Joe Travers is a character in the novel Friday the 13th: Mother's Day. An inhabitant of Crystal Lake, Joe is a grizzled man with a habit of poaching the animals in the forest surrounding the woods of Crystal Lake.
Biography[]
Living in a cabin in the woods around Crystal Lake alone (his mother having died in 1991) Joe spends his time poaching various animals in the woods, on one occasion losing a finger in one of his own traps. [1]
One hot May day in 1996, a heavily camouflaged and shotgun wielding Joe goes hunting in the woods surrounding Crystal Lake, coming across a doe in the middle of feeding. Prepared to shoot the animal, Joe accidentally scares it away after tripping on a large white rock he had earlier missed. Seeing the doe fleeing, an enraged Joe angrily kicks the rock that had caused his misfortune several times before realizing that the rock is marking something. Surmising that the stone is marking the place of something Jason Voorhees had buried, Joe begins to dig near the rock with his hunting knife before resorting to scrounging with his hands. After several moments of digging, Joe discovers a grey cardboard box and lifts it out of the ground, finding it surprisingly heavy. Opening the box, Joe, after seeing the animate head of Pamela Voorhees inside, recoils in horror and screams for a minute straight before the head takes control of him. [1]
Obeying orders given by Pamela, Joe travels back to his cabin in the woods and waits until dusk before leaving, heading towards a construction site his neighbor Rick Perkins had set up to build a foundation for his new house. Arming himself with a screwdriver, a shovel, a pair of work gloves and the box, Joe enters the construction site and, picking the lock on the foreman's shed with his screwdriver, enters it and takes a pair of keys. Hijacking a backhoe, Joe, directed by Pamela, drives past a dilapidated house and the cemetery near it before finally stopping. [1]
Using the backhoe, Joe begins to dig as a storm brews on the horizon. Eventually making a big enough hole, Joe exits the backhoe and begins to dig with his shovel, ignoring the rain, lightning and thunder. After an encounter with a snake and a hoard of worms, Joe digs up Jason Voorhees' hockey mask. Knocking some worms off the mask, Joe puts it on, allowing Jason's spirit to possess him. [1]
Several days after discovering Jason's mask, Joe, after leaving a Mother's Day card in his cabin, sneaks into the cottage of Rick Perkins and his wife. When the couple opens the door to their house, Joe shoots both of them dead with his shotgun. A few hours after killing the Perkins, Joe, cardboard box and shotgun in hand, travels to Camp Crystal Lake, where he spies on a group of campers who have traveled to the area. [1]
After stalking the campers, Joe, the next morning, wades through the lake and attacks two of them, Kyle and Suzanne, when they are left alone on the Crystal Lake docks by their friends. Sneaking up on Kyle and Suzanne while they are meditating, Joe slits both their throats ear to ear with his hunting knife. After slaying the two meditating teenagers, Joe later goes after Paul Sexton, another camper who had been jogging in the woods and was on his way back to the camp. Jumping out of the bushes in front of Paul, Joe chases after him. Managing to catch up to Paul, Joe impales him to a tree with a second hunting knife. [1]
With Paul dead, Joe claims two other victims who had wandered into the woods, camper Albert Harris and local gas station attendant Ned Varner. Repeatedly stabbing Albert in the stomach with his knife, Joe, after killing the boy, proceeds to murder the dumbstruck Ned. After committing these murders, Joe, wiping his knife off on his pants, is congratulated by Pamela, who afterward tells him he still has work to do. After Pamela tells him this, Joe places the head in a nearby tree for safekeeping, reasoning that to finish the rest of his work he needs both hands. [1]
With almost all the campers dead, Joe goes after two of the remaining three. Entering Crystal Lake where Billy Boone and Monique Dufy are on a rowboat, Joe, when Boone falls into the lake, leaps from the water and grabs Monique and, despite her struggling, bashes her head against the side of the boat and stabs her to death with his knife. When Boone returns to the boat and finds Monique's body, Joe attacks him, but is repelled when Boone smacks him in the throat with one of the boat oars. [1]
After Boone escapes him, Joe returns to Camp Crystal Lake and finds camper Carly McDonnell, who had discovered Kyle and Suzanne’s dead bodies, desperately trying to drive away in Paul's car. Bashing the windshield of the car twice with his shotgun, Joe smashes through the window and grabs Carly as she tries to exit the car through the door. Pulling Carly through the shattered windshield, Joe bashes her head against the hood of the car and, lining his shotgun up with her forehead, fires. [1]
Joe misses his shot when Boone, seeing Carly in danger, tackles him before jumping on his back and stabbing him over and over again with a hunting knife. Weakening due to Boone's assault, Joe, after one last attempt to throw the boy off, falls face first onto the ground, seemingly dead. Inspecting Joe's body, Carly, convinced the hunter is still alive, kicks his shotgun from his grasp before fleeing with Boone on the boy's motorcycle. [1]
Recovering and seeing Carly and Boone trying to escape, Boone grabs his shotgun and blows Boone's head off. Chasing after Carly, who survives the motorcycle crash, Joe follows her past the house and cemetery near where he had found Jason's mask. After chasing Carly all the way back to the campgrounds, Joe loses track of her and ultimately goes back into the woods, believing Carly had gone there. [1]
Joe is later led to Carly by Pamela's head, which Carly had stumbled across. Finding Carly, Joe, picking up Mrs. Voorhees's screeching head, advances on the girl. As he prepares to strike down the dumbstruck Carly, Joe is attacked by the girl, who stabs him with the hunting knife he had earlier impaled Paul with. Knocked to ground by Carly, Joe is stabbed in the back by her several times before managing to gain the upper hand; grabbing Carly and knocking her away, Joe prepares to bash her head in with a rock. Missing with his first strike, Joe tries to clobber Carly a second time when the girl stabs his arm with her knife. Despite being struck by Joe's rock and being strangled by the man, Carly manages to grab Jason's hockey mask and pull it off Joe, essentially exorcising Jason from the hunter's body. Without Jason's power, Joe succumbs to his injuries and dies. [1]
Appearances[]
Novels[]
- Friday the 13th: Mother's Day (1994)