Chapter 33: Strange Town

Chapter 33: Chapter 33: Strange Town

Chapter 33: Strange Town

The next morning, Axel Vance loaded seven or eight children into his Ford pickup and headed toward the small town nearest Crystal Lake. Since Woody expected him to remain here for at least a few months, Axel saw no reason to keep living in a half-empty ranger cabin with worn bedding and barely enough supplies. The children filled the truck with nonstop chatter as the pickup bounced along the dirt road.

Axel glanced at them through the rearview mirror and smiled. "All right, listen up. When we reach the grocery store, everybody gets to choose one snack, and only one." The announcement immediately produced a deafening cheer that made Axel regret not setting a volume limit.

The pickup eventually stopped in front of what appeared to be the only general grocery store in town. The doors had barely opened before the children poured out and rushed inside like they had been released from prison. Axel shook his head, followed at a slower pace, and started filling a cart with blankets, cleaning supplies, canned food, soap, batteries, and everything else the camp desperately needed.

He had just picked up a new comforter when he heard Russell complaining from the next aisle. "Hey, watch it! You stepped on my foot." A nervous male voice immediately answered, "Sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to."

Axel rounded the shelf and found Russell facing a thin young man who looked exhausted enough to have missed several nights of sleep. The stranger’s clothes were wrinkled, his posture was hunched, and he kept his eyes lowered as though he expected trouble from everyone around him. "Everything okay?" Axel asked as he approached.

Russell waved dismissively. "Yeah, he just stepped on me by accident." Axel nodded and offered the stranger his hand. "Axel Vance. I’m the new forest ranger working around Crystal Lake."

The young man looked at Axel’s hand but never took it. "Lionel," he muttered, still refusing to make eye contact. "My mother’s looking for me, so I should go." Before Axel could ask anything else, Lionel slipped around him and hurried toward the exit.

Axel watched him leave and raised an eyebrow. "Strange guy." Russell leaned closer with the casual confidence of a child discussing local weather and whispered, "He’s just a mama’s boy. This town has lots of weird people."

That answer interested Axel more than Russell probably intended. Crystal Lake already had enough history to make any reasonable person cautious, and now the nearby town apparently considered behavior like Lionel’s ordinary. Axel made a mental note of the name before returning to his shopping.

Once everything had been paid for, Axel stood near the entrance and raised his voice. "Everybody over here. Time to load the truck." The children immediately came running from different aisles, formed something resembling a crooked line, and gave him a collection of ridiculous salutes while trying not to drop their snacks.

Axel laughed and pointed toward the bags. "Good enough. Carry what you can and don’t crush anything." The children grabbed lighter packages and marched toward the parking lot with exaggerated seriousness.

Just as Axel prepared to follow them, an elderly voice called from behind the counter. "Wait a moment, young man." Axel turned and saw an old woman wearing a shawl emerge from the back of the store, her sharp eyes fixed directly on him.

She approached without hesitation and took Axel’s hand before he could decide whether to move away. "Interesting," she murmured while studying his palm. "There’s an unusual amount of spiritual energy around you."

Axel’s expression remained calm, but his attention sharpened immediately. After everything he had encountered, he was no longer willing to assume anyone claiming supernatural sensitivity was automatically a fraud. "You can actually sense something?"

The woman smiled mysteriously. "Why don’t you visit my little cottage sometime? I could lay out the tarot cards and tell you what kind of trouble has attached itself to you." Her tone suggested she already suspected the answer would be interesting.

Axel gently pulled his hand free and pointed through the window toward the pickup. Several children were already arguing because one had decided somebody else’s snack looked larger. "Maybe another day. Right now I have a truck full of children preparing to start a civil war over potato chips."

The old woman laughed softly but did not press him. Axel joined the children, loaded the last bags, and started the engine. As he pulled away, he checked the rearview mirror and noticed the woman still standing outside the store, watching his truck disappear down the street.

At the next intersection, Axel noticed another odd sight. Several high-school students were gathered near the sidewalk talking quietly, and every one of them looked exhausted. Dark circles surrounded their eyes, shoulders sagged, and more than one teenager yawned repeatedly while trying to remain focused on the conversation.

Axel glanced toward Russell, who had claimed the passenger seat largely because nobody else wanted to argue with him about it. "Russell, do people around here ever talk about anything strange happening in town?" The boy tore open his potato chips and thought about the question.

"A new KFC opened."

Axel stared at him. "Not what I meant."

Russell stuffed several chips into his mouth and nodded as understanding finally arrived. "Oh, weird stuff. Yeah, there’s tons of that."

Axel waited.

Russell began counting on his fingers. "There are some big old houses outside town that people don’t like going near, an abandoned factory, and one street where almost nobody lives anymore even though strange people still show up there sometimes." He swallowed and added, "Crystal Lake used to be off-limits too, but the adults started letting people come back this year."

Axel looked through the windshield and sighed inwardly. He had come here hoping for trees, clean air, and maybe one hockey-masked killer at worst. Instead, the town was already beginning to look like a catalog of unexplained problems.

They returned to camp by early afternoon and carried the supplies into the cabins. The children had spent most of their energy running around the grocery store, so by the time everything was unloaded, several were barely keeping their eyes open. Ethel took one look at them and ordered everyone back to their cabins for an afternoon nap.

With the camp temporarily quiet, Axel decided to explore the lake properly. He followed an overgrown trail through the woods, pushing past weeds and branches until he reached sections of old rusted fencing that had clearly been standing there for years. Some of the wire was bent and broken, suggesting people had crossed through long before him.

One section made Axel stop. A dark reddish-brown stain still clung to the rusted wire, old enough that he could not tell exactly when it had been left there. Axel studied it for a moment and thought that if even half the stories about Jason Voorhees were true, there was no shortage of possibilities for where it had come from.

He continued until the trees finally opened around the shore of Crystal Lake. Afternoon sunlight glittered across the surface and made the water look almost unnaturally peaceful, nothing like the infamous killing ground Axel remembered from the movies. For several minutes, he simply sat near the shoreline and enjoyed the breeze.

A branch snapped behind him.

Axel turned instantly.

A young man wearing camouflage and outdoor gear stood several yards away with a hunting rifle pointed directly at him. The stranger looked to be in his early twenties, but the weapon trembled slightly in his hands despite the threatening posture. "Who are you?" he demanded. "What are you doing here?"

Axel slowly rose without making any sudden move toward his own weapons. "Just looking around. You?" His calmness seemed to make the stranger even more nervous.

"This is private property," the young man said. "You crossed into a restricted section."

Axel glanced around the woods. "Interesting. I must have missed all the signs."

"The sign doesn’t matter." The young man pushed the rifle forward. "The gun does. Leave now, or I’ll shoot."

He never had the chance.

Axel moved before the threat was finished, crossing the short distance fast enough that the young man barely had time to blink. One hand struck the rifle aside while the other twisted the weapon free, and within seconds Axel had opened the action and removed the ammunition.

The stranger stumbled backward while clutching his wrist. Axel inspected the rifle, made sure it was empty, then tossed it back with the muzzle pointed safely away. "Now that neither of us is threatening to shoot the other, maybe we can have a normal conversation."

The young man caught the empty rifle awkwardly and sank onto the ground, still staring at Axel in disbelief. "My name’s Rob Dier. I live around the area, and sometimes I come into these woods to hunt."

Axel nodded toward the lake. "That doesn’t explain why you’re guarding this place like somebody’s about to invade it." Rob’s expression changed immediately, and the nervousness gave way to something much heavier.

He looked toward Crystal Lake for several seconds before answering. "My sister’s name was Sandra. She died around here years ago." Axel’s eyes narrowed slightly because that name fit another piece of the Friday the 13th story he remembered.

Rob tightened his grip around the empty hunting rifle. "The police treated the killer like the case was over, and people around here keep saying Jason Voorhees is dead or gone. I don’t believe them."

He stared across the water.

"So I keep coming back."

Rob’s voice hardened.

"I’m going to find out what really happened to my sister."

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