Slasher Summer(64)

What was one of his knives doing on the floor? That was the Japanese carbon steel chef’s knife that cost more than the rest of his kit combined. Patrick was going to kill someone if it was ruined. Though it would serve him right for making all these big, elaborate plans for the weekend. He’d wanted to surprise his friends with his newfound skills.

After surviving his freshman year on takeout and instant ramen, Patrick had taught himself how to cook via YouTube. Surprisingly, he’d discovered he loved cooking. So much so that he’d taken a leap six months ago and enrolled in a few night classes at a local culinary school. During the day he found himself dreaming about delighting friends with perfectly butterflied chicken or hasselbacked potatoes. Cooking for people made him feel like he had when he’d hosted the Jumpscare Society. He was sharing something he loved. It was the same high as running around onstage at the Rialto, making an audience scream and laugh. His economics classes couldn’t compare. Financial risk analysis had probably never brought tears of joy to anyone’s eyes.

Patrick padded closer to the knife, the sweat on his skin turning to ice. It was lacquered with something thick and dark, like a mole sauce. He crouched down to pick it up, and his pulse raced as his fingers registered the stickiness.

It was blood. The knife was covered in blood.

An explosive sneeze took over Patrick’s face, jarring him out of his shock. He wiped his itching nose with the back of the hand that held the flashlight. Sniffling away the tickle, he was able to identify the other scents. Sandalwood and pot. Classic eau de Freddy. Patrick’s nerves lit up with alarm. Carrie had been afraid of Freddy, and Patrick had just found one of his prized knives on the floor, covered in blood. What had Freddy done with it?

A buzz suddenly crescendoed in his left ear. He jerked in surprise, and swatted at a fly that must have gotten in through the open windows. That was the source of the hum he’d heard earlier. As he moved, he jerked again as something warm dripped onto his head and slid through his curls to his scalp. Was there a leak in the cabin’s roof? He touched the damp spot and stared at the dark stain on his fingertips.

Slowly, very slowly, he looked up.

One of the cooking classes Patrick had taken was butchery fundamentals. He’d learned how to break down poultry and pigs into cuts of meat that were unrecognizable from the animal they’d come from. He’d cracked bones, pulled sinews free, separated muscles from fat. He’d thrust his hand into many a wet, gaping cavity and emerged with slippery fistfuls of offal.

It was different—and yet not so different—when the parts were human.

A body hung over the banister like a wet towel. It seemed to Patrick that the quiet cabin had become deafeningly loud. A heady thrum filled his ears, and he forced the arm that held the flashlight to move. The light illuminated mussed black hair and staring brown eyes that didn’t squint at the sudden brightness.

“No,” Patrick croaked.

Freddy’s striped T-shirt had ridden up to his chest, and his mouth gaped almost as wide as the incision across his belly. Glossy loops of intestine had spilled free, dangling in parallel with his hanging arms, as if Patrick’s presence below was drawing them out. A handful of flies crawled down these lengths, tasting their shine. So much blood. More than Patrick had ever seen on a cutting board.

The Slasher, he slashes, Freddy screeched in Patrick’s head. The Slasher certainly had.

Freddy was never going to finish his screenplay now. The knife dropped from Patrick’s limp fingers and bile surged in the back of his throat. “Oh God, no.”

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.

But this was 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. Death was 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. Jason was out there. And none of them knew Russ was capable of this. 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 without distractions. Movie fans flocked to the cabin for the eighties experience. The Slasher experience.

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.