Part III
Chris Higgins wondered what this trip would be like had it gone according to plan: her friends coming with her in the blue van they all called the Boogie Wagon. Best friend Debbie would be up front with her as she drove, happily gabbing about how she had never been to a lake before as she applied her favorite nail polish the color of arterial blood. Chris would periodically check the rear view mirror to see what The Wild Bunch was up to in the back, allowing herself a small smile at their pot smoking antics. Though she didn't approve of drug use, they never took it too far and only ever ended up doing goofy things like juggling apples and oranges anyway.
She was certain that Debbie and the others would be able to soothe her damaged nerves, usually okay but instantly shredded at the thought of returning to Crystal Lake. It was there, at her family's summer home, that a monster with twisted pink skin had dragged her along the forest floor by her wrists, intent on taking her to some dark hole where he was planning to...what? What was he going to do with her? She shivered violently at the thoughts racing through her mind, everything from cannibalism to sexual assault.
But her mother had insisted upon the two of them making the journey to the summer home that weekend, for Mrs. Higgins had arranged for a local magazine to do a photo shoot at their lodge. It was a Better Homes and Garden type of deal, with Higgins Haven about to be immortalized as one of the ten top homes in rural New Jersey. "We need to make sure everything is clean and perfect, and that alone will take your mind off that terrible nightmare you had a few years back."
Her mother was being quite literal when she used the word nightmare, for she and her father had never believed that Chris had actually been attacked. She had fled into the woods after their awful fight that night and simply fallen into a demented dreamworld as she sat against an old oak tree, memories of their knock down drag out becoming a deformed creature. Her mother had even had the unmitigated gall to say that the hideous man was her subconscious mind's way of telling her that she had been right to be so angry about the late night date with Rick. "Girls who stay out late - like your friend Debbie - end up getting themselves into all sorts of trouble. Maybe that dream will ensure you never really run into some beast you can never hope to get away from."
So her mother had heard her on the phone with Debbie and invited herself along while disinviting everybody else. "She and her boy toy can pick out baby names or something. This trip is for family only." Chris had to shake her head at that one. Family. Right. Family had been the first thing on that woman's mind when she uprooted them all from their home in Texas when Chris was ten because the place was suddenly not good enough for her wanna-be East Coast sensibilities. They had left Fort Worth like thieves in the night, barely saying goodbye to their friends and neighbors in their mad dash to get up north and be a part of, well, that Better Homes and Garden society that so fascinated her mother.
Chris still had a bit of Texas in her, however. Her love of bright, warm days, and of horses charging along with the wind in their manes. She had been asking her father about getting at least one horse for the empty barn out behind the lodge, but since the encounter with that awful man her desire to ride had been replaced by a desire to hide. That's why she had to come back to the scene of the crime to face down what had happened. It was getting in the way of everything: school, work, her social life. She couldn't concentrate enough to complete any task, she still had nightmares that extended beyond the dragging and ended in some freaky shack made from a patchwork quilt of wood and trash.
And the head. Don't forget the severed head, with skin like the leather of her father's old saddlebag after it had been left out in the rain. Somehow It was even worse than that body in the bathrobe that lay slumped against the altar it was perched atop.
She had never spoken a word of that shack or its contents to her mother, or her father. That was private information, and Chris had already made up her mind about what she would do if she ever came across that dwelling in the woods this weekend. She had insisted on keeping one aspect of her original plan despite her mother yelling about wanting to take her Cadillac. They had come in the blue Boogie Wagon, and in the far back, covered by a red flannel blanket that she had once taken along for a picnic with Rick, was a large metal can of gasoline, filled to the brim.
If she ever saw that goddamn monster's hovel she was going to burn it down to the ground. And if that thing was inside at the time, all the better. Now, as she drove her blue van along the rickety old bridge leading to Higgins Haven, she saw her mother notice the book of matches that lay on the dash. Mrs. Higgins frowned, her mouth puckering into a sour expression as she reached for it.
"What is this doing here, Chrissy? You're not smoking are you?"
Chris slowed the van to avoid hitting a rabbit that darted out onto the dirt trail before them. "No, mom, those were left here by Andy. I gave him and Debbie a lift back to campus one day when their car broke down in town."
"What a filthy habit," she said, tossing them back on the dash. "Your Rick friend, does he smoke, too?"
Again she said: "No, mom. He's clean. Too much of a healthy living country boy to do anything like that."
Something around here was sure going to smoke, if she had anything to say about it. Then, once her mother saw the ashes and the scattered bones, she would never again doubt her daughter's story. Chris smiled and pulled the van to a stop beside the old barn that had yet to see a horse. They had arrived.