When the man dressed as the Slasher had stalked Patrick through the woods, even though he’d been terrified out of his wits, it had felt abstract. Surreal. Like he’d been acting out a play or a childhood nightmare. The Slasher was a bogeyman from a movie, after all.
Butthiswas real—Freddy’s blood on his hands, the smell he now recognized as urine and fecal matter from Freddy’s loosened bowels, the burn in his esophagus as he fought the urge to vomit. The Slasher was real.Deathwas real, his senses told him. Real, ugly, and imminent.
The shock sent Patrick staggering to the main room, stumbling over the scattered throw pillows and crooked furniture as he frantically wiped his sticky fingers on his shirt. He nearly had a heart attack as his shaking flashlight found the antler chandelier. For a moment he thought the skeletal shape was another body hanging from the rafters, and he had to swallow down bile again.
He paused to lean against the sofa, gulping great breaths of air and willing his stampeding heartbeat to slow down. He needed to resist the urge to run screaming from the cabin. His friends were still out there.Jasonwas out there. And none of them knew Russ was capable ofthis.He couldn’t abandon them now.
Help. He had to get help. He snatched up the heavy receiver of the rotary phone. The rental office had said it was the only phone in the cabin, and at the time he hadn’t thought much of it. He and his friends were coming to disconnect and have fun withoutdistractions. Movie fans flocked to the cabin for the eighties experience. TheSlasherexperience.
It seemed the Jumpscare Society was getting a more authentic stay than they’d bargained for.
The telephone let him down. Still no dial tone, which didn’t make sense because it had delivered the Slasher’s message earlier.You’re all going to die tonight.And just as quickly, it had stopped working. Patrick pressed his lips together, trying to think through the haze of panic. It was an old phone, a vintage set piece. Maybe a connection was loose.
He wiggled the cord at the back of the phone’s base. It snaked down the table leg and along the sofa. He kept pulling, unearthing the cord from under a floor runner. The middle of a room behind a sofa was an impractical place to put a corded appliance, but that was where Jordan Knox had received the famous phone call in the movie. Framed by the support beams beneath the peaked ceiling, it made for a good scene. A-plus for cinematography, but a fail for practicality.
There. Patrick spotted where the cord was plugged into the wall, next to a bookcase. He dropped his end and checked the plug. It seemed to be firmly in its socket, but he unplugged and plugged it back in, just in case.
He grabbed the receiver, silently uttering a prayer to the telephone gods. They didn’t answer.
Shit. Patrick tugged on the cord again. With the floor runner flipped up, the cord had slackened considerably. He gathered its length in his hands until he came to a mangled part that would’ve been hidden by the edge of the runner near the socket. Chewed by a mouse, he guessed. Most of the cord’s innards had been severed, and the whole thing hung together by a single wire. Like Freddy, the skin was only a case for its inner parts.
Patrick had no idea how old phones worked. Maybe that single wire was why they’d been able to receive that call but not dial out. He peered at where the cord had split, and the drumming of his pulse rose to a thunderous volume.
The casing had been sliced cleanly. What the hell?
The cord slipped out of Patrick’s suddenly boneless fingers as his racing thoughts were interrupted by footsteps dragging up the front porch.
His breath scratched inside his chest, as if his lungs were full of sand. He didn’t recognize the footsteps. He knew Jason’s gait like his own heartbeat, and Tiffany and Carrie’s step would be lighter, more anxious. Mikey moved like a puppy who hadn’t mastered full control of his legs yet. Jen had hopefully found her way to the Cedar Lake Motel, and anyway she walked with sprightly self-assurance.
The person coming up the steps was very calm, very sure, possessing a confidence that none of Patrick’s friends would have under these circumstances.
It was the confidence of a masked man holding a bloody axe.
21
Patrick
Patrick hurriedly turned off his flashlight and glanced around the room. There had to be something he could use to fight off the Slasher. The assorted knickknacks at hand were laughable in comparison to that axe. What could he do with them, anyway? Lob them at the Slasher like snowballs? They would buy Patrick only a few minutes before that solid blade buried itself in his body. Wedged between his joints, the way he’d been taught to break animals into palatable cuts.
To the Slasher, Patrick and his friends were merely meat.
What else could he use to fight off a killer? The main room and kitchen had already been raided. Patrick shouldn’t have dropped his prized chef’s knife, even if the thought of touching that sticky handle made him want to gag again. Anyway, if he went to grab it or ran upstairs to get his other knives, whoever was coming to the front door would see him.
There was one place left he could check. Renters normally weren’t allowed to access the cellar, but Patrick had sweet-talked—okay,begged—the rental manager on duty into letting him have a key. The manager remembered Patrick and how respectful the Jumpscare Society had been of the cabin grounds and had relented. After Patrick had slipped her an extra hundred under the table and assured her that Carrie Zhao hadn’t been invited. It was supposed to be his final surprise for his friends: a tour of the forbidden cellar where theSlashermemorabilia was stored. None of them had ever been down there. Except for Jen and Carrie, the night Carrie had borrowed props to use in that ill-fated photo. That machete she’d posed with had been real.
If it was still there, it might give him a chance against an axe.
Patrick dashed to the cellar door, taking his key ring out of his pocket. Hands sweating, he fumbled the right key into the keyhole and twisted. The tumblers gave no resistance. A hundred dollars, and the cellar was already unlocked. If he hadn’t been in a life-or-death situation, he might have admired the rental manager’s hustle.
The screen door squawked. Patrick was grateful for its telltale squeaky hinges now. He slipped inside the cellar and quietly turned the lock. Breathing heavily in the pitch black, he leaned against the door to collect his galloping thoughts.
At the forefront of his mind was Clare. He’d always wished she’d fought harder, like a cornered Final Girl. Now he understood, as the fear shimmered across his skin and urged him to run down the darkened stairs and make himself as small as possible. When it came to fight-or-flight instincts, it seemedflightwas in his family’s blood. After Clare’s death, Dad had fled with him and Mom from the supposedly dangerous city of Fairvale to Cedar Lake. Mom had escaped her grief through self-medication. Didn’t Patrick himself avoid conflict at all costs, acting as the peacemaker in all his friend groups, including the Jumpscare Society?
Patrick shook as he leaned against the cellar door, wracked withguilt and terror. He’d wasted so much time being angry at Clare. And, God as his witness, he didn’t want to meet her fate. He was going to fight.
The cabin’s hardwood floors creaked, betraying that the mystery guest was moving around. There was the possibility Patrick had misjudged, and it was one of his friends. He listened carefully above the pounding of his heart. The footsteps were even and deliberate, even though the person must have seen Freddy’s eviscerated body. It had to be Ranger Russ. Tiffany and Carrie would have screamed bloody murder. Mikey and Jason would have at least stopped and made a noise of shock. But the footsteps betrayed no surprise, no fright, no sorrow. They were unrelenting. Like the Slasher.
The owner of the footsteps knew Freddy’s body was there.
