Pieces of straw accompanied the young Chris Higgins as she descended the ladder from the loft, of the ancient barn. Exhaustion threatened to overcome her, but the woman slowly continued her descent. As Chris reached the base of the ladder, she exhaled deeply, letting out a series of deep sighs. A night from hell this had been for her. Dirt and dust lightly soiled her clothing, as pieces of hay dropped from her blue sweater.
The thought of anyone else being alive suddenly occurred to Chris as she stepped slowly away from the ladder. She had only seen three bodies, one of whom she did not recognize. All of her other friends were missing, but there just had to be someone else. Right? Surely, Chris couldn't have been the only one left alive. But she was. The freak wearing the goalie mask had apparently murdered everyone while she and her boyfriend Rick were absent. Rick had been taken from Chris as well, his head crushed by powerful bare hands.
Softly panting, Chris turned toward the entrance of the barn, moving towards it, taking her time. A wooden crossbar rested in the slats of the double door, courtesy of the man hanging from his neck by the young woman's noose.
She pushed at the crossbar, using what little amount of strength she possessed. It didn't budge. On the right of the doors, Chris spotted an iron pulley, which she grabbed with both of her shaky hands. Using the pulley, she struck the underside of the crossbar a few times, knocking the sturdy wood up and out of the slats that held it in place. Chris was finally free! However, it was not over yet. Not until she got passed the bulky form of the murderer, hanging right in front of the barn entrance.
Chris removed the crossbar, feeling much relieved that her night of horrors had been concluded. She had fought quite hard to survive the murderous onslaughts brought on by the now dead intruder. There were a few instances where Chris had felt sure that her life was about to violently end, but she kept her composure maintained, and simply fought back. A natural instinct.
The pulley was dropped on the hay covered ground, as Chris positioned her body before both doors. Without hesitating, she pushed outward, and the doors swung open, revealing her handiwork on the masked man before her. The giant swayed gently in the wind, the roped coiled about his thick neck.
Chris now hesitated a moment, not moving yet. She studied the body of the man, looking for any signs of movement, but she felt quite positive that he was dead. With that, the woman prepared to step out of the barn past the nightmare on the rope, but...
Chris suddenly screamed, jumping back in shock and disbelief.
The man's arm snapped up, grabbing the rope, as did his other arm. Chris glared wide eyed as he lifted himself up a bit, not taking his eyes off of his intended victim, who had spent most of the night dodging him.
"You Can't Be Alive!?" That was all that came out of her, and quite understandably. How could a man survive such a hanging? Chris had even heard the sound of his neck snapping as the monster was dropped from the loft. How? But as Chris stood transfixed before him, the man reached up to remove the noose from around his neck. The goalie mask came off as well in the process, much to the woman's horror and plain disgust.
Now Chris felt that all of her worst nightmares were playing out before her, in reality. She had understood that it was possible she would never forget the awful, inhuman face of the man who had attacked her two years ago, near Higgins Haven. She truly would never forget it now, for he glared right back at Chris, only hanging a few feet away from her, his horrid face wearing what appeared to be a hideous grin.
"IT'S YOU!?
As if acknowledging this fact, the unearthly grin appeared to widen on the ghastly mouth. The goalie mask was pushed back down to conceal the face from hell, as two large workboots thudded heavily on the ground. Still, Chris found that she could not move, or even look around for a weapon to fight him off. The man, however, was surely reaching for his fallen blade, to use on her. The last victim of this summer massacre.
The machete rested on the ground between Chris and the man who had killed tonight, having dropped it when the woman had struck him hard on the back of the head with a shovel, before she had hung him. Now as he bent to retrieve it, Chris found her footing and began to back away as the man approached her, intent on cutting her into pieces. There was no where to run or to evade him this time.
She backed up against an open tool closet, not bothering to look around for a weapon. She was hysterical, too terrified to try and attempt to save her own life as she had done many times tonight. All Chris could do now was cringe before the hockey masked apparition and scream until the end came.
"Mom, Dad, I love you," she thought through her terror, knowing that the end was near. Her life seemed to flash before her eyes as the killer stood towering over the cringing woman who continued to scream hysterically. Chris intended to shut her eyes before the big machete laid open her flesh. The blade rose high in the air, as she prepared for the impact.
Due to the immense size of the murderer, Chris could not see the movement behind him, that there was someone else in the barn. Beneath her screams, she could vaguely make out a masculine voice shouting something behind the killer, then he was grabbed from behind by a bald man that Chris had never seen before. That didn't at all matter to her. She continued to scream in hysteria, still believing that she was about to die.
The male biker rushed at the armed killer, forcing the big man around to deal with him now. Automatically, the machete was swung through the air, making brutal contact with one of the biker's raised, muscular arms. A severed hand hit the ground and a short scream of pain errupted. Chris witnessed the brutal murder in it's entirety, being closer than she ever wanted to be to such a ghastly scene. Her hysteria increased, as more blood was spilled. But the brute of a man was not yet finished with the biker. More screams errupted and the biker went down, with the killer going down also and continuously hacking at the body.
Chris watched as the killer mindlessly chopped away at the biker, who had inadvertently saved her life, for the moment. Now, it was time for her to save herself again. She could run, but where would she go? The van was not an option, as it was stuck on the flimsy bridge, and hiding in the cabin was definitely out of the question. He would find her.
Gasping, as if out of breath, Chris glanced to her left, at the ground near her. Due to her hysteria upon realizing that the killer was the same culprit she had dealt with two years ago, she had failed to take notice earlier of the big ax that rested beside the tool closet she had cringed beside. The killer had his back toward Chris, allowing her the chance to obtain the weapon and sneak up behind him.
Chris's slender hands shook as she firmly gripped the wooden handle of the ax, now getting to her feet. The masked man still continued to hack at the body as if it were nothing more than a hunk of meat in a slaughterhouse. Temporarily, he had forgotten about the woman.
Five feet behind the man, Chris stood fully upright, the ax poised and ready for the killing blow. She certainly hoped that it would kill him, as the hanging did not. This monster had to be stopped.
As if finally satisfied, the man ceased his attack on the now dead biker, getting back to his feet to resume his attack on Chris. The machete was decorated morbidly with dark blood, to Chris's horror. The man turned around to face his prey again, only to be greeted by an ax to the head.
Chris, wide eyed, gave a wild grunt of effort, and with all her lasting strength, swung the ax down on the man's head, puncturing through the mask, and deeply embedding into the skull. The big killer grunted, his head snapping back as Chris released the weapon.
Unexpectedly, the man extended his arms forward, trying to grab at Chris. She screamed, stumbling backwards away from him, until her back touched a wall. With the ax still embedded in his head, the man kept coming, but Chris could see that he began to falter. He stopped just several feet from her, big arms still outstretched as blood ran down his mask and face. Then the hulking man toppled over on the ground, as if a giant tree, seemingly dead.
Chris looked down at the masked killer, the ax still lodged in his head. Just to make certain he was dead, she tapped his large head with the toe of her sneaker. It appeared limp, to her grim satisfaction.
For a brief moment, Chris stood in the barn, staring down at the dead man, once again forced to kill, so that she may live. But something inside told her that this monster was not dead. Chris stepped around the body and hurried out of the barn of death.
Feeling not quite sure what to do next, Chris found herself walking towards the lake near the cabin. The windstorm had died down, leaving a gentle breeze for the remainder of the night. On the shore, Chris approached the water's edge, dropping to her knees, extremely worn out from the night's events. She splashed water onto her face, slightly stinging the abrasion on her cheek due to a fall she had suffered much earlier while running away from her attacker.
The night had become as quiet as ever. Chris had never felt so alone before. Her friends were all dead,... Rick too. She felt dreadful, realizing that it was because of her that her friends were murdered. Coming back to the cabin had been her idea. In her mind, she had led them all to slaughter.
Chris thought of going back into the cabin to call the police, remembering that there was in fact a phone downstairs in one spare room. She would call them soon, though right now, she felt extremely exhausted, from the long walk back to Higgins Haven and from her lengthy battle for survival. She would call the cops soon,... after she got a little bit of rest.
Although Chris had been successful in defeating her foe, the woman continued to feel like the truly defeated one. People close to her were now gone and she knew that she would never, ever be the same. She would be much worse, now having survived two separate encounters from the same hideous man who had tried to kill her. As Chris lay her body down inside of a canoe on the shore, she prayed silently to herself that everything would be back to normal when the daylight came, and that this whole night had somehow been nothing more than a vivid, realistic nightmare.