l'Enfer C'est les Autres

Chapter III:

Jenelle heard the boys crashing through the underbrush as she raced toward the lake, laughing with unbridled glee as the cool wind rushed through her hair and stained her cheeks dark pink. She could hear them coming up from behind, gaining on her, but it did not matter - she just ran faster, ignoring the cold flames of each breath searing and tearing into her throat and lungs. Running like this, it felt almost as if she were flying, freed from the cage of her organised, structured life. Nobody could catch her. Nobody could tether her to the earth. Up ahead, the lake came into view, its night-blackened water darkly welcoming, then she heard the resonance of the wooden dock slapping beneath her sneakers as she dropped the lantern and her towel to lie upon the weathered boards. She felt the heat from a pair of hands reaching for her waist from behind, but she danced just out of their reach, giggling triumphantly as she kicked off her shoes, shimmied out of her shorts and panties, and stripped off her bra then shallowly dove off the end of the dock.

Nobody could catch her tonight.

The water was shockingly cold and it stole the breath from her burning lungs immediately upon impact, the lake's chill caress immediately banishing the daze of alcohol from her mind, sobering her instantly, but Jenelle did not care. She had always loved running, how it allowed her to forget the sometimes unbearable pressures of school and her parents' expectations, to forget about trying to obtain one more scholarship so she could attend college without going into debt, to forget about how boys inevitably saw Lainey first. Instead, running forced her to focus entirely upon her body, to concentrate upon her breathing, the steady building of lactic acid that burned in her muscles, the rhythm of her stride, and the placement of her feet. But tonight, racing through the woods with her two best friends right at her heels, it had felt outright euphoric.

Jenelle's head broke through the surface of the water and she turned around to face the dock, grinning. Mike was standing at the end of the dock when her face emerged, illuminated by the pallid glow of the lantern that limned his slim, hard body with silver as he jumped almost straight up into a cannonball that landed just shy of where Jenelle was treading water with a loud splash. Behind where he just stood, Dave sat beside the lantern she had dropped, rolling his socks off of his feet and placing them inside his shoes before he stood and quickly stripped. The differences between the two young men were perfectly illustrated by how they approached getting into the lake, but despite how nearly opposite their personalities were in so many ways, the pair had been best friends, sharing almost everything, for as long as Jenelle could remember.

"Fuck, it's cold!" Mike sputtered upon surfacing.

Laughing at Mike's discomfort as she stretched out and laid back to float, the hard, rosy tips of her breasts peeking up out of the water, Jenelle called out to Dave, "C'mon, slowpoke!"

Dave looked out over the water as he fumbled with his belt and the button at his waistband, his attention and gaze fixed themselves upon Jenelle, and it was with a shock not unlike electricity that he found himself noticing how her short, fair hair clung to the delicate shape of her skull and the black eyeliner smeared around her mischief-bright eyes before his own eyes were drawn down along the pale line of her throat to the peaks of her breasts exposed above the water for a moment. Simultaneously, his pants and boxers dropped to the wooden planks with a muted thump and he quickly stepped out of them then dove into the cold, black water.

As soon as Dave's head reappeared above the water, Jenelle grabbed his shoulders from behind, dunking him with a giggle that was swiftly cut off when Mike pulled her back to his chest, one arm wrapping around her torso just below her breasts. He held her so close to his body that she could actually feel the staccato vibrations of his teeth chattering through hers.

Mike pressed himself into the warmth of her with an audible sigh of relief, more intent upon feeling the heat her body emitted than the intimacy of their naked embrace.

"It's too fucking cold, babe," he muttered.

Even though Jenelle was not facing him, Mike thought he could hear her disappointed frown in her voice when she retorted, "I think it feels great!"

"Well good for you," he snapped, letting his arm go slack around her. "I'm getting out."

She turned around in his loose, one-armed embrace and tossed her hair, sprinkling his face with droplets of water before pushing him away.

"Fine, but I'm staying in."

Mike heard Dave's laughter over the quiet splashing of his strong strokes slicing through the water as he swam back toward the short dock. By the time he pulled him out of the lake and looked back toward his friends, he saw that Dave and Jenelle's limbs were already entwined as they played, giggling and splashing each other. "So that's how it is," he thought over the chattering of his teeth with a bitter bite of disappointment while towelling off.

Trying to ignore the splashes, their breathless gasps, and their delighted laughter while slowly putting his clothes back on, Mike turned his back to the pair in the lake. He really thought this trip would be his chance to finally get with Jenelle - it was he who had suggested they invite girls along this, and it was he who had the balls to actually ask her to come along, not Dave. It had taken Mike over a year to build up the courage to come that close to asking her out, even though they had been best friends ever since her family moved from Rhode Island to New Jersey right before they both started third grade. Back then, he had seen Jenelle as just one of the guys, a slim daredevil who ran like the legions of Hell were on her heels with a wicked sense of humour and a crooked pirate's smile, until suddenly, sometime during the previous summer, she had become something else.

Something mesmerising.

Something he knew he was meant to have.

Mike could not pinpoint the exact moment when the shift happened, when he first saw her as something other than his childhood friend who just happened to be a girl. Her personality had not changed as far as he could tell - but maybe he had? She had not suddenly become super hot like some of the girls; Jenelle remained slim and almost boyish with her feathery blonde hair clipped pixie short, but he unexpectedly found himself staring at her, his mouth suddenly going dry, wanting to run his fingers through her hair to see if it felt as soft as it looked and wondering what her mouth tasted like. He did not think she noticed the change in him, how his gaze followed her with longing as if magnetically charged at track and cross country meets. How she talked to him remained the same, though - sarcastic and teasing, peppery rather than sweet, yet she never was outright unkind to him.

This trip, tonight, was when he hoped it all would change in her mind, too, just as everything had changed in his over the summer, but instead he was alone upon the dock and Jenelle was down there, beyond his reach, naked in the water with Dave. God, why did it have to be Dave? Of all the guys they knew, Mike had never even considered that his best friend could be a threat to his plans for himself and Jenelle to get together. Dave was just so … Dave. Goofy, a bit clumsy, more cautious by far than he or Jenelle; a clownish, gawky boy with hands and feet too large for his skinny beanpole of a body - Dave definitely was the comic relief and not the guy who would get the girl if movies were any sort of a reflection of real life.

Mike stole a glance at the pair in the water, realising that they had fallen silent at some point while he was getting dressed, and regretted looking instantly. Dave had his long arms wrapped around her and their mouths were locked together. Mike only realised that he had kicked their towels off the side of the dock in his disgust when he saw the plush, white rectangles floating there, pale, limp, and slowly sinking into the liquid darkness. He clenched his jaw, trying not to care as he pulled his small flashlight from his pocket and stormed off the dock toward the woods. He did not even look back.

"See you guys later. I'm going back," he muttered, kicking at a rock that went sailing off into the forest.

They did not reply, not that he expected them to. They probably did not even notice he was leaving.

—

—

Blade out and dripping blood that looked black in the starlit forest, Jason followed the barely visible traces of the long-unmaintained trail that the three remaining teenagers had taken toward the lake, his breathing perfectly steady and his footsteps eerily silent upon the bed of pine needles and dead leaves. His mind was empty but for thoughts of his duty to this sacred ground, the pressing need to obey his mother and rid it of the unwelcome trespassers whose mere presence was sacrilege punishable only by death. The hunter's sharp ears picked up the arrhythmic sounds of someone approaching before he saw the thin beam of a flashlight bouncing off the trees and underbrush. Stepping off the trail, he melted into the darkness, becoming just another shadow in the woods, anticipation flooding his acute senses.

He did not have to wait long.

The boy was almost stumbling with every step, his head down, muttering "fuck, fuck, fuck" with each incautious placement of his feet upon the rough terrain. When he was barely a metre away, Jason stepped back onto the trail directly in front of the boy.

Mike was lost in thoughts of anger and regret, his disappointment at what might have been, what should have been, as he made his way back toward their tents, almost totally unaware of the trees around him or the path beneath his feet. It seemed to be a much longer distance now that he was walking and not racing after Jenelle, each step of the trek dragging him down without the buoyant hope that their relationship would so soon become something more, and rocks, fallen branches, and roots seemed to pop up out of nowhere along the trail just to snag his feet and send him stumbling. He did not even notice the man standing on the trail right in front of him until he almost walked into him. Mike was accustomed to being one of the taller people in any room, having hit six foot one the summer before ninth grade, so it felt strange to have to look up to see another man's face.

Only it was a battered, chipped, and gouged bone-white hockey mask with red markings and a deep cut through the right side of the forehead that he saw tilted down to look back at him rather than a face.

With a startled gasp, Mike fell back a single step at the same moment that the masked man took a step toward him, the beam of his flashlight reflecting off the long, bloodstained blade as it swung up into his gut just below his sternum. The air was driven forcibly from Mike's chest with an audible "whoosh," and for a moment, briefer than a heartbeat, Mike thought the man had only punched him.

Why'd he hit me? I didn't do anything to him!

The flashlight fell from the teenager's numb hand with a dull thunk and rolled into the underbrush, but Mike did not notice. He opened his mouth, intending to ask what the fuck the dude's problem was, but when he opened his mouth, only blood bubbled out to drip down his chin. The thick, coppery fluid coated his tongue and lips, spewing from his mouth as he coughed, his lungs spasming, the pressure in his chest growing more and more extreme with each panicked, agonised breath he tried but failed to take, and his vision began to fade as he felt himself lifted up off the ground.

Why was this happening to him? He just wanted a weekend of beer and hunting and the girl he thought he might love …

Jason watched impassively as the boy's hands twitched and curled into claws before falling limply to his sides, his jerking and quivering body suspended above the ground upon his blade, blood oozing out around the steel impaling his chest to drip onto the masked killer's gloved hand and spurting out of his mouth with each attempt at filling his lungs with oxygen as his eyes went empty and blank. He was not quite dead, but Jason knew very well that he would be in under two minutes, so he shook the body off his machete and allowed it to crumple to the ground in a pathetic heap. After a few moments of contemplation, the hunter stretched the corpse out across the trail, deciding to make use of it as a trip line in case either of the remaining trespassers should manage to escape him at the lake and try to flee back to their campsite.

Three down. Two to go.

The masked killer resumed his silent walk toward the lake in which he had drowned as a child without another glance back at the boy's broken body he left sprawled across the old trail. Once he reached the edge of the forest that encroached closer upon the lake with each year that passed since the area around the old camp had been abandoned in response to the many violent deaths and disappearances in the area, he concealed his thick bulk behind a tree and watched.

A boy and a girl were in the water a few yards past the remains of a short dock that still jutted out into the water although the home it once served had burned to the ground at least two decades earlier, if he recalled, their faces pressed together and their arms twining around each other, blind to their surroundings and the danger lurking so close. Jason could hear the girl's giggles when the pair broke apart which grew louder and wilder when the boy splashed water into her face and she, in return, pounced on him and pushed him under the water.

Seeing the boy held down below the surface, even for so brief a moment, sent a faint shudder of memory through the Camp Blood Killer.

The lake probably should have frightened Jason, since he had died for the first time trapped beneath its surface - and drowning was the worst death he had suffered, by far. He could still remember how it felt, his mind and his lungs screaming for air as he clawed desperately at the water, fighting to find the surface, how when he opened his mouth to cry for help or just to catch a breath of precious air the water rushed in instead, filling his sinuses and his lungs and no matter how he struggled and fought he could not spit it out, could not cough it out. Every single second of his struggles passed more slowly than he had ever imagined was possible, his awful last moments of life stained by agony and terror, explosive pressure and pain, until his twisted and malformed young body gave up. He had died then, truly died, and he never found out exactly how long he had been dead before whatever force still drove him had dredged his cold corpse from the lake and brought him back to serve this sacred, cursed land.

He had been nervous around the lake at first, but time and experience quickly dulled the fears that might have hindered him in carrying out his duties and fulfilling his purpose. The clear, greenish water had haunted his dreams back when he still thought sleep was a nightly necessity, and it might still when he occasionally slept, although he had no dreams anymore, at least none he could recall upon awakening. Then, later, the lake had been used to imprison him for years at a time, but Jason was patient, and inevitably he would be released, he knew - all he had to do was wait. It was almost peaceful down there, he had found, trapped within the clear water, so like the grave to and from which Tommy Jarvis had brought him. Now, Crystal Lake was nothing scary to him; it was just another part of the realm he was charged with defending, and it had often proved useful in carrying out his rôle of defender … and executioner.

The teens in the water were so distracted by their play and exploration of each other that they failed to notice the large shadow that pulled away from the dense woods and quietly approached the water's edge, smoothly and silently sliding into the chilly water well away from the circle illuminated by the pale light of the lantern upon the dock. Jason did not pay any mind to the cold seeping into his ragged clothes and enveloping his body, unaffected by and barely even aware of it as he skirted around the light to approach his quarry unseen. Such things as physical discomfort simply did not matter to him anymore. Still, he preferred to catch his victims unawares whenever possible, lessening the chance that they would fight back and possibly injure him. He could feel pain to a certain extent, though it was not enough to stop him, and he was not sure how much damage his body could take before he would be incapacitated. It was not something he ever intended to learn.

It was easy enough to approach the first completely undetected from behind and below the water's surface.

Dave could not believe what was happening. Mike could not handle the cold and left him with Jenelle. He knew that Mike had a thing for her, that he was hoping to use this trip to show her that he liked her more than just as one of his best friends, that he wanted almost desperately to hook up with her, but when Jenelle grabbed his shoulders and pulled him under, he could feel the hard nipples tipping her softly rounded breasts, the sleek muscles of her stomach and her firm thighs brushing against his back as he sank, and he decided he did not care if this was a betrayal of sorts. Mike was his best friend, but Mike did not take him seriously, never had. It felt like Mike knew that Dave would always be there, that he would forgive being left out and taken for granted. Dave suddenly felt sick of being taken for granted by his friends and dismissed by girls. Jenelle was here, and unless he was badly misreading her signals, she seemed … interested.

Was this really possible?

Dave's thoughts and residual hesitance were immediately banished from his mind when Jenelle's mouth met his, hotter than the water was cold, and then her tongue was in his mouth. He thought Mike might have said something, but when he pulled back from her kisses to look, Mike was already off the dock and about to disappear into the forest. Then he felt the scant warmth of Jenelle's body rub against him, her small breasts pressing into his chest, and he forcefully banished Mike from his mind. Instead he gave himself over completely to Jenelle's quick, clever hands, hot mouth, and lithe runner's body.

He was so intoxicated from the beers he consumed and with her that he barely noticed a light pressure against his ankle a few minutes after Mike left. However, he could not ignore the iron grip of impossibly strong fingers around his knee, jerking him down under the water. Shocked, he swallowed and inhaled water, choking upon the lake and upon his terror, and he kicked out violently, trying to escape the grasp holding him under or injure whatever was holding him under, drowning him. For a split second, he wondered if it was Mike getting revenge for him making out with Jenelle right in front of his best friend who he knew had more than a crush on her, but that was ridiculous. The hand wrapped around his knee sharply pulled him down even deeper then released him, but that relief lasted only an instant before he felt those hard, strong fingers around his neck, squeezing then twisting. Dave felt a jolt, a flash of pain so intense his vision went white, and then he felt nothing at all.

Jenelle had no idea what happened to Dave - she only knew that he was touching her, kissing her, and then he jerked away from her, pulled down into the black water by some unknown force. She could see the bubbles of his screams floating up to burst silently upon the surface and the wild churning of the water where he had been that indicated he was struggling against something. She reached down to grab his hand, but even though she knew that he was down there, somewhere just beneath her, she could not feel him, and she had no idea how deep the lake was here. An unfamiliar fear gripped her heart and her stomach in bloodied talons, squeezing ruthlessly, and no force in the world could have convinced her to stay behind a moment longer - not even to try to save her longtime friend and would-be lover. Despite the terror leaching panic and adrenaline into her bloodstream with every thudding beat of her racing heart, she swam for the dock with strong, sure strokes.

She just had to get out of the water. If she got out of the water and onto dry land, she was certain that she could outrun whatever had dragged Dave under, assuming that it was something that could leave the lake to chase after her. She reached the dock more quickly than she expected, skinning the knuckles of her right hand upon one of the old pilings supporting the weathered boards, the pain jolting like electricity through her but not slowing her from pulling herself up onto the span. She did hesitate when she realised her towel was not where she had left it, and she took the time to pick up the lantern and look back toward the lake and Dave. She saw him floating upon his belly, but she realised something was horribly wrong before her brain could make sense of what her eyes saw out there in the black water. Dave was floating upon his stomach, but somehow his face was twisted around to stare sightlessly up at the sky.

Jenelle screamed, the sound carrying over the water, even as she slid her bare feet into her sneakers and started to run, not taking the time to grab her clothes. Whatever could have pulled Dave under and twisted his head around 180 degrees, she did not want it to do the same to her. There were more clothes and towels and weapons back at the tents. She looked back over her shoulder and saw a shape that looked like a man leaving the lake, which inspired her to run even faster.

The masked killer paused to watch the blonde girl race into the woods as he strode, dripping, out of the lake, the lantern swinging from her hand bouncing crazily off the thick trees and casting mad shadows to mark her passage. She was quite quick, he noted, but he was unconcerned by her speed. She was the last of the interlopers remaining to stain his land with her presence, and she, too, would be dead soon enough. With no thought in his mind beyond her imminent demise, Jason plunged into the woods after her.

Jenelle ran. She ran like the hounds of Hell followed hot upon her heels. If she could make it to the campsite, then she could grab the keys and Mike and Lainey and Frank, and they could all get to the truck and the guns and kill the motherfucker who just killed Dave …

Oh god, Dave!

Jenelle felt a stabbing pain in her side and each breath burned down her throat and into her lungs, stinging like rubbing alcohol poured into cuts, but she only lengthened her stride in response. She could not think about Dave anymore or even about the monster that was probably following her - she just had to get back to her friends.

She could not help it, it was an irresistible force, and it forced her to do it - to make the stupid, foolish mistake of looking back over her shoulder to see if the figure from the lake actually was following her. At first she thought maybe it … he … was not, because she heard nothing but her own heartbeat hammering in her ears and her own feet crunching through the dessicated corpses of summer's leaves that littered the trail, but then she saw a shadow moving behind her. Moonlight glinted off his strange, white face.

A mask!

She gasped, terrified.

How could it be so close behind her?

And that was when she stumbled.

Over something large.

And fell forward onto her hands and knees, hitting the ground hard.

Jenelle pulled herself up even though her palms stung and her ankle and both knees ached now, her lungs burned, the scrape across her knuckles throbbed, and her head pounded with the gasping rhythm of her respiration. Then she swung the lantern over and glanced at what had tripped her.

Not what, but who - she had tripped over someone not something.

"MIKE!" she shrieked, her voice higher-pitched than she had ever heard it, recognising that it was he lying across the trail, and she had tripped over him, his still, unmoving body, and she fell again.

Jenelle scrabbled backward like a crab until her back and head came into contact with a tree trunk. She shrieked again at the rough texture of bark catching in her short hair, rubbing against bare skin and the silent shadow looming ever larger as it came ever closer. Somehow, she managed to pull herself to her feet, and set out at a dead out run again, not realising that she was crying even though the tears were streaking across her cheeks and into her already-sodden hair. Through the blurring veil of tears, she saw the bright green of their tents, and relief flooded through veins that flowed with battery acid into muscles that threatened to cramp at any moment.

"Lainey! Grab the keys! We've gotta go! NOW! LAINEY! FRANK! C'MON!"

In her panicked hurry, she failed to notice that they had allowed the fire to burn down to almost nothing as she raced past it. But she skidded to a stop barely a moment later when she saw Frank collapsed in a pitiful, twisted heap just outside of the tent, his naked body nearly bisected and stained dark and awful.

"Oh god, oh no, oh god, LAINEY! WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU WE GOTTA GO!"

But Lainey never answered, so Jenelle resumed running.

Jason could see the running girl pause at the campsite, her pale body glowing ruddy in the fading light of the dying fire, and he heard her frantically calling for her dead friends, grimly satisfied that they would not answer her. Despite her speed, he was catching up, and he was content in his certainty that she could not run forever - and he would be there when she faltered in exhaustion to dispatch her to wherever the dead of Crystal Lake went.

Jenelle tried to remember which way they had hiked from the truck to set up their camp, which path led to escape, and she decided to take the trail that looked broadest, assuming that had to be the correct one since they had hiked in carrying the tents, their packs, and everything else, so they would have needed some space.

Oh fuck, the guns. Were they even in the truck? The guys moved everything to the blind, didn't they? But would they have moved the guns there, as well? And what about the keys? She had no idea who had them last much less where they might be now. The weight of horrifying despair crashed down onto her shoulders, dragging her down with it.

"I can't give up! I've gotta keep going! I can't die! I got into Dartmouth AND Princeton! I can't fucking die! Not like this … not here! I can't die now!" ran like a mantra through her head, distracting her from the almost agonising sensation of her muscles straining as she tried to push through the cramps stiffening them, knowing she could not stop, not even long enough to vomit up the beer and vodka sloshing in her stomach.

The weight of the lantern, slight though it was, became too much to bear, so she let it fall from her tingling fingers and just ran blindly through the dense forest, trusting her feet and the faint luminance of the crescent moon to guide her through the cloying darkness. Dropping that slight burden proved enough to give her a second wind, and she took full advantage of it, digging in deeper and harder than she ever had, harder than she had thought she could, flat out sprinting along a trail that barely even existed, desperate to put as much distance between her vulnerable body and the threatening shadow still following behind her. Another two hundred yards, and she saw the edge of the forest approaching, the placid black lake coming into view reflecting pallid moonlight back. For a moment she thought she might have gone in a circle somehow, that the shadow was herding her back to where Dave's corpse floated, waiting for her to join him in death, but she did not see the decrepit dock. Instead, she saw an even more decrepit building looming over the water, only a hundred more yards ahead. Her heart soared, hope beating back the despair weighing her down with resolute fists, and she felt like she was flying along the path that sloped down toward the lake and shelter.

A place to hide from Death.

Before she knew it, she was there. Jenelle leapt through the unglazed window like when she was running hurdles at a track meet, her feet and legs barely missing the shards of glass still sticking up like teeth from the rotting frame, then she skidded into the adjacent wall, unable to stop herself in time. She barely felt the impact through the adrenaline.

Looking around the old boathouse, she regretted dropping the lantern. The roof had a large hole on the far side, though, which let in the slightest hint of moonlight. Her eyes finally adjusted somewhat to the dim light, and she saw a row of wooden paddles lining the wall. She darted over and yanked one down, totally unbothered by the cobwebs that clung to it and her hands. It might not be much of a weapon against something that could cut people nearly in half and twist a man's head around 180 degrees, but it was something. Relief crashed down and through her, and although she felt real hope, she doubled over and vomited out everything that had been in her stomach.

When she raised her head, panting and spitting to try to get the foul taste out of her mouth, she heard heavy footsteps just outside. Panic raised itself like a wild animal lunging and snapping within her again, and she searched desperately for somewhere to hide.

During the entirety of her desperate race against fate, the masked killer kept the girl's fleeing form in sight, and when he saw her hurdle into the boathouse his lips, such as they were, twisted into what for him passed for a smile. It was almost done. Not even short of breath, he stalked around the decaying structure, no longer bothering to hide the sound of his footsteps upon rotted wood. She was already dead - she just did not know it yet. Truly, she had been dead from the moment she hiked into this forest.

It was time to finish it.

Jenelle crouched in the darkest corner behind a pile of unidentifiable detritus undoubtedly left behind when the structure was abandoned many years earlier, gripping the paddle like a club in both hands, listening to the heavy tread of the fiend's feet just outside of her hiding place, trying to calm her rapid breathing and shaking limbs. Now that she was still, the chill of the autumn night air bit into her over-exerted body, the sensation of the slick layer of sweat beaded upon her exposed flesh prickly as it formed into droplets that slid down her skin like icy needles, raising goosebumps along the lines of their passage and reminding her that she had left her clothes behind on the dock. Waiting for the masked killer, naked but for her running shoes, hoping beyond hope that he would think she had kept running and continue to follow the path instead of searching inside the old boathouse, she felt more exposed than ever in her life. She tried not to think about her friends and how horribly they had died, but every time she blinked she saw Dave's corpse floating with his head turned all the way around, Mike's crumpled form lying limp and motionless across the trail, Frank's shattered leg held fast in the silvered steel mouth of a fucking bear trap with splinters of white bone sticking out through macerated flesh, gleaming wet and splashed with red in the orange glow of a dying fire, all the horror of the night seemingly imprinted upon the insides of her eyelids. But she realised she had not seen Lainey's body amidst the chaos of any of the murder scenes.

Maybe she had escaped the carnage with the truck keys, and even now she was coming back with the police to rescue her from the psycho chasing her!

But how could Lainey have escaped the killer? Jenelle had run faster than in any meet or training, faster than she thought her body could go, and she had barely managed to increase her lead. Lainey had never been close to being able to keep up with her, not on any distance. But maybe while the killer was busy with Frank? As much as she wanted to believe it possible, Jenelle doubted it, but she just could not give up her hope that maybe Lainey survived the killing spree, no matter how unlikely that she could have escaped when three strong, athletic guys had been butchered. Still more tears threatened to leak from her eyes, but she was unable to bring herself to relinquish even one hand on the paddle to knock them away.

Her head filled with warring hope and despair, Jenelle waited, praying to every god she had ever heard of that her friends' killer would move on instead of searching for her in the boathouse.

Then the door shattered upon its hinges, splinters of wood and dust flew through the air like tiny missiles, and when the shadow stepped into the building, it was all she could do not to scream. It … he … looked massive, nearly filling the doorway, and renewed terror assaulted her. She could taste her frantic heartbeat upon her tongue, bitter as bile. The killer strode to the middle of the room, and as he passed beneath the hole in the roof, the light glinted off the long blade he carried, and all she could do was watch, frozen by horror. Barely able to breathe, smothering beneath her fear, Jenelle pressed herself further back into the concealing darkness.

Behind his mask, the little bit remaining of Jason's nostrils flared, taking in the stink of decay overlaid with sour vomit, the tingling sting of alcohol, and the familiar stench of fear's sweat. He stood completely, perfectly still in the centre of the dimly illuminated space and listened. Over the familiar sounds of his breath through the holes of his mask and his own slow, steady heartbeat, he detected the faint noise of irregular, shallow breathing.

There.

Jenelle watched in mute horror as the hulking brute, who had stood so still he resembled a statue in the middle of the room, turned toward where she crouched behind the pile of junk. Her heart fluttered in her throat as if trying to take flight to escape the doom headed her way. There was no way he could see her in the shadows, absolutely no way! So why was he coming toward her with such purpose in his long stride?

She could not have known that sight was the weakest of his nearly preternaturally acute senses, and even if she were aware of this, there was nothing that knowledge could have done to help her.

Without even knowing it, she scooted back a pace, her sneakers quiet against the dust-strewn floor, but Jason heard her.

Jenelle blinked, and in that brief time, the man in the mask somehow reached the junk pile. When her eyes opened, his shadow was enveloping her and his broad back blotted out the scant light filtering through the hole in the roof. His arm rose, and the long, bloodstained blade in his hand usurped the entirety of her vision.

Jason swept aside the pile of lumber and shingles behind which the girl was attempting to conceal herself from him with an offhand, nearly lazy gesture, swinging the machete at her from the other side almost simultaneously. The girl sprang to her feet, parrying the blow that would have severed her head from her body with the paddle.

The force of the man's swing almost tore the paddle from her sweating, shaky hands, but somehow she kept her grip upon it, and the machete blade skittered harmlessly along its shaft, just barely missing her numbly tingling fingers.

"Why?" she shouted at him as tears filled her eyes and spilled down her face again, smearing streaks of black kohl down her cheeks to mark their passage.

She did not wait at all before swinging the blade of the paddle at his head; however, he was so much taller than Jenelle that it struck the stone-solid muscle of his shoulder instead with enough force that the shaft snapped with an explosive crack that sounded like thunder in an electrical storm, right at the machete's point of impact. He barely even seemed affected by the blow that should have numbed his arm.

Jenelle screamed up at him in impotent fury, "What do you want?"

But the man towering over her said nothing.

She saw the muscles of his arm bunch beneath his stained and tattered work shirt, and she knew that he was about to deliver the killing blow. With a speed she did not know she possessed, she jabbed the jagged end of the broken paddle at his midsection, aiming at the unprotected area just below his sternum.

Jason easily caught the remains of the paddle with his free hand before it could make contact with his body, wrenching it from the girl's hands. Before she could say anything, before she could do anything, he shoved the sharp length of wood up into the triangle of her jaw at the underside of her chin with such force that he lifted her up off her feet, her legs kicking weakly over a foot above the pool of blood steadily growing upon the floor beneath her, and the jagged end of the broken paddle burst through the top of her skull.

After a bit, slowly, almost gently, he lowered his arm and allowed her body to slip to the floor before putting a booted foot on her chest and jerking the shaft of the paddle out of her skull.

Jason felt almost nothing when he looked at the young body sprawled awkwardly on the floor amidst the junk at his feet, no elation, no remorse, nothing except a sense of completion, and of relief. The threat that the bad, irresponsible trespassers posed to his domain was finally neutralised. Now, all that remained was to dispose of the bodies.