by Jack Martin
A shot of hands groping through cracks in walls. More boards hastily nailed up. Gunfire. And screams. Lots of screams.
"Turn it off," said Janet.
"No way. Wait till you see the good part. Pretty soon they start eatin' people. Fingers, guts. . ."
"You're disgusting!"
Bud shrugged and clamped the end of his joint in a hemostat and fired it up again with his Bic. "Don't get on my case," he said. "I'm only tellin' it for real." He offered the joint to Jimmy. "Ain't that right, college boy?"
"No," said Jimmy.
The movie cut away to another bulletin.
". . . IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE KILLINGS, THE STREETS BETWEEN CHESTNUT AND TENTH ARE JAMMED WITH PEOPLE AND CARS. . . ."
"Speaking of eating," said Bud. "I sure could go for a pizza now. Nice big one with sausage, onions, peppers. But no mushrooms. I hate mushrooms."
Jimmy ignored him and got up. He began pacing.
The live newscast cut to a remote shot of a street corner. It was roadblocked against a stream of automobile headlights. More police cars were arriving to bolster the traffic barricades.
"THIS IS USUALLY A QUIET, PEACEFUL STREET, BUT TONIGHT THE NEIGHBORS WERE STUNNED BY THE GRUESOME SIGHT OF THREE BODIES BEING WHEELED OUT OF THIS HOUSE. THE NAMES OF THE YOUNG VICTIMS HAVE NOT YET BEEN RELEASED, BUT PEOPLE IN THE CROWD HAVE RECOGNIZED THEM AS NEIGHBORHOOD TEENAGERS. I'M TOLD THAT THEY WERE ALL FRIENDLY KIDS WHO LIVED NEARBY, ONE OF WHOM MAY HAVE BEEN BABYSITTING HERE TONIGHT. . . ."
"Looks like a goddamn homecoming," said Bud.
Janet could not finish her Coke.
"I gotta go," she said. But she made no move. She was tired and nervous from waiting to see what would happen next. By the look on her face, the announcement only confused her more.
"So go," said Bud.
Jimmy looked up and down the hall. He came back in.
Over their heads the diffused lighting flickered and buzzed as if an insect were trapped inside one of the neon tubes.
"Julie saw him, you know," said Janet very seriously.
"Who?" said Bud. "Michael Myers."
"Come on. . ."
"I swear. Yesterday when she was coming to work." Her eyes were large and fixed, seeing it.
"Where did she see him?"
"You know the Shop and Bag out by the mall? She stopped at the light and saw him walking in that field behind the Lost River Drive-In. Julie said he was so creepy. . . ."
"Julie's fulla shit. He didn't escape until last night."
"You don't have to swear about it."
"She's a goddamn moron, anyway."
Janet's face boiled with barely-suppressed revulsion. "Every other word you say is either hell or shit or damn."
"Sorry. I guess I just fuck up all the time."
Janet gave up. She stood and left the lounge.
"Bye," said Bud after she had gone.
"Why don't you just rest your mouth for a while?" said Jimmy. "Everybody's pretty uptight tonight. You're not helping things."
"There's only one thing'll help me tonight. Two things. Karen, where are you and those humongous tits of yours?!"
In the town square, near the shopping center, a few pedestrians were still in motion.
Some were in costume. Whether the pirates and assorted ghouls and demons had not yet gone home from trick-or-treating, or whether they had been called back once only to sneak out for a second round of make-believe mayhem was impossible to determine. But it was obvious that spirits were high; movements were jerky and angular, the silhouettes of their costumes blowing in the wind like tattered pennants of unknown design, so that the shadowed sidewalks and dark awnings and gaping caverns of doorways appeared to be alive with restless, furtive activity. Here echoing footsteps so quick and faint they might have belonged to running mice tapped in secret procession between a hardware store and gift shop; there fading laughter not unlike demonic giggling sounded across the impenetrable distance between sidewalk and parking lot; and there, the afterimage of a scurrying witch's glance lingered under a totem lamppost, lighted from within and winking into invisibility when finally faced, like the contrail of a shooting star that falls across the evening sky only to disappear when confronted directly.
And here a nurse, whose name was Karen Bailey, already late for her shift at Memorial Hospital, hurrying toward her car, racing the hands of her wrist watch.
She was tall and slender, physically presupposing, with a steady, efficient gait and a determined cant to her shoulders. Beside her and two steps behind was another young woman.
". . . I cannot believe it. Pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and bobbing for apples. Actually bobbing in water, no less!"
"Oh, they have to use water so you can get the apples out of—"
"I'm never going to another Halloween party as long as I live, especially at Steven Mackle's house. And of course now I'm going to be late." Karen fished in her purse for the keys to her red Mustang.
"You gotta drive me home first."
"Oh Darcy, I don't have time."
"W'll, you got to!"
Karen reached inside her open convertible and dropped her purse on top of her uniform. "Can't you ask Eddie Lee?"
"He's in Russelville!"
"It's five minutes to your house, another five minutes back to the hospital. Mrs. Alves is gonna kill me," said Karen despondently.
"You promised me," said Darcy.
"I know I did," sighed Karen.
They got into the car without another word.
The red Mustang pulled out.
Neither driver nor passenger noticed the Valiant parked under a broken streetlight.
Neither did the children who hunkered at the corner, busy dividing candy, nor the teenaged boy who passed them on the sidewalk. He had on a straw hat that masked his face, raccoon-like, from the faint spill of overhead light, and as he walked he hoisted a battery-operated stereo radio with separate woofers and tweeters so that it was balanced on one shoulder, inches from his ear.
"Oh, Mister Sandman," the radio was playing, an old song from the Golden Oldies station, "send me a dream . . . make him the cutest that I've ever seen . . ."
The side of his face blocked from view by the monstrous radio, the teenager looked straight ahead as he ambled past the children. Advertising neon blurred nearby; he did not turn his head.
A tall, dark shape in a black coat was walking toward him on the sidewalk.
The shape's arms were stiff at its sides and its feet moved slowly and deliberately, as though weighted. As it passed through an unexpected circle of light from an electric pumpkin window display, its pale rubber mask seemed to undulate with a ghostly sheen, its eye slits black as coal, the tuft of artificial hair sewn to the crown of the mask sprung out in comic abandon, creating a spiked, aboriginal profile to the oversized head.
But it was hardly an unusual mask in the town that night. Several exactly like it had been in the window of Stoddard's Store only that morning, before the break-in. The robbery had not received much attention on the news; only one of the masks, some rope and a set of kitchen cutlery were stolen. Not much in dollars and cents, and hardly worth the time Sheriff Brackett had spent in answering the call. Chances were this teenager had passed the same mask in the window many times in the past few weeks. He had not paid any attention to the mask then. He did not now.
The boy passed the shape without a second look.
The music went with him.
The shape kept walking.
At the end of the sidewalk a sign:
HOSPITAL
From this distance the amber sodium lights of the emergency lot were clearly visible. It was an easy walk the rest of the way. In fact, many of the locals left their cars in the shopping center lot as a matter of course on days when hospital visiting was heavy.
Without breaking its lumbering stride, the shape kept walking.
Fifteen minutes later, a red Mustang fishtailed into the staff parking lot.
Karen flew
out of the car. A thin film of perspiration glossed her face as she reached for her purse and uniform and trotted toward the building. She did not even glance at her wristwatch. Her pink scarf, rendered a sickly green by the sodium lights, streamed behind her like a sea plant as she picked up the pace.
She did not take notice of the ominous, elongated shadows under the posts or of the landscaped flowerbeds, the arrangements of rocks and the unhealthy state of the plants there by the back of the building. Nor did she notice the lumbering movement which cast a peculiar ripple along the chrome of the cars at the edge of the lot, coming to a halt at the left rear fender of her own Mustang. The reflection was distorted, but held the anamorphic image of a tall shape in a black coat, arms stiff as it stood next to the red car, staring after her, head tilted curiously to one side, its mask highlighted and framed perfectly in the circle of the car's outside rearview mirror like a death's-head cameo.
The shape waited until the staff door closed.
Then it moved on.
Toward the building.
Garrett, the security guard, was watching television.
Not the bank of closed-circuit sets which monitored the parking lot and key corridors of the hospital, but the local channel, WWAR, where now another reel of Dr. Dementia's Horror Movie Marathon was airing in grainy black-and-white. Just now a montage of clutching hands filled the screen, accompanied by endless blood-curdling screams and a cheap but poundingly effective music score.
Garrett settled his enormous gut behind the desk and thumbed through a copy of MERCENARY ADVENTURERS magazine. The Pinup-of-the-Month was a full-page closeup of the severed head of an Oriental human being, mounted on a stick. The sharpened end of the bamboo was pointing out of a vacant eye socket. The caption read: "You Don't Need an M-16 to Bring Home a Trophy From Today's Preemptory Incursions!"
He wagged his head and chuckled at the picture.
On the first of the monitors, something moved at the entrance to the parking lot, then dematerialized off the edge of the screen.
He did not notice this.
Above the screams and the music, there came a pounding.
Garrett looked up.
Hands were pounding the boarded windows of an old farmhouse. Wood splintered under the assault and fingers broke through, clawing and grasping.
Garrett returned to the pin-up, then flipped ahead to the letters page, which was entitled "He-Man-To-Man."
The pounding was more insistent.
Garrett swiveled in his chair.
A silhouette was pounding on the guard station door.
He marked his place in the magazine, cut off the horror movie and reluctantly got up.
He opened the door on darkness. Before it was all the way open, the silhouette pushed inside.
"Thanks, Mr. Garrett!"
"Hi, Karen," said the guard. "Did you hear?"
"Hear what?"
"Aw, some weirdo's out there, cutting kids up. He's—"
"Yeah. On the radio." She hurried to punch in.
Garrett hooked his thumbs in his web belt and puffed his chest out. "It was drugs."
"Was it? I gotta go. I'm late." She folded her uniform over her arm and crossd to the inner door. The plastic bag covering the uniform rippled with dull reflections in the electronic light.
Garrett stayed where he was, rocking authoritatively on his heels.
Behind him, the monitors continued to scan the inner and outer perimeters of the grounds. On one of the exterior screens, a figure could be seen passing an unmarked doorway. The figure became a grainy shadow at the edge of camera range, and then melted off the screen.
"Yup," said Garrett. "Teenagers on drugs. . . ."
". . . Seen this flick so many times," Bud was saying. His chin was down and his eyes were having trouble focusing.
Jimmy paced the lounge, touching the Coke machine, the counter top, the cups and trays, straightening chairs for something to do.
"Too bad we missed the first picture they had on tonight. Shit, what's the name of it? The Thing, yeah. That guy from Gunsmoke was in it, played the monster. This big ol' hairy thing comes down in a fuckin' flyin' saucer, he's all frozen—been in suspended animation since way back when. Then, when they thaw his ass . . ."
"I saw it," said Jimmy. "When I was a kid."
"Right. And then he starts rippin' through doors, kickin' ass on some dogs. . . . He hangs this one poor son of a bitch upside down and bleeds him! Yeah And there's this phony doctor, he thinks he's the only one understands the Thing, but when he finally gets there, well, the ol' Thing just blows him away like everybody else. Finally the soldiers fry him, though, and—hi, Karen!"
Karen stuck her head in the doorway. "Hi."
"You're late," said Bud.
"Yeah." Karen smiled at Bud and toyed with the ends of her pink scarf. "I gotta get on the ward," she said apologetically. The hallway behind her was empty, so she stretched it as long as she could. "Hi, Jimmy," she added.
"Oh, hi, Karen." Jimmy gave her a half-hearted nod.
She adjusted the purse and uniform over her arm and stood expectantly over Bud. The driver's eyes traveled familiarly over her
sweater and the taut lines of her designer jeans. He gave her a lazy, sloe-eyed grin and crept his fingertips across the table toward her wrist.
She stroked one of his fingers. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, still out of breath. The ribbed pattern of her sweater swelled; in the strained silence her breasts rose and fell; there was the almost imperceptible whisper of her skin moving against the inside of her clothing. She noticed the clock on the wall and withdrew her hand.
"See you later, she said.
"Right."
Bud watched the designer jeans disappear down the hall. Then he kicked back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head.
"A-mazing grace," he sang, "come sit on my face. . . ."
"Look," said Jimmy, "why don't you just shut up, all right?"
"All right," said Bud obligingly. "What are you all revved-up about?"
"It coulda been Ziggy, you know." Jimmy's words were clipped and fast, half-stuttering. "It could have been your brother Mark they pulled out of there."
"All right, so what do you want me to do? Look, Jimmy, Rule Number One: never get involved with a patient. Nurses, that's another story. But patients, it's no good. It never works out."
Jimmy lost his patience and went to the door.
"Where you goin', college boy?"
Jimmy ignored him.
"I'm tellin' you. Listen to ol' Bud!"
The door started to close. On the wall outside was a crepe paper decoration. HAPPY HALLOWEEN, it said.
"Shit," Bud said after him, "you wouldn't have made fifteen minutes in 'Nam, college boy".
"You awake?"
Laurie's head rolled on the pillow and her eyes darted to the door, which was ajar a few inches. She had not heard it open. She had been thinking about—something. She did not want to think about it. She did not want to think about anything. But the colors had started to form before her eyes in the grainy darkness over her bed, swirling over her in a misty whiteness. And there had been voices, too, heard from far away over a long-distance telephone wire or from another room, a room she was not supposed to enter. And other sounds. A dripping. The color red, the darkest red she had ever seen. And a face turning toward her. She could almost see it.
But it was not this face. This was a good face, kind and unbelievably tender. Like a brother. Her heart speeded unaccountably and she raised herself a few inches, suppressing the thought.
"Yeah."
Jimmy's face hovered over her. His skin was so soft and blue from the moonlight coming through the window that she wanted to reach up and touch it. But she could hardly move. There was a pain in her shoulder and a constriction in her arm, inside the elbow. An I.V. bottle swung on its stand as she endeavored to sit up, disturbing a tube that ran from the needle in her arm.
She cleared her head. "I'
ve just been thinking."
"You shouldn't try to think."
There, that was proof. He understood, he really did.
"I know. But I can't help it. I still can't believe it."
Jimmy closed the door. The bluish light through the blinds made a striped pattern over his face, and then the pattern moved. That was because of the leaves outside the window, she realized.
"They should have—they should have handled him more carefully."
"Who?"
Jimmy's voice was intense, wound up like a spring. "Michael Myers."
Laurie could not imagine what he was talking about. Still something about the name chilled her blood; she did not know why. "Michael Myers?"
"Yeah, he's—he's the guy that was after you.
"You mean the Myers house? That little kid who killed his sister?"
"Yeah."
Jimmy was uneasy talking about it, but it was obvious that he needed to talk to someone. And he was giving her information so that she could understand. Begin to understand. She wanted to thank him for that and for the delicate way in which he raised the subject. She was not sure she was ready for the rest of the story yet; contradictory emotions tugged at her, the need to know and the desire to erase it all from her mind forever. She was not sure which would be easier.
Her mind raced. She could not stop it. What he was telling her did not add up. What did it have to do with anything?
"But he's in a hospital somewhere."
"He escaped last night."
It was too facile. "How do you know?" she asked, dubious.
His face was so open and uncalculating. "It's all over the radio. Television too. It's on right now."
Laurie felt a wind rush through her chest. It was colder than the night air outside. She forced herself to breathe again.
"Why me?" she whispered. "I mean, why me?"
For some reason she could not keep her breath working right. She lowered back onto the pillow, the blue-white bed. The ceiling swam before her eyes. Expanding, contracting. "Oh God . . . !" she said.
The door opened again.
Laurie squeezed her eyes shut, unable to move.
"Time's up, Jimmy," said Mrs. Alves. "Let's go.
She opened her eyes. Jimmy was leaving. "Okay, okay," he said, his voice lighter again. When he looked back at her his tone remained deceptively casual, but a tension he could not hide gripped his vocal cords so that his words seemed to carry great weight. "I'll be back. In a little while."