The Dead Girls Club - Damien Angelica Walters Page 0,16
then. Still friends. The Dead Girls Club. Four girls with a penchant for the macabre. Reading from true crime books about serial killers and imagining what it felt like to be killed in such horrific ways. The bloodier, the better. Gruesome, certainly. Our parents would’ve been as horrified by the eager tone of our conversations as our subjects: Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Ed Kemper. The names of their victims never summoned as easily. They made good press only when their pictures were lined up, a grim tableau of numbers. The more the merrier, so to speak. A bigger headline.
They came first: the killers, the Dead Girls Club. The Red Lady came after. She was Becca’s boogeywoman, her avenging angel, her desperate wish for another, better life. The product of fraught emotions, her stories and overarching theme didn’t always follow the expected logic. What began as a story became something more, and what started as a chain around my ankle turned into a noose around my neck. Maybe Becca and I were damned from the first mention of her name.
How exciting, how grim, that first story. Even now, the thought of choking on all that dirt sends a chill through me. At least I think that’s how the story went: a deep hole, a dying woman. But when you recall an event, you aren’t remembering the event itself, only the last recollection. A memory of a memory. And if the mind wants something to be real, it can rearrange facts and occurrences to suit. Sometimes we make up stories to explain things to ourselves; sometimes we do it to hide the truth.
Index finger held rigid, I jab the enter key.
My search results: an Alabama ghost; an Upper Paleolithic–era human skeleton; Sekhmet, an Egyptian deity. I’ve seen the links before. Never the correct red lady, because she never existed, neither as ghost nor historical figure. And yet.
Tell a story enough, it becomes something else. To the mind at least. It felt true. It all felt horribly true. And deep inside, in a tiny part of me that’s still twelve years old, she feels as real now as she did then. If I take her away, what’s left? Cold-blooded murder.
She made me do it. I didn’t want to. I would never have hurt Becca like that.
My eyes burn, and there’s a dry click when I try to swallow. I scrape the edge of my thumbnail along the skin around my index finger until I peel away a pale comma. The small wound stings but doesn’t bleed. I scrape until it does, then blot it with a tissue.
There wasn’t as much blood that night as I thought there’d be. That’s a truth I remember. Another truth: I have no memory of burying her body. But I know I did it. I must have; I’ve a strong memory of digging, of washing dirt from my hands.
I open my drawer, swirl the necklace’s chain. Feel a tightness in my belly at the liquid sound it makes. I close the drawer, catching the tip of my pinkie finger. I shake it off with a hiss.
This is not my fault. And I can’t change what happened then. If I could, I would’ve already. All I can do is move forward. One way or another, I’ll find out who sent the heart to me. Then I’ll figure out what to do.
* * *
Ryan’s singing Linkin Park, which usually means good news. I shrug off my shoes and force myself to relax as I walk into the kitchen. He has a pot on the stove, a bowl in one hand, mixing spoon in the other.
He turns with a smile. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself,” I say. “Something good happen?”
“Indeed. I got a call today from Eloise Harding.”
“Should I recognize the name?” I say, pulling a glass from the cabinet and peering over his shoulder into the bowl. Olive oil, red wine vinegar, a scatter of spices. “Looks good.”
“Remember the four-million-dollar house with the cupula on Sharps Point Road?”
“I think so. That big gray one with the wraparound porch?”
“That’s the one. Eloise Harding lives there, wants her guest bathroom renovated, and as she put it, I came highly recommended.”
“That is good. I’m happy for you.”
He scans my face. “What?”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought you’d be happy. It could be a big deal.”
“I said I was, and it sounds like it could,” I say. Could, but isn’t yet. And I know the Kane check didn’t come today because I checked the mail. He forgot.