l'Enfer C'est les Autres

Chapter VI - Hunter/Hunted

Jason paced back and forth across the worn, bare wooden floorboards of the nearly empty main room of his ramshackle old cabin, lost in uncomfortable thoughts. Anything out of the ordinary bothered him more deeply than he cared to admit, even to himself. And the intensely unwelcome presence of the girl he could not categorise, who for whatever reason was not afraid of him as any remotely sane person should be, was as out of the ordinary as anything he had encountered in his decades of existence - as anything he could have imagined, even if he a were a more imaginative creature than he was. There was nothing particularly unique about her that he could pinpoint aside from his inability to determine her approximate age and the fact that she had greeted him with hope. It was perplexing, as was his mother's silence regarding the girl-woman-child, and his arm was cocked back to strike the chest of drawers closest to the front door when he was distracted from the whirlwind of confusion wracking his mind when he thought about the peculiar girl on the dock by the insistent jingling of little bells announcing the arrival of people at Crystal Lake.

More trespassers.

With an odd sort of relief at the sudden redirection of his thoughts to something familiar which he knew how to handle properly, what remained of his lips curved up into what might have been a smile, he scooped a mid-sized hatchet up off the long, low coffee table littered with mismatched candles that sat in the middle of the room, then he strode out the front door, slamming it shut behind him with such force it shuddered within its frame, and small chips of mildew-stained paint fluttered like so many ungainly snowflakes to the warped wooden floor of the shallow front porch. Jason's fury at the presence of interlopers upon his land and the anticipation of the hunt flooding through him erased all thoughts of the girl from his mind. All that existed to him in that moment were his duty and the intruders who must die by his hand. Upon perfectly silent feet, Death stalked off in the direction indicated by that particular set of bells toward his prey.

—

—

Jared was brimming over with excitement as they hiked away from the cherry red '77 Chevy Blazer and into the dense woods where no employees of the forestry service had dared set foot in at least a decade, if not longer. Cley was home from college on Fall Break, finally home for the first time in two years; and, even better, he had agreed to go hunting with his younger brother. Best of all, he had even agreed to go wherever Jared wanted - to the site of the former Camp Crystal Lake. Jared hoped that he and his brother would encounter the legendary murderer who was said to haunt the woods around the lake, because he wanted them to be the ones who finally put the killer in the ground, but even if Jason Voorhees proved to be nothing but a myth to scare kids away, he figured the hunting would be good in a place so widely avoided. It would be a fun weekend with his big brother, regardless. His father's Winchester slapped against his thigh and his pack bounced against his lower back with each exuberant step.

"Are you sure about the Navy?" Cley asked from in front of his brother.

Jared did not even have to think before replying, "Yeah. I've always wanted to join up, Grandpa would be thrilled if he'd lived to see it, they'll pay for school so I won't have to go into crazy debt to get my degree, and the Navy's supposed to have the best food in the military."

Cley laughed.

"You're still making big decisions with your belly, huh?"

"Just 'cause you've been away for two years and changed a bunch doesn't mean everything's changed," Jared retorted, laughing as well.

Somewhat self-consciously, Cley replied, "I don't think I've changed that much."

"Long hair, tattoos … dude, I don't think Ma even recognised you when we saw you in baggage claim! Shit, I was half afraid you'd gone all hippie and wouldn't want to come hunting. You know, like 'guns are bad and killing animals is eeeeevil' and all that sorta shit."

Grimacing at his brother's assessment of his appearance, Cley asked, "Oh hell, you didn't really think I'd changed that much, did you?"

Although Cley was still laughing, Jared could hear a slight hint of genuine shock in his voice.

"Well, you never know, and it's been two years …" the younger of the pair teasingly insinuated.

"That's the second time you've mentioned two years in as many minutes," Cley interjected, pouncing upon the opportunity to change the subject away from how much or how little he had changed in that time. "I'd almost think you've missed me, little bro."

When Jared failed to reply for a long moment, Cley continued, "You could've visited, too, you know."

"You know I was busy with wrestling, soccer, and Scouts," Jared stated flatly. "You didn't even come to the ceremony when I made Eagle."

"I would've, but I told you I was in exams - Calc II and Mechanic Behaviour of Materials in one week. Engineering sucks. Still, I wish I could've been there. I'm proud of you, though, if I didn't tell you - I never made it to Eagle, and I fucking tried."

"Yeah, I know," Jared mumbled.

Not wanting the mood of their first hunting trip together in years soured, Cley quickly changed the subject yet again, inquiring, "What d'you think we'll find out here? I know deer's out of season, but there's sure as shit no game wardens out here, and I've seen several runs and a ton of scat. Wouldn't mind nailing me a ten or twelve pointer to mount over the fireplace."

"You're living in a dorm, bro - what fireplace?"

—

—

The silent hunter creeping along, trailing the brothers, hidden within the deep shadows of the forest, could not have cared less about their fraternal conversation as he sized up his prey. The only words to which he paid any heed were Mommy's, and she was telling him to kill. His quarry had proved to be two young men, one taller and skinnier with long hair, the other short and broad, both armed for a hunt themselves but weighed down by their large backpacks. It should not be too difficult to kill them, he knew, although they were spaced just far enough apart that he could not take both out with a single motion using either of the weapons he carried. This meant that the one he attacked second might have time to swing his gun up to firing position and shoot him before he had a chance to kill both. Preferring not to get shot again even though he knew it would not kill him or even slow him down much, Jason decided to watch and listen just a little bit longer, hoping that one of the pair would say or do something to show himself as slower to react or less adept with a firearm than the other. He had time.

Anyway, if they walked just a little bit farther, they would walk right into one of the traps he had set the previous night. The fear generally made his prey that much easier to kill.

—

—

Cley paused to take a swig from his flask, the metal flashing silver in a beam of sunlight that managed to sneak through the thick canopy of golden leaves overhead, then held it out to his younger brother.

Jared held up his hands, sheepishly explaining, "I can't - I'm in training and Coach'd kick me off the team if he found out."

Laughing, Cley jiggled the flask at Jared, his dark brown eyes bright with mischief.

"C'mon! How's Coach gonna find out? I'm sure as shit not gonna tell him. Are you?"

Running his hand through his close-cropped, dark hair, Jared grinned sheepishly then accepted the offered flask.

"Guess not. Alcohol's not like pot - it'll be outta my system by the time school's back and Coach piss tests us, anyways."

The younger boy took a long swig, then coughed a little before drinking again.

"Oh fuck, that shit's smooth!"

With a smirk, Cley pronounced, "Only the best for my baby bro," then held out his hand for the flask.

The brothers continued along the overgrown remnants of the camp trail, passing the flask back and forth, unaware of the camouflaged presence following them, watching and analysing every word and movement, trying to determine which would die first. With a sigh, Jared turned the flask upside down upon realising it was empty.

"Please tell me this isn't all you brought!"

Grinning, Cley shook his head, already feeling a pleasant buzz.

"Nah, I've got a whole 'nother bottle in my pack. But let's wait 'til we've set up camp to break it out - don't wanna run out too soon. It's gotta last 'til we're ready to call it quits and go home sometime tomorrow afternoon."

Since he had not drunk any alcohol in just over a year because he was constantly in training for one sport or another, even over the summer break, the whiskey had gone straight to Jared's head - although he would never admit he had become such a lightweight, especially not to his brother. Therefore, he began walking more cautiously, watching where he set each foot upon the uneven ground and making a concerted effort not to slur his words. Although Cley, who had again walked up ahead of his younger brother, noticed nothing amiss, the silent hunter following them, hidden yet far closer than they could have imagined, took note of the changes alcohol wrought upon the shorter of the two.

"So, d'you think there's any chance we're gonna run into that homicidal maniac that's s'posed to kill campers around here?" Jared asked, his voice bright with excitement and his words only faintly slurred.

"Nah," Cley replied. "I know you're hoping to go down in history as the guy who finally puts down the monster - it's just about all you talked about the whole drive down from Connecticut - but he's gotta be a weak old man by now, if he's even still alive. The drowning thing that supposedly happened when he was a kid was back in the '50s, right?"

"Yeah, I guess," Jared admitted, "but they say he's died a buncha times and always comes back, like some sorta killer zombie or something."

Cley laughed loudly and startled the birds settled among the scarlet-clad branches of a nearby sugar maple into nervous flight, calling raucously to their fellows in warning, alerting them to the disturbance in that generally peaceful, quiet forest.

"Do you hear yourself, bro?" Cley asked incredulously. "Killer zombies running around with machetes in the New Jersey woods? Zombies aren't real, and if there ever was a real Jason Voorhees, he's a lame old man by now, if he's not already worm-chow."

Cley hesitated for a moment, turning back to his little brother to add with a straight face, "Though if there's zombies anywhere, it'd have to be in New Jersey. Ugh, what a fucking shithole of a state. Did you smell the difference when we crossed the border? Toxic waste, those freaks from The Jersey Shore, low-rent mafiosos … I guess killer zombies'd fit right in."

Jared almost doubled over laughing.

Cley waited for his brother to catch his breath before continuing, "Anyway, I heard old Jason's thing is killing horny teens he catches fucking, something to do with the counsellors being too busy screwing to notice when the dude fell in the lake as a kid, not a coupla guys out hunting. We didn't bring chicks, so he wouldn't come after us anyways."

Sighing dejectedly in disappointment at how a bit of logic had almost completely destroyed any hope he had at getting to achieve the goal that had inspired him to choose Camp Crystal Lake for their hunt - a goal which now felt rather silly even to have considered as a possibility - Jared replied, "Yeah, I guess you're right," but he perked up a bit upon coming up with a better idea, adding, "Next time you're home, maybe in June after my graduation, we gotta bring some girls along, see if that'll flush out the killer. If he's not dead. Just think how cool it'd be to be the guys who finally killed the infamous Jason Voorhees for real - shit, imagine mounting that hockey mask he wears over the fireplace, how badass that'd be!"

—

—

Jason knew that the boys were discussing killing him, although it did not bother him much - several others had come here with similar goals over the years, and he felt confident in his knowledge that they would not be any more successful in that endeavour than any of the other fools who attempted to end his existence. Tommy Jarvis was the only person who had managed to kill him after the lake spat out his corpse to walk the Earth again after he drowned on his 11th birthday, and not even that death, as final as it had seemed at the time, had turned out to be permanent. He strongly doubted that he could die at this point. Were he in a better mood, had he not spent most of the day until the boys' arrival pondering the unwelcome, peculiar girl's presence at Camp Crystal Lake and her reaction to seeing him, he might have been amused by their assumption that he must be either a decrepit old man or a zombie, though. While he only possessed the most rudimentary knowledge of zombies, the ravenous, mostly mindless walking dead, he knew that he was something different, something else. He was a dead man animated by forces he had never bothered to investigate or question, but there the similarities ended. Jason was perfectly aware that he had no formal education, but despite that lack, he was far from mindless, and he only rarely ever felt the pangs of hunger, often going several seasons without consuming any food or water, and the occasional hunger he felt was never for human flesh. Well, he might admit, assuming he ever considered the matter in greater depth, that he probably would eat human flesh if the rare hunger struck him at a time when there was absolutely nothing else available or obtainable for him to eat. Not that such things mattered in the least. The exact, precise nature of his resurrected body, or indeed what sort of being he had become after his long-ago death, was irrelevant to him. All that truly mattered was his duty.

And that duty was calling to him in the form of his dead mother's insistent voice ringing inside his head, telling to kill the brothers who still failed to realise that the subject of their conversation was right there, mere metres away from them, plotting their imminent demise.

Further unbeknownst to the brothers, only fifty metres ahead, the trap waited to be sprung, patient as only the inanimate and the dead could be.

—

—

Glancing back at his brother, Cley noticed that Jared's eyes were ever-so-slightly unfocused. "Lightweight," he muttered under his breath with fond amusement, almost too quietly to be heard.

"How much further to where we're setting up camp?" Jared asked.

"One sec, I think we're getting close but lemme check the map," Cley answered, fumbling in the large side pocket of his khaki cargo pants without bothering to slow his pace.

He had just managed to pull out the somewhat crumpled paper while walking and was squinting at the faded print when he felt a sharp pain surrounding one leather hiking boot-clad ankle and a jerk, followed almost instantaneously by a sudden rush and a stomach-flipping jolt. The whole world seemed to tilt, then he realised that he was suspended in the air, hanging upside down by one leg, swinging like a crazed pendulum with his extended fingertips at least six inches from the ground upon which he had been walking barely a moment before.

"Oh FUCK!" Jared exclaimed.

"What the fuck!" Cley shouted. "Fucking cut me down!"

Jared fumbled for the hunting knife at his waist to cut through the thick cord from which Cley was hanging, then he saw the counterweight and screamed like a girl, almost dropping the long knife from shock-numbed fingers.

"Oh fuck," he repeated, this time in a long, low moan of absolute horror at the sight of a nude male body, mostly pale as milk but a bilious dark violet at the extremities and lower back from livor mortis, and although the corpse's back was facing him, so was its face, the dead eyes profoundly awful, a grotesque, whitish blue and cloudy, staring up at Jared in the palpable terror he must have felt as he died.

Unable to see the dead teen that startled and terrified his younger brother from where he was swinging helplessly, Cley yelled, "What the fuck, Jared! Cut me down already, dammit!"

That was when the afternoon shadows encasing the forest parted, and the tall, imposing figure Jared had been so eager to hunt stepped forward from the concealing woods, revealing itself upon the trail in front of the brothers. Moving as smooth as quicksilver, painstakingly sharpened machete in hand, the masked killer slashed at the hanging boy's unprotected abdomen once, twice. Shining, slimy and purplish, his entrails fell in a shower of thick, dark crimson blood to drag in the dirt, gleaming like fat, wet sausages.

Cley howled, his dark brown eyes bugging out of his deeply red face, reaching with shaking hands for his stomach, trying to pull his guts back inside where they belonged. But then Jason's blade flashed again, this time across the dying man's throat, biting so deeply it severed the arteries, windpipe, and oesophagus. Cley's body jerked violently twice, blood spurting over the tattered legs of his killer's pants, then he hung limp and still, twisting slowly in the air from the cord by which his body was suspended.

Jason stabbed the machete deep into the corpse's chest, setting it to spinning like an inverted ballerina, pulled the hatchet from its loop at his waist, and stepped around the dead body to face the other boy.

When Cley's entrails had fallen from his still-living, still-screaming body, the knife had fallen from Jared's nerveless fingers, and he had fallen to his hands and knees, retching violently. But, by the time the killer stepped around his brother's grotesquely spinning corpse with all the contained grace of a mountain lion, the Eagle Scout had regained his feet and held the antique Winchester tight to the crook of his shoulder, aiming down the smooth wooden barrel at the bloodstained monster bearing down upon him.

"Fuck you!" he screamed, his voice cracking with emotion, not thinking that he had gone to Crystal Lake intending to kill the very man approaching him with such emotionless determination, that he had even been imagining displaying that same battered, blood-spattered, bone white hockey mask staring down at him over his fireplace mere moments before.

"You killed my brother!" he nearly sobbed. "Fuck you!"

Seeing the barrel of the shotgun aimed directly at his chest and the absolute rage in the boy's tear-reddened eyes blazing from his bloodless face, Jason accepted that he was unlikely to come through this encounter unscathed, but he barely had time to brace himself before the boy's finger squeezed the trigger.

"Die, motherfucker!" Jared bellowed as his finger curved around the trigger of his father's shotgun, exerting pressure.

Jared barely even felt the kick in his shoulder he was so intent upon the murderer, his brother's killer, the horror of a man bearing down upon him, hatchet in hand. The buckshot caught the large, masked man in the right upper chest and shoulder, ripping a low groan from behind the mask and knocking him back several feet. Jared crowed triumphantly when the weapon fell from Jason's hand, expecting the monster to fall down immediately thereafter.

"Gotcha, fucker! How'd ya like that!"

But the killer did not go down.

The all-too familiar pain burned in the right side of Jason's chest and in his shoulder as he staggered back from the force of the impact, and his hand spasmed, dropping the hatchet. But, much to his surprise given the force of the impact of the shotgun blast and his prior experiences with getting shot with various sorts of guns, he was still standing. Jason flexed the fingers of his right hand, smiling grimly behind his mask when they still moved at his command. The boy was yelling at him, screaming obscenities and taunting him, but that did not matter. He did not bother to reach down for the fallen hatchet, instead rushing at the boy before he thought to rack the shotgun again.

Jared was too shocked to do more than fall back a single pace when the monster who had just taken a chest full of double-aught buckshot fucking sprang toward him. He was still thinking "that's impossible!" when he felt the inhumanly strong fingers clad in red-stained yellow leather work gloves scrabbling at his face. He tried every move he had practiced for the upcoming district championship in wrestling, but he could not seem to get any leverage upon his attacker who must have outweighed him by double, and who seemed absolutely expert at using his mass to subdue - despite the wound that ought to have been incapacitating if not fatal and which was dripping blood, smearing it over both their chests as they struggled.

Opening his mouth to grunt in pain, Jared felt those leather-clad fingers slide into his mouth. He bit down as hard as he could, tasting old leather, oil, and his brother's blood, but Jason did not react at all, if he even felt the pain. Then, there was an awful pressure as the killer forced his mouth open. Jared tried to bite down harder, focussing all of his strength into his jaw, but it did no good. He knew that his mouth could not open any further, but then he could feel the corners of his lips tearing, the flesh parting at the impossible strength wrenching his mouth open, wider and wider. Blood filled his mouth, pouring down his chin and down his throat, and his struggling finally gave way to panic, but his violent thrashing did no good. Jason's hands just kept exerting that terrible, terrible pressure, until finally something gave.

With an awful tearing sound, not entirely unlike the sound of wet sheets being ripped in half, Jason wrenched the younger boy's head and jaw completely apart, the mandible coming off in his hand like a gory trophy and his neck breaking as the force when his jawbone tore free from his face snapped the upper portion of his head back so roughly that his skull was nearly wrenched off his spine.

The Camp Blood Killer took a deep, heaving breath, satisfied that both trespassers were dead and his mother's voice was silent again in his head, then dropped the body and the severed mandible to the ground. Rolling his shoulders, he realised that his right shoulder blade and collarbone had likely been broken by the buckshot, but the wounds had already stopped bleeding and probably would be healed up completely within a day or two, at the most. Though hardly comfortable, the injuries would not slow him down, even if more intruders should enter his land that very day. Moving slowly but doing nothing to muffle the sounds of his booted footsteps upon the dead leaves covering the trail, he bent to retrieve his hatchet, slipping it back into its loop to hang from his belt, then he pulled the machete from the hanging body's chest. He wiped it clean on the corpse's pants then slid it into its straps upon his thigh, moving by muscle memory alone, not even having to look.

Once he had extracted the taller boy's body from the snare, he let it fall onto the pile of intestines dragging beneath it and carefully reset the trap. He could use it until the corpse that served as a counterweight lost its integrity and fell apart, at which point he would give it back to the lake if the wild animals that called these woods home did not get to it first. Everything Jason did followed a pattern he had set years ago, every action serving a purpose. Maintaining and serving that order was one of the closest things to a pleasure in his existence.

When his work at the site of the kills was finally complete, he kicked the jawbone into the woods for scavengers to pick clean then ripped the guts from the taller corpse's gaping abdomen, tossing them off to the side of the trail to serve the same purpose. Afterward, he hefted the shorter and neater of the bodies over his left shoulder and tied a length of rope he kept in his pocket to the other corpse's ankle, so he could drag it behind him. As he walked back in the direction of his cabin, he considered how he could use the two new bodies. No thought of the peculiar girl and her thoroughly inexplicable response to seeing him crossed his mind. For the moment, Jason was almost as content as he was capable of being.