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* * *
Moonlight filtered through the thick canopy of leaves, speckling the forest floor with minute shifting points of light. The sky was clear over the cold black waters of the lake. Last year’s drift of leaves broke the silence, rustling in the sudden light breeze along the ground, but the insects remained mute.
Out of the blackness of an oak grove, a shadow moved. With a heavy tread, it walked through the trees and disappeared along the shore of the lake.
The breeze died and the leaves lay where they fell. Moments later, the insects began to sing.
* * *
Chris Higgins ran until she was out of breath. The trees became thicker around her, but she didn’t stop. Her thoughts flew in circles, the fight with her parents and their shouts drowning out the memory of being with Rick.
They had been waiting for her when she came home, angry that Rick had dropped her off so late. He was her first, and he had been so gentle, so sweet. The yelling, cursing at her, had upset her and she had told them she had slept with Rick. Her cheek still felt hot from the sting of her mother’s slap.
She had turned and run from them, into the forest near the lake.
They destroyed the most beautiful night of my life!
Tears ran down her face. She ran until they couldn’t find her, until their voices calling after her had faded.
I’m not going back. Let them worry, I hope they’re sick with it. I’ll stay out here all night. I’ll make them sorry for what they did to me.
The woods were cold and damp from the rain. When she was out of breath, she stopped and found a dry spot under a rotted oak tree. Sitting down to rest, she closed her eyes and tried to slow her breathing.
I can’t believe she hit me…
She drifted off into a doze until the sound of heavy footsteps woke her.
It has to be my dad.
Chris rose and hid behind the tree, but the footsteps stopped. It was so dark; she couldn’t see anything.
A cracking noise sounded behind her and she whirled – gasping in horror at the creature that came out of the trees. She drew in a deep breath and screamed.
* * *
The staccato rhythm of the footsteps that had woken him stopped so abruptly that it took a moment to find the intruder again. When he did, he stopped and stood silently, watching. Only his right hand moved – the thumb rubbing the handle of the hunting knife he held.
The girl had fallen or settled down to rest and sat panting on the ground at the base of a rotten oak tree.
Was she alone? He listened a moment but heard no other human sounds.
Weak silver light shone on the cream of her skin in places, with shadows hiding the rest. Dark hair. No gear or supplies, but the shorts and t-shirt might mark her as one of those from the camp.
The boy watched her through the eyes of the man. He could feel the other one coming close inside him, pressing him back from what had to happen – what he shouldn’t see – but curiosity held it off a moment longer.
She had heard something. She jumped to her feet and hid behind the tree. Turning this way and that, she watched the forest around her with wide eyes.
Jason stared at her in a fascination he barely understood.
Could she help? Bring Mommy back?
The other one, the cold one that rarely spoke, rejected the thought. Its hunger sparked, marking the girl’s fate. Jason shrank away from it reflexively. The blood lust was gathering. As it rose, he retreated inside his own mind.
When Jason moved around her and then stepped out from between the trees to approach his prey, the boy was gone, and a killer watched her through his eyes.
The girl turned with a start and screamed. Struggling out of the undergrowth, she ran. Jason stalked after her, his deformed face hardening into an expression of hate.
It was easy to corner the girl after she ran blindly into a dense cluster of pines. Her speed slowed and he lunged at her with the knife. Dodging it, she tried to get away.
Jason stepped in her path again, swiping at her face with the blade. She kept leaping back from his strikes, her cries becoming more frantic each time.
When the blade finally bit, it was only a shallow cut across the left arm. The girl’s scream rang out, shrill in his ears. He cut her again, another tiny tear that barely bled.
As she turned and darted around him, Jason grabbed her in his left hand and hurled her into a tree trunk. She cried out in pain as she hit it.
Rage rose up in him and he lifted the knife to slash her throat. As the blow fell, she crumpled and slid out of the path of the weapon, falling in a heap on the ground. The blade scored the tree with a force that would have decapitated her.
His breath rasping heavily, Jason stared down at his motionless prey.
Dead?
He nudged her leg with his boot.
If dead, take to Mother.
Sheathing the knife on his belt, he leaned down and grabbed her right wrist. Yanking the body around, he began to drag it off between the trees.
Then the prey woke, thrashing and screaming. He dropped her and she leaped up to run. This time, she was easier to catch, tripping through the undergrowth. He pulled her down and crouched over her.
Reaching out, he grabbed the stuff she wore to drag her again, but it tore and came off in his hand. The prey began to scream again as he dropped the cloth, so he seized a big handful of her long hair and twisted it like a rope to hauled her away, kicking and yelling.
* * *
Chris screamed and kicked, trying to grab things as she was dragged deeper and deeper into the woods. The grip on her hair was painful, but she didn’t need to wonder who her attacker was, and the terror of that knowledge helped her to fall silent and try to stop fighting.
Jason Voorhees. It has to be him. No one else in Crystal Lake looks like that. What is he going to do? Oh my God … play dead. Just play dead. Oh please - just drop me and go away!
She didn’t know how she could keep from crying out from the pain of his grip or the bumps and snags of the undergrowth. Just as it seemed unbearable, he stopped. After a moment, he released her hair.
Chris was staring up at the tall form in horror when he started to turn to face her. Her eyes shut fast, and she tried to keep her expression blank.
Denied sight, she listened to every sound, trying to sort them all out. Footsteps. He was heavy; she could hear him walking around to her side.
Please, please, just let me live.
She fought to not to let her fear strangle her. Her mind tormented her with visions of the monster stabbing her. She wouldn’t know it until she felt the knife.
I’m trembling. He’ll see it and he’ll kill me. Please don’t let him kill me.
Something struck her bare stomach below her dirty and ragged bra. The shock of it tumbled her back into oblivion.
* * *
She lay still on a bed of brown pine needles. He stood and watched her breathe for a moment. The urge to kill her warred with the desire to look at her.
The boy Jason crept reluctantly from his hiding place and pressed the kill-hunger back. The sight of the body before him triggered strange memories, images of touching things like this, wanting things he didn’t understand. The form he wore was unaffected, and the cold, dark part of his mind wanted only her death, but the boy-mind couldn’t help his curiosity.
He knelt at her side and reached out to touch her flesh. Still unused to such long arms, his fingers struck her instead of touching lightly. The body twitched once and lay still again. He drew his hand back sharply.
After a moment, he realized she was still breathing. Looking off in the direction of his home, he hesitated. Mommy would be angry if he didn’t bring her, but he couldn’t bring her like this.
A sound in the distance made him rise to his feet, the inhuman low growl of the other inside him on his lips. Voices shouted and laughed through the trees. They were close. Jason stepped backward away from the girl, slipped between two massive pines, and disappeared from sight.
* * *
Talking. Someone’s talking.
Chris slowly became aware of herself again. She was still lying on the ground, but there were people around her – men, at least three of them.
I’m saved!
She opened her eyes and looked around frantically.
“Hey, Charley, Sleeping Beauty’s awake. Too bad,” a dark-haired man said.
Chris gulped and whispered, “Where is he?”
“Where is who, princess?” the man called Charley asked. His voice was grating, almost threatening.
“Jason Voorhees.”
She watched their faces go slack with disbelief before they broke into grins and laughed.
“We got us a Jason victim, Ed.” Charley smiled.
The dark-haired man, Ed, was a little cleaner than the other two, but not by much. He didn’t reply to Charley, and the way he watched her began to make her skin crawl.
“Did ya knock your head, girlie? That spook’s a myth,” added the third man, a blond with very few teeth. He sniggered as he slowly sat down beside her.
“Jonesy’s got a point,” Charley said, “but if Jason’s a myth, so’s she, right, Ed?”
Chris stared from one man to another in shock. This wasn’t a rescue. She slowly brought her cut and bruised arms up to cover her bra.
“Please, you have to help me,” she whispered. “I have to get home, and he might come back after me.”
“Jason ain’t comin’ for ya, princess,” Charley leered, moving closer. “But don’t worry – we will.”
She screamed when the blond man beside her grabbed her arms. He pulled her up into a sitting position against his chest and held her still as Charley fell to his knees and drew a switchblade out of the front pocket of his dirty plaid shirt.
Kicking and yelling, Chris tried to fight them off, but Charley sat on her legs. The bra was gone in one slice, and when he started to cut her shorts off, her struggles made him cut her.
“Now ya got that yourself, princess,” Charley scolded. “Keep still and ya won’t get hurt. We ain’t monsters like your boyfriend Jason – be good and ya get to live. Hell, ya might like it.”
Chris screamed again when he cut the denim shorts away. She didn’t even notice the dozen little cuts she received as she fought them. Charley was about to cut the sides of her panties when Ed spoke.
“That’s enough. If you motherfuckers think I’m goin’ after either of you, think again. Get off her, Charley. Hold her still.”
Charley moved too fast to kick and grabbed her right arm as Jonesy held her left. They forced her to lie back, and Charley put the switchblade against her throat.
“Try anything, princess, ya get cut. Just let it happen, yeah?”
She sobbed and tried to beg but couldn’t talk. Ed pulled her legs apart and knelt between them. He tore her panties at one side in his fists and yanked the thin cotton from her body.
“Sweet shit, this meat’s gonna be good,” Jonesy muttered at her ear. His breath reeked.
“It sure as fuck is,” Ed agreed.
Chris started to close her eyes, unwilling to watch the man touch her, but they flew open again as the trees behind Ed exploded.
The fearful face of Jason Voorhees was the last thing Ed saw as the monster reached down and twisted his head around backward, almost tearing it from his neck.
Charley and Jonesy scrambled to get out of the way, dropping Chris and almost trampling her. She curled her body as well as she could and tried to roll away from them.
Jason crashed right over her, and she looked up in time to see him grip Charley’s hand and shove the switchblade into his gut. Still holding his victim’s hand, he forced the knife up until it hit bone.
When the body fell, he let it keep the switchblade and drew his own buck knife on the remaining man.
Jonesy tried to run but tripped over the body of Ed. Chris watched Jason reach out and grab a handful of blond hair.
What are you doing watching this? He’s not here to save you! Run!
She turned away from the massacre and started to run as a gargled shriek behind her was cut short.
* * *
Buried in the wash of a killing lust, the boy gave way to the beast in an instant. Two of the men were dead before he even crossed the small clearing. The final one was easy to catch. As the buck knife slashed across the throat, he felt a surge of elation with the spill of blood.
Footsteps. She was running away but moving toward the lake. He dropped the corpse and followed her.
Feeling no impulse to run, he moved steadily, covering ground quickly with long strides. Soon enough, the sound he waited for was heard – a cry, a fall. He turned slightly in that direction and in moments saw her struggle to rise. She tried to limp away from him but fell again. Jason gripped the knife as he approached her.
She was on her knees, hands out to ward him off, her face streaming tears. The men had cut away the rest of her clothes, leaving only the hiking boots. As he looked at her, the memories surged up to confuse him.
Too long ago to remember, he had felt something like the sensation the images hinted at, when he had touched himself. All that remained of that impression was shame. Mother had caught him. Mother had been angry.
The beast inside him receded in the face of his emotional conflict and confusion. He sheathed the knife in a daze and stepped forward. She screamed when he grabbed her wrists and hauled her to her feet.
She looked up at his face and gasped out, “Jason…”
He cocked his head to the left and stared at her.
“Yes, I know who you are. You’re Jason Voorhees. You … you stopped those men. Please don’t hurt me. You don’t want to hurt me,” she whispered.
He bent and caught her legs under his arm and swung her up to carry her back home. Her eyes closed instantly, and her body went limp.
* * *
Beyond the fresh carnage, pressing deeper into the forest, Jason didn’t stop until he reached the oak grove. He knelt and laid the girl down on a drift of moldering leaves.
His body remained still, but his mind struggled with complex and confusing memories. Memories that weren’t – couldn’t be – his. Among them were images of hands, the hands he now possessed, touching something like her – and touching his mother, too.
The fleeting vision of Pamela Voorhees, younger, shimmered in his mind as if she lay beyond a sheet of falling water.
His right hand reached out timidly, afraid the vision would disappear. A crushing loneliness filled him.
Mommy?
* * *
The hand poised over her was the same bloodstained hand that had killed the men. Chris kept her face and body as still as she could, and carefully moved her eyes to look at him.
She winced at the sight of the hideously disfigured face. The head was misshapen with lumps of skin, and the flesh around the right eye had pulled it down out of place. Only the left eye seemed normal. The mouth was pulled strangely too, but once she noticed the normal eye, she couldn’t look away from it. As hard as it was to make out any expression in the face, that eye seemed full of pain.
What is he thinking? Does he think? If I move, will he kill me?
She shuddered in the cold night air.
Think, think! He responded when I called his name and didn’t kill me. He brought me here. What does the legend say, the one that’s supposed to be nothing but a campfire story? Jason drowned as a boy back in the fifties, and his mother killed a lot of people in revenge.
She tore her gaze from his face and took in the hulking form of him, kneeling at her side, breathing heavily.
This is no boy, and dead people don’t breathe. Could this just be some other crazy? No. He recognized the name Jason. Use it. “Jason ... why did you bring me here?”
He watched her but didn’t answer. His head was cocked to one side again, which she took to be a sign that he was confused or trying to understand something.
Her fear made it hard to think, but she abruptly realized she should have something to tell authorities – if she got out of the forest alive.
Description? Nightmare. Wearing? Some sort of dark work shirt, khaki pants, all bloodstained – and a knife on a belt – a big one.
The hand that had been motionless above her lowered and the fingers touched her shoulder. Her body began to tremble.
Fingers shaking, she raised her own hands and touched his wrist. The skin was chilled, unnaturally cold, but human. Slowly, she touched the back of his hand. He twitched, and she had the strange impression that he could be afraid of her, in some way.
“I can’t hurt you.” She looked up into his left eye again. “What do you want?”
* * *
From the moment she spoke, he knew she wasn’t Mother. She waited for him, through the trees, through the water, in the old cabin. Even now, she watched for him, waiting for him to bring her another tribute. He should go back, to the others, and bring them to her – and she would want this one, too.
The flesh under his fingers was warm, smooth. Her touch on his hand had frightened him, an old fear that any touch but his mother’s would bring only hurt, but she had said she couldn’t hurt him.
His hand moved, stroking down over her chest until she gasped. The skin there was almost sharp. Disjointed memory led him further, and flushed by both curiosity and shame, he moved his right leg over her, straddling her legs as he had seen the other man do.
The girl cried out and her hands rose and pushed against his chest, but she couldn’t move him.
He ignored her small hands and touched her body, following the images in his stolen memories; but the sensations he vaguely reached for in his mind did not affect his body. It remained cold, unmoved. His confusion intensified. Unable to understand, he strove to mimic the memories, to force understanding.
* * *
Oh God, oh God, oh God, no!
Chris shoved at him as hard as she could, but he didn’t even notice. Clutching at his wrists had no effect either.
Scratch him, shock him into moving and maybe get the chance to run!
She almost did it, but hesitated. He wasn’t hurting her, but if she hurt him, he might.
Frozen by fear, her hands slid from his wrists as he moved them. His hands, the nails black with grime, touched her everywhere.
She closed her eyes, lifted her hands to her face, and covered it. When she felt his fingers slip inside her body, she began to cry. He probed her bluntly for a moment, and then his hands left her. The weight on her legs moved.
Her head spun. She was afraid to open her eyes.
Will he kill me now? Where is he?
Chris stiffened when his hands touched her ankles. When he forced her legs apart, she screamed. Trying to twist her body, or strike him with her hands, she stared in horror as he crushed her under his weight, ignoring her blows and screams. She felt the cloth of his pants against her legs, but the open belt struck her stomach.
She went wild, her fingers flying up to claw at his face, until he caught her left wrist and almost crushed it. The horrible face was too close, the left eye pinned on her with a maniacal blank stare.
“Please, please, don’t...” She felt dizzy and sick.
His expression never changed. He drew back once, and then a pressure struck between her legs, and he impaled her in a rush of stabbing pain. Her scream rang in her ears and echoed through the trees.
He released her wrist but continued to thrust brutally inside her. As her hands went limp against her chest, she stared numbly up into his merciless left eye as her mind fell into darkness.
* * *
The memories had lied. The strange act brought no feeling, no sensation he could understand, no euphoric release. He stopped it almost as soon as he had started. Pushing himself away from her, he sat back on his heels and shook his head.
As he shoved himself back together again, the old shame suffused his mind. Dimly, he recalled Mother’s anger, her disgusted disappointment. For a moment, he hung his head.
Then the rage began to build again. It was the girl, she had made this thing happen, made him want something he couldn’t name – a thing only the body he wore remembered.
As Jason rose to his feet over her, he could barely contain the kill-hunger that sought to drown him, but the child-mind fought it.
Kill her; give her to Mother, the hunger demanded.
No. The others – then her.
Now.
No. The others. Then...
A low moan leaked from his throat and as he hesitated, and then, defeated, he stalked away to gather the fallen men and didn’t look back.
* * *
“Here, I’ve found her, here!”
“Oh my God – my baby! Chris!”
“She’s alive, Mr. Higgins. But ... I think she’s been ... hurt.”
~ ~ ~
“What is it, Captain? You got the fingerprint results, didn’t you? Who hurt my little girl? Who is the bastard?”
“It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Who is it!”
“Mr. and Mrs. Higgins, please – you might want to sit down.”
“Tell me, Captain.”
“The fingerprints – belong to a man named Elias Voorhees.”
“I know that name.”
“You should. Every resident of Crystal Lake had better know it, but the name we know is Jason Voorhees. Elias Voorhees, that was Jason’s father.”
“So? He can’t do that to my daughter and get away with it. We have to catch the bastard, make him pay!”
“Mr. Higgins, you don’t understand. Elias Voorhees has been declared legally dead. In 1958.”
* * *
Chris woke slowly. Someone, sitting at her bedside, wiped her forehead with a cool damp cloth.
“Chris, honey, how are you feeling?”
“Mom? What happened?”
“You’ve had a fever, honey, but it’s nothing to worry about. Just relax and rest now.”
“But where is he?”
“Who, dear?”
“I don’t – I don’t remember...”
“Try not to fret. You just need sleep.”
Sleep claimed her, but it would never be peaceful again. Somewhere in her mind, a monster stalked her, grabbed her, and dragged her through a moonlit forest – a monster with a hideous face. And he had ... he was...
* * *
Jason stood in the center of the oak grove. The wind blew leaves over his boots before taking them away toward the still cold waters of the lake. The depression in the vague form of her body was disintegrated in moments.
Others had been here, disturbing his home, but they were gone now. They had taken her and left the forest, and the wind had destroyed their tracks.
He turned toward the lake and watched its dark surface, his body becoming as still as the oaks. He couldn’t go home yet. Not without a tribute for Mother. Turning slowly, he stalked through the grove and down to the path beside the lake.
The wind picked up and moaned through the old oaks. Leaves shifted, making the moonlight dance on the forest floor. Not long after, the wind died down. The leaves were still again, and the insects had begun to sing.
FINI.