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Jill wheezes awake, fingers scrabbling at her throat, her face. She can taste nothing in her mouth but the metallic coat of blood, threatening to choke her. On instinct she bends forward, spitting up onto the ground, but there’s only bile.
How do I look?
Jill coughs out a sob, investigating her face, expecting to find chunks of wet flesh. Everything seems to be whole, but she remembers the tear of skin as the reverse bear trap activated, the way it felt when her jaw was ripped in two. The fear as Hoffman stood in the doorway and gloated.
How do I look? Did you miss me?
It takes a second for Jill to realise she’s not in the evidence room, strapped to the chair. Instead, she’s sitting on the floor of the Gideon Plant, the concrete rough under her legs. Her outfit has changed too, she’s in her clinic robes, Kramer stitched onto the pocket in blue thread.
“Oh shit,” Jill says. “I’m dead.”
The laughter that bubbles from her throat is manic and scared. She tries to push herself to her feet but her legs are made of gelatine, and she can’t move. Jill wraps her arms around herself and laughs again, because she’s dead, she’s fucking dead . Her body is probably still sitting in evidence, eyeballs splattered against the ceiling.
“What’s the joke?”
Jill snaps her neck upwards. There’s a figure standing in the entranceway, white dress stained with blood. She tilts her head curiously towards Jill, opening the cut on her throat that almost severs her head in two. Jill doesn’t recognise her, but she’s met so many people over the years that it’s hard to keep track.
“Are you one of my husband’s victims?” Jill asks blandly. “I’m not in the mood to be tortured.”
“Why do you think I’m going to torture you?”
“This is hell, isn’t it?” Jill says, waving her hand. “I mean, the Gideon plant? It’s a little on the nose.”
The woman laughs. It echoes around the warehouse like a gunshot.
“I don’t know where we are.” She admits. “I just get sent here.”
Jill runs her fingers through her hair. She’s been anticipating death for so long that it’s a shock to finally be here, conversing with a demon. She was expecting more fire and brimstone, the screams of Jigsaw’s victims. Billy the Puppet gloating on his little tricycle. That fucking puppet. She can still remember Strahm yelling at her, flecks of spit against her face. He had pulled a gun on her.
“Is John here?” Jill asks. She doesn’t even know why she asks - to shake him? To punch him in the face? To kiss him one final time?
“I haven’t seen him.” The demon replies. “When did he die?”
“Before his body did,” Jill says morosely.
The last time Jill saw John Kramer, it was a photograph of his corpse, forced into her line of vision by one of the detectives. She can remember the colour of the blood, a deep ruby red. It hadn’t seemed real – in fact, she thought it was another of his tricks. But Amanda had been dead on the floor, and Jill knew she couldn’t be trusted to stay down.
“I’m Angelina.” The demon says. “Can I sit down?”
Jill nods.
Angelina crosses the room and gracefully sits down opposite Jill on the cold floor. She’s got lovely brown hair, matted with blood, and Jill can see her nipples through her dress. She smells like a corpse left to rot, and a little like sex, something heady. Jill shoves her hands into her coat pockets and doesn’t look at the gaping neck wound.
“You’re John Kramer’s wife,” Angelina says.
“I don’t do autographs,” Jill replies. She’d been messaged several times from Serial Killer Fansites, wanting signed photographs, wanting memorable from John. She’d screamed down the phone and then blocked all their numbers.
Angelina laughs again. “You’re funny. I wish Amanda had said you were funny.”
Jill looks up at her. “You knew Amanda?”
Amanda had been a patient at the clinic before John got his hands on her. She was a nightmare to deal with, promising to get sober but never following through. One time she bit Jill on the arm, sunk her teeth right through to the bone. Jill had forgiven her, because she forgave all her patients. Except one.
“I got sent to meet her,” Angelina says. Then she frowns. “I don’t know why. I’m only waiting for one person, and I keep getting introduced to all these strangers.”
“Who are you waiting for?” Jill asks curiously. Maybe her initial thought of demon was wrong. Not that Angelina could be an angel - angels aren’t in flimsy nightgowns with stab wounds.
“Mark,” Angelina says, rolling the word around in her mouth. “I miss him so much.”
Jill is confused for a moment, and then – “You’re waiting for Hoffman .”
“And he just won’t die!” Angelina says, with a little hiccup of a laugh. “Much to the disappointment of the Agent I met. He was so angry when I broke the news.”
Jill’s eyes flick to Angelina’s hands, but there’s no engagement or wedding ring. Hoffman never mentioned a girlfriend or partner in all the years she knew him, and all his family were dead. Oh fuck . Acomb.
“Listen,” Jill starts, and Angelina interrupts.
“I know he killed you.”
There’s no point in being delicate. “He tore my face to pieces,” Jill says. “He’s a psychopath. Why are you waiting for him?”
“He’s my brother,” Angelina says. “I love him.”
Hoffman had slammed her face into the table, one paw on her neck keeping her under his control. Jill had tried to be so strong, but he was bigger than her, uglier than her. She’d been more scared that he would rape her than she was about him killing her.
At least it was a quick death.
“He’s a serial killer,” Jill says. “He’s not worth it. Trust me, I’ve dated enough of them.”
“He’s worth it to me.” Angelina wraps her arms around herself. “I know it’s stupid but – I need to see him again. I need to tell him it wasn’t his fault.”
Jill looks at her ruined neck. She can imagine pinning Angelina to the ground as she screamed, hands leaving bruises on her arms.
“My boyfriend,” Angelina says, catching her looking. “I should have left, but I didn’t.”
“We all should have left,” Jill says idly. “But we just ignored the signs.”
Angelina smiles at her, a little shyly. She’s so young, Jill realises now. Just another girl in the domestic violence statistics. From the ruin of her throat, it was a knife – Angelina’s boyfriend wanted to get close and personal. At least Hoffman had killed Jill from a distance.
“Did Kramer ignore the cancer signs?” Angelina asks.
“There were headaches,” Jill says. “Little changes in personality. I just thought it was the loss of the baby that caused it – I was hardly the picture of sanity.”
She wonders what would have happened if Gideon had lived. A little snuffling piglet of a boy, pink-cheeked and full of giggles. Would John still have tortured his way through the city? Was there any way to keep him sane?
“I think Kramer’s a cancer of his own,” Angelina says thoughtfully. “A poison in the blood. He got Amanda, and you, and my Mark.”
“I loved him,” Jill says. It’s the first time she’s said it in years.
“In the beginning.” Angelina tucks one leg underneath her chin, exposing a second stab wound. “But I don’t think you loved him in the end.”
“I finished his final task,” Jill says. “I watched the reverse bear trap rip open Hoffman’s jaw.”
He had been beautiful in all that blood. They all had been beautiful.
“And are you happy?” Angelina asks.
Jill doesn’t think she’s been happy since she first saw two lines on a pregnancy test. She grunts instead and bites the skin from her thumbnail. She wishes John was here, so she could scream at him. She wasted so much time running from him, when they could have been tearing out each other’s throats.
“How bad is Mark’s scar?” Angelina asks.
Jill huffs a laugh. “He’ll have no problem getting any girls with it. Or boys.”
“That’s good, I suppose.” Angelina traces the line of her jaw with a finger, her nails chipped. When Jill focuses, she can see the blood underneath them. At least she’d put up a fight.
“Is this it then?” Jill asks. “We just sit here forever, trading stories?”
“No,” Angelina says. “I’m here to take you somewhere. If you’ll let me.”
“What happens if I don’t let you?”
“Then we sit here until you do,” Angelina says. “I sat here for ages with Kerry. She did a lot of screaming.”
God, Jill doesn’t even know who Kerry is. Was she one of John’s? One of Amanda’s? So many victims, so many names. So many people tried to win their test but failed, and ended up face-to-face with Angelina Acomb and her sawn-open throat.
“Where do we go?”
Jill doesn’t want harps and clouds, but she wants something . At the very least, eternal sleep, where she can finally shut her eyes safely and not worry that someone is hunting her. She’s spent most of her adult life running, and she wants to stop.
Angelina shrugs. “I don’t know. I haven’t been there yet.”
Angelina pushes herself to her feet, a beautiful corpse. She offers her hand to Jill, and Jill takes it, letting herself be pulled upright. The Gideon Plant flickers slightly, and Jill can see the vast empty space beyond.
“Mark really did a number on you, huh?” Angelina says, looking at Jill’s face. “I’m sorry.”
Jill touches her cheeks, but can only feel skin. “You can see the bear trap?”
“You’re open like a flower,” Angelina says kindly. “Jill Tuck in bloom.”
It makes Jill feel sick. She can picture the red raw of her face, nothing left but meat. She pities the person who finds her body. She hopes they bury her in the family plot. She hopes the Jigsaw Groupies don’t dig her up again.
“Are you ready to go?” Angelina says. She’s still holding Jill’s hand, warm and comforting, like Jill may have held Gideon’s hand as they waited to cross a road.
Jill shuts her eyes. She can hear the swell of the ocean, and John explaining something to Gideon about engineering. It might be good wherever she’s going. She can almost smell the salt on the breeze.
She takes a deep breath.
“I’m ready,” Jill says and steps out into the beyond.