Halloween 2

by Jack Martin

  Hunt and Loomis got out.

  A beer bottle sailed out of the crowd and shattered a window next to the policeman. He crouched and shouted at them. They shouted back louder.

  Hunt trained his searchlight at the roof to encircle the officer.

  That only made him a better target. Obscenities rang out from both sides. In the beam of the searchlight fists were raised, angry faces snarled at the new arrivals.

  Like something I saw in a movie once, thought Loomis, appalled. I thought scenes like this went out with nineteenth-century villages. Any second now they'll be lighting torches and calling for blood.

  Hunt uncoiled his radio microphone. "This is Hunt!" he said, yelling to be heard. They were all out now, teenagers, neighbors, the whole block by the look of it. "Send another vehicle. Forty-five Lampkin Lane."

  "The tribe," said Loomis. "One of their number was butchered. This is the wake."

  He rechecked the chamber of his .357 as Hunt unlocked his riot gun from the dashboard.

  "Heightens my sense of security," said Loomis.

  "All right, all right, knock it off!" shouted Hunt. He held his shotgun like a baton and forced a way through the crowd.

  Loomis felt that he was running a gauntlet.

  There were more officers inside the house than he would have guessed there were in the whole of Haddonfield. They were sifting through every square inch of the place.

  Better late than never.

  The patrolman from the coroner's office came up. His badge glinted in the crisscrossing flashlights.

  "Empty," he announced to Hunt. "Plus we covered the whole east end of town, Gary. Nothing."

  "Check it again."

  "He just ain't here!"

  "I said, check it again."

  The patrolman took two men and the three of them fought their way back out to the street.

  Hunt turned on Loomis.

  "Haddonfield was a pretty quiet town," he said, "until tonight. The only gunshots you ever heard were to start the track meet at the high school." He shook out a Marlboro, lit it with a yellow Cricket lighter. As an afterthought he offered Loomis one.

  They walked around to one side, away from the natives.

  "And yet," said Loomis distantly, lighting up, "one night in 1963, Michael Myers did murder his sister in that upstairs bedroom.

  With a large butcher knife."

  "I remember," said Hunt.

  "It was on Halloween.. ."

  "I was sixteen years old."

  Loomis was aware of a new feeling insinuating itself into his consciousness, a sense of continuity that linked his life with the life of Hunt and the others in this town. Though he had not known them or the town directly until now, it was true that they had an unholy alliance, himself and this square-cut young man and his partners; it was almost a complicity. By this alone were they now united here, remembering, marking similar milestones in their lives, however different those lives might have been.

  Fifteen years ago, thought Loomis. What might I be now if not for Michael Myers? I stayed with him, naively trying to help. And Hunt, he took a different course after that night. He responded in a way I should have all along. He armed himself with firepower.

  "It's his anniversary, Mr. Hunt." As it is for all of us, he thought, the date of our blood bondage. "He came back."

  "After fifteen years?"

  "He waited with extraordinary patience." Loomis was quite surprised to find himself explaining how it had been for him, miles from Haddonfield but always fated to be here one day, this day, along with the other parallel lives, aimed from the beginning toward a convergence none of them could have known anything about. Myself included; myself most of all. Only the Evil knew. He always knew.

  "There was a force inside him, biding its time," he went on, smoking his cigarette against the stars. "The staff grew accustomed to his immobility and silence. In many ways he was the ideal patient. He didn't talk, he didn't cry, he didn't even move. He just waited. The staff was unprepared. "They," he finished recounting, "didn't know what he was."

  The twin arcs of their cigarettes moved like shooting stars over the Illinois porch.

  "Did you know?" asked Hunt. There was no accusation in his voice. It was too late for that, and this policeman was nothing if not pragmatic.

  "Yeah," said Loomis bitterly, "I knew."

  I always knew. It was my belief, not my knowledge that failed. My faith, that primitive impulse for survival that our modern world has taken from us, leaving us what we are now: alone and lost, trying to set it right and make it back through the darkest part of the night to morning.

  Two teenaged boys ran up.

  "Mr. Hunt?"

  "Yeah, what is it, Craig?"

  "I'm worried about Bennett Trainer."

  "He's not home yet," said the second boy.

  "Yeah, he left the party at ten."

  Hunt consuited his watch. "It's only a little after eleven, boys."

  "He was real drunk," said the second boy.

  Loomis had a sense of foreboding. "How old was he?"

  "Seventeen," said the first boy.

  "He had this stupid mask on," said the second boy.

  Hunt and Loomis avoided each other's eyes. "We're scared something happened to him."

  "All right, boys," said Hunt.

  "Mr. Hunt?" said the first boy. "I—I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell my dad I was at a party tonight. . . ."

  Hunt nodded. "Go on home now. We'll take care of it."

  Loomis watched them lope away. "Seventeen," he said, "and wearing a mask."

  "Oh God" said Hunt.

  "We'd better check his dental records."

  A patrolman came around the side of the house.

  "Old Reservoir Road!" called the patrolman. "They got a break-in at the elementary school. They're pretty sure it's him."

  Loomis pitched his cigarette away. It hit the street in a shower of sparks.

  "Come on!"

  Karen had to take off her shoes in order to keep from slipping.

  The therapy room was filling up with steam. It permeated her uniform and condensed in her stockings, rose up to the ceiling and began to rain back down along the white tiles in rivulets, flowing into mirages under the exercise machines and walking bars.

  She slogged over to the stainless steel tub.

  Bud was buoyed back on his elbows. He had a look of absolute spoiled indulgence.

  She kicked her toes through a puddle, sprinkling his face.

  His eyelids opened lazily.

  "Hurry up," he said with a dopey smile.

  "I don't want to wrinkle my uniform." She hiked up her skirt and skinned off her panty hose. She stood over him with the shrunken nylons in her hand.

  Bud dunked his head under the churning surface and came up red as a lobster.

  "Well?" he said. He reached for her ankle.

  She dodged his hand. She watched him float over one of the jets. His hairy legs lifted, his kneecaps breaking the surface like bald heads. The roseate of his genitals bobbed on the water.

  "Well?" she said.

  The steam was rising.

  Karen held to the rail and tiptoed to the control room.

  The glass was misted over. Bud stretched out in the tub. He was a pink blur through the window. He said something to her, but his voice was muffled by the double safety panes. With that and the clouds of steam which now enclosed the tub, they would be very much alone even if someone were to walk into this part of the room from the hall, which was not likely at this hour. She stripped and folded her clothing on a shelf under the heating pipes. She set her stethoscope careful on top of the pile.

  The gauge indicated 104 degrees, the perfect temperature.

  Back in the tiled area once more, the rumbling of the aerators effectively blocked every sound of the world outside this room. Billows of steam licked invitingly from the sunken tub. She pinned back her hair and descended.

  The water closed around her neck.
<
br />   Bud's hands were slippery fishes darting over her hips and thighs. Their toes nipped at each other. The changing waterline tilted in front of her and merged with the misty white skyline of the ceramic floor beyond.

  If the door to the control room had opened and closed, neither of them noticed.

  Eventually Bud gripped her more demandingly around the waist and lifted her up into the hot air. A stream of bubbles rolled up her spine.

  She separated from him. "It's getting hotter in here," she observed.

  "That's me," said Bud.

  "You wish."

  "I know." He encircled her and nuzzled her breasts.

  She pushed him away again. Her fingers squeegeed his hair. "I'm not kidding. It's too hot now."

  Bud tried to hold her ankles with his in a frog leg lock.

  Karen tossed her head. "Check it, Bud," she said, using her impersonal nurse's voice.

  "That gauge is stuck on a hundred and five. It hasn't moved. Nobody could move it. I know—I tried it when I got here. It would take King Kong to budge it. It must be wrong. Besides, baby, it's cold out there."

  "It can get cold in here."

  "Gotcha," said Bud resignedly. He got out of the tub, deflated.

  He flat-footed it to the control room.

  He went inside. It was hot in the glass room, too, though silent as the door closed. Karen was a hazy blur from here. Her clothes were piled neatly under the controls. He smiled.

  "Where's your stethoscope, little girl? Lost it again, huh? Old Lady Alves is gonna start taking them out of your paycheck . . ."

  He wiped the misty gauge with wet fingers. It read 122 degrees.

  "Wha-a-at?" said Bud. "Can't be right."

  He touched the knob, drew his hand away and kissed his fingers. It was hot. "What the . . . ?"

  As he stood there massaging his chest hairs into a swirl, the temperature needle crept up another notch.

  124 degrees and inching into the red zone.

  He grabbed a towel and reached for the valve.

  A shadow passed over the gauge.

  He looked up. And up.

  The temperature gauge crept up to 127 degrees.

  But he could not have seen it.

  Karen ignored the misty activity in the control room. Bud's arms were jerking in the shadows.

  "Yank that thing, big man," she said, turning her back. "You've got strong hands. I know you can do it."

  She sat on the edge of the tub and folded her arms under her dripping breasts. The water humped as if boiling.

  Behind her, the door to the control room opened.

  She snagged a towel and dabbed her neck and shoulders. She lifted the hair away from her face with her red fingernails. She fanned the steam. It was becoming difficult to breathe. The back of her neck trickled with perspiration. She dabbed it again.

  A hand touched her.

  "Bud, forget it. I have to get back to work."

  The hand stayed where it was.

  Her big toe dipped into a mound of aeration. She jerked her foot away.

  "Ow, that's hotter than ever! Did you even do anything? We sure can't go back in now."

  The hand slid around her neck to the hollow of her throat.

  "Mmm. You want to go for breakfast later?"

  She took the hand in her hands and drew it down to her breastbone and closed her eyes. The fingertips brushed her nipple.

  She sighed. "I'm sorry. I just have to get back, that's all." Eyes closed, she licked the finger, sucked it.

  There was no response.

  "Come on, Bud, don't be this way . . ."

  She stopped what she was doing. The fingers were dirty. Filthy.

  She opened her eyes to the wrist, the arm—

  To what was behind her.

  Instantly she was bent in half and driven forward. Before she hit the water she wrenched around far enough to see Bud sprawled nude on the tiles of the control room, a stethoscope—her own—knotted across his Adam's apple. Then she was forced down and up and down. One, two, three, four, five, six times. Each time she was hauled up by the hair her face was redder and more blistered, until her bubbling, choking screams ceased and there was only the hissing and the patient, silent, curious shadow leaning over her, observing.

  Finally it dropped her and left her there, half-in and half-out, her arms and one leg floating gracefully on the roiling waves, the skin of her face and breasts boiled and peeling loose in long, dangling strips.

  Then the shape stepped over her and moved on.

  Back out into the hospital corridor.

  It had not been difficult at all.

  Chapter Nine

  How they changed, Laurie thought.

  There had been a crackling and then every light in the hall, the hospital and the world, it seemed, went out all at once.

  Laurie had stopped resisting because hands were no longer forcing her back into the bed. Yet they did not release her.

  "Hold her." Dr. Mixter's voice.

  "I'll have a talk with—"

  A rumbling in the walls, an almost subaudible electric pressure.

  "—with Mr. Garrett about this," finished Mrs. Alves.

  Just as suddenly, emergency power returned. Some of the lights in the hall stayed off. The few that reactivated now outlined Mrs. Alves' head so that it appeared much larger than before.

  She advanced on Laurie with an unreal modeling to her features as dim light leaked through her hair. Someone thought of the table lamp. It clicked and clicked uselessly. Only the moonlight through the blinds remained constant, and it was a distant, storybook kind of lighting that hid as much as it revealed.

  "That's it," said Dr. Mixter, his face huge over the bed. "Easy." His cheeks were hollow and craggy, Laurie saw now, his temples scarred with pockmarks. His eyes were black and unreadable under heavy anthropoid brows.

  The cold stab of the needle in her vein. . . .

  That was how it was.

  But this is supposed to be a hospital, she thought, returning to the present. The safest place there is.

  If that's true, why didn't I feel safe when they brought me here? And why don't I feel safe now?

  That question had been answered a few minutes ago.

  It was the people, the doctors and nurses. They seemed friendly enough in the beginning. Pretending to be interested in my welfare. Like mothers and fathers.

  But that was a lie, too, like all the lies down the years. Oh, they answer your questions as long as you don't ask the really important ones. Then they turn out your light and tuck you in so tight you can't move and tell you to go to sleep whether you want to or not. If you see things, they tell you it's only a dream. If you dream too much, they tell you not to do that, either. Finally they don't want to listen. They try to make you feel guilty for being afraid.

  That's the way it has always been for me, as long as I can remember.

  Nothing has changed.

  When I was in sixth grade, I thought it would be different once I got to junior high. In eighth grade, I could hardly wait to be a freshman in high school. Then I was a sophomore. By the time I was a junior I knew for sure it was an illusion. I'll never know the answers, at least not enough of them to be safe.

  Maybe when I'm older, out on my own, married?

  No.

  She put that from her mind, too. Now when does it seem that I'll know? Twenty-one? Thirty? Forty? Ever? What a fool I've been, waiting. It's like a rainbow: as soon as you get close to the pot of gold, the end moves farther away. It always has. It always will.

  I wonder if my grandmother knows? She must be in her sixties. I'll bet she doesn't. I wish I could ask her, or at least tell her that it's the same for me, too. Why won't they let me see her? They change the subject like they're embarrassed whenever I bring her up; they won't even tell me her name. As if not knowing the name could make someone less real. I know she's real. I almost remember. Almost. . . .

  She drifted on a cloud of drugs, leaving her hospital bed
behind.

  She wanted to tell her friends right now, tomorrow, that it was all a game. As soon as she could get out of here she would. Don't wait any longer, she heard herself yelling in the daylight that would come. Don't put off your life, school or no school. College next year? Yes, if you want to. But don't do it because you think it's going to make you any wiser; don't use it as an excuse. The time you have is precious. You'll never know more than you do now, I promise. . . .

  It was as clear to her as the knowledge that she was finally on her own.

  Completely, from now on. Mom and Dad can come here if they want to. It will be easier, seeing them. But it won't really make any difference. They hadn't been able to help her when she needed them most. There was no reason to assume they ever would again.

  For the first time in her life she accepted and embraced her lot.

  It was like an opening up, not like a loss.

  I wonder if it would be easier for Annie or Lynda if they knew? It's the secret everyone's moving toward discovering all through life. They don't know it. They only know that parents can't do it forever, if they ever did. That's why Annie's got Tommy, Lynda's got Bob now. . . .

  She wanted to tell them that Tommy and Bob won't be able to help them, either, not in any way that really counts, when the time comes that you need help most. Love them for what they are and be grateful for that, but don't expect them to save you. They can't—they're waiting for someone to do the same for them. Don't you get it?

  Annie and Lynda . . .

  Her friends' faces drifted in the air over her bed. She could almost hear them if she listened closely enough:

  . . . Totally insane! Lynda was saying, lost in her world of school and partying. Was it only yesterday? We have three new cheers to learn in the morning, the game in the afternoon, I get my hair done at five, and the dance is at eight. I'll be totally wiped out!

  I forgot my chemistry book, Laurie heard herself saying.

  It totally doesn't matter, she wanted to tell herself.

  So who cares? Lynda again, crazy Lynda. I always forget my chemistry book, and my math book and my English book and my, let's see, my French book and, oh, who needs books, anyway? I don't need books. I always forget all of my books. I mean, it doesn't really matter if you have your books or not. . . .