by Simon Hawke
“No! NO!” she screamed, pounding at him furiously in an effort to get free. But her blows had no effect, and he continued to pull her in. With a ripping sound, the thin cloth of the jacket tore and she plunged to the ground, leaving part of her jacket in Jason’s hands.
She had enough presence of mind to allow her legs to collapse beneath her and roll as she hit, dissipating the impact. She was momentarily stunned by the fall, but otherwise uninjured. She scrambled up and saw him throw the remains of her jacket to the ground and duck back into the bedroom.
She knew he’d be coming down after her, and she needed to get around to the front of the house, where the van was parked. She’d never be able to move fast enough. Somehow, she had to slow him down. She shrugged out of the remains of her torn jacket and ran to the porch. Through the window, she could see him coming down the spiral staircase. She grabbed a heavy log off the pile of firewood on the porch and stood against the wall by the front door, the log held high over her head. As he opened the door and came out on to the porch, she stepped in behind him and brought the log down on his head with all her might.
He grunted and crashed through the porch railing, falling and landing facedown on the ground. She stared at him for a second, holding her breath. He didn’t move.
She ran down the porch steps and headed for the van. She made it to the door and jumped in just as Jason was starting to pick himself up off the ground.
“Keys! Keys!” she shouted as she pawed frantically through her pockets. “Come on!”
She found them and rammed them into the ignition switch. The motor started right up and she sobbed with relief, shifted into reverse, and backed the van around.
Jason staggered into her path, limping on his wounded leg.
She set her teeth, shifted into first, and floored it, aiming the van right for him. At the last possible instant, he leaped out of the way, throwing himself to one side as the van hurtled past him. Jubilant, Chris headed for the wooden bridge . . . but the van suddenly lurched, sputtered, and stalled in the center of the bridge over the dried-up steambed.
“No!” Chris shrieked. She turned the ignition key again and pumped the gas pedal, all with no result. The starter motor whined, but the engine simply wouldn’t start.
“Come on! Come on!” she shouted.
Her gaze fell on the gas gauge. Empty! But it couldn’t be, she thought. It had read at least half full when they pulled in! There was no way she could have known that the bikers had siphoned all the gas out. She hammered at the steering wheel in frustration and then she glanced into the sideview mirror.
Jason was hobbling down the driveway toward the van, limping from the wound in his thigh, but moving quickly nevertheless. Hysteria threatened to overcome her and then she suddenly remembered the reserve tank. She reached under the dashboard and flicked the switch, pumping the gas pedal to prime the carburetor. She glanced terror-stricken in the mirror as Jason came closer and closer. Whimpering with fear, she turned the ignition key again and the engine roared to life!
She yelled triumphantly, and at that moment, the rotted, loose wooden planks beneath her cracked and splintered, buckling under the weight of the van so that the rear wheels dropped through the broken bridge planks up to the axle. Then the entire rear half of the van dropped through as the support beams gave way and Chris’ body whipped back against the seat and was then thrown forward, her head striking the steering wheel.
The engine stalled.
Dazed, Chris shook her head just as Jason reached through the open windown on the driver’s side and grabbed her around the throat. She gasped for breath, unable to cry out as the powerful fingers squeezed relentlessly. Then, in a last desperate attempt to free herself, she reached out for the window handle and cranked the window up, trapping his wrists against the top of the door frame. His hold on her loosened momentarily, and she lunged across the seat, fumbling for the door handle on the passenger side. She yanked on it, got the door open and dropped down into the dried-up streambed.
Above her, Jason rammed his head through the window, shattering the glass and freeing his hands.
Chris tumbled as she landed, then rolled to her feet and ran back along the streambed toward the barn. She couldn’t get back up to the road now; he had cut her off. She had to get some kind of weapon. It was her only chance.
She climbed up out of the streambed and hopped over the fence around the barn, looking over her shoulder. Jason was dropping down into the streambed after her, hobbling quickly on his wounded leg, as unstoppable as a juggernaut.
She ran around the front of the barn and struggled to pull the door open against the fiercely blowing wind. She leaned back, putting all her weight into it, got the door open, slipped inside, and grabbed the first thing that came to hand, a long-handled shovel, to drop into the slots as a cross bar. She was just in time. No sooner was the shovel in place than the doors shuddered as Jason hit them outside.
She jumped back with a cry and started looking frantically for something to use as a weapon. The doors cracked and a gap opened between them. In another second, he’d break through! There was no time! All she could think of was escape. She had to get away from him. She ran to the ladder leading up to the loft and rapidly climbed up.
The doors cracked and the ancient hinges groaned as Jason forced them apart still further, reaching through and knocking the shovel out of the slots. He burst inside, looking around inside the dark recesses of the barn. Then he noticed the long, heavy, two-by-four wooden crossbar leaning against the side wall. He closed the doors behind him, picked up the crossbar, and slammed it down into the slots, wedging it in place. Now she was trapped inside. With him.
He stormed into the barn, looking for her everywhere, throwing open the gates to the wooden stalls, tearing the place apart as he searched for her. Above him, Chris clung to a ceiling rafter, praying that he wouldn’t notice her up there in the darkness. There had been nowhere else to run. She knew he’d look up in the loft next. The square hayloft window was open, and if she kept extremely still, maybe it wouldn’t occur to him to check up in the rafters, and he’d think she jumped. Below her, Jason was throwing things all over the place, trying to find her. Stacks of hay bales that weighed hundreds of pounds came tumbling down as he threw them about effortlessly, seeking her hiding place.
Exhausted, Chris began to lose her grip. She tried to wrap her legs still tighter around the rafter, but she overbalanced and it took all her willpower to keep from crying out as she slipped beneath the rafter, hanging upside down by her arms and legs. As Jason moved around below her, she felt her strength ebbing rapidly and knew that she wouldn’t last much longer.
Oh, God, she thought, please, no, no . . .
Her legs slipped off the beam. Now she was only hanging by her hands. Her arms felt as if they were on fire as she desperately tried to hold on, but it was useless. She felt herself losing her grip and she looked down . . . Jason was directly below her.
She fell.
She landed right on top of him and they both crashed to the dirt floor of the barn. She scrambled up immediately, driven by stark terror, and bolted for the door. Behind her, Jason slowly recovered from the shock of the impact and pushed himself up off the ground.
Chris grabbed the wooden crossbar and pushing up on it, but it was firmly wedged inside the iron slots and she couldn’t even budge it. She cried out, throwing all her strength against it, but it was useless.
Behind her, Jason rose to his feet and picked up the machete he had used earlier on Andy. There was dried blood on the blade. Chris, still struggling with the crossbar, looked over her shoulder and screamed as he raised the machete and lunged at her. She leaped out of the way just in time as the blade whistled through the air and embedded itself deeply in the barn door.
She raced to the ladder leading up to the loft as he struggled to free the blade of the machete from the door. She was gasping like an asthmatic. She had almost no strength left, and was at the limits of he
r endurance. Only fear drove her on. She threw herself through the trapdoor in the floor of the loft and slammed it shut, rolling a hay bale over it. Then she looked around madly for anything that she could use to defend herself. A long-handled shovel was lying on top of a stack of hay bales. She grabbed it and hid behind the stack, breathing like a long-distance runner after a marathon as she desperately tried to think of what to do. He’d be up after her any moment.
Jason yanked the machete free from the wooden door and turned to go after her. Several small pieces of straw drifted down from overhead, having fallen between cracks in the floorboards of the loft. He glanced up and headed for the ladder leading up to the hayloft.
Clutching the machete, he quickly climbed up the ladder, intent on cutting her to pieces, determined to catch this victim who kept escaping him and dismember her, chop her into bits until she was a bloody stew so that it would be impossible to recognize that the pices had ever come from a human being. The killing lust raged through him, blood pounded in his ears until it seemed as if a tribe of cannibals were beating drums inside his head. He reached the top of the ladder and pushed against the trapdoor. It moved about an inch or two then slammed back down. Something heavy was on top of it. In a fury, he shoved against it with all his might. The hay bale holding it down was knocked loose and the trapdoor slammed open, striking against the hayloft floor with a crack that sounded like a rifle shot.
He came up through the floor of the loft and stepped out through the trapdoor, rising to his full height and holding the machete out before him. Just then, Chris stepped in behind him, and with every ounce of remaining strength that she possessed, she brought the iron shovel down upon his head.
There was a dull clanging sound and Jason fell full length upon the floor of the loft. The machete slipped out his grasp and dropped out of the open hayloft window to the ground below. Chris stood over him with the shovel, ready to bring it down again, but Jason remained motionless upon the floor.
Chris wasted no time. She quickly grabbed the rope hanging from the block and tackle used to haul the hay bales up to the loft and she fashioned a noose with it. Loosening it, she bent down, slipped it over his head, and drew it tight around his neck. Then she crouched down beside him and strained to roll his heavy bulk over to the window. She couldn’t move him. He was incredibly heavy.
She put her arms under his side and gritted her teeth, groaning with the effort as she tried to push him out the window. She leaned into him, straining, putting all her weight into it, and she managed to roll him over onto his side.
His fingers twitched.
With an agonized moan, Chris straight-armed his limp form until it rolled over once again and teetered on the edge of the window opening . . .
As his hands clutched at her, she pushed him out the window.
The rope whizzed through the block like a nylon fishing line screaming from a reel when a marlin hits the hook, and Jason fell straight down at the ground until the stopper knot hit the block and the rope suddenly pulled taut around his neck. It jerked his body in midair so that, for a second, it seemed as if he were about to come up again like a yo-yo on a string. But he simply hung there, twisting slightly, dangling only a few feet from the ground, hanged as effectively as if he had been dropped through the trapdoor of a gallows.
Chris stepped over to the window, looking down as Jason’s body swung gently from the rope, his arms limp at his sides. She was at the end of her rope as well. Tears streamed from her eyes as she stared down at the awful sight, unable to take her eyes away from it, unable to believe what she had been forced to do.
With a sob, she turned away and slowly came back down the ladder, then staggered wearily toward the door.
She couldn’t believe that it was over. A dozen times she was sure she had been about to die. She felt utterly exhausted, drained, and shocked almost to the point of catatonia. She tried to push the wooden crossbar up out of the slots, but it was hopeless. She couldn’t budge it.
For a moment, she sagged against the doors, crying quietly. She looked around, trying to think how she would get the doors open, and her gaze fell on a large, rusted iron pulley wheel hanging from a peg in the wall. She took the pulley down, held it in both hands, drew a deep breath, and swung it hard against the underside of the wooden crossbar. Once, twice, three times, she kept pounding at it until, finally, the crossbar moved up slightly as she jarred it loose. She dropped the iron pulley wheel to the ground, and with an effort, lifted the cross bar out of the slots and dropped it to the floor.
She grabbed the door handles and leaned back, pulling the barn doors open. There, Jason’s body was suspended directly in front of her about three feet off the ground.
She stepped back, staring at him numbly. The cold wind blew in through the open doors, blowing her hair, making his body sway slightly on the end of the rope, and suddenly his eyes snapped open.
“No!” she screamed, recoiling from the impossible sight. “NO! You can’t be alive!”
She retreated back into the barn in stunned disbelief as Jason brought his arm up and grasped the rope just above the noose around his neck. With one arm, he hoisted himself up on the rope, giving it some slack, and with his other hand, he pulled at the noose, loosening it and drawing it up over his head. As he pulled the noose off, his mask slipped and Chris saw his hideously misshapen face, a grotesque vision straight out of her worst nightmares.
“It’s you!” she cried, shaking her head and backing away from him. “No! NO! NO!”
It all came back to her as she recognized him from the horrible night in the woods when he had attacked her and she had blacked out. Her mind had retreated into unconsciousness rather than face the awful reality of what was being done to her, and now as it all came flooding back with terrifying clarity, she broke, giving voice to a frenzied scream that bubbled up from deep within her and shattered the stillness of the night outside, echoing through the darkness.
Jason pulled the mask back over his face and dropped down to the ground. He bent and picked up the machete that had fallen from the loft. As Chris stumbled backward, screaming uncontrollably, he advanced upon her, raising the machete for the killing stroke.
Something hit him from behind.
He staggered forward, thrown off balance as Ali, his face smashed and bleeding, his shaved skull caked with blood, threw his arms around him and tried to pull him to the ground. Jason shook him off and spun around, the machete came down with a whoosh, and Ali’s right hand flew off, severed cleanly at the wrist. The biker gave a high-pitched scream as he stared at the blood spouting like a fountain from his stump.
Jason brought the machete down again and chopped the biker to the ground. He stood over him and raised the machete once again, bringing it down with a savage force, again and again. Ali wasn’t screaming anymore, but Jason kept chopping away like a crazed butcher cutting meat.
Chris ran over to the tool rack and seized the first weapon she saw, an ax, and as Jason slashed away at the dead biker with demented fury, Chris raised the ax high over her head and moved toward him. Jason gave a final brutal blow to the biker’s vivisected corpse and turned back toward her as she gave a wild cry and swung the ax with all her might. The blade thunked through his white plastic mask and became buried in his forehead.
Chris stepped back, shocked at what she’d done, and suddenly Jason’s arms shot out for her. With the ax still embedded in his skull, he staggered toward her, arms outstretched, fingers grasping . . .
“NOOO!” Chris screamed, staggering back, incredulous that he was still alive. “NO! NO! NO!”
Feeling the wall behind her back, she shrank against it, screaming hysterically as he staggered closer, his hands reaching out for her. And then he fell forward like a cut-down tree and landed with a thud on the ground right at her feet.
Chris stood, trembling against the wall, staring down at him with terror. She drew several shuddering breaths and prodded his head with the toe of her sneaker, then immedi
ately jerked her foot back.
He didn’t move.
She was afraid to trust the evidence of her sense. She shuffled to one side, still pressed back against the wall, and then went around him in a wide circle, staring down at his massive body lying there with the bloody ax embedded in his head. She slowly edged around him and went outside, breathing heavily, her throat raw from screaming. In a daze, she walked down the path leading to the lake.
The wind had died down and Crystal Lake was dark and smooth as glass. The night was cold, but she didn’t even feel the chill. Knowing she was on the verge of collapsing, she followed some blind instinct that led her to seek safety out upon the lake, where no one could reach her. At the boat dock, she sank down to her knees and pushed the canoe, which she and her friends had brought, into the water. She climbed into it, huddled on the bottom, then drifted away from the shore into the darkness.
She sprawled in the bottom of the canoe, staring vacantly up at the stars. The gentle, slightly rolling motion of the canoe as it drifted lulled her into a deep and dreamless sleep.
Something heavy struck the side of the canoe and Chris jerked awake, sitting up violently and crying out, “No!” And then she realized where she was and looked around. It was morning. The canoe had drifted out to the small island in the middle of the lake and had struck a drifting log.
She sighed with relief, then reached out to push the partially submerged log away from the canoe. She hesitated, staring at the log with sudden fear. She forced herself to touch it, then jerked her hand back. She set her teeth and shoved the log away, then cried out and threw her arms up to protect herself as something swept past her head . . . but it was only a duck landing on the water. Chris squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. Her nerves were ragged. She was starting at the slightest sound, the faintest shadow, the slightest movement. She counted to ten and opened her eyes, looking back toward the house.