Page 127 of Final Girls

Jonah points to the name of the facility where Tina Stone was treated.

Blackthorn Psychiatric Hospital, located just on the other side of the woods from Pine Cottage.

Looking at it makes me instantly woozy. Worse than when I woke up that morning. Almost worse than the moment I realized I had beaten Ricardo Ruiz to within an inch of his life.

Tina Stone was a patient at Blackthorn.

The same time He was.

The exact same time He went to Pine Cottage and gutted my world.

PINE COTTAGE

MIDNIGHT

The first scream arrived when Quincy reached the cabin’s back deck. It blasted from the forest, swooping toward her as she climbed the stubby wooden steps. Quincy turned toward the sound, too surprised to feel afraid.

The fear would come later.

She scanned the dark forest behind the cabin, whipping her gaze from tree to tree, as if the scream had come from one of them. But she already knew its source.

Janelle.

Quincy was certain.

A second scream erupted from the woods. Longer than the first, it became a crackle of noise stretching across the sky. It was also louder. Loud enough to spook an owl from the upper branches of a nearby tree. The bird skated past the deck, wings thumping, vanishing over the cabin roof.

The sound of its retreat blended with the approach of something else.

Footsteps. Reckless ones.

A moment later, Craig burst out of the woods. His eyes were blank, but there was a crazed jerkiness to his movements. His shirt was back on. So were his pants, although Quincy noticed how the fly was undone and that his unbuckled belt jangled and flapped.

“Run, Quincy.” He stumbled forward, frantic. “We gotta run.”

He was on the deck by then, making an attempt to drag her along as he streaked past her. Quincy’s arm went limp in his hands. She wasn’t going anywhere. Not until Janelle was with them.

“Janelle?” she shouted.

Her voice echoed, bouncing through the woods, creating new calls, each one more faint than the last. They were answered with anotherscream. Craig yelped when he heard it. He did a little shimmy, as if trying to shake something from his back.

“Come on!” he shouted at Quincy.

But a fourth scream lured her forward, to the deck’s top step, the toes of her shoes peeking over the edge. Behind her, Craig tried to get inside, blocked by the others pushing their way out.

“Whatwasthat?” asked Amy, fear slashing her voice.

“Where’s Janelle?” asked Betz.

“Dead!” Craig yelled. “She’s dead!”

But she wasn’t. Quincy still heard her choked breaths hissing in the night. Footfalls as quiet as cats’ paws stumbled through the woods.

Janelle appeared suddenly, materializing like one of her Indian ghosts along the tree line behind the cabin. She didn’t stand so much as hover, only the instinct of standing keeping her upright. Dark blooms of red dotted her dress at her shoulder, chest, stomach.

Both hands were at her neck, one clamped tightly over the other. Blood streamed from beneath her palms—a crimson waterfall running down her chest.

That’s when the fear struck.

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