“You can see how stupid this is,” she said. Ugh. Patrick was sucha wet blanket. She knew she should’ve ditched him ten minutes ago when he’d stopped to retie his shoelaces. He was only slowing her down. “Mikey’s a big boy. Jason doesn’t have to keep taking care of him like we’re in high school again. Come on, the motel’s retro vibes are as good as the cabin’s. We can ask Norma for the honeymoon suite. I hear it’s got a waterbed.”
Patrick gestured wildly behind them. God, he was so stubborn. He really didn’t like a change in plans, even if this search party wasn’t his plan in the first place. “But if we don’t meet back at the cabin, everyone’s going to go out looking forus.”
“Then it’s their own fault for having no sense of self-preservation. I’m going, Patrick. With or without you.”
Jen continued the march toward the highway, swinging her arms to show she meant business. Patrick was asking her a question, but she was too far ahead to make out the words. “You’re not changing my mind,” she said, without glancing back.
A sharp grunt sounded behind her. He’d probably tripped. Silly Patrick, thinking he could delay her from getting the fuck out of the woods.
“Stop sulking, Patrick. You’ve seen enough movies. Running like a motherfucker is the one thing people should do in horror films at the slightest hint of danger, and yet they never do. Though I guess otherwise there’d be no movie. If our hero saysFuck no!and leaves the cabin, the summer camp, or the haunted house, it would be the end of the story. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m saying,Fuck no!and ending this story.”
Jen kept walking, rolling her eyes at Patrick’s sullen silence. She took the opportunity to rant some more. “And why does no one ever think to unmask the killer? Like, that’s the first thing I’d do. Tiffany should’ve gone for that guy’s mask when she was underwater. A masked killer would be afraid of their identity being revealed and fuck off. Because why wear a mask in the first place?”
Patrick continued to give her the silent treatment. He could be such a baby sometimes.
Jen answered her own question. “It’s because they’ve got something to hide. And staying out of sight is more important to them than slaughtering people.”
She waved her knife with a flourish. “Right, Patrick?”
She expected his exasperated voice to tell her to shut up or say something logical. Or something sappy about how much Jason was counting on them. But she heard nothing in response, not even the soft step of his deck shoes.
“Patrick?”
The weight of the silence urged Jen to finally turn around.
Her faithful shadow had disappeared.
12
Michael
It was common knowledge that Michael Kline was highly intelligent. His stellar grades and MIT scholarship proved it. What people didn’t know was that he considered himself rather resourceful, too. A fighter and survivor. Like Ash in theEvil Deadfranchise or Tommy Jarvis in the laterFriday the 13thfilms. He’d made it this far, despite his shitty childhood and tumultuous high school years, and often it felt like he’d gotten here by the skin of his teeth.
Which was why he was wandering alone in the dark, cursing his hubris. Surviving through life didn’t mean he knew how to make his way through the freaking woods. He’d never gone to Cub Scouts camp as a kid, like Jason. His parents couldn’t afford to send him. But he couldn’t let Carrie down. He was going to be her knight in shining armor.Hewas going be the hero for once. Not Jason. Tiffany would finally regard him with the respect he wasdue, instead of like an unwanted tagalong, and Jen would never call him Pipsqueak again.
His phone lit the way, although he had no idea where he was going or where he actually was. Without a signal and GPS, his state-of-the-art device was only a glorified flashlight. Shame washed through him so powerfully he wanted to scream. At least he’d gotten rid of the fireplace poker, hurling it as far as he could off the dock into the lake. Goodbye, fingerprints, and the blood and bits of Russ’s hair stuck to the end. Hopefully the evidence would be rendered too inconclusive to pin any crime on him.
Something in the trees chittered above. Michael yelped and threw his arms over his head, expecting a swarm of bats to dive-bomb him. The shame hit him again, smothering any fear he had of the dark. Did bats even live in evergreen forests? It was probably an angry squirrel.
He needed to be brave. He wasn’t that kid with the taped-up glasses anymore. Yet he was cowering as if his drunk parents were screaming at each other again. He bet Jason wouldn’t have ducked. And he would’ve never panicked and run off into the woods like Michael had.
Michael blamed the shock. He’d never hit anyone before, let alone caused them to crumple to the floor. He also couldn’t believe how much blood had come out of Russ. Enough to rival peak tourist season when theSlashershadow cast did two shows a night.
He shuddered, feeling stupid. This was going to screw everything up. Fucking Ranger Russ. Michael had really thought he was Carrie’s ex, after she’d called him Daniel. Carrie wasn’t afraid of much, which most people didn’t realize because of her wholesome image. But he’d heard the anxious hitch in her breath and had struck without thinking.
And now Russ was probably dead because of him. Michael wanted to throw up. In a way he was glad he was in the woods right now, because he didn’t want Carrie to see him like this. The manly exterior he’d worked so hard to build during the past fewyears had flaked away in a matter of seconds, revealing the helpless little geek he’d been in high school. He’d thought he wasn’tMikeyanymore, but here he was, near-shivering from his regrets. He needed to do better. He had to be stronger, like Jason.
Jason. A sliver of discontent pierced Michael’s gut. This was ultimately Jason’s fault. When the dust settled, the blame would fall on his cousin. Michael had never intended to set foot in Cedar Lake ever again, but Jason had practically begged him to come. Jason was hurt that Michael never visited the Ackermans for the holidays. His cousin didn’t get that Michael had a new life now. He had nothing to come back for. Jason had good memories of their hometown, having been the cock of the walk. Michael didn’t. Except for those stolen moments with Carrie when they were kids.
But then Jason had mentioned the summer IT job at the mayor’s office, and Michael figured this was his last chance to make his mark on the town that had never respected him. He’d taken the job and temporarily moved back in with Jason’s parents at the beginning of June. He was going to show Cedar Lake that being brainy was a good thing. That you didn’t have to play football like Jason or Billy to be successful. Outside their dinky little town, being a top athlete meant nothing unless you were a professional. It was smart guys like Michael who went on to build Fortune 500 companies and marry beautiful and accomplished women. Last he heard, Billy was working as a personal trainer, and Jason was on track to be a gym teacher like his dad.
Michael refused to settle for that kind of forgettable life. He was above that. He’d returned to Cedar Lake to prove his worth, if only to himself.
And no one was going to stand in his way.
“The geek shall inherit the earth,” Michael declared to no one, and then promptly stumbled over a tree root. Okay, maybe not this particular patch of earth. He peevishly kicked at the root with the toe of his hiking boot, fantasizing about bulldozing this forest to build a Kline Industries office. A sprawling tech campus wouldshow the townspeople what wasreallyimportant in this world. They wouldn’t care about football and some old horror movie if Michael offered them jobs.
Ifhe decided to ever come back, that is. When he was a famous tech founder, he’d tell people at parties how he and his wife Carrie had met. Their humble beginnings at Cranfield House. How they’d clawed their way out of that shitty little town that had looked down their noses at them.And have either of you returned to Cedar Lake since high school?No fucking way. Even when the mayor had begged, so they could be paraded around as success stories.Well, there was that one time we reunited with friends at the oldSlashercabin. The weekend everything went wrong. But you probably heard about it on the news—
