The Last House on Needless Street

Through her head, Lauren warns Olivia that Ted is taking them away to the woods. Ted is going to make them into gods. Olivia is still angry with Lauren for hurting her, but she agrees to help. She eventually manages to open the freezer door with the top of her head. Her head fills with Lauren’s panicked screaming.

Olivia knocks the Bible off the table to read a passage, but it is of little help. Olivia uses her anger to fuel her, just as she did when she left the refrigerator open. The front door is unlocked. She realizes she must go outside.

Fighting past her fear, she exits the house, which pushes her into Lauren’s body. Olivia is momentarily overwhelmed by the transition into Lauren’s body. She thinks she is in a sack slung over Ted’s back as he runs through the woods in the moonlight. She can feel their unfamiliar body sobbing. Lauren explains that they are outside, and Olivia is momentarily overwhelmed. Ted has the knife.

Ted sets up camp deep in the wilderness. Lauren and Olivia must alter their plan; their only hope is for Olivia to take the knife from Ted. Olivia is scared and doubtful, but she resigns herself. Lauren explains that killing Ted is good for him too. He does not want to live like a monster. Deep down, Night-time roars that it is his time, but Olivia suppresses him.

Lauren hears Ted mumbling to himself about his mother before he falls asleep near dawn. Olivia takes the knife from Ted’s hand and laboriously drives it into his stomach. Ted screams. Inexplicably, Olivia and Lauren are flooded with pain. They are bleeding and cannot move.

Dee listens to Lauren’s recording. She is certain it is Lulu’s voice. She knows she should tell Detective Karen. From the window, she watches Ted unearth a long hunting knife. He leaves with a bag slung over his shoulder. She thinks she sees it moving. There is no time to tell Karen. She packs fluorescent spray paint and a hammer, puts on her snake-proof boots, and follows Ted into the woods.

Dee’s ophidiophobia begins to plague her in the undergrowth. She trips and falls—right in front of a rattlesnake. The snake is sluggish, giving her just enough time to kill it with the hammer. She feels triumphant; she picks it up, intending to keep it as a trophy. The dead snake bites her on her forearm. She pries it off her arm with the hammer and flings it away. She finds herself laughing instead of screaming. Her arm swells, and she is far from help. She presses on to finish her job.

Dee hallucinates red birds flying through the trees. She marks trees as she goes. She comes upon Ted’s campsite, which she assumes is his weekend place. She follows a trail of blood into a stand of birches where Ted lies on the ground with the knife in his stomach. Dee thinks Lulu managed to get away, but she is also disappointed: She wanted to kill Ted.

Ted is still alive. He asks for help and notices that Dee is hurt too. Ted tells her he has a snake bite kit in his bag, but he does not know if it works. Dee tells Ted that she is going to watch him die. Ted is confused. Dee asks where Lulu is. All Ted can do is sob.

Dee calls Ted a monster and turns away. Ted speaks with a little girl’s voice. Lauren tells Dee that Ted is not a monster, though she had to kill him. Dee thinks it is a trick or a hallucination brought on from the venom. She covers Ted’s nose and mouth until he stops moving.

Dee pumps some of the venom-infected blood from her arm with the snakebite kit. She goes off to search for Lulu.

Olivia is crying. She realizes that they live in Ted. Lauren knew this, but she needed Olivia’s help. Everything Lauren told Olivia about her abuse in the freezer was true; however, it happened to her and Ted. Ted’s breathing sounds bad. Olivia apologizes to him for hurting him. Lauren says that they cannot hurt Ted; Lauren takes his physical pain, and Olivia takes his emotional pain.

Olivia sees the cord that connects her to Ted and Lauren spreading out through the world. She hears a big dog barking somewhere. The Lord arrives and tells her, “Cat […] You were supposed to protect” (262). She cannot look at his face; she knows he will be wearing her own face.

In the dimness of his receding consciousness, Ted feels someone applying emergency aid. He sees sunlight and hears a dog whine, then nothing.

Olivia is back in the house. The walls are collapsing. She knows she is dying. The others are gone, and she can feel Ted’s body now. She thinks she can help.

The front door is impassable and the stairs cave in. She finds Night-time wounded in the living room. She convinces him to take her down to his place. Night-time’s abode is empty, lonely, and dark. Night-time does not want to go deeper down. He and Olivia fight, but Olivia convinces him the danger is worse if they stay. They descend.

Olivia and Night-time are crushed under immense pressure. They struggle to a point of light in the void, and when they emerge, they have become one. They spread themselves through Ted’s body, willing it to wake up, as a red-haired man presses down on Ted’s wound. Ted’s body begins to come back to life.

Dee runs on as the sun rises, trying not to think of her rattlesnake bite. Dee wonders if she is now a murderer. Dee remembers Detective Karen asking if there was anything else she should tell about the day Lulu disappeared. A woman who found Lulu’s sandal in her bag was sure someone put it there. Karen warned her that not telling the truth will eat her alive.

Dee relives the real events of the day at the lake.

Dee flirts with the boy she met at the beach. Lulu follows Dee. Dee is filled with loathing for Lulu; she resents her family. The boy, Trevor, asks Lulu if she wants to get ice cream. Dee’s hand brushes Trevor’s, exhilarating her. The three of them wander off, going farther and farther from the crowded beach, toward the tree line. Lulu wants to return, but Dee threatens her. She tells Lulu to go play by the water. Dee and Trevor French kiss, feeling each other’s bodies.

Dee hears a strange sound. She pulls her shorts up and calls for Lulu. There is no response. They rush to the water. Lulu is lying half-in, half-out of the water, her skull dented in on the rocks, bleeding. Trevor begins breathing fast. He runs away. Dee finds a pretty, green pebble in Lulu’s hand.

A snake swims out from under Lulu’s body, followed by its young. They ignore Dee and swim away. Dee flees from the water, only to come face to face with another snake on the rocks, which hisses and slithers away. Dee screams and runs away.

Dee’s thoughts race. She realizes that Lulu is still bleeding, which means she is still alive. She races back to the spot where she left Lulu. Lulu is gone. Dee picks up Lulu’s sandal. There is an adult’s footprint in the mud by the water. She hears a car door shut nearby. The grove where they went for privacy was right next to a parking lot. She sees a car driving away.

Dee goes to the bathroom, earning disapproving stares from other women. She knows she must tell someone what happened, but the voice in her head tells her there will be no ballet school. She is furious; she thinks her family has always loved Lulu more.

Dee makes herself believe Lulu is with their parents. She makes a show of washing her bloody shorts and asking other women for a sanitary towel, trying not to think of it as an alibi. She slips the sandal into a woman’s bag. She thinks the woman will throw it away later. She drops Lulu’s pebble on the path.

In the present, Dee retches. She hears a child running through the forest. She calls to Lulu to stop. She hears Lulu laugh; Dee smiles, willing to play tag with her for a bit longer.

In the years since the disappearance, guilt causes Dee to become obsessed with finding the person in the car who took Lulu. However, the list of suspects grew thinner over the years. Dee almost gave up when she found Ted. Dee had staked out Ted’s house before moving in next door. It was Dee who put the glue traps on the bird feeders. She did it to punish Ted, but she regrets it.

Dee chases her hallucinations of Lulu deeper into the forest. She thinks, “I just wanted there to be some kind of justice in the world” (282). She apologizes to Lulu. Dee dies far from the trail. Her remains become part of the forest.