Chapter 48: Aftermath

Chapter 48: Chapter 48: Aftermath

Chapter 48: Aftermath

The chaos that had swallowed the town finally came to an end. Axel Vance stood beside the fire engine and released a long breath as the tension that had kept his entire body ready for another attack slowly faded. For the first time since Freddy Krueger appeared in the road, nothing nearby was trying to bite, stab, dismember, or drag him into a nightmare.

A muffled sob broke the strange post-battle silence. Axel turned toward the sound and found Paquita Sanchez kneeling on the pavement with Lionel Cosgrove’s severed right forearm clutched against her chest. Tears streamed down her face as she looked between the detached limb and Lionel’s empty sleeve. "Lionel, what are we supposed to do now?"

Lionel stood beside her looking completely helpless. He glanced at the mangled stump below his elbow, where jagged bone and torn tissue should have been producing catastrophic bleeding, yet only a limited amount of blood continued escaping. The pain remained terrible, but the unnatural condition of his body made the injury feel disturbingly unreal.

Axel had just started toward them when the fire engine’s passenger door opened. Paquita’s grandmother carefully climbed down and walked over with far less concern than everyone else seemed to think appropriate. "Paquita, why are you crying like somebody died?"

Paquita raised her tear-streaked face in disbelief. "Grandma, Lionel’s arm is lying in my lap." She looked back at Lionel and added miserably, "How is he supposed to eat, work, or do anything normally like this?"

The old woman examined Lionel’s injury and sighed. "His body isn’t normal anymore. Vera turned him into something close to a living bound effigy, so an injury like this isn’t necessarily permanent." The young volunteer firefighter standing nearby stared at her as though she had completely lost her mind.

"Ma’am, that is an arm," he said while pointing at the severed limb. "It came off." Paquita’s grandmother ignored his disbelief, held out both hands, and told her granddaughter to give her the forearm.

Paquita hesitated before carefully passing it over. Her grandmother brushed dirt from the severed limb with the same casual irritation someone might use on a dropped coat, then motioned for Lionel to come closer. Everyone fell silent as she aligned the exposed bone and torn tissue with the stump of his right arm.

Lionel immediately sucked in a sharp breath. The moment the two wounds touched, pain shot through him strongly enough to make his entire body tense. Paquita’s grandmother held the limb firmly in place and began murmuring a low ritual chant under her breath.

Something moved beneath Lionel’s skin.

Thin strands of new tissue extended from both sides of the wound and twisted together like living threads. Muscle reconnected, bone drew into alignment, and fresh skin slowly spread across the joining point until the horrific gap disappeared. Within moments, only a faint reddish line remained around Lionel’s forearm.

Lionel stared at his restored arm in disbelief. The agony had faded into a warm tingling sensation, so he cautiously moved his fingers before closing them into a fist. His hand responded perfectly.

Paquita covered her mouth as fresh tears filled her eyes. This time she threw both arms around her grandmother and whispered, "How did I never know you could do something like this?" The older woman patted her back and gave an offended little snort.

"When I tried teaching you some of this, who was the one saying old spiritual traditions were boring?" she asked. "You were more interested in learning guitar and listening to records." Paquita’s cheeks reddened as she admitted that she had assumed most of her grandmother’s practices were harmless superstition.

The grandmother shook her head and turned back toward Lionel. Freddy’s bladed glove had left several terrible wounds across his torso, although the earlier exposure to Holy Water had already stopped the worst bleeding and prevented the injuries from worsening. She placed her hands over each damaged area in turn and continued murmuring until the remaining wounds slowly closed.

Soon there was almost no visible evidence that Lionel had been repeatedly stabbed, cut open, or dismembered. Axel watched the process from several feet away with growing interest because the old woman had gone from falling out of her chair at the sight of Jason’s bones to reattaching limbs in less than a day. Whatever else she was, she clearly knew far more than she liked admitting.

Lionel flexed both hands again before looking toward Paquita. Something in his posture had changed now that Vera was finally gone, and the timid young man who constantly lowered his head seemed to have disappeared with her. He wrapped one arm around Paquita and said softly, "It feels like somebody finally took a weight off my chest."

Paquita leaned against him while Lionel continued, "From now on, I want to live my own life with you." He then turned toward Axel with an expression far steadier than the one Axel remembered from their first meeting in the grocery store. "Mr. Vance, thank you for putting my mother to rest. If you ever need my help, I won’t run away."

Axel gave him an amused smile and patted his shoulder. "Forget someday. I’m going to need you for the next several hours." Lionel blinked in confusion, and Axel pointed toward the devastated street behind them.

Broken windows, ruined vehicles, scattered debris, and damage from the supernatural battle stretched through the center of town. The fire engine itself had been battered during the fighting, Axel’s brand-new Ford pickup was practically scrap metal, and an entire outbreak had somehow begun inside Lionel’s house. "This isn’t a fairy tale where the monster disappears and everybody goes home," Axel said. "There are going to be police reports, statements, investigators, and a whole lot of people asking what happened."

Lionel’s confidence immediately began shrinking. "Am I going to jail?" he asked nervously. Axel put on his most serious expression and replied that since Vera had started the outbreak and Lionel was the closest surviving person connected to her, investigators were definitely going to have questions.

Lionel’s face turned white. "How bad are we talking?" Axel paused for effect before saying, "Hard to tell. Maybe they decide you masterminded the whole zombie apocalypse and give you life."

Lionel’s knees almost buckled.

Axel finally burst out laughing.

"Relax," he said. "I know people in the FBI, and I was standing here for most of this disaster, so you’re not explaining it alone." Axel looked Lionel over and added, "Besides, anybody who spends five minutes talking to you is going to have trouble believing you secretly planned the destruction of an entire town."

Lionel stared at him for several seconds before realizing he had been mocked. Paquita laughed weakly for the first time since the battle ended, while her grandmother shook her head at Axel’s sense of humor. Lionel muttered something about police officers being crueler than Freddy.

Axel’s expression became serious again as he looked toward the container holding Jason Voorhees’s bones. Freddy had been purified, Vera and the infected were gone, and the town was no longer being overrun, but Jason’s curse remained unfinished. "All right. We still have one problem left."

Paquita’s grandmother followed his gaze and nodded. "The ritual anchor." She looked toward the remains of Axel’s ruined Ford and added, "Paquita has a car. We can take hers back to Crystal Lake."

The young volunteer firefighter stayed behind to secure the station and wait for emergency services, while Lionel and Paquita insisted on accompanying Axel and the grandmother. Axel initially considered telling them to remain in town, but after watching Lionel fight Freddy with his own severed arm, he decided the young man had already earned the right to see the matter finished. They gathered Jason’s bones, the tracking charm, and whatever equipment Axel still needed before leaving for Crystal Lake.

The group eventually reached the wooded area around the lake and began following the strange bone charm Paquita’s grandmother had given Axel. It remained cool at first, then gradually warmed as they left the ordinary trails and pushed deeper into overgrown ground. After several wrong turns and a difficult hike through brush, the charm became almost hot against Axel’s palm.

They finally discovered a narrow opening hidden behind hanging vines and thick bushes. The entrance had clearly been dug by hand or with simple tools rather than formed naturally, while years of vegetation concealed it from anyone casually walking past. Axel pulled the vines aside and stared into the darkness. "Looks like Pamela really didn’t want visitors."

They entered carefully and soon reached a larger chamber farther inside. A crude altar made from stones gathered around Crystal Lake stood against one wall, while faded ritual symbols had been painted across the surrounding rock with dark pigment. A worn child’s toy rested in the center beside several old photographs.

Axel picked up one photograph and studied it. It showed a much younger Jason Voorhees beside Pamela Voorhees, long before Crystal Lake became synonymous with bloodshed. Whatever Pamela later became, the picture showed an ordinary mother standing beside her child.

Paquita’s grandmother released a long sigh. "What I taught her was never meant to create this." She moved closer to the altar and explained that the original rite had only been intended to let a grieving mother reach toward the spirit of a lost child one final time. "It should have ended with goodbye."

Her gaze moved across the distorted symbols surrounding the altar. "But Pamela refused to let go, and Jason carried his own fear and anger. Then she began killing innocent people, feeding more violence and obsession into something that was never designed to hold that much hatred."

Axel looked toward the bag containing Jason’s bones and finally understood why Holy Water had repeatedly destroyed the flesh without ending the regeneration. Jason himself was only one part of the curse, while the ritual site continued anchoring him to the world regardless of what happened to his body. Until the source was destroyed, beating him apart was little more than temporary maintenance.

Axel set the bag beside the altar and rolled his shoulders. "All right, then we finish this properly." He looked around the cave before adding, "Because I really don’t want to kill Jason for a third time."

Lionel swallowed and stepped farther away from the altar.

Axel grabbed the first ritual stone with both hands.

Then he began tearing the entire altar apart.

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