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Shelly sighed heavily. I give up, he thought. What’s wrong with me, anyway? Why can’t I ever do anything right? I ought to just give up on the whole thing, forget about Vera, forget about a career in filmmaking, and get a job as a cook at a fast-food restaurant. The thought suddenly made him long for a double burger, a quarter pounder with cheese, a couple of orders of large fries, a large milkshake, and maybe a fried fish fillet with extra sauce and an apple turnover. He wondered if there were any fast-food places nearby. Or at least a pizzeria. He was starving.
A shadow crossed one of the windows and he glanced up to see who it was, but the figure had already passed. Whoever it was had gone around the house, heading toward the barn. Shelly got off the porch swing and went down the steps toward the barn, carrying his mask and spear gun. He went up to the window and looked in, but it was way too dark to see anything. He tapped on the window.
“Chuck? Chili? What’re you guys doin’ in there?” He grinned. “You guys doin’ something I shouldn’t see?”
He pushed open the door and fumbled for the light switch. Powerful fingers suddenly closed around his wrist in a vise-like grip and brutally yanked him forward. He gasped with shocked surprise, then he saw a flash of steel and opened his mouth to scream, but he never had the chance. The knife blade whistled through the air with the speed of a Japanese chef slicing up a stir fry, and Shelly felt the agonizing fire of its razor-sharp edge as is slashed across his throat.
Vera shifted uncomfortably on the wooden boards of the dock and reached into her back pocket to see what was poking her. She pulled out Shelly’s wallet. She had forgotten to give it back to him after that scene with the bikers at the convenience store. Out of curiosity, she opened it and started going through the contents. She paused at a photograph of Shelly and his mother and guiltily closed the wallet. She looked around, but he was nowhere in sight. He must have gone back to the house, she thought. She started to get up, but as she rose, the wallet slipped out of her grasp and fell into the water.
“Oh, that’s just great,” she said, looking down at the wallet floating in the lake.
Fortunately, it was one of those cordura nylon outdoorsman’s wallets, used by fisherman and boaters because they floated, but it had drifted out of her reach and now she couldn’t get at it from the dock. There was nothing else to do but go in after it.
She walked back to the opposite end of the dock and stepped onto the ground, going down to the water’s edge. Slowly wading out into the water until it was up over her knees, she reached out for the floating wallet and picked it up. As she shook it off, the sound of heavy footsteps on the dock above her made her look up.
She saw a dark figure wearing a white hockey mask and carrying a spear gun walk out onto the dock. Shelly, she thought, was still playing his stupid games. Well, he probably wouldn’t think it was so funny when he found out she had dropped his wallet in the water. Everything inside was soaking wet.
“Hey . . . I dropped your wallet!” she called out. “I’m sorry!”
She saw him raise the spear gun.
“Hey, now cut that out!” she shouted. “That’s not funny!”
It was pointed straight at her. Suddenly she realized that the dark figure wasn’t wearing a wet suit. It wasn’t Shelly, but a much larger man, some huge and frightening stranger wearing Shelly’s hockey mask and aiming Shelly’s spear gun at her face . . .
“Who are you?” she shouted, staring with sudden fear at the figure on the dock. “What are you doing?”
Jason pulled the trigger. With a click and a sharp, hissing sound, the steel spear hurtled through the air and struck Vera in her left eye, penetrating deep into her brain. She fell back into the water, her right eye staring blindly at the sky, the shiny spear shaft protruding from her left eye socket as blood leaked out from around the window and mingled with the cold waters of Crystal Lake.
Jason dropped the spear gun onto the dock and turned back toward the house. He looked up at the light in a second-floor bedroom window, where Andy and Debbie lay wrapped in each others arms.
“That was the best one yet,” said Debbie, sighing contentedly. “Was it you . . . me . . . or the hammock?”
“I vote for me,” said Andy, with a grin.
“I vote for the hammock,” she said, giggling as she sat up and lowered her feet to the floor. She stood and reached for her bathrobe.
“Where are you goin’?” Andy said.
“I’m taking a shower,” she said, pausing at the door. “You ought to try it sometime.”
She went into the bathroom, flicked on the light switch, and turned on the shower.
“Hey, Debbie, can you hear me?” Andy shouted from outside the bathroom door.
She dropped her bathrobe to the floor. “Barely,” she said.
“I’m going downstairs to get a brew,” he called, “You want one?”
She got into the shower and started soaping herself. Downstairs, the front door opened and Jason walked in, carrying a machete from the barn. He slowly crossed the living room and started up the spiral staircase to the second floor, and the sound of their voices.
As Debbie washed the soap out of her eyes, the door to the bathroom opened. She heard a banging noise and turned off the shower.
“Andy?”
She wiped the water out of her eyes and opened them. She could see a shadowy figure through the shower curtain. She drew the curtain back and saw Andy, upside down, walking on his hands. The banging sound had been him kicking the bathroom door open. She rolled her eyes at him.
He came down out of his handstand, grinning, “Do you want that beer, or not?”
