Previously on The Last Night at Oakhaven
Jason Jasonson Jr. and his friends came to the Oakhaven Timberlands for a weekend getaway. Instead, they found three killers in the rain. Tyler died in the kitchen. Jason headbutted a mountain of a man in a pig-hide mask. And then he discovered he’d grabbed the wrong keys from the junk drawer—keys to a Subaru when they needed the Jeep. Now, trapped between a burning house and three monsters, Jason faces his most desperate gambit yet…
Chapter Five: The Attic Thing
The creature unfolding from the ceiling looked like something that had been human once, perhaps decades ago, before it had been left in the dark too long. Its skin was mushroom-pale, stretched over bones that seemed too long, too angular. It wore nothing but tattered bandages that might have once been clothing. Its fingers ended in jagged nails that dug grooves into the mahogany banister as it perched there like a gargoyle studying Sarah’s throat with the intensity of a surgeon planning an incision.
Jason didn’t think. He’d stopped thinking when Tyler died. He pivoted on the smoke-slicked wood, his lungs screaming as he inhaled vaporized drywall and synthetic carpet. The heat from below was a physical weight, but his eyes were fixed on the top of the landing.
The Attic Crawler tensed its haunches, preparing to lunge for Sarah’s neck.
Jason extended his arm like a steel bar and launched himself up the remaining stairs, putting every ounce of his mass into a clothesline that would have made his wrestling coach weep with pride.
The impact was jarring. Jason’s forearm connected with the creature’s throat with a sound like a dry branch snapping. The thing had no mass to resist with—it was light, like a bundle of sticks wrapped in wet parchment. The force sent it spiraling backward, flipping over the banister with a screeching hiss that was more insect than human.
It disappeared into the black smoke of the stairwell. Jason didn’t hear it land.
“Jason! The door!” Sarah’s voice was ragged, already at the master suite, fumbling with the brass handle.
Jason looked back down one last time. The Big Slasher was rising through the smoke like a vengeful god. One side of his pig-hide mask had melted, fusing the leather to his cheek in a bubbling, horrific mess. He reached the third step. He wasn’t running—he didn’t need to. He was simply… inevitable.
Behind him, blue flame erupted as the kitchen fire reached the stove’s gas line.
Jason dove through the master suite doorway just as Sarah threw her weight against the door. It was heavy oak, solid and expensive—the kind of door that promised security. The deadbolt slid home with a satisfying chunk just as a massive impact vibrated through the wood.
The Big Slasher had reached the landing.
Chapter Six: The Suite Trap
The master suite was quiet—too quiet. The roar of the fire and the frantic scratching of something in the walls created a soundscape of mounting doom. The room was large, with vaulted ceilings and a king-sized bed that seemed obscene in its domesticity. A balcony overlooked the woods beyond.
“The keys,” Sarah wheezed, leaning against the door as it shook under another blow. “You said you had keys. If they aren’t for the Jeep… what are they for?”
Jason pulled the ring out with trembling hands. The Subaru fob. A silver key stamped “Master.” A small, rusted skeleton key that looked older than the house itself.
The balcony door rattled.
Through the glass stood the Yellow Slasher, having somehow circled the burning house to cut off their escape. His flare gun was gone, replaced by a heavy wood-splitting axe. He looked scorched, his yellow slicker blackened by fire, and his eyes held the focused intensity of someone who’d been hunting a very long time.
They were trapped. Monster at the door. Monster at the window. And something crawling in the ceiling, scratching and patient.
Jason looked at the balcony. Second floor. Maybe fifteen feet to the ground. A big guy like him could probably survive the fall, assuming the landing was soft and he didn’t get an axe to the skull on the way down.
“It’s only the second floor,” he said, more to convince himself than Sarah. “A big guy like me could probably survive the fall.”
Behind them, a splintering crack announced that the Big Slasher’s brush hook had finally bitten through the oak door. A massive, gray-skinned hand reached through the new hole, groping for the deadbolt with the determination of something that had all night.
Jason didn’t wait for permission. He lowered his head and treated the balcony glass door like a finish line.
Chapter Seven: The Rain-Soaked Flight
Jason hit the glass like a freight train piloted by desperation and concussion. The door didn’t just break—it exploded outward in a crystalline spray that caught the lightning like a thousand tiny stars. His shoulder connected with the Yellow Slasher’s chest, the impact softened by the heavy coat but driven home by the full weight of Jason Jasonson Jr.’s fury.
The two of them went over the railing together, tangled in broken glass and worse intentions.
For a second, there was weightlessness. The smell of ozone. The rain on Jason’s face feeling almost like baptism.
Then the world returned with a bone-jarring thud.
Jason landed in the flowerbed, the mud softened by hours of rain accepting him like a cold, wet embrace. Every rib screamed protest. His vision swam with stars that had nothing to do with the lightning.
The Yellow Slasher hit the stone edge of the decorative koi pond with a sickening crack. He groaned once, his axe slipping into the dark water with a plunk that seemed almost musical. Then he went still.
Jason rolled onto his back, gasping, staring up at the balcony through the rain.
Sarah stood silhouetted in the shattered doorway, looking down in horror. Behind her, the master suite door exploded inward, kicked off its hinges. The Big Slasher lumbered into the room, his face a ruin of melted pig-hide and raw meat. He ignored Sarah for a moment, walking straight to the balcony’s edge.
He looked down at Jason. The fire from the house cast his shadow long and distorted across the muddy lawn, reaching for Jason like a dark hand.
He didn’t jump. He simply watched, patient as stone.
Ten yards away, under a sagging carport, Jason saw salvation: a silver Subaru Forester, rain drumming on its roof with the rhythm of a racing heartbeat.
The keys were in his pocket. A broken killer lay at his feet. And Sarah was trapped above.
“Sarah, JUMP!” Jason bellowed, his voice cracking. He planted his feet in the mud, bracing his shoulders. He’d spent years catching spiraling footballs and tackling sprinting giants. Catching a terrified woman should be simple.
But the ground was liquid. His vision was blurred. And the Big Slasher was leaning over the railing, his shadow stretching out like doom itself.
Sarah didn’t hesitate. She climbed over the railing, gave Jason one last look that contained everything they’d never have time to say, and hurled herself into the dark.
She hit Jason like a bag of concrete dropped from heaven. His knees buckled, sinking calf-deep into the freezing garden muck, but his arms held. They’d always held. Her fingernails dug into his jacket as she gasped for air, eyes wide and unfocused with shock.
“The… the car…” she choked out, pointing toward the Subaru with a trembling hand.
A heavy, wet clack sounded from above. Jason looked up. The Big Slasher hadn’t jumped. Instead, he’d reached into his slicker and pulled out a heavy, iron-linked chain. He wrapped it around the balcony railing with practiced efficiency, preparing to climb down with a speed that suggested he’d hunted this way many times before.
Behind Jason, the Yellow Slasher—the one who’d hit the koi pond—twitched. A hand clad in a scorched yellow sleeve reached out of the water, grasping for the stone’s edge, for Jason’s ankle, for another chance.
Twenty feet to the Subaru. Keys in hand. Two monsters converging.
Time to go.
Chapter Eight: Grand Theft Subaru
Jason heaved Sarah to her feet, her boots slipping in the gore-slicked mulch. He didn’t saunter anymore. The Jock had become a man-sized freight train fueled by pure, crystallized panic.
They bolted toward the Subaru just as the Yellow Slasher’s hand clutched at Jason’s boot heel. Jason kicked back with a grunt that was half fury, half terror, feeling his heel connect with something that cracked wetly. He shoved Sarah into the passenger seat.
He dove into the driver’s side, the interior greeting him with the smell of stale pine air freshener and old gym socks—a strangely domestic contrast to the charnel house they’d just escaped. His fingers fumbled with the keys, slick with mud and blood and rain. The silver Master key? No. The skeleton key? No.
The fob.
His thumb jammed the unlock button.
Chirp-chirp.
The most beautiful sound in the world.
Jason’s hands trembled as he jammed the key into the ignition. Behind them, something massive hit the roof of the Subaru with enough force to buckle the metal inward. The Big Slasher had dropped from his chain, landing on the car like a hunter claiming his kill.
That melted pig-face appeared upside down in the windshield, staring through the glass with eyes that held neither mercy nor hurry. He raised a fist to punch through.
Jason twisted the key.
The engine coughed—a pathetic, mechanical wheeze that sounded like death itself.
Thud.
“START, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!” Jason screamed at the dashboard, at God, at whatever cosmic force was scripting this nightmare.
The engine roared to life.
Jason slammed the gear shift into reverse without looking, without thinking, without caring about anything except the simple equation of distance equals survival. He floored it.
The Subaru lurched backward with enough force to throw the Big Slasher from the roof. Jason watched in the rearview mirror as that massive body tumbled into the mud like a discarded doll. Then came the thump-squish of tires passing over something that Jason desperately hoped was a garden gnome and not the Yellow Slasher’s torso.
He spun the wheel, tires spitting gravel and mud, finding the narrow dirt driveway that led away from the Oakhaven Timberlands. In the rearview mirror, the house was a pillar of fire against the black sky, a funeral pyre for Tyler and whatever vacation dreams they’d brought here.
The Big Slasher stood in the center of the road, perfectly still, watching the red glow of their taillights fade into the rain.
“We… we’re out,” Sarah sobbed, clutching the dashboard. “Jason, we’re actually out.”
Jason was driving fast—too fast for a mud-slicked mountain road in the middle of a storm. But the headlights cut through the downpour, illuminating dark pines that lined the drive like a gauntlet, and Jason wasn’t slowing down for anything.
Then he saw it.
The driveway wasn’t empty. A hundred yards ahead, a heavy timber gate—the one that had been open when they’d arrived with laughter and beer—was now closed and padlocked with thick, rusted chain.
The speedometer read sixty miles per hour on a road designed for twenty-five.
“Jason, the gate! It’s solid oak!” Sarah shrieked, bracing her hands against the ceiling.
Jason didn’t brake. His hands tightened on the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. Through the sheets of rain, the timber gate loomed—heavy, dark, indifferent. The padlock chain glinted in the high beams like a row of silver teeth.
Every instinct screamed stop. Every survival impulse demanded reason.
Jason floored it.
To be continued in Part 3: The Breaking
Sometimes the only way through hell is straight ahead. At sixty miles per hour. In a stolen Subaru. With a monster in the rearview mirror.
