Crystalized: Part 3 - The Daisy Chain

Then...



She'd woken in darkness, chilly and damp, the smell of wood rot thick in her nose. There was a glassless window above her and she saw sunlight, heavily filtered by the trees. The time was impossible to discern. She wore no wristwatch and the cabin she found herself in had never seen electricity. Nor indoor plumbing either, to judge by the smell. She didn't mind, she'd smelled worse. Her father was the reason that air freshener had been invented, for God's sake.

At the thought of her dad, she sat up. Was he worried about her? Had he called the police? She sat and listened intently, but after a good minute and a half of separating birdsong, breeze and various animal footsteps, she heard no helicopter blades whupping the air overhead, no dogs barking or amplified voices calling her name in bullhorn stereo, she figured either one of two things had occurred in the wake of her aborted kidnapping: she was too deep in the woods to be found by a foot search, or her father was still asleep in front of the TV, not having noticed her absence when he woke long enough to take a piss and grab another beer with which to fill the void. She knew the latter was more likely; she'd pretty much been left on her own to come and go as she pleased for the last month, so she relaxed and took in her surroundings.

The floor was dirt. Actually, if truth were to be told, the floor was mud and rodent shit and she was smeared with it, covered in it, a tanglehaired mudgirl with dirty scrapes on her bony knees and a bladder that was full to the point of screaming. There was a door six feet in front of her, closed firmly but not locked. She wobbled to her feet and pulled it open, hoping for a toilet. Instead she found a ripe and festering meat garden, blooming with hideous glory under the summer sun.

The floor was muddier here, squelching rudely beneath her ruined sneakers. The blood had done that. There was a lot of it, a swamp of blood, some fresh, most congealed into soupy puddles of syrupy gore. It looked firm enough to skate on. The buzz of flies was loud and thick and lazy, their movements over the remains sluggish and obscene as they gloated over their proud and shameless feast. Fat white maggots squirmed busily, happy as only spoiled babies can be, wallowing in their cradles of decomposing gray meat with nauseating contentment. She saw a hand, palm up, its fingertips eaten away to bone. There was a leg bone growing out of a sturdy hiking boot with shreds of pant leg still fluttering from it. A ribcage was propped in a corner, and beyond the bone doorway, there was just enough sunlight to see something wet and glistening down within, something that moved ever so slightly. The smell of spoiled meat and evacuated innards was richly fruity and dark. She searched her brain for a word that would encompass that reek, but her vocabulary was still expanding and had not yet picked up everything it would need for its collection. Had she been ten years older, she might have used the word foetid, but the best she could do at that age was to associate the decaying reek with a mental image: a cartoon girl with red hair and mismatched eyes buried beneath a fresh and steaming heap of smotheringly gooey horse poo. Or maybe dog poo. From a lot of dogs. The stink was too meaty for a herbivore.

She took all of this in within four seconds, drawing a breath as she did so and immediately expelling it back out again, her gag reflex clocking in for immediate overtime. Her dirty hand, coated with mud and shit and blood, clapped over her mouth instinctively. Her outraged nasal cavity immediately roared in protest and declared war on the invading stench. She didn't vomit, mostly because she had nothing in her stomach to eject, but she dry heaved tremendously nonetheless.

She'd noticed the shrine immediately upon entering the room, but the tidal wave of rot-stink that had rolled out to greet her in the doorway had knocked her back a few steps, disabling her ability to focus. Now, as she took shallow breaths through her mouth and carefully picked a semi-dry path through the bloodpuddles and fleshclumps, she took in the details. The centerpiece was real, she knew that much. Surrounded by candle stumps that had burned out, it had suffered no insect activity, nor had it ever been nibbled upon by vermin or wayward bird. The skin was leathertough and withered dry as an apple now, but she thought the face was still pretty. Her hair was still as blonde as a dandelion just turning to puff. The old fisherman's sweater spread out before her smelled like dead fish and mushroom bellies, but it was still soft. She ran her hand over it and could see the lady wearing it, warm beside a fire, maybe stroking a cat or reading a book or knitting something with a mug of tea lazily steaming beside her.

She suddenly realized that she still desperately needed to pee and looked around. It did not seem proper to pee in here, even though she knew the smell would be swallowed by the rot and chaos immediately and her puddle of wet nothing compared to the gelatinous puddles of blood pudding standing everywhere

Backtracking brought her to an open front door. She chose the outer wall furthest from the shrine so as not to befoul what she knew was a sacred spot. The shadows were deep and cool, the fierce summer sun unable to pierce the foliage this deep. As she emptied herself, she spotted a dozen dancing and nodding spots of white in her peripheral vision and turned her head. And had an idea. One that made her smile for the first time since her ordeal had begun.

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So absorbed was she in her chosen task that she didn't notice the light fading from the sky or the sun sinking with an almost audible sizzle into the lake waters, turning its placid surface into molten glass. The door slammed open behind her with a splintering crack and she jumped, but to her credit did not scream. It was only him after all, and she knew he would not hurt her. Not like the other one. She didn't wonder where he'd been all day, if he slept or if he simply materialized out of the shadows after the sun retreated. His eyes - still miraculously intact even as his face rotted away beneath his hockey mask, worn so long that it had become part of his skull - went from her face to her hands, where drooped six remaining daisies, then beyond both to the gruesome but cherished centerpiece now surrounded by flickering candles. She'd found the wooden box of matches secreted away at the base of the makeshift table. Flameglow leapt across the face of Pamela Voorhees. And as her only begotten son looked down upon her, the reliquary that guided his every move, governed his every thought and inspired his every action, her eyes opened. They were bluer than Brazilian blue topaz, crackling with elfin delight. As if on cue, the little girl smiled right along with her, their double grins pure and bright as pearls in a red velvet jewelry box. 

"Isn't she pretty?" the little girl asked, her voice sincere and bright.

"Isn't she an angel?" his mother asked on the heels of the girls inquiry, her voice hushed with reverance and awe reserved for the unveiling of the pink plastic Christ child in the manger on Christmas Eve. But Christmas was a million years from now and beyond the darkened windows, fireflies had begun to flare, competing with the candlelight. Mrs. Voorhees' eyes alighted upon Jerusha, still smiling serenely. The flowers in her hair, carefully pushed through the snarled locks and wilted strands by Jerusha's patient hands nodded and swayed, a perfect crown of snowy stars for an immortal Northern Queen, a goddess of ice and vengeance, flanked by wolves. 

"She's fixed me up so pretty just for your birthday, Jason." Mother said in her lullaby voice, the one reserved just for him, at night, to keep the bad dreams away.

"Take her home, sweetheart. Make sure she stays safe. You are such a good boy, protecting her like that. You've done well. Now take her home. Keep her safe. And make sure you thank her." Just a slight sternness entering her voice now, just the most fleeting wisp of cloud scudding over the sunlight of her daisy framed face. Then the ice melted and the warmth and green grass emerged once more, blinding as diamonds. "After all, look how pretty she's made mother."

Pamela Voorhees fell silent once more, retreating into peaceful sleep. Jerusha was still smiling up at him. He stood and considered carefully, weighing and rejecting everything his eyes fell upon: bone, teeth, blood. None of it suited. Mother approved and appreciated his offering of death, but wouldn't want such a thing for the girl. He remembered dimly, through years of muddy water, the things he'd had as a child from the hands of his mother. Things for good children. He turned and walked back through the door and into the depths of the cabin, smashing through things rather than past them, wood screaming beneath the crush of his footsteps, bleeding dust. Jerusha didn't wonder where he'd gone. She still had six more flowers to place. By the time Jason returned, she had finished and the cabin was holier than a Sunday after sermon. He'd found what he'd wanted, what he'd once loved, now useless in his hands but placed in hers now infused with new life and meaning.

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Now...

"So what was it?" Gus asked, eyes still on the road before them, unspooling grey and lifeless.

She glanced at her feet where her backpack sat wedged between her ankles. She'd brought it with her, of course she had. It was a weapon more powerful than any chainsaw or machete ever crafted. One eye missing, one foot torn away, bleeding dirty stuffing from its wounds. She'd never named it, but she'd kept it. She'd even loved it. But it wasn't hers. Jason was past due for a birthday present. She'd only been borrowing it because Mother had made him share. Now it was time to return it. 

She thought of all the expensive equipment that Blake Beland had undoubtedly purchased and lugged up here, never knowing that it was all worthless junk in the face of an ancient teddy bear. For this particular battle, she was better armed.