Chapter 26 Jason #2
He tried to run, but Carrie blocked his path, wielding that damned axe.
“Nuh-uh,” she said, smiling sweetly.
“You fucker!” Mikey screamed. He grabbed a fistful of Jason’s T-shirt, the chef’s knife curving downwards, and Jason’s right arm suddenly blazed with icy fire.
Jason had never thought much about what being stabbed would feel like. Apparently it was cold and hot at the same time. The pain receptors in his right shoulder shrieked. He cried out, left arm flying up to block additional attacks, anticipating the knife slashing his lungs, his heart, his guts.
“Michael!” Carrie snapped. “We agreed I was going to kill him. It’s the only way I can get closure.”
The knife stopped midair. A coppery taste filled Jason’s mouth and he realized he’d only bitten his tongue.
He wasn’t coughing up blood from a pierced lung.
His shoulder was in bad shape, though. Hot blood oozed between the icy fingers of his left hand while his right arm dangled uselessly, debilitated by severed tendons and agony.
He’d probably never be able to throw a football again, and the thought oddly flooded him with relief.
“I did it in self-defense!” Mikey whined. But he lowered the knife and picked the phone off the ground.
Carrie paused, regarding Jason thoughtfully. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, and if she hadn’t been carrying the axe, Jason would have believed she was the same shy, demure girl of his high school years.
“Good idea, Michael,” she said.
Mikey’s shoulders straightened and he even preened slightly. It made Jason nauseous.
“We could pin the killings on Jason instead of Russ. It would be more believable,” Carrie continued.
“What’s my motive?” Jason demanded.
“You’re the guy whose girlfriend broke up with him. Tiffany told us she was scared of you, didn’t she, Michael.”
Mikey nodded vigorously, that bastard. “I saw him in the boat with the axe.” Fuck. Jason’s fingerprints were all over that boat, as well as on the axe. “He was so angry. He’s been so angry lately.”
A look of innocent confusion crossed Carrie’s face. “Who would’ve ever guessed? He was such a nice boy.”
The bottom fell out of Jason’s stomach. It was an easy sell.
Tiffany had been afraid of him, near the end.
Jason had thought she was afraid of change, but he could see how it could be construed differently.
She might have even believed it was him in the Slasher mask, coming for her in the boat. The thought cracked him in two.
Carrie patted Jason’s cheek as condescendingly as she’d patted Mikey’s earlier.
Then she bared her teeth in a grimace and ground her gloved fingers into the bloody gash in Jason’s shoulder.
Jason bit back an agonized howl as the pressure sent shooting stars of pain down his arm.
“Not nice enough to keep a lady’s personal photos to himself. ”
She released him, and Jason twitched from the effort to keep his reactions under control. The tension in his jaw ratcheted to a new level as he gritted his teeth against the hysteria that threatened to spill out.
It was no good. He couldn’t hold it in any longer. His body spasmed, and he began to laugh.
Mikey and Carrie stared at him, which only set him off more. He laughed long and hard, even though every twitch sent a white-hot spike through his wounded shoulder.
He knew something Carrie didn’t.
“I never showed that photo to anyone,” Jason wheezed. “I deleted it as soon as I saw it. I swear I did. But someone else got to my phone first.”
He looked right at Mikey.
Carrie’s eyes widened. Jason nodded.
“You’re lying!” Mikey said, his nostrils flaring. “Kill him now, Carrie. Get it over with.”
Carrie didn’t move. Jason took that as encouragement to continue.
“I drank too much that night.” That moment in the toolshed with Patrick had left him confused, and slipping into his usual persona as the partying popular jock was easier than questioning his feelings.
“Mikey drove me and Tiff home. I didn’t check my phone until the next morning. ”
“It was Tiffany!” Mikey said. “She was jealous!”
Jason shook his head, accepting that Mikey hadn’t changed at all in the past four years.
People never changed, did they. Not fundamentally.
He and his friends really were, when painted with broad strokes, the roles they’d played in the Slasher shadow cast. The jock, the preppy, the cheerleader.
The bad girl, the stoner, the nerd. The whole eighties stockpile of archetypes.
And Carrie, who was set up to be the Final Girl in more ways than one. A good girl who hadn’t known how to get rid of her halo, and so when she did, she went too far. Probably with her therapist’s encouragement.
“I thought so at first.” Jason clutched his throbbing shoulder. Had Mikey hit a major artery? He felt light-headed, but it might have been from the horrific unreality of the situation. “But last year she told me it was you.”
“That bitch! She said she wouldn’t—” Mikey gulped, and then his lips curled into a sneer. “I knew that she’d dumped you that summer so she could fuck your brother. She would’ve said anything to discredit me.”
The knowledge of Tiffany’s betrayal didn’t hurt Jason as much as he thought it would. He’d always known she wanted to marry a football hero, and he’d come to terms with the fact that wasn’t him. “It was so obvious. You were working at the school library. You had access to the color printer.”
Carrie’s face had gone very white. “Why didn’t you say something, Jason?”
Jason shrugged, and then regretted it when the movement sent a lick of pain rippling through his body. “I was protecting Mikey.” Like he usually did. “And by that time, I thought everyone had moved on and it wouldn’t have mattered who did it.”
“You actually believe him, Carrie?” Mikey said.
Jason should have told him to shut up. Because these protests were classic Mikey: deflect, deflect, deflect, never taking responsibility for his actions. Carrie would see the pattern. Mikey was paving the way to his own downfall.
Carrie’s hands shifted around the haft of the axe. “Jason only ever lies to protect others. You lie to protect yourself. Why would you do such a thing, Michael?”
“Yes, why would you do such a thing?” Jason demanded, hoping to fluster Mikey even more. A flustered Mikey would make mistakes, and Jason might be able to get away. “I thought you cared about Carrie.”
A vein throbbed at Mikey’s temple as his glance darted back and forth from Carrie to Jason.
Carrie sighed with disappointment and turned toward Jason.
She put her bloody gloved hand on his good shoulder and rested her chin on it.
It would’ve been an affectionate gesture if not for her other hand holding the axe only inches from his throat.
Jason swallowed hard as if he could pull his Adam’s apple away from the blade.
“What do you think, Jason?” she said, seemingly ignoring Mikey.
That did the trick. Mikey’s face flushed darkly and he blurted, “You were supposed to come crying to me!”
Carrie let go of Jason and recoiled as if Mikey had slapped her. At that moment Jason didn’t know who was more fucked up, Mikey with his unhealthy obsession, or Carrie.
“Instead you left Cedar Lake, still mooning over this asshole,” Mikey snarled, gesturing at Jason. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Did you really think a guy like him would ever notice a girl like you, when he could fuck someone like Tiffany?”
He stabbed a finger at his own chest. “I’m the only one who truly cares about you. No one else.”
Carrie shivered like a dog shaking off water. Jason didn’t blame her. Mikey’s words made him want to take a shower, too.
Then she straightened, lifting her chin like she was pulling a drawstring tight around her feelings.
“Daniel used to say the same thing,” she said.
Mikey went dead quiet, mouth slack.
“Tiffany was right. Everyone always wants to save me. They want to keep Saint Carrie safely on a pedestal and heaven forbid she try to step off. I thought you were different, Michael.”
She gazed at Mikey like he was something scraped off the bottom of her shoe.
Jason didn’t know how he’d missed how beautiful she was.
If Mikey hadn’t spread her photo all over school four years ago, maybe Jason would’ve reached out to her, just to talk.
Maybe he would’ve gotten to know her better, and seen her as more than shy, sweet Carrie Zhao.
They could’ve developed a deep friendship or something more.
Now it was too late. Now she was glorious and terrifying, made more intimidating by the look of rapturous calm on her luminous face.
A murderous Madonna. Saint Carrie of the Axe.
Mikey must have seen it, too, because he rasped, “Carrie—”
He ducked behind Jason, as if he expected Jason to help. Because that’s what Jason always did. Protected him or took the rap.
Mikey had killed Jen and Patrick. He’d let Carrie murder Tiffany and Freddy in horrible ways.
The black cloud descended over Jason’s vision, and he saw only red.
He squirmed away from his cousin. Mikey could face the music alone, for once.
There was nothing Jason could do to help him now anyway, even if he wanted to.
Carrie put a finger to Mikey’s lips. “Michael. Mikey. You disappoint me.”
Mikey’s face mottled to the tips of his ears, and his fists clenched in anger. The anger of someone who’d fed all his change into a vending machine and was about to kick it because it wasn’t dispensing what he’d wanted. “I only did it because I love you!”
He panted furiously, probably expecting Carrie to fall in his arms at his confession like they did in movies.
Her answering smile was bland. “Love hurts.”
She looked at Jason as she said this, not Mikey, and the axe flashed.