Grabbing a fistful of her hair and hammering her head into the ground. Alice buckled and thrashed like a fish out of water, almost dislodging her, squirming around and sinking her teeth into her arm, biting down with all her might. She felt the woman's grip relax and she hurled herself to the side, throwing her off, gasping for breath as she scrambled away.

Staggering to her feet, her gaze fell on the machete lying on the ground about five yards away. She lunged for it in desperation, felt her fingers close around the handle, picked it up and turned. Mrs. Voorhees was running toward her, her face twisted into a feral snarl of rage. Alice raised the machete. Mrs. Voorhees tried to stop herself but she had too much forward momentum and her eyes grew wide as Alice brought the blade back. She opened her mouth. Alice gripped the machete tightly and screamed as she swung it in a wide sweeping arc like a baseball player connecting with a fastball. Mrs. Voorhees threw her hands up to ward off the blow and the blade struck her neck and sliced right through it.

The force of Alice's desperate blow, chopping through the spinal column, decapitating Mrs.

Voorhees with one stroke. Her severed head fell to the wet ground. The mouth opened in a soundless scream. The eyes blinking as blood gushed from the stump of her neck. Blood spurting in fountains from her severed arteries.

For a second, it seemed to Alice as if everything had somehow shifted into slow motion. The headless body remained standing for a moment, hands up, fingers clutching in the air, then it slowly collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut. Hitting the ground and staining it with a wash of blood that poured from the grizzly wound. For a long moment, Alice simply stood there, numb and slack jawed, her eyes wide, staring at the horror lying at her feet.

Then, the bloody machete slipped from her fingers and fell softly to the ground. In a daze, she turned away and walked unsteadily to the water, unable to comprehend what she had done. Her mind had retreated into shock. Without fully realizing what she was doing, Alice bent down and pushed one of the canoes into the water, stepped into it, and drifted onto the lake, into the darkness as if safety could be found on the water—out where no one could reach her. Away from the horror of what had happened on the shore.