Jason Voorhees's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Jason Voorhees wanted the lakeside camp empty, and every summer the strangers came back anyway. Tonight three of them lit a fire near his old cabins. He crouched behind a thin stand of pines and watched. The problem was simple and it had cost him kills before. He had no den deep enough in the woods. When he moved close, the trees thinned, and people saw the big shape in the dark before his blade could reach them. He needed a lair they would never find. He left the fire alone and walked deeper than he ever had. The ground sloped down into black trees. Then he saw it. A house stood where no house should be. Its roof sagged. Its windows glowed a dim orange, though no one lived inside. Moss hung from the porch rails. The place felt wrong, and that was exactly what Jason wanted. No camper would wander this far. No camper would step through that door. He pushed inside. Dust rose. Something small shrieked above him. A bat with orange eyes and long fangs dropped from the rafters and snapped at his mask. Jason swatted it into the wall. It hissed, folded its wings, and settled in a high corner. He let it stay. A hunting ground needed guards. "You've got a good eye for a dead man." Jason turned. A small, gray-skinned thing sat on the broken stairs. Curved horns rose from black hair. Its eyes burned red. A demon wore the body like old clothes. Beside it stood an older man in a priest's collar, a wooden club in one fist and a cross strapped across his chest. The priest had chased the demon here and lost it to the house. "This place is mine," the priest said. His voice shook with anger, not fear. "I bound it here years ago. I won't let it loose on your campers." "He lies," the demon said, and smiled with small teeth. "The house takes who it wants. You just walked into its mouth, big man." Jason did not care who owned the walls. He cared that the trees outside hid every window. He cared that the camp lay just uphill, and no one alive would come searching here. He stepped between the demon and the priest and made his choice plain. He drove his blade into the rotten doorframe and left it there, claiming the room. The priest understood first. "You mean to stay." Jason said nothing. He climbed the stairs past the demon, found a window, and looked out. Through the pines he saw the small orange fire by his cabins. The campers never looked back at the dark. From here he could watch them for hours. From here he could come down unseen. He had his lair at last. But he did not have it alone. A bound demon and the priest who hunted it now shared his walls, and one of them was already working to get out.