l'Enfer C'est les Autres
Chapter V - Insignificant
When Jayne woke up the next day in the blue-stained light beneath the tarp, she experienced a paralysing moment of disorientation before she remembered where she was, why she was sleeping curled up in a pile of blankets upon the ground, and what a strange ground it was that crinkled noisily beneath her like crumpled up plastic as she shifted positions. It had been far too long since last she had slept so soundly, and her mind seemed to be having a moment's difficulty returning to her current reality. Quickly though, it all came back to her - how she had disposed of the majority of her possessions, left her life behind in every sense of the phrase, made the long drive up to New Jersey, and finally reached her destination: the allegedly cursed summer camp that, according to legend, was haunted by the vengeful figure of a boy who had drowned in the lake back in 1957 then somehow grew up to be a nigh-unstoppable killing machine who Anna had told her about as a campfire ghost story ten years before. Jayne stretched out with a yawn, disentangling her limbs from the blankets in which she had wrapped herself like some sort of smooshed human burrito so that she would not get too cold during the night to sleep, then sat up stiffly with a low groan before peering out from beneath the tarp. To her shock, the sun was already high in the sky, dappling the ground with the dancing shadows cast by its light passing through the trees. She knew that she had been thoroughly worn out by the time she curled up in her blankets and fell asleep last night after the days she had spent driving all the way from southeastern Louisiana up to rural New Jersey all by herself with only the stereo and her pain for company and then the effort of setting up her simple campsite. However, she rarely slept well or for long, regardless of how exhausted she might be, so managing to sleep past 9 a.m. as she so clearly had was a rarity. It felt good, though; very good, in fact, and she stretched her arms up over her head and arched her back with another broad yawn, just enjoying the fresh, clean air surrounding her. Inhaling deeply, she savoured the crisp flavour of Fall carried upon the light breeze sneaking into her shelter, especially after having awakened for the past few days to the choking stink of exhaust, burnt oil, and mildew that permeated the car in which she had been sleeping during her journey.
Still seated upon the crinkling blue plastic ground cover, she folded up the blankets and stacked them neatly beside her stack of books, then took her morning doses of all her medications before hiding the lockbox in which she stored the pill bottles between the blankets. She resented the reminder that the white-capped, orange containers were of how even though she had reached the destination about which she had dreamt and for which she had longed more and more over the course of the decade after she first heard of it and its tragic, blood-soaked history, being there had not changed her at all. Not even one little bit. She was still just as sick and broken and ugly and wrong here as she was everywhere else despite the beauty and vibrancy surrounding her; her body still needed the medications she hated taking but could not skip taking or else it would do far worse to her than it did every day.
Some of that wave of bitterness receded when getting up proved to be less difficult than she feared it might be after the stiffness that had plagued her the previous day whenever she remained still for more than a few minutes, much to her relief. Using her walking stick for balance but barely limping at all, she went to Rodney and found her teakettle. Seeing a hint of a smile upon her face in the distorted reflection upon the curved side of the teakettle came as a rather pleasant surprise, and her smile only widened. It took very little effort to coax the banked campfire into flames again with the addition of a bit more pine straw and two of the previous night's partly-burnt branches, and in a very short time she was settled upon the folding chair beside the fire waiting for the water to boil so she could enjoy a hot cup of tea. She could not recall the last time she had felt so relaxed, so peaceful, and she silently thanked Anna for telling her the story of Camp Crystal Lake.
A cursed place should not be so beautiful or induce such profound calm, she thought.
With a sense of nostalgia settling upon her, Jayne found herself wishing the trees back home would have exploded in such a fiery blaze of colour in the Fall, but it always seemed as if the interminable, wet heat of Summer gave way directly to Winter in the southern swamps, the leaves adorning the trees immediately shifting, seemingly overnight, from brilliant shades of green to muted browns, the vibrant trees suddenly becoming bare and dead. Fall in southeastern Louisiana lasted barely a week, if the inhabitants of that marshy realm were lucky. The region certainly had its charm, and New Orleans in particular was a jewel of a city … well, a cracked and filthy jewel, marred with potholes large enough to swallow Rodney and stinking of rancid beer, stale vomit, and piss wherever the tourists congregate en masse, but a jewel nonetheless, with its fresh seafood, multicultural cuisine, and historical architecture. As for Jayne's hometown of Pontchatoula, it was nationally famous for the size and sweetness of its strawberries. Not even the vast agricultural fields of California could compete with the quiet, small town less than an hour from the sybaritic Crescent City.
The whistling of the kettle appeared to disturb the birds in the surrounding forest, their calls suddenly ringing sharp and insistent from the trees until she removed the offending object from the fire and poured its boiling contents over the little hand-packed bag of dried and coarsely-ground spearmint, ginger root, orange spice, lemon peel, and chamomile in her mug then poured in a generous amount of thick, dark honey. It sounded like a strange mixture even to her, but she found it helped to settle her stomach in the morning, so she had endured the commingling of strong, disparate flavours until with familiarity she actually grew to like it. Surrounded by the pristine peace of the wilderness that her body hungrily absorbed, with the ever-present ache of her swollen joints reduced to an uncharacteristically dull nagging in the background, and with her slightly gnarled and twisted fingers warmed by the mug of steaming tea clutched between her hands and her upturned face similarly warmed by the Autumn sun, Jayne felt a deep sense of contentment that she had long ago given up on ever again experiencing.
Today would be a good day.
It was extremely rare for her to feel hunger until she had been awake for several hours, which she viewed as something of a blessing because her stomach typically rebelled against the introduction of anything but tea until then; however, to her surprise, when her mug was still almost half-full, she heard the rumble of her empty tummy calling her attention to the faint pangs of hunger. It made sense, though - she realised that she had eaten nothing at all after the ice cream sandwich and a handful of goldfish crackers she bought at a truck stop to serve as her lunch shortly before noon yesterday. Oops. The sense of calm contentment she was enjoying faded as she nervously contemplated what she might eat, fearful that her stomach would reject anything she put in it, no matter how bland, thereby ruining what she hoped would be a good day.
Leaving her chair, she dug through the supplies in the back of Rodney, trying to decide between a can of condensed chicken broth and some strawberry applesauce, and finally settled upon the applesauce because it seemed more like breakfast food. While she sat beside the fire, slowly licking the applesauce off her spoon, she tried to figure out what she should do once she finished, assuming that breakfast did not make her too sick to accomplish much more than curling up beneath the tarp clutching her tummy and trying not to vomit as morning meals so often did. After several days out upon the road, she almost desperately wanted a shower, so she decided that the first order of business would be setting up the camping shower she had purchased. Plus, getting water for it gave her an excuse to go down to the lake again … not that she really needed an excuse to return there. All she could see was its beauty despite what she knew of its tragic history.
Once she finished her small bowl of applesauce, Jayne remained seated for about ten minutes, waiting, sitting as still as she could hold herself and hoping that her stomach would not not decide to reject her breakfast. Surprisingly and fortunately, the small meal seemed to be sitting easily thus far, much to her relief. When she finally was almost completely certain that it would stay down, she banked the fire again then pulled the shower-contraption out from beneath the tarp and read through the instructions. It all seemed relatively straightforward, and in under an hour she had it rigged up, hanging from the thickest of the lower branches of one of the towering pin oaks encircling the clearing in which she had set up her campsite. Even though she doubted her ability to lift the 5-gallon reservoir off the ground much less over her head when filled, it seemed like it would not be too difficult to haul it up using the cord looped over the branch like a pulley for leverage. Carrying the water to fill it from the lake to her campsite, on the other hand … that would be the challenge. Simply carrying the reservoir to and from the lake to fill it as anyone else might have done was not feasible for her, but how much time would it take for her to haul enough water to fill it back and forth? Then she remembered that she had no schedule to follow, no deadlines to meet, so if it required her to make multiple trips to and from the lake to fetch enough water to fill it, so be it. Her stiff muscles could use the exercise, anyway, and she had always enjoyed walking through the woods.
After cleaning her bowl, spoon, and mug, she put them away and pulled two empty gallon-jugs out from the back of the car then changed out of the clothes she had worn for the past three days, trading the long-sleeved black T-shirt and leggings for a worn-thin, heathered grey T-shirt so loose the stretched-out neck tended to slip off her shoulder and down her arm, exposing one bony shoulder or the other but incredibly comfortable, and a pair of black cargo shorts that hung precariously off her jutting hip bones even with a belt to cinch in the waistband. She brushed out the mussed mess sleep had made of her wild curls before parting her hair down the middle and braiding it into a pair of pigtails, her fingers struggling with twisting the fine strands in the repeating pattern a bit less than usual, then slid her feet into her black and white converse sneakers, propping her feet upon the seat of her chair so she would not have to bend all the way down to tie the laces. Lastly, she strapped her knife in its sheath to her thigh and pulled on her holster, checking to make sure that the Kimber nestled within had a round in the chamber, ready to fire if necessary, before sliding the band into position upon her hip and buckling it securely in place. She could not have expressed precisely why, but she found the pressure of the handgun's slight weight at her side immensely comforting, almost like a loved one's hug. Except Jayne had never actually felt comfortable being hugged by anyone, not even by her parents. Finally ready, she set out for the lake, water jugs in hand, almost skipping.
On the way back to the campsite, weighed down as she was by both full jugs of water, she was very glad that the terrain was relatively flat. The jugs were not particularly heavy, even to her, but they affected her balance and, much to her frustration, the wrist she had broken several years earlier began to throb in protest before she made it even halfway back. Still she persevered, long accustomed to having to push through varying degrees of pain if she wanted to accomplish anything at all, and upon reaching her campsite she carefully poured the contents of each jug into the shower's reservoir before returning to the lake to refill them. The second trek down to the lake took a little bit longer, and although it was cool outside, especially in the shade of the dark trees overhanging the remains of the trail, and a slight breeze ruffled the blazing leaves still clinging to the branches above, she felt a bit of sweat beading upon her forehead, and more trailing down her spine and along the shallow line between her breasts. Once she finished pouring the third and fourth gallons into the five-gallon tank, she paused to wipe the back of her forearm across her damp forehead, wondering if she really needed to go back to the lake for just one more gallon of water. It did not seem like it would make much of a difference, and she very nearly set aside both of the jugs, but then she considered just how ridiculously much hair she had, the unruly mop of waves and curls both long and thick, and her concern that she might not have enough water to rinse all the suds from her hair drove her to return to the lake for that last gallon of water which might just make all the difference.
Once she had filled the jug, she decided to stay at the lake for a little while, enjoying the warmth of the late Autumn sun and the faint caress of the breeze over her skin, absorbing the peace emanating from the clear, tranquil, blue-green water and the fiery blaze of leaves bedecking the dark trees surrounding it and reflected upon its glasslike surface. After all, there was nowhere else she needed to be. There was a particular beauty unique to such stark contrasts - flame and water, dying leaves and the living lake that contained the intrinsic power to kill - that captured her attention. Entranced, her senses were completely filled with the overwhelming calm, leaving her unaware that she was no longer alone beside the water, that she was being watched.
—
—
Jason had not been able to stop thinking about the peculiar girl whose age was so difficult to discern and whose unwelcome presence had not triggered his mother's voice to ring inside his mind, insisting that he kill the trespasser, only able to ignore those unpleasant thoughts during the brief period while he dealt with the five drunken intruders. That inexplicable silence from his mother, who had begun nearly screaming in his head almost immediately after he left the girl behind unscathed to hunt down the new trespassers, demanding that he must kill those irresponsible teens for her such a short time after she had failed to say anything at all about the small figure he had discovered seated at the end of the dock, coupled with the girl's diminutive stature and scrawny build, led him to believe that the girl was a child, but children did not drive or carry handguns. It was perplexing, uncomfortable, and he did not like anything that did not fit snugly into the order he imposed over his existence. And the girl-woman-child did not. The only thing about her of which he was absolutely certain was that she did not belong at Camp Crystal Lake - aside from that, she and her presence and Mommy's complete lack of a reaction to her confused him. Even when he had returned to his domain after the Jarvis boy resurrected him, however long ago that was, and found that the fools had dared to reopen the camp to children, his mother had not been silent. No, his mother had demanded that he not harm any of the campers (not that he ever would intentionally hurt an innocent child; it simply was not in his nature - even though Jarvis had been young that first time they clashed, that boy had not been innocent, he had been able to sense that his mind was no longer fully a child's; and besides, the irksome boy had gotten between him and his duty an unforgivable number of times that night, even before playing his cruel trick - in truth, Jason would have preferred not to have to kill anyone at all, and he yearned for the day to come when nobody would trespass upon his land so that he would never have to kill again) and warned him against killing where they would see if it were at all possible. The situation was too strange for him, and he longed for a return to the routine, predictable, simple normalcy of his routine, predictable, simple existence where everything followed the patterns he understood so well. He decided that he would give her until midday to pack up her belongings and leave on her own, but if she were still upon his land after that, he would ensure that she left, well aware of just how intimidating he was capable of being.
So, when the sun passed its highest point in the sky, Jason abandoned his patrolling of the forest and returned to the clearing in which she had set up her camp, hoping to find it deserted and empty of any signs of human habitation. Much to his consternation, though, the tarp was still strung up between the trees, faint curling trails of smoke arose from the fire pit where the coals of the banked fire still smouldered beneath their thin, protective coating of grey-white ash, the rusty little hatchback still sat where she had parked it, and there was even a new addition which he had not seen the previous times he inspected the site - some strange contraption of hoses and cords was now hanging from the lowest branch of one of the trees. Curious, he examined it, trying to discern its purpose. The large container at the base of the tree sloshed as if full of water when he prodded it with a boot-clad foot, and the tube extending from the bottom thereof terminated in something that resembled nothing more than a faucet, and he wondered if it might be a sprinkler of sorts, though what purpose that might serve for the girl while camping in the woods was beyond him. It was an interesting contrivance, certainly, and the part of his mind that was fascinated by the functioning of mechanical devices urged him to linger a while until he could figure out its purpose and function. However, he was not there to feed his curiosity, so he dismissed that desire.
With narrowed eyes, Jason stalked through the neat little campsite, searching for the girl herself, but although her things were there, she was not. Unbidden, a low growl of frustration vibrated within his chest when she failed to appear. Why could nothing be simple where she was involved? Grinding his teeth, he thought about how he first had seen her down at the lake, so he decided to continue his hunt for the girl there.
Although he was searching for her, so he probably ought to have been pleased to find his quarry so easily, all he felt when he saw the small figure sitting upon her heels at the end of the dock was anger paired with discomfort. Again, he noticed that his mother's commanding voice in his head was strangely silent, and he did not like that one bit. In his mind, he asked her to tell him what he was supposed to do about the girl; however, Mommy never responded to him when he tried to address her, not even in the early years after her murder when he outright begged her to say anything to him, anything at all besides her hissed demands for death, and this situation was no different. Pausing at the foot of the dock to observe her, he took note of the full water jug sitting upon the grey-weathered boards beside her, the black-hilted knife in its black sheath strapped to her thigh camouflaged against the black of her shin-length shorts, and the bulge beneath her loose grey shirt at her hip that he knew concealed a handgun. Gritting his teeth behind his mask, Jason drew his machete with a softly hissing whisper of steel from the leather straps that held it secured to his thigh then stepped out onto the old wooden span over the water, this time doing nothing to disguise the sound of his footsteps.
At the sound of creaking wood and heavy footsteps approaching from behind her, Jayne sprang to her feet with a sharply indrawn breath and abruptly turned around to see who was there. Before she even had time for her eyes to register who was coming toward her, her left hand immediately went to her hip to release the snap then came to rest upon the .45 holstered at her waist, prepared to draw and fire in a single, smooth move she had practiced from half a dozen carry positions for several years until it was as much a part of her muscle memory as breathing.
Maintaining awareness of her hand where it dropped to her handgun, Jason's mismatched gaze nevertheless fixed upon the girl's face, expecting to watch her mounting terror at his appearance write itself across her features.
Jayne's green-flecked amber eyes went wide and her mouth gaped open soundlessly as she took in the sight of the the enormous masked man in ragged, dirt- and blood-stained clothing full of holes suspiciously reminiscent of bullet holes and the sort of tears made by blades thrust through the fabric into the flesh beneath, who had appeared behind her so suddenly and who now loomed threateningly over her, holding up a long, stained machete so comfortably that it appeared to be an extension of his thickly muscled arm. She was not sure what or who she had expected to see upon whirling around, but it was definitely not this … fearsome behemoth radiating deadly menace with his every heaving breath. She thought he was likely the tallest man she had ever seen, standing well more than a foot taller than her barely five foot - in shoes - stature. No, he was probably closer to a foot and a half taller than she, maybe even more, she realised, and the spread of his shoulders seemed close to equalling her height. He looked like he could snap her bones with one large, gloved hand. She stared up at him, frozen in place at the sight of how he glared down at her with mismatched eyes - one dark and greenish and the other white as a blind man's, the two set unevenly in his skull - from behind the chipped and marred old hockey mask that obscured his face, and she knew instinctively that this was the man from Anna's stories. This was the boy who had drowned in Crystal Lake and been resurrected to wreak vengeance upon anyone foolish enough to trespass upon his land. This was the Camp Blood Killer in the flesh. Her chest ached when her pounding heart seemed to skip a beat, but she managed to force the words to leave her mouth.
"You ..." she murmured in breathless disbelief. "You're real!"
At her softly uttered outburst, Jason expected the girl to draw her gun or try to run, so he readied himself to swing the machete and end her life should she choose to attack, but to his absolute shock, instead of pulling her handgun from its holster, she smiled radiantly up at him with what appeared to him to be hope, of all the improbable expressions a face could wear, as opposed to the horror or fear he was accustomed to seeing upon faces upturned to his, and her left hand abandoned its position upon the handgun entirely, rising to flutter like a pale bird before her throat.
When his sole visible reaction to her exclamation seemed to be an additional tensing of the bulging muscles in the arm holding up the machete, the tip of her tongue darted out to lick her lips nervously, and she suddenly felt afraid that maybe she was mistaken - that maybe this was some other masked, machete-wielding giant of a man who just happened to be at the site of the former Camp Crystal Lake - and for the briefest moment she regretted having moved her hand away from the security represented by the Kimber. The stories she had found about Jason Voorhees were all quite specific as to what he did to his victims: he killed them. There were no tales of extended torture or rape committed by the Camp Blood Killer - from everything she had read, she gleaned that anyone who stood upon the ground where he and his mother had died so many years ago committed a crime in his eyes for which the penalty was a quick, violent death.
Which was precisely why Jayne had come to Crystal Lake.
She yearned for death to release her from her body and her memories, but she absolutely did not want her death to be drawn out - she had already suffered enough for a hundred lifetimes in her twenty-six years of life, and what she sought was an end to her suffering. But while her research led her to believe that the legendary killer would end her life relatively quickly without prolonging her last moments to enjoy her pain, playing with her as a house cat plays with a lizard for his own cruel amusement at her expense, she felt no such certainty about any other man she might encounter in the woods. Cold sweat slid down along the line of her spine, raising goose prickles in its wake as she tried not to think about the sorts of things strange men in the forest might do to a lone girl encountered far from where anyone could hear her screams or come to rescue her, before killing her, silencing her forever so she could not tell of the horrors perpetrated upon her during her last moments of life. The thought of dying with those images as the very last at the fore of her mind seemed almost as awful as actually suffering such a fate. So she clutched at her hope that all of her pain would soon be ended forever and addressed the menacing man standing before her.
"You are Jason Voorhees, right?" she asked in a thin, light, slightly scratchy voice only a hair above a whisper, and a shy, apologetic smile returned to light her pallid face just before she added, "I so hope you are."
And that was when the significance of the moment finally sank in, and she understood. This was it. The end of everything. The end of the pain that never went away no matter how many damned painkillers she took. The end of the memories that haunted her. The end of the nightmares that did not end when she awakened twisted in wet sheets to a body damp with sweat and a face slick with tears, but which shifted into a reality that was less phantasmagorical but which was actually worse because it was real and there was no waking up from it to escape … but it was the end of everything. It was the end of her suffering, but it was also the end of the odd joy she felt when she was alone in her car and a favourite song came on, inspiring her to sing along even though she had a thin, breathy voice that she felt ruined any song she tried to sing. It was the end of the bittersweet pleasure of losing herself in the novels she loved. She would never again awaken in pain so terrible she could not even drag her stiff, spasming body from the bed, but neither would she ever feel the thrill of riding her bike down the levee again, raising her feet off the pedals and lifting her hands off the brakes while the wind rushing past lifted her tangled, baby-fine curls off her back to wave like a banner of copper and gold in her wake. She would never again experience anything at all, good or bad.
The moment was so unlike the surreal morning almost a year before when the doctor flown in from Centres for Disease Control in Atlanta had breezed into the isolation room where they had her hooked up to several machines to tell her that there was nothing more they could do, that the infection was still spreading through her, wholly unresponsive to the cocktail of antibiotics they had pumped into her veins through the IVs over the past two weeks, and that there was no real chance of her living long enough even to see the sun rise the next morning, so if she had not yet made her peace, she probably should, as the time to do so was running out quickly … but, despite that prognosis, she had seen the sun rise that next morning … and the one after that … and every other morning thereafter up to today …
But this moment was it. The true last moment. There was no uncertainty left. The upraised machete hovering over her would descend, bringing death and blessed oblivion with it. She wished that her life had not led her to this bleak moment, but she only felt regret that her existence had been so full of misery and pain that its ending had become her sole hope and most powerful desire.
Jayne waited for the blade to fall.
Although he could not speak, Jason might have nodded in response to her inquiry if he was himself, but he was too confused and shocked to do so. Nobody who came to Crystal Lake actually wanted to encounter him, because to encounter him was to encounter their death. Perplexed by the girl's unexpected and, to him, inexplicable response to seeing him, Jason's boots remained frozen to the wooden planks where he stood, no more than an arm's length away from her, and he cocked his head to the side as he took the opportunity to observe her from the front up close now that he could see her face for the first time.
Female beauty was irrelevant to him, so his assessment failed to determine if the girl were pretty or not; instead, he noticed her pallor and the dark shadows around her large eyes, which he recognised as indications of exhaustion or illness. Seeing her dark, coppery blonde hair, even pulled back as it was into a pair of long plaits that hung down to the bottom edge of her ribs over the loose, grey shirt covering her torso, stabbed him in the gut, reminding him again of his mother's killer so many years dead, but the eyes looking up at him from her pale face with such inexplicable hope were a green speckled amber, wholly unlike Alice's bright blue. Hope, of all things … Jason truly could not understand it. When she swallowed, he could see the tendons and muscles moving beneath the pale skin of her throat and upper chest, hers a form made up of little more than muscle, sinew, and bone beneath easily bruised skin, but despite how little body fat she appeared to have, the curved line of protruding collarbone exposed by the neckline of her shirt sagging down onto her upper arm did not stick up any more than typical of the many other girls he had killed, telling him that she was not only short and skinny but also quite fine-boned; and therefore, she would be effortlessly easy for him to break.
However, what he still could not judge by his keen observation of her appearance was her age. Her body still told him that she was a child, her obvious familiarity with carrying a handgun implied that she was a grown woman, and he could not place her face into either category - when she smiled, he thought child, but she had appeared significantly older when she first turned to face him with her mouth set by nervousness in a grim line. All in all, she just confused him more upon closer observation. He felt the urge to ask her who and what she was, why she had come to Camp Crystal Lake, and why she had appeared relieved instead of terrified when she saw it was he who stood behind her, especially since she seemed to have some knowledge of who he was - and of whom or what was she so afraid that she was ready to draw a gun upon them but not upon him? However, being effectively mute, he could not ask her these or any of the other questions buzzing around him like so many flies.
In the face of the imposing masked man's continued unmoving, silent scrutiny, Jayne could feel her cheeks growing hot as a blush crept up over her face from her neck. She had never been comfortable with being the focus of attention, particularly male attention, and being glared at by a man a foot and a half taller than she whose entire body radiated menace so intense the air around him should have rippled with its heat as he observed her was more than unnerving. She could feel her fingers twisting as she nervously awaited the machete diving down to swing her way, so sharp the blade would split the molecules of the air in its passage before splitting her flesh, muscle, and bone, and finally put an end to the pain that had become her life over the past several years. How bad would the pain of that blade entering her body be? How long would it hurt until oblivion would finally free her forever from pain's clawed grasp? She watched him expectantly, hoping it would be quick.
For his part, Jason's frustration at not being able to put the girl standing before him, gazing up at him with so much hope and with that improbable little smile, into any single one of the organised boxes into which he placed people, was rapidly building toward explosion within him. Standing there and staring at her was not providing him with answers to any of the questions he had about her, and he could feel his frustration shifting back to rage, so he turned upon his heel and stalked away from her, still hoping she would just leave his woods on her own. Whatever she was, she did not belong here.
For several long moments after the silent, imposing man she presumed to be the legendary killer who haunted the abandoned summer camp turned and walked away from her, leaving her unharmed, Jayne stood frozen to the spot, watching the large figure's retreat until the dark shadows of the forest swallowed up the last traces of him. She did not understand what had just happened, but when it finally dawned upon her that he was not going to kill her, hot tears welled up from within, filling her eyes and blurring the trees into which he had vanished.
It was so wrong - Anna's story, everything she had read, all the sources agreed that Jason was absolutely merciless, that he killed everyone who set foot upon the ground that had once been Camp Crystal Lake. So why was she still alive? Why had he not killed her?
Was she really so insignificant that she was not even worth killing?
"No!" she whispered in agonised horror with a low sob to the retreating figure she no longer could see. "Don't go! You were supposed to kill me!"
She wanted to run after him, to demand that he do what he was supposed to do, to beg him to kill her because surely that was what he wanted; but instead, she fell to her knees upon the warped, splintery boards with a quiet moan, hunching over and burying her face in her hands.
"You were supposed to kill me!" she sobbed hopelessly.