Saturday, October 31st
The Present
Halloween Night
The sleek, silver-painted BMW luxury car drove down the winding, debris-covered road that led to Camp Crystal Lake.
Trees, standing like skeletal sentries off to the sides of the path, towered over the vehicle as it deftly avoided a fallen, rotting log that had tumbled out of the surrounding forest.
"Christ-!" Nathan breathed as he swerved his newest birthday gift out of the way.
Nicole, still dressed in her purple minx outfit, shot her boyfriend and personal chauffeur for the night a dirty look.
"That was close..." she mumbled sourly.
The horribly-paved road ahead was as black as the night and littered with disconnected branches of all twisted shapes and sizes. Soggy leaves and crisp leaves alike all drifted down from the nearly-bare trees above, raining down atop the hood of the BMW as it approached the dilapidated front gates of the abandoned campgrounds.
As the vehicle began to slow, Nicole pressed her face against the cool, rain-covered window (there had been horrific downpour that afternoon), and squinted out into the darkness.
Nailed to one of the few trees that was not horribly rotting was a wooden, hand-painted sign that read: Camp Crystal Lake - Est. 1935.
Surrounded by the bare limbs of the nearby trees, the sign was nearly unreadable beneath the mess of leaves and branches; Nicole, however, had excellent eyesight, and immediately realized that they had reached their destination.
"We're here," she said with a slight smile as she unbuckled herself. "Come on, Natey..."
Nathan, turning off the windshield wipers, asked, "Do you think that Derek has already set up the tables and chairs? They might have been blown away by the wind."
Nicole, exiting the car, shook her head.
"The storm wasn't that bad...and besides, I told Mark to have Derek pin down the tablecloths."
Slamming the car door behind her, Nicole carefully examined her new surroundings; desolate, dark, dreary...Camp Crystal Lake was the perfect spot for a Halloween party.
In fact, Nicole had been down to the lake numerous times before when she was just a child. Upon hearing the legend of lunatic Jason Voorhees from a classmate, she had begged her parents to enroll her in a summer camp program in the nearby woods, just off of the Crystal Lake property.
The summer had gone by without a fault, and the lake had been nothing but a distant memory since school began that year.
Young Nicole had not been entirely pleased, however; she had wanted to see Jason lurking about the water.
When her older sister, Jennifer, had told her that the Voorhees tales were just told to scare little kids, Nicole had dropped the subject entirely, angry that she had been fooled.
But now, upon returning to the campgrounds, Nicole knew that she had a story herself to tell that would scare the bejeezus out of everyone present.
"Thank you, Jason Voorhees." she murmured as she and Nathan approached the front gates.
The gates were massive, rusting poles of metal sealed off with a twenty-pound lock; a second sign hung from one of the bars, reading: New Owners Welcome; Inquire at Town Hall. Unauthorized Trespassing Will Not Tolerated.
Nathan shoved his hands into his jean pockets; he was not dressed for the occasion.
"Unless Derek's got a permit, we gotta find someplace else." he noted upon reading the sign.
Nicole flashed her muscular boyfriend a dazzling smile.
"Bullshit." she breathed, hurrying off to the side of the road.
Nathan's gaze followed her as she grabbed a heavy, fallen branch from out of the wet and scraggily thicket.
"Aw, no, Nicole...you can't -"
Nicole, laughing, raised the tree limb high over her head, and brought it down atop the lock, which immediately buckled beneath the force of the attack, and fell away.
Almost immediately, the gates swung open, creaking and groaning with age.
Nicole, satisfied with herself, dropped the branch and turned back to Nathan.
"Get in," she said as she leapt back into the front seat of the BMW. "Drive us inside the camp."
Nathan hesitantly opened the driver's door, sat down, closed the door, and started the engine.
Within moments, the vehicle, glistening in the moonlight, shot forward and disappeared into the night.
xxx
Nicole was fiddling with a blanket she brought and Nathan was seated in a grimy lawn chair drinking a Diet Coke when a second car, an outdated forest-green Honda, pulled up to the open gates.
Craning his head for a better view, Nathan watched as Derek Myers, draped in a pitch-black, tattered cloak and wearing an infamous Ghostface mask, leapt down from out of the front, rubbing his gloved hands excitedly. Also from the front came Chloe Carter, Derek's quick-witted girlfriend of six months and Nicole's closest friend.
Nathan could tell that Chloe was clad in a sexy, revealing She-Devil costume as the couple approached.
Her hair dyed a shocking red , she wore blooded-colored, see-through leggings, a scarlet mini-skirt that showed off her dark skin, a tight, crimson button-up shirt that revealed her slim midriff , and high-heeled, bright red boots. In her slender hands was a plastic pitchfork, and two "horns" sprouted from out of her scalp.
"See anything you like?" she asked Nathan playfully.
Nathan immediately turned the color of his female friend's pointed "tail".
Laughing, Chloe brushed past the baseball player and ran to embrace Nicole.
"I love your costume!" the latter squealed.
"Oh, damn, your whiskers are so cute!"
Derek, shaking his masked head, turned to Nathan.
"Why didn't you dress up?" he asked, his voice slightly muffled. "You could have at least thrown on a cape or something."
Nathan shrugged, already bored with the conversation.
"I might've had an old Freddie Krueger mask or something in my closet." he mumbled.
Nathan looked at the ghostly, stark-white mask and warped, gaping latex mouth before him.
"It looks like you're ready to head on down to Woodsboro," he joked, snickering. "God, could you have worn a more clichéd costume? Everyone and their sister is wearing that piece of crap tonight!"
Derek cocked his head to one side, his mask giving him a demonic look.
"Hey, I'm the one who set this entire party up in the first place!" he glowered behind the fake black eyes.
"How'd you and Mark get over the gates, anyway?"
Derek began making his way over to the refreshment table, where Chloe and Nicole were busy setting up plates, utensils, and an orange-and-black checkered bowl full of candy bars and gummy worms.
"We hopped it."
xxx
Then, from out of the backseat of Derek's car came Mark, a muscular, Filipino teenager and avid football player and his plain, fair-featured girlfriend, Gina.
Chloe immediately waved Gina over to help them with the punch while Nathan and Mark playfully began to punch one another.
Approaching the table, Gina smiled warmly, her straight black hair hanging down past her shoulders and her pale skin barely visible in the moonlight.
"Why did you drag Mark along?" Chloe asked with a half-smile.
Gina gingerly removed a silver flask of alcohol from her inside jacket pocket, pouring its contents into the deep-red punch bowl.
"He's the only one of us who has a fake ID!" she giggled, throwing the empty container aside.
The three girls burst into laughter, thrusting their paper cups into the bowl and chugging the fruity liquid down rapidly.
xxx
Erin Benet, her antiquated coke-bottle glasses drooping down her button nose, slipped her short arms into the sleeves of her partially-torn denim jacket, rearranged her ponytail, raced down the steps of her 15 Maple Avenue house, and quickly shouted "I'll be home by ten" before racing out the oak front door.
A Halloween party...the first party Erin had been invited to since at least third grade, which was, of course, before she had established herself as the class brainiac.
Third grade was when the ship started sinking.
Now, however, life rafts were finally being lowered down into the black waters of her life; now she could board a second, unsinkable vessel, and watch as her old self disappeared beneath the ocean surface.
Erin hated such metaphors, but the sinking ship did sum up her feelings quite well. After all, it had been ages since she had last talked to someone (someone who was not just interested in copying her homework) on the phone.
In fact, just that afternoon she had had a rather long, pleasant conversation with Gwen.
Like Erin, Gwen was also a bit nervous about crashing the party down at the lake. While the latter was more concerned about Nicole Goldman and Chloe Carter, Erin had always been the one person to fall for tall tales and rumors.
The idea of a psychopathic mother and her demented son made Erin sick.
Erin's father had been a camper at Crystal Lake the summer Jason Voorhees had disappeared. He had heard stories, horrific stories, of the poor boy struggling in the water. Apparently, no one was around to pull him back out onto land.
The following year, as every local resident of the Crystal Lake area knew, Mrs. Voorhees, completely unhinged after her son's "death" brutally murdered the two counselors who were in charge of watching Jason; at the time of his drowning, they had been off having sex in the woods.
The thought of such gruesome deaths and a young child cut down in his prime easily made Erin regret the lengthy walk it took to reach the desolate campgrounds.
The entire surrounding area, facilities, pools, everything, had been boarded up and left for the roaches and mice that swarmed the camp each year.
Rumors abounded about what the vermin were after; some would go so far as to say that they were in search of the decaying corpses of Jason's past victims.
Erin shuddered as she passed a string of identical houses; the combination of heading towards Crystal Lake and the cold, damp weather made her shiver beneath her heavy jacket.
It would be a long night.
xxx
Gwen sat in her bedroom, delicately defining her face with deep teal eye liner. Though not a big fan of makeup, she enjoyed making herself appear as dark as possible.
Of course, it would not make much of an impression when compared to the sheer blackness of the night.
Halloween.
The single day of the year during which no one could point out her...unique form of dress; after all, half the town was dressed as either a witch or a warlock.
Gwen didn't like to say that she could only fit in on October 31st, but it was the truth.
As always, the truth hurt.
As she got up from her chair, Gwen felt a stab of burning pain in her chest.
They'd always hated her, but why?
Why?
She knew why; being different in Clearmont High was like receiving a death sentence - you couldn't change anything about yourself afterwards.
Marked for life as a freak.
Sighing heavily, Gwen smoothed out the creases in her black mini-skirt, her dark hair falling down into her dark eyes.
Moving away from the nightstand, she reached for the doorknob, twisted it to its side, and strolled out into the bare hall.
Her parents were probably downstairs, her father reading the newspaper and worrying about tomorrow's work day and her mother fretting over the unwashed dishes after a dinner of Chicken á la King.
Silently making her way down the steps, Gwen turned at the fork in the hall into the dining room, mumbled something beneath her breath to her mother who was busying herself at the sink, and disappeared out through the front door.
Shoving her hands into her pockets, she briefly admired the moon shining down upon her (it had to be almost full), listening to the crickets chirping in the background.
Once in a while she could distinctly hear the lake frogs croaking, their lonely groans always reaching her ears.
xxx
The night had gone better than expected.
About a dozen other cars had pulled up since the start of the party, and many others had simply walked to the lake from their homes.
Horrifically-loud music blared over the loudspeakers Mark had shoved into the trunk of Derek's car, and balloons that Chloe and Gina had filled floated about, as if swaying in-time to the pounding bass notes.
Derek, still in his Ghostface costume, was over at the refreshments table with Gina, serving punch and chips to Wonder Woman, then Freddy Krueger, and then the Cryptkeeper.
"Hurry up with that salsa." Derek shouted at a frenzied Gina as Count Dracula appeared, demanding chips and dip instead of blood.
As Chloe and Mark headed down to the lake to skip pebbles across the surface, Nicole, meanwhile, beamed happily as Nathan came to sit by her atop a fallen log, carrying two glasses of punch.
"Here, I brought you something to drink." he said as he extended his arm.
Nicole took the paper cup, sipped at its contents gingerly, and threw it aside when she was finished.
Nathan frowned; he hated when people openly littered.
"I brought something for you, too." Nicole said with a bright smile, sifting through a beige duffle bag lying on her lap, a bag that Nathan had not even seen her bring.
Eventually, she brought her hand out of the bag, a clear, plastic container grasped in her slender fingers. Removing the lid, Nicole shoved the rectangular box in Nathan's face.
Nathan cautiously took a crumbling brownie from the open container.
"One for you and one for me." Nicole said, winking.
Hesitantly brining the dessert up to his nose, Nathan pushed it away, a look of disgust painted across his otherwise-handsome face.
"What it this, poison?" he yelped, dropping the brownie down atop the soggy earth.
Nicole pouted her lips at him, yet stuffed the second brownie into her mouth all the same.
"What, don't you like my baking?" she muttered, crumbs falling from her soft lips.
Nathan looked up at the young woman seated beside him, his eyes wide.
"You baked pot brownies?" he gaped.
Nicole glowered at him, crossing her arms across her chest defiantly.
"Jesus, why don't you just shout it out to everyone here! Maybe you'd like to go run and tell the cops, too?"
Nathan cocked his head to one side, his frown disappearing; he only felt pity for his visibly-upset girlfriend.
"They're criminal, Nicole...how many more did you bake?"
Avoiding the question, she murmured, "It took me all afternoon just to whip up the batter..."
"Nicole..." Nathan cooed, frustrated.
"Christ, only those two!" she snapped, her face red, her expression livid. "I try to do something a little special for you, for us, and you just screw everything! You could have taken a itty bitty bite..."
"They do drug tests for the minors, baby; are you trying to sabotage my career by getting me hooked on those things?"
At that, Nicole turned on him, barely able to control herself.
"What career? You haven't done shit since sophomore year! The clock's ticking away, Natey, and you're not gonna get anywhere unless you friggin' start doing something... anything! While you've been waiting for a baseball scholarship, I've been waiting for my boyfriend!"
Leaping up from the decaying log, Nicole stormed off, her delicate hands clenched into bone-shattering fists.
Closing his eyes, Nathan laid down atop the rotted trunk, wishing that he had never come to party, his temples pounding and his head throbbing.
xxx
It was close to eight-thirty when Erin arrived at the front gates, shifting her weight from one foot to the other nervously.
This is it...
Her first party, besides her own birthdays, in nine years.
Yet she wasn't even technically invited, which could pose numerous problems.
Erin had never crashed anyone's party; it was too risky, even during gigantic bashes where no one even knew the person standing beside them. She had always been much too afraid that she'd be recognized as one of the outsiders, one of the ones who didn't belong, who didn't deserve to belong.
A firm, pale hand on her left shoulder made her spin around, her eyes wild and her expression frenzied.
Erin came face-to-face with Gwen, who was standing, shivering, directly behind her, the air escaping from her mouth like icy clouds in the cold wetness of the moonlit night.
Erin's look changed suddenly, and her lips twitched into a half-smile.
"I didn't think you would come." she said lightly, barely suppressing a laugh.
Gwen merely shrugged, her hands shoved into her pants pockets in order to keep them safe from frostbite.
"I didn't think I make it here, myself."
She turned her attention to the numerous parked vehicles, some still possessing the "new car smell" which everyone either loved or hated, while some possessed nothing but dents, patches of rust, or visible repairs.
"Might as will head on in." Gwen murmured, her legs trembling from more than just the cold.
She was petrified.
Erin, noticing how anxious her friend of a few hours was, gently took Gwen's arm and interlocked it in her own.
"Come on," she said, beaming. "The night's still young."
Hesitantly, Gwen began to move for the gates, inadvertently dragging Erin along until the latter managed to regain her footing.
Avoiding a pile of soggy, debris-laden leaves, the pair walked onto the campgrounds as casually and as naturally as they could.
It did take long for darting pairs of eyes to recognize the two young women.
Chloe spotted them first, and nearly choked on her sangria.
"Shit." she breathed, crumpling her paper cup and flinging it aside.
Turning away from the gates, she rapidly brushed past hordes of drunken peers until she emerged in a clearing by the refreshments table.
There, pouring herself a glass of spiked punch and shoving potato chips into her petite mouth stood a distressed Nicole, her back to Chloe.
Huffing, Chloe rushed up to the table, and jabbed Nicole once in the shoulder with her slender pointer finger.
Dropping a handful of chips, Nicole turned to her infuriated friend.
"What's wrong?" the former asked between chomps.
Chloe put her hands on her hips.
"They're here." she said with an agitated grunt, her horns and tail giving her a demonic, sinister look.
Nicole, her heart clenching in her chest, spun around to face the gates, and two familiar, yet much-hated, faces popped out at her.
"It's Gwen and that other piece of trash the cat dragged in." Chloe snapped.
Nicole turned a bright shade of red, and Chloe could not tell whether she was enraged or embarrassed.
"First Gwen ruins my entire Monday afternoon with her crap about Derek, and then she and some nobody crash my party!" Nicole whined, her arms flailing in protest. "That bitch!"
Upon hearing murmurs of her name, Gwen clawed at Erin's arm for support, her eyes dark and tearful with worry.
Erin smiled faintly, and spoke as comfortingly as she could.
"Don't worry about them. Let's just try to enjoy ourselves, okay?"
Reluctantly nodding, Gwen allowed Erin to lead her farther into the crowd, even as heads turned to the pair, eyebrows raised and lips twitching downward into irritated frowns.
Before long, they made their way over to the refreshments table.
Nicole and Chloe were gone; they had vanished the second Gwen had been noticed. Mark and Gina had taken their place, their heads down as they rapidly spooned out punch for Frankenstein's Monster.
"One glass, please." Erin said sweetly, taking a few pretzels in her small, pale hand.
Gina looked up, smiling artificially and batting her long eyelashes.
"Just one?" she asked, her hands suddenly grasping the sides of the punch bowl.
Almost immediately, she brought the basin up, spraying the blood-red liquid at the two party crashers before her.
"Why not the entire bowl?" Gina snickered, a dark smile painted across her otherwise plain face.
"Watch out!" Erin shrieked, extending her arm and pushing Gwen out of the way as the cascade of punch struck the already-damp ground, sending twigs and pebbles flying.
Gina, annoyed, dropped the large, plastic bowl as Derek muttered, "Nice aim."
Suddenly, footsteps and whispering in the distance caused Gwen to take notice of a dark shape rushing toward her.
Nathan appeared out of nowhere, panting heavily, his head spinning dizzily.
"What...the hell happened?" he breathed, his eyes bulging. "I heard shouts..."
Gina put her hands on her hips, pouting and huffing.
"These two nobodies think they can just ruin Nicole's entire night! It's bad enough that Gwen here already got her stuck in detention on Monday."
Nathan shot a dark look at Gina, yet spun around in order to comfort his two embarrassed classmates instead of making a scene.
Erin was shielding her eyes from everyone's gaze, and was slumped wearily up against the table. Gwen stood beside her, sniffling, trying to hold back tears that she feared would come nonetheless.
Why did Gina do that? Does she really hate us that much? I haven't even said two words to her all year...
"Come on, Gwen, don't cry...she didn't get anything on you, did she?"
Gwen looked up at him, her eyes raw, and her expression blank.
"No, I'm fine, really." she mumbled beneath her breath, though her words did not reassure a concerned Nathan.
"Do you mean that?" he asked, wary of her expression.
Erin, turning away from the table and careful to enjoy the scarlet puddle, nudged Gwen in the ribs.
"Maybe we should go," she whispered quietly. "My mom will have a fit if I get anything on this new jacket..."
Gwen surveyed the denim material, which looked like something rejected from the nineties; but who was she to judge her friend's style of dress? Gwen wore nearly the same thing to school every day. It wasn't her place to critique Erin's "fashion".
That's what it is. Our clothing. Neither of us bothered to dress up; it is a Halloween party, after all...
Our clothing.
Right.
You keep telling yourself that, Gwen.
Gwen eyed her miniskirt and noted the beads of red liquid that were dripping down from the loose threads. She had been splashed more than she had thought.
"You're right," she said to Erin at last. "It's for the best...it's not our party, anyway."
The two young women began to turn away from Nathan and Gina, who was busy being congratulated by Chloe as Nicole ran up.
"That could not have gone better!" she squealed joyfully, hi-fiving Gina with glee.
"Priceless!" Chloe said with a smile.
Nathan, ignoring the jeers and laughter behind him, hurried to catch up with Gwen and Erin, both of whom were beginning to leave the campgrounds.
"Hey! Come on, you two...stay a while longer!" he called, placing his hand on Gwen's left shoulder.
Gwen squirmed away, her expression dark and somber.
"I don't have time for this..." she breathed tiredly, continuing forward.
Dodging Nathan's other hand, she hastily brushed past him, and began to pull Erin away from the nearby cabin that she was examining.
"It's getting late." she lied through gritted teeth.
Erin nodded in agreement, yet still turned her attention back to Nathan in order to flash him one final smile; he returned her lighthearted gaze with a half-hearted grin.
With a few more steps across the soggy stretch of grass and pebble, the two young women disappeared out through the rusted front gates.