actually the slasher ISN’T impossible or just in the movies, sir. But it does need certain minimum requirements after the initial prank.

The 1st thing is the Blood Sacrifice. Think Judith Myers the big sister in Halloween or Casey Becker from Scream, or her 1960 version Marion Crane in, you guessed it, Psycho.

The 2nd thing a slasher needs is Adults, surprise. And by adults I mean those parents and teachers and cops who dismiss all this tomfoolery of the kids being just kids. Think A Nightmare on Elm Street where Nancy’s dad the police detective should listen to his daughter. Or Officer Dorf from Friday the 13th who can’t even drive his own motorcycle but with a name like Dorf what do you expect. If the adults and police were competent then all this could be stopped.

Or go to Final Destination‘s Bludworth, who is really and forever Candyman Tony Todd, an adult who actually BELIEVES these kids, but because of that he can’t talk to any other adults. Or even when the adult knows for sure and believes beyond any shadowy doubts, which is rare like Dr. Loomis in Halloween or Crazy Ralph in Friday the 13th, then nobody believes THEM, which is the main sucky part about being a kid. Well it’s 1 of the sucky parts but don’t get me started because then I’ll be talking about how it’s not really suspension worthy if someone replaces the sex ed videotape with that arrow coming up from Kevin Bacon’s throat, but this paper is of such educational value that it should make up for that.

3rd of what the slasher needs is for all this to happen pretty much Overnight.

The reason you need that is because a slasher that happens over a single bad night in Haddonfield, it’s believable that the adults who could put a stop to it are distracted or it’s their night off. The 3rd and a half necessary ingredient which is kind of part of “Overnight” is a Party. Slashers love to crash parties. Think what if Proofrock were getting a slasher. What night might we all be in one place for for this bloody business?

Next and 4th is the Signature Weapon. Jason has his machete, Michael has his kitchen knife, Ghostface has a hunting knife, Freddy has his glove, Cropsy has those hedge clippers, the Fisherman who still knows what you did last summer has that hook, and, 5th, the pentagram number, you need someone to WIELD that weapon, sir.