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Prologue
Sometimes, Edna Hockett got so frustrated, she just wished she could die. Her life was going absolutely nowhere. She often wondered what the point of it was. There was no way out; she was stuck. And the worst thing was that she had done it to herself.
If anyone had told her back when she was seventeen that she would wind up married to a fat slob who ran a tiny roadside market way out in the middle of nowhere, just off a two-lane highway, and that her nights would be spent curled up on an old sofa in front of the TV, knitting sweaters endlessly just to have something to do with her hands so she wouldn’t start pounding on the walls and screaming, she would never have believed it. But there she was, in her flannel nightgown and curlers in front of the TV in their living quarters over the store. They didn’t even have a decent house to live in, not even a mobile home, just a lousy, cramped apartment above the store. How did she ever get herself into this mess?
When she had married Harold at eighteen, fresh out of high school, she felt so proud and free and full of life that it seemed as if nothing could hold her back. She married her high school sweetheart, the captain of the football team and the best-looking guy in school. Harold had a football scholarship to college and she planned on getting a part-time job to help make ends meet. They had wonderful plans. Harold was going to work hard and win a position as the starting quarterback in his sophomore or junior year. Then he’d get picked in the draft and spend some years playing pro ball, after which he’d take all the money he would have invested and start a business of his own. Well, Harold got drafted, all right, but it wasn’t by any football team. This team was called the U.S. Army.
The big jerk just had to flunk out and get drafted. For a while, she was terrified that he’d get sent to Vietnam, but they shipped him off to West Germany instead, where he picked up a taste for dark beer and bratwurst and Wiener schnitzel and apple strudel. Pretty soon it was all that he could do to fit into his uniform. And after Harold go out of the army, he just kept on eating.
She couldn’t really remember when she stopped calling him “honey” and started referring to him as “the big jerk.” She wasn’t sure when she started letting her own appearance slip, though she’d never allowed herself to get as sloppy and overweight as Harold. She couldn’t remember when she’d finally realized that all her dreams were merely that—just dreams—and instead of “making it,” she had started to settle for “just getting by.” She was thirty-eight years old, but she looked forty-eight and sometimes she felt even older. She changed the TV channel with a sigh and sat back to see what bad news there was in the world.
The eleven o’clock news came on. “The quiet little community of Crystal Lake was shocked today with reports of a grisly mass murder scene,” the anchorman said.
Her eyes grew wide and she leaned forward, staring intently at the screen. They were just down the road from Crystal Lake! She turned the volume up.
“Eight bodies have been discovered in what is already being called the most brutal and heinous crime in local history,” the newscaster continued. “A police spokesman told ‘Eye-On News’ that they have been combing the area since just before dawn and are afraid that their gruesome discovery is just the beginning.”
My God, she thought, it was almost like the last time, when that crazy Vorhees woman ran amok and killed those kids at that camp by the lake! Edna shuddered at the thought. “Camp Blood” was what all the newspapers had called it. And to think that Pamela Vorhees had actually been in their store every now and then! Who would have thought that a perfectly normal-looking woman like that . . . but these new murders couldn’t have been done by her. She was dead. Edna remembered reading that she had been decapitated. She shuddered, imagining the gruesome sight of a body with its head cut off.
There was a crash outside and Edna jerked, startled by the noise. She ran over to the window and looked out. Of course, she thought, who else? It was Harold. The light of my life, she thought wryly. Some light. Some life.
He had stumbled into one of the poles holding up the clothesline and knocked it over. Now he was down there, flailing amid the hanging laundry, trying to get the pole propped back up. Looking at him now, at his clumsy, shambling gait, the awkward way he moved, his beer belly and fat cheeks and thinning hair, it was hard to believe that he had ever been a handsome young football hero.
It all just goes to show you, Edna thought. She had married the top jock, the best-looking boy in school, and look what he had turned into. On the other hand, her cousin Jennifer had married the class nerd and now he was a wealthy Hollywood screenwriter and Jennifer lived in a big house in Malibu, wore designer clothes and drove a fifty-thousand-dollar sports car. Go figure, Edna thought. Who would’ve guessed? Life was a cruel joke. She pushed open the window and leaned out.
“Goddamn it, Harold!” she screamed down at him as he looked up guiltily. “I spent all day yesterday washing your clothes and look what you’re doing to ’em! You know I work very hard around here, tryin’ to keep up with you and all your sloppy habits! And I get no help from you at all!”
She slammed the window back down furiously. “Jerk,” she mumbled, going back over to the TV. They were still on the mass murder story. The anchorman had just turned it over to the reporter in the field.
“Police Chief Scott Fitzsimmons had no comment about the murders when reached early this morning,” the reporter was saying as he stood outside one of the cabins down by Crystal Lake. In the background, an ambulance and police squad cars with flashing lights were visible. “Detectives at the scene, however, were baffled by the brutality of the killings,” the reporter continued. “Bodies were found literally strewn over the four-square-mile campground in the remote lake region.”
“Oh, my God,” Edna murmured, biting her lower lip as she leaned forward slightly to adjust the antenna on the portable TV, improving the picture. She sat back again and resumed winding the yarn. The camera cut away to a shot of a pretty blond girl being taken out of the cab
in on a stretcher. The reporter provided a voice-over commentary as she was loaded into the ambulance.
“Ginny Field miraculously survived repeated attacks by the ax-wielding killer and was taken to the hospital today,” the reporter said, offscreen. “She is in serious condition, suffering from multiple stab wounds and severe hysterical shock. The names of the eight victims are still being withheld pending notification of the next-of-kin. Reports of cannibalism and sexual mutilation are still unconfirmed at this hour. The person responsible for the Crystal Lake horror remains at large . . .”
Edna reached forward quickly and turned off the TV. She didn’t need to hear that sort of thing. My God, she thought, cannibalism? Sexual mutilation? And the killer was still at large? She wouldn’t get a wink of sleep tonight.
“Harold?” she called, in a shrill voice. “What’re you doing down there?”
There was no answer.
“Harold . . .” Edna set her mouth in a tight grimace. She hated it when he got sulky and didn’t answer. “I swear . . .”
She looked out the window, but there was no sign of him in the yard. Shaking her head, she put her knitting on the couch and went downstairs. She went out the back door into the yard, stood looking around for a moment, then glanced at the laundry hanging on the line and sighed. A work shirt and a pair of pants were missing. She picked up the basket and started taking down the clothes.
“Jesus Christ, Harold,” she said, talking to herself, “you take what’s yours and you leave the rest for me to do. So inconsiderate. Why didn’t you just finish the job?”
No, of course not, that would be too much to ask, she thought. If I hadn’t come out here to see what that big dope was doing, the laundry would’ve hung out here all night.
“Do I have to do everything around here?” she said to herself. Given the lack of response from Harold, she was saying things to herself more and more often. Christ, she thought, they’ll be coming to take me away to the rubber room pretty soon. That’s if I live so long.
She heard a footstep crunch on the gravel in the drive.
“Harold?”
She squinted into the darkness and, for a moment she thought she saw a large figure moving past, but now the sheets hanging on the clothesline blocked her view. She moved to look around them and saw that the door to the wooden shed out back was open. She put the basket back on the porch and went to see what the hell that jerk was doing out there in the middle of the night. Sometimes she simply couldn’t figure him out at all. Most of the time, she thought, sourly.
Meanwhile, Harold was bent over the fishbowl in the back room of the market. He opened up a little can of fish food and shook some flakes out into the bowl.
