But as to A Bay of Blood‘s ancestoriness, there are many who say that Sean Cunningham the director of Friday the 13th 9 years later modeled his slasher ON A Bay of Blood. The reason for that is partially the set up and mostly the kills.
However Sean Cunningham objects that it’s really just great minds thinking alike.
But one of the main premises of A Bay of Blood is some teenagers going to party at a lake and having sex and then they get killed in the most violent and satisfying ways, which is also the set up for Friday the 13th.
But what you need to pay attention to with A Bay of Blood isn’t that the way to avoid a blade to the face is to leave the lake. What to pay attention to is the 13 ways there are to be killed AT a lake, and also that you can’t trust anyone not to be the killer.
What I’m telling you is that pretty soon, probably at our annual July Fourth party on the water, Proofrock is going to be turning INTO A Bay of Blood, I promise. Instead of explaining pranks and revenge and red herrings and final girls and reveals all right here I’m just going to instead fold in a lot of the papers and interviews I wrote for Mr. Holmes in History Class, including a bonus on Jaws since that matters. Those papers can be your bible and your map and guide and gospel. What I’m telling you is that the Dutch boy you found in the lake is the beginning, not the end.
As for the end, nobody not even an expert in the slasher genre like me can guess it this early, but the rules say that whoever is already chopping necks is going to use for disguise the thing we’re already afraid of. Here in Indian Lake that’s Stacey Graves. 2 years ago I 100 percent believed in Stacey Graves. But I realize now that the age of the supernatural slasher was the Golden Age, with Michael and Jason and Freddy and Chucky. This is the age of Ghostface and Valentine, which is mostly people wearing masks for revenge.
But you should know about Stacey Graves the Lake Witch all the same. That’s why I’m including the interview paper about her.
My number is inside Bay of Blood if you want to talk more.
SILENT RAGE
On the way out of the darkened library—custodians have keys and keys and keys—when Jade’s using every last bit of her effort and attention to get the glass front door lifted enough on its saggy hinges for the deadbolt to slide home, a man’s voice knifes out of the darkness, straightening her back, flooding her veins with adrenaline, her head with static, and priming her throat with a scream she barely manages to swallow.
“Thought Connie and her husband were having a dust-up again,” the creaky voice says from the book return alcove right by the door. “That she was maybe sleeping up here for the night, y’know?”
Jade shuts her eyes in instant regret. She should have gone out the back way. She should have just slept in the breakroom.
She should have shrouded the computer monitor she was writing on with one of the big cardboard boxes. She should have remembered that Hardy always finishes his day out with one last cigarette on the bench by the lake, the one dedicated to his daughter. The one just a hop, skip, and gulp from the library—emphasis on the gulp.
“Sheriff,” Jade says.
“But then I swung by Connie’s place,” Hardy goes on in his good-old-boy way, “and both cars are there, you know? Living room window’s blue like from a television show.”
“She watches CSI,” Jade says, finally getting the deadbolt to click over, hold the tired door up for the few hours the night has left.
“Yeah?” Hardy says, just super conversationally. “Hope you didn’t leave any trace evidence in there, then…”
Jade doesn’t have to be directed to follow him when he shoulders off the wall, spins his toothpick into the mulch under the bushes, and starts ambling over to his Bronco, so bright white in the darkness.
“What you got there?” he asks about the sheaf of papers still warm enough from the copier that they’re trying to curl up against the night air.
When Jade doesn’t answer, Hardy looks back to evaluate, then holds his hand out for them, not even having to snap. Jade surrenders them, sure her life is over now, that this is the end.
It was fun, y’all, but I’ve got to go to hell now, see ya. My secret diary’s getting logged as evidence, is probably going to indict me six ways from Sunday on multiple charges, not the least of which will be wishful thinking.
Hardy stops on the bulging sidewalk, pulls his bifocals up to his face to read the first line of the top page: “And then there was one. Of me, I mean, Mr.… Holmes?”