Friday the 13th 3

by Simon Hawke

  She disappeared from view, swinging back through the hayloft door, and a moment later she came swinging out again like a little girl in a playground on a set of swings.

  “This feels so goooooooooooood!” she yelled, giggling like a child.

  Loco simply stared at her. He couldn’t believe it. What did the silly bitch think they were doing here, playing games for chrissake? He glanced back over his shoulder, looking in Ali’s direction. The van was out of sight, around a bend in the driveway, behind a large oak tree. He shook his head. If Ali saw this, he’d lose it for damn sure.

  “Ali’s gonna be pissed if you don’t stop this screwin’ around!” he called up to her. “We got shit to do!”

  The hoist came swinging out by itself, with no sign of Fox.

  Loco waited for a moment, staring up at the hayloft, but Fox didn’t reappear. He scowled and went into the barn.

  “Fox!” he called, getting really irritated. He wanted to get on with it; he didn’t feel like wasting time playing nursemaid to Ali’s old lady. “Where are ya?”

  The cigarette dangled from his mouth. I oughta just dump the goddamn gas out and toss the butt down and be done with it, he thought. Let the stupid bitch find her own way out. Serve her right if she got burned. He ground his teeth together. No, then he’d have to deal with Ali. Where’s Fox? he imagined Ali saying. Oh, she’s back in the barn, man. Oughta be nice and crispy by now. No, he didn’t guess Ali would go for that. Shit. He’d better get her and bring her the hell out.

  “Stop screwin’ around!” he yelled up at the loft. “You’re messin’ everything up!”

  There was no response.

  “Shit,” he said savagely, staring up the ladder to the hayloft. He’d had it with her. He didn’t care if she was Ali’s old lady or not, he was going to grab her by the goddamn throat and toss her right out that big square window up there. “You’re dead now, woman!” he shouted.

  He came up through the opening in the floor and stepped off the ladder onto the floorboards.

  “Fox!”

  He turned around . . . his jaw dropped and his eyes opened wide with shock at the sight of Fox dangling in the air, pinned to a crossbeam, impaled through the throat by the long tines of a pitchfork like a butterfly pinned to a board. Her eyes were ghastly, wide open, frozen into a stare of utter horror. Blood trickled down her leathers and dripped down onto the floor of the loft, soaking into the straw.

  Loco panicked and turned to run.

  The second pitchfork was driven deep into his stomach with a dull, wet, smacking sound; the long, sharp tines ripped through his entrails, penetrating deeply, going straight through him and coming out his back. Blood bubbled up into his throat as he opened his mouth to scream, and his hands clutched helplessly at the wooden shaft of the pitchfork, his horrified gaze fixed on his attacker. He staggered forward one step, and then his legs turned to rubber and collapsed beneath him. There was a brief period of the most incredible, agonizing pain he had ever experienced in his entire life, and then everything started spinning and he was falling as fire exploded in his mind and the whole world started burning.

  Ali came hurrying up to the barn doors, carrying a heavy can of gasoline in each hand. He scowled at the sight of the closed doors and kicked at them, looking around to see if anyone had heard him. He waited for either Fox or Loco to let him in, but no one came. Angrily, he kicked the door again.

  “Loco! Fox! Open, this damn door!”

  There was no response from inside. Ali gritted his teeth and set the gas cans down, then pushed the door open himself. He picked up the cans and went inside, setting them down once again and looking all around the interior of the barn. They were nowhere in sight. He heard the sound of heavy footsteps up in the hayloft and looked up.

  “What the hell are you two doin’ up there?” he demanded angrily. “You hear me talkin’ to you?”

  He stormed over to the ladder and grabbed it, about to start climbing up, when suddenly Loco’s body was thrown down from the hayloft. It came flying down at Ali, landing right on top of him and sending him crashing to the ground. His eyes went wide as he saw all the blood and he shoved Loco’s corpse away, scrambling out from under it.

  “FOX!” he screamed, and then he turned quickly as someone dropped down from the hayloft, landing back in a dark corner of the barn.

  Ali looked around quickly and his gaze fell on a rusted machete among the array of gardening tools. He grabbed it and started for the back of the barn, his eyes glittering with homicidal fury.

  “When I find you, you bastard, you’re a dead man!” he said.

  He rushed back to the stalls, brandishing the machete, and then he spun quickly as he heard someone jump down behind him from the pile of hay bales in the corner. In the dim light inside the barn, he saw a huge figure coming at him, holding something in his hand. Ali swung the machete at the shadowy figure’s head with all his might.

  Moving with amazing speed, his attacker ducked beneath the blow and Ali staggered, momentarily caught off balance, and then stars burst before his eyes as an iron plumber’s wrench came down upon his skull and he fell crashing to the floor. The wrench descended on him three more times like a sledgehammer driving in a railroad spike, but Ali never felt it.

  Chapter Five

  He saw them through the window of the barn, the girl dressed in a scanty blue bikini and wrapped in a towel, the boy in shorts, sneakers, and a T-shirt. Their wet hair was plastered down and they walked close to one another, hand in hand. They were coming up from the boat dock by the lake, heading directly toward the barn. Their voices floated up to him.

  “What’re you doing?” Debbie said as Andy started to pull her toward the barn.

  “We haven’t been in the barn yet,” Andy said, with a sly grin. “Let’s take a look.”

  “Not now,” said Debbie, pulling away from him and walking back toward the house. “I’m cold.” The water in the lake was freezing and it had brought on a sudden attack of cramps and mild nausea.

  “How about it, Debbie?” Andy said, wiggling his eyebrows and leering. “A little roll in the hay?”

  “Go play with yourself,” she said, grinning at him. “I’m going in the house.”

  “Hey, wait up!” he yelled, laughing and running after her.

  Jason Vorhees slowly unclenched his fists as the couple headed back up toward the house. The bloodstained plumber’s wrench dropped from his hand and fell onto the floor of the barn, next to the prostrate form of Ali. He looked down at the biker’s blood-spattered body and, for a moment, the raging fever within him ebbed. His breathing slowed and became more regular. A curious sort of calm came over him, as it always did after a kill. But it only lasted for a little while, and each time the period of calm was briefer than the last.

  He had fled from the deserted Camp Crystal Lake known to the locals as “Camp Blood” after the sheriff, with assistance from local hunters and the state police, had organized a search for him. It was the largest dragnet in the history of the state. They had started at Paul Holt’s counselor training center, the scene of the recent murders, and from there they had gone on to the abandoned camp, where they had found the ruined, patched-together cabin he’d been living in. From hiding, he had watched them carrying out the bodies of the counselors he had slain and brought them to the shrine he had erected to his mother, the centerpiece of which had been her rotting, decapitated head. It was all that remained of her after the girl named Alice, the soul survivor of her vengeance, had killed her at the camp, beheading her with a machete.

  Thinking he had drowned and blaming his death on inattentive counselors, Pamela Vorhees had been driven mad with grief and she had embarked upon a murderous vendetta to avenge her son. She butchered two young counselors while they were making love, savagely hacked them to pieces with a hunting knife so that their bodies were barely recognizable. Then she had poisoned the camp water supply. Each time someone tried to open up the camp again, she stopped them until Steve
Christy, the son of the original owner, returned with a setup crew of counselors, determined to reopen the camp and prove once and for all that “Camp Blood” wasn’t cursed, as people in the town of Crystal Lake believed. Enraged, she killed them all, except for Alice, who, in terrified desperation, struck out at her with a machete and ended her pathetic life. Only what Pamela Vorhees had never realized was that her son, Jason, had survived.

  Jason had drowned in Crystal Lake on that fateful Friday the 13th, but some feral spark within him had refused to die. He had come to on the shore, with no memory of how he had dragged himself up out of the slime at the bottom of the lake. The last thing he remembered was crying out in terror as the waters of the lake closed over him, the awful feeling of the water rushing down his throat, flooding his lungs as he tried uselessly to breathe . . . and then nothing.

  When he found himself in a clump of bushes on the shore he rolled over on his side and retched for what seemed like hours, vomiting up filthy, stagnant water, worms, and writhing maggots. After a time, he regained enough strength to crawl a short distance from the lake and collapse beneath a stand of pine trees, where he slept while his body continued the strange process of regeneration that had kept it alive despite all the rules of nature.

  He did not know how much time had passed since he had drowned, how long he had remained on the bottom of the lake, but even had he known, chances were he would not have understood. The ordeal of his “death” had dealt an irreparable blow to his tortured mind, which had never really functioned properly to start with. Despite the supernatural ability of his body to shut down and repair itself, his mind was never fully able to recover from the effects of brain death. He lived, but he did not really reason. He was a human shark, motivated by nothing more complicated than a relentless urge to kill.

  He had avenged his mother’s death, then returned to the abandoned camp on the shore of Crystal Lake to carry on her grisly work. And when Paul Holt had come to open his camp counselor training center on the lakeshore near the abandoned summer camp, Jason had killed them all, save for Ginny Field, who had survived miraculously after he left her for dead. When they came with dogs and rifles to hunt him, he fled deep into the woods, then plunged into a stream and followed its course, causing the dogs to lose the scent while he doubled back to the lake and worked his way around the searchers. Instinctively, he outmaneuvered them and did the last thing they expected him to do. He returned to Crystal Lake.

  They expected him to flee deeper and deeper into the woods, heading for high ground. They would never think to look for him on the north side of the lake, closer to the town, where there was the thickest concentration of summer homes and vacation cabins. By keeping to rocky ground and then wading through the stream which fed the lake, he left no tracks for them to follow. When it grew dark, they gave up their search.

  And then he started to hunt.

  Rick parked the battered Volkswagen just off the road overlooking a quiet cove, about twenty-five yards from the water. He switched off the radio seconds before the announcer came on with a special bulletin updating the progress of the manhunt for “The Camp Blood Killer.” There was no television in the cabin and none of them had been listening to the radio since they arrived. So far, they hadn’t heard a thing about it.

  He turned the engine off, left the headlights on, then got out of the car and walked with Chris down to the water’s edge. They sat down on a log and looked out over the water, which gleamed with the reflection of the moonlight and the beams from the car’s headlamps. When Chris rubbed her shoulders because she felt chilly, Rick took off his denim jacket and draped it around her.

  “Is that better?” he said, moving close to her.

  She smiled at him in a distracted manner. He picked up a few pebbles and tossed them one by one into the water. He glanced at Chris after a few moments. She seemed a thousand miles away. He suddently wanted very much to take her in his arms and kiss her, but as he put his arm around her, he felt her body tense. He sighed and took his arm away. He knew something was bothering her, but he couldn’t figure out what the hell it was. Was it something he had done or failed to do? Something had really changed between them since last summer. Maybe there was someone else back home, he thought. But surely, if that were the case, she would have told him.

  “You know, I don’t think I could live anywhere else,” he said, looking out at the lake and just talking to make conversation, hoping he could get her to open up. “The nights are always so peaceful and quiet.”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment, then, still not looking at him, she said softly, “It’s deceiving.”

  He glanced at her sharply, puzzled by the peculiar comment. “What do you mean?”

  Again, she was silent for a moment, as if she were struggling to get the words out. “The quiet can fool you,” she said finally. He saw her swallow hard. “It fooled me.”

  Rick sensed that she was on the verge of telling him about it, whatever it was, but she was having a difficult time of it. Suddenly he didn’t think it was another guy back home. It was something worse. Something was really bothering her. Something had happened and she was scared.

  “Chris,” he said, gently prompting her, “why did you come back here?”

  She hesitated, moistening her lips. Her mouth had gone suddenly dry. “To prove something to myself,” she said at last. “To prove I’m stronger than I think I am.”

  “What about us?” Rick said.

  “I’m here with you,” she said, looking at him intently. “Can’t that be enough for now?”

  “I don’t know,” said Rick, his frustration mounting. She seemed about to tell him, but suddenly she backed off again. “I mean, I don’t see you for months on end, and when I do, you put this barrier between us. How do I break though?”

  She sighed heavily. “You’re right,” she said. “I should have told you everything a long time ago, but I just couldn’t.” She bit her lower lip and shook her head, looking away from him. She looked as if she was about to cry.

  “Look, Chris,” he said, “you don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to.”

  “I want to,” she said, looking at him earnestly. “I want you to know what happened so you’ll understand.”

  She looked away from him and stared out at the water. She was afraid to tell him, afraid that he wouldn’t understand, but she could not go on any longer without telling him about it. It wasn’t fair. She owed him at least that much.

  “Everything is so clear in my mind,” she said, “as if it were happening right now.” She shut her eyes a moment, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “I don’t know if you remember,” she said, “but when you dropped my off that night, it was very late. I knew my parents would be waiting up for me. But I didn’t care. We’d had such a good time.”

  She sighed again and looked at him briefly before looking away once more. He was watching her intently, allowing her to proceed at her own pace, just listening and not commenting. He was doing his best to make it easier for her. Maybe he really would understand, she thought. Maybe he won’t blame me, as my parents did. The thought made it a little easier for her to go on. Now that she had started, she had to tell the whole story and it simply came spilling out of her.

  “The minute I got in the door,” she said, “they started yelling at me and cursing me. We had such a big fight. My mom slapped me. That was the first time my mother had ever hit me. I couldn’t believe it. I ran out the door and into the woods. I wanted to punish them. I decided to hide out all night. I’d get them so worried that they’d be sorry for what they did.”

  Her voice caught and she took another deep breath, trying to steady her nerves. Talking about it was bringing it vividly into focus. Rick took hold of her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. She continued.

  “It had been raining out and the woods were cold and wet. I found a dry spot under an oak tree and I guess I fell asleep. All I can remember next is being startled out of
sleep by the sound of footsteps. I was sure it was Dad, so I sat up and listened for him.”

  She began to tremble.

  “The footsteps stopped,” she said, her heart beating faster as she relived it in her mind. Her mouth felt dry. Her skin was clammy. “Then I heard this crackling noise behind me. I turned around and standing there was this hideous-looking man . . . so grotesque he was almost inhuman. He . . . he had a knife and . . . and he attacked me with it!”

  Tears started down her face as she gripped Rick’s hand with a fierce intensity but avoided looking at him. She felt herself shaking and she fought to keep her voice steady. I’ve got to tell it, she thought desperately, I’ve got to, this is part of it, I’ve got to face what happened . . .

  “I . . . I was so hysterical, I don’t know how I was even able to think,” she said, her voice trembling as she blinked back the tears, but they were running freely now, making long, moist trails down her cheeks. “But I kicked the knife out of his hands and I ran.” She gulped, forcing herself to go on. “But he ran after me and pulled me down to the ground. I was kicking and screaming, but it didn’t do any good. Then . . . oh, God . . . then he dragged me by the hair along the ground . . . And I . . . I blacked out . . . I just don’t know what happened after that. I—just—don’t—know!”

  She broke down, sobbing uncontrollably, burying her face in Rick’s shoulder as he gently pulled her close and stroked her hair. He had an agonized expression on his face as he understood for the first time why she had stiffened every time he tried to touch her, what it must have been like for her to be assaulted like that and not know what happened, suspecting the awful truth, wanting to know and, at the same time, being terrified of knowing.

  “It’s all right,” he said softly, stroking her hair gently, feeling her pain. “You’re all right now.”

  He held her until she cried herself out and pulled away, taking deep breaths as she tried to calm herself. She wiped her eyes and smiled at him weakly, grateful beyond words for this understanding.