Fear

Okay...i know...this has been a long time coming...sorry...hope it's worth the wait...disclaimer as before...don't own 'em, only wish i did...

Nicole Sherriden’s POV

“Honey…we’re hooome!!” Nicole’s voice sang out as she stopped the black Explorer in front of the shabby looking house. “Bet this was a decent looking place at one time. Shame.” Lori nodded beside her before looking back to her boyfriend. She smiled, seeing him sleeping apparently peacefully. She was about to reach back to wake him before Nicole stopped her.

“Nah…let him sleep. Looks like he needs it.” Lori looked thoughtful a moment before nodding in agreement. “Neither of us have slept well since…the incident.” Nicole shrugged to her. “Who could blame ya?” With that, the two of them got out of the SUV and headed cautiously inside. There were several places that felt like the floor wouldn’t hold them and given the random holes in the floor they probably weren’t far from the truth on that thought.

Tread carefully, Lori. I’m gonna go upstairs and see what I can find there.” She looked up the stairwell and carefully made her way up creaking steps. She grinned own to the other girl. “With my luck, I may just drop in on you…” She continued her careful path from room to dusty room before coming up on what must’ve been Pamela Voorhees’s room. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear this lady had a major crush on her son…” There were quite a few pictures of the boy from infancy to childhood. There was one family picture on the nightstand. The buy guy with his face all scratched out with a marker must’ve been Mr. Voorhees. .oO(Guess the split-up wasn’t a particularly friendly one.) She rifled around the room some more, but aside from the woman’s fascination with her kid, Nicole didn’t really find anything majorly out of the ordinary. She moved on to another room, which was obviously a study or office of some sort. .oO(Suppose with all the space in this house and only two people living in it, you have room for these things.) She sat down carefully at the desk and started going through the papers scattered on top and in the drawers. Most of the stuff was just mundane bills and the like. However, the bottom drawer held some very interesting little facts. They were apparently medical bills and statements. Young Jason Voorhees apparently wasn’t a well child. From an early age, the earliest she saw was when the child was 32 months; he had been seen by quite a few doctors. As she looked closer, she could see that no one diagnosis was ever decided upon and then the visits seemed to taper back down to normal childhood pediatric visits by the time the child was 6 years old. The three things that seemed to come up the most for a cause of the boy’s condition was Autistic Disorder .oO(okay I know what that is), Rett’s Disorder .oO(okay I *don’t* know what that is), and Asperger’s Disorder .oO(what the hell is that?). She srote those names down, thinking she should look into it some more. Could have something to do with what was going on now. Looking around the desk again, she noticed another picture of the child. She recognized it as the onethat was printed in the local paper when it covered the boy’s death. She looked the boy over closely in the photo for signs of disease or deformity. Nothing there to indicate anything on what the fellow back at the facility looked like. Fair appearance, slender build…nothing at all like the guy laying on that gurney. Maybe they weren’t the same. Maybe the man on the gurney who went by Jason Voorhees wasn’t really Jason Voorhees. ((just a note here folks, the description I’m going with as Jason’s childhood appearance is that of the kid that played Jason in the short clip at the end of the first movie, Ari Lehman.))

The boy stared back at her from the picture with an expressionless face. Then it hit her. The eyes. The color and the general look. It was the same flat look that had gazed out from behind that mask when they had apprehended him. The man at the facility was indeed the same Jason Voorhees that was staring out at her from the picture. But how? He died, right? Several times, right? “Makes no damn sense…”

Downstairs, Lori was working through her own puzzles. She walked through the living and dining rooms and the kitchen. Seemed like a normal enough household, if rather dilapidated over time. She made her way down the hall, looking at the several pictureson the walls of a boy at various ages. None of them seemed over tge oge of 10so, so, though. Strange…he didn’t look like Jason…maybe he had a brother? But then why weren’t there any pictures of him…not that he was the most…picturesque child as she recalled. The hall ended with two doors opposite each other. One was open and looking inside, she figured it must’ve been the guest room. Standard bedroom set up, but no personal touches. She turned to open the door to the room opposite but found it was locked. Slightly annoyed she was about to go in search of Nicole when she though of something. She went back to the living room and looked it over again. Where normal houses had a television with all the furniture facing it, this one had a table set up with a lot of pictures of that boy again. She paused a moment glancing over the pictures of the boy. .oO(Strange child…doesn’t smile in any of these. Come to think of it…he hasn’t smiled in any of the pictures all over the house.) Shrugging, Lori opened the drawer on the table and sure enough, there was a key. As suspected the key opened the door to a child’s bedroom. Typical little oby’s room despite the order and lack of random clutter that one would normally find in a kid’s room. On one wall was a picture of a woman and the boy. Beside that picture was a piece of needle work. It was a name, but she couldn’t believe it. Jason. Then the boy was Jason Voorhees. She looked more closely at the boy in the picture. He didnook ook like the boy from the dreamscape. He looked…well…normal. She couldn’t see any sign of the deformities she’d seen in the other Jason she remembered. Still wondering about that, Lori wandered back to the foyer where she met with Nicole.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Nicole for her part grinned and shrugged. “I guess. Course I didn’t really know what I was looking for in the first place. Apparently he was diagnosed with some strange disease or something as a kid. Maybe that explains why he turned out the way he did. Course he is supposed to be dead. And with the mom’s obvious obsession with him, if he didn’t die, shouldn’t there be more pictures of him…when he got older I mean? Hell, seems like she was snapping a camera at him all the time up till he was about 10…which corresponds with how old he was at the time of the drowning.”

“Yeah, I noticed that. But I have to tell you something. Remember I said something when you showed up at door about Fred Krueger?”

“That Freddy fellow, yeah. Thought you didn’t wanna talk about him. Thought you said that was better for me.”

“And I still don’t like getting other people involved. Hell…the only way Springfield contained him was by keeping people from knowing about him. He…I don’t really know how to say it without sounding crazy so I guess I’ll just say it and let you think I’m crazy.” She hesitated a moment before continuing, not really sure about what to say. “He…he feeds off fear. Fred Kruiger gets in your mind and your dreams. When we had our little adventure before, we drug him out…right out of my dream. And we killed him. With Jason’s help, we killed him. But he could still be…wherever he exists…in our minds. We just don’t talk about him. To try and take away that power of his. That’s why we didn’t want to tell you…”

“So…that guy’s out of the picture now…you killed him…however it is that you say you got to him, you killed him. What’s all this got to do with Jason Voorhees?”

“When we brought him here, or rather the campground, we had to keep him contained. We put him under with a bunch of tranquilizers. A *LOT* of tranquilizers. So Jason was there with me…in my dream…when I brought out Freddy. I saw Jason…not as a grown Jason but as a kid Jason. And I’ve got to say, he didn’t look anything like this kid. Not really…maybe the eyes…yeah, he had that same look in his eyes. But…well…he was deformed…real deformed. The brow, the jaw…the whole right side of his face was all messed up looking.”

“You think maybe something else happened when he drowned in that lake? Maybe he didn’t really die, just got maimed or something? Still…never heard of maiming by drowning before. And still doesn’t account for surviving everything else he’s been through.”

“No…no I think it’s something else. When I first saw him in the dream, all the other kids were picking on him. Pushing him around and calling him names. They pushed him in the lake. I thought then that he was sort of re-living what really happened. But maybe it’s something else. Maybe he thinks of himself as a freak or something…”

Nicole stood there thinking on this for a long moment. “The doctors there at the facility are studying his regenerative abilities…that’s really the biggest reason for keeping him there. Like he’s some sort of lab rat or something, I don’t know. I don’t really care for it, myself…but that’s just me. You think maybe when he regenerates himself, he forms himself into that image with the deformities because like you said, that’s how he sees himself. Like his physical body somehow changed to mimic his mental self-image…to turn him into the big Frankenstein’s Monster type thing that we have back in our lab?”

“I don’t know…I don’t know…” Lori shook her head a bit in confusion trying to piece together the few little pieces they had. There just wasn’t enough. And image of his eyes looking up at her as he sank into the lake flashed in her mind. “We’re not going to find out anything more here, though. So how about it? Will you let me see him now?”

“Like I said before…I’ll see what I can do.”


Jason’s PoV

The next thing he was aware of was his surroundings. He was back in that house again. And he was outraged. That woman!! That filthy, disgusting woman had dared touch him…touch him…*there*!! No one should touch him there! He’d rend her limb from limb when he found her again! He heard a laugh behind him and turned quickly to face it’s source. The terrible burned man stood before him, leaning against the wall.

“Come to play some more, pup? So glad you decided to come back home. We’re going to have such fun…” Krueger chuckled again.

All his rage surged up to the surface and he had a target right there before him. The nasty woman may not be here, but this creature was…and he was just as horrible. With a snap of the arm he tossed his machete forward where it slammed to the hilt in the man’s chest. Krueger looked down at the weapon in his chest and looked back up at Jason with a smirk before grabbing the hilt, slowly pulling the blade out and dropping it to the floor. He watched as Krueger dropped the weapon, tilting his head to one side puzzled…usually that was enough to kill...not this time. Then, faster than he’d ever seen a man move, the burned one leaped forward, throwing his weight against him. Jason fell back to the floor with Kruger on his chest slashing away at his body with those razor claws. When he finally got a good grip on him a strange feeling hit him. He looked to the side and realized he was sinking. Sinking right into the floor as though it was soft earth! Kruiger laughed some more and pressed down on his chest, pushing him further into the floor. He released his firm hold on the burnt flesh to try and grab some leverage around him, but to no avail. A moment later he was through the floor completely and falling fast, Krueger no where in sight. The fall only last a few seconds before he struck cold, deep water below. He flailed his arms and legs around, searching frantically for something to grab onto. All he could see around him was darkness and he couldn’t keep his head above the chill water. It was so cold. Then something grabbed his leg right about the shin and yanked down hard. He was pulled farther and farther under and it was so dark and cold and suffocating. He stopped his flailing movements as terrible fear filled his chest where outrage had been only moments before. He felt alone and helpless and he hated that. The next thing he knew he was back in that hall where he had been knocked down. Krueger knelt down over his small form seemingly towering over him. He could hear Krueger talking above him, but he was pulled too far into himself now to really make out his words.

Fred Krueger knelt over the trembling form of the boy with an evil grin. He smoothed his un-clawed hand up the boy’s chest and pulled the mask off. Snorting down at the disfigured face presented to him, he tilting the boys chin around so that he could more closely examine his little prize. His original impression was certainly right…this was a face only a mother could love. Fat was right to have drowned the little shit so long ago. Now little Jason Voorhees was his little toy to play with. And oh what fun he would have!

Jason lay there staring out at nothing really. The oversized clothes were cold and wet and oppressive. “Let’s see what other little secrets you’ve got hiding away in that ugly little head of yours…” Jason screamed as one razor finger was pressed to his temple and began pushing its way into his skull. Memories long buried began playing out before his eyes and he couldn’t stop them. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like *them*! Images of the other children in his school calling him names and throwing random objects at him played out. He’d never paid them any heed. Never shown that he understood what they were doing. He just couldn’t. He’d tried a few times, but just was never able. So it never stopped. Unless Mommy was around. Mommy always took care of him. She always kept him safe. An image of Mommy being murdered by that horrible girl flashed next. He wanted this to end. He didn’t like seeing these things. So many images were flashing in front of him that they seemed to blend into one another. Then they all faded back again to the hall and the burned man on his chest chuckling darkly. HE screamed again as those razor fingers raked down his chest. Moments later he faded out from under Krueger, only to reappear elsewhere in the house a short time later. Time passed on and the tortures blended into one another. The dream demon delighted in every cut, every gasp, every little sign he could get that showed Jason’s pain and suffering.

The lab personnel never noticed the additional blood seeping through filthy fabric, staining his clothes further. They never noticed the deep gouges forming over his body under those clothes and that mask.


Will’s POV

Will stood there facing that house. That old ragged house on Elm Street. And through the window he could see him. A cold sweat broke out all over him. NO…it couldn’t be! Nonononononono!! With a start he sat up wide awake in the back seat of the Explorer. He barely had time to wipe the sweat from his face before Lori and that little crazy girl who had drug them back here were climbing back in.