JASON
Of all the things the world might say about Jason Voorhees, being unsure of himself was not one of them. He had always known what he wanted, and he had always operated by a very specific code of conduct in order to get what he wanted. And if he deviated from that code, he always made subsequent changes in his life to accommodate the new paradigm.
It didn't happen very often.
Because Jason had never liked change.
Until he met Ana.
He had sworn to himself that he would not harm those who did not seek to harm him, or his land, or his mother's memory.
He had broken that promise the instant he'd crossed the invisible line that marked the edge of his territory and had taken her from the dock by the lake. Knowing she had done nothing to harm him. She had not trespassed. She hadn't done anything wrong at all. She'd just been singing. And her voice had called to something deep inside of him, something that had forced his hand.
Since that moment, he had operated by a new set of rules. Rules that he knew might have disastrous consequences in the future.
But that had not mattered at the time, and it didn't matter now. He'd always known what he was getting into. He'd known what might happen, and he'd known that he might, one day, have to choose.
And in the end, it had been surprisingly easy.
In the end, when he was faced with the choice of being a coward and a hypocrite, or being the kind of man who took responsibility for his own actions, he made his decision within the space of a heartbeat.
In the end, Jason chose Ana.
He let the boy live.
His trip back to the mine was not difficult, but it was unpleasant. Thanks to the massive amount of adrenaline flooding his system, his senses were incredibly sharp, and every step he took sent a bolt of agony through his left shoulder.
By the time he reached the entrance to the mine, the blood on that had soaked into his clothing had begun to freeze, making movement difficult. He needed to get the bullet out, he needed to disinfect the wound, and he needed to sew up the hole in his shoulder.
But first, he needed to see Ana.
He needed to know that she was still safe. Still warm. Still his.
Then he would be able to focus on fixing the mess he'd found himself in. He would be able to think clearly once he saw her, once he touched her and heard her voice.
He dropped down into the tunnel and made his way quickly to the main room. He could smell her in the air, citrus and summertime, a scent he was quickly coming to associate with happiness.
He turned the corner that led into the main room, bracing himself for her reaction; he did not know how well she would handle so much blood, but judging from past experience, women did not take well to the sight of it.
He looked over at the bed.
It was empty.
The world ground to a jarring, screeching halt.
The bed was empty.
Ana was gone.
At first, he felt nothing. He looked at the bed, at the fading embers in the stove, at the rest of the cold, dark, empty mine, and he felt… absolutely nothing.
And then, from that nothing, there came a terrible, mindless pain. It exploded inside him, unbearable and uncontrollable, a wave of darkness breaking over his head and pulling him under. His legs refused to hold him any longer, and he stumbled forward, catching himself on one of the worktables.
The big table fell with a booming crash, and Jason fell with it, jarring his knees on the cold dirt. On instinct, he lifted both hands to break his fall, and another pain came screaming out of the darkness, merging with the agony in his heart.
He pushed himself back up, back to his feet, and staggered across the room, only to fall again, to his knees, beside the bed. He did not know how long he remained there, consumed by his own pain and deaf and blind to the world. He did not care.
Ana was gone.
She had left him, alone, in the dark. Forever.
From somewhere deep inside Jason's broken, scarred mind, the voices of his demons rose up in unison, a chorus of taunts, and curses, and then something else. Something worse.
Laughter.
ANA
First, she tried to use a bundle of old rock-climbing rope that she'd found stuffed in a milk crate under one of the workbenches, but it was nowhere near long enough to suit her purposes, so she rummaged around in the piles of junk stacked around the walls of the room until she found several balls of thick, hemp twine.
Perfect.
She started by the worktable and tied one end of the twine to one of the big, sturdy table legs. She gave it a few tugs to be sure the knot would hold, and then she turned and started down the corridor that led deep into the mine. She had no sense of direction, and no way of measuring distance, but she knew the bathroom was down this tunnel, and beyond that, the waterfall and hot springs, and if she was going to be here for a while – something that she was currently refusing to think about beyond a simple acknowledgement that it was, in fact, a possibility – she was going to have to start learning the mine. Might as well do it now, to keep her busy while she was trying not to imagine what might be going on aboveground.
It wasn't that she was worried. She wasn't worried. She knew Jason could take care of himself.
And she certainly wasn't doing this in order to keep her mind off of her emotions.
Of course not.
That would be completely self-defeating.
So she grabbed a lantern, took a deep breath, and started down the tunnel.
Almost immediately, the panic started, whispering from the shadows and curling around her mind like wisps of smoke. Quiet. Insidious. Distracting. She started humming under her breath to counteract the anxiety that fizzled in the back of her mind. Even after repeated promises that he wouldn't abandon her, Ana still had trouble with the instinctive, soul-wrenching terror that shot through her every time she thought of Jason walking away from her. It didn't matter if he was leaving the mine or walking across the room to get a can of ravioli. She freaked.
So she kept walking. Limping, really. And she tried not to focus on the passing time and the seemingly endless tunnel that stretched before her.
Thoughts buzzed through her head, flickering like caffeinated fireflies. Her anxiety could have stemmed from the fact that she was nearly two hundred steps down a pitch-black tunnel with God-knows-how-many tons of dirt and rock looming above her head.
But it didn't.
Ana had a lot of experience with anxiety. She knew this had nothing to do with exploring an old coal mine with nothing but a lamp and a piece of string tethering her to the rest of the world.
She knew that because she spent more time forcing away the thoughts she didn't want to deal with than she did worrying about getting lost or being buried alive.
She rounded a corner and hesitated. A smaller tunnel branched off from the main corridor, rougher and more narrow, like it had been abandoned halfway through construction.
Ana frowned.
Well? Her brain was persistent in its attempts to distract her. What are you waiting for?
Normally, she would have responded to her inner thoughts with actual words. But down here, in the deep, endless darkness, there was a small part of her that was afraid to speak aloud. Afraid that someone might be lurking beyond the feeble light of her lamp. And that they might talk back.
Ana grit her teeth, took a deep breath, and ducked into the side tunnel. It ran in a surprisingly straight line for about twenty feet, and then it ended at a door.
This, at least, managed to quiet the worrisome thoughts that gnawed at her brain. There was obviously something behind the door. Better figure it out.
Hopefully it's not a pile of dead bodies.
Ah, the many perks of sleeping with a serial killer.
Hysterical laughter threatened, tickling the back of her throat. She bit her lip and pulled the door open.
And that's where she found the books.
The room was small, maybe ten or twelve feet in all directions, and only half-framed in timber and concrete. But it was packed, from floor to ceiling, with books. Full bookshelves lined the walls, and it looked like Jason had resorted to filling cardboard boxes when he'd used up all the shelf space. Each box was labeled with subjects like "American History" and "Fishing." The whole room was meticulously organized, with a clear path that allowed her easy access through the maze. It smelled like a library, a scent that was as delightful as it was surprising.
Ana wandered through the room, scanning book titles that glinted up at her in gold leaf and shiny plastic. She saw everything from hunting manuals to classic literature, from Science Fiction novels to Crime Thrillers. All grouped together by subject and, upon closer inspection, sorted alphabetically by the author's last name.
She even found a stack of dictionaries. Where the hell had he gotten dictionaries?
And, more importantly, had Jason actually read all of these books?
Of course he had. It made perfect sense, considering how smart he was.
And it made her smile. A slow, dazed kind of smile. She imagined him sitting by the lake - his lake - reading in the golden light of a lazy summer afternoon.
And then she imagined being there with him, curled in his big arms and enjoying the warmth and sunshine, the smell of the forest, the sound of birds singing above them in the trees.
Christ, Ana, you are in so much trouble.
She set the lamp and twine down on a box labeled "Medical" and scrubbed her hands over her face. She could feel the storm, brewing at the back of her mind, radiating across her nerves in waves of pinpricks and white noise. She wasn't ready to think about this. She wasn't ready to go down that rabbit hole.
I don't love him.
I can't love him.
I won't.
And from the dark recesses, another voice whispered back.
You don't really have a choice.
"Shut up," she whispered, fisting her hands in her hair and giving her head an angry shake. "Just shut up, Ana." She sat down on a box and rested her forehead against her knees. The thoughts were crowding into her skull, pushing and shoving, shouting over one another. Memories and ideas and emotions, a chaotic jumble. She didn't know how much longer she could fend it off, and she didn't know what would happen when the storm finally hit.
A noise exploded somewhere far away, echoing down the corridor of the mine. The sound of something big crashing to the ground.
Ana jumped and spun, eyes wide. Her heart slammed against her ribs, rushing adrenaline through her blood. She crept toward the corridor, peeked around the corner, and waited. She strained her ears for the sound of approaching footsteps, but no other sounds reached down the tunnel. She wasn't sure which direction it had come from, and for a few terrifying moments she considered the possibility that the mine might be inhabited by a family of cannibal mutants, like in that movie she'd seen a few years ago.
Don't be stupid, her brain scolded. It's just Jason.
The thought calmed her. Not even wild cannibal mutants would dare to hurt her with Jason around. There was something distinctly comforting about that thought. Further proof, perhaps, that she had lost her mind?
But the knowledge that she was probably safe from cannibals, and that the noise was probably Jason, raised more questions than it did answers. What was he doing? Was he throwing things?
Why would he throw things? Was he angry?
Wait.
Oh. Crap.
Jason had returned to the mine.
And Ana wasn't there.
Oh.
Shit.
She grabbed the lamp and started back at a fast pace, hardly limping as she followed the path of her twine along the ground. It didn't take her long to make it back to the main corridor, where old yellow lamps lit the path for her. She switched off her lantern and slowed her pace, in case it wasn't Jason. She didn't want to come rampaging into the room just to find it full of strangers. Or mutant cannibals.
She stopped just beyond sight of the living area and listened for movement.
Silence.
She edged up to the threshold and peeked her head around the corner.
The first thing she noticed was that one of the big workbenches was overturned. Tools and supplies were scattered on the floor. Well, at least that solved the mystery of the loud noise.
The second thing she noticed was the blood. Dark, glistening pools of it, splashed across the floor.
And then she saw Jason.
Her heart seized.
He was on his knees. His back was to her. He was facing the empty bed. He was not carrying his machete. In fact, his machete was nowhere to be seen.
To be honest, that fact was far more worrying than the blood.
"Jason?"
No response. Not even a twitch.
The little voice in the back of her head, the last vestige of a defective self-preservation instinct, advised her to exercise extreme caution. Preferably by moving in the opposite direction.
But the rest of her was already heading towards him, driven by the overwhelming desire to touch him. To close the gap between them. To reassure him that everything was fine.
She wanted to be back in his arms again.
"Jason, are you okay?" It was a stupid, useless question. She knew it the instant the words left her mouth. Something was wrong. She could feel it in her bones. She moved around to face him. On his knees, he was almost as tall as she was. But his shoulders were bowed by invisible weight, his blue eyes empty and unfocused.
He looked defeated. Lost.
"No," Ana whispered.
When she reached for him, he recoiled, eyes still blank. She paused.
"Jason," she said quietly, "it's me. It's Ana. I'm not going to hurt you."
He blinked, eyes shifting. Focusing. For a long minute he just looked at her, as if he didn't quite understand her presence in front of him. As if he wasn't expecting it.
Then his eyes sharpened. He sucked in a harsh breath. The disbelief, the sheer incredulity in his eyes, was utterly heartbreaking. Ana moved forward; she wanted nothing more than to touch him, to have his arms around her.
But then he lifted his right hand, palm out, stopping her in her tracks.
Slowly, and without taking his eyes from her even once, Jason pulled open his jacket. The light was always low down in the mine, and with several inches of snow piled over the windows, it was darker than usual. But Ana's eyes had long since begun to adapt to the light conditions.
When she saw the wound, she cursed violently. Jason did not react. He looked like he was having trouble breathing. His eyes were losing focus again. He was going into shock.
And she was back in Atlanta, back in the heat that always followed late summer storms. Distant sirens. Ringing ears. The smell of wet asphalt. Cheap sneakers skidding on bloody linoleum. The chant that echoed in her mind, over and over again.
Please, God, no.
She knew that wound. She remembered. Five years ago. A million years ago. Before her life had changed. Before she'd gotten lost, and then found again.
Jason had been shot.