Chapter 40: Lionel in Despair

Chapter 40: Chapter 40: Lionel in Despair

Chapter 40: Lionel in Despair

Lionel Cosgrove shot upright in bed with cold sweat soaking through the back of his shirt. The pain Freddy had inflicted inside the nightmare was gone from his body, yet the memory remained vivid enough that Lionel almost wished he had never awakened. A night of supernatural torture was terrible, but opening his eyes only meant returning to the nightmare waiting inside his own house.

He dragged himself out of bed and headed toward the kitchen because preparing breakfast for his mother had been part of his routine for as long as he could remember. The moment he entered, Lionel stopped because the refrigerator door was hanging wide open and Vera Cosgrove was bent over the freezer. She had both hands around a raw steak and was tearing pieces from it with her teeth.

Vera slowly turned when she heard him, revealing cloudy eyes and dried blood around her mouth. Instead of greeting her son, a wet guttural noise escaped from somewhere deep in her throat. Lionel’s stomach tightened, but after everything he had witnessed over the last few days, even this was becoming horrifyingly familiar.

He walked to the sink, filled a glass with cold water, and drank it in one long swallow. The chill helped settle his nerves enough for him to sit at the dining table and force down his own breakfast while Vera swayed in the chair opposite him. Her mouth remained stained red from the raw meat, but at least she no longer seemed interested in criticizing every small thing he did.

That realization disturbed Lionel almost as much as Vera’s appearance. His mother had controlled, insulted, and smothered him for most of his life, yet now that she had lost enough humanity to stop berating him, part of Lionel actually felt relieved. He lowered his eyes toward his plate and quietly continued eating.

The doorbell suddenly rang.

Lionel nearly jumped out of his chair.

Another sharp ring followed, and his spoon slipped from his fingers and clattered against the plate. Lionel immediately grabbed Vera by the shoulders and tried steering her toward the bedroom before whoever stood outside could see what she had become. She resisted with surprising strength, forcing him to struggle for several seconds before he finally managed to move her out of the kitchen.

The knocking became louder.

"I’m coming!" Lionel called while hurriedly wiping blood from the counter and closing the refrigerator. He drew a deep breath, tried to make himself look normal, and opened the front door.

A middle-aged woman stood outside carrying a medical bag and wearing the practical uniform of a visiting home-health nurse. "Good morning. I’m here for Mrs. Cosgrove’s scheduled wellness visit." Lionel felt the blood drain from his face because a medical professional was exactly the last person he wanted examining Vera.

"My mother isn’t feeling very well today," Lionel said quickly. "Maybe you should come back another time." The nurse frowned at him and replied that if Vera was sick, that was even more reason for her to be examined.

Before Lionel could invent another excuse, she stepped past him.

He was too timid to physically stop her.

The nurse entered Vera’s bedroom and found the older woman standing motionless near the bed. "Mrs. Cosgrove, how are you feeling this morning?" she asked while setting down her medical bag, but Vera merely stared at her with those murky eyes.

The nurse sighed as if dealing with an uncooperative elderly patient and removed a stethoscope. She stepped closer, bent slightly, and reached toward Vera’s chest. That was when Vera exploded into motion.

She lunged.

Her teeth sank into the nurse’s arm.

The woman screamed so loudly that Lionel froze in the hallway.

Blood immediately soaked through the sleeve as the nurse tried desperately to pull herself free. Lionel rushed forward, grabbed Vera around the shoulders, and pulled with everything he had, but his mother’s infected body possessed strength that made no sense for a decaying older woman.

"Mother, stop!"

Vera refused to release her bite.

Lionel panicked.

With no better idea, he shoved himself between them and kicked the nurse away while dragging Vera in the opposite direction. The sudden force finally separated the two women, but Lionel stared in horror when he realized part of the nurse’s arm had remained in Vera’s mouth.

The limb had been torn off around the elbow.

Vera dropped into a crouch and immediately began chewing on it.

"Oh my God!" the nurse shrieked while clutching the mangled stump. "Your mother is insane!"

Lionel’s entire body began trembling. "I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll call an ambulance." He stumbled toward the hallway, trying to remember where the nearest phone was while blood spread across the bedroom floor.

After only a few steps, Lionel realized the screaming had stopped.

He froze.

Slowly, he looked back.

The nurse was no longer writhing from pain. She stood unnaturally still and stared down at the place where her arm had been severed, while the heavy bleeding had already slowed to almost nothing. Lionel watched her skin turn pale and her posture change, and he immediately knew what was happening.

"Ma’am?" he whispered. "Are you still with me?"

She did not answer.

Lionel sank onto the sofa and buried his face in both hands.

"It’s over," he muttered. "Everything is completely over."

The doorbell rang again.

Lionel stared toward the front door with disbelief.

Under normal circumstances, this house could go months without receiving an unexpected visitor, yet today people seemed determined to arrive one after another. He dragged himself upright, opened the door, and found a well-dressed middle-aged couple waiting outside.

"Mr. Cosgrove?" the woman asked politely. "We’re with the neighborhood association. Your mother recently submitted paperwork regarding membership and property matters, so we’re here to complete the home inspection."

Lionel nearly laughed from despair.

"My mother really isn’t available today."

The man looked past him into the old house with mild disapproval. "This will only take a few minutes."

Before Lionel could stop them, both stepped inside.

He weakly followed.

Less than a minute later, another scream echoed through the house.

Lionel returned to the sofa soon afterward.

Now Vera, the infected nurse, and the two neighborhood-association representatives were wandering through the rooms with dull eyes and occasional low growls. Lionel stared at them and tried to decide whether he was witnessing a disease, a curse, or some combination of both.

The doorbell rang for a third time.

Lionel slowly raised his head.

"You’ve got to be kidding me."

This time the knocking came with impatient pounding.

Lionel opened the door and was immediately pushed aside by a large, heavyset man in expensive but gaudy clothes. Uncle Les strode into the house with several relatives and acquaintances behind him, already talking as though Lionel were merely an inconvenience.

"Where’s Vera?" Les demanded. "I’ve been saying for years that this house should have stayed in my side of the family." He looked around the entryway with open greed and added, "If she’s finally ready to discuss property, I’m not wasting the opportunity."

Lionel opened his mouth to warn him.

Nobody listened.

Several minutes later, Lionel was back on the sofa.

The house was now full of wandering figures.

Vera moved through the dining room.

The nurse drifted near the kitchen.

The neighborhood couple wandered aimlessly in the hallway.

Uncle Les and the others had joined them.

Lionel slowly looked from one infected person to another and noticed something that frightened him even more than the spreading mutation. None of them attacked him. Vera ignored him, the nurse passed within arm’s reach without reacting, and even the newly transformed relatives behaved as though Lionel did not exist.

"Why?" Lionel whispered.

He walked directly past one of them.

No response.

Lionel remembered Freddy repeatedly cutting him open in the nightmare only for every wound to close instantly. Then he remembered his mother’s strange behavior over the last several days, and the connection made him feel as though he were trapped inside something he could not understand.

He needed someone normal to talk to.

That thought immediately brought Paquita Sanchez to mind.

Only two days earlier, Lionel and Paquita had finally admitted what they felt for each other, only for Vera to appear and drag him home as though he were still a child. Lionel had been too frightened of his mother to resist, but now the house behind him contained something far worse than parental disapproval.

He made his decision.

Lionel locked the front door behind him and ran toward the grocery store.

At almost the same time, Axel Vance’s Ford pickup stopped outside that very store.

Axel climbed out carrying a heavy reinforced bag over one shoulder. Inside it, the bones of Jason Voorhees continued producing faint movements against the fabric despite everything Axel had already done to destroy them.

He entered the grocery store and found a young woman behind the counter resting her chin on one hand. She looked distracted and slightly unhappy, but the moment Axel approached, she straightened. Axel recognized her as someone he had seen briefly during his previous visit.

"Hi," Axel said. "I’m looking for the older woman who works around here. The one who reads tarot cards."

The young woman nodded. "My grandmother."

This was Paquita Sanchez.

"She’s in the back room," Paquita continued while pointing through a doorway behind the counter. "You can go in. She’s been acting like she’s expecting somebody all morning."

"That sounds promising."

Axel thanked her and headed through the doorway.

The small room beyond smelled faintly of incense, dried herbs, and old wood. The elderly woman from his previous visit sat upright behind a table with her hands folded neatly in front of her, looking so composed that Axel suspected she really had known he was coming.

"Child," she said before he could introduce himself, "you have finally returned."

Axel raised an eyebrow.

"You are carrying confusion with you," the old woman continued. "Something unnatural has crossed your path, and you do not know how to remove it."

Axel nodded slowly.

"That’s actually pretty accurate."

The grandmother smiled with quiet confidence. "Then sit down. Perhaps I can help you understand what troubles you."

Axel pulled the heavy bag from his shoulder.

"I was hoping you’d say that."

He dropped it onto the table with a solid thud.

The old woman’s smile weakened slightly.

Axel untied the opening.

"Here’s my problem."

He pulled the fabric aside and exposed Jason Voorhees’s bones.

Fine strands of new flesh had already begun spreading across several sections of the skeleton. Tiny red granulations clung to the bones like fresh roots, slowly rebuilding tissue that Axel had completely dissolved only a short time earlier.

The grandmother stared.

Her eyes widened.

The mystical calm vanished from her face.

"What the hell is THAT?"

She jerked backward so violently that the chair tipped over with her still in it.

Axel looked down at her from the other side of the table.

"So you’ve never seen one before?"

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