Murdered bad girl Annie Lane is back from the grave and hellbent on revenge . . . she just has to figure out who killed her. This fast-paced thriller by a talented debut delivers a horror-infused hunt for justice that’s at once furiously feminist, darkly funny, and utterly satisfying.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Codie Crowley’s Here Lies A Vengeful Bitch, which is out August 6th 2024.
Between her careless mom, her cheating ex-boyfriend, and her rotten reputation around town, Annie Lane is used to being left behind. But she’s never been left for dead before—until she wakes up to find her body’s been dumped on a mountain rumored to raise the dead.
Annie can’t remember who killed her, but she’ll stop at nothing to figure it out and make them pay. Because girls like her don’t get justice unless they take it for themselves.
Codie Crowley’s propulsive debut presents a furious and cathartic thriller skewering society’s condemnation of “unlikeable” girls.
CHAPTER ONE
I HAVE REALLY out-fucked myself this time.
I mean, I know I’m already a champion screwup, but if you were waiting for my gold medal moment—well, this is it.
My fingers claw at the earth. Cold dirt cakes my chipped red nails. The rushing current tugs at my frozen legs, pulling like hands around my ankles, dragging me back to the dark riverbed.
Back to where I just woke up, beneath the icy water.
I don’t know how I got here. When I opened my eyes, I was already thrashing in the tide. Daylight glares through golden leaves, which means I’m missing a lot of time—because the last thing I remember is the sweaty crush of kids crammed into the club where I was waiting for my ex-boyfriend’s band to get on stage.
Now I’m here.
Crawling out of the river, hair tangled with leaves, cold water pouring from my mouth.
My hands find a tree root, and I wrap my muddy fingers around it. Stones along the bank scrape my legs, catching my frayed tights as I haul myself out of the churning cold.
With chattering teeth and shivering limbs, I squirm until I’m sitting up against a tree trunk. The bark pokes at my spine through my soaked black minidress. All I see are more trees around me, stretching on and on in every direction. I could be anywhere in the endless acres of state forest that surround my tiny hometown.
What happened last night?
Did I drink too much of the tequila stashed in my bag? Did Gun and his friends dump me out here as a joke? The last thing I remember is being with him, but tossing me in the river seems like kind of a sick joke, even for my narcissist ex and his butt-sucking bandmates.
No. Whatever happened last night, I doubt it was anyone’s idea of a joke.
When I close my eyes I see the same forest, but it’s dark and I’m running from something. Someone. I open my eyes and gasp, choking on something caught in my throat. I dig my fingers into my mouth and scrape mucky pine needles and twigs from my tongue.
What. The. Fuck?
I stare at the woodsy detritus slicking my fingers and gnaw on the remnants still stuck between my teeth.
My mind is sloshy, and my body feels as if it’s made from the same stuff I just coughed up, needly and waterlogged. I wipe my fingers on my tights and look around again, blinking past the drop- lets caught in my lashes.
I might not know where I am, but I don’t want to wait until whoever left me here comes back for me.
I have to get the hell out of here.
I stand, knees mushy, my boots flopping and squelching under my feet. I shiver against the breeze that blows on my damp skin and the dress that barely covers me. I don’t know where my jacket is—or my purse, or my phone for that matter. Maybe they’re lost in the river I crawled out of, but I’m definitely not going back in there to look for them.
I wrap my arms around my stomach, pick a direction at random, and start walking.
My feet drag in the dead leaves like I’m trudging through snow. My whole body feels like room temperature cherry soft serve, pink and runny in the cold dawn light. While I hike the sun shifts higher in the sky, but its rays barely warm me through the browning can- opy of leaves overhead.
I’m not sure how long I walk. My thoughts rush, the trees sway, the water on my skin never dries. Then, finally, a break in the trees—and beyond it, pale yellow siding and a moss-covered porch.
Civilization. Hopefully, I’ve found my way out of these woods . . . so I can get to figuring out how the fuck I wound up here in the first place.
My numb legs grow weaker with each step. I stumble past the tree line and collapse in the tall grass behind the house. I tip my face up toward the dawn and notice the cracks in the yellow siding, the variegated shimmer of the sun on broken windowpanes.
There’s no one here who can help me.
There hasn’t been anyone here for a long time.
My legs are liquid against the grass. I think they could melt right
into the ground and trickle between the dirt and rocks, sinking into the clay. Maybe the rest of me could follow. I could water this little patch of grass, catch the sunlight on its blades, and fade away with the passing autumn. I think about it for a while, but then I get up again and stumble around the side of the house.
Across the parched lawn there’s a dirt road that curves through the trees, lined with more long-deserted homes. A blue cottage faces the yellow house behind me. the devil was here is streaked on the door in stark black paint. I shiver and hurry past, hiking farther up the road.
At least now I know where I am.
“Hey!” someone shouts. “Where are you squirming to, worm?” “Yeah. Wait up for the early birds!”
I spin around. Two boys stand on the road behind me. Their eyes are the same shiny copper as their hair, their sweaters are ill- fitting, and they have matching toothy grins on their identical faces. They can’t be much younger than me, but they are much smaller. Their petite stature and gaunt limbs don’t make me any less uneasy to find them here.
If I am where I think I am, no one should be here.
“I need help,” I croak. “Do you have a phone?”
“A phone? Who would you call?” The boy on the right giggles. “Lady, there’s no hotline for your problem,” says the one on the left.
The right one lifts his hand like he’s picking up the receiver on an old telephone. The left one does the same.
“Operator,” says the right.
In a falsetto impression of me, the other says, “Hello, Operator, I need help—”
“Whoa there, lady. What you need is an undertaker!”
“Leave her alone, brats,” barks a third voice from behind me. A girl swoops in, drawing a knitted shawl off her shoulders to bundle around me. I grasp at the dry wool as the solemn-eyed girl who gave it to me chucks the plum she’s holding at the boys in the road.
The boy on the left catches it and takes a bite. Bloodred juice dribbles from his teeth.
“She needs help,” the boy on the right taunts, before he steals the plum from his mirror image.
“What the hell is your problem?” I snarl.
“Same as yours,” he says like some kind of playground insult, sticking his hands on his hips.
The girl folds an arm around my shoulders and turns me away from them. “Beat it, you two, seriously,” she says.
The two boys chitter behind us, but they don’t follow as she leads me away. Once we make it around the bend in the road, she says, “They don’t mean anything by all that. They think they’re just playing around.”
“Sure. They’re hilarious.”
“They’re Hunt and Howl. I’m Fern,” she tells me.
“Annabel,” I say.
“All right, Annabel. You know where you are?”
Of course I do. The abandoned town at the top of Resurrection
Peak is the stuff of local legend. I visited once with my big brother, Neil, who said that when the paper mill closed for good in the 1950s everyone just up and left for lack of work.
Maybe that’s the truth, but it’s not the only tale I’ve heard about why the town was abandoned.
As kids we used to whisper about it during slumber parties, breathless and hushed in the dark like the ghosts might creep down the mountain and snatch us from our sleeping bags. There was always something about a phantom killer who slaughtered half the town and drove the other half to flee, a sadistic demon who couldn’t be caught and must roam the mountain still. Resurrection Peak was our nightmare fuel, our campfire story, our goose bump shivers and sleepless nights.
But it’s just an urban legend. There’s not really supposed to be anyone up here.
My sloshy legs buckle, and Fern seems prepared. The arm locked around my shoulders crushes me to her side to keep me up. Her downturned mouth presses tight, but she holds my weight and we keep walking. It’s nice and all, but I have to wonder what she’s doing up here at dawn, walking around an abandoned village in suede slippers with her hair wrapped in blue silk like she just woke up, too. And where is she taking me?
A stone obelisk at the corner says the road we’re on is called He Is the Way. I’m so tired of walking. “I really need help,” I whisper. “I think something happened to me last night. . . .”
Fern’s fingers knead at my shoulder through the shawl wrapped around me. “I know,” she says. “We’ll help you, okay? Can you tell me what happened?”
What happened . . .
What happened?
I drop my lids and images splash across my mind. I see head- lights blinding my eyes. Broken glass beneath my boots. My face bent over a toilet seat in a pink bathroom stall. Trees turning side- ways as I fall to the ground. Blood on my palms, glimmering black in the moonlight.
I shake my head and force my eyes open, staring up at the iron gates that guard the empty estate at the highest point of the peak. One of the wrought iron doors is open, beckoning us on.
“No,” I say. “I don’t— I’m not sure—”
“Okay,” Fern says as we pass through the gate. “It’s okay. Let’s just get you inside, all right?”
“Inside?” I repeat. “Do you live up here? I thought nobody lived uphere….”
“Technically we don’t,” Fern says, and keeps leading me up the dusty drive.
The Gilded Age mansion at the top of the hill is a moldering testament to a time before this town’s industry became obsolete. Everyone back home calls this place Chapel House, probably on account of the cathedral-like touches to the mansion’s grandiose Romanesque architecture.
Brittle ivy swaddles the wrap-around porch. The brick has darkened to the color of old blood. There’s a turret that looks like a church spire jutting up toward the yellow sky. I guess it’s kind of a cool place to crash if you have nowhere better to go, but I still can’t believe there’s really anyone living all the way up here. The road to the top of Resurrection Peak is just an unkempt byway, the turnoff nearly hidden on the main highway that cuts through my hometown. It wouldn’t be easy to get back and forth if you needed food or supplies—or help.
Fern leads me up the stairs to the darkened porch, supporting me as my boots flop on the parched wood. A scrawny blue-gray cat skitters through the porch posts and hides against an overgrown bush to watch from the shadows.
The double doors are inlaid with stained glass, one window depicting a lion with a gold halo and the other a serpent stabbed through with a dagger. The lion’s eyes have been busted out of their lead frames, leaving vacant holes that whistle when Fern swings the door open to a high-ceilinged foyer.
“Sam?” she calls out, but there’s no response.
We trudge through the foyer to a sweeping staircase with an elaborately carved handrail. I groan as we start climbing, and around when we hit the fifth or sixth step I slump out of Fern’s grip. My butt hits the wood and my head thuds on the banister behind me. I cough up a little water and curl in on myself.
“Do you have a phone?” I mumble, too cold and exhausted to think of anything else. “I need help. . . .”
Fern squats to rub her hands over my upper arms. She tucks the shawl she gave me more securely around my torso and says, “Just stay right here, okay? I’m gonna get help. Don’t move. Stay here, Annabel.”
I nod and my temple grinds against a swirl of carved wood filigree.
I close my eyes.
When I open them I’m not on the stairs anymore.
I’m not alone, either. A murmured conversation draws my gaze to two shadowy figures by the fireplace. I keep my balmy lids low and watch them through my eyelashes.
I recognize Fern, but the boy she’s talking to is a stranger. He looks like a remake of Rebel Without a Cause, with his hair brushed back, biker boots, and blue jeans.
I’m laid out on a couch in a wood-paneled drawing room, still soaked beneath Fern’s wool shawl. The recessed ceiling above me is frescoed with some kind of abstract jungle scene. Fern and the boy are speaking quietly to each other as a small blaze sizzles behind the fireplace grate.
“Did she say anything about being DOA?” the boy asks Fern. “Not exactly,” she admits. “But if we just tell her we’re—” “Cut the gas for a second, would ya?” he interrupts, holding his hand up between them. “You’re gonna scare her right back into her grave. You don’t want her to wind up like the townsfolk, do you?” “She’s not like them,” Fern says, glancing over her shoulder at the window behind her. Through the warped glass I can see the houses of Resurrection Peak sinking into the overgrowth. Fern turns back to the boy and tells him, “She’s like us.”
The boy nods and takes a cigarette from behind his ear. He strikes a match on the fireplace and lights his smoke.
“You know what that means, don’t you?” he says.
“Yeah, I know,” Fern says. She twists at the braided bracelet on her wrist. “But I saw her holding herself together. She won’t fade away.”
“Still. Give her a little time to get her sea legs before you shove her overboard, all right?” he says.
“Oh, drop dead twice,” Fern says. The boy smirks and a dimple sinks into one of his cheeks.
I’ve had enough of lying still.
I sit up and untangle one arm from Fern’s shawl, stretching it out toward them, fingers beckoning.
“Can I have that?” I ask the boy. I watch him without the obstruction of my mascara-sticky lashes now. His brows rise above the round rims of his tortoiseshell glasses. His eyes are inkblot black, impossible to read. I have to rely on the upward twist at the corner of his mouth to know what he thinks of my abrupt demand. He flips the cigarette around and comes closer to place the butt between my fingers. I bring it to my lips and squint at him to keep the smoke out of my eyes as I inhale.
“Careful. There’s nothing but exhaust in that pipe,” he says.
I know what he means as soon as the smoke hits my lungs— there’s no filter on his cigarette. My throat aches as I breathe out, but I don’t cough. “Thanks,” I murmur, like the cigarette doesn’t suck. I shift my eyes from him to Fern. “Sorry I passed out on you.”
“Honestly, you were getting kind of heavy anyhow,” Fern says as she plants herself on the couch beside me. “That’s Sam, by the way,” she tells me. Before I can acknowledge him, she asks, “How do you feel?”
I groan and say, “Like I got lobotomized by a power drill.” “Yowch.” Fern winces. “Do you . . . know what happened?” This time I don’t close my eyes when she asks that question, but I hear the water rushing in my ears anyway. The smoke from the cigarette toasts the riverbed muck in my throat. I swallow and say, “No. Not really.”
“You must remember something,” Fern says. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
I glance over at Sam, whose black stare makes goose bumps prick across my arms. I drop my gaze to the burning cigarette between my fingers and shrug. “Last night I . . . was at a club in Newton with my ex. His band was playing. Was supposed to play. I don’t . . . actually remember seeing them play, I just—” I lift my free hand and push my bangs back from my forehead. My palm is wet. Why haven’t I dried off yet? “I, um . . . I remember getting there with him, but I don’t . . . know what happened . . . I must have gotten too drunk or something. . . .”
That doesn’t make sense and I know it. I had a bottle of tequila stashed in my purse, but I was only taking tiny sips between Gun’s chugging mouthfuls. I was pacing myself on purpose, making sure I wouldn’t wind up drunk enough to think hooking up with my ex might be a good idea. But the last thing I remember with any coher- ent clarity is Gun leaning in toward me, his jaw scraping my cheek as he yelled over the noise of the venue, telling me he was going outside to help his bandmates grab their gear. . . .
Everything that came after is muddled and blurry, like trying to glimpse the bottom of a river through rushing water.
I lift my stinging eyes to Fern’s face and meet her gaze. “I don’t know. The club is the last thing I remember.”
Fern’s eyes are steady on mine, searching for something that she clearly isn’t finding. “Are you sure?” she says. “There’s nothing else? Nothing at all?”
There is more.
I remember running through the trees.
Someone was chasing me.
Screams splitting my lungs. Blood slicking my palms. Cold water in my nose and mouth.
I gurgle up a mouthful of icy water. It pours over my chin and splashes onto my chest, soaking into the straw-colored shawl. For a moment my eyes roll up toward the ceiling, but I don’t see the fresco overhead. I see black trees swaying against a violet sky. I see water splashing above my head. I see a shape, dark and angry, crouched above me—
Fern’s hands clutch my shoulders and wrench me out from underwater. I gasp for air like I’ve been drowning. The cigarette drops into my lap, fizzing on my damp stockings. I cough up a little more water and curl forward, pressing my forehead to the curve of Fern’s shoulder.
I shiver in her embrace as the lashing river fades from my ears.
“Oh, Annabel, I’m sorry. Don’t— don’t get lost there— in that moment— you’re here. You’re here, you’re safe, it’s okay. . . .”
My arms coil behind her, hands locking between her shoulders. I lift my face enough to see the boy by the fire, who is tense and still as he stares back at me.
I don’t know why he looks so freaked out. I’m the one who keeps drowning on dry land.
“I don’t know what happened,” I whisper through chattering teeth. “I don’t know what happened to me.”
“It’s okay,” Fern says. She squeezes at my shoulders. “Did you, um . . . do you still want to call someone?”
I chew on my jittering lip as I consider my options. I know I kept asking for a phone earlier, but now that I think about it . . . I don’t even know who I’d call for help. Not my mom— this early, she’s probably just getting off work and heading to her boyfriend’s place to sleep off her overnight shift. I was supposed to be watching my younger brothers last night, and if I called my mom and she had to drive an hour on zero sleep to come get me, and I’m pretty sure she’d just kill me anyway.
There’s my best friend, Maura, but I don’t want to call her either. The last time I saw her we got in a huge fight about my kind of rekindled thing with Gun. I’d rather hike all the way home than deal with her I-told-you-so bullshit if she finds out that after going out with my sleazebag ex I woke up in the river. And I’m definitely not calling 911. I think these kids are squatting here and I doubt they’d want the police getting involved.
Besides . . . Maura’s dad is the sheriff, and telling him where I was last night would suck even more than telling Maura or my mom. Sheriff Harker has always treated me like his surrogate daughter, but he might just cast off his last shred of paternal affection for me if he has to come pick me up hungover and drenched in my tightest black dress.
The fact is, I don’t think there’s anyone who would want to help me now.
“No,” I rasp. “No, there’s no one I can call.”
Fern looks back at Sam. He slides his hands into the pockets of his jeans and heads to the arched doorway framed by gleaming wood. “Stick with us, then. Fern’ll fix you up. Just keep it together, all right?” His black eyes shift from me to Fern. “I’m gonna go have a talk with those twins.”
And then he’s gone.
Fern helps me stand, her oval mouth fighting off a frown. As she guides me around the tea table toward the hall, she says, “No more sorrows, Annabel. You’re safe and snug here with us.”
And I believe her.
Maybe I should be creeped out by this old mansion and the ghost town that surrounds it, but I’m not.
I’m only afraid of what I see when I close my eyes.
