A Nightmare Reborn Ch. 01

"Okay, Voorhees," John said, "Whoever he was, he did a lot of damage."

"It wasn't just Voorhees, John. You know that."

John picked up several smooth stones and started skipping them on the lake as they neared the shore. He looked at Mary and laughed. "Hey, I'll believe Jason Voorhees is sixty and still kicking ass before I believe that Freddy Krueger is anywhere but hell. The good citizens of Springwood made sure of that."

"And the fact that there are over fifty reports of him being in Springwood since his death in 1970 make no never mind to you?"

"Mass hysteria," John replied, "Or mass delusions."

"Why did I invite you along on this expedition?" Mary frowned.

"I'm the voice of reason," he smiled and pulled her to him, holding her as the mist began to curl and sweep around their feet unnoticed.

Mary pressed her body against him and laughed. "You have a one track mind, Dr. Bilk," she said playfully.

"We could be back at the hotel, in bed, naked and exploring each other instead of this God-forsaken place," he ran his hands down to her ass, squeezing her cheeks through the rough denim material.

"That sounds nice," she smiled and kissed him, "But no."

"We could watch a scary movie from the comfort of a bed instead of living one out here in the sticks."

"Work first, play later," she licked his lips and kissed him, "Besides, you know the rules."

"Rules?" he sighed as they continued towards the dock. "What rules?"

She raised a curious brow, "If you ever want to get in my pants again, you'll play by the rules."

"That's what I like about you, Mary. Always keep our sex life simple and stress free."

"Whatever," Mary laughed and rolled her eyes, continuing to snap pictures. The wood that composed the dock was old and waterlogged. Their boots didn't so much strike against it as they seemed to sink in as far as the grain would allow. She explained, "Just think of it as verbal foreplay for the scholarly."

"I didn't know we eggheads had any foreplay," he grunted.

"Look at these tire tracks," she pointed back at the shoreline, now almost totally lost in the fog, "You see those?"

John squinted. "Yeah... it looks like someone drove into the lake."

"That's weird," Mary said, "The tracks looked fresh too."

John offered, "Maybe someone launched a boat?"

Somewhere beyond the swirling canvas of thick fog, a branch snapped and echoed through the morning air.

John immediately froze. "You hear that?"

Mary nodded unconcerned. "Yes I did."

He looked at her, his eyes wide, "And the fact that we're at Camp Crystal Lake with strange noises means nothing?"

"But honey," she patted his face, "You said Jason was dead."

John stood back, reasserting himself. "I know. I know."

"Relax," she squeezed his hand, "You've got your gun right?"

John felt for the handle of the revolver in his coat pocket. The cold steel was heavy and reassuring in his hand as he looked around. The fog was now coiling and rolling like a nest of large, fat phantom snakes. It seemed to be reaching out for them and surrounding them with insidious precision. John could feel his heart pounding out of irrational fear, and he knew in that moment they should've left. But for whatever reason, he said nothing.

"This fog is seriously freaky," Mary commented.

"They never found the copycat, sorry, Jason or the guy he was fighting," John remarked quietly, straining to listen for more sounds.

"Freddy Krueger," Mary corrected.

"Shit, Mary," John shrugged, "Freddy Krueger or Freddy Mercury, who gives a fuck? What I'm saying is there were no bodies."

"You changing your mind on Voorhees?" Mary asked slyly, kneeling down and touching the flat surface of the water. She could only see a few feet beyond her own nose, but it was enough to catch a glimpse of the cold, black and secretive liquid. The surface was completely flat, like glass.

"Maybe," he said and glanced back at the cabins, "Or maybe I don't want to bump into a copycat. It is Friday the 13th today, you know."

"Yes it is," Mary frowned, still looking at the water.

"Most killers are really nostalgic about this shit," he said, "Voorhees always seemed to attack on or around Friday the 13th. It's a psycho-serial killer prerequisite, babe. Remember the Haddonfield murders in Illinois? That fucker always did his shit on Halloween..."

"The water," she said, her voice suddenly quiet.

"What about it?"

"Well," she stood up straight and looked around blindly. Fog that hung so motionlessly now curled around them to where she couldn't see more than ten feet away. "The fog is starting to moving, like there's a wind. But the water isn't moving."

John peered through the soupy mist and saw the waters' surface, glassy and still. He said, "So?"

"Do you feel any wind?"

"No," John frowned, "No I don't."

"If there is a wind blowing to stir up the mist like this, shouldn't the water be moving too? Shouldn't we feel it?"

Mary tried to peer past the dense mist that was closing in on them.

"We need to go," John whispered.

"Don't be a pussy," Mary replied.

"The only pussy here is yours," he shook his head, "And this cock is gonna walk."

"John, relax-"

Then the dock suddenly shook, scaring them and causing a brief sensation of off balanced vertigo. Mary steadied herself as something heavy stepped onto the old wood construct with them. The chains coupling the platforms together shook and rattled as heavy footsteps slowly and methodically marched towards them. John felt his heart almost stop completely as he listened to the sound of hard rubber soles digging into the rotting wood. He looked over at Mary, unsure of what to say. His mouth had gone dry and his throat tight with fear. His heart hammered in his chest as he put one hand on her shoulder and pulled her close again.

"Were you expecting anyone?" he whispered.

"No," she shook her head, her voice betraying her confidence.

"What do we do?"

Mary licked her lips. "Say hello?"

John listened to the approaching steps, slow and heavy. "I don't think so. I don't like this."

"Well what would you like?"

"I'm 43," he whispered, "I'd like to make 44."

"Hello?" she called out.

The footsteps stopped for a moment, and then resumed. Whoever it was, their mystery guest was getting closer. More unnerving than the sounds of the person approaching them was the lack of vision. All they could see were rolling volumes of white fog, so close now that when John held his hand out in front of him, it was faded and nearly hidden. The dock shook as footstep after footstep sent tremors through the aging structure.

A foul odor caught Mary's attention. She nearly gagged, the stench of rot and infection began circling them as heavily as the fog. Something smelled of death just a few feet away, something large and something that was still very much alive. John covered his mouth and nose, eyes watering from the smell as the footsteps became louder, more real to him. They seemed to reverberate through the fog and echo for an impossibly long time as the two scientists stood paralyzed on the dock.

He hadn't believed that Jason Voorhees could still be alive after all these years, still able to kill. When he had heard about the massacre in Springwood in 2003 and the official belief that Voorhees was to blame, he was skeptical. Only his love for and professional relationship with Mary had brought him out here to investigate the possibility of the killer still being alive. He had no real interest in proving the infamous killer was here, let alone still living. It was a ridiculous notion to him, a secret disgust that he withheld from Mary.

Profiling these monsters was her job, her passion. He could not bring himself to outwardly debunk her belief that men like Fred Krueger, Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees had found someway to cheat death. They had been killed, in one form or another, and in John Bilk's book, when you're dead you're dead. Krueger had been burned to death, Voorhees was either drowned or blown away by the FBI and Myers had his head chopped off. It was simple mathematics, the mathematics of life. As a psychologist, John held to those equations like a man in the ocean holds to his life preserver.

There were a lot of strange things in this world, but maniacs who attacked you in your dreams and invincible knife-wielding psychos didn't exist save for what Hollywood slopped on the movie screens.

Another footstep jarred John back to reality, and as much as he wanted to believe that Jason Voorhees was dead, he found himself beginning to shake. Mary noticed this, and squeezed his arm.

"Let's back up a little," she whispered and nudged him back, "We should have a few more feet of dock..."

John nodded.

He craned his neck around to see behind his back only to find a wall of milky white fog. They could fall off into the water if they weren't careful, and the prospect of swimming in Crystal Lake didn't appeal to him in the slightest. He grasped Mary's hand tightly and turned with her as they felt their way slowly to the edge of the dock. Behind them, the footsteps sounded as if they were no more than a few feet behind them. The smell was unbearable, and Mary felt certain she was going to throw-up her breakfast.

"We have to slip into the water," Mary whispered, her face becoming a faded out white ghost as the fog enveloped them.

"No," John said.

"If this is Voorhees, he won't get in the water," she reasoned, "He has a fear of water."

"That's a fucking urban legend," he hissed back, "And he's afraid of drowning, not water."

Another heavy footstep sounded out, and also the sound of labored breathing.

"What if it's not him?" John asked, the tip of his boots feeling for the rapidly approaching edge.

"We'll be safer in the water than here-" Mary said, and then was cut off.

John heard a brief whistling sound of metal cutting though air and then a thick thud. He thought for sure something had happened to Mary. In his mind, he could see her having been cut in two by a rusty blade. He knew the sound of metal cutting though air. He opened his mouth the call her name, and then realized something was wrong.

"I think..." he grunted and then knew.

He registered a moment of pain in his back and then felt nothing else. His spinal column severed as a mammoth machete blade punctured his back, pushed through his midsection and exploded out the front of his jacket. Blood erupted from his mouth in a silent scream as he went limp, his head falling back and lolling like a broken marionette might.

"John?" Mary watched, her eyes wide with terror as John rose into the air, bleeding and dying.

The mist rolling around John began to clear just enough for her to see a huge shape behind him. Mary forced her self to look at the shape, to lay her eyes on the man she already knew in her heart was there. She had to know if it was him or not. If it was he, then she was already dead. The mist briefly thinned out in skeletal wisps and revealed a muddy, bloodstained hockey mask. Four long blade marks cut deeply across the expressionless facade. The mask was fastened to a misshapen head that sat atop a hulking seven to eight foot frame, powerful and horribly real.

With a flip of his powerful wrist, Jason Voorhees whipped the convulsing body of Dr. John Bilk into the placid waters of Crystal Lake, where he joined the ranks of the killer's dead. John landed in the filthy water with a splash, and Jason cocked his misshapen head, coolly regarding Mary with an impassive dead stare.

Mary screamed and jumped from the dock just as the machete sliced past her head. The camera fell from her hands and dropped into the depths of the lake. The freezing water jolted her body, feeling like a thousand pins jabbing into her skin as she sank into the lake. With frantic determination, she forced herself upwards towards the surface.

As she ascended, she began swimming away from the dock. Through the distorted surface, she could see hulking mass of Jason looking down into the water, waiting for her. She looked off to her left and saw something floating lazily. She didn't need to look any longer than a second. John's body was slowly being dragged down by the weight of his thick heavy clothes in a billowing crimson cloud.

Beyond him, in the shadows made by a drop-off, she saw a yellow car resting nose first in the soft, muddy bottom. It was a Volkswagen Beetle, embedded up to the doors in the slope of the lake bottom. She realized that this was the car that had made the tire tracks on the shore. Someone had driven into the lake. Or perhaps been pushed into the lake?

'The gun!' she remembered suddenly, and quickly struggled to reach her lover's corpse. Her lungs were beginning to burn as she grabbed his jacket and pulled him to her. His face was frozen, mouth open and contorted into his final scream of pain, eyes wide and glassy. She felt in the pocket and found the butt of the revolver. She yanked it out and shoved off him for extra gain.

'I'm so sorry John,' she thought. With all her strength, she swam as far away as she could and finally broke the surface.

Her lungs filled with the harsh, crisp air as she came up. She gasped, her skin immediately attacked by a new cold as she surfaced. She opened her eyes and looked for the dock, trying to get her bearings. She could see nothing, and was overwhelmed by disorientation as she kicked off her boots and began to tread water. As the morning sun broke over the trees, shadows filtered into the fog creating a bizarre display of moving shapes and confusion.

Mary treaded the water, tears burning her eyes as the fog started to succumb to the morning. Rays of sunlight burned the thick mist away, allowing more and more of a view around her. She jumped as movement to the left caught her eye. A crow flew past the massive silhouette of Jason Voorhees, still standing on the dock, silent and unmoving. The crow cawed and cackled as it arced into the air, fading away into the mist and sunlight. She wasn't certain, but she felt as if thought even through the curling fog Voorhees could see her.

Mary pulled the gun out of the water and took aim at Jason, her hands shaking badly as she tried to stay above water. Her fingers were as numb as her toes as she tried to line the barrel of the gun up to her attacker. She squeezed the trigger and fired. The deafening blast stabbed her ears and rang throughout Crystal Lake. The figure on the dock remained where he was, unmoved and unafraid. She knew she had missed and took aim again.

This time, her shot found its target. She saw Jason jerk to the left as an audible *smack* sounded off and a spray of red blood misted from his shoulder in the fog, illuminated by the sunlight. Still, the killer remained standing.

She fired again, and tagged his leg.

She fired again, this time catching him in the chest (at least, that's what she assumed as he jerked backwards slightly when the bullet hit).

She was preparing to fire her fourth round when something beneath her moved. She reflexively jerked upward and the gun fell from her grasp. It landed in the water with a splash and was gone. She screamed and desperately tried to grab it before it sank out of reach, but no avail. Her reflexes were slow and clumsy as she tried to move in the icy water. It was like a bad dream, a nightmare from her childhood where she couldn't move fast enough.

She felt her eyes becoming heavy and weak as she fought against the cold. Mary looked around her, the black calm waters of Crystal Lake growing more and more visible as the fog burned away. She could even see the shoreline now, and the forest beyond. She turned back to the dock and saw Jason still standing there.

His clothes were tattered and dirty, his hand clenched around the machete. Mary could see bright red blood dripping from the blade in fat droplets to the cracked white painted wood of the dock. The skin visible at the sides of the mask was gray and bloated, the bald scalp dotted with a few long, stringy strands of hair that had caught the morning light.

He stood there, waiting for her.

And why not?

Jason had all the time the world.

Something brushed by her again, and she instinctively kicked with her legs at it. She was horrified to find her feet slam into something meaty and very much alive. Mary cried out and tried to turn, to swim away. Something broke out of the water in front of her, as though it had been shot from a cannon. A hand reached out for her, the skin eaten away and angry red muscles flexing beneath.

She thought it might be a man when she saw the red and green sweater covering the basic shape of a torso. But there was no head. A ragged, gored stump was all that remained of the neck. It was missing its right arm as well, yet this did nothing to slow it down as its remaining hand grasped her neck, squeezed tightly and pushed her down with all its weight.

Mary screamed and choked on the icy water as the living corpse took her to the depths of the lake. She briefly heard a voice in her head as she felt something cold and purely evil pass into her head like the essence of a rapist to his victim. She convulsed once, and then twice as things went slowly dark.

"You're mine, bitch," a deep, guttural voice echoed in her mind.

Mary Stilfreeze jerked once more as she and her attacker went limp and floated at the muddy bottom of the lake.

"You're the way home," it laughed in the darkness.

***

From the dock, Jason waited silently for the woman to resurface, but knew she would not. The dark man was in the lake, the one in his dreams. Jason could not comprehend how the dark man could be in there still, but like an animal can sense a natural disaster coming long before the actual event, he knew that the dark man, the dream killer was not finished yet. He would return, and when he did, the fight would resume.

Jason's dull eyes flashed with anger.

The dream killer was a trespasser, as the woman and her man had been. As the kids the night before had been. These were scared grounds, even hallowed grounds and were precious to Jason. They were all he had left of his mother who had loved and protected him so. They were his home, and because he had so little, and because so much had been taken from him here, he would defend it from all trespassers. Jason could never find the words to express this, but on the concept he was perfectly clear.

Jason turned and slowly walked back to the shoreline, his one-track mind focused on the dark man and the one name he could remember from their last meeting. The name burned in his mind and fueled his unbridled rage, finally a focusing point for fifty years of retribution.

That name was "Freddy."

***

Lori Campbell-Rollins lay in her bed, spooning closely with her husband Will. She ran her hands over his broad, muscular shoulders and looked to the green LED display of her bedside clock. It was one in the morning, and she still had not been able to go to sleep. In fact, she hadn't been able to really sleep since May two years ago. Her nightmares had come to life and tried to kill her, along with everyone else in her life. Every time she closed her eyes, she could see his burnt face, the horrific scars and purely hateful white eyes glaring at her.

Freddy Krueger had tried to take her, and she had escaped. So it seemed, anyway.

She had finally stopped crying about three months ago. The crying had been an everyday occurrence for her, an inevitable side effect of remembering friends long since gone. It was unfair that they should have met their end the way they did, and Lori hated that asshole Krueger every minute of every day. It had all happened so fast that now, in retrospect, it felt like something out of a relentlessly paced horror movie. No matter how much she hated Krueger, she felt there was a part of her that hated herself even more for what had happened.