A Nightmare Unleashed

BASED UPON CHARACTERS CREATED BY:

Wes Craven: A Nightmare on Elm Street

Victor Miller: Friday the 13th

Sam Raimi: The Evil Dead

John Carpenter: Halloween

EDITED BY:

Miriam Belle

CREATIVE CONSULTANTS:

Tessa Alexander, Sean Renaud & Simply_Cyn

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

-"This is the sequel to 'A Nightmare Reborn.' I hadn't planned on writing a sequel, but the reader response to the first story was so good I figured what the hell? I hope you enjoy this as much as I did writing it.

This story is meant to be a segue into the events of 'New Nightmare' and 'Jason X,' wrapping up all the loose ends from both series as best I can. Please enjoy!" --bluefox07

***

"Do you know the terror of he who falls asleep? To the toes he is very terrified, because the ground gives the way under him, and the dream begins..."

-Friedrich Nietzsche

"Only through a Voorhees can he be killed."

-Creighton Duke

"What are these monsters if not dark reflections of ourselves? Know yourself, and you will know your enemy." --Dr. Matthew Loomis

***

CRYSTAL LAKE

Friday, July 13th 1957

The day that it happened was bright and sunny.

In the deepest reaches of the woods surrounding Crystal Lake, a young woman knelt before the forces of a world she did not understand and cried out. Her anguish touched not only the ears of those living in the small town around the lake, but also into the water itself. The trees heard her scream and the things living within them recoiled, the concerns of her fellow man focused on more important things. She was a mother seeking solace from the one place she had left to go. While the language she spoke was foreign to the conscience of the living woods, it was understood that the grief of a mother over her dead child was a universal constant.

If one had happened upon her as she had been that hot afternoon, the mosquitoes lighting on her and sucking of her blood freely, her face streaked with tears and tainted with mud, they might have thought her insane. If after seeing her like this, a once timid and quiet woman who had dealt with not only a dead husband five years prior and a daughter that was never meant to be hers, and a man had still had the courage to ask her what troubled her he would have found himself on the end of her wrath.

Pamela Voorhees, barefoot and weak in her simple blue summer dress cried into the dirt of the woods, her body stretching out so that she lay flat and limp. Only her fingers dug at the earth, her nails bent and bloody as she scraped rocks and thorns in the only protest she had left. Her heart had split in two within her chest, everything inside spilling out. What had once been a pure and simple love for her son became a poison to her. She felt pain and grief as she never had before, and she believed that before the sun set she would join him.

"Please," she wept, "Please..."

She knew not what it was she asked for. Her mind begged for the return of her son from the depths of the lake. She pleaded for the strength to take vengeance on the kids who had let him die, a poor retarded boy who had never crossed anyone before in his life. She could still see his disfigured face, drooped to one side and damned with a lazy eye that saw nothing beyond the limited range of his distorted bone structure. He had been a freak, but he had been kind and only wanted to be with the other children.

She had loved him despite all the grotesque physical deformities... in fact, she may have loved him even because of them.

Her boy, her Jason... her special boy.

And they had killed him. He had gone under the surface of the lake and never came up. He was lost to her.

"I want my son back!"

Lost forever, taken.

"PLEASE!"

Pamela grabbed at her clothes and ripped, her lips pulled back from her teeth and her eyes shut so tightly she could see an explosion of colors in the darkness from the pressure. A frustrated growl of complete, unadulterated anger tore from her throat as she gave in to the rage surging through her body. She could not control it anymore than a volcano could restrain its lava from erupting. The result of such an action was more deadly than the original intent.

The woods had grown quiet around her as the things that made it grow watched with a morbid curiosity. There was an anxiety building up as spirits that should not have been woken roused themselves and sought her out. They began to move. Though her ears could not hear it, something was coming through the woods towards her like gale force wind. It sped along in a silent running to the ears of men, but its scream could be heard across the hidden places of the world. Trees snapped in two at the core and fell as it rushed to meet her.

Pamela sat up suddenly.

A voice, the sum total of a thousand smaller beings speaking all at once, rang out through the woods, "Join us."

She froze, her blue eyes wide and glassy. She slowly stood up, her once gorgeous dress ruined with grass and dirt, twigs in her hair and clean streaks down her cheeks where the tears had washed the dirt away.

"Who are you?"

"We are eternal." The voices boomed.

"What are you?"

She could feel something rushing towards her like a phantom tidal wave.

Pamela staggered back and braced herself against a dying oak, her hands clawing at the bark, "Help me!"

"What do you seek?"

Pamela closed her eyes as an excruciating pain shot through her temples and then to her ears. The voices were so loud. She barely was aware of the bloody trails dripping from her damaged ear canals and draining down the sides of her neck. She cried out, "I seek revenge on those who stole my boy from me!"

A wind kicked up. It was closer now. She could feel it barreling towards her as the dry leaves of the forest floor spun and flew into the air. She felt something wet under her hands, slick against the rough bark. Her hands were covered in blood. She stepped back and gasped as the old oak tree bled steadily from a thousand wounds. The unnatural stigmata the woods displayed marked her flesh as she tried to speak again.

"Join us," the voiced howled. She could hear giggling and laughing, chanting from the branches above, floating on the wind.

"Dead by dawn, dead by dawn!" they screeched.

"Show me!" she screamed at the voices.

A sharp pain stabbed into her foot and she tried to jump away. Roots, dirty and wet had dislodged from the soil and were attaching to her skin. They slipped up around her bare calves and pulled on her, beckoning her to the depths below. She could feel the world of the dead calling her. She tried to break away again but only found more branches and limbs pulling at her. They tore into her clothes and pulled, ripping and shredding her dress until she stood naked and exposed. Pamela screamed, now lost in the fear for her life.

"Dead by dawn!" the spirits cried.

Pamela was taken to the ground and restrained there. The stinging sensation of fine roots and branches penetrating her skin made the world turn a bright white as she struggled vainly against the forces she had inadvertently summoned forth. Her skin twisted and then gave way as her legs were spread open by thick, wet vines. She cried out as a large branch, once unbreakable and solid, twisted and snaked it's way down from a nearby tree. It found her sex and invaded her. Her eyes rolled at the intrusion and her mind went to a place that was beyond her comprehension.

Pamela Voorhees gave herself over, and in doing so unbalanced the world around her. In the towns surrounding Crystal Lake there was a sudden drop in the temperature, some places recording as much as eight degrees down in a matter of minutes. Years later, the old timers who had been youthful then would try to tell their grandchildren about the strange phenomenon, but no one would listen.

Later on, the old timers would think back to that day and realize that particular Friday the 13th lived up to its reputation. Lights blew out across three counties and a number of toilets back flowed from freak pressure explosions deep in the sewers. Even as far to the west as Springwood, there were reports of sudden bird attacks on kids that matched the ones happening in Dayton, Cincinnati and Crystal Lake. It seemed the world had experienced a conniption fit, a display of vomitous power that spread out like a plague of accidents and in some cases, death. Of the thirteen people killed that day, either through a freak mishap or other accident, twelve were teenaged children.

When darkness fell across the middle third of the nation, and people began to retire for the night, Pamela Voorhees awoke. She laid on the ground still, the plants and roots gone from her body. Her eyes were blood shot and distant. Her flesh was torn and bruised, every muscle trembling not from the cool evening air but from the unholy energy hanging about her in a black aura. She stood up in the shadows as the sun shrunk away from her and she knew. She could still hear the voices on the wind.

"Come," they called, "Join us."

Pamela walked, her feet bloody and raw. She walked until she came to the shores of the lake. The water was flat and placid, black as ink in the dying light. She fell to her knees and watched the water as the voices spoke to her, whispering unknown words into her mind and burning them to memory. The voices wanted to give her something special, something that was never meant for the world of the living. She closed her eyes and began reciting the words over and over again, letting the power of the darkness in the woods electrify her.

"Allren ammenon," she whispered, her voice breathless as she held her arms out, palms to the sky, "estium dante vorellum..."

The ground beneath her bare knees began to feel warm. The fine hair on her arms and neck prickled and rose slowly as something not of this world began to birth itself. She dared not look at what was forming beside her, but she could feel the sand and gravel of the beach push away and spread as the voices sang their song to her.

"Congragotham anellun..."

Something firm, wet and cold touched her naked leg.

"Orellius carpthium selleras..."

The wind picked up again and swirled all around her as all the shadows of night drew to her on the beach of Crystal Lake. The greenwood of the forest darkened inside, growing hot with the touch of the evil seeping in through the window Pamela had opened. The water of the lake slowly began to churn and boil, the fish inside spasming and dying from the heat. Algae and muck stirred from the lake bottom and rose up as she recited the words.

"Negethum noriuelles," she cried out, blood suddenly gushing from her nose, eyes and mouth "Killias boratus..."

The voices squealed with delight.

Her eyes opened suddenly and she spoke the final words, "Sarithai conharum dei!"

And then it was done. The lake was quite and calm again.

Pamela looked down and saw a book beside her. A glowing blue mist swirled around it, whisping about lazily before evaporating into nothing. The earth had sent her a book, but it was a book like none she had ever seen before. It was gnarled and weathered, the cover and binding a tanned hide of some sort, stitched together in such a way that it formed an angry, demented face. She could see what looked like eyes staring at her from the cover of the book, a screaming maw open and wide just below them.

She touched the book. The cover felt like flesh, somehow warm as though blood were still pumping through veins beneath it. Her fingers felt cold and distant from her hands as she picked the book up and held it. When it opened by itself, the pages flipping by and fluttering like the wings of ancient butterfly, she couldn't breath or speak. In the blur of texts and pictures she could see horrific creatures inked in blood. It had to be blood. No ink ever dried such a dark, bloody brown against paper.

"Say the words," the voices whispered to her, "Say the words."

Pamela Voorhees looked into Crystal Lake and finally, completely understood. A calm fell over her as she placed her palm on the open page of text. Though it had been written in a foreign, long forgotten dialect she read the words as though she had been born speaking the language. As the phrases and incantations left the flesh of her lips, she could feel the heat and the power they invoked from the world beyond.

"Gorethum, alacartum alghanick menthum," she said, "Barrius robbartuh an samiahl areum thenum memman rohdsilias."

At first, nothing happened.

The water remained flat and still as blackened glass. She waited, her breath held and her eyes unblinking. Several birds flew low over the water, squawking. They cruised along and Pamela felt her hopes sink. And then, they began dropping from the air and splashing into the water, wings flapping erratically. Something in the water, something far below in the very blackest depths of the lake moved. It moved and dislodged enough air from dead lungs to make some bubbles on the surface. Pamela saw them and her heart jumped in her chest.

"Gorethum, alacartum alghanick menthum," she cried as the water began steadily to bubble, "Barrius robbartuh an samiahl areum thenum memman rohdsilias!"

The spirits in the woods clamored around, spinning and tumbling with invisible hateful glee as the dark magic of the world beyond found a new vessel to travel in. An unnatural marrying of dead flesh and the living evil from the foul places of the earth began in the shadows of Crystal Lake. The water around the unholy union superheated and began to boil. The surface over the hot spot spouted and foamed, turning red with blood.

Pamela sat back, her lips drawn back in a crazed leer.

Her son was coming back to her. She could feel him returning to her, even from the watery grave his friends had sent him to. She could feel the rage inside her find a focused point of clarity that she had never known before. It consumed her and filled her with such a malevolent purpose.

"Come to me," she whispered to her dead son, "Come..."

The children could never be trusted. Not a single one of them. She had seen them all running about before her boy drowned, smiling and innocent and putting on such a face of complete benignity that even she had been fooled. That false face they presented hid their wet, damp unions and their lovemaking and their sweaty climaxes, all so important that even the screams of dying boy were of no importance.

Pamela stretched her hands to the sky and laughed, half crying and half overjoyed. The water in the middle of the lake was spewing red offal into the sky, glowing from the light of the hell unleashing just below the surface. Her nipples grew hard in the cool air. She was no longer herself, lost in the seductive chasm of the nameless evil.

A cold hand touched her mind and she turned to see a phantom apparition, alien to her yet oh so familiar.

"My boy," she whispered, "My special, special boy..."

Friday the 13th would never, ever be the same again. Jason Voorhees was dead, and yet he was no longer dead.

Pamela smiled, "My special boy..."

* * *

Dark Hollow, Michigan

Friday, August 13th 2005

Janey Paulsen waited patiently, alone, on a bench in the Dark Hollow city park.

It wasn't her strong suit, and typically when given the choice between waiting or moving on to something more interesting, she left more tracks than any one woman in the history of impatience. Still, even as a cool breeze rustled the branches of the slowly turning oak trees, shaking loose scores of the first auburn orange fall she knew that this just might be worth the wait. After all, it wasn't every day that the captain of the football team asked you to meet him in the park.

Janey had been filled with a wonderful anxiety ever since Tyler had left her a note asking her to be here (by the second picnic table near the mouth of the river trail, no less). She drummed her fingers on the green enamel coated wood of the bench as evening gave way to dusky night. Part of her felt like a giddy little school girl, though being a high school senior and physically as far from little as a woman could get, she let herself revel in the anticipation.

'He's not the kind of guy who dates outside his click,' her friend Renee Alexander had warned her, 'It's probably a joke.'

Janey could see her point. Tyler Cantrell usually surrounded himself with girls like Renee, not herself. Women who were thin and perky and situated a little higher up the social ladder than she was. It wasn't that Janey was fat, but by the often constrictive and severely skewed standards of the new millennium, she was considered obese.

She looked down at her clothes. She thought she looked good in them, a simple white blouse that complimented her considerable bust while hiding her modest midsection. The jeans she wore were a dark blue and hugged her full curves. The thick blessing of blonde hair she had inherited from her mother was pulled back in sexy do that made her classically beautiful face both radiant and attractive. Anyone could have told a passerby to Dark Hollow that Janey was gorgeous, but of course "for a fat girl" always followed that statement as nighttime followed day.

It wasn't fair and it wasn't at all kind, but it was also the mentality of her peers. Obsession with media-dictated perfection left little room for a woman with any true fluidity to her form. It used to bother Janey to no end, even to the point of trying to puke her meals (that lasted about a week before she fell into her mother's arms, weeping and sick to her stomach). Her freshman and sophomore years seemed to be an endless parade of fat jokes upon fat jokes, some subtler than others.

Through it all had been two things: her friendship with Renee and her secret crush on Tyler Cantrell. Both of these special relationships had sustained her like a lifeline in the middle of storm, keeping her afloat and keeping her sane. She had never expected Tyler to notice her, let alone talk to her in any capacity. Her love for him had been sufficed enough to remain at a distance. She figured that's all it would ever be.

But then came the note.

Despite all her reservations about trusting people, she had come here and waited for the man of her dreams. Her heart was skipping a bit, and she knew that at any moment she might wake up in her bed. If it was a dream, she hoped it end after he had kissed her. After all, the only times prior to this that Tyler had touched her was in the hot, sensual playground of her dreams.

"Janey?"

She jumped and looked to her left. Tyler walked out of the shadows, his blue and yellow letterman's jacket bright in the dim light. His loose fitting jeans, white t-shirt and matching sneakers complimented his tall, muscular frame. He was an All-American boy, right down to his corn-fed good looks and head full of dark, wavy hair. He smiled at her, that same sexy little grin he got on the football field when his helmet came off on the sidelines and the team was kicking the opposition all the way back to their goal posts.

"Hi Tyler," she said timidly and stood up.

"How are you?" he walked up to her and actually embraced her.

"I'm fine," she smiled. She was better than fine. She thought she might die from an overdose of pure unadulterated happiness.

"I guess you're wondering why I asked you out here?" he smiled.

"Yeah," she said nervously, "A little."

"Well," he began and sat down on the bench, motioning for her to join him, "I have this problem see..."

She couldn't help but let her eyes fall to his muscular chest, somehow rippling even under his thin t-shirt. She said, "What is it?"

"I have a crush on this girl," Tyler said, "And she doesn't know it all. She's not like any other girl I've seen before."

"She sounds special," Janey replied, her smile still broad but her heart sinking. He was going to ask her to talk to a friend for him. She knew it. The luster began to fall away as she listened.