Prologue

Prologue

Ki Ki Ki Ma Ma Ma

Night is the best time for stories. It's dark at night. What you can't see in the darkness you imagine.

Sounds you don't hear in the daytime seem very loud, significant, and ominous. A slight rustling in the bushes, a faint creak on the stair outside the bedroom door. Perhaps it's only the wind. Perhaps it's only the house settling. Perhaps. But sounds at night can be disturbing. Noises in the darkness make the imagination see what the naked eye cannot. The imagination feeds on darkness and it's hungry at night.

It began as stories often do, around a campfire on a warm summer night. The time was 1958. The place: Camp Crystal Lake. Imagine log cabins set back in the trees, picnic tables, a small dock sticking into a lake surrounded by deep woods, a few rowboats and canoes. There were a thousand places just the same. summer camps run on a shoestring by small town families; The Christy's in this case.

Nice people, fond of kids. Places that remained locked most the year, sitting idle. Not costing any money except for a few months in the summer when the operating costs were small enough to allow for a little profit. Camp Crystal Lake wasn't one of those large, well-financed places with a fleet of paddle boats. A corral full of horses, and a small fortune in sporting goods equipment. It was just a small family owned business, cheap to run, cheap to attend. A few cabins nestled in the pine trees on a lake shore near a small town where the lower income families could afford to send their children for a short vacation. Not a bad business if you're not looking for a lot of money. You hired a few older kids as counselors who doubled as the setup crew. Arriving a couple of weeks early to open the camp, turn on the water, and do a little maintenance. In return, they got the opportunity to roam in the woods, relax, and have a little fun. Perhaps even a summertime romance, and you didn't have to pay them much. It beat the hell out of working as a fry cook at McDonald's.

The Counselors took care of the kids when they arrived, so you didn't have to do much. You didn't really even have to be there. Maybe in the early spring, you'd hire a plumber to replace some pipes that had frozen or cracked during the winter. Maybe you'd buy a new rowboat every few years.

Some cots and outdoor furniture. All insignificant expenditures. The overhead was low, the time involved was minimal. The operation practically ran itself. What could go wrong? The camp had just been open for the summer but it was going to be a short season. The counselors had spent the day sweeping and cleaning doing a little bit of carpentry, hauling out the targets for the archery range, storing the supplies. Most of the work was finished; they'd been at it for about a week and none of them was a stranger anymore, if you had already grown close. As they sat around the campfire singing "Michael row your boat ashore," Barry hugged his legs and watched Claudette playing the guitar. The two of them were singing an all together different song, one that did not require any words. Their eyes sent messages. Claudette finished playing as they sang of the last "hallelujah" and wordlessly handed the guitar over to one of the other girls. Her gaze locked with Barry's. Barry stood and offered her his hand. She took it smiling knowingly and they left the campfire as the group started singing "Hang down your head Tom Dooley…"

The sounds of singing and the guitar receded as they walked through the darkness toward the barn.

The crickets were also singing in the night. Claudette hesitated at the entrance to the barn, pulling back on Barry's hand.

"Somebody'll see," she said.

"No they won't," Barry tugged her gently by the hand, leading her into the darkness of the barn. He closed the door behind him and flipped on a light. As he turned, Claudette rushed into his arms, their lips met in a long kiss.

"Does Mary-Ann kiss as good as I do?" Claudette asked coyly when they both came up for air.

"How would I know?" Barry said, a bit too quickly.

"Oh, you."

"Come on."

He took her hand again and led her up the steps to the loft. Claudette picked up a worn woolen blanket. She paused, staring at him uncertainly.

"You said you were special," she said as if reading from a script used by countless young couples before them, performing the necessary motions of the courtship ritual; the unspoken agreement sealed with knowing gazes and lingering kisses. The token protests, the need for reassurance at the very last minute.

"I meant everything," Barry said, kissing her to prove it. Perhaps he really did, but it was more likely he didn't and she probably knew it too. The physical need two people felt for one another was only the beginning. Sometimes it was an end in itself. A brief sharing of pleasure and he had mutually fulfilled and selflessly taken. Sometimes it was only a catalyst for something deeper: a bond of real intimacy, but that kind of intimacy only came with time and although they didn't know it, neither Barry nor Claudette had much time left.

As they settled down on the blanket they had spread on the floor of the loft, huddling close and holding one another, the barn door downstairs opened slowly. Soft footsteps made little sound as they move towards the stairs. The music of youthful passion covered the sounds of the measured tread moving stealthily towards the steps. A faint creak the footsteps hesitated but no, they didn't hear.

"Ohhhh…" Claudette moaned and then she stiffened slight as she felt Barry's hand fumbling with the zipper on her shorts.

"No," she said, catching his hand but not really fighting.

"Come on," said Barry, his voice plaintive, his lips gently brushed her ear.

"A Man's not made of stone, " she giggled, "Oh please," she sighed as if with resignation and released his hand. Then her eyes widened as she saw a shadowy figure standing in the darkness at the entrance to the loft.

"Somebody's there."

They both sat up in alarm, buttoning up and tucking in, smiling nervously and blushing, feeling self-conscious.

"We… we weren't doing anything," Barry said quickly. He stood up as the figure in the shadows moved towards them. He smiled guiltily and shrugged. "Hey, really we were just messing around—"

The knife plunged deep into his stomach. He gasped with pain and shock, doubling over. His hands instinctively going to the wound. The room started to spin and he fell back, landing on a roll of chicken wire, clutching his stomach. Warm blood spilt out between his fingers and ran from the corner of his mouth as life ebbed quickly. Claudette brought her hands up to her face and screamed.

The killer came towards her but it backed away, a gaze riveted to the bloody hunting knife, eight inches of steel streaked with scarlet. She couldn't tear her eyes away from it. She shook her head, unwilling to believe this was happening.

"No! Please, no!" She whimpered, darting to the left then to the right, but the killer followed her motions, blocking off escape, slowly closing the distance between them. She panicked and sought shelter behind a pile of boxes, grabbing them and throwing them, backing away, looking desperately for a way out, but she was cornered. She suddenly felt her back up against the wall and there was no escape. She screamed as she saw the gleaming knife rise in stock, its swift descent. It was like a streak of fire across her chest. A burning incandescent pain more agonizing than anything she had ever felt. The blade bit deeply, ripping through her flesh, sinking in up to the hilt. It rose again and fell and rose and fell and rose and fell, over and over. Claudette wasn't screaming anymore but still the killer hacked away like a runaway machine and over the sounds of metal thudding into flesh and bone that came a distant sounds of singing from around the campfire.

"Hang down your head, Tom Dooley… poor boy you're going to die…"

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

"Small towns don't change much over the years. If anything, they get even smaller. The children grow up and move away to bigger towns and bigger opportunities. Those few that stay behind replaced the old folks as they died, providing not so much an infusion of fresh blood as a dose of Geritol. Just a small shot of tonic to keep the old town going. Businesses closed, perhaps losing their customers to the new shopping mall in the next town or simply finding they're unable to complete in an economy that is increasingly geared towards mass production and cheap foreign labor rather than quality and service. The regulators sit at the bar or at the soda fountain. Some still exist and if you can find them, they're generally worth looking for and they tell remember when stories or whatever happened to stories. Remember when Al Clary's little girl run off with that motorcycle gang back in '56? And when the police picked her up in… where was it? Brattleboro? She come home with that tattoo. Damn, you could hear old Al scream clear over the county seat.

"Whatever happened to Bonnie Clearly anyway?"

"Heard she went out to California. Married some producer."

"What? Bonnie? Married a producer?"

"Shoot. No kiddin', really? What I heard. Course, you know what they say 'Everyone out in California is a producer,' right? She ever get in any pictures? Knowing Bonnie, if she got into any pictures, they ain't the kind you'd show your mother."

Often, there were particular stories that were told over and over. Stories that become part of the folklore of the town, part of its history. In Crystal Lake, it was the story of 'Camp Blood.'

'Camp Blood,' as it came to be called, was the place on the outskirts of the town, about ten miles down the country road owned by Christy family. For 20-some odd years, the story had survived, passed down orally like an Indian myth. It survived because it possessed all of the ingredients that made for a legend. It centered on a place: Camp Crystal Lake. Only the locals called it 'Camp Blood' and its focus was violent death and mystery. The mystery was that no one had ever learned who caused the deaths or why, and it concerned a local family: the Christys, who owned the place and tried to fight the legend to no avail. Ever since 1958, each time they tried to get the camp going again, something stopped them; stopped them in a way that only added to the legend of 'Camp Blood.' Some said it began in 1957, after that young boy had drowned. His name was Jason Voorhees, Pamela Voorhees' boy. A shy child, quiet and strange, went swimming alone out in Crystal Lake.

They never found his body. Other said it began in '58, when those two young camp counselors were killed. They found the horribly mutilated bodies in the barn, hacked to pieces.

The girl who had found them, the murdered girl's bunkmate, had been taken to the country hospital in a state of nervous shock. Some claim she got better; others insisted that she was still in an institution somewhere, locked up in a padded cell and screaming about blood. The police had never solved the murders. Theories abounded, depending on who told the story. The murders were either committed by one of the other counselors in a jealous homicidal rage, or an escaped inmate from an insane asylum or by a Satan cult or some deranged derelict living in the woods still on the loose, still out there somewhere, or if you listened to Crazy Old Ralph, by vengeful ghosts or ravaging demons or by little green men from a UFO. The story varied according to how much Old Ralph had to drink, but then, nobody listened to Old Ralph anyway.

Old Ralph was the town geek. No small town was complete without one. Big cities had them too, more than their share, but in big cities, geeks completely wandered the streets talking to themselves and carrying all of their belongings in shopping bags, sleeping in parks or down in the subways. They were ignored by a population that considered them a nuisance and didn't really want to see them, lest they feel some spark of human pity. People in small towns noticed, maybe no one listened to them but at least they noticed them, which made for some kind of human interaction.

Old Ralph was happier in the town of Crystal Lake than he would have been in a big city. He had no friends except his imaginary ones and his long-suffering wife, but people noticed him and knew him.

Every now and then, he'd get tanked up and hear the call. He would mount up his old swim newsboy special, the kind of bike you don't see anymore. With sheet metal wrapped around the top frame rail, so that it looks like it has a gas tank. The kind with the big balloon tires and springs under the seat. He would ride out like Paul Revere, shouting the gospel, doing the Lord's work, a latter-day Reverend Jonathan Edwards, preaching to the sinners. A Puritan, warning of an Angry God. Nobody listened, but at least they heard him and because they heard him, they called the Sheriff and Officer Dorf would be sent to bring Ralph in to sleep it off.

It was a symbiotic relationship. It made Old Ralph feel noticed and it made Officer Dorf feel like a real policeman. You couldn't feel like a real policeman if you didn't get to arrest someone every now and then and Dorf needed to feel like a real policeman. He needed his big Harley-Davidson electra-glide with the siren and the lights. He needed his spit-shined riding boots and his crash helmet with the department's gold insignia painted on. He needed his hand-tooled gun belt loaded down with every conceivable accessory a police officer could possibly desire. From the leather holster to the billy club to the chrome steel handcuffs to speed loaders and to the special police Kel flashlight and the utility snap pouches where he carried chewing gum and breath mints. He liked to use the ten code when he spoke on the Motorola radio, just like the cops on TV, despite the fact that there were only four officers on the Crystal Lake Police Force and there wasn't any need to abbreviate everything by using numbers instead of simple phrases in plane English. Dorf dreamed about leaving Crystal Lake and becoming a policeman in a big city like New York or Los Angeles. He felt trapped in Crystal Lake but his police paraphernalia and his Wyatt Earp attitude helped him to live out his dream at least a little bit.

Annie Phillips on the other hand, had felt trapped by the big city. She needed to get away every chance she got which was mostly during summer vacations when she took jobs as a cook at various camps. It paid a little more than just being a counselor and good cooks were always in demand. It gave her a chance to get out into the country and breathe fresh air for a few weeks. She lived for it.

She dreamed of leaving the city forever and moving to a log cabin or a frame house in the country.

Perhaps starting a small crafts business or getting a job as cook in a resort hotel. She and Dorf might had an interesting conversation about the pros and cons of their respective dreams but Dorf wasn't on hand to welcome her to Crystal Lake when she arrived. He was out cruising the highway looking for speeders.

All Annie had to welcome her as she hiked into town was Ed Brian's dog, Winslow, who watched the pumps for Ed and barked whenever a car pulled in. Since Annie didn't have a car, Winslow decided not to bark. Better to let Ed sleep than risk a sharp rap on the noggin with a rolled up newspaper for raising a false alarm. Instead, Winslow sat up between the pumps and unfurled his tongue, wagging his tail for affection. It worked and Annie shucked her knapsack and knelt down beside the dog, stroking his fur.

"Well, Hiya girl—uhh excuse me, Hi boy!" she laughed. It was a gorgeous day. The town was quiet and peaceful, about as far removed from the noise of New York City as possible.

"Hey, can you speak English?" she said, laughing and ruffling the dog's fur. "How far is it to Camp Crystal Lake?"

It was the most attention Winslow had received in months and he whined in appreciation.

"That far, huh? Okie dokie, see you later!" Annie groaned as she hoisted the backpack onto her shoulders. She had hiked in all the way from the interstate and had hoped there'd be more traffic around town so she could hitch a ride to the camp, but there wasn't a car in sight. The town looked quite dead.

"Well, you wanted peace and quiet," she said to herself, "I guess you got it." She passed several buildings and turned onto the main street of the town. She saw a number of cars parked in front of a general store and a coffee shop. She decided to take a chance and stop in to ask directions. Perhaps someone would volunteer to drive her. The radio was tuned in to an AM station playing "Sail away, tiny sparrow" as she walked in, causing a small bell mounted over the door to tinkle. There were several people in the shop, seated at the counter. Small town folks, an older woman dressed in a white uniform with rhinestone glasses stood behind the counter, a couple of New England types in red and black Buffalo plaids, jeans, work boots, and truckers caps perched on the stools.

"It's 7:01 on Friday the 13th of June!" The radio announcer said in that obsequious DJ voice that sounds like a cross between a game show host and Woody the Woodpecker. "This is Big Dave and it's time for you lazybones to get out of bed! It's Black Cat Day in Crystal Lake."

"I must have seen that cold track 82 times," the woman behind the counter said to one of the coffee drinkers in response to a comment Annie hadn't heard.

"Uh hi, excuse me," she said to be heard over the radio, but the woman behind the counter had turned down the radio at the same moment so Annie's voice suddenly sounded unnaturally loud.

"How far is it to Camp Crystal Lake from here?"

Everyone turned to stare at her. For a moment, she thought perhaps the fly on her jeans was unzipped or something because they simply kept staring but then the woman behind the counter broke the silence.

"What is it, Enos?" she said, "About 10 miles?"

"About that," replied Enos, a heavyset man in a plaid shirt and baseball cap.

'Terrific,' Annie thought. She didn't relish the thought of hiking another ten miles.

"Camp Blood?" one of the other men said, "Don't tell me they're opening that place up again."

"Lots of luck," said Enos, shaking his head. Annie sighed, not really following the conversation, just thinking about the ten miles she had yet to go.

"Can I get a bus or something?"

"Not likely," the man who mentioned 'Camp Blood' answered.

"You going out to the crossroads aren't you Enos?" said the woman behind the counter. "What about giving the girl a lift? That'll be about halfway," she added, looking at Annie with a smile.

"No sweat, Trudy," Enos said. He made getting off the stool look like something that required manly effort. "Okay, kid, let's move it."

"Name's 'Annie'," she said, smiling at him, grateful to have five miles less to walk.

"Alright, Annie, let's go." He walked past her and opened the door, holding it for her.

"All the girls up there gonna look as good as you?" he laughed.

"I don't know."

A man who looked like a scarecrow wearing a fedora loomed up before them, lifting his palm up towards them. Annie stopped suddenly, surprised. The bony hand descended onto her shoulder as the man leaned down close to her face. His breath would have stunned an ox.

"You're going to Camp Blood, ain'tcha?" he said, glaring at her. It seemed as if any minute he was going to break into a maniacal cackle like the Wicked Witch of the West.

"Goddammit, Ralph, get out of here!" Enos gave him a hard shove. "Go on, get! Leave people alone!"

"You'll never come back alive!" cried Ralph, his voice rising in pitch.

"Oh shut up, Ralph," Enos said, leading Annie towards his truck.

"It's got a Death Curse!" Ralph persisted, rolling his eyes wildly.

"He's a real prophet of doom, ain't he?" Enos said, opening the passenger door. "Go on, climb up, miss."

He gave her a boost with a hand on her rear as she climbed up. For a moment, Annie wondered if he was copping a quick feel but she decided to forget it. He seemed reasonably harmless like crazy Old Ralph and it probably made his day. In any case, it beat walking ten miles. He went around the front of the truck and climbed in, turned the key and started the engine.

"I tell you," he said as he banged the shift lever into first with noisy grinding, "He's causing problems enough for your boss with all that talk."

The truck shuddered out of the parking lot with a sloppy clutch engagement.

"Goddamn nuisance," Enos muttered. They drove in silence for several minutes as the truck left town and headed into the country, over a small bridge and onto the country road. Enos seemed to be wrapped up in thought and Annie just stared out the window.

"He tell you anything?" Enos asked and he turned. Her eyebrows raised.

"What?"

"He tell you anything?"

"Who?"

"Your boss, Steve Christy."

"Oh," she smiled, "Yeah. I'll be cooking for 50 kids and 7 staff, including me. The campers will mostly be inner city children.

The Story Continues on BooksBarbecue!

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