Chapter 41: Witch Poison

Chapter 41: Chapter 41: Witch Poison

Chapter 41: Witch Poison

Axel Vance stared at the overturned chair and the supposedly mystical old woman lying on the floor, and the corner of his mouth twitched. A few minutes earlier, she had looked like someone who could predict the future by glancing at his shadow, yet one look at Jason Voorhees’s regenerating bones had knocked every trace of mystery out of her. Axel suddenly wondered whether coming here had actually been a good idea.

The curtain separating the back room from the grocery store was violently pulled aside before Axel could help her up. Paquita Sanchez rushed inside and cried, "Grandma, what happened?" She stopped the instant she saw the bones on the table, where thin strands of fresh tissue were slowly crawling across the yellowed surfaces.

Paquita’s face went pale as she looked from the writhing remains to Axel. "What is that thing, and why did you bring it into our store?" Her grandmother had already grabbed the table leg and pulled herself upright, though she deliberately kept as much distance from the bag as possible.

"I’m fine, Paquita," the old woman said while brushing dust from her clothes. "Go back to the front and let me speak with him alone." Paquita tried to protest, but one stern look from her grandmother made it clear the discussion was not optional.

Paquita gave Jason’s bones one final horrified glance before retreating through the curtain. Her grandmother returned to her chair but positioned it noticeably farther away from the table than before. All traces of her earlier playful mysticism had vanished from her expression.

"Where did you get those?" she asked.

Axel pointed generally toward the road leading out of town. "Crystal Lake. They belonged to a very large man wearing a hockey mask."

The grandmother’s face changed immediately.

"Jason Voorhees?"

Axel nodded. "So you do know him." Hearing the name without needing to explain anything convinced him that the old woman knew far more about Crystal Lake than most people in town.

She remained silent for several seconds before looking down at Jason’s regenerating bones. "To explain this, I need to tell you about something I learned when I was young. People around here sometimes lazily called it voodoo, but that name was thrown at almost every unfamiliar folk practice involving spirits."

Axel folded his arms and waited.

The grandmother continued, "What I learned came from an elderly spiritual practitioner who helped people with protective charms, bindings, and rituals meant to communicate with the dead. The tradition itself was not evil, but like any knowledge involving human remains and the soul, someone determined enough could twist parts of it into something terrible."

Axel’s mind immediately returned to the cult operating through Shark Renovation Company. They too had claimed to combine occult practices with experiments involving souls and human bodies. He was beginning to dislike how often different supernatural problems seemed to borrow pieces from the same dangerous toolbox.

The grandmother tapped one finger against the table. "Some old traditions even used the idea of a zombie for a person whose will had been bound or controlled by another. That does not mean every story about walking corpses came from the same practice, and what happened to Jason is far beyond anything I was originally taught."

"Then how did he end up like this?" Axel asked.

The old woman closed her eyes.

"His mother came to me."

Axel’s expression sharpened. "Pamela Voorhees?"

She nodded slowly.

The grandmother’s voice became quieter. "Pamela believed Jason had drowned at Camp Crystal Lake, and grief had hollowed her out. She knelt in front of me and begged for anything that might allow her son to return."

Axel looked toward the bag.

"You taught her."

The grandmother lowered her eyes. "Part of a binding ritual, yes. She promised she only wanted her boy back and swore nobody else would be harmed."

Axel stared at her without speaking for several seconds. "That promise worked out incredibly well. Crystal Lake has enough bodies attached to it that people call the place Camp Blood."

"I know," the grandmother replied bitterly. She looked older than she had moments earlier, and the confidence in her voice disappeared.

She explained that by the time she realized Pamela had taken the ritual much further than intended, stopping her had become almost impossible. "I tried to intervene, but I suffered a stroke around that period and spent a long time unable to walk or even leave my bed. By the time I recovered enough to understand what had happened, Crystal Lake already had its curse."

Axel sighed because assigning blame would not solve the immediate problem. Jason’s bones were regenerating on the table while Freddy Krueger was attacking children in their dreams, so he had more urgent concerns than judging mistakes made years ago. "Fine. Tell me how to permanently stop him."

The grandmother looked toward the remains again. "Jason’s resurrection is anchored somewhere near Crystal Lake. Pamela created a ritual site, and something at its center continues feeding the bond even after everything you did to his body."

"So I find the site and destroy it."

"Yes, but that alone may not be enough," she replied. "Break the central focus first, then burn these bones together with whatever ritual materials remain there. Only after both parts are destroyed should the binding finally collapse."

She opened a drawer beneath the table and removed a strange pendant made from a polished piece of bone wrapped in old cord. The grandmother placed it carefully in Axel’s palm and explained that the charm reacted to the same kind of ritual energy Pamela had used. "The closer you get to the anchor, the warmer this should become."

Axel turned the pendant between his fingers. "That would have saved me a lot of time earlier." He slipped it around his neck and then looked back at Jason’s bones, where several more strands of flesh had already appeared.

"One thing still bothers me," Axel said. "I dissolved nearly all of Jason’s flesh in Holy Water, but the bones barely reacted. Why?"

The grandmother seemed relieved to receive a question she could answer confidently. "Because your Holy Water is attacking the corruption layered around him, not necessarily the force holding the original binding together. Hatred, violence, death, and whatever has accumulated in Jason over the years can be burned away, but Pamela’s ritual was anchored in obsessive maternal attachment."

Axel raised an eyebrow.

She quickly added, "That does not make the ritual good. I am saying the spiritual source is different, so trying to wash it away as though it were merely an evil spirit will only destroy what grows around the anchor." Axel accepted that explanation as her interpretation rather than universal theology, especially since the evidence in front of him supported at least part of it.

He began repacking Jason’s bones into the heavy bag. Before closing it, another thought occurred to him, and he asked, "Did you ever teach this kind of ritual to anyone besides Pamela?" The grandmother leaned back and genuinely searched her memory.

"There was one other woman from town," she finally said. "Vera. I only taught her a few little protective and binding tricks, though, nothing dangerous."

Axel paused with one hand on the bag.

"Vera?"

The old woman waved dismissively. "Nothing to worry about. Compared with what Pamela learned, Vera’s little tricks were harmless."

Axel slowly tied the bag closed. "That is very reassuring." For some reason, he did not feel reassured at all.

He lifted the heavy bag and pulled aside the curtain leading back into the store. At almost exactly that moment, the front door flew open and Lionel Cosgrove stumbled inside as if something were chasing him. His clothes were disheveled, his face was soaked in sweat, and terror had replaced the timid awkwardness Axel remembered from their earlier encounters.

Paquita shot out from behind the counter the moment she recognized him. "Lionel!" She wrapped both arms around him before asking excitedly, "Did your mother finally agree to us being together?"

Lionel stood there struggling to breathe. After several seconds, he shook his head and said, "I don’t think she can control me anymore." Paquita’s hopeful expression disappeared immediately.

"What happened?"

Lionel grabbed her arms as though he needed something solid to keep himself standing. The story spilled out incoherently: his mother’s worsening condition, the raw meat, the nurse, the severed arm, the neighbors, Uncle Les, and the growing number of infected people wandering through his home. Paquita’s face became increasingly horrified as every new detail made the situation worse.

Axel remained half-hidden behind the curtain until one particular detail caught his attention.

He stepped into the store so quickly that Lionel jumped.

Axel grabbed Lionel by the shoulder and asked, "What is your mother’s name?"

Lionel blinked at him. "What?"

"Your mother. Her name."

"Vera."

Axel froze.

He slowly turned his head toward the back room.

The grandmother was sitting behind the table pretending not to hear anything.

Axel looked back at Lionel, then toward the old woman again. "Harmless little tricks?"

The grandmother gave him an uneasy smile.

Axel’s expression went completely flat. "Your harmless little tricks apparently turned one house into a zombie convention."

Before anyone could respond, a heavy crash echoed somewhere outside.

Everyone in the grocery store went silent.

A second impact followed.

Then came the growls.

Low, guttural voices began echoing along the street, distant at first but rapidly growing closer. Lionel’s face drained of color because he recognized the sounds immediately.

"They got out."

Axel did not waste another second.

He dropped Jason’s bag beside the counter, rushed back into the rear room, and lifted Paquita’s grandmother over one shoulder before she could understand what was happening. "What are you doing?" she shouted while Axel carried her through the curtain.

"Saving time."

He grabbed Jason’s bones again with his free hand.

Axel looked toward Lionel and Paquita. "You two, get to my truck. We’re leaving."

Neither argued.

Lionel grabbed Paquita’s hand, and the pair rushed through the front door toward Axel’s Ford pickup. Behind them, the growling from the street became louder, accompanied by breaking glass and terrified shouting.

Axel followed with Paquita’s protesting grandmother over one shoulder and Jason Voorhees’s regenerating bones in the other hand.

His quiet vacation at Crystal Lake was officially over.

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