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There was a dull clanging sound and Jason fell full length upon the floor of the loft. The machete slipped out his grasp and dropped out of the open hayloft window to the ground below. Chris stood over him with the shovel, ready to bring it down again, but Jason remained motionless upon the floor.
Chris wasted no time. She quickly grabbed the rope hanging from the block and tackle used to haul the hay bales up to the loft and she fashioned a noose with it. Loosening it, she bent down, slipped it over his head, and drew it tight around his neck. Then she crouched down beside him and strained to roll his heavy bulk over to the window. She couldn’t move him. He was incredibly heavy.
She put her arms under his side and gritted her teeth, groaning with the effort as she tried to push him out the window. She leaned into him, straining, putting all her weight into it, and she managed to roll him over onto his side.
His fingers twitched.
With an agonized moan, Chris straight-armed his limp form until it rolled over once again and teetered on the edge of the window opening . . .
As his hands clutched at her, she pushed him out the window.
The rope whizzed through the block like a nylon fishing line screaming from a reel when a marlin hits the hook, and Jason fell straight down at the ground until the stopper knot hit the block and the rope suddenly pulled taut around his neck. It jerked his body in midair so that, for a second, it seemed as if he were about to come up again like a yo-yo on a string. But he simply hung there, twisting slightly, dangling only a few feet from the ground, hanged as effectively as if he had been dropped through the trapdoor of a gallows.
Chris stepped over to the window, looking down as Jason’s body swung gently from the rope, his arms limp at his sides. She was at the end of her rope as well. Tears streamed from her eyes as she stared down at the awful sight, unable to take her eyes away from it, unable to believe what she had been forced to do.
With a sob, she turned away and slowly came back down the ladder, then staggered wearily toward the door.
She couldn’t believe that it was over. A dozen times she was sure she had been about to die. She felt utterly exhausted, drained, and shocked almost to the point of catatonia. She tried to push the wooden crossbar up out of the slots, but it was hopeless. She couldn’t budge it.
For a moment, she sagged against the doors, crying quietly. She looked around, trying to think how she would get the doors open, and her gaze fell on a large, rusted iron pulley wheel hanging from a peg in the wall. She took the pulley down, held it in both hands, drew a deep breath, and swung it hard against the underside of the wooden crossbar. Once, twice, three times, she kept pounding at it until, finally, the crossbar moved up slightly as she jarred it loose. She dropped the iron pulley wheel to the ground, and with an effort, lifted the cross bar out of the slots and dropped it to the floor.
She grabbed the door handles and leaned back, pulling the barn doors open. There, Jason’s body was suspended directly in front of her about three feet off the ground.
She stepped back, staring at him numbly. The cold wind blew in through the open doors, blowing her hair, making his body sway slightly on the end of the rope, and suddenly his eyes snapped open.
“No!” she screamed, recoiling from the impossible sight. “NO! You can’t be alive!”
She retreated back into the barn in stunned disbelief as Jason brought his arm up and grasped the rope just above the noose around his neck. With one arm, he hoisted himself up on the rope, giving it some slack, and with his other hand, he pulled at the noose, loosening it and drawing it up over his head. As he pulled the noose off, his mask slipped and Chris saw his hideously misshapen face, a grotesque vision straight out of her worst nightmares.
“It’s you!” she cried, shaking her head and backing away from him. “No! NO! NO!”
It all came back to her as she recognized him from the horrible night in the woods when he had attacked her and she had blacked out. Her mind had retreated into unconsciousness rather than face the awful reality of what was being done to her, and now as it all came flooding back with terrifying clarity, she broke, giving voice to a frenzied scream that bubbled up from deep within her and shattered the stillness of the night outside, echoing through the darkness.
Jason pulled the mask back over his face and dropped down to the ground. He bent and picked up the machete that had fallen from the loft. As Chris stumbled backward, screaming uncontrollably, he advanced upon her, raising the machete for the killing stroke.
Something hit him from behind.
He staggered forward, thrown off balance as Ali, his face smashed and bleeding, his shaved skull caked with blood, threw his arms around him and tried to pull him to the ground. Jason shook him off and spun around, the machete came down with a whoosh, and Ali’s right hand flew off, severed cleanly at the wrist. The biker gave a high-pitched scream as he stared at the blood spouting like a fountain from his stump.
Jason brought the machete down again and chopped the biker to the ground. He stood over him and raised the machete once again, bringing it down with a savage force, again and again. Ali wasn’t screaming anymore, but Jason kept chopping away like a crazed butcher cutting meat.
Chris ran over to the tool rack and seized the first weapon she saw, an ax, and as Jason slashed away at the dead biker with demented fury, Chris raised the ax high over her head and moved toward him. Jason gave a final brutal blow to the biker’s vivisected corpse and turned back toward her as she gave a wild cry and swung the ax with all her might. The blade thunked through his white plastic mask and became buried in his forehead.
Chris stepped back, shocked at what she’d done, and suddenly Jason’s arms shot out for her. With the ax still embedded in his skull, he staggered toward her, arms outstretched, fingers grasping . . .
“NOOO!” Chris screamed, staggering back, incredulous that he was still alive. “NO! NO! NO!”
Feeling the wall behind her back, she shrank against it, screaming hysterically as he staggered closer, his hands reaching out for her. And then he fell forward like a cut-down tree and landed with a thud on the ground right at her feet.
Chris stood, trembling against the wall, staring down at him with terror. She drew several shuddering breaths and prodded his head with the toe of her sneaker, then immedi
ately jerked her foot back.
He didn’t move.
She was afraid to trust the evidence of her sense. She shuffled to one side, still pressed back against the wall, and then went around him in a wide circle, staring down at his massive body lying there with the bloody ax embedded in his head. She slowly edged around him and went outside, breathing heavily, her throat raw from screaming. In a daze, she walked down the path leading to the lake.
The wind had died down and Crystal Lake was dark and smooth as glass. The night was cold, but she didn’t even feel the chill. Knowing she was on the verge of collapsing, she followed some blind instinct that led her to seek safety out upon the lake, where no one could reach her. At the boat dock, she sank down to her knees and pushed the canoe, which she and her friends had brought, into the water. She climbed into it, huddled on the bottom, then drifted away from the shore into the darkness.
