Chapter 26 Jason
Jason
Jason stood in shock outside the cellar door, unable to understand what had happened. Mikey had charged forward and now Patrick was falling down the stairs, screaming Jason’s name.
The last syllable cut off in a sickening thud, as loud as the sudden fracture in Jason’s chest.
His eardrums still throbbed from the firing of the flare gun, or it might have been his overactive heartbeat.
It made him feel dull and slow, like he’d spent the past hour moving through a fog.
Somewhere beyond the haze was an iceberg of grief, lying in wait like he was the Titanic.
Jen was dead. Freddy, too. And Tiffany—oh God, Tiffany.
But a tendril of that heartbreak broke through and Jason felt like he was the one who’d smacked his head on concrete.
Patrick.
His friend. The only person in the world he could be himself with. The one person who had no expectations of him other than friendship, despite caring more for him than Jason had ever dreamed. What was Jason going to do without him?
His eyes burned. “We’ve got to—” He took out his phone and turned on the flashlight, meaning to dash back downstairs, Carrie’s axe be damned.
Mikey stepped in front of the door, blocking his way. Mikey had put on muscle over the past few years, and Jason was surprised to discover his cousin was as immovable as a linebacker.
“You can’t help him now.”
“Mikey?” Jason was stunned by the wolfish grin on his cousin’s face. Stunned by the sudden hole in his chest where he hadn’t known Patrick had lived. Jason’s heart was now at the bottom of the cellar stairs on the cold cement floor.
Mikey reached into his jeans pockets, first the left, then the right, revealing two dark balled-up objects.
Gloves. Why the hell would he have brought gloves?
The leather squeaked as Mikey pulled them on. “It’s just you and us left now, golden boy.” he said, wrenching Jason’s phone out of his hand.
Us? Mikey and—
Heavy footsteps started up the cellar stairs. Jason held his breath. Could Patrick have survived that fall? And that terrible final crack?
The phone encased them in a nimbus of light, and Jason’s eyes fell on an object lying in the shadowy outskirts of the bubble. Patrick’s knife, lying in a pool of Freddy’s blood.
Mikey noticed it too, and they both lunged at once.
Jason cringed as his hand touched the tacky surface of the floor. That hesitation cost him. Mikey grabbed the knife first and held it up. “Uh-uh,” he said, waggling a gloved finger. “Carrie!” he called out toward the cellar door. “I’ve got Jason covered.”
Despair and disbelief seized Jason’s chest. Yet at the same time, he wasn’t surprised. Self-sacrifice had never been Mikey’s strong suit. “You’re selling me out to Carrie? For what? You can’t bargain with a cold-blooded murderer. She’s going to kill you, too.”
Mikey laughed. “No she’s not.”
“I don’t understand,” Jason said. His own cousin, whom he’d treated like a brother his whole life, was holding him hostage for a brutal killer.
“I don’t understand,” Mikey repeated in a mocking, high-pitched voice. “It’s always two people working together, to throw off suspicion. And you call yourself a horror movie fan.” He clicked his tongue in disappointment.
“But—”
Jason grappled with the possibility. It didn’t make sense that Mikey would go along with Carrie’s killing spree.
Even if he was in love with her. That was an extreme way to win her affections.
But a bolt of illumination struck Jason between the ribs.
When he’d grabbed the flare gun, Mikey might not have been yelling Run!
at him. He could’ve been yelling at the Slasher. Who’d been Carrie in disguise.
And he was wearing leather gloves just like hers.
Had Mikey’s complicity been staring him in the face all this time?
Mikey ambushing Russ Meachum, because he and Carrie hadn’t expected the ranger to show up.
Then running into the woods so they’d be forced to split up and search for him, and thus easier to pick off.
His goofs downstairs in the cellar, designed to slow Jason and Patrick down.
Mikey coming back to Cedar Lake for the summer in the first place, after he’d steered clear for years.
Mikey touched the chef’s knife to Jason’s throat. Jason stiffened as the blade’s sticky surface kissed his skin. A sickening horror burbled deep within his belly. Had Mikey been the one to kill Tiffany? Jason only had his word that the Slasher had attacked her in the lake.
“Who do you think set up the phone call? You’re all going to die tonight,” Mikey hissed in a perfect imitation of the movie.
Of course. Mikey was working in the mayor’s office this summer. He knew how to set up an automated call. “What was the point of that? Why not just kill us?” Jason demanded.
“As Carrie said, we thought it would point to a crazy Slasher fan. Then afterward I cut the line.” Mikey patted the front pocket of his jeans.
“That Swiss Army knife was the best birthday present you ever got me, bro. Carrie used it to puncture everyone’s tires, too, while Tiffany was swimming.
So in a way, you only have yourself to blame. ”
Jason struggled to fit more of the pieces together. “And you took the axe from the toolshed when you ran off.”
Mikey’s grin was smug. “Not me. Remember, it takes two. Carrie brought an identical axe with her and hid it in the woods with the Slasher outfit. That’s what I used to chase Jen and Patrick. Carrie has the one from the toolshed. Who else has keys?”
Disappointment and disbelief razed the last of Jason’s hope. He’d assumed Mikey was only an accomplice, but his hands were just as dirty as Carrie’s. “Did you kill Tiff?” he sputtered, nails biting into his palms as his fists clenched.
“That was Carrie. I was telling the truth about being on the dock when she showed up in the boat,” Mikey said, as casually as if he was describing a trip to the grocery store.
Tears scalded Jason’s eyes. He didn’t understand how Mikey could’ve just stood there and watched the massacre.
Jason had dated Tiffany for so long that she’d been part of their family.
“I tried to get Patrick, though, with my Mrs. Voorhees. Help, help!” Mikey cried out in a haunting voice.
It was the cry Jason and the others had heard before falling down the hillside.
Was it Carrie or Patrick who’d recognized it as Mikey’s voice?
Carrie. It must have been her trying to mislead them.
Had she even fallen down the hill? Jason remembered her shouting his name and struggling to keep her balance, and nothing else.
“Fucker managed to hide from me. But it doesn’t matter. I got him in the end,” Mikey gloated, glancing at the cellar door.
“But why? You’re family.” Jason had been closer to Mikey than his brother Billy, since they were the same age. His heart would’ve broken if it weren’t already at the bottom of the cellar stairs with Patrick.
Mikey sneered. “You think I should be grateful your parents took me in? My parents are losers, but they let me live my life my way. I was happy at Cranfield House in that shitty apartment. And then your parents took me away and paraded me around as a pathetic charity case, when your dad wasn’t treating me like a lesser version of you. ”
Jason winced. Why hadn’t Mikey told him any of this before? Jason had suffered under his father’s expectations, too. If only they’d talked, Jason could have stopped these feelings of resentment from spiraling out of control. They might have even helped each other.
“And worst of all, they took me away from Carrie.”
As if by cue, Carrie appeared in the cellar doorway, dishevelled, her nose bleeding sluggishly. Mikey’s face brightened with adoration, not noticing how she completely ignored him as she leveled Jason with a calculating stare.
“And then there was one,” she said, her voice cool and calm.
She hefted the axe, the faint moonlight glinting off the steel surface. Jason’s breath hitched as he fought the sting of tears behind his eyes. He didn’t want to give her and Mikey the satisfaction. “Patrick?” he croaked.
“Out of commission, thanks to Michael.”
Mikey beamed at Carrie like an eager puppy. “Fuck, I’ve been wanting to do that for years. He’s such an insufferable prick.”
“You should’ve killed him in the woods when you had the chance.”
“It’s not my fault he got away.” Mikey’s lower lip jutted like a drawer. Jason wanted to smack that mouth right off his face.
Carrie patted Mikey on the cheek. “It’s all right, Michael. I understand. Slipups happen. It worked to our advantage when you couldn’t manage to drown Tiffany. It gave me the opportunity to appear trustworthy.”
Carrie thought she was being kind, but Jason could almost see the steam shooting from Mikey’s head. His cousin’s cheeks flushed to a ruddy pink.
“I don’t make mistakes,” Mikey said petulantly, the knife slipping from Jason’s neck as he turned to face Carrie. “I got Jen, didn’t I?”
That was the distraction Jason needed. He didn’t care that both Mikey and Carrie were armed.
The black cloud he’d been trying to keep at bay for months crept to the edges of his consciousness.
This time the storm clarified his intentions instead of confusing them further.
He had nothing to lose, except his life, and the chances of him keeping that were as slim as the professional-grade steel of the chef’s knife.
He pulled his arm back and punched his asshole cousin with enough force to send him into next week.
He put everything he had into that punch.
The hurt and betrayal, the disgust and horror, the fury and grief.
All the frustration and rage he’d been holding back for the past months, because, why not?
Now he could funnel it into good. There was a satisfying crunch as his knuckles met Mikey’s face.
Mikey dropped the phone and howled like an injured dog.
For a split second, Jason enjoyed that both Mikey and Carrie had broken noses. Only for a second, however.