Jason gives Gretchen a vision of hell

Smiling to herself, she winced and looked in the mirror at her face full-on. She had never been a girl who used much makeup, but these days there were factors it would take more than a little foundation cream to fix.

It unsettled her more than she thought it would, to look at herself without any doctors or counsellors beside her. She flinched. Her face looked far worse than she had led herself to believe. Far worse.

In fact, she could only force herself to look at some of the more unpleasant aspects one by one. The deformity of the skin that had to be rebuilt around the third degree burns she received from the electric shock. The discoloration that had to be covered over with cosmetics. And then there were those hideous little patches of fungus that filled some of the pores of her skin. She had never even noticed those before.

But then, as she suddenly realized, this was not her face.

The mirror cracked as the brutal, festering hands broke through the glass to grab at her. "No! No! NO!" She shook her head from side to side, but the image of Jason would not go away. She tried to fight, but his grip was too strong. In horror, she realized she was being dragged toward the broken glass, its shards promising further damage to the face that the nurses told her was still naturally beautiful.

But, as she was dragged into the mirror by her hair, there was no pain, merely a sensation of lightness. Of being taken out of her physical surroundings. Of freefall.

Gretchen imagined herself being drawn rapidly toward the ground, and then into the very earth itself. But her descent did not end there. She found herself tumbling slowly, as if toward the gravitational pull of the earth's core. Down through vast underground vistas of rock. Mountain, cliffs and ravines. Down past escarpments and plateaus that contained hundreds and thousands of bickering, arguing, fighting people.

As she descended to the very bottom of their pit of misery, she thought of a line from her old literary studies: "I had not thought death had undone so many."

As she fell to the bottom, she could see the baying faces that waited for her. The screaming faces of the killers and the rapists who had terrorized her and her friends. The gloating face of that sleazebag Ed North. And the terrible, hideous visage of Jason Voorhees.

When they finally brought her round on the bathroom floor, there were all kinds of recriminations in the air. While the nurse who had administered the smelling salts felt her pulse, her consultant, Dr Anthony, berated Sister Magda for allowing her to tend to her face on her own.

"God knows, we have enough trauma patients without making matters worse! The papers tell us the crime rate has miraculously fallen, the streets are safe again, but we'll be dealing with the fallout from that little statistical 'blip' for as long as most of us are here."

Gretchen felt sorry for the shame-faced sister. It truly wasn't her fault. Neither of them could have known what she saw as she looked into the mirror.

As she was helped to her feet, they tried to shield her from her own reflection, but she wanted to see. The mirror was no longer broken, and it was hard for them to stop her regarding her own face with interest. Her own face this time, not the one she had seen before.

The medical staff backed off and let her look when they realized she was coming to terms with it. She was still a pretty young woman, after all, as they were always telling her. It was just that the burned half of her face was symmetrically distorted. The damage to her facial muscle and tissue was such that, even after all their efforts to rebuild it, one eye still remained lower than that on the untouched side. It looked, she could now tell herself with a complete lack of squeamishness, just like Jason himself.

Gretchen could still hear the wailing of those imprisoned in hell alongside Jason. She had received a vision of damnation that would never leave her now. It almost made her feel sorry for Jason Voorhees all over again. But he was an elemental force embodying pure hate, which could never really die.

I think I can understand you now, Jason, she told him within the privacy of her own mind. After all, when I look in the mirror, I can see that you're still a part of me.

   Friday the 13th: Hell Lake, chapter 20