Page 62 of Girl, Deceived

Ella ignored the question for a moment. ‘And finally, Ginny Mathers. At this scene, he left us this unique mask. That’s because this ishim. It’s not a representation of horror icon, this ishismask,hisidentity, the slasher villainhecreated himself.’

Ripley scratched her chin. ‘And by putting himself in the sequence, he was equating himself with the greats, if you can call them that.’

‘You got it. Michael, Pinhead… then whoever this guy is.’ Ella rushed over to her laptop, clicked through a few pages, and found the thread she'd been on barely an hour ago.

‘Okay, I get it, but what movie are you talking about? Not that B-movie that was filmed at the cabins years ago?’

‘No. He only killed Kathleen there because it represented horror cinema. Like I mentioned before, this guy doesn’t do subtext.’

‘You’re telling me.’

Ella spun her laptop around to show Ripley. ‘And maybe that’s why his indie movie got shut down last year.’

Ripley leaned in and read the title aloud. ‘Indie film casting call. In Hell. Masked killer rampages LA.’ She peered back at Ella. ‘In Hell?’

‘I caught this earlier, but I dismissed it because the post was a year old. But read the thread. It's an old casting call announcement for a horror film. It's all there, synopsis, cast requirements, everything. If you read through the posts, it's like a timeline of this film's history. I've only skimmed it, but from what I can tell, the film is about a masked killer moving through Los Angeles, targeting victims that epitomized horror movie cliches. Look, the synopsis is a few replies down.' Ella commandeered the laptop, scrolling down.

In LA's forgotten corners, a new kind of terror emerges. As night falls, a mysterious maked killer known as The Director begins a rampage, turning the cliches of classic horror films on their heads. At the center of the Director's gruesome spree is a group of women, all survivors, but The Director seeks to redefine their statuses, bringing a new meaning to the term ‘final girl.’

Will they turn the tables on The Director and bring his reign of terror to an end, or will they become the final victims in his twisted film? Only the final reel will tell.

Perched over the laptop, Ella waited for her partner’s confirmation, some validation that she hadn’t going crazy or was making ridiculous leaps.

Then Ripley said, ‘I am in hell, help me.’

‘Exactly,’ Ella yelled, drawing a few eyeballs her way. ‘He wasn’t just quoting a famous horror line, he was trying to be smart. Our guy was hiding the title of his film right in front of us.’

Ripley smirked. ‘Devious son of a bitch. Like you said, sometimes the truth is right in front of you from the start.’

‘Right? And Kathleen was the first victim. He hid his end game in sight from the beginning. Another fiction trope.’

Ripley grabbed on the edge of the desk for support. ‘Apparently this film shut down because of production issues, am I seeing that right?’

‘Yeah. They ran out of money. Looks like they fought to bring it back but ultimately gave up.’

'Well, maybe someone hasn't completely given up, but who? Producer, actor, what?'

Ella pointed at the synopsis again. 'Remember, subtlety isn't our guy's forte.'

Ripley clocked it, slamming her hand on the desk in triumph. ‘The Director.’

‘Bingo.’

‘But who is he? The main post has been deleted.’

Ella assumed the position in front of her laptop. Time for a little technological wizardry.

‘Once something’s on the Internet, it’s there forever,’ she said. ‘We just need to get a little creative.’

‘Look through the user’s old posts, maybe?’

Ella had tried that as she was running back to the precinct. ‘This is the only post he’s made. But don’t fret, because caching might be in our favor.’

‘Caching?’

Ella fired up a search engine and keyword searched the URL of the Dread Pages forum post. It popped up. One result. ‘Cached pages are a snapshot of a page from an older time. Now, our little director made this post last year but deleted it six months ago. But with a little luck…’ Ella clicked the drop-down menu beside the search result, opened up the cached version of the page.

A white, text-only version of the page popped up.

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