Hello fans. This will probably be the last one I will write for a while. If someone wants to take on Jason Takes Manhattan and add in some more New York chase scenes, I'd love to read it. Anyways, here is Friday the 13th part VII: The New Blood. I added the slashed scenes as well. It's all a labor of love for me because I've always loved the franchise. It has that wonderful nostalgic aesthetic quality that just reels me in. Take care everyone, and enjoy.
PROLOGUE
There's a legend around the town of Crystal Lake.
A legend about Jason Voorhees.
For some, it wasn't a legend at all.
It happened at a local summer camp.
Camp Crystal Lake.
Some said it was a curse.
Locals say he died as a boy, but he keeps coming back…to kill. To slaughter. To maim anyone in his path.
His mother sought vengeance for his death as a young boy.
They said he drowned in the lake.
Mrs. Voorhees slaughtered them all…the ones who were supposed to be watching him.
But Mrs. Voorhees didn't live to see her vengeance through to the end.
Her head was lopped off with a machete.
Still, murders kept happening around Crystal Lake.
Everyone said it was Jason who never really drowned and was back to avenge his mother's death.
Few have seen him and lived.
Some have even tried to stop him….
"Come on maggothead!" 18-year old Tommy Jarvis screamed over the sound of terrified children.
Jason Voorhees stood face-to-face with him on the shore of the lake.
Crystal Lake.
Jason's home turf.
After all these years, Tommy was now face-to-face with the monster from his childhood; Jason was back from the dead, and stronger than ever.
Tommy teetered unsteadily on a small, crude camp-owned speedboat out in the murky water.
"Come on Jason! It's me you want, remember?!"
Jason stood, enthralled with Tommy, his maniacal eyes pointed straight at him.
Although there was nothing left of Jason's conscience except for the need to kill, he still remembered Tommy.
It was the one that had escaped him all those years before.
All Jason had left in him was an instinct to annihilate only Tommy and forget about the cabin full of children and the young blonde who stood nearby, staring in shock and disbelief at the horrifying sight of the resurrected mass murderer.
To Jason, all else was secondary.
Tommy Jarvis was his target.
And towards him he stalked.
Moving briskly, not running, but taking his time walking menacingly towards the one who got away.
Tommy remembered that night.
That summer night back some six years ago.
After Jason had murdered his mother and his neighbors one stormy night, Tommy had faced him and saved his sister's life.
Tommy had swung a machete at him, burying it deep into his skull.
But he still came back.
He was inhuman long before he came back to life, but now, he was stronger than ever, seemingly by the power of very dark forces that Tommy couldn't even begin to fathom or comprehend.
The curse of Crystal Lake.
Tommy had watched only a few days before as Jason plunged his fist through his best friend Allen Hawes rib cage, clutching his bleeding heart on the other side.
And it had all been Tommy's fault.
He had gone to the cemetery where Jason was laid to rest, and something had come over him.
The same feeling that had been imposed on him back when it happened.
Rage.
Unadulterated, white-hot rage.
He had to know Jason was truly dead.
At first, he was going to try burning his rotting remains, but once he saw him there, in the open casket, he realized how personal his relationship with Jason was.
This was the man, the thing who almost killed him and had haunted him and ruined his childhood.
This was the man, no, the monster who robbed him of his most precious years.
Jason was going to suffer. If his tortured soul was still alive somewhere out in the ether or down in the rotting husk of what used to be a man lying in the grave, Tommy wanted it to spend its last moments in agonizing pain.
He hadn't been able to stop himself.
With the lightning storm that was raging over his head, he didn't even recognize the danger of touching metal, and he ran over to the fence that surrounded the cemetery and pried off one of the long, sharp iron fenceposts.
He had rammed it into Jason's body. And then, again.
And again.
"Die….Die….Die…"
Those words screamed at him in his mind. They were the words he had screamed back in the summer of 1984 when he had hacked at the monster over and over again with a machete after the murderer had savagely killed his mother and broke into their home.
Unfortunately, Tommy had left the fencepost stuck in Jason's corpse, and without warning, lightning struck.
The bolt went straight for the iron rod jutting into the sky.
Sparks flew, sending Tommy on all fours.
And Jason was back.
The electricity had apparently awakened the deep hatred and maliciousness that ran through his bones and had restarted his heart .
The curse of Crystal Lake was far from over.
And now, Tommy was back at Camp Crystal Lake, staring down the mad killer from only yards away.
But now, Tommy had a plan. He didn't have a plan then. All he had felt years ago was helpless terror, the same way he had felt years before.
That's the terror Jason imposed on you.
It was the kind of helpless, paralyzing terror that a person feels when they know they're about to die a painful, horrendous death at the hands of someone truly sick and evil.
Tommy didn't know exactly why Jason had chosen evil. It baffled him. It was one of the key questions that would keep him up in the middle of the night.
What made some people born with the instinct to cause harm, and others not?
To Jason, killing seemed to be just his duty. Morals were irrelevant to him. He did not discriminate. That part of him had died long ago.
That part of him died when he drowned as a boy.
The part of him that cared about others' lives was long gone, snuffed out by the carelessness of the ones who had let him die.
He was only finishing what his mother started in 1958.
Tommy guessed sometimes he should try and have some sympathy for Jason, since he never received what he needed as a young child, but ever since that night, all he felt was sheer rage.
This time, Tommy wasn't going to let him live.
Quickly, as his panicked thoughts continued, and as he balanced himself on the speedboat out in the middle of the lake, Tommy picked up the heavy chain that he had tied into a makeshift noose, and steadied it.
He was ready for Jason.
He used to be afraid of him.
But now, he just wanted it to be over. Finally over.
The citizens of Crystal Lake and all the young men just like him would be finally free of him and the bloodshed he caused.
There couldn't be any room for sympathy.
Only killing the one who had let him drown back in 1957 made sense. But everyone else was innocent, but Jason didn't care anymore.
He had to be put down like a rabid dog.
It...was time.
Jason started sloshing through the shallow water of the lake towards Tommy, submerging deeper until he disappeared.
Then, Tommy went into action, incited like a match being lit.
Adrenaline coursed through his body and as he tried to stop his shaking hands, he snatched up the can of gasoline that Megan had gotten for him and started pouring it into the lake all around the speedboat.
It clung to the surface of the murky water like a film.
As the light of the full moon guided his eyes, Tommy started scanning the water for Jason.
There was no sign of him.
He could be anywhere, lurking in the lake.
If he could just get the noose around his neck and then dive to safety, it would all be over.
Jason would be home again.
Jason had to be returned to his original resting place. Tommy had read about it in a book about the occult and about the supernatural.
He didn't know if any of it was real, but the book definitely explained Jason's curse. There was no other reasonable explanation for Crystal Lake's gruesome history.
It explained the murders in the area.
It explained how a short time ago, a man named Roy Burns wreaked havoc and killed over fifteen people at a halfway house where Tommy was staying.
It explained how Jason came back from the dead.
It explained how to get rid of the undead, and it said that they have to be returned to where they died.
And for Jason, that was the bottom of Crystal Lake where he drowned as a boy.
Tommy was hellbent on making sure he stayed down there.
As the gas can emptied, Tommy tossed it back down into the boat, lit a match, and threw it into the water.
A ring of flames rose up all around the canoe like a portal to Hell. Tommy felt the intense heat all around him; the flames licked and grasped at the stars above Tommy's head.
Tommy hurriedly reached for the chain, but before he could grab it, Jason's monstrous form suddenly lunged out of the water and snatched him by his jacket.
Half of his body was lit by the flames. Jason glared at Tommy loathingly through the eye holes in the hockey mask that he wore.
Tommy wriggled free from Jason's grasp, narrowly avoiding being pulled down into the murky lagoon with him.
Jason was fast.
He grabbed Tommy with both arms, trying to pin him down, his hands grasping for Tommy's throat. Tommy grappled with him, using all of his upper body to fight back against Jason's near superhuman strength.
Tommy clawed and reached for the boulder he had tied the other end of the chain to, and his nails nearly broke on its rough surface.
Tommy finally got the upperhand and Jason was shoved back into the murky lake, but he sprang up again like lightning, still lit ablaze by the flames. The fire seemed to not even faze him.
The one preoccupation that filled his unhinged, primal mind was ending Tommy's life.
Tommy managed in a last frantic effort to wrap the noose around Jason's neck just as he heaved his body into the boat again, and the rickety speedboat splintered under Jason's immense body mass.
It split in half, and Tommy plunged into the water.
"Noooo!" Megan screamed from the lakeshore.
The terrified campers were huddled by the cabin door, watching and waiting for Tommy to rise back to the surface.
Tommy resisted the urge to take a deep inhale as the cold lakewater hit him like a freight train.
All he could see around him was a murky-green seemingly endless void. Rays of moonlight filtered in at the surface, and Tommy started to swim towards them.
But something was firmly grabbing his leg.
Tommy looked down and he almost opened his mouth to unleash a blood-curdling scream.
Jason had him by the leg and yanked him down to the bottom of the lake where the boulder Tommy had used as a weight had him pinned.
Jason's gloved hands found Tommy's neck and began to squeeze.
Tommy kicked and writhed, but to no avail.
He punched and kicked as hard as he could, but underwater, it was absolutely no use.
Jason pressed his thumbs as hard as he could down on either side of Tommy's larynx, but his oxygen levels, much like Tommy's, were plummeting.
They were both losing strength.
Tommy tried desperately to cling on to life, pulling and prying at Jason's fingers that clutched his throat like an eagle suffocating a rat in its talons.
Slowly, he felt consciousness ebbing, and his strength was failing. The murky green landscape that enveloped him started to turn to nothing but vast darkness.
Finally, his body went limp and Jason triumphantly observed his victory, watching as Tommy lifelessly floated to the surface.
Megan and the young campers gathered around, huddling on the lakeshore and watching as they listened and looked for any sign of Tommy splashing to the surface.
Megan felt the tears rolling down her cheeks when several agonizing moments passed by. The only sound was her own, frenetic breathing, her heartbeat, and the crackling of the flames that lit Crystal Lake up like a supernova.
"Is he killed?" one of the young female campers asked.
"Stay here," Megan said to the children in a firm tone.
Then, in a blind panic, she started running towards the lake.
She had to do something.
She had only known Tommy for a day or two, but he had tried to save them all. She couldn't believe he had been right about Jason.
Megan couldn't fathom how a dead mass murderer had come back to life, but it was right in front of her.
She couldn't let Tommy die after what he tried to do.
Megan ran onto the dock, and dove into the frigid water, dog paddling over to the flames and looking everywhere for Tommy.
Over by the wrecked boat, she saw him. Floating near the back end of the boat which had splintered off in the struggle.
He was floating ever so closely to the motor and the rusted and wickedly sharp set of propellers below it.
He couldn't be dead, she thought. He just can't be dead!
With all of her strength, she wrapped both of her arms around his ribcage and heaved him through the water towards the dock.
And then, a hand suddenly grabbed her ankle and yanked it with enormous strength.
She released her grip on Tommy, and kicked with her other foot, feeling her boot make contact with the hard plastic of his hockey mask.
It was Jason.
And he wasn't letting go.
Megan was pulled under the water, and she let out a scream.
Water filled her throat.
She managed to splash up frantically to the surface again, using Jason's shoulders to spring herself back up.
She gasped for a breath, coughing up the murky water, tasting the acrid gasoline in her mouth. She gasped for another tiny bit of air, anything, and then she was pulled under again.
And again.
No matter how much she fought, he wasn't letting go.
She was going to tire out and eventually drown if she didn't think of something fast.
Tommy still was motionless in the water, bobbing in the waves she created with her terrified thrashing.
Then, her eye caught the metallic shine of the motorboat nearby and she lunged for it.
As Jason fought against her kicking, she tugged at the pull start on the motor. It sputtered but didn't start.
She yanked it again, and it roared to life.
Still fighting with all her willpower to not get pulled underwater and drowned, Megan lowered the motor down as far as it would go, and rotated it towards Jason.
Jason didn't see it coming.
Spinning blades suddenly came out of the murky green void.
They connected with flesh and tissue, slashing deep into his collarbone and under his chin.
Megan was free.
Blood filled the water, bubbling up underneath the motor. Megan swam away, grabbed Tommy, and swam all the way back to the shore and dragged him up onto the sand.
She felt more tears welling up in her eyes as she stared down at Tommy's lifeless figure sprawled out on the shore.
He just couldn't be dead.
Not after all that had happened.
Not after she was really beginning to like him.
And not after he had saved them all.
She knelt down and started mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, pressing down underneath his sternum with all her might and then strategically breathing into his mouth.
It was a good thing that being trained as a camp counselor involved CPR training.
She wasn't going to let him die.
All the children were alive thanks to him.
The young campers, a mix of wide-eyed boys and girls, came running over and surrounded Megan, watching with anticipation and sorrow.
They didn't know him, but they knew he had been trying to save him from the monster who had broken into their cabin in the middle of the night.
Megan kept trying, again, and again, pumping as much air she could into him.
Then, she threw her hands to her face, overwhelmed.
No…she thought. He's not going to die.
She slammed her fist down again onto his belly and this time, Tommy lurched upwards, arching his back. He coughed, and murky water came shooting out of his mouth.
The children cheered, and Megan's face lit up with joy. Tommy was pulled into a sitting position and suddenly wrapped in Megan's warm embrace.
Tommy wasn't focused on her. He stared out at the lake and watched the flames slowly die.
"It's over…" he said. "It's finally over."
"Jason is home,"
Under the surface of the water, Jason narrowed his eyes.
He was still very much alive.
The legacy of Crystal Lake wasn't over. There was much more to tell.
All Jason had to do was wait…
1958
Crystal Lake
A summer camp for kids once sat on the shore of a lake known as Crystal Lake.
There was a whitewashed, wooden dock that stuck out into the shallow, murky water.
A few homely log cabins were nestled among the tall pine trees in the middle of Northeastern wilderness.
A yellow wooden sign with a painting of a log cabin perched on a hill by a sparkling lake read:
Camp Crystal Lake.
Est. 1935.
Everything looked placid and peaceful. The water gently lapped on the shore in the quiet, warm afternoon. Reeds gently swayed back and forth in the summer breeze.
It would have appeared like your normal everyday summer camp…save for the police tape and the "No Trespassing" sign hung up on many miles of barbed wire that kept residents of the town from lurking around the campgrounds.
The place had been condemned just last year when tragedy struck the small town.
It started with a boy.
A young boy.
His name was Jason.
The time was 1957.
Jason's mother would watch him play alone by the lake with sad, wistful eyes.
She wished the best for Jason.
But everyone could tell that Jason was somewhat…different. Much different.
He would scare the other children with just a glance.
He was like one of those paintings with eyes that followed you everywhere you went.
Some counselors would complain to Mrs. Voorhees that Jason would never talk, but he would always watch.
He was always watching.
He would have his head turned from you, and then, when you looked away, you could see him out of the corner of your eye.
Watching you.
Keen on your every move.
Studying you.
It creeped everyone out, including the other children who never wanted to play with him.
They were never mean to him.
They were much too afraid of him.
He had been born on Friday the 13th, and even the doctors were spooked by the look in his eyes.
He had suffered from mental retardation and a birth defect that caused him to look very different from the other kids.
The ones who did pick on him all ended up in unusual freak accidents.
One summer day, Mrs. Voorhees had been cleaning the dishes in the main cabin when she noticed that Jason was missing.
She had run outside, frantically calling her son's name, and that's when she saw him.
He was thrashing in the lake helplessly, calling for his mother.
"Mommy!!!l"
His pathetic, tiny voice shrieked out in terror as the vast lake sucked him down.
Pamela Voorhees ran for help, searching for the owner, John Christy, searching for anyone who could help.
That's when she stumbled into an old barn where she saw the two counselors who were supposed to have been watching Jason.
They were making love, literally rolling around in the hay.
When Mrs. Voorhees returned to the lake with them, after scolding them harshly, Jason was nowhere to be found.
Divers and police searched the lake and the grounds but could not find the boy.
Soon, the camp closed down. Nothing was ever done about Jason's mysterious drowning.
Why couldn't they find his body?
Mrs. Voorhees didn't understand it. But she knew one thing.
Someone had to pay.
Something had to be done.
That camp was a death trap.
It claimed the life of her son.
She couldn't let them open it again.
1958
On Friday the 13th, the next summer after Jason's drowning, when Camp Crystal Lake opened back up, one of the counselors made a gruesome discovery on the second day of camp.
The two counselors from the previous year were both found stabbed to death in the same old barn where they had been fondling each other when Jason drowned..
The police were clueless. They knew they were killed sometime in the middle of the night.
They just didn't have any clues as to who could have done it. John Christy didn't have much to gain from the camp closing down. It was his life's work.
All of the counselors had been together and had given one another alibis.
Who could it have been?
The one disturbing feature that the police noticed was the sheer rage displayed by the killer.
The two seventeen year old's bodies were virtually hacked to pieces.
The killer disappeared into the night, never to be seen or heard from again for the next twenty years.
1979
John Christy's son, Steve, re-opens the camp in an attempt to sell it for profit.
His greed would be his tragic flaw.
Only after one short week, before the camp even opened, the Crystal Lake police found Steve and all of his teenage counselors dead.
Steve had a hunting knife driven into his chest like it was a stake used to slay a vampire, and was found hanging upside down like a freshly slaughtered pig.
Marcie, with an ax in her head.
Brenda was tied to a tree, slashed, shot with arrows from the archery range, and thrown through a window.
Ned, his throat slit from ear to ear.
Jack, an arrow through his throat.
Bill, impaled to the shed door with multiple arrows driven into him.
Annie, the new camp cook, her throat also slashed just like Ned's..
One counselor, Alice Hardy, managed to survive the bloody rampage that night.
A rampage inflicted by none other than Jason's mother, Pamela Voorhees.
She fought Pamela, who was enraged by her son's hapless drowning at the camp twenty years earlier, and managed to decapitate her in one, wild, frenzied and desperate swing of a machete.
Her headless corpse had grasped at the sky, and then it collapsed into a heap.
The detectives found Alice panicking in the middle of the lake.
She swore that Jason Voorhees had risen from the depths of Crystal Lake and pulled her underneath the water.
Some people said she was just crazy.
But others believed the legend of Jason Voorhees.
For the ones who continued to die, they definitely believed in the last moments of their lives.
And it wasn't over. More murders continued to plague the area for years to come.
1984
First, a counselor training center right beside the abandoned Camp Crystal Lake was struck by a maniacal pitchfork-wielding killer.
Ginny Field, a psychology major and a grad student, told authorities it was Jason Voorhees.
She said he was living in a shack in the woods near the camp and was storing the mutilated bodies of his victims there.
Including the body of Alice, who was responsible for Jason's mother'so death.
But when authorities searched for the shack, they found nothing but charred remains.
There was no shrine to Jason's mother like Ginny had described.
There was no way to prove it had been Jason Voorhees.
But the townsfolk and Ginny knew the truth. She actually saw him, smelling like rotting meat and filth, and blood, wearing tattered clothes, and hideously deformed.
The next victim was nineteen year old Chris Higgins, who found all of her friends that she had invited to her childhood lakefront property viciously slaughtered.
Andy had been split in half by a machete.
Her best friend, Debbie, was dead in an upstairs closet, a knife through her throat.
Vera had a spear fired into her eye from a speargun.
Chris survived, but was far too traumatized to tell the authorities anything.
All she could get out was…
"It was him…It was him…"
Then, a family was brutally attacked in their lakeside home.
Tommy Jarvis was the young boy who had to fight and defend his family from a deranged serial killer in a hockey mask.
He managed to hack Jason to death with a machete.
After that, he became severely traumatized.
A few years later, Tommy was sent to a halfway house out near Crystal Lake.
All the patients were slaughtered one night.
By a man in a hockey mask.
But this time, it wasn't Jason.
It was a local ambulance driver, enraged by the death of his son who was in the care of the halfway house.
Some said he was a victim of the curse.
It was just another murderous week at Crystal Lake.
Some said it was a death curse, like the town drunk, Ralph.
Nobody believed him when he tried to warn people about living at Crystal Lake, or at "Camp Blood" as Ralph called it.
"Camp Blood is cursed! You'll never come back again!" he would say in his raspy voice.
They found Ralph dead too. Strung up to a tree with barbed wire and brutally garroted.
Everyone didn't want to believe that living in their small town was a death sentence.
Nobody believed that it was Jason.
How could it be Jason?
Jason drowned back in the fifties.
There was no way he could have been alive after all this time.
Or was there?
Bodies kept falling. And more people kept reporting that it truly was Jason Voorhees.
At a town council meeting in 1990, the whole town managed to convince the mayor to change the name of the town.
They wanted to forget the murderous and violent history associated with the name "Crystal Lake".
Thus, the name changed to the town of Forest Green.
Camp Crystal Lake was newly renovated, and rebuilt on the shore of Crystal Lake, which was now called Lake Forest Green.
But Tommy Jarvis knew that Camp Forest Green was still Camp Crystal Lake.
It was still Crystal Lake to Jason.
Tommy couldn't accept that Jason was truly dead.
Even after he had seen Jason lying in a pool of his own blood, with his head split nearly in half with a machete, he couldn't believe Jason was dead.
That's why he had gone to the cemetery.
He had to be sure.
It had hopelessly backfired on him, and just like that, Jason was back.
But now that Jason's body was at the bottom of Crystal Lake, pinned by a chain tied around his neck like a lynching, the town of Forest Green could now rest.
Years passed.
Friday the 13th was approaching.
Forest Green eventually changed the name back to Crystal Lake.
But no matter what the name of the town was, there was still a price to pay. Jason's mother's work was anything but finished.
1985
Friday the 13th
October
There was something off about ten-year old Tina Shepard.
48-year old Amanda Shepard leaned against the porch column of the large, two-story clapboard house that sat on the edge of Crystal Lake.
Her husband, John, had built it many years ago, thanks to his late father's surplus of money that was passed down to him.
It was settled in a large clearing surrounded by pine trees. The scent of the pines and the smell of the lake filled the air.
A weather-worn, rickety wooden dock, covered by a gable roof, jutted out into the water. A small canoe rocked back and forth gently in the small waves laid out by a speedboat that flew by.
Mrs. Shepard gazed out nostalgically at the place where she had spent the last twenty some years of her life.
The lake's surface was glassy smooth. In the late afternoon, the crickets were chirping, providing a beautiful ambience.
Her daughter Tina was skipping rocks across the pond, something her father always did with her to spend time with his daughter.
Her blond hair reminded her of how her own hair used to be.
Long, blond, and wavy.
Now, Amanda's hair had faded to a light blondish-gray.
Tina's hair was so blond it reflected the sunlight.
It made Mrs. Shepard happy. Tina had been a beautiful, angelic baby with these deep, crystal blue eyes.
Tina's eyes were really what made Amanda fall in love with her daughter.
There was something beautiful and mysterious about them.
It had almost been a spiritual experience the first time she held Tina as a baby and had stared into her eyes.
Now, Tina was growing into a young, healthy girl, albeit some strange quirks, and it scared Amanda, more than she was comfortable admitting.
Living out in the woods like they did worsened her fear, and that's why she always watched her daughter like a hawk.
Anything could happen.
A wild animal could attack her.
She could fall in the lake and drown.
Crystal Lake was a small, close-knit and safe town to live in, for the most part.
Amanda had heard about some murders that took place on the opposite side of the lake they lived on, but that had been over a year ago.
That had been the only time something like that happened since she'd been living on the lake.
Still, it never hurts to be cautious, she thought, as she watched Tina playing down by the lake.
She had noticed something off about Tina ever since she was only a few months old.
Things would happen around the house that were totally unexplainable.
Objects moving, doors slamming, and lights flickering on and off.
Candles being lit without anyone being home.
The oven would be left on overnight even when Amanda swore she had turned it off.
All of these things typically happened whenever Tina was around.
That was the strange part.
She was able to shrug most of these odd occurrences off, until Tina started acting really strange.
First, she would say that she could see things move by themselves.
Then, she would say that she could see people in the house.
All kinds of people.
But when Amanda would take a look, there would be nothing there.
Then, a few years ago, on Tina's seventh birthday, they bought her a pet goldfish that she kept on her nightstand by her bed.
It died in the night, and they found it floating at the top of the bowl.
When Mrs. Shepard went to get something to fish the carcass out of the bowl and then came back, the fish was suddenly alive again.
Tina had been standing there, with a hazy look in her eyes, staring at the bowl.
Mrs. Shepard wasn't at all a superstitious person, but she couldn't think of any reasonable explanation for these things.
She tried taking Tina to a doctor and they brushed it all off as the silly fantasies of a child.
Psychiatrists tried to analyze her, and blamed her behavior on not getting enough attention. They said she was just "lashing out" to try and get the attention that she was starved of.
Mrs. Shepard knew better.
She loved and doted on her daughter. There was no way the psychiatrists were telling the truth.
Then again, she knew how crazy she must have sounded. She would tell them that Tina would sometimes speak of seeing things, and they would always glare at her with a dubious expression.
She could tell these visions that Tina had distressed her a great deal.
She would spend nights sleeping in Tina's bed with her because she was too scared to go to sleep for the fear of seeing another strange man or woman roaming around the house.
Over the past few months, things had been starting to die down.
Her and her husband's marriage was even getting better.
Before, he would come home drunk and yell at her, and a big fight would break out.
Mrs. Shepard figured it was the stress of owning a business that was really starting to take a toll on him.
It was hard in a small town where there was lots of competition.
John's furniture store barely brought in enough customers to get by.
His inheritance from his father was all spent building their home.
Now, it was hard to make ends meet considering Mrs. Shepard quit teaching.
Teaching was certainly her passion, but she once
was assaulted by a student. After that, she was always too afraid to go back and do what she loved to do.
Maybe that was why she begged her husband to move out of the city and somewhere that was safe.
Plus, she had a daughter who was going through some kind of imaginative phase, and needed to be taken care of during the day.
To cope with all of the financial stress, John had turned to the bottle and the last few years had been rocky, to say the least.
But now, he seemed to be working on his anger and his drinking problem.
They were actually getting along as a family.
Mrs. Shepard had noticed that, strangely, when she and her husband were getting along, the strange occurrences surrounding her daughter would cease.
There seemed to be no need to call in a priest, or do something along those lines, because nothing too bad ever happened.
Most of the time, they'd just see objects moving on their own, sometimes flying all the way across the room.
It scared them all, but eventually, they learned to live with it.
As long as she and her husband weren't fighting and making Tina upset, nothing would happen.
Their lives could finally be normal again, and Mrs. Shepard was rejoicing in that.
As she looked out onto the shimmering lake, she watched the afternoon sun slowly sinking down towards the horizon, painting the tops of the trees with a golden haze.
The sky was getting darker as the minutes passed by.
Tina looked like she was having way too much fun to ask her to come inside.
Why not sit outside for a bit longer and soak in the oncoming sunset?
It was the perfect afternoon for it.
Everything seemed so tranquil it was like a scene out of a movie.
The wind was picking up, and the sky turned a deep shade of turquoise, embellished by the bright pink and violet colors that streaked across the horizon in a dazzling array.
Crystal Lake seemed like the perfect place to live.
Mrs. Shepard hated the city. Her husband liked it, but succumbed to his wife's wishes once he realized that he could build his own property.
So, they found a spot of land on the lake and the rest was history.
Her husband would be home soon from his job at the local furniture store which he owned and managed.
She prayed that he hadn't been drinking again, but he was supposed to be home at five and it was already seven.
This was a telltale sign that he had stopped off at a bar somewhere along the route back home from town.
Just great, she thought. Tina had been so happy recently.
For months, Tina hadn't been able to make any friends at school.
It was almost time to have to homeschool her. It was getting bad.
Too many of the kids said Tina had "crazy eyes" and they steered clear of her.
They were afraid of her. Afraid of what she was thinking behind those piercing eyes.
And then, just a month ago, a kid that Tina had gotten into a heated argument with was involved in some kind of terrible accident.
Nobody knew how it had happened.
At recess, he had suddenly flown through the air off of some playground equipment and ended up breaking his arm.
There was no explanation.
Tina had been found standing nearby. Still as a stone. Staring at the boy. Her jaw had been locked tight and her fists had been clenched.
It really spooked Amanda, and was pushing her closer and closer to homeschooling Tina.
It would be a cinch considering Mrs. Shepard was a retired teacher.
Maybe something was wrong with Tina. Maybe she had one of those awful mental disorders, like bipolar, but she didn't think children could be diagnosed with that.
Maybe she was autistic, one of those children who had trouble fitting in, but it wasn't that she was socially inept. She seemed just fine. She wasn't antisocial.
It was the other children who had a problem with Tina and Mrs. Shepard couldn't fathom why.
Maybe she was different. One of those kids who just didn't fit with most other kids and didn't share the same interests.
Tina hadn't really taken the time to develop her interests. She was only ten years old.
Maybe given some time, Tina would find herself and fit in with the right crowd of people.
All things take time, she thought.
Life takes time.
After all, she herself had been a quiet, bookish kid and never fit in well either, and she turned out to be a stable adult with a somewhat pleasant marriage and lakefront property.
"Tina!" Mrs. Shepard called.
"Yes, Mom?" Tina replied.
"It's almost time to come into the house. Your father is almost home,"
Tina let out a small groan.
"Aw, ok," she said.
Suddenly, there was the sound of spinning tires and John Shepard's 1972 Cadillac pulled into the lot, screeching to a halt.
Mrs. Shepard just knew in her gut that it was time for another brawl with her husband.
He clambered out of the car, stumbling a little bit, and then finding his balance.
He was clearly plastered.
"John, what the hell is this?" she demanded.
"Inside. We have to talk," he said, his words slurring.
Mrs. Shepard controlled her urges to talk back to him, and followed him into the house. She knew what talking back to him would bring. The screen door banged shut.
John paced around the living room nervously, shaking his head. His light sandy-blond hair was disheveled, and his shirt was rumpled.
He reeked of alcohol.
"I'm sick of this, Amanda. I am sick to death of living out here," he said after a brief hesitation.
"John…we have something good going on here. Let's just talk about it," Mrs. Shepard said, in the kindest tone she could manage.
"Don't give me that!" John bellowed so loudly it echoed off the walls.
"John, please…" Mrs. Shepard protested.
It was no use. He was drunk out of his mind. His bloodshot eyes leered at her.
"No, listen, Amanda. I'm going to sell this place and get the hell out," he said furiously.
It was the same fight they always had.
He always ranted about how building a house out in the "boonies" had been a bad idea from the start.
He had said that they'd be better off living in an apartment in the city instead of blowing their savings on maintaining and repairing their home.
Mrs. Shepard tried to just ignore him, and thought that maybe he would go and settle down upstairs.
"Tina!" she called out the screen door.
"Leave her out of this," John said.
"Tina!" Mrs. Shepard called again. "Please come inside!"
Tina stood in the doorway, listening to the argument. Her alluring eyes were watching them intently.
"Yeah, come on. Have her join the party," John said.
Then, he snatched up a potted plant and heaved it into the wall.
"Please, John!" Mrs. Shepard cried. "Don't drink any more!"
John snapped his head around to stare at her, his eyes wide. He was fully irate now.
"Don't tell me what to do!" John screamed.
He reared back, and that's when he hit her.
Mrs. Shepard was dumbfounded at the stinging sensation that suddenly burned across her cheek.
Her jaw dropped.
She held a hand to her face in astonishment.
John's eyes immediately turned apologetic. He couldn't believe he had actually done it either.
He froze in time, staring at his own hands in bewilderment.
As Mrs. Shepard caught a glance of the screen door, she saw Tina in the doorway with a look of despair and terror on her face.
"Tina, it's okay baby!" Mrs. Shepard tried to console her, but Tina turned and ran towards the lake, disappearing into the approaching darkness of the night.
John instinctively felt the pang of guilt hit him like an eighteen wheeler, and he ran after her.
"Tina!" he cried.
He ran out the screen door and onto the covered porch. Through the mesh screen that provided a way to look out onto the lake, he saw Tina's tiny figure running out onto the rickety dock.
"Tina, no!" he shouted.
She wasn't listening.
That dock was dangerous, full of splinters, and could topple at any second.
It was already rocking unsteadily back and forth in the waves.
"Tina, please come inside, honey!"
She still didn't listen.
She started climbing into the canoe and paddling off into the water.
"Tina!" he yelled again. "Wait!"
It was too late.
She was floating off into the middle of the lake, tears streaming down her cheeks.
John ran his hands through his dark hair, exasperated. What have I done? he thought.
He started sprinting towards the old, wooden dock, running up the steps and onto the sagging wooden planks.
"Tina!" he cried. "I'm sorry!"
The dock tediously swung back and forth. The old logs that supported it creaked under his weight.
He ran to the edge of the dock and called out to her.
"Tina, please come back, I'm sorry!"
"You hit Mom!" Tina cried back to him.
"And then, another voice rang out.
It was the frantic voice of Mrs. Shepard.
"Tina! Tina!" she screamed at the top of her lungs, now seeing that Tina was out in the lake by herself.
"Please, baby, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!" John exclaimed.
"Go away! I hate you! I wish you were dead!" Tina screamed. Tears stained her fair cheeks.
That made Mrs. Shepard stop in her tracks.
John's jaw dropped and he stood at the edge of the dock speechless and stunned at what he had just heard.
And then, he saw the sheer look of hatred in his daughter's eyes. Her fists were clenched down by her side. She stood up in the canoe, and became transfixed on John. Her jaw locked tightly. Her eyes narrowed.
Without warning, the lake began to churn.
Bubbles rose to the surface violently.
The dock began to shake. It thrashed back and forth, without the help of any wind. It was like it had taken on a life of its own.
John tried to keep his balance, but the dock suddenly swung sharply to the right, knocking him to his knees. It thrashed again, sending him onto his back.
"Oh my God!" Mrs. Shepard vociferated helplessly.
There was no time for John to make it back to the shore.
The wooden beams that held up the old ramshackle pier began to splinter. And then, the wooden planks that John was lying on suddenly fell out from beneath him, and he went plunging into the lake with a scream.
"No, Daddy! Nooo!" Tina shrieked.
"John!" Mrs. Shepard cried.
The roof of the dock caved in, and the whole thing came crumbling down right on top of John with a resounding splash.
As a mysterious fog started to spread across the surface of the lake, from seemingly nowhere, the lake was quiet again.
Tina let out one more guttural, sorrowful scream.
"Daaddddyyyyyyy!"
Another life was lost at Crystal Lake