Observation

I would tolerate his behavior without limit, let everything go the way he expected, deal with the trivial matters it needed or did not need, and then let him consciously or subconsciously realize how indispensable I was.

Breakfast was freshly baked wheat bread, butter muffins served with oatmeal, butter, and honey. Bacon fried golden on both sides, grilled sausages, a choice of fried eggs cooked through or with runny yolks, black tea with fresh milk and sugar, and fresh fruit to accompany the meal-berries, apples, and oranges, served with yogurt or fresh cream.

With a wider range of ingredients, I could make even more.

I knocked on the door and waited patiently for a while, but there was no response, so I decided to open it myself. Jason was lying across the bed. Only when I opened the door did he sit up, as though finally reacting, but when he heard what I said, he gave no response either.

I patiently repeated myself before he went downstairs.

He was slow to react and understood a little speech. No long, complicated sentences, no speaking too quickly, and preferably an emphasis on individual words.

Once downstairs, he used neither a fork nor a spoon. He simply grabbed food with his gloved hands and pushed it beneath the slightly loosened bag. His table manners were wild, but he wasted nothing.

Afterward, he put some food on a plate and carried it to the room upstairs, the room where the severed head was.

I followed him up and found him trying to put food into the severed head's mouth. When that failed, he chose to eat it himself, then sat there staring at the head without moving. This head was important. From now on, I would have to treat it as a person too.

I went downstairs and looked at the dining table. He had deliberately left a portion for me. He had his own rules.

It was not hard to establish who the two of them were. Looking at the documents in my hands, I reached another conclusion: Jason was probably extremely resistant to-or rather, completely forbade-anyone entering his territory. I looked at the bloodstained kraft-paper bag, then contacted my assistant to have condolence money transferred to his family, and told him to handle the arrangements for my purchase of Crystal Lake and a large stretch of the surrounding forest.

On June 13, 1946, Jason Voorhees was born at Camp Crystal Lake in New Jersey. His mother, Pamela, was the camp cook, and his father, Elias, abused him. He was born with hydrocephalus, severe facial deformities, an enlarged heart, and an intellectual disability. These conditions left him living in seclusion and isolation from childhood, while his overprotective mother, Pamela, never sent him to school, keeping him by her side instead. He had almost no contact with the outside world in his daily life.

In the summer of 1957, Pamela brought him to Camp Crystal Lake, where she worked. The other children mocked Jason mercilessly for his appearance, calling him a "monster," even putting a sack over his head and treating him as a source of amusement. Terrified, Jason ran to the dock to escape the bullying, accidentally lost his footing, and fell into the water. The counselors who should have been watching the children were sneaking off for sex and smoking, completely ignoring his cries for help. Jason could not swim. After struggling briefly in the water, he sank to the bottom of the lake. His body was never found, and everyone thought he had drowned.

Afterward, Camp Crystal Lake became a forbidden place. The following year, in 1958, two counselors tried to clean up the camp in preparation for reopening it, only to vanish overnight. Later, someone found their bodies by the lake, horribly mutilated. The town's investigation yielded nothing. The townspeople had suspected Pamela, but there was no evidence. After that, quite a few people tried to reopen the camp, but a series of deliberately caused accidents occurred: the camp caught fire in the middle of the night, and the well water was poisoned. Over time, the name "Camp Blood" spread, until even people from other towns knew Crystal Lake was cursed.

But one child's drowning clearly could not account for so many accidents. The truth soon came to light. In 1979, Camp Crystal Lake was preparing to reopen. Seeking revenge, Jason's mother, Pamela, murdered several counselors in succession, only to be beheaded with a machete by the survivor, Alice. The mystery of Crystal Lake was finally uncovered. Alice currently lived in a nearby town and suffered from several psychiatric conditions, including PTSD and stress disorders.

I took a sip of coffee and more or less understood. From childhood, Jason's mental development had taken place in an extremely isolated and repressive environment. His mother Pamela's overprotection had cut him off completely from the outside world. He had received no formal education, and his existing intellectual disability had kept his cognitive abilities at an extremely low level. It was the typical psychological makeup of a deviant, a homicidal maniac.

The bullying he had suffered had only deepened his absolute fear and hostility toward the outside world. Yes, he was afraid. This might also have been one of the reasons he resisted outsiders so fiercely, even torturing them to death.

After drowning, he had become what he was now for some reason, but had later lived in the forest. Why had he not reunited with his mother? Was it because he had only become a revenant like this after his mother died? I recalled Alice's subsequent statement. She had always remembered a little boy covered in rot in the lake, who had pulled him into the water, but the police had found no such boy afterward. That boy had most likely been Jason.

I guessed that Jason had probably witnessed Alice killing his mother, Pamela. Perhaps because of the psychological trauma, he did not believe his mother was dead, as though he thought she was sleeping after being hurt. Afterward, his sole emotional attachment had disappeared and turned into boundless rage. This was probably the main reason. It had turned into an obsession, forming the violent instincts he had now.

Fear and anger had formed an obsession. He probably now believed Crystal Lake was the only safe place. He was protecting this place, protecting the home he and his mother had shared, their former home. He believed all outsiders were threats who would hurt him and his mother. Only the last dregs of coffee remained in the cup, its bitterness leaving the rich aroma barely better than nothing.

At present, Jason's personality seemed very simple, but he was not easy to fool. Second, Jason did indeed seem to be guarding this place. In recent years, he had killed two cyclists and several hunters, as well as those three thieves and the man who delivered my things. Third, that head was probably Jason's mother, Pamela. Thanks to his intelligence, Jason did not seem to think Pamela was dead. Fourth, Jason was indeed growing. He had grown from a little boy covered in rot in a river into someone built like a door. Fifth, he did indeed have some connection to the occult. Sixth, Jason's attitude toward me was very unusual. He did not drive me away. Had he sensed the things around me? Or was it simply because I had food here?

All right, it was time. I put down the documents. Time to make lunch.

Smoked beef with lemon butter and slices of rye bread, accompanied by a vegetable salad with pickles, pickled beetroot, and cubes of cheddar, garnished with nuts and berries. Roast beef with gravy and mashed potatoes, served with roasted carrots and asparagus. Butter-baked cornbread, cream muffins, and tomato risotto. Creamy baked mushrooms, onion rings, and roasted sweet potatoes. Apple pie and pumpkin pudding, served with fresh cream or maple syrup, milk, and port and sherry imported from Europe.

I opened the door to Mrs. Pamela's room. Such cumbersome formalities-or rather, etiquette concerning human privacy-were not particularly necessary when dealing with Jason. He was still sitting silently there, staring at his mother's head.

"Hello, Jason."

His head immediately turned toward me like a snake locking onto prey, but his body did not move. I observed him, my mind racing. Within expectations. His behavior was controllable.

"Lunch is ready. I made apple pie too. Come and eat with Aunt Pamela."

I spoke very slowly, making sure he could understand every word.

A standoff. A long standoff.

Why does he know my name? Why does he know Mom's name?

"While you were out just now, Aunt Pamela woke up for a little while. She told me."

I was deceiving Jason. As I had said before, Jason was not easy to fool, not because he was particularly vigilant, but because he simply did not trust anyone-anyone other than his mother.

Jason found it utterly unbelievable. Mom woke up? Why didn't she talk to me? Why is she asleep again now? If it's a lie, why does he know I love apple pie?

In a gentle, calm voice, I slowly said, "Aunt Pamela is sick and needs to sleep for a very long time. He asked me to take good care of you, so come downstairs and eat, all right?" I could feel that he believed me.

Being cared for seemed to give Jason a new connection to me. My standing had risen to the same level as his mother's in terms of duties, but only duties. Emotionally, it was entirely different. I guessed his mother had left him in someone else's care before and had probably told him to behave and so on. His trust in me had now reached its peak. Well, mainly because there was no second person around.

He expressed his trust in me by doing everything I said. When I told him to go downstairs and eat, he ate. After I told him Mrs. Pamela would not wake up again anytime soon, he stopped trying to feed his mother.

Jason was a good boy. I could not be too harsh on him in this respect. He had never lived a normal person's life or received a normal education, but if he had had all of that, I was certain he would have been a good person, the kind far better than me.

In daily life, I was not the only one doing the caring. I cooked for him, bathed him, and cleaned his room, and he took care of me in his own way too. Of course, he did not know how to do housework, but he observed. He knew that after we finished eating, I had to take the dishes and cutlery into the kitchen and wash them clean. After lunch on the third day, he took over that job. He also began cleaning the house, taking a cloth and wiping every surface that could be wiped until it was spotless. Bear in mind that this three-story house, including the seldom-used basement, covered nearly six hundred square meters. He could wipe the whole place down in just over two hours, including the floors.

He also tried to light the stove, though his movements were too rough. I guessed he had learned this from the hunters in the forest. He could even do some simple woodwork. And he took the initiative, doing things like taking the water heating on the stove off the heat.