Friday the 13th 3 Page 2

  He uncapped the bottle and put it to his lips, taking several healthy slugs. It burned deliciously as it went down. God, how he’d needed that! The doctor had warned him about cutting back on the booze—well, what he’d actually said was, “If you don’t stop drinking, Harold, you’ll kill yourself”—but if having a rattlesnake almost bite your nose off wasn’t enough excuse for a man to have a drink, he didn’t know what was. Jesus, just being married to Edna was enough to drive a man to drink, he thought, knocking back anouther slug.

  She was always on his back about his eating. Well, he thought, what the hell was there to do around here except eat? And drink a little on the sly. He hoisted the bottle once again. She was always complaining that he wasn’t the man he used to be, that he wasn’t the guy she’d married. He grimaced at the thought. Well, she wasn’t exactly the girl he’d married, either. He remembered what she looked like back in high school. God, he thought, she was enough to make your heart stop. Long blond hair, incredible legs, and the way she had filled out her cheerleader’s sweater, man, the guys used to fumble the ball every time she jumped into the air, shaking her pom-poms.

  Now, she was always padding around the house in those ridiculous pink furry slippers, with her hair up in those pink plastic curlers and that flannel print housecoat covering what was still actually a pretty nice body come to think of it—only every time he tried to do anything she would groan and roll over on her side, saying, “God, not tonight, Harold, I’m really tired and I’ve got a headache.”

  Okay, so maybe he had put on some weight and maybe his hair had started falling out. Maybe he wasn’t the same handsome, young quarterback she’d married, but hell, a guy couldn’t help getting older, could he? She was always complaining that there was no more romance in their marriage. Romance! Try getting romantic with somebody whose head looks like a heating coil and whose face has about a pound of cold cream on it every night. Try getting romantic with someone who was always getting on your case about one thing or another, scolding you as if she was your mother, for cryin’ out loud.

  “Who can live like this?” she always said, spreading out her arms and looking up, as if expecting an answer from God.

  “You tell me,” he always replied. “This ain’t no kind of life at all, if you ask me! Hell, the way things are goin’, I might as well drop dead!”

  “I sometimes wish you would!” she’d shout back.

  “And I wish I would, too!” he’d yell back, and then he’d stomp out of the room and go out to the shed, where he’d have a whiskey bottle stashed away.

  He drained the whiskey bottle and wiped the liquor off his chin. I’m in the toilet, all right, he thought. For a moment, he felt like throwing the empty bottle against the wall, but then Edna wouldn’t clean it up and he’d only wind up stepping on the broken glass the next time he came into the bathroom barefoot. He resisted the impulse and put the empty bottle down on the floor, reminding himself to get rid of it so that Edna wouldn’t find it and give him a hard time.

  He put the bottle behind the toilet, and as he straightened up, he noticed the dusty curtain opposite him move slightly.

  The bathroom had two large cupboards in it, from which Harold had removed the shelves to make storage closets. One of the closets had a makeshift wooden door; the other was covered by a cloth curtain. The door had been missing for years and Harold kept meaning to replace it, but he never got around to it. Now he stared at the moving curtain, and it occurred to him that whoever had put the rattlesnake in with the rabbits might easily still be around. The closets were both deep enough for a prowler to hide in.

  Harold swallowed nervously and pulled up his pants. He slowly moved over to the curtain and reached out to draw it aside. He hesistated. What if there was someone hiding in there? What would he do?

  Hell, it’s probably just my imagination, he told himself. That damn rattlesnake has got me spooked. He’d have to call someone tomorrow to get that damn snake out of the shed, because he sure as hell wasn’t going back inside there . . . On the other hand, maybe he’d send Edna in there.

  Just to convince himself that he was getting worked up over nothing, Harold summoned up his nerve and jerked the curtain aside. There was nothing behind it except a pile of dusty cardboard cartons. He breathed a sigh of relief.

  Then he glanced at the other closet.

  He drew himself up and walked over to it, grasped the doorknob, turned it, flung open the door—and a large meat cleaver thudded into his chest with all the force of a lineman sacking a quarterback.

  He staggered back, blood spurting from around the cleaver embedded deep in his chest, staring with horror and disbelief at the huge figure standing in the closet, and before the pain could even register, he died. He never felt the impact when his body fell upon the bathroom floor.

  Edna heard the crash and scowled. “Harold?”

  There was no answer. She reached out and turned off the TV.

  “Harold?” she called again.

  Why couldn’t he ever answer when she called? It drove her crazy when he did that. With a sigh of exasperation, she got up and went over to the bathroom.

  “Harold, you still in there?” she called through the door. “What was that crash? You break something again?”

  No answer.

  She tried the door. It was unlocked. She went inside and looked around. Now where the hell was he? She sniffed several times. Whiskey. If figured. She knew he hid his whiskey bottles all over the house, but she didn’t even bother looking for them anymore. She was thankful that he wasn’t one of those angry, nasty drunks. Whenever Harold had too much to drink, he would simply pass out, and at least then she’d get a little peace and quiet. Maybe one of these days he’d just pass out and never get back up, she thought. It would serve the big jerk right.

  She heard a rustling sound behind the closet door. He was probably in there with his whiskey bottle. She jerked the door open and was confronted by a large rat sitting atop one of the storage cartons. She gasped and drew back from it with a grimace of disgust—and suddenly a large hand was clamped over her mouth and the missing steel knitting needle was driven through her neck, rippling through her voice box and emerging through her throat.

  She struggled uselessly, realizing with horrifiying clarity that she was being murdered. She gagged, choking on her own blood as it bubbled up into her throat, seeping between the fingers of the huge hand covering her mouth. Waves of white-hot pain washed over her, and then all sensation disappeared as numbness quickly spread throughout her body and she sank down into oblivion.

  Chapter One

  The group of small children playing baseball in the street scattered to make way for the silver, custom-striped van with the canoe and camping gear strapped to its roof. The teenagers inside grinned at the children who waited until the very last moment, asserting themselves with challenge in their eyes, before grudgingly getting out of the street. They could remember being much the same themselves not very long ago, regarding the street in front of their homes as turf rather than as a thoroughfare for cars.

  “It’s the white house on the left,” said Chris, a shapely nineteen-year-old with reddish-brown hair, large eyes, and an energetic, slightly nervous manner. She pointed as they passed the house and pulled over to the curb on the opposite side of the street.

  Andy and Debbie were both the same age as Chris. Andy was slim, with dark hair, brown eyes, an athletic build, and clean-cut, handsome looks. Debbie was slightly shorter than her boyfriend, with full, naturally wavy chestnut hair that fell down to her shoulders and a wide, sultry mouth. She had the kind of figure that would even attract attention in a sweat suit. They both stepped down out of the van and came around the back to join Chris as they crossed the street.

  “Hey, Shelly,” Chris called over her shoulder. “Come on out and meet your date!”

  “Bring her to me!” a muffled voice called from the rear of the van.

  Chris glanced back dubiously at Andy and Debbie,
walking with their arms around each other. Andy merely shrugged. Debbie sighed and looked at him with a wry grimace. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” she said. She like Vera and she regretted allowing Andy to talk her into setting up this blind date.

  Andy grinned and kissed Debbie. Behind them, the rear door of the van opened and a chubby figure in faded jeans and a navy windbreaker came out, wearing a white mask and brandishing a huge knife.

  Chris glanced at Andy and Debbie and shook her head. “Sex, sex, sex,” she said. “You guys are getting boring, you know that?”

  “So what would a weekend in the country be without a little sex?” said Andy, grinning.

  “Cool it, Andy,” Debbie said quickly, nudging him in the side and giving Chris and anxious glance.

  Andy looked contrite. Debbie had told him what happened to Chris last summer, telling him to be careful of what he said around her, and he had already blown it. “I didn’t mean it that way—” he said, apologetically. Chris interrupted him, not wanting to pursue it.

  “I know you didn’t,” she said, reasssuring him. The one thing she didn’t need, especially this weekend, was to have her friends walking on eggshells around her because of what happened to her. “Look, guys,” she said, “I want you to have a good time this weekend. What happened to me at the lake happened a long time ago. I’m fine. Really. Forget about me.”

  Debbie looked concerned. She didn’t fail to notice the way Chris had stiffened suddenly or the strained note in her voice as she tried to sound casual, as if it didn’t matter. “I’m supposed to forget that we’ve been friends for—”

  Andy yelled with surprise as the masked figure crept up behind him and plunged the knife into his back. The rubber blade bent as it struck his shoulder and Andy spun around angrily, grabbing the toy knife away and giving his “assailant” a hard shove.

  “Damn it, Shelly!” he snapped. “Why do you always have to be such an asshole?”

  “I beg your pardon,” Shelly said stiffly from behind the mask, his tone arch and stagy, like a second-rate thespian’s. “I’m not as asshole. I’m an actor.” He broke the word up into two distinct syllables, so that it came out “ack-tor.”

  “Same thing,” Andy said with disgust, angry with him for acting like a fool. Debbie and Chris walked away, shaking their heads. “Look, Shelly,” Andy said, his tone softening, speaking to Shelly as if he were an awkward little brother, “you’re my roommate and I like you . . . most of the time. But you gotta quit doing these things! Now, I set up this date for you, didn’t I?”

  Shelly remained silent, like a sullen child who was being scolded for misbehaving.

  “Didn’t I?” Andy persisted, leaning closer to him.

  “Yeah . . .” Shelly said, morosely.

  “So don’t embarrass me,” said Andy. “Just relax, be yourself!”

  Shelly pushed the mask back up on his head. “Would you be yourself if you looked like this?” he said miserably.

  There was actually nothing wrong with the way he looked, except that he was very overweight, which gave his body and his features a round and pudgy softness. His light brown hair was very curly, and while he wasn’t ugly, by any means, his poor self-image gave him sort of a hangdog expression that telegraphed his own unhappiness with the way he looked to others. And when Shelly was unhappy, Shelly ate, and the more he ate, the heavier he got, the more his unhappiness increased. It was a vicious cycle. Frustration led him to seek gratification in food, which only made the problem worse and led to more frustration and size double-extra-large.

  Disappointed with reality, Shelly found escape in fantasy. Movies were his drug. He saw several each week, often going to two or three in a row on weekends. At first, it had been enough merely to sit inside a darkened theater and watch another reality unfolding on the screen, but as he got older, he became more and more involved with his fantasy world that he preferred so much to his own.

  He became a walking encyclopedia of movie trivia. He read up on the art of filmmaking and learned about camera techniques, special effects, and makeup. He became an expert on who was doing what in films, always staying at the end of every movie to see the credits and remember who had done the editing, the special effects, the stunt work, the music, and the costuming. He began to experiment with theatrical makeup and latex molding and soon everyone he knew became exposed to the many faces of Shelly Greenblatt. The drama club at school was not enough to give vent to his creative impulses; the whole world became his stage. The only problem was, he often did not know when to stop.

  He and Andy had been roommates since they had started college, and although Andy knew Shelly well enough to understand him and make allowances for his behavior, it was often extremely frustrating trying to make excuses for the way he acted. He often wished Shelly wouldn’t try so hard. He had hoped that taking Shelly with them on this weekend would help him to unwind a bit and drop the goofball act. He had even asked Debbie and Chris to fix Shelly up. Yet now it looked as if the whole thing might have been a bad idea. The pressure was apparently making Shelly very nervous, he acted like a nerd. Andy hoped the weekend wouldn’t turn into a disaster.

  They walked up the front steps onto the porch of the white house and Chris rang the bell. Shelly hung back slightly, looking like an inmate about to walk his last mile on death row. The door was opened by a middle-aged Hispanic woman who spoke to them with a slight accent.

  “Yes?” she said, eyeing them cooly.

  “Hi, Mrs. Sanchez,” Chris said, with a smile. “I’m Chris. We’ve come to pick up Vera.”

  “She’s not going,” Mrs. Sanchez snapped, and slammed the door in their faces.

  They exchanged startled glances. They had absolutely no idea what had caused such a reaction. From inside the house, they heard Vera and her mother shouting at each other in rapid Spanish.

  “What’re they saying?” said Chris, glancing uncertainly at Debbie.

  Debbie shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know,” she said. “I flunked Spanish.”

  They were about to leave when the door opened once again and a striking, raven-haired twenty-year-old in a form-fitting blouse and tight shorts came out onto the porch, carrying a knapsack over her shoulder. Shelly’s eyes bulged.

  Vera smiled awkwardly, slightly embarrassed at the scene she knew they must have overheard. “Hi, everybody,” she said. “What’re you looking at? Let’s go.”

  “Is everything all right?” said Chris.

  Vera shrugged. “You know, just your basic, old-fashioned mother problems. So, which one’s my date?”

  Shelly stepped out from behind Andy. “Hi,” he said sheepishly, practically shuffling his feet.

  “You’re Shelly?” Vera said, unable to hide her disappointment.

  He sighed apologetically. “Sorry.”

  That’s what I get for agreeing to go out on a blind date, thought Vera. Her mother had been outraged at the idea: not only was Vera going out on a date with a boy she’d never even seen before, she was going away for the weekend! Vera’s mother was very traditional and she thought that the whole thing was scandalous. She had forbidden her to go, which of course had been a sure way to guarantee that Vera went, no matter what. Now it was too late. If she backed out now, her mother would never let her hear the end of it. Like it or not, she was stuck with this guy for the whole weekend. The expression on her face clearly mirrored her thoughts.

  Andy rolled his eyes. Debbie had been right. This wasn’t such a great idea. Why had he insisited on bringing Shelly along? The weekend was going to be death.

  “Hey!” Debbie shouted, pointing. “The van’s on fire!”

  Smoke was billowing out of the windows in the van. They ran across the street and threw open the door, but instead of a fire, they were confronted with the sight of Chuck and Chili, sitting cross-legged on the floor in the back of the van with imbecile grins on their faces, puffing away on plastic bongs that were so huge they looked like oboes. The sickly-sweet smell of mariju
ana smoke permeated the van’s interior. In order to dissipate some of the smoke, Chris and Andy rolled the windows down all the way as they drove off. All they needed was to get pulled over for speeding or running a stop sign and have a cop take a whiff inside that van. It would be all over.

  Shelly watched disapprovingly as Chuck and Chili organized their stash. Chuck was a round-faced nineteen-year-old with a full black beard and a headband holding down his bushy hair. He wore well-faded jeans and tinted aviator glasses. With his sixties look, Chuck might have stepped right out of a time warp. His girlfriend, Chili, was a darkly attractive, slim eighteen-year-old with curly black hair and a facial expression that made her look as if she was always pouting. Chili was actually her real name. She had a twin sister named Pepper. The girls were born in a commune in Santa Fe and their parents were a little loaded at the time.

  “Is that all you’re going to do this weekend?” said Shelly disapprovingly, watching them sort their plastic sandwich bags filled with grass. “Smoke dope?”

  “Why not?” said Chuch wryly. “There’s no law against it.”

  He seemed to find his comment extremely funny. But then, dopers were liable to laugh at anything, thought Shelly. He shook his head.

  “There’s better things to do with your life,” he said.

  “Like what?” said Chuck.

  “I can’t think of anything,” said Chili.

  Shelly decided to forget about it. It wasn’t his business to tell other people how to live their lives, but he wished that people that insisted on their right to ruin their health would respect other people’s right as well. He wasn’t crazy about having to sit there and breathe in their smoke. It was as bad as actually smoking.

  “Hey, Chrissie,” Andy said, “how much farther to the lake?”

  “We could’ve been there already if some people didn’t have to go to the bathroom every five minutes,” Chris said wearily, glancing pointedly at Debbie.

  “That’s what happens when you’re pregnant,” Debbie said defensively. She had only known about it for a month or so and she hadn’t started to show yet. She also hadn’t told her parents. They didn’t even know that she and Andy were sleeping with each other, much less planning to get married. They figured she was still going out on casual dates.