She didn’t mean to raise a killer.

She just wanted her son back.

The summer Jason drowned, the lake never stopped swallowing. Even now, when the mist hangs low and the cattails shiver against still water, some people say you can hear a boy crying beneath the surface. Others say it’s just the wind. They always say it’s just the wind.

But once, before the campfire stories and caution signs, before the number 13 became something mothers feared, there was just a boy with a crooked smile and a mother who loved him too hard.

Like most tragedies, it began with a woman’s sobs. Then, as usual, it was followed by another voice. A much deeper, snarling voice. 

Through the blanket of night, a television glowed in a dark living room, flickering white and blue across the tear-streaked cheeks of a boy, young Jason, just trying his best not to exist. The noise of a hockey game kept time with the thudding in the next room, but it doesn’t matter how loud the kid had the TV that night; nothing was going to truly distract him. He didn’t need to hear it. Hell, he didn’t need to see it. History taught his imagination what the gruesome scene looked like a long time ago. 

And like the clockwork of the game before the boy, a man stumbled out of a bedroom—his father—liquor breath and belt in hand. And also, as usual, he ignored his son entirely. With a grumble and a stumble, Jason watched him vanish into the kitchen. No need to sneak when you’re a ghost in your own home, Jason still tiptoed down the hall and into the bedroom his father had just exited.

Inside, his mother sat stiffly on the bed. A bruise bloomed under one eye, but she looked as if she didn't notice the pain. She was somewhere else entirely. Her stare stabbed far off into the distance, nailed to the wall, clad with family photos. When she finally spoke, her voice was softer than it should be.

Without turning to her son, her words trembled across her chapped lips.

“Don’t cry… stay strong for Mommy…”

Jason was a different kind of child. He was quiet, reserved, and very gullible—that’s nothing to be too alarmed with, considering those traits could be used to describe any nine-year-old. But Pamela had noted that as his age progressed, his mind seemed to progress more slowly than the others. He seemed to be no older than five. This made it exceptionally difficult for others to understand, considering his size. Not even double digits in his age, and he was already moving his way toward six feet. Pair that with the fact that various birth deformities littered his face, traced by scars from surgery to correct them, and you have a cocktail for adolescent isolation. Silas, the boy’s father, blamed the mother, Pamela, for Jason’s irregularities. 

A self-proclaimed man of God, he always hated his wife’s dabbling in the occult, and said that her interest in it was what punished them with such a child. 

Jason was sent to Camp Crystal Lake that summer. His mother said she needed to work on things with Daddy, but even Jason knew that possibility was long gone.

But the camp felt like a second chance. At least initially. But the rosiness of possibilities faded away on the first day. When the housing assignments were handed out, he was given a bunk behind the toolshed, far away from the others. Little did the child know that the other parents had asked for it. No one wanted their kids near a boy like Jason. He didn’t complain. Nor did he see an issue. This was a perk of his gullibility. All it took was a little bit of bullshitting from some counselors and Jason was more than fine with the sleeping arrangement.

One counselor in particular—Claudette—was exceptionally kind to him. Which is why she spoke up to be his handler. Perhaps she knew someone like Jason at some point in her life. But whatever the reason was, it didn’t matter much to him. She talked to him like he mattered, and even though he had issues seeing any discrimination against him, the same couldn’t be said for kindness. That, he easily recognized. So he trusted her. When settling in, he found an old hockey mask, and Claudette let him talk her ear off about hockey while she set up his bunk. There was no way she was going to be able to make this building truly livable for him, but she was going to try her best to ignore the abuse being bestowed and make his time here as enjoyable as possible. With a fake excited tone, she informed Jason that this week they were going to be focusing on swimming activities. When he told her he couldn’t swim, she quickly offered to teach him. “What are friends for?” she declared. 

That was the first and last time he would ever have a friend. And when he lay down in that musty cabin, he stared up at the ceiling, thinking of the possibilities of tomorrow. 

Maybe camp wouldn’t be so bad. 

At home, Pamela had already cracked. It didn’t take but an hour for Jason to be gone for Silas to release his rage onto his wife. But she was prepared for that, and with a swift stab of a machete, her abuser could abuse no longer. 

Since Jason could remember, there was always one door in the house that remained locked. Off limits to him, and seemingly everyone else. When he would ask about it, his mother would simply say it was an old addition, falling apart and unsafe to enter. He never dared ask his father, but even he seemed weary to be near it. Not once had he ever seen that door ajar. But with Jason gone and Silas dead, today would be the day the lock would creak open for the first time in years. 

Pamela stood at a table in the middle of the room, surrounded by walls of jars of dried herbs and animal bones. Before her was a large wooden table, bearing the body of her newly-late husband. In her hands was an old book with soot-stained pages that whispered old words from old worlds. The kind of book that can catch fire in your hands without burning. 

She missed this place. When Jason was born, her husband locked it away, forbidding her from practicing her beliefs. But now with Silas gone, Pamela felt free to be herself. And with the pettiness that only an abused wife could muster, she drove a chef’s knife into his corpse with the intention to dice and disperse him among the jars in the room. Preserving his organs for future use in the rituals he had long prevented her from partaking in. 

The next day was as still as the mist on the lake. Far from a day that would be chosen for swimming activities, but perhaps this is why Claudette chose it—no other children. The counselor held Jason’s hands firmly, but gently coaxed him into the shallows. The other kids ran and shrieked in the distance of the forest, cattled into groups by the other counselors for an activity that Jason was not to be included in. But with Claudette there, he would never know the pain of that dismissal.  Overcome with glee, the boy stood in the misty water, smiling–almost laughing–fixated on his new friend.

But then Barry called her away.

He was adamant that he needed her help immediately. So, she reluctantly left the lakeside, leaving Jason with promises to keep him company in the shallows. “Just wait right here,” she told him.

And he did.

Hours passed, and the sky went dark. Like tears, rain fell one by one from the sky. Not enough to soak the skin, but enough to ruin the day. The children in the forest’s screams faded away as the counselors corralled them in, tucking them into the shelter of the cabins. But Jason didn’t move. He did as he was told and waited, the clear water shaking at his knobby knees. But Claudette never came back. She meant to, she truly did. But it’s hard to fight your teenage hormones, and even harder to keep track of time when your legs are wrapped around another person. 

Anxious to impress her, the boy waded out into the water, determined to teach himself how to swim. But when she finally returned, the sky had opened up to a true storm, but sadly, he was gone.

The next day, Pamela sat at the shore, cigarette shaking between her fingers. The sirens wailed. The search boats carved the lake into ribbons. Claudette sobbed nearby, wrapped in a blanket she didn’t deserve. She attempted to reason with Pamela and explain how he was being treated, but she said nothing. She was as stoic in stone as she was when Silas would leave their bedroom. She knew they weren’t going to find him. If she wanted her son back, she had to do it herself. And when Pamela returned home, she retrieved the book once again. This time, her hands were steady.

She knew the ritual. Only by education, never by implementation. The pages promised resurrection—but only through blood. And blood is something she was now more than comfortable with. The ritual needed the resurrection to land on the deceased’s birthday, and lucky for her, his birthday was the 13th–next Friday. This was all the devine reassurance she needed. 

She was going to get her son back.

The book proclaimed that ten living for one dead would wake the dead. Their blood had to be spilled before dawn upon the soil where the deceased lost their life. This aligned perfectly for the mother. While she would naturally never wish death upon anyone else’s child, she knew what needed to be done. And perhaps, if the counselors had just kept their eye on her son, they wouldn’t have lost their lives. But not everything would be as easy as that. If the ritual failed or was interrupted, the soul would not return alone. Something would come with it. Something old and vengeful. 

An ancient being named Ki’ma.

But that was far from her concern.

Pamela would have to move fast. After Jason’s death, the camp season was concluded early, and over half the counselors had already gone home. The closure made Mrs. Vorhees more of a town pariah. Not only did parents have to have their kids home early, but they weren’t refunded for the full season, which further caused more discourse for Pamela at every excursion into town. Little did the town know that every time they turned their nose up, scoffed at her, bumped into her, or passively-aggressively asked how she was doing since Jason’s death, they were simply fueling the wildfire in the mourning mother’s heart.

Finally, his birthday arrived. As did the cover of dusk. So Pamela climbed into her jeep to began her journey of bringing back her child. Doubt began to fill the mother’s mind, but before she could succumb to the debate, fate would present itself. The road curved like a question mark through the trees, flanked by the low whisper of the fading light of day. 

That’s when Pamela saw her—thumb out, hair pulled tight, a counselor uniform peeking from beneath a thrift store jacket. Her name was Annie. Bright-eyed. Friendly in the way people are when they haven’t been hurt enough to stop trusting strangers. Pamela slowed the jeep and leaned across the seat, offering a smile so gentle it almost fooled her. Annie climbed in, eager for conversation. She explained she was headed to the camp—they were trying to finish out the season with a few weekend kids, despite what happened. Pamela asked about Jason. Annie’s face changed. She said she’d heard about it. Said it was tragic. Said all the right things. But they never meant anything when they came from people who weren’t there.

The road grew quieter as the jeep sped up. Questions trembled out of Annie’s mouth, spiderwebbing into their own individual points. Pamela didn’t blink. Stoic stone. The jeep just moved faster. Annie asked her to slow down. Then begged her. But the doors stayed locked, and Pamela didn’t stop. Suddenly, Annie threw herself out of the vehicle, knees scraping gravel, eyes wide, and body tumbling. Ignoring her wounds, she pushed herself up and scrambled into the forest, lungs rattling against her ribs. Tree limbs snap back at her like a trap. And Pamela followed, machete already unsheathed, footsteps never hurried. There was no need to run. She knew these woods better than anyone.

Perks of being a former counselor at Crystal Lake.

The killing itself didn’t take long. One slash. Opened throat. One soul. The woods absorbed the scream before it could reach the road. And with that, the ritual had begun.

The moon rose with fury that night, red like a bruise against the sky. The camp looked empty, but Pamela knew where everyone would be. She moved like a breeze between cabins, shadowed by the mist curling off the lake. Barry died first. While Pamela would have never known Barry’s involvement in her son’s death, there is a sense of satisfaction in her eyes when his face faded to empty.

Ki’ki’ki. Ma’ma’ma.

Then came Alice. She recognized Pamela instantly. Her eyes brimmed with fear before her lips could form an apology. And that’s when she used the machete. She pleaded, while Pamela said nothing. Alice cried to her, saying that she liked Jason, but she didn’t like how the camp was treating him. Pamela could tell she was telling the truth, and while she wanted to care, she just couldn’t. That kind of failure doesn’t get forgiven. The blade slid clean through the plea in Alice’s throat, quieting it before it became a reason to hesitate.

Ki’ki’ki. Ma’ma’ma.

Then came the others—quick, brutal, efficient. The crime scene would later indicate each one of their deaths vividly, like a page from a pulp script. Ned’s throat tore like wet paper. Jack was skewered from below, paralyzed by pleasure one second and impaled by pain the next. Marcie’s face caught the axe head-on, splitting her final story in half. Steve barely got a word out before the hunting knife made a home in his chest. Bill was pinned to the wall like a cautionary tale. Brenda was last, cornered and trembling, before Pamela crushed her skull with the edge of a brick, the sound of it echoing off the walls like a final punctuation. 

Ki’ki’ki. Ma’ma’ma.

Each kill drew more blood into the soil, and with every death, the demon’s chant grew louder in Pamela’s head, like a heartbeat that didn’t belong to her. Over and over, steady as the lake, and as gentle as the mist upon it. Now, almost dawn, and all of the other souls sacrificed, there was only one left. Fitting that it was her.

Claudette.

Claudette found Pamela near the shore just before dawn. At first, she thought she’d been saved. Then she saw the blood. Then the look in Pamela’s eyes. That glassy kind of calm that only comes after losing everything. Claudette begged her to understand. She spoke of Jason with a true sense of care and affection, how he smiled when he was in the lake, how he laughed. Pamela’s knees buckled. Not once in her life did she ever hear her son laugh. Claudette then explained what happened that day. She didn’t want to have sex with Barry, but he was manipulative. The things he would say to her. The pressure he would put on her. The time he hit her for saying no. Under any other circumstances, perhaps Pamela would have sympathized with her. 

And in a way, maybe she did.

Pamela’s stony demeanor crumbled away as tears built in her eyes—she spoke of how mothers aren’t supposed to bury their children, how she didn’t want to kill anyone. But grief opens doors you didn’t even know existed, and sometimes they lead to things that aren’t meant to be let in. Claudette tried to understand. But with tear-streaked cheeks, Pamela told her that she was sorry. But she let Jason die, and now it’s her responsibility to bring him back. And the second, Pamela raised the machete, and Claudette acted. The two collided like two locomotives, knocking them both to the ground, unleashing the attack. End over end, the machete cartwheeled toward the bank of the lake. 

Claudette begged her to stop, but Pamela didn’t listen. The two scratched and clawed at one another, rolling around in the dirt like rabid canines fighting over territory. Finally, in an act of desperation, Claudette reached over and grabbed the blade from the ground and swung with every ounce of strength she had left. The cut was clean. Pamela’s head rolled from her shoulders and into the sand, its mouth still open, like it was trying to finish one last sentence.

Ki’ki’ki. Ma’ma’ma.

10 souls.

Blood poured out from the serrated neck of the mother, steaming as it hit the sand. Tremors shook at Claudette’s feet, nearly knocking her to the ground. She didn’t scream, once again, she just acted. Like the burst of light emerging over the tree line, she darted toward a shore boat, diving into it. The ground continued to shake as she drifted into the center of the lake, too exhausted to think, too hollow to cry. She waited there, rocking in the canoe while the sun rose and the tremors eventually stopped. Suddenly, sirens erupted from the distance in piercing echoes, the red and blue lights flashing onshore like they were there to help. But the water beneath her was never safe.

The tenth soul slain was never supposed to be Pamela. And now, a repercussion she never considered presented itself.

Beneath the lake, time cracked open. Jason’s corpse bloated and spasmed in the deep, like a cocoon pulsing with wrongness. His skin stretched, popped, and peeled, as bones grew where they shouldn’t. His large frame twisted as it grew larger than what any man naturally would be. Teeth split through his surgically repaired lips, as his eye sunk down his face, boiled and bloated from his aquatic burial. And finally, one single bubble erupted from his mouth as the reanimated corpse, now a monstrous man, took his first breath. The boy that Pamela loved was gone, and what emerged from the floor of that lake was not a child. It was something else. Something ancient. Something promised.

Ki’ma was now with Jason. 

Jason’s hand rose from the depths like a question, grabbing the side of the small boat, tipping it, and her in. The two thrashed, limbs tangling, air escaping through gurgled screams. The water burned her eyes, preventing her from ever getting to lay an eye on her attacker. When she finally kicked herself free, she clawed her way back into the boat. Jason’s body may have the fury and possession of something evil, but he still had the same degree of clumsiness he had before. The boy was still in there; he just wasn’t alone. 

Breath ragged, Claudette paddled with her palms, desperately trying to reach the officers who had just made it to shore. And when they finally pulled her out, her eyes held the terror of a survivor of something she would never be able to explain. 

What grabbed her?

Who grabbed her?

But below the surface of the water, Jason stood like a statue in the murk. Watching Claudette cry in front of the officers. His brain stammered, echoing with an argument with the being inside of him. It wanted Jason to continue. To kill her–but he didn’t want to. 

Claudette was his friend. 

“What happened here?” An officer inquired. Claudette informed him that Pamela Vorhees killed her friends. And she was able to stop her from killing her.  She explained how the woman’s blood burnt the sand and how the earth quaked. And something grabbed her in the water. Unsure of what to do, one of the officers placed the traumatized girl into the car, informing his partner that he was taking her in. 

The partner agreed to stay, sharing the last words he would ever mutter to another human.

Jason dragged himself through the sludge of the lake, clawing upward toward the bank. Swollen with rage and rot, the reanimated monster stepped onto the bank. Just feel before him stood the police officer who stayed behind, inspecting Pamela’s dismembered head. 

“Mommy…” the voice said from inside Jason’s skull.

Then came the other voice, louder, hungrier. 

Ki’ki’ki. Ma’ma’ma.

Jason charged.

The officer had barely turned when his throat was crushed, tendons severed like splintered thread. His mother’s machete gleamed in the grass just feet away from her head. Jason took it, and with the clumsy precision of a newly born monster, Jason hacked the man into pieces, as if punishing the body for touching something sacred.

He wrapped his mother’s head in the sweater he tore from her body, bundling it like a child. He ran through the woods, clutching the bundle to his chest, until he reached the small cabin behind the toolshed. His old bunk. Still there. Still musty. He set the head down carefully, arranging her like she was just asleep. He sat across from her. Waited. The boy’s voice inside him was faint now, like a memory sinking into tar. The other voice—the demon’s—grew louder. Steadier. Hungrier. 

He looked to the corner of the room. There, among the shattered glass of an old mirror, was the hockey mask that inspired the last shred of hope in him. He picked it up and put it on, looking into the shards at his reflection. And for the first time, there was no conflict.

Just quiet.

Just the lake.

And the chant of the devil.

Ki’ki’ki. Ma’ma’ma.

Written by: Jaiden Hord

Artwork by:  Darius Jones

Formatting by: Jaiden Hord

Sponsored by: Fear State

I wrote this as a treatment for Paramount Pictures in 2017. I was hired to take the original story of the movie and make the lore of Jason work with a new origin story. After I concluded the job, I didn't hear anything about it until one day I saw that the movie was unfortunately canceled. All that is left of my draft is this story.

You can still find pictures online of what my Jason would have looked like, as pre-production had begun. I'm unsure of how much of my treatment was used in that version, but from the studio notes I read, there was quite a bit of it. I have recently heard from some people in the business that the new series that Peacock is producing actually pulls from the abandoned story from the 2017 reboot. While I'm unsure of how much remained from mine in that iteration, I hope you still enjoi what mine would have looked like. Thanks for reading. 

 - JH 

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