Chapter 28 Patrick
Patrick
Nine months later
Patrick guided his Audi smoothly off the freeway and onto a narrow rural road, taking the opportunity to lower his window now that he’d reduced his driving speed.
Spring was in the air, finally, after a long, gray fall and winter full of funerals and hospital visits and incessant questions from authorities and journalists.
It had been months and Patrick still twitched every time an unknown number called his cell phone.
At least the media had fled Cedar Lake a week after the murders, when a mass shooting on the other side of the country hit the news cycle and there was another fresh face to point fingers at. How could this happen? people cried again, clutching their well-worn pearls.
At night, though, he slept surprisingly soundly.
No more tossing and turning, imagining how Clare had felt every agonizing second before she’d died.
He understood now. The mystery of her death still niggled, however.
Like Carrie, was the killer someone Clare had known, who’d wanted to peg it on an outsider?
He’d never know, and that was fine. Sometimes life—and death—simply took you by surprise, and no amount of planning could prepare you.
He had to remind himself of that, when the debilitating weight of survivor’s guilt occasionally delayed him from getting out of bed in the morning.
It had all been a roll of the dice that he’d escaped death and others hadn’t.
If Jen were here, she’d smack him upside the head and tell him if he wanted to do right by his dead friends, he should live.
Really live. His parents hadn’t been happy about him dropping out of Harvard before the start of the school year, but they knew as well as he did that life was too damned short and fickle.
Patrick breathed deeply as wind rushed through the open window, appreciating the clear blue skies and the tang of salt water on the breeze.
There was nothing on the horizon but rolling hills and sandy bluffs.
Some trees, but not a single cedar forest for miles around.
The final knot of tension he’d been carrying since the previous year unfurled. Slasher Summer was over.
Literally over. In light of the murders, the festival had been canceled until further notice, and the plans to rebuild the Slasher cabin and open a museum had been postponed indefinitely.
Carrie had gotten her revenge on Cedar Lake in the end.
Patrick’s heart lightened as he pulled into the town and parked along the main street.
The town’s business district was similar to Cedar Lake’s, lined with charming little mom-and-pop cafés and boutiques, mostly catering to tourists.
A lighthouse thrust from the horizon instead of oppressive trees.
Flower baskets, as well as decorative lights in the shape of Easter eggs and rabbits, hung from the wrought-iron lampposts.
Patrick found the place he was looking for, a diner with a cozy, retro feel.
The door chimes jingled as he entered and strode across the scuffed black-and-white-checkered floor.
The brunch rush hadn’t started yet. Only a single server stood behind the laminate countertop, refilling a coffee cup for an old white man hunched on a vinyl-upholstered barstool.
The old man glanced up from his newspaper crossword and tilted his baseball cap at Patrick in salute.
Patrick nodded in return and then focused his attention on the server.
“I hear you’re looking for a line cook for the summer.”
The young man’s eyes narrowed. “I might be. Can I afford you? You look like a fancy Boston culinary school type.”
“I’ll work for cheap. Got a boyfriend in town I want to stay close to.” Patrick’s mouth quirked. “I have to warn you, though. I only cook vegetarian.”
Having seen his friends reduced to meat had turned him off all animal butchery.
The young man eyed him appraisingly. “I think I can work with that.”
Patrick grinned and then went behind the counter to throw his arms around Jason, enjoying the feel of his wiry body against his.
Jason had lost some of his football-playing bulk while recovering from Mikey’s stabbing, but he wore his new leanness well.
It suited the friendly manager of this sleepy small-town diner.
God, Patrick had missed him, and had felt bad he’d had to stay in Boston to prep for his end-of-year culinary school tests during the past month.
Patrick might sleep soundly, but Jason slept with a restlessness that only Patrick’s presence could abate.
The dark circles under his eyes were a testament to how much Jason needed him, and Patrick’s heart bled at the sight.
“Oh, just kiss already,” the old man grumbled.
“You don’t have to tell me twice.” Patrick took Jason’s face between his hands and kissed him enthusiastically.
The world wasn’t safe. Clare’s death and Carrie’s murder spree had taught him that. But Jason was safe. The Slasher cabin had always felt like home to Patrick, because he was home wherever Jason was.
And Jason had chosen to move to this small Cape Cod tourist town, where there were beaches and lighthouses and an ocean.
As far away from the hinterlands of their youth as possible.
Not that Jason was welcome to return to Cedar Lake.
Coach Ackerman wasn’t speaking to him—because Jason had quit football and dropped out of college, not because he’d brought Patrick home for Thanksgiving.
Though Mrs. Ackerman had texted Patrick to say her husband was coming around, and even making noises about coaching any children Jason and Patrick might have.
That was way too far in the future for even Patrick to contemplate.
For now, he wanted to savor the present for a change.
Although it was occasionally difficult to leave the past behind.
He’d come so close to losing Jason. After Patrick had stabbed Carrie, and Jason lost consciousness, Patrick had tried Ranger Russ’s car one more time.
By some miracle, it had started. He’d driven until he could get a signal—past the speed limit, too—and called the authorities, and then he’d come right back and held Jason’s hand until the ambulance arrived.
The door chime jingled. Patrick broke away from Jason to welcome the new customer—and froze.
A dark-haired girl wearing a red buffalo plaid jacket thrown over a gray hoodie approached the counter, hefting a long object in her hand.
Jason’s fingers dug into Patrick’s arm. Patrick’s teeth gritted, and he catalogued all potential weapons within reach.
The full coffeepot. The stack of mugs in the corner.
The fire extinguisher. The baseball bat Jason kept under the counter, as well as the locked safe that held a gun.
Jason’s right arm moved stiffly, due to tendon damage from Mikey’s stabbing, but he was turning into a crack shot with his left.
After what had happened with Carrie, you couldn’t be too careful.
The girl came a little closer and Patrick relaxed. She held a plastic-capped cardboard tube, like something you might store a poster in. She flashed a cheery grin and cracked her gum. “Delivery for Jason Ackerman?”
Jason cleared his throat and let go of Patrick. “That’s me.”
The girl handed over the tube. “There ya go.”
She flounced out of the diner, sending the door chimes jingling merrily. Jason frowned at the cardboard tube, and then his brow smoothed out. “Oh, it must be my poster sample from the printers. I was thinking all-you-can-eat waffles on Mondays.”
The old man at the counter—Gerald, the diner’s most faithful regular—pumped his fist triumphantly.
Jason pried the cap out of the tube and pulled out a large, rolled-up sheet of glossy paper. Patrick helped him flatten it on the counter, weighing down the corners with empty coffee mugs.
And stared.
“What the fuck?” Jason said.
Patrick was already sprinting out the door. The girl in the buffalo plaid jacket was just about to climb into a battered sedan. “Hey!” he shouted. “Hey, stop!”
The girl paused, her face screwed up with concern. “What’s wrong?”
Patrick caught up to her, panting. “What the hell was that?” He gestured at the diner. Through the windows he could see Jason hadn’t moved, his face as white as the countertop.
“I dunno, I’m just an Uber driver, dude.” She whipped out her phone, showing Patrick the completed journey. “Aw, man. Did I fuck up the delivery? Is he the wrong Jason? The instructions were very specific.”
“No, no. Who asked you to deliver that?”
“You weren’t expecting it? It was from someone named…” She scrolled farther down the phone screen. “Wes.”
That was the name of Carrie’s so-called therapist. Patrick’s mouth went dry.
“Weird. There’s no last name.” A notification popped up on the girl’s phone. She scrutinized it and added, “Do you still need me? I gotta go pick up some diapers at the drugstore on the other side of town.”
Patrick shook his head and ran back into the diner.
“She’s just a messenger,” he said in reply to Jason’s stricken look.
Gerald slid off his stool and sidled up to the poster. “That don’t say nothin’ about waffles. Slasher 2? Is that one of those horror movies?”
“Yes,” Patrick said flatly.
Gerald returned to his coffee and crossword, his mouth pinching with disapproval. “Hope you’re not plannin’ to put that up in the diner. Don’t like those kinds of movies. Nothin’ fun about watching a bunch of young folks dying.”
“No,” Patrick said. “There isn’t.”
He and Jason stared down again at the movie poster for the Slasher sequel.
Slasher 2: A New Chapter. A terrified girl in a clinging white tank top and too-short denim cutoffs cringed behind a window’s open blinds, while the Slasher lurked outside in the shadows with an axe.
The tagline read, Everyone Needs a Fresh Start.
“What does this mean?” Jason asked quietly. His fingers wove between Patrick’s. Patrick squeezed his hand tight. Jason’s strength and resilience were the only things he could trust in this unpredictable world.
Patrick swallowed, trying to dislodge the words from his throat. “I don’t know.”
An icy chill raised all the hairs on his arms as he read the message scribbled in black marker at the bottom of the poster. The world as he knew it turned upside down and he was falling again, falling down those long steep stairs in the Slasher cabin and into a cold and endless dark.
See you soon, boys!
XOXO The Slasher