Sandra's horrified shrieks were drowned out by the loud rock music that the college partiers had blaring through a stereo.
Robin rocked back and forth to the beat, with David's arms swathed around her, grinning up at him and staring dreamily into his eyes.
"You know what I like about you?"
David said over the music.
"What?"
"You hardly sweat at all"
Robin didn't know why exactly he drew her to him like a ditzy, clueless moth to a shimmering candle. It had to be his bad boy attitude, she thought as she rested her head on his shoulder.
His shirt emanated the floral aroma of pot.
Doing illicit drugs made him seem dangerous, and that was incredibly attractive to her.
The only other thing he needed is lots of tattoos, and then Robin may have taken her clothes off right there in front of everyone. All for him.
Robin didn't even like pot all that much, but for him, she would dive into a pool of it if it meant that she could have his body.
His pelvis kept pressing into hers, and she couldn't help but let out a small moan of pleasure whenever it happened. Robin had been a fairly sheltered child, so when Sandra had asked her to come to a big get-together out in a cabin in the woods, she had leaped at the chance.
It was finally time for her to break out of her shell, and she wasn't going to let anyone, especially not Maddy, stop her.
Now here she was, leading on an incredibly foxy eighteen year old with a head of good hair and boyish charm. And he was doing his part, playing the game of a very flirtatious courtship.
First, he would catch her looking at him, and he would throw his hair back and wink at her.
Then, he would walk by her just so she could smell his cologne.
Now, it was stage three, and they were practically inside each other at any minute now.
Maddy sulked in the corner, her arms crossed in front of her flat chest, glaring at Robin.
Eddie was drunk again. He had wrapped himself up in party streamers, and was talking to himself in a low, raspy voice, writing out a new idea for a science fiction novel out loud.
As Kate came down the stairs into the living room, with Ben following behind her, her voice could be heard over the rock and roll.
"So we go to all this trouble and no Michael," she said, glancing out the window into the night. "Typical,"
They sat down on the stairs together.
David whispered to Robin…
"You wanna get high?"
Maddy suddenly shot upright and stormed up the stairs, past Ben and Kate who moved out of her way.
Ben leaned back closer to Kate, and she turned away from him, pretending to watch for Michael. She didn't say a word.
Damnit, he thought. Still more silent treatment.
"So, what do you wanna do? Hit me?"
Ben and Kate were the kind of on-and-off couple that probably wouldn't last another year.
Their first major break-up had been when she caught him drunkenly flirting with every other girl at a sorority party.
She had sworn to all of her girlfriends, and to Sandra, that she wasn't getting back with him, no matter what. She had said that she was done with his playboy ways.
A few short weeks later, he caught her in the hallway of her dormitory, and he had looked so irresistible in a tux from one of his frat events, that she had dragged him into her dorm and made love to him on the couch for the entire hallway to hear.
They were back on each other.
For only a few months.
Their next major fight happened when Ben went to a formal dance…without her, that is.
He had sworn that he was trying to show his second cousin a good time during her stay in town, but Kate hadn't believed him.
They fought for months afterwards, but eventually, once again, their make-up sex would attach them back together.
Now, Ben had bailed on her to go out drinking with Eddie and his nerd friends.
Kate had wanted this entire week to be special.
It would start with a romantic date night, and then a week in the woods with her friends, with a big cabin to do whatever they wanted in.
And he had just blown it off.
Now, here he was, looking at her with puppy dog eyes and she couldn't stay mad at him any longer.
"I love you," she suddenly said. She toyed with the ring he had bought for her on her finger.
It had been a present from him, an "I'm sorry" gift given during one of their many fights.
"Squidface,"
She laughed at the pet name she had given him, one that she also called him when she got angry.
In the kitchen, Nick was on the small telephone hanging on the wall.
"Come on, Michael, pick up!"
No use. His cousin wasn't answering.
He had thought maybe they got lost and turned around and went home, but the number for his apartment wasn't fruitful.
There was just endless ringing.
Nick slammed the phone back on the receiver.
Tina's words were haunting him.
And then, as if things couldn't get more frustrating, Melissa swaggered into the kitchen, changed into another designer outfit.
"So, Nick, are you still mad at me?"
"Yeah, what was that crap you pulled on Tina this afternoon?"
"That chick's crazy," said Melissa. "Besides, all is fair in love and war,"
God, Nick thought. This girl may actually be crazier than Tina, and that was saying a lot considering Tina was the one saying that his cousin was dead.
"Melissa, I don't like you," Nick said firmly.
Melissa smiled deviously.
"'Like' has nothing to do with it,"
Then, she went back into the living room and strolled right up to Eddie, who had now wrapped himself completely in party streamers and was roaring and moaning like a mummy.
"Eddie, we have got to get to know each other better," Melissa said, cutting her eyes at Nick.
Look at this insane chick, Nick thought. She was actually trying to make him jealous.
As David and Robin danced in each other's arms, and as Kate and Ben were making up on the stairs, they were all unaware of the hulking figure right outside the kitchen window.
Watching them.
Waiting with inhuman patience
Dr. Crews was a thinking man.
He thought about lots and lots of things.
But now, his thoughts are all honed in on Tina.
He had never seen anything like it in his entire career.
He had a girl who could move things with her mind in some wild attempt to have control over what she had suffered as a young child.
Maybe experiencing that grief was what had made Tina into what she was.
Grief can do that to people, he thought as he strolled across the yard towards the woods.
He once worked with a man completely unable to get out of bed and go to work due to the passing of his youngest child in a horrible fatal car crash.
He had once been a vibrant and happy member of his community, and productive too. But when his youngest son was found dead in that hit and run, it completely destroyed him, inside and out.
His teeth became so deteriorated from neglecting to brush them that they began to rot.
His hair started falling out.
Grief can sometimes even kill you.
It was known as psychogenic death. Some people can completely give up their will to live and seemingly "think" themselves into dying.
Coined by Walter Cannon in 1942, psychogenic death was the phenomenon of people suddenly and mysteriously dying from seemingly an emotional response.
Tina's emotions literally ravaged her. Could they eventually kill her?
It wasn't a well studied phenomenon by any means, and Dr. Crews didn't have a better explanation for Tina's powers. After all, Tina's abilities had been completely undocumented by the scientific community, due to the fact that most of his colleagues were skeptical about parapsychology.
It seemed there was some kind of connection between grief, loss...and the supernatural and it fascinated him.
And now, Dr. Crews would have video evidence of it actually happening.
This whole story could change multiple fields of science.
It was revolutionary.
Grief and its effects on the mind…he could see his own name on the research paper.
Grief and telekinesis, it would be called. By Dr. Mark Crews.
This girl…he thought. This girl could change the world.
Only problem was, she had to be worked up in order to use her power.
But just maybe, he thought, just maybe by keeping her aroused she may finally learn how to wield it for good.
That was why he had taken the blood-stained spike that had been thrust into the porch column.
Tina had to stay distressed, and for that to happen, he couldn't validate her delusions.
He didn't have a clue as to why it was there.
But it had been there, as if someone had just walked by and rammed it into the house, but for all he knew, it could have been Tina, in a desperate attempt for attention.
Or it could have been there for years, just a remnant of the past. After all, the house had been unoccupied for some time. Who knows how long that spike had been there?
As he began to walk down a trail into the woods, to clear his mind, he began to reminisce on all his past cases.
He had seen things like extreme suicidality, but that was the thing with Tina. She was far from suicidal. She was actually quite resilient. She wasn't like any of his other patients, who seemed to not have a grasp of reality.
Tina had a very good grasp of reality, for the most part.
It was that Tina could apparently see into other realities and manipulate reality, and she almost didn't want to believe it was happening.
It was so incredulous to her that she started denying it to herself, and that's how she lost control. She had to accept it, and face the fact that this is a gift and she had to learn how to wield it.
Otherwise, she would be a wasted opportunity to improve the world.
Just picture it.
Tina Shepard, the one who can build skyscrapers with her mind!
Or, the Amazing Tina! Watch her catch a moving bullet with only her wits!
The possibilities were endless.
This could revolutionize agriculture, construction, architecture…so many different fields of science.
If parapsychology could be proven to be a real field of study, hell, they could devise a way to detect it and analyze it and understand it and use it to better the world and humanity at large.
Just bide your time, he told himself. Tina would eventually come to her senses and learn how to control it.
He could picture all of his work rivals seething with anger hearing about Mark Crews and his groundbreaking study on telekinetic powers.
He pictured himself sitting at a peer review board, with Tina sitting at a table demonstrating her powers for the whole room to see.
He could just see the stunned looks on all of the scientists' faces. All of those stuffy pretentious people would be reduced to blubbering masses of awe and astonishment.
That would be the day, he thought.
He wouldn't even have to go through the harrowing process of trying to prove a theory through experimentation. He would have the proof right in front of him. He wouldn't have to pay for equipment.
The proof…the equipment… was Tina.
If only Tina weren't so stubborn.
She needed to think about the larger scope of things, think beyond her past and her trauma, and realize that this is an opportunity.
One that can't be passed up.
Tina was just too caught up in her own life. But she ought to think about what this means for the world!
As Dr. Crews continued down the trail leading deeper into the woods around Crystal Lake, his thoughts were still centered around Tina.
He had never had this much interest in a patient before, but had another patient ever thrown a microwave at him without touching it?
This patient could be the jolt that his career had needed for some time.
It was extremely competitive in the field of psychiatry.
Patients could drop like flies, especially in small towns and these small towns were losing huge psychiatric clinics that served the area all the time.
But now, here he was out at Crystal Lake…
He thought back to what Tina had said.
She had seen a man come out of the lake.
What was that story in the news so many years ago? He thought.
Something about a boy who drowned in the lake, whose mother went on a killing rampage across Crystal Lake.
He didn't recall too many details about it, but it was uncanny how Tina could claim to see things that seemed to match up with reality.
After all, she said that she saw a metal spike in her vision, and then she had been right about the spike in the wall.
Maybe she had seen the spirit of that boy who drowned. Maybe Tina could actually see into the realm of the undead.
Did she know what that meant? This meant that scientists finally had a mechanism to access the supernatural, and finally, the world would see that the supernatural was indeed real.
Of course, it was risky hinging it all on a teenage girl whose emotions were unstable.
That was why he was trying to get her to control it somehow. The more times she entered that emotional state, the more she would get accustomed to it and learn how to use it.
Dr. Crews had been a skeptic and an atheist for most of his adult life.
After all, it was hard for him to accept that there was any benevolent force in the world with what he had seen in his career.
Young girls driven to suicide after being raped, young men blowing their brains out after losing a loved one.. he had seen down to the bottom of the barrel of humanity.
He was also a methodological naturalist. That meant that he didn't assert that the spiritual or supernatural world doesn't exist, but that for all intents and purposes, you had to act as if it didn't exist.
Crews had long maintained that the natural realm was practically the only realm with the capacity for being investigated.
There was seemingly no way to test or measure for the supernatural, and so, for scientific purposes, you have to sort of presuppose that the natural realm is all you have to work with.
If you have no way to investigate something scientifically, then for all intents and purposes, it didn't exist.
But, Tina…she was changing everything.
He was facing the dire task of radically altering his worldview.
He had just seen an entire microwave fly across the room at him.
Now…anything was possible.
Maybe this didn't mean there was an entire realm out there…
However, some otherworldly things were definitely happening out at Crystal Lake.
Blood.
Dr. Crews stopped for a moment, looking at the ground curiously.
There, on the leaves.
Dr. Crews stared down at it, narrowing his eyes.
It was definitely blood.
Then, he came face-to-face with Michael.
He was jammed inside the branches of a rotting tree, twisted up inside like a pretzel.
Dark red blood stained his face and his clothes, and dribbled from his open mouth.
There was a look of abject terror frozen on his face, and his lifeless eyes pierced Dr. Crews and he lurched backwards at the ghastly sight.
"Oh..my God!" Dr. Crews uttered, narrowing his eyes. The moonlight streamed in through the canopy, illuminating exactly what he thought he saw.
A corpse.
A murdered corpse of a young boy.
Tina had been right. Again.
"Dr. Crews?" said Mrs. Shepard as she inched cautiously through the open door into the doctor's darkened makeshift office.
There was no answer.
She fumbled her way through the darkness, finally finding a lamp and pulling the cord.
Where was the man? She wondered.
But it didn't matter, she thought.
She was taking Tina away from this awful place immediately in the morning, and Dr. Crews couldn't change her mind.
As she paced nervously, she made sure that he wasn't anywhere outside, and then sat down at his desk.
Maybe she could get a look into just what he was doing to her daughter's brain.
At this point, she truly believed that his treatment, whatever it was, wasn't working.
Tina was still seeing awful things, things she wouldn't wish for anyone to see.
She scanned the desk in front of her.
His notepad was thick with ink, and many scrawlings that were barely legible. Tina's file was open on his desk. Her eyes surveyed the first page.
"Session today…no progress. She still lacks control…" his notes read.
Progress? Mrs. Shepard thought. What kind of progress was he looking for?
Her daughter was becoming a mess.
That didn't seem like any kind of progress. She was becoming more distraught day by day out here at Crystal Lake.
Then, she saw something gleam inside his partially open top drawer.
She opened it and her jaw dropped in astonishment.
It was a blood-stained tent spike. Just like Tina had said.
My God, Mrs. Shepard thought. Her daughter had been telling the truth.
What else is the man hiding?
She reached for his tape recorder on the desk, and hit play.
Whatever tape he already had in the player was now playing, and Tina's distressed voice could be heard during one of their sessions.
"I told you, sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't happen,"
Then, Dr. Crews' voice came through the cassette player.
"Other than the Anderson Case in '65…there has never been this much documentation. By keeping Tina's trauma and stress levels high, I am confident I can induce huge psychokinetic reactions,"
And then, she hurriedly shut off the tape recorder, hearing footsteps across the old hardwood floor outside in the hallway. She tried to get up from his desk, but it was too late.
Dr. Crews came barging in, looking like he'd seen a ghost, but Mrs. Shepard didn't notice; she was glaring dead at him furiously.
"What do you think you're doing?" Dr. Crews said with an accusatory tone.
"You…you never intended to help her," Mrs. Shepard said, her voice breaking with the horrible realization that her daughter was being used again.
"Be reasonable…that's why I'm here," he said, hanging his blazer up on a coat rack.
"First..I find this spike and then…" her voice trailed off as she was hearing the way he talked about Tina in her mind.
Like she was a science experiment.
Her eyes got wet with tears.
"What are you doing to my daughter?"
"I have been trying to help her,"
"What's this?" she exclaimed, pointing to the bloody spike in his drawer. "Is this what Tina's been talking about, huh? Have you been hiding this all this time?"
Dr. Crews took a breath.
"I can't expect you to understand this highly complicated process that is integral to your daughter's treatment,"
"Liar!" Amanda cried. "I see what you've been doing,"
She could see it all now. The camera. Tina's "sessions".
It was so clear to her in her mind that she regretted bringing Tina out here so deeply it made her sick to her stomach.
"You've been deliberately making my daughter an emotional wreck!"
"Err…uh..now that is not true," the doctor stammered nervously. "What you saw on that tape Mrs. Shepard, is a side effect of her treatment,"
Mrs. Shepard couldn't believe what she was hearing.
Her eyes filled with tears again.
"Treatment?" she said, her voice cracking. "You…you bastard. You brought her out here so that you could watch her perform,"
In the midst of their heated discussion, they didn't hear the old floorboards creaking.
Tina, with her suitcase ready to go, was standing out in the hallway. Listening.
"It's out of your hands now," Tina heard the doctor say.
"God, how could you do this to her?" said the frantic voice of her mother.
"I don't care what you say, I'm her doctor. We'll take her back to the hospital, and begin psychotropic drug treatment,"
"Do you really think I'd let you see her again?" her mother's voice said.
"Mrs. Shepard, she needs help. She's dangerous to herself, she's dangerous to all of us,"
"She's not dangerous!"
"She killed her father. Look at what she's tried to do with me. I see no other option but to get her back in the hospital,"
"But Dr. Crews!"
"Mrs. Shepard," he said, lowering his voice. "I'm going to have to commit her, even if it is against your wishes,"
Tina had heard enough.
She dropped the suitcase.
It thumped on the old hardwood floor, and Mrs. Shepard and Dr. Crews both turned to the door.
Then, they heard footsteps thumping down the stairs and the front door opening.
"No, Tina!" Mrs. Shepard cried as she saw her daughter running to the Oldsmobile.
She got in, and drove away into the night.
Tina sped down the country road, not daring to look back, her hands gripping the steering wheel in a vise-like hold.
There was no way in hell she was going back to the hospital. No fucking way, she thought.
There had to be a way out.
Maybe if she just kept driving, she'd find herself in some small town where she could just start over.
Then, she could actually have a normal life.
Instead of the hell that was her reality.
In a new town, nobody would even know her name.
Nobody would know that she was a freak. Nobody would know about all the strange accidents.
Tina wasn't thinking anywhere close to rational. All she could think was that she wanted to get the hell away from there, no matter what and no matter how.
She wasn't even thinking about her poor mother. All she could think about was getting away. Far away. The trees whipped by the Oldsmobile as she sped up to sixty.
She didn't care that the speed limit was 45.
All she wanted was to be somewhere far away.
Somewhere where they'd never think to look.
Somewhere where she would never be bothered ever again.
She didn't care if she wasn't acting rationally anymore. Acting rationally hadn't gotten her anywhere thus far. Every doctor had failed to help her. Her mother was useless.
Only thing to do now was escape.
She no longer cared about figuring out the mystery of Crystal Lake.
It didn't matter.
They were taking her back to the hospital whether she liked it or not, where she would have to live in close proximity to seriously dangerous people. Where she would have nothing but four white walls to stare at, day in and day out, watching nothing but infomercials on the small television in the recreation room.
No way in hell, she thought. They'd have to tie her up.
She'd have to be dragged kicking and screaming to ever set foot in that hospital again, back on those drugs that didn't do anything but turn her into a lifeless zombie.
Her mind was wild with panicked and frenzied thoughts as she raced down the narrow dirt road.
She was spiraling fast.
She had to get away…
Suddenly, something stood out in the darkness.
A figure.
Two figures standing in the road.
Tina approached with the vehicle as the headlights illuminated the silvery sheen of a long bladed scythe.
It was the man from the lake.
The scythe was impaled through her own mother.
Amanda Shepard was the second figure.
Blood was splattered all over her white blouse.
The scythe had burst through her chest like a parasite from within, and Jason held her up in the air, like a fish on a harpoon.
"M..Mom?" Tina managed to force it out.
Her eyes were riveted to the sight, so much so that she didn't notice the car was veering off the side of the road.
She gasped as the car went off into the bushes, plunging into a ravine.
Tina furiously tried to pump the brakes, but to no avail. The car had too much momentum.
Just like that, the car vaulted forward and slammed head on into a tree, and as Tina's head hit the dashboard, she could see back onto the road for a split second before she lost consciousness.
The ghastly vision was gone.
Maddy was nowhere near a perfect ten, and she knew it. If there was anything she knew for a fact, it was that.
Sure, she was pudgy. She always had been, ever since elementary school.
The kids had always teased her, calling her Wide Load and mocking her if she decided to have some cake and ice cream at a birthday party.
It had been that way as long as she could remember.
Girls her age would gather around, whispering about her at the swimming pool.
"Nobody likes a pig" they'd say to her face.
"Put on a shirt, nobody wants to see that,"
Maddy also didn't cake her face full of make-up or paint her nails all that often, or wear all that perfume the way Robin did.
As Maddy sat upstairs in Melissa's room, she rifled through her makeup bag sitting on the vanity mirror.
She couldn't believe the way Robin had been acting. All for a guy who couldn't get his head out of the weed clouds.
Is that really how Robin saw her future? Ending up with a no-good husband who sits around, smokes pot all day and doesn't clean up after himself?
David was a totally reckless fool, Maddy thought, almost as bad as Eddie, but at least David had charisma.
She guessed it was that that attracted both Maddy and Robin to David.
His recklessness was boyish and charming, and his bad boy attitude was at least endearing to some degree.
At least David was somewhat funny.
And now, here Maddy was, applying thick lipstick in an effort to impress David. She didn't even like him all that much, but if it would prove a point to Robin, she didn't care.
She applied some mascara perfectly, and checked herself in the mirror.
Looking good, she thought.
"Touch-up work my ass," she said to herself, as she found some faux diamond earrings and put them on.
At least, she could show Robin a thing or two about how a real woman dolls up, and show her that a bigger, mousier girl could still clean up nicely.
She thought back to Robin's snide comments and scowled in the mirror.
Why did I ever decide to make a friend like Robin? Maddy thought.
At first, their friendship had been sweet. They had decided to room together after they had Psychology 101 their freshman year. It started out with a bang.
Tons of house parties and bar crawls were on the girls calendar for months after they met.
It was how they made most of the friends they were out here in this cabin with.
Maddy remembered the first time they met Sandra and Russell, who lived in a nice, affluent apartment just off campus.
They had invited Maddy and Robin for a few drinks, and pretty soon, it turned into a regular thing.
Robin had behaved totally fine then.
But now that David was here, she had totally morphed into a complete bitch.
That's what certain men can do, thought Maddy. Men could easily tear apart friendships in a heartbeat.
But Maddy didn't think it would actually happen with Robin, and after tonight, she was thinking deeply about finding a new roommate.
Wouldn't it be awkward for them to share a space with one another if Robin had actually said all those nasty things in front of everyone?
Maybe she could find a new roommate here. Maybe Russell and Sandra could use a third housemate.
It was looking far too much like Robin and Maddy's friendship wasn't going to work out, and if Maddy stirred the pot like she was planning on doing, things would definitely not go over well.
As she applied her last touches on her well-made-up face, and smoothed out her short, blue dress, Maddy decided that she looked as good as she was going to get.
It was time, she thought.
It was time to show David that she could look just as sexy and appealing as Robin. That would really show her.
It was time to show everyone that she wasn't just the ugly tag-along friend that nobody even invited and that she wasn't just the girl next door.
It was time to show her entire group of friends what she could actually do.
And as she primped in the mirror, she couldn't believe how much a little makeup, some hair styling and a sexy outfit could make her look so irresistible.
David was going to be at her feet before the night was through, she just knew it and then Robin would eat her words in front of everyone.
She left the bedroom and went downstairs.
Where was everyone? She thought. Ben and Kate
were gone. So was Nick. Eddie and Melissa were sitting together on the couch and Maddy started to listen to their conversation.
Melissa was curled up next to Eddie, stroking his hair and looking lovingly into his eyes.
"Are you joking?" Eddie said in disbelief at the fact that Melissa was coming onto him. Hard. It didn't even register to him that it was clearly an attempt to make Nick jealous. He was too drunk to realize it or care.
"Now, why would I do that?" Melissa said.
"Y-you really think I'm cute?"
"Of course I do,"
"Since when?"
"I always have. You've just been too blind to notice,"
As Maddy came further down the stairs, she searched the living room for David and Robin but they were nowhere to be seen.
"Where is David?" Maddy's voice broke up Eddie and Melissa's conversation.
"They went to the shed to roll around in the hay," Melissa said coyly.
Maddy frowned.
It was time to go show David a good time with a real woman, she thought. One that is steadfast in her values, and stands for what she believes in, not a girl who changes herself and her entire personality for one guy, like Robin.
Maddy fixed her cleavage in the mirror and left the house, walking through the quiet night. Her high heels crunched over the leaves as she walked towards the tool shed at the back of the house.
Goddamn that Robin, she thought.
Makes her look like a fool in front of that Tina girl.
Said it straight to her face.
"Maddy, you're not his type," she had said with a bitchy smirk.
It was happening all over again.
Again and again, Maddy would end up making friends only for them to stab her in the back.
Not this time.
Maddy was determined to not let herself be the butt of the joke any longer.
She walked across the yard with purpose, thinking of the reaction on David's face when he saw her looking like she did, with her hair up big and high, and her face made-up like it was.
And, no glasses.
She'd look absolutely riveting in the moonlight.
Then, she and David could take a walk and Robin could sit and think about the consequences of her behavior, Maddy thought.
For once, one of the pretty and popular girls would get to sit alone.
Alone. That's how Robin would feel. Absolutely alone with herself and her thoughts.
Just like Maddy had been for years.
It felt validating to make someone else suffer just like she had suffered.
Robin would learn, Maddy thought. She'd learn one day that you can't always get what you want with your body, or by pushing other people down and treating them like dirt.
That is always what happened to the prettiest and most popular girls in Maddy's experience.
One girl that she knew, a girl with the snarkiest voice you can imagine, was the queen of her school.
Her nasally voice would cut through the rowdy clamor of students, mocking the ones lower than her, even the special needs students.
Where was she now?
She was in rehab. For being on cocaine.
Her brother wound up getting arrested for having makeshift bombs.
Another girl in her school, another holier-than-thou tightwad, wound up knocked up and in an abusive relationship.
It never failed. Life caught up to them.
Maddy guessed that for some, their peak would only be in high school. The rest of their life would turn out to be a travesty once they left the safe and comfortable environment of eleventh grade with all of their friends.
Maddy should have known that Robin still had a high school mentality when the only thing she ever did was get drunk and have casual sex.
She didn't even care about her grades.
All Robin did in college was wake up with a boy in her bed, skip class, and then do it all over again the next night.
Get wasted, go to a bar, or a house party, and go home with a guy.
Didn't she know the dangers in that kind of lifestyle? Maddy meant what she said when she promised Robin that they would have a good time out in the woods at Crystal Lake.
But she didn't mean that they would be totally stupid, blow off their friends, get stoned and have sex with random potheads.
What had Robin even been thinking?
Why would she seemingly end a seven month friendship and roommate situation over a boy she had just met?
It didn't make sense to Maddy at all, and it was making her anxious.
Was it something Maddy had said? Something she had done to make Robin behave the way she had?
Maybe she just didn't know Robin all that well, even after seven months of rooming together.
None of it seemed to make any sense.
Boy, what a strange night it was out at Crystal Lake. What a strange week.
First, Mike never shows up. Next, some girl from next door is invited by Nick, only for her to run from the house twice.
Then, Maddy remembered it all. Melissa's pearls had just broken. They seemed to fly right off of her neck.
Maybe Maddy had just been seeing things.
But she could have sworn those pearls had been moving all on their own.
And then, that look on Tina's face…
And now, Robin was acting like a different person.
It was turning out to be quite a strange vacation, and Maddy wasn't enjoying it one bit.
As she carefully made her way through the wooded area in her high heels, she thought she heard soft voices coming from the shed.
It sounded like David and Robin.
Then, Maddy smelled the aroma of marijuana and scrunched up her nose.
They had to be around here somewhere.
Maddy approached the shed door and listened.
"Wait, do it again,"
It was Robin.
"Just put it in your mouth"
And that was David.
Maddy made a disgusted face.
She was repulsed, and absolutely furious.
She pulled open the rickety shed door and went inside the dank and dark interior.
Hay covered the sagging wooden floor.
A single bulb hung from a bare string. It wavered, as if someone had brushed against it.
Maddy squinted in the darkness.
Where were they? How massive was this shed? As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw a few
stalls lined up in a row.
This must have been once planned to be a barn, Maddy thought.
Saddles, and brushes, and other tools hung on a rack.
Another tool rack was full of dozens of sharp instruments. Sickles, saws, and axes. Maddy grimaced.
What did Russell's family need with all of this junk? Maddy wondered.
She stepped further into the musty shed, dusting aside a cobweb and peering into one of the stalls.
Nothing.
She followed the giggling.
And then the coughing.
She rounded a corner, and almost bumped into Robin, who had just taken a hit of a joint.
Maddy's eyes widened.
"What are you doing?"
Robin sneered at her.
"What are you doing?" she asked, looking her up and down. "Spying?"
Robin giggled. Maddy was at a loss for words. David was laughing at her too.
She just froze, not knowing what to say.
"Come on David, let's go somewhere with a little more privacy," Robin said.
She took David's hand, flashed Maddy a dirty look and dragged David out of the barn.
"Aren't those Melissa's earrings?" Robin commented as she left.
Maddy heard the old rickety door bang shut, and then she was all alone, and about to burst into tears. David had laughed in her face.
It was all about to come flowing out of her when just then, as lightning flashed, startling her, she heard the door open again.
David? She thought. Was he coming back for her? She peered out of the stall.
There, illuminated by a streak of lightning, was a man that towered over her.
A surge of terror welled up deep in her core.
Her gut instinct was that this was not someone from the party in a mask.
This was a stranger.
Someone in a hockey mask.
Thunder rumbled in the distance.
The door slammed shut.
She heard his heavy, labored breathing, and brought her hand up to her mouth to silence her own hyperventilating.
Panic coursed through her. She looked around for any kind of weapon, but the stall was empty. There was nothing but a stack of crates and a hay bale.
She was trapped and cornered.
Nowhere to run.
His boots thumped across the wooden floor as it groaned underneath his immense weight.
Maddy fought the urge to scream, or to cry, or make a sound. She backed against the wall, trembling.
God, no, she thought. Her mind tried to get some kind of a grip on the situation, and she fought the overwhelming compulsion to panic.
Adrenaline was now compelling her to move into action.
The man in the hockey mask came closer to the stall.
In a flash, Maddy pulled off her high heels and tucked them into the hay.
Then, she scrambled underneath the stall wall into the next one as quietly as a mouse.
His boots suddenly stopped.
Maddy got to her feet, and leaned against the wall, putting her eye up to the wooden slats and trying to see out into the darkened shed.
He was moving back and forth. Searching.
Who the fuck is that? Maddy's panicked mind tried to search for some kind of an answer to that question, but she quickly realized she needed to put her energy into surviving.
He suddenly stopped again.
Then, he walked towards the door, and disappeared.
In a flash, Maddy scrambled back to the next stall, and peered out.
No sign of him.
All was quiet.
There were a maddening few moments as Maddy listened quietly.
Nothing happened.
She leaned back against the wall, breathing in…and out…waiting to see if he was truly gone.
WHAM.
The hockey masked assailant's arm suddenly exploded through the stall wall, splintering through the wood as easily as if it were paper.
Maddy shrieked, but it was cut off by his grimy, blood-stained hand clamping down over her mouth.
She clawed at the hand with all her might, but it was unfathomably strong.
She smelled lakewater. And filth. And decomposition. It permeated the stale air of the shed. She smelled the metallic odor of the blood he was covered in. His other hand gleamed silver…
It was the long, curved blade of a sickle. It flashed quick, just like the lightning that struck again and Maddy could suddenly feel agony like nothing before.
She felt the incredible tightness suddenly in her throat, and then she began to see a white light, so captivating and incandescent, pulling her into it until she couldn't scream, or feel anything at all