Slasher Summer(82)

Mikey and Jason made it to the top of the stairs and through the doorway to the cabin’s ground floor. Furious grunts and clangs and screeches rose from below as Carrie struggled to climb out from under the shelves. “Hurry, Patrick. We need to lock the door,” Jason said.

“She’s got an axe!” Patrick panted as he ran up the steps. “She’ll be able to Jack Torrance her way out!”

“It’ll still buy us time.”

“Is she coming?” Mikey said anxiously. He peered down the stairs, filling the doorway as Patrick hopped up on the landing.

“I think she’s almost gotten free of the shelves,” Patrick said breathlessly.

Mikey nodded. “Good.”

Good? How was that—

Mikey planted two hands on Patrick’s chest, and pushed.

For the second time that night, Patrick tumbled into darkness, screaming Jason’s name.

Until a dull thunk cut it off, and the world turned to black.





26



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.