Written by Tom Carrao
If you subscribe to the idea of little girls being made of sugar and spice and everything nice, you may want to apply elsewhere. Damien Angelica Walters blasts apart this aged and outmoded traditional sensibility in favour of a more complicated and complex contemplation of what lies deep in the heart of female adolescence, as an opening quote from Margaret Atwood states, “Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized”. Author Angela Carter would certainly understand, as would Anne Perry (from whose early life Peter Jackson’s horrifically exhilarating Heavenly Creatures is adapted, which is a perilous visualisation of the closed, heightened state of fantasy shared by two young women and the possible loss of moral perspective such obsession may spawn).
Now on to The Dead Girls Club… On a pleasant September day, Heather Cole, a clinician for troubled youth, innocently receives a package at her office. Its contents set off deep-seated alarm and dread, reaching back through decades to cataclysmic events long buried and banished (“sometimes you bury everything so deep you forget it’s there because it’s the only way you can make it through the day”). Structural defense mechanisms in place for years to protect sanity and stability are dismantled. A necklace, once the tangible promise of a committed eternal friendship, bone and soul-deep, now tarnished by time—and an object thought lost forever—slides treacherously and heavily from an envelope. A threat, a warning, and a conduit through which Heather must again confront her participation in her best friend’s death. “We make up stories when it hurts too much to tell the real ones…the ones with teeth, the ones that keep us awake at night.”
In 1991, Heather and Becca, along with fellow members Gia and Rachel, assembled regularly for Dead Girls Club meetings in which they would exchange information about and pore over facts of serial killers. Walters locates her story in the very recognisable world, as the girls discuss legendary individuals such as Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Aileen Wuornos, and all the way through to the more recent Slender-Man case (the two leads are also frequent readers of Stephen King).
This macabre, concentrated fascination with death and mayhem finds culminates in the imaginary story of the Red Lady, a witch put to death by the patriarchy of a small community spooked and offended by her audacity to guide the women of her village to act independently of the men. She is subject to humiliation and torture for her transgressions, but through sheer will and spite returns to haunt and dispatch all those who condemned her, including pressured women, now a vessel by which others may seek vengeance for a price. What is unvoiced, given the growing age of the girls, but very subconsciously felt, is how much the narrative around young girls is based upon violence done to them, of perceived vulnerability and fragility, perhaps a direct factor in the creation of female figures who demand retribution against injustice.
Gathered together within the confines of an unfinished property on a housing development lot, driven by an emotional volatility generated by hormonal surge, the girls enact rituals to draw out the Red Lady. Walters skilfully presents the visitations in such a way that they work equally on both a natural and supernatural level, keeping the reader off-kilter. What is plain to see is that the need for the Red Lady to be real is most important for Becca, a need mired in very immediate, substantive anguish, rage, helplessness and pain, all the while a bewildered, loyal Heather struggling to keep up with a friend increasingly skipping in and out of her comprehension. Becca is a product of chaos and disorder, secret with wounds and malformations, entrenched in a covenant with Heather in which nothing may be confessed to a wider world, an oath of silence taken.
As current-day Heather becomes the victim of a mounting campaign of harassment, her relationships with her nearest and dearest suffer, devolving into suspicions and distrust of everyone’s behaviour, her steadfast refusal to confess her past alienating her from those with whom she should be closest. Her mother, one of the few people to have lived through the ordeal with her daughter, is reluctant to dredge the past. In a bid to investigate all angles, Heather reconnects with Rachel and Gia if for no other reason than to eliminate them as conspirators. Unable to process the enormity of her past and exasperated by the possibility of exposure as a murderer, Heather loses all proportion and starts to exhibit erratic and desperate conduct-clarity has become a casualty, most astoundingly displayed in a party sequence that steadily spirals out of control, as the gears shift ever tighter around her frayed nerves and confounding behaviour, pushing her towards breakdown.
As resolution nears, and a more comprehensive explanation of the actions of the fateful night emerge, conditions conform more to sad human dimensions than any work of the uncanny. The spectre of abuse (psychological, physical), spiritual starvation, love withheld, contribute to a personal environment of despondency, damage and distortion, of outrageous demands made of a best friend’s fealty and pledge. By the end, many hands have converged in the final pitiable stage of the tale.
Ghosts, literal or not, haunt the core of this novel. Strong emotional connections still reside in Heather, in fact, in many ways a ghost in her own life, Heather has never quite moved on from that primal moment, outward appearances notwithstanding. It’s clear that transpiring events will force engagement with her central trauma and perhaps offer a hopeful, if painful, reckoning. Walters ramps up the tension and thrills (and twists) as the novel careens towards its conclusion. Several revelations and layers of involvement strikingly announce themselves, deepening the story’s study of how far one will go in duty and deed to loved ones. A spectacular final confrontation provides the means of purge, a conflagration both genuine and spiritual, leading Heather to a final redemptive gesture, a commencement of healing and peace. With great precision and sensibility, Walters immerses the reader in this sea of sudden, earned calm in which the characters may begin to discern proper perspective, finally free of the crushing noise and grip of the long ago.
The Dead Girls Club is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
A supernatural thriller in the vein of A Head Full of Ghosts about two young girls, a scary story that becomes far too real, and the tragic–and terrifying–consequences that follow one of them into adulthood.
Red Lady, Red Lady, show us your face…
In 1991, Heather Cole and her friends were members of the Dead Girls Club. Obsessed with the macabre, the girls exchanged stories about serial killers and imaginary monsters, like the Red Lady, the spirit of a vengeful witch killed centuries before. Heather knew the stories were just that, until her best friend Becca began insisting the Red Lady was real–and she could prove it.
That belief got Becca killed.
It’s been nearly thirty years, but Heather has never told anyone what really happened that night–that Becca was right and the Red Lady was real. She’s done her best to put that fateful summer, Becca, and the Red Lady, behind her. Until a familiar necklace arrives in the mail, a necklace Heather hasn’t seen since the night Becca died.
The night Heather killed her.
Now, someone else knows what she did…and they’re determined to make Heather pay.
