Chapter 41: S#7. Saturday the 13th (3)
by fnovelpia
I threw the axe without hesitation.
It spun through the air.
Simultaneously, the electrical room door slammed shut.
The axe’s blade missed Jayce and stuck in the door instead.
I ran to the door and tried to turn the doorknob.
It was locked from the inside.
Zzzzzt—
Fierce sparks sounded from behind the door.
Soon, screams and the sound of crushing flesh began to mix.
Ellen might be inside.
I kicked the door repeatedly to break it down.
The solid metal door was hard to destroy.
Bang— Bang— Bang— Bang—
It took me 13 seconds to break through.
I rushed into the electrical room.
The hockey mask was nowhere to be seen.
Darkness, torn wires, the smell of cooked squid, flesh, and blood filled the room.
Three bodies lay there:
A man cooked by electrocution.
A man with a pierced chest.
A man with his neck crumpled like a can.
-⑤ Electrocution
-⑥ Penetrating wound
-⑦ Strangulation
These men were victims of Jayce’s swift massacre. Luckily, Ellen was not among them.
“Oh, oh my god… the… people…”
Jerry, horrified, crouched down.
He seemed to have nothing left to vomit.
“Jerry. Is this the only entrance?” I asked.
“Yes, ye… yes… The door you just broke is the only entrance to this electrical room…” Jerry replied.
Where could Jayce have escaped to?
It was impossible that he had just up and vanished.
I left the electrical room.
A moaning sound came from between the aisles.
I found the manager lying on the floor.
He appeared uninjured.
“Manager…? What are you doing here?” Jerry asked cautiously.
“I twisted my ankle! I need to run but can’t move!” the manager yelled.
“Jerry, help me up, now!” the manager demanded.
“But Manager…” Jerry hesitated.
“Damn it, are you going to dawdle even now?! What would your father, who’s in hell, think?!”
“……”
“Hurry up, you worthless piece of sh*t!”
“……”
“What are you still dawdling for! Do you want to get fired? If you get kicked out from here, Jerry, you’ll be a homeless person getting eaten alive by rats in the subway!!”
The manager’s spit flew and hit Jerry’s face.
Reluctantly, Jerry helped him up.
Whether Jerry stayed or left didn’t matter to me.
I was only concerned about Ellen.
I thought about Jayce’s pattern of murders. ‘⑦ Strangulation’ was followed by ‘⑧ Explosion’.
The next victim would die in an explosion.
“Jerry. Where’s the explosives aisle?”
I asked him as he supported the manager towards the exit.
Suddenly, Jerry stopped and let go of the manager.
“…Customer. I’ll show you,” Jerry said.
The manager’s face twisted in anger as veins bulged on his forehead.
“Come back here, Jerry! Come back!!!!” he shouted.
But Jerry did not look back.
Determined, he led me to where the explosives were stored.
“Jerry! You’re fired!! FIREEEED!!!” the manager’s angry voice faded into the darkness.
Relying on a flashlight, I walked through the dimly lit store.
Jerry shook like a leaf in front of me.
Movies like <Julia’s Eyes> came to mind.
But given the setting in a store, perhaps <The Mist> was more apt. <The Descent> best represented the deep claustrophobia and darkness.
Boom───────!
An explosion sounded. A flash lit up the area.
It came from the tool aisle where the explosives were displayed.
-⑧ Explosion
I ran towards the sound.
Smoke clouded the area.
A corpse with its head blown off lay on the floor. Next to the body stood a human figure.
It was Jayce.
He seemed to be mocking me for my tardiness.
Leisurely yet agile, he fit the profile of a classic slasher film killer.
I hoped inwardly that the dead person wasn’t Ellen.
Jayce glided through the smoke, his machete shimmering in his hand.
‘⑧ Explosion’ was followed by ‘⑨ Decapitation’.
Jayce functioned like a programmed killer.
He aimed his machete at Jerry’s and my necks, ready to cut.
“Ah…!”
Jerry gasped at the sight of the hockey mask smeared with smoke and darkness.
Whoosh—
Jayce swung his machete with force.
The blade grazed us. I dropped my flashlight.
As the light hit the ground, darkness took over. Visibility was zero.
I had no time to pick up the flashlight again.
Holding the axe, I gauged the distance to Jayce.
In the dark, Jayce thrust his machete at us. It was a stabbing attack.
I dodged it by sensing it. It was time to counterattack.
I struck his knee with the axe.
As I yanked the axe out, I slashed his abdomen.
Chlurk— The torn stomach scattered his intestines.
Still, Jayce did not fall.
To bring Jayce down, I had to become a conductor cutting through the darkness.
The axe was my baton.
Swoosh
│
I made a vertical slash that severed Jayce’s left arm.
Jayce swung his machete in his right hand as if playing an invisible violin.
It was a persistent performance, but it didn’t match my tempo.
I embedded the axe between his shoulder and neck to end his ability to perform.
Thump. He fell to his knees.
“Where is Ellen?”
“……”
“Answer me.”
I raised the axe high, ready to split his skull if he didn’t answer.
But Jayce made a sudden move.
He lifted the machete and unexpectedly cut his own neck.
Thud. His head fell off.
-⑨ Decapitation
The head rolled away, and the hockey mask fell off.
Legs like an insect’s were attached to the mask’s edge.
Caught off guard, I watched as the hockey mask scurried across the floor like a cockroach.
It vanished into the darkness in an instant.
“……”
I was speechless.
What was that?
-The mask enjoys its game.
A game of seizing human bodies and plunging them into death.
It has consumed much sweet blood but still thirsts for more.
Until it claims 13 victims, the mask will continue its carnage.
I realized from the narration.
It wasn’t Jayce who attacked the store.
It was the hockey mask.
The mask was a kind of body snatcher, a face-hugger that clings to faces and controls its hosts.
Hosts under its control destroy their own bodies.
Like the man who had just slashed his own neck with a machete…
13 days ago, at the cabin massacre.
Jayce Borison was not the culprit.
He too was a victim of the hockey mask.
The 13 people gathered at the cabin were all consumed and killed by the hockey mask, one by one.
I reviewed the remaining murders on the list.
⑩ Falling from the cabin roof
⑪ Drowning in the lake
⑫ Sawing the body into upper and lower halves, causing death by shock
‘⑨ Decapitation’ was followed by ‘⑩ Falling’.
The mask was likely heading to the rooftop next.
It would choose another host and make them jump.
It couldn’t be Ellen.
I had to stop it.
“Jerry, please guide me to the rooftop.”
“…”
“Jerry?”
I turned to look back.
Jerry was watching me with a skewed posture.
The hockey mask was attached to his face.
When had it latched onto Jerry…?
1.3 seconds felt like 13 hours.
Jerry kicked off the ground and began to run.
The hockey mask was controlling him.
“Wait, stop…!!”
I chased after Jerry.
The manager had finally reached the store’s exit.
“Argh, argh…!”
His ankle was swollen badly.
He couldn’t walk, so he crawled like a turtle with arthritis.
Reaching the exit by crawling was a triumph of human spirit.
That damned Jerry…
How dare he throw me aside and leave, I will definitely cut him down.
The manager made a silent vow as he stepped outside.
The cool night air filled his lungs. He had finally escaped.
“I did it…! I actually did it!!”
But his moment of triumph was brief.
The store window shattered and something crashed through it.
It was Jerry, wearing the hockey mask.
He had jumped from the fourth floor and landed on the manager.
Crunch.
⑩ Falling Jerry died instantly.
The manager did not.
The massive impact crushed the manager’s chest and shattered all his ribs.
Pain engulfed him like thunder.
Blood pooled around his body.
“Argh…”
He struggled to breathe.
The hockey mask slipped off Jerry’s face.
It moved quickly, like an insect, and covered the manager’s face.
Suddenly, the manager could no longer control his body.
His neck moved on its own.
His nose plunged into the sticky pool of blood.
He breathed through the mask.
Blood entered his nostrils through the small holes.
His lungs filled with hot blood.
The manager inhaled the blood of his subordinate, who he had disregarded.
His painful breathing continued until he died.
-⑪ Jerry’s corpse, lying on top of the drowned manager, was smiling widely.
Jerry had charged towards the window like a rugby player.
Both he and the manager died from the fall.
I had no chance to stop it.
I watched helplessly through the broken window.
Then a thought struck me.
The root of all this chaos was the hockey mask.
It must have set the evidence storage on fire and crawled here.
Why then had Jayce Borison’s body disappeared?
“…For revenge.”
A chilling voice spoke from the darkness.
A rotten smell wafted towards me.
I saw a man’s silhouette. He was holding a woman.
The man was huge, like a bear, but his posture was unstable.
“That mask… it killed my friends… and my fiancée Alice…”
“You are…”
“I couldn’t rest until the mask was destroyed…”
It was Jayce Borison.
He looked as if he had just come from the morgue, freshly rotted.
A corpse driven by a grudge.
He was an old-style, horrific zombie.
He was responsible for taking Ellen.
“Did you follow the mask here? Why did you kidnap this woman?”
“The mask… it kills its sacrifices in a specific order… To lure the mask, I needed bait…”
“…”
“The 12th victim is a beautiful woman… My fiancée was the 12th to die…”
Jayce spoke, his decaying jaw clacking.
⑫ Death by shock from being sawed in half at the waist.
A method used on a beautiful sacrifice…
To capture the mask, Jayce had kidnapped a woman who was to be the 12th sacrifice.
“Now that the 11th victim is dead… the mask will come here soon… Then I can have my revenge…”
I looked at Ellen, who Jayce was holding.
However, this woman’s hair color and build were different from Ellen’s.
Her skin, touched by moonlight, was not the healthy color of Ellen’s but a pale white.
The woman Jayce was holding was not Ellen Strode.
“Oh, Reiko?”
“Summer…?”
It was Reiko Ishikawa, the neighboring psychic.
“Why are you here, Ms. Reiko?!”
“I don’t know what misfortune brought me here. I was shopping and this corpse dragged me here.”
Jerry had claimed that Ellen was taken.
How could he confuse Ellen with Reiko?
I wanted to kill Jerry on the spot.
But he was already dead.
The hockey mask crawled up the stairs.
“Now, it’s time for revenge…”
Jayce ground his teeth.
The hockey mask, fast as a modified RC car, leapt towards Reiko.
With a fierce motion, Jayce knocked the mask away with his rotten arm.
The mask flew and suddenly landed right on my face.
What the hell.
This was unexpected.
The mask’s insect-like legs wrapped tightly around my head.
It stuck firmly to my face.
“Oops… my bad…”
Jayce said, appearing embarrassed.
Soon, the hockey mask took control of my body.
I couldn’t move properly.
My waist twisted, and my spine began to move beyond its normal range.
I screamed in agony as it felt like my body was being torn in half.
-⑫ Shock…
But I resisted.
My abs, strengthened by countless battles with monsters, were not to be underestimated.
I fought against the control of the hockey mask.
“That’s impossible…!”
Jayce exclaimed in shock.
Soon, I regained control over my arms.
I grabbed the mask firmly and ripped it off my face.
As I exerted force, the mask cracked.
I then kneed it with all my strength.
Crunch.
The mask shattered into 13 pieces.
-⑫ The massacre has stopped at shock.
“Ah… Ah…”
Jayce stuttered in defeat.
I threw the mask pieces away.
Reiko quickly picked them up and stuffed them into her pocket.
Jayce and I looked at each other.
“Jayce Borison. This settles your revenge, doesn’t it?” I asked.
“…Yes.”
Jayce nodded.
A fresh tear rolled down from his tear duct.
“Now I can join my love, Alice. Thank you for helping me with my revenge…”
Bang────────!
Before he could finish his sentence, Jayce’s head exploded.
Skull fragments and brain matter scattered everywhere.
Jayce fell to the ground.
-⑬ Gunshot
A shotgun, still smoking, had blown off Jayce’s head.
Ellen was holding a double-barrel shotgun.
“Are you okay, Summer?!?!”
Ellen exclaimed as she threw the shotgun aside and ran to hug me.
“Where have you been all this time, Ellen…?”
“In the parking lot! I thought you had come outside too!”
Ellen explained that she had been searching for me for a while.
It seemed we had missed each other.
I had been looking for Ellen inside the store, and she had been looking for me outside.
After seeing the bodies of the manager and Jerry outside, Ellen had grabbed a shotgun from the trunk and rushed over.
“That was close, Summer…! You almost got bitten by a zombie…!!”
Ellen said, misunderstanding the situation.
I didn’t correct her misunderstanding.
After all, Jayce wasn’t exactly a good guy.
Reiko and Ellen exchanged awkward greetings.
We went home.
“…I was really worried.”
“Me too, Ellen,” I replied.
As we drove, scenes of the street passed by the car window.
13 streetlights.
13 parked cars.
13 trash cans.
13 dog houses.
The number 13 was everywhere.
But it no longer bothered me.
For every bit of bad luck, there’s good luck too.
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