7 Days of Fiction: Hell Goes to Jason (Hellraiser/Friday the 13th Fan Fiction)

During the days of Fight Evil, one of the main draws of the site were “Fights”, an event in which members of the site would vote who would win between various horror icons if they were to clash. From time to time, a member would put one of these stories into writing. I myself had intended to write a series of these, before not completing it for various reasons (one of the temporary site closures may have been a cause of this). Hell Goes to Jason pit two of my favorite horror icons against one another. I’ve done some minor editing to the story (the tense problems I had at that time could not be forgiven) but largely left the story intact.

“Can you stop with that box? We may only have minutes to live!”

“Well, right now we’re just waiting,” Janie said. “It’s not like we have anything better to do till we find a way to escape that guy.”

Ron looked at her, pointedly. Janie knew very well what her boyfriend would rather be doing to occupy time. However, a puzzle box was much easier to drop and run than he was. He would whine and ask for help; the game wouldn’t. “Ahah!” she said, as the “puzzle box” was completed and began to open up. The closet they were in got even darker, and Janie screamed.

Microseconds into the scream, Ron had a hand clamped over her mouth. “What the hell are you doing?” He whispered. “There’s an un-killable monster looking for us in this building and you just let him know exactly where we are. There can’t possibly be anything in the dark worse than him.”

A voice filled the room. “That depends on your point of view. You will experience untold pleasure…and unimaginable pain.”

Janie screamed again, this time muffled by Ron’s hand. He looked defiantly around, obviously shaken but just as obviously trying to hide that fact from his unseen companion. “Who are you? What do you want from us? Help us! Help us escape!”

Ron nearly screamed himself as he heard motion behind him, and heard the clicking of an unseen cenobite in the corner of the closet. He jumped forward and crashed headlong into Pinhead, who had begun to illuminate the closet around them. The dim grey light revealed shovels, hoes and rakes, and other gardening tools that stored in there. “We are the cenobites, masters of pain and pleasure. What we want from you is simple: your souls!”

Somewhat calmer now, Janie pulled Ron’s hand off of her mouth. “Why us?”

“You opened the box,” Pinhead said, taking the Lament Configuration from her weak grasp. “You summoned us, and we have come to collect.”

At that, Jason smashed through the closet door. With a swing of his machete, Ron and Janie’s heads go rolling across the floor. Their bodies fell to the ground, and Chatterer Dog met them and began to consume their fresh meat. Jason looked around the room, confused at the inhuman look of the cenobites.

Pinhead’s face clenched into a look of rage. “You have denied us of the souls that are rightfully ours. Your soul shall be your payment. Your undying soul shall experience pain the likes your feeble mind cannot possibly begin to imagine!” Hearing the anger in Pinhead’s voice, Jason stirred from his confusion. He swung out with his machete, connecting with the Chatterer cenobite in the corner and adding his head to the growing pile on the floor. Then, the Crystal Lake Killer advanced toward Pinhead, ready to do the same to him.

As he raised his machete to strike, a dozen chains flew out from the wall. Jason’s hand and arm were each impaled several times with hooks, and the machete was yanked from his hand. Pinhead grabbed the machete as Jason struggled with freeing his arms from the hooks. Jason looked at him, reaching for his favorite weapon with his free hand, and more hooked chains came out of the walls, this time attaching to all of Jason’s arms and legs.

Pinhead looked Jason in the eyes. “We will tear you soul apart!” he said, and the chains pulled. Jason was lifted into the air, his arms and legs pulled in different directions. Pinhead stepped up to him, holding the machete. He looked thoughtful, and ran the machete down Jason’s middle – not impaling it through him, just enough for a gout of blood and some painful injuries that would have dropped a normal man.

But Jason wasn’t interested in letting Pinhead think. He pulled with all of his strength, tearing his arms free from the chains. Bits of Jason meat hung from the hooks like a bizarre slaughterhouse as Jason freed himself, limb by limb, from Pinhead’s chains. Blood poured from his open wounds, forming a puddle on the floor. He tour through the final chains, frustrated that they wouldn’ t come off of the wall no matter how hard he pulled. In fact, to Jason’s surprise, the harder he pulled on the chains the shorter they got. The chains stretched and there was a “pop” as Jason’s shoulders were dislocated.

Enraged, Jason escaped the chains and reached Pinhead. He yanked the machete from Pinhead’s hand, staring straight into Pinhead’s eyes. Jason’s gaze was not met by the fear he was accustomed to, or even the mad jealousy and predatory hunger from the last person to fight him, Freddy Krueger. It was anger: pure, unadulterated rage of a man who had taken what had been stolen from him. Pinhead takes his job seriously indeed, as many have met before.

“You are not the first to challenge me,” he said to Jason, unflinching in the face of a being that, with one swing of his arm, could end the cenobite’s career prematurely. “And you won’t be the last!” Jason feels something in his stomach, and looked down; he had just been impaled by a bundle of pointed chains, tearing a gaping hole the size of his head in his torso. He looked down at it for a second, and swung his machete at Pinhead. The blade whistled through the air, and –

Continued whistling through the air as it passed through the space where Pinhead had been a moment before. Jason looked, confused, wondering what happened to the person who had been yelling at him a moment before. Where was he, and why wasn’t his head rolling across the floor to join the others?

“To reach the bounds of your physical experience, we must first break your mind. Welcome to the labyrinth, where your greatest hopes and most dreadful fears are one and the same.” Pinhead’s voiced boomed from the walls of the corridor, and Jason noticed that the crumbling closet around them was all but gone. The tools were still there, and the nearby walls were the same material, but the two undamaged walls seemed to stretch on for a mile, while the other two walls were completely gone.

Jason looked to the left, and he looked to the right. All he saw to either direction was a long corridor. Pinhead’s voice had not come from one side or another, and there was no sign of him. Jason didn’t know which way to go. Then, he heard something to the right of him and his head jerked in that direction: it was his mother. “Help me, Jason. Help Mommy!” He started in that direction. “Mommy needs you Jason!”

Jason remembered the last time he had seen his mother. Freddy Krueger had pretended to be her, first to make him go to Elm Street and then to tell him to leave. Jason didn’t like people pretending to be his mother; it made him angry. If someone was pretending to be his mother, he would kill them. But if it was his mother…

Jason missed his mommy. Ever since he had seen her murdered at Camp Crystal Lake, he had wanted to see her again. If it was her, maybe he would stop killing. Just for a little bit. But he also had to kill Pinhead. Pinhead had angered him. He had threatened him and chained him, made him bleed. He wanted to hurt him, and for that he had to die.

Jason walked down the corridor, hurrying toward his mother’s voice. He couldn’t move quickly – he was leaving a trail of blood and had lost some muscle to the chains. He got to the end of the corridor, to another one going in both directions. “Jason!” Again, the Crystal Lake Killer turned toward his mother’s voice. Finally, he reached her. Jason leaned down to one knee when he got to his mother, who shouted out “son, you have come to rescue Mommy!”

“Meet your greatest desire, Jason,” Pinhead steps out from the shadows behind Jason, remaining safely 20 feet away but with his face well lit, his voice as clear as ever. “Your reunification with your mother, whom you have not seen for twenty years.” Jason stands, reaching for his machete, as his mother watches with curious eyes.”

“Now, Jason, meet your greatest pain,” he points at the pair. “As your mother vanishes in front of your eyes.”

Jason looked back down, following Pinhead’s pointing finger. Where his mother was, on the ground, was a cenobite. The cenobite, gender indistinguishable, had had its face torn apart in a half dozen ways, molded to be virtually the same shape as Jason’s mother. Jason stabbed down with his machete, spearing the cenobite through the head and down to the ground. As Jason pulled his weapon around and spun to advance on Pinhead, the cenobite on the ground was already turning into a middle-aged woman.

Enraged, Jason rushes Pinhead swinging his machete as hard as he can. Again, he passes through air. Again, Pinhead had faded away into the Labyrinth. “It is your emotional turmoil that will give us the keys to your heart.” Jason, enraged, begins to swing at the walls. Almost every wall he had ever met had given way under his brute strength, and it puzzled him that this one wouldn’t even the chip away. The walls of the Labyrinth, created by an item outside of its power and unable to even allow themselves to break, held strong. The sound of Pinhead’s cruel laughter echoed.

Jason continued raging against the walls, until he noticed something: unlike the first time Pinhead vanished, his voice wasn’t coming from every direction; it was coming from one way, like his mother’s voice had before. This time, it came from the left side of the corridor. Jason began to head down that way, eager to find the source and put a machete into it.

He continued to hunt down Pinhead’s voice, in corridor after corridor. He got angrier and angrier, as with each corridor he turned into the voice got louder. Finally, he approached the final corridor. As he turned the corner, the laughter abruptly stopped. He met Pinhead, oddly lit under a violently growing sky. “Here you meet Leviathan, Lord of this Realm.” Rather than coming from Pinhead’s mouth, the sound came from above him. Jason looked upward.

As Pinhead said, above them Leviathan could be seen. Light and sound flared, and Jason looked at it. He looked back at Pinhead, obviously not impressed. Jason raised his machete, and found himself unable to swing. A single chain was hooked into his arm, stretching back down the corridor from which he came. More chains came into his sides, holding him still.

“Leviathan wants souls,” Pinhead said, his voice coming this time from his own mouth. “You have been chosen.” As Pinhead steps to the side, a bundle of chains comes from the end of the corridor, behind where Pinhead was standing. The chains latched into Jason’s stomach and, despite his efforts to the contrary, dragged him down into the darkness.

*  *  *  *  *

Pinhead looked at the cenobites, selecting his team, knowing that the time was near; the Lament Configuration was again being opened, this time by a curious homicide investigator seeking to discern Janie’s state of mind at the time of her decapitation. He looked at the newest cenobite, standing six feet, five inches tall and covered in muscle. The shape of a hockey mask had been branded into his face, leaving an impression three inches deep into his skull, with a solid metal plate welded to his face. Skin from his arms was peeled to the elbows and shoulders, coming together at the back of his neck. He lifted his weapon in two hands: a double-bladed longsword with serrated, razor-sharp sides.