Reggie awoke to the sound of thunder booming and rattling the farmhouse.
He rubbed his eyes and sat up straight on the couch, listening.
He didn't hear any voices or laughter. Nothing but dead silence and the rain.
And then, he heard the soft sound of something being dragged from upstairs. Then, a loud thump.
Maybe it was Tommy, he thought. Maybe he had run back to the farmhouse after the incident at the trailer park.
"What are them nuts up to now?" he said to himself.
He walked groggily through the living room and slowly he climbed the stairs. Thunder crashed again as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes.
As he reached the upstairs hallway, he saw that the door to Tommy's room was open.
It was pitch black inside.
He stepped into the doorway.
"Tommy, you back?" he called into the dark room.
There was no response.
"Yo, Tommy!"
Lightning flashed.
The room was illuminated in white light.
Violet was lying on Tommy's bed, her head propped up against the wall. Blood drizzled from her lips and from the gash in her torso.
Robin was sprawled on top of her, a giant, gaping hole was carved through her chest.
Jake lay beside Robin, his face split by the missing meat cleaver.
Reggie reeled back in absolute shock.
He couldn't scream. He was paralyzed.
Blood was smeared along the walls and all over the bed. Bright crimson. Everywhere.
The realization hit him. It was Tommy's room.
Tommy was a maniac.
He backed away slowly out of the doorway and into the hallway.
He wanted to run as fast as he could away from the halfway house, but his body wouldn't let him.
"Tommy?" he said, his lips quivering.
Thunder crashed and the lightning illuminated the room, as Reggie saw the horrible sight again, entrenching it further in his psyche.
All of a sudden, a hand grabbed him and he leapt out of his skin, and let out a high-pitched shriek.
Pam was looking back at him.
Her hair was drenched from the rain.
She saw the petrified look on Reggie's face.
"Reggie, it's Pam! Reggie, what is it? What's wrong?" she implored him.
Reggie couldn't get it out. He stammered, his entire body trembling.
"What's the matter, Reggie? What is it?" she begged him.
Reggie pointed a quivering finger towards the open doorway.
"I-I-In Tommy's room," he said, his voice breaking.
"Ok, you stay here, relax. I'll go look," she said, consoling him.
As Reggie froze in his spot on the floor, Pam stepped into the darkened room.
The lightning flashed again.
All Reggie heard was her terrified scream.
Then, she ran out of the room, incited with urgency. She stared at Reggie with panic-stricken eyes and then in a flash, she grabbed him by the hood of his sweatshirt and pulled him fiercely towards the stairs.
They ran, scrambling down the stairs two at a time. Pam's heartbeat began to race and her breathing quickened.
They ran through the farmhouse as the storm
raged outside.
Pam dragged Reggie into the kitchen, pulling the door shut and locking it.
As they rounded the kitchen island, Reggie fell, bashing his shin against the small stair that led up into the main room.
He cried out, grabbing his leg in pain.
Pam bent down beside him, trying to pull him
to his feet but he cried out again.
He couldn't get up. Pain shot through his right leg like a hypodermic needle.
Then, the kitchen door began to quake and rattle violently.
WHAM.
It shook again and begun to splinter from the weight of whatever, or whoever, was ramming it
"Get up!" Pam yelled at Reggie frantically.
He winced, managing to get himself to his feet just as the kitchen door imploded.
Fragments of wood rained down on top of them.
Standing there was a tall, monstrous man, wearing a work suit and heavy boots.
He also wore a hockey mask.
His hands were coated with the blood of the halfway house patients.
He glared down at Pam and Reggie with a menacing hatred.
Reggie looked on in terror, and Pam screamed. Reggie forgot all about the splitting pain in his leg and ran for the front door pulling Pam along behind him.
The hockey-masked killer was in pursuit.
Pam grabbed at the front doorknob, and tugged at it.
The door was wedged shut.
"Shit!" she swore, hearing his heavy boots on the linoleum floor slowly and steadily approaching.
She kicked at the door hard, knocking it loose. She then managed to heave the heavy oak door open and Reggie and Pam raced out into the night.
Now, Reggie was dragging Pam along, his breathing frenetic and quick. His heart pounding. Scared out of his mind.
The killer's breath was shallow and steady as he marched out the front door and followed after his prey.
As the rain came down on both of them, Pam
and Reggie ran across the grounds of the halfway house.
Reggie was running in a blind panic, as Pam held his hand and was pulled alongside him.
They ran past the barn, and into the woods, heading for the road leading into town.
The woods were wet and dark. Leaves glistened. The moon was full, and shone down, providing their only source of light.
They could no longer see the masked maniac.
They must have outran him, Pam thought.
She was lucky to have even one single cohesive thought. Her mind was racing in one panicked stream of frenzied thoughts.
Pam wanted Reggie to stop. She couldn't breathe. But he kept running in a hysterical state of mind, trying in a desperate attempt to get as far away from there as possible.
The trees suddenly cleared and Pam and Reggie dove from out of the undergrowth, stopping for a minute to finally catch their breath.
When they looked up, they saw the road that led past the halfway house in front of them.
Thank God, Pam thought. Someone had to come
by and help them. They just had to.
But they were in the middle of nowhere.
Goddamn you, Matt, she thought. Goddamn you for bringing me out to this place.
Then, Reggie pointed at something in the distance.
"Look!" he shouted.
It was a car parked on the side of the road.
"Help us!" Pam instinctively shrieked as loud as she could possibly shriek.
They both ran through the pouring rain towards the vehicle, frantically splashing through the thick mud that covered the shoulder of the road.
"Help!!" she screamed again, waving her arms.
As they drew near to the seemingly abandoned car, Pam saw that it was the government-owned transport van that Tommy had arrived in.
Her eyes lit up when she saw the Unger Institute's insignia on the side of the van.
What was it doing out here? she wondered.
But what did it matter?
Maybe the keys were still inside. Maybe someone was inside and could help them.
Pam and Reggie ran around to the driver's side door and Pam pulled it open.
Duke Smith's lifeless corpse fell out into the mud.
His throat had been cut from ear-to-ear. Blood stained his white medic's uniform.
Pam screamed a blood-curdling scream.
Then, from out of nowhere, the maniac lunged at them from behind the van.
Reggie was next to scream. He finally unleashed the power of his lungs and it was piercing, catching Pam off-guard.
Then, he was gone, racing off back into the woods as fast as the lightning that catapulted across the sky.
Now, she was alone with the killer.
"Reggie!!!!" she screamed at the top of her lungs.
He was gone. His red sweatsuit was disappearing into the blackness of the woods.
The killer advanced towards Pam. He brandished a long, blood-stained machete.
Stained with the blood of the patients she had come to know.
She had to get back to the pick-up.
It had to be somewhere on this road.
But what about Reggie?
She had to catch him and get him out of there.
As the killer thrust his machete at her, Pam dodged and ran into the thick woods after Reggie, screaming his name frantically.
She flailed wildly at the branches that clawed at her, tearing at the undergrowth, pulling it aside and running, stumbling, half-falling through the woods.
Rain mixed with petrified tears streamed down her face.
Thorns slashed at her skin, drawing blood.
"Reggie! Reggie!" she cried, searching for any flash of red in the darkness.
Then, she finally broke out of the woods and came upon a small creek.
She must be near the Hubbard property.
There was no way Reggie would run there. He had to be back at the house.
She dashed across the stream, but suddenly found herself sinking.
She was trapped in the thick, black mud at the bottom of the creek.
No!" she screamed, as she clawed at the ground, trying with all of her might to pull herself out of the muck, but it was thick and viscous.
Finally, she grabbed onto a tree root and managed to heave herself out of the mud.
Then she scrambled to her feet, not willing to wait around to see if the maniac was close by.
She crashed through the undergrowth blindly and stopped dead in her tracks in front of a gnarled tree.
It was Matt.
He had been impaled to the tree by a railroad spike that had been driven into his forehead, and his throat was slit so deep he was almost decapitated. His body was racked with stab wounds.
A bone-chilling scream erupted from Pam's raw
throat. She threw her hands up to her face, aghast at the sight but also not able to take her eyes off of it.
So much blood.
"Nooooo!" she shrieked.
The panic started to set in again, and she ran from the awful sight, tripping again in the mud. She struggled to her feet, and ran some more, not stopping, hyperventilating.
She was hopelessly lost now.
The dark woods were disorienting her, and she stopped, her eyes flickering around wildly.
"Reggie!!!!"
Then, as her eyes adjusted, she could see lights through the trees and realized she was back at the farmhouse.
She dashed towards it, clearing the woods and sprinting past the chicken coop, up onto the porch and through the front door, slamming it closed and locking it.
"Reggie!!" she screamed.
The only sound she heard was her own panicked breathing and the thunder outside.
Then, the lights went out.
Lightning flashed, illuminating the interior of the house.
Pam caught her breath, using the wall to support herself.
What the fuck am I going to do? She thought.
Who was wearing that mask? Who had gone and killed everyone?
Then, she remembered.
It had been in Tommy's room where all the bodies had been posed.
Tommy was the one who liked masks.
And he's also the one who had faced the hockey mask-wearing murderer Jason Voorhees.
Now, it was like he had finally snapped and had become Jason.
She had been right. Tommy finally lost it. And she sensed it coming. And now, she was right in the middle of it.
There was no more time to think, she decided.
The maniac could be heading for her. He could be here at any minute, waiting to hack her to pieces just like the rest.
Just like Matt.
Just like Robin and Violet and Jake. Oh God, Matt, she thought. Her mind raced and she looked around frantically for any sign of the killer, thinking of what she could do.
She had to find Reggie and get out of there.
Where had he gone? Where would he go?
Then, she closed her eyes, trying to think.
What could she do? She was trapped out in the middle of nowhere.
Weapon, she thought.
I need a goddamn weapon.
Pam hurried into the kitchen and pulled a long, sharp kitchen knife out of the butcher block.
She tried to slow her breathing down and stay quiet, looking around her in all directions.
The rain pattered on the roof, keeping a steady rhythm that accompanied the sound of her pounding heart.
Thunder crashed again.
"Reggie…" she whispered.
No response.
"Reggie!" she called up the stairs.
Again no response.
The halfway house was deathly quiet.
She made her way cautiously into the dining area, curling her fingers tighter around the knife and holding it high above her head.
As lightning flashed and the thunder rang out again, the patio doors suddenly shattered completely and glass sprayed across the room.
Pam shielded herself from the glass and reeled backwards, looking back at what had been thrown at her.
It was George.
Staring back at her were two, empty, bloody eye sockets.
Pam let out another frenzied scream.
A hand suddenly smashed through another kitchen window, grasping at her. It snatched her by the hair, pulling her backwards as she cried out in pain.
It was the killer. She glanced back at those demented eyes leering at her through the eyeholes
of the hockey mask.
He pulled her towards the window, bringing the machete up to her throat.
"No!" she exclaimed and thrust the knife backwards. She felt it hit flesh and sink into the bone.
The killer growled and Pam let go of the knife when it became buried in his right arm.
The deranged murderer released his grip and clawed at the knife handle, stumbling back out of the shattered window.
Pam ran, now in full hysterics, through the broken patio doors out again into the rain. She didn't think to go back for the knife. She didn't care. She was running for her life.
"Reggie!!" she shouted through the storm.
There was no sign of him.
Maybe he had gone into the barn and hid in the hay or searched for a weapon.
The bulldozer, she thought.
They could ride it out of this godforsaken place.
With a look of mad determination, she ran towards the barn.
"Reggie!" she called again.
As she rounded a row of hedges, she suddenly found herself disoriented again, almost collapsing from exhaustion.
Her light-headedness got the best of her.
She fell, stumbling forward, plunging straight into a mudpit dug out by the construction workers to build a new stable for the horses.
The mud looked like thick, black tar in the night.
It started enveloping her, and sucking her down, and down, as she screamed, clawing for something to grab onto.
There was nothing.
And then, she saw the killer.
She caught him out of her peripheral vision, stalking towards her, machete gleaming.
"Noooooooooo!!!!" she cried out. "Reggie!"
She finally heaved her way half-way out of the pit but the ground slid out from beneath her and she went falling in deeper.
The killer was coming closer and closer, moving in on an easy kill.
This is how it would end, she thought. Stuck in the mud with a machete right through her head.
Just like Matt with that railroad spike.
They would find her propped up in Tommy's
room. She could see it all flashing through her mind.
The killer was now just a few feet away.
And she was hopelessly caught in the mud that had become quicksand in the storm.
Then, the deafening sound of splintering wood rang out, startling her and the killer.
It was the bulldozer.
It had driven through the barn walls from the inside at full speed.
Its headlights pierced the inky, black darkness that shrouded them all. The falling rain glimmered against the dazzling white lights.
Reggie was at the wheel, a look of fury and grim determination on his face.
He let out a battle cry, and pulled his hood over his head.
Reggie vaulted the bulldozer forward at full speed.
The killer raised his left arm, shielding his eyes from the light, frozen with bewilderment.
It was too late now to get out of the way.
The sharp metal teeth of the bulldozer's trough rammed into his chest, sending him flying backwards like an acrobat falling.
He hit the ground hard, and writhed in the throes of pain before finally lying in the mud motionless.
Reggie climbed down from the bulldozer and rushed to Pam's aide. He grabbed her arm, and pulled her in one giant effort out of the mud.
Then, they stood next to the unconscious killer.
Pam held Reggie tightly as they both looked down in terror, praying that he wouldn't get back up.
They had to get out of there.
As they started to run for the bulldozer, the masked maniac lurched up from the ground in a wild paroxysm, grabbing madly at them.
He managed to grab a hold of Reggie's red sweatsuit and pulled him onto the ground.
"No!" Pam screamed. She kicked the killer hard in the mask, and he didn't let go.
Reggie was screaming a high-pitched terrified shriek, clinging onto Pam for dear life.
Pam kicked at him again, nailing him square in the face and he finally relinquished.
"Go!!" Pam said.
She grabbed Reggie and they ran for the bulldozer, climbing it and they started the engine.
It sputtered, and then died.
Oh fuck, Pam thought. Noo! her mind screamed.
She started it again.
It didn't start.
The killer slowly stood to his feet, clutching his bleeding chest. He picked up the razor-sharp blood-stained machete.
He looked dead at them.
"Fuck!!" Pam yelled in frustration.
They climbed out of the bulldozer, and they both made a beeline for the barn.
There had to be some kind of a weapon in there, Pam thought. Their only choice was to fight back.
It was their last chance. There was nowhere else to run.
He had to die.
They ran through the giant hole in the barn wall where Reggie had rammed it with the bulldozer, and stopped, searching for places to hide.
The killer stalked towards them. He showed zero emotion. He just walked slowly. Effortlessly. Taking his time.
He stopped at the barn doors, not seeing his prey anywhere.
He walked slowly across the hay-covered floor, his boots thudding across the hard-packed mud.
All was quiet except the rain coming down on the tin roof.
The killer gripped the machete tighter, scanning the room.
His eyes flickered over to a storage closet, and he tilted his head, studying it.
As he started to advance towards it, Pam, a look of
fierce valor on her face, came bursting out of the closet.
She tugged a string and the chainsaw in her hands revved to life.
The wild, spinning blades came at the killer and he lurched backwards to avoid them.
He held up the machete, deflecting the blades of the chainsaw. A shower of sparks shot out in all directions.
"Yeah, Pam! Alright!!" Reggie cheered her on from the hayloft where he hid behind a large haystack.
Pam lifted the heavy chainsaw into the air and thrust the blades at him again.
It made an awful metallic scraping as it made contact with the crimson-soaked blade of the machete. More sparks flew.
Pam and the mad killer circled each other like
boxers in the ring.
It was chainsaw vs. machete and Reggie cheered like a rabin fan.
She thrust again, and the killer stepped back, once again deflecting with the machete.
She thrust lower, and he still blocked her.
"Ughhhh!" she cried out, brandishing the chainsaw at him as it rumbled.
Then, the killer stumbled, and lost his balance. This gave Pam the opportunity of a lifetime.
His machete fell down to his side.
Pam lunged at her chance.
The spinning blades tore into the killer's left arm, giving him a similar gash to the one on his right where Pam had stabbed him with the knife.
She heard him growl underneath his mask, and he fell backwards onto a stack of hay.
She raised the chainsaw into the air with all her might, her eyes wide with determination and rage.
"Take that!" Reggie cried.
Reggie's smile dropped as the chainsaw suddenly
stopped.
"Shit!" Pam said, as she tugged on the string, revving up the motor.
No use.
It was out of gas.
"Oh, please…" she said, revving it again.
It still didn't start.
She felt the panic rising.
The killer slowly stood to his feet and picked up the machete.
Pam did the only thing she could think to do, and heaved the chainsaw at him.
It worked, sending him stumbling back again into the hay.
She made a mad dash for the ladder leading up into the hayloft and scrambled up out of the mad killer's grasp.
And then, a figure suddenly appeared in the hole where the bulldozer had driven through.
Silhouetted by the moonlight.
Covered in mud.
Wet from the rain.
It was Tommy.