Chapter 1 - The arrival

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How long were they traveling? Jasmine was asking this to herself, looking out from the window of her father's gray Golf Sportsvan. She had fallen asleep while listening to some music on her old green ipod, lying on the back seat with her head resting on the window and her legs immobilized by Finn's weight, her border collie red merle with an ice-blue eye and a yellow gold eye, that had also begun to drool on her black leggings.
She moved him, sitting in a better position and stretching, feeling some bones get back in position and her black Disturbed's t-shirt wet on the back because of the sweat. The heat that day was unbearable, even with the conditioned air at max.

"Rise and shine, sweetie!" Her mother looked at her from the mirror in the visor of the passenger seat.

"Where are we?" Jasmine asked, looking at the time marked on the dashboard: 17:38.

"We are almost there, not much left now" Her father replied without looking away from the road.

Jasmine and her family were moving. Behind them was the moving truck, driven by a couple of workers from the company recommended by the estate agency, two mountains of muscles.

Her father, Robert Hatefield, was a doctor at the Columbus Community Hospital, Nebraska, where they lived until that morning and where the girl had attended the last high school year, graduating with good grades a week earlier(*).Her mother, Anna Hatefield, of Italian origin, had remained unemployed about six months earlier when the perfumery she worked in had closed. All three could not bear the city life. Jasmine preferred quiet and silent places to crowded shopping malls and loud streets and her parents were no less, both grown up in the countryside adjacent Columbus. By common accord they decided to move in to a small town. Robert would have asked for a transfer, which was accepted in a short time, and Anna could have looked for work once the new home had been settled. Even Jasmine had thought of looking for a part-time job, as she did not think she would go on studying.

Checking the availability of work for Robert, they had finally chosen a home that fully satisfied everyone. It was a two floors house surrounded by woods and a few dozen meters from a lake. A quiet place immersed in the nature as Anna and Jasmine wanted, but not too far from the town center, to meet Robert's needs. They had found it doing research on the internet. It was Jasmine's first choice as soon as she had seen where it was and she insisted in a way her mother defined disturbing. In the end, Hatefield's spouses had surrendered to thier daughter's requests, thanks to the natural beauty of the place and the price of the home, which would have been much higher in a different place. And then they just needed a doctor more there.

The new home was located in the territory of the unlucky town of Crystal Lake, in Colorado, not far from the homonymous lake and close, really close, to the notorious "Camp Blood", once "Camp Crystal Lake".

Jasmine was an horror movies fan and was aware of the many killings in the area thanks to the famous movie series "Friday the 13th". She was disconcerted by how some people could speculate on the misfortunes of others, but could not help to stay in a way fascinated by the creepy figure of Crystal Lake's serial killer, the unlucky and ruthless Jason Voorhees.

She kept looking out of the window, seeing trees and shrubs across the street. She could not wait to arrive. She would see her new home for the first time. When her parents had gone to see it, she had to stay home to study for the latest assignments. Obviously she had seen the pictures on the estate agency's website, she knew that it had already been heavily furnished by her parents and that it had a video surveillance system left by the old owners, together with a lot of furniture and junk storage in the basement and in the attic.

Shortly after the 18 o'clock they passed the green sign with the white "Welcome to Crystal Lake" on it, on the right side of the road. Within a short distance they began to see the various dirt roads leading to the properties outside the city. Then finally the first buildings. Jasmine looked at everything with extreme care, trying not to miss a detail. Her mother looked at her from the mirror, a little worried about all that interest, and glared at her husband, who answered with an almost imperceptible shrug. Following the main road they cut the inhabited area halfway, returning to see only the forest and a few pathways.

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