The phone rang.
A few moments later, my mother knocked at the door of my bedroom.
“Dave, it’s for you.”
I picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
A man’s voice spoke through the receiver. “Hey. Are you Dave Meindl?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve got a Nady System that I want to sell. I heard you’re a guitarist and thought you might want it. It’s brand new. I’ll sell it to you for 40 bucks. You want it?”
Now, Nady Systems wireless transmitters were about the coolest thing a 15-year-old aspiring would-be rock star like me could own. Full mobility. No wires. Just you and your guitar jumping around the stage. And these things weren’t cheap, either. This was top-of-the-line cutting edge technology that retailed for around $250 in 1989 (the equivalent of close to $600 in 2022).
I thought, “$40? This is awesome!”
“Yeah, I want it!” I exclaimed enthusiastically.
“OK. I’m over at 4 Sons, you know… the gas station. Meet me over here.”
“Yeah, 4 Sons is a block from where I live. I’ll be there in like 5 minutes.”
The faintest of whispers echoed in the back of my mind. They said:
“This is a little too good of a deal. Why would he sell it so cheaply?”
Oh, he probably just knows that there aren’t a lot of people in this small town that are going to even want a wireless system at all.
“Why does he want to make the exchange at the gas station? Why not just come to my house?”
Who knows. But going to meet him is the least I can do to score such a sweet deal.
“It’s 9:00 at night. It’s dark.”
Meh. This is Creston. You’ve grown up here in this tiny rural community. It’s basically the safest place on earth. Plus, I’m only walking a block.
I put my shoes on and walked to the sliding glass door that opened from the kitchen into the back yard. I slid the door open and, without saying a word to my parents, stepped outside into the darkness.
I glanced north in the direction of the house of our nearest neighbor, perhaps 300 yards away. But there was no sign of the house. The near absolute darkness of the moonless night obscured it completely from sight.
Immediately, I turned my attention left and began walking briskly toward the road in the distance, illuminated by street lamps, that led to the 4 Sons gas station.
As I crossed over a grassy hill about 50 yards from the gas station, a man’s voice called out from somewhere in the darkness.
“Hey.”
I stopped and looked around. I saw no one.
Suddenly, he emerged from the shadows as if materialized by the ominous fading light of the nearby gas station.
He was walking toward me. And his hands were empty.
Wait a minute. I know this guy. That’s my friend’s older brother. He’s not a guitarist. Shit. Something’s wrong. What the fuck is going on?
Two feet in front of me, he stopped. I looked up at him. He towered over me. And on his face was a look of absolute contempt.
“You like to kick people when they’re down?” he asked rhetorically.
Terrified, I whimpered, “No.”
He turned his head away, looking over his right shoulder at nothing… contemplating… The pause lasted only for a second, but that second lasted an eternity.
Without warning, a fist flashed inches from my face. My head jolted back against my neck, the world went black, and my ears filled with an explosion of thunder.
A moment later, the world came back into view and I saw him walking away.
“Thank god,” I thought. “It’s over.” That wasn’t so bad.
I turned and started walking in the direction of home.
I felt something in my mouth, like unpopped kernels of popcorn. I instinctually spit out whatever it was and continued walking home.
I opened the sliding glass door, walked through the kitchen and made my way to the bathroom to inspect the damage. I flipped on the light and looked in the mirror.
What the fuck!
My face looked like a scene from an 80’s vampire movie. Blood poured out of my mouth, painting my entire chin and lower jaw in bright red, and dripping from my chin onto the bathroom floor and counter. Blood had also sprayed upward and outward, too, from cheek to cheek and across my nose.
Out of shock at the sight, my jaw dropped, exposing the reason for the profuse bleeding. Where two of my front teeth should have been, there was empty space.
That’s when it hit me.
Those kernels of unpopped popcorn I had spit out back on the dark, grassy hill… those had been my teeth.
Have you ever watched a horror movie where the characters will perhaps hear a noise outside. And, as a viewer observing from a distance, you think, "Um, don't go outside, you idiot." But what do the characters invariably do? "What was that noise? Let's go out into the dark and check it out." Don't be like the characters in horror movies. Don't be like me. Whenever you get that feeling in your gut that something isn't quite right, whenever you hear those whispers in the back of your mind telling you that something's off, pause. Reflect. Take some precautions. Maybe consult with other people. Tell them about the situation, and about your gut feeling. Get the perspective of people watching the movie in which you're a character. Who knows? It just might save you from Jason Voorhees.