RETURN TO CRYSTAL LAKE
CHAPTER 21- A SHADOW IN THE NIGHT


Krista sat in an old, beat-up chair that was left behind in cabin five, staring out of the cabin's only window into nothing but darkness, wondering where her friends could be.

The rain beat down on the old window, and every once in a while, thunder roared in the night sky.

Kevin was lying down on the bed sleeping. He's had a rough two days with the car wreck and that long hike up here, Krista thought to herself.

I can't take it anymore, Krista thought to herself. There has to be somebody in this camp.

Then, she started to become nervous. She hated to admit it, but she actually missed Nikki, even after what she did. She couldn't stay mad at her sister for long.

She kind of figured that Scott and Ashley were probably having sex in some cabin and Emmy and Sean were probably doing the same thing somewhere else, but Nikki had no one and that worried her.

Maybe she got lost, she thought. After all, Nikki isn't the smartest person in the world and it is very easy to lose track of yourself in these woods.

Then she saw it.

Sean's yellow poncho that he had in his bag.

Krista quickly threw the poncho on and grabbed Kevin's flashlight off of the floor. She also saw a pencil in his bag, so she wrote a note on a gum wrapper to tell Kevin where she was at, so he didn't worry.

The note said: "I went out to find Nikki. I'll be right back. Love Krista."

She placed the note on the middle of the floor where she knew he'd be able to see it and then took off into the stormy night.

She turned on the flashlight and swept it over the entire campgrounds. It was a Mag-Lite flashlight, so she was able to see pretty far, even in the storm.

Krista hollered out at first only for Nikki, and then for the rest of the group.

There was no response.

She made a complete sweep of the horseshoe of cabins before considering checking down by the lake. But then she figured even this group wasn't crazy enough to be near a body of water in a thunderstorm, so she decided to check each of the main cabins individually.

She checked cabins six through ten, but found no trace of any human activity, so she circled back the way she came to check four through one, hoping that they were in a main cabin and not one of them creepy backwoods cabins.

At one point, Krista just wanted to turn around and run back to Kevin, but she really missed her sister, and she just couldn't shake the feeling that something happened, and Nikki needed her.

As she circled back around, her heart skipped a beat as she spotted the figure of man slowly making his way through the woods coming straight in her direction.

Krista didn't know what to do.

The man didn't look like Scott or Sean. She managed to stutter out, "Who are you?", but the man didn't respond, he just kept walking faster and faster toward her.

Krista stumbled backward and tripped over a log, dropping her flashlight.

She tried to get up, but it was too late. The man was already over top of her grabbing her with his powerful hands as Krista screamed at the top of her lungs.

"Hey calm down, it's just me," said a familiar voice.

It was Kevin.

"Kevin, oh my god! You scared the hell out of me!" Krista said, relieved to see him.

"Well you scared the hell out of me, too," Kevin replied, hugging her.

"Whenever I woke up, I almost had a heart attack when I didn't see you in the cabin," Kevin stated.

"Aww, I'm sorry, but I just couldn't take not knowing where everyone was. I am totally like the most impatient person in the world, and when I found Sean's poncho, I decided to just take a quick walk around camp seeing if I could round anybody up," Krista replied.

"Besides, I did leave you a note so you wouldn't worry," Krista said, matter-of-factly.

"Oh wow, could that note of gotten any bigger?" Kevin joked. "I mean it was nearly pitch black in the cabin as it is and you expect me to find that little tiny gum wrapper?"

"Oh, well sorry, but it seems as if you did find it after all huh?" Krista replied jokingly.

A crack of lightning that seemed to strike near them cut off their conversation and brought them back to reality and the task at hand.

"We have to get moving, this storm is getting bad," Kevin suggested. "Where all did you check?"

"Only the cabins on this side of the horseshoe," Krista answered. "I didn't check the ones over there," shining her flashlight through the trees to the other side of the camp.

"Alright, let's go check them out real fast then head back to my cabin," Kevin said assuringly. "Everybody is fine. I mean what could happen to us out here?"

Kevin could always sense when girls were getting worried, and he was always able to calm them down before things got out of hand.

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Krista said, grabbing his hand and feeling much more comfortable now that Kevin was with her.

The two made then made their way back around the horseshoe of cabins.

The rain didn't let up one bit since it started about an hour ago, and it beat down hard on the couple as they walked around the cabins, searching for any sign of their friends.

Thunder rumbled in the sky as if the heavens were fighting against hell. The wind blew the tree tops hard, and the water of Crystal Lake was white-capped and the tides collided with the shore, eroding away more ground. Even the animals needed to take shelter from this fearsome storm, hiding in their homes. Yet, there they were, Kevin and Krista, fighting the storm, not thinking about anything, bent on finding their friends.

"Damn, no one in this cabin either," Kevin said as they closed the door of cabin four.

They started to make their way over to cabin three, when Krista spotted something up head.

"Hey look, what's that?" she asked, shining her flashlight on what looked like a large stick sticking up from the ground.

Kevin also noticed it and ran up to see what it was, and they were shocked at what they found.

It was an ax, stuck in the ground.

"What is this doing here?" Krista asked, shocked and confused.

"I don't know," Kevin replied, "but if this is some kind of trick, it's not very funny at all." He was equally shocked and confused, but also angry that someone would play a joke like this.

"Kevin, they wouldn't do something like this," Krista said, worried.

"We've gotta find them, fast," she added. "You go check cabin two, and I'll check out cabin three."

"Alright, meet me over in cabin two if you don't find anything," Kevin replied, running off toward cabin two.

Krista anxiously jogged up to the porch of cabin three, when she remembered that it was Nikki's cabin.

She approached the door, but felt like she stepped in a puddle or something. She shined her flashlight down, but it just looked like really dark dirty water.

She wondered for a second how the puddle could have gotten there, but quickly abandoned the thought and opened the heavy cabin door, praying that Nikki was inside.

The cabin was dark inside, but she could tell that her sister wasn't there. She shined her flashlight around, hoping to find some sign of her sister, but found none. She could still feel wetness underneath her shoes, but thought that there must have been a leak in the roof or something.

Then she noticed something odd.

Nikki's nightstand was knocked over and her stuff was all over the floor. This was so unlike Nikki, Krista thought. Nikki was always such a clean freak. She would never let her stuff just lay around like this.

"Krista!" she heard Kevin yell from cabin two. She peered out the window looking into cabin two to see what the problem was.

She saw Kevin with the most awful look on face, almost as if he just saw a ghost.

Then she realized he was pointing at something behind her.

Something at the only side of the cabin that she hadn't checked.

Krista quickly spun around and stared right into the face of her sister, hanging from the back of the cabin door, with a knife straight through her beautiful face.

Krista then let out a loud blood-curdling scream and dropped to her knees and started to cry.


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