Good Girls Don’t Die – Part Two
Good Girls Don’t Die – Part 2
There we were, three dead women – presumably the victims of a grisly serial murder – all alone in the woods with no idea where to go or what to do. It was hours until sunrise, and none of us had a clue how to navigate without the position of the sun to tell us which direction we were walking. Guess I should have payed more attention in girl scouts when I was a child.
Even if we did manage to find our way back to a town, what would we do? Walk into the nearest police station and say, “I want to report a murder?” Ya, right!
Every nerd within a mile would start screaming about the zombie apocalypse, and the police would have their shotguns out before someone said “brains”.
Still, my two cohorts in death stared at me as though I were the one with the master plan. I suppose I should have expected as much. I was the one who had taken charge when Laura was in the throes of a panic attack. Too bad for them, I was just as lost as they were.
“If we could manage to make it to a phone…” I began, but the suggestion died on my lips.
Who on Earth would I call? Surely, by now someone would have reported the three of us missing. We were three young women with friends, family, and jobs. Someone would have missed us and called the police. The only problem was that we didn’t know how long ago we’d been dead.
None of us were exactly farm fresh; poor Heather least of all. If I had to make a guess – keeping in mind that I am not a doctor – I would have to say she was in that grave at least a couple of months before waking up. Time had not been kind to Heather.
Decomposition had taken its toll, and left her as barely more than a husk of the woman she had once been. The elastic layer of tissue that had once held skin to muscle had liquefied, and left her skin hanging in pallid folds across her bones. Her belly was bloated and stiff from the bacteria and other carrion eaters which were no doubt feasting on her entrails.
With the majority of her muscle mass turned to soup, it was a miracle she managed to lift her head, never mind the fact that she’d managed to nearly claw out of a grave on her own.
It was obvious that, out of the three of us, Heather was the oldest victim. Her friends and family would – rightfully – assume that she was dead, and would begin the long and painful process of moving on from their loss.
I imagined her missing persons report in a manila folder collecting dust in a pile of identical folders on the desk of an overworked – and likely underpaid – homicide detective. Statistically speaking, it was likely that her folder – along with countless others – was bound to be packed away in a box, and then filed away in a dark evidence locker under a sticker that would read “cold case”. Laura and I would follow soon after as our families began to give up hope.
It occurred to me that Heather may not have been the first victim. She was just the oldest of us who managed to retain some small vestige of mobility.
My eyes scanned the forest floor, seeking out signs of disturbed Earth where other graves could be hidden away. For every one of us who’d managed to claw our way back from oblivion, how many more woke up and found themselves trapped? How many girls were laying under only a foot or two of packed Earth, their bodies too weak to fight, silently screaming for rescue?
I shuddered. I didn’t want to think about that possibility. Besides, we didn’t have the time or means to start digging up half the forest searching for corpses. We needed to take care of ourselves first, and then we would worry about other victims.
“There has to be a town, or a farm, nearby,” I said.
Laura shook her head, her bare skull shining dully in the moonlight. Her teeth were bared in an open sign of hostility, “The only place nearby is the cabin, and there is no way in hell that I am going back there.”
“The cabin?” I asked dumbly.
“Ya, you know, the cabin,” Laura responded flatly, as though she were talking to a dimwitted child. “The one where that creep took us before he turned us loose in the woods without our clothes.”
Part of me still wishes that Laura had kept her big mouth shut. Then maybe I wouldn’t have to remember what happened the night I died. I remember reading a long time ago in an old psychology textbook about repressed memories. Sometimes, when a person can’t deal with the terrible things that have happened to them, their mind locks those painful memories away. It was the brain’s way of protecting itself when a person can’t move past a traumatic event. I guess that dying ranks pretty high up there on the trauma scale, because I honestly couldn’t remember a thing until Laura had so kindly thrown it in my face.
Up until that point, memories of my death had been like a bad signal on an old pair of rabbit ears. I prodded my brain this way and that, but the image remained a blank field of snowy pixels. The most I could see were vague outlines of shapes moving through the fog, but nothing substantial. As the memories came flooding back, the snow coalesced into an ever-looping reel of that dreadful night.
I remembered everything. I remembered going to the gym late one night after work; my nightly routine. When I left it was late, and the parking lot was nearly empty, save for a rusty old pickup truck.
“That rusty piece of shit pickup,” Laura called it through clenched teeth. She was moving through the stages of grief at breakneck speed; having moved on from sorrow and denial to anger.
Heather, unable to speak, nodded in confirmation. She remembered the piece of shit pickup as well.
Inside was a man, though at the time I don’t recall seeing his face. I’d been checking my phone at the time, which I realize now was a stupid mistake. He came up behind me and clocked me over the head before I even knew what was happening.
Next thing I knew, I was bouncing around in the cramped back seat of the truck’s extended cab. I tried to move, but my wrists and ankles were duct taped painfully tight, and an old rag stuffed into my mouth as a gag. Wedged between the front seat and the back, I did not even have enough room to roll onto my back and get a proper look at my surroundings. My face was lying against the musty interior carpet, which I was willing to bet hadn’t been cleaned since the truck was manufactured. All I could manage was to crane my neck awkwardly up toward the windows, but all I could make out was the tops of trees and telephone wires as they zoomed past. There were no buildings or any landmarks to indicate where we were headed.
My kidnapper – and soon to be murderer – drove for nearly an hour before we finally reached our destination. I got my first good look at his face when he parked the car and climbed into the back to haul me outside.
Laura accurately described him as, “That hillbilly badass wannabe.”
Heather and I concurred.
He looked like he maintained himself about as well as he maintained his truck. A week’s worth of patchy growth covered his cheeks, and his hair was shaggy and unwashed. He wore heavy hiking boots, olive green jeans, and a camo patterned jacket. All standard fare in the outdoor recreation department at Walmart – the kind of clothes hunters wore during deer season – though I suspected that he used it as casual attire.
I would soon find out that the hunting attire was entirely appropriate for what he had in mind. He wasted little time pulling out a long skinning knife and using it to, well, strip me down to my skin. With practiced precision, he cut away my lululemon yoga pants and sweatshirt, all while carefully avoiding cutting into my duct tape bindings.
As I lay there, buck naked on the gravel drive way in front of a tiny hunting cabin, he reached into the back of his truck and unlocked a utility tool chest. He produced a long barrel hunting rifle, and stuffed a handful of spare ammunition into the deep pockets of his green pants.
Leaning his weight on the butt of his gun, he brought his mouth close to my ear and whispered with his warm cigarette breath, “Are you a wolf, or are you just a scared little doe? We’re about to find out. I will give you a two-minute head start. If you can survive the night, I will let you go. If not, well, you end up in my trophy room.”
My finger unconsciously traced the contours of the hole in my chest. It was no bigger than the size of a quarter, tucked in between my ribs under my left breast. After the shock of discovering that he’d scalped my corpse, the life-ending bullet wound somehow seemed trivial.
We all lost his little game, but I guess that was the point. We never stood a chance.
I stared at Laura and Heather – their twin bare skulls glaringly white in the dim light – as I rose to my feet.
“We’re going to find that cabin,” I announced.
Laura’s mouth hung slack, “Are you out of your mind? Why would we want to go there?”
“Why not?” I countered. “What do we have to lose? What more can that asshole take from us?”
Each with only one good eye, Laura and Heather exchanged looks. Was I being serious? Could we really go back there?
To my surprise, Heather was the first to agree. She turned to me, and looked me right in the eye. I knew her answer – even before she nodded – I could see the stone-cold resolution in her gaze.
If looks could speak, I knew she was saying, “Let’s get him.”
Sweet, fierce, Laura grinned in agreement, “What the hell are we waiting for?”
*
Our journey back to the cabin was slow and arduous, but the funny thing about being dead is that you suddenly have nothing but time.
Heather managed to pull herself to her feet, but walking on her own was out of the question. Every time she tried to take a step her knees buckled, and her legs fell out from under her. She tried to walk twice on her own. I would have stepped in to help her sooner, but she kept pushing me away. Clearly, she wanted to prove that she could do it on her own; a matter of pride I suppose.
Eventually she conceded, and allowed Laura and I to act as her crutch. She could manage to shuffle along just fine so long as there was someone next to help support her weight.
We made our way through the trees at a slow and sedate pace; using our combined memories of the forest to guide our way. Laura and Heather both remembered the narrow river that wound through the hills. They’d both followed it in hopes of it leading into a town, or across another property. Turns out, that was the first place our killer looked for his prey. We knew that if we followed the river upstream, we were heading in the right general direction.
By some miracle, we found the cabin just as the sky began to turn pink in the hours of pre-dawn.
Like the truck, the cabin was in desperate need of some TLC. The yard was overgrown and choked with weeds. The windows were unlit, but clearly so caked with dirt that if anyone were inside they would not be able to see outside anyway.
To our disappointment, the driveway was empty. It seemed that revenge would have to wait just a little bit longer.
I unhooked Heather’s arm from my shoulders, and left Laura to bear the brunt of her weight while I tested the front door. The door was unlocked, and swung open easily on creaking hinges.
“Cocky, isn’t he?” I asked, giving my companions a sideways glance.
I groped for the switch on the wall, finding it just to the right of the main entrance. The single light fixture in the center of the room buzzed to life; one of its four bulbs sputtering and going dark.
The inside of the cabin mainly consisted of the central room – which functioned as a kitchen, living room, and bedroom – a bathroom, and a small back storage closet. The air inside was stale and musty, though there were clear signs that someone had slept there recently. The futon couch – which also functioned as a bed – was unmade, and miscellaneous bits of clothing – mainly socks – were strewn about the floor.
There were clear patches on the heavy wooden table where the dust had been wiped away. The surface bore the criss-cross pattern of knife gauges; possibly made by a cleaver. Dark blotches sullied what would have otherwise been gorgeous hardwood. When I ran my fingers across the darkest of the stains it felt tacky to the touch.
A butcher’s table, I realized.
My two new friends shuffled over to the table in the center of the room and eased her into one of the chairs. Heather slumped into it gratefully. The trip through the woods seemed to have sapped what little energy she had left.
They both looked up at me, and it struck me how unkind the light was to them; to us. In the dark I had mistaken so many dark blotches for shadows, or patches of dirt, but under proper light I could see the patches of necrotic flesh which ate away at our bodies. I was reminded of illustrations I’d once seen of the black plague when I was a kid.
Laura wasted no time wandering over to the sink and turning on the taps. The pipes groaned, and the water which initially sprayed out was light brown, but after a few seconds it began to run clear. Laura grabbed a stained washcloth from the counter, and began wiping away the dirt that clung to her skin. She didn’t even pause as her fingers ran over the death spots. It struck me then, that Laura was much stronger of will than I had initially given her credit.
While waiting for my turn at the sink, I rummaged through the cabin to see if I could find anything useful. In the chest of drawers, I found a change of clothes, but the thought of putting on anything owned by that monster made me sick to my stomach. I would rather be naked. The cupboards were stocked with non-perishable foods – pasta, and canned vegetables. A long the back wall was a glass fronted cabinet which I realized was a gun rack upon closer inspection.
I was expecting to find more hunting gear when I searched the back closet, but what I found was much worse. It was a deep walk-in storage area – a pantry in a former life – with all the shelves lining the walls removed. In the pit of my stomach, I knew what I would see when I pulled the cord on the single string lightbulb.
The bulb swayed, casting weird and ghastly shadows across the trophies mounted on the wall. What looked like bundles of hair at first glance, I knew to be human scalps. No fewer than six victims were represented in that trophy closet. They varied in colour and texture; ranging from platinum blonde to my deep mahogany brown.
Despite myself, I ran my fingers through the scalp that I knew to be my own. My hands instinctively knew its texture from years of careful washing and conditioning. Years of growth and maintenance all stripped away, along with my dignity, when I died.
At the far end of the closet, in the back corner where the light from the bulb scarcely reached, hung a special type of trophy. I can only guess that our merry little murderer had gotten bored of only keeping scalps. Removing the skin from the head was gruesome, but a simple task; all things considering. Somewhere along the way, he’d decided to shake things up a little bit. Why keep only a scalp, when he could mount the whole head?
The face of yet another victim stared back at me from the back of the closet; her neck firmly attached to an oak plaque. Her eyes were replaced with a glossy black glass pair, which had clearly been meant for a deer or some other type of wild game. The lids were pinned back to hold them open, giving her an exaggerated shocked expression.
Her eyes, and the long glossy blonde hair, were about the only part of the grim display that had been maintained with care. The acrid smell and discoloured skin were clear indicators that our wannabe big game hunter lacked the skill to properly preserve the head. Or maybe he just didn’t care enough to bother? Perhaps the hair and the eyes were the only things he cared about. I don’t know, I don’t claim to know the minds of serial killers.
I stepped into the closet for a closer look at the head mounted on the wall. My heart went out to her. Looking at hair hanging on a wall was sad because I knew what they symbolized. Each of them was a life lost for no other reason than to satisfy the twisted power fantasy of a psycho killer. Looking a victim in the eye – even glass eyes – stung so much more.
“Who were you?” I whispered to the trophy girl.
The mouth of the mounted head dropped open, letting loose a rancid stench that made my eyes water. The muscles of the face began to twitch and spasm as though I were staring into the face of a person having a seizer. The partially shriveled lips opened and closed repeatedly like a fish gasping for air on the deck of a fisherman’s boat.
I let out a shrill shriek as I backpedaled out of the pantry closet.
As I backed away the trophy head’s mouth opened wider as if to scream, but no sound came out. After all, how can you scream when you no longer have lungs or vocal cords? Its jaw worked, trying desperately to make any sound, but all it managed to achieve was to loosen whatever was binding it to the plaque. Like a suction cup coming undone, something detached from within the throat with a moist smacking sound. The tongue lolled uselessly over the teeth and lips, lengthening until it overbalanced and slid free from between the lips. The long lump of pink and grey flesh fell to the floor with a sickening plop, where it sat glistening by the light of the swinging closet bulb.
I clamped my hand over my mouth as I slammed the door to the closet shut, and then I braced my back against it as though I expected the head to somehow come after me.
Laura and Heather stared at me wide-eyed from the kitchen.
“What the hell was that about?” asked Laura, looking like she was ready for a fight.
I shook my head, “You don’t want to know.”
A wave of guilt washed over me. That poor girl mounted on the plaque could just as easily have been me, and there I had gone and slammed the door in her face. In my defense, grotesque does not even begin to describe what I experienced in that trophy closet. I guarantee anyone else would have freaked out too.
I knew I would have to deal with the trophy closet, but I promptly decided that it was going to be a problem for later. First, we needed to deal with the man responsible, and then we would deal with cleaning up his mess.
Author’s Story Note
I know I promised that this story would be two parts, but I lied. Surprise, it is now a three part mini series! Tune in next week to see the final confrontation between the girls and their murderer. Muahahaha!
Also, as an aside, one of my short stories, Evidence, has been published in this year’s Group Hex anthology. Brought to you by Library of the Damned, Group Hex Vol 2 is available for sale right now on Amazon. Pick up a copy if you are interested in some spooky tales from Canadian authors. If you like what you read, please leave us a rating and a review, so we can spread the word of horror.