"It's YOU!" And his response was that smile, the grin of a starving man suddenly given a juicy steak, a once-upon-a-time-puppy, now bull mastiff presented with a bitch to mount. She shuddered violently. He looked like he wanted to both devour and mount her. And he had the power to do it, too. There was nowhere left to run. Even if she sprinted past him while he lifted himself out of that noose, where could she go? The van was in the clutches of the demon bridge with its broken boards, and the lodge had shattered windows that he would only leap back through in yet another pursuit.
Then, it would be death - or much worse - in her own bedroom, or that closet with the corpse of her precious dead friend Debbie. Better to just let it end out here, in the barn that had never seen a horse.
It was fitting, in a way. How many times had she wondered if things could have been better between her and her parents if they had only invested more time in family life, gotten a horse or two so that they could all go for a gallop along forest trails truly enjoy the property, and life itself?
But instead of fresh air and happy times, her father had not done what he promised to do,and indeed had even stopped promising, trading summer memories with his wife and daughter for more hours at the company, while her mother had thrown herself headlong into the society parties and attempts to beautify the place through professional landscapers so that they could get into Better Homes and Garden, thereby impressing the cocktail party crowd, which at the end of the day, was all that mattered to the both of them. So yes, fitting it should end here, in this place of broken dreams.
But even as she contemplating just giving up, she cringed inwardly at the thought of the beastly mockery of a man that struggled even now against the cord wrapped around his neck, and knew that there were things worse than death. That petrifying travesty of what could only be a smile spelled it out for her without the need for words. The very image had been enough to telegraph that she wouldn't experience a clean death at this monster's hands, there would be no merciful twist of the neck, no gory but quick slice of the throat. No, it was obvious that was not what his intentions were.
Strangely enough, as okay as she was at the moment with a quick, clean, no nonsense ending that would release her from the horrors of this day along with the various disappointments in life, it was clear that this creature was not going to be a dear and wipe the slate of her memory clean in death, or at least not before scribbling his own horrors there first. And that she could not deal with.
He struggled with the rope binding him about his grotesquely thick neck, and Chris found herself cursing the gods that had not seen fit to leave him to twist and writhe against the cord in his mother's womb and snuff out this obscenity before he ever drew breath.
But that hadn't happened, this man had been born and gone on to haunt her woods, the place where she was supposed to have happy times. This savage interloper had robbed her of the calm, level headed attitude that she had cherished since childhood. She was too much of a wreck to even be with Rick - oh God, poor, sweet Rick, who this creature had thrown through the window like a rag doll, like a toy pitched away by a hateful child in the grips of a temper tantrum. Rick and all her friends were lying back at the lodge like meat on the floor of a crude slaughter house, her own home turned into a lair of blood, gore and entrails. The police who arrived later would have to wipe their feet before leaving, lest they track it back to their own clean, innocent homes that had never
seen the carnage that had taken place here.
Now the man was free of the noose she had been so proud of moments before, dropping down to the ground with the mask mercifully covering that hideous face. He stooped a bit to recover his wicked blade, then advanced upon her yet again. She cowered against a stall, waiting for the end. But like an audible punctuation mark at the end of a sad sentence, the door to the supply shed burst open and a man appeared, rushing forth and shouting obscenities, although nothing issuing from his mouth could have been as blasphemous as the creature before her.
He lashed out and grabbed the monster from behind, apparently as insane as she felt herself becoming. The man spun around wildly, the sword coming down on the offending arm with a loud and meaty THWACK! She watched the man shriek and gape at his stump, which spurted blood onto the hay. Then the monster gave a little kick and knocked the man's legs out from under him, sending him crashing to the ground. He then rained blows upon him, chopping off the other arm, then going to work on the legs. Chris couldn't contain her own shrieks anymore, mainly because she couldn't make her eyes obey and stop watching the grisly execution.
And that, tempered with the fact that whatever he had in store for her after he'd finished with this man was sure to be a thousand times worse was what gave her the needed boost of adrenaline to dash out of the barn, shrieking uncontrollably. Chris's feet flew under they're own command, she didn't know where she was running, only that it was away from the atrocity back in the barn. In her panic, she turned back, much like Lot's wife only to see that thing, sporting a fresh coating of blood as he shambled out of the barn hot on her heels. Her throat burned raw as her sneakers pounded the ground below, and them mercifully the dock came into view ahead of her.
As she drew closer, she spotted something shiny laying out on the sun warped boards. Forcing her exhausted body to make those last few yards was unbearable, but she somehow made it. She collapsed at the dock, groping for the sharp salvation before her.
Just in time, as well, for the blood soaked figure had only just stepped onto the dry, splintery wood, his boots thudding heavily against the boards. It took every last ounce of her being to wrestle the speargun up and point in in his direction.
For a long moment, neither of them moved. Jason merely stood at the junction of dock in land like the cat that had cornered the proverbial canary, and Chris, well... it took everything she had just to level the weapon at her tormenter and lift a shaking hand to the trigger. As she did, the monster lifted his mask again, almost as though he were giving her a prime head expression was different this time, not the gleeful grin but more of a hawk watching its prey. Narrow eyes, mouth tight but slightly pulled open by the deformed lips.
He took a step towards her, and she found herself retreating to the very edge of the dock. She could find at least temporary salvation in the water, even if he were a marathon swimmer, but damn it, her mind might be a spool of thread unravelling at a frightening clip, but it was telling her one thing: FIGHT.
Her own mouth tightening in grim determination, Chris Higgins prepared to squeeze the trigger on this instrument of death, the very weapon he father bought when he got it into his head to snorkel-dive for fish in the lake. But before she could shoot the bolt into the monster's eye socket, the water erupted behind her.