Halloween

by John Passarella

  Two detectives worked the room, dusting for prints, one kneeling by the open door that passed through to the garage, the other standing behind the seated corpse, examining the cash register, radio, and countertop. Leaving them to their work, Hawkins stepped back out of the office.

  He’d always thought when the day came that the heinous stuff no longer bothered him it would be a psychological warning sign to get the hell out, to retire already. That he would have become damaged goods. Unfortunately, that day had long passed. Sometimes once was enough—or too much. Because some things you couldn’t unsee.

  Finally, he left the office to make sure Righetti and Richards had everything under control before he examined the final victim, the mechanic in the garage bay. Pausing, he noticed a familiar woman’s face amongst the onlookers gathering at the edge of the police tape.

  Hawkins nodded toward her and asked Richards, “Is that who I think it is?”

  “Yeah,” Richards said. “She calls the station at least twice a month. She’s a paranoid pain in the ass.”

  “Tell her to go home. Tell her I said so.”

  Shrugging, Richards walked across the lot to where Laurie Strode stood behind the yellow police tape. After Richards spoke, looking over his shoulder at Hawkins, Laurie looked up and caught Hawkins’ gaze with a look of recognition. He nodded, but as she started to work her way along the crowd toward him, he turned away.

  Some people have good reason for paranoia, he thought, not sure what comfort he could offer her. Only excuses, and they weren’t even his excuses. The Warren County Sheriff’s Department had had no advance warning about the prisoner transfer. But we’re expected to clean up the mess, he thought. And the mess kept spreading. At least five killed after the prisoner bus escape. Now four more at the service station.

  “Hawkins!” Sheriff Barker called from inside the garage bay. “Look at this.”

  Hawkins followed Barker into the garage, past a pickup truck with a raised hood and a bloodstained engine block, and a mobile tool chest. The mechanic’s corpse lay face down, bare legs protruding from under storage shelves. Crouching beside the body, which had been stripped down to a dingy white t-shirt and briefs, he noted the bloody hammer and the back of the man’s crushed skull.

  “Face isn’t much better,” Barker said.

  “Don’t suppose he came to work in his skivvies,” Hawkins said.

  “That’s why I called you in,” Barker said, waving to a detective standing a few feet away wearing latex gloves while holding an evidence bag.

  “Show him,” Barker instructed the detective.

  The detective reached into the bag and brought out two items of clothing, a white V-neck tunic and white trousers. Hawkins stood up, pulled a pair of gloves out of his jacket pocket, slipped them on and asked to examine the clothing. No identifying marks, but the lack of quality spoke volumes. “State issued,” he concluded. He passed the clothing back to the detective who returned them to the bag.

  “Get on the phone to Smith’s Grove and confirm the match,” Barker said to Hawkins.

  “In the meantime, we have to let people know, sir.”

  Barker was already shaking his head. “Not until we have confirmation. I don’t want the media foaming at the mouth and dragging the name of this town through the headlines again.”

  Hawkins bit his tongue before expressing his first frustrated thought, which would have included a choice profanity or two. Like it or not, Barker was his boss. He proceeded diplomatically. “I strongly disagree, sir,” he began. “Let this be my case. If this is who we think it is, we have one order of business. Hunt this man down.”

  “And we will,” Barker said. “Soon as we confirm he’s the one responsible for this… mess.”

  With a soft sigh of resignation, Hawkins turned away. The man lived in a state of denial, delaying the inevitable. Ignoring this problem wouldn’t make it go away. At least if they made an announcement that Myers was loose in town, everyone would be on the lookout for an older man dressed in a gas-station mechanic’s coveralls. Instead, they’d have to wait to see where he would strike next.

  His gaze drifted to the last place he’d seen Laurie Strode, but he no longer saw any sign of her. Good, he thought, maybe she took my advice after all.

  * * *

  After the policeman informed her of Hawkins’ instruction to go home, Laurie decided to have a word with him. She had as much right to stand there as any of the other gawkers. And even though other Smith’s Grove inmates had escaped when the transport bus ran off the road, Laurie had no doubt who was responsible for these murders.

  She had survived his last killing spree and, from where she stood, history had already begun to repeat itself. How many had he killed at this service station? From what she could tell from beyond the wrong side of the police tape, there was at least one victim in the restroom, another in the office, and a third in the garage.

  She needed to know more, to find out if the murders were connected or random. Why had he come to this specific service center? In broad daylight, no less. Maybe it had something to do with the Ford parked at the self-service pump.

  After Hawkins told her to leave via his intermediary, she initially backed away, until she got lost a bit in the crowd, then she worked her way up the line to get a better view of the crime scene in the garage. She recognized Sheriff Barker. The other man with him was either a detective or a crime-scene tech. Considering he wore a suit jacket, she was betting on the former. When that man showed Hawkins clothing from an evidence bag, it confirmed her fears that Michael had left behind his Smith’s Grove hospital garb. That he’d left those clothes in the garage indicated that he’d switched clothes there. From what she remembered of this place, all the mechanics, gas-pump jockeys and clerks wore the same dark coveralls.

  Even without the state hospital clothes, he would stand out.

  20

  By the time Karen picked up groceries and was returning home, the afternoon sky had begun to dim. It was not quite sunset, but younger children had already taken to the streets. She glanced around at the various costumes: a mummy, a princess, a firefighter, a vampire, a cowboy, a pirate—accompanied by his mother who also wore a pirate costume—assorted superheroes, and a taller kid dressed as a wizard with a conical hat and a robe decorated with stars and crescent moons. Wary of a kid potentially darting across the street, she slowed her station wagon to school-zone speed and crept along until she made the turn into her own driveway.

  As she glanced out the rear window, someone slapped the hood of her car with enough force to startle her. She caught a brief glimpse of an older kid dressed in a black cloak and hood, wearing a ghoulish rubber mask that hid his identity. Brazenness and rude behavior born of anonymity. Cross-reference the comments section on most of the Internet.

  Next time, wear a troll costume, she thought, chuckling as her nervous reaction waned.

  Karen walked to the rear of the car, opened the hatchback, and grabbed her two bags of groceries, hoping to make one trip into the house. A young cowboy, ninja, and skeleton walked past her, a few steps ahead of one of their parents.

  “Happy Halloween!” the cowboy called.

  “Trick or treat!” the skeleton said.

  Nodding, the ninja remained silent, maybe an attempt to stay in character.

  One boy carried a canvas sack for his candy, hand-drawn pictures of bats, skulls, bones, and tombstones decorating one side, along with the misspelled CEMATERY in all capital letters.

  “Hi, kids,” she replied as she wrangled the two bags in her arms after closing the hatchback. “Have fun.”

  With her jacket on, they wouldn’t see her Christmas sweater, which was just as well. She had no desire to stand around discussing why her family failed to embrace this popular holiday.

  On the porch, she set down one bag to unlock the front door. Inside, she found the upstairs hallway light on, illuminating the staircase, but the house was silent. “Ray?” she called.

&nbs
p; No answer.

  Walking into the house, listening for any sound, she neglected to close the front door behind her and made her way to the kitchen. “Allyson? Anyone home?”

  As she set the grocery bags on the counter, she heard a sound from upstairs. Halfway between a creak and a squeak. Maybe a random sound of the house settling. Or possibly something more. She thought about the anonymous ghoul kid slapping the hood of her car and started to wonder if that had been a postscript to vandalism or theft inside the house—or maybe a warning to his compatriots to get out…?

  Leaving the kitchen, she walked slowly back toward the stairs so as not to make a sound of her own while she listened for more noises upstairs. Near the stairs, she craned her neck to look up the staircase to the hallway—and heard footfalls above her.

  Someone’s in the house!

  A moment later, she noticed movement at the periphery of her vision as someone stepped into the open doorway. Her head whipped around, heart racing—

  Ray.

  “Karen?”

  She exhaled in temporary relief, raised a finger to her lips, warning him to keep quiet. He mouthed a question and she pointed to the second floor. When she turned back toward the staircase, her gaze raised to the top of the steps, a figure stepped into view, holding a handgun—

  —Laurie!

  Her mother aimed the revolver at the bottom of the staircase.

  “Bang,” Laurie said matter-of-factly. “You’re dead.”

  Karen gasped. “You scared me,” she said, incensed. “What are you doing in our house?”

  Every time Karen saw her with the sheathed hunting knife strapped to the belt of her jeans, she absurdly imagined her mother hunting squirrels and rabbits and skinning them with the blade. When has she ever had to use that knife? The thought usually made her chuckle. Not this time. She was too angry to find any amusement at all in her mother’s eccentricities and obsessions.

  Laurie stood there, unapologetic. “Side window was unlocked,” she explained. “No security system. Sometimes I can’t tell the difference between your ignorance and your stupidity.”

  “I know jujitsu, Laurie,” Ray said indignantly. “I can apply pressure points, chokes, and holds to use the opponent’s force of attack against them.”

  Both Karen and Laurie replied simultaneously, “Shut up, Ray.”

  Ray meant well but this argument was between Karen and her mother.

  Laurie descended the stairs. Before she reached the bottom, she said, “The bus crashed.”

  Karen shook her head, confused. “What?” Okay, now her mother talked in non sequiturs. Or was it some code only she understood?

  “I have a plan,” Laurie continued. “We’re going to get him before he gets us. Where’s Allyson? We have to get out of here. Now.”

  “What bus crashed?” Karen asked, trying once again to grasp her mother’s madness. “Mom, no one’s coming after us.”

  “Maybe you should put down that gun?” Ray suggested in a calm voice, clearly open to the possibility that Karen’s mother was unstable and potentially dangerous.

  “You need help,” Karen said to her mother, with a nervous glance of her own at the revolver. “You’re not welcome here until you get it.”

  As always, Laurie had her own agenda and was unwilling to listen to reason, only to the scared voices in her own head. “Evil is real,” she said. “You don’t know what it’s like to feel true terror. To be powerless.” Her voice softened. “I don’t ever want you to feel that way. I only want to prepare and protect you.”

  The same excuse for her mother’s aberrant behavior Karen had heard a hundred times. The same fears and obsession. She was a broken record of paranoia, a danger to herself and—Karen was forced to admit—possibly to others.

  Karen had spent her whole life trying to avoid the behavioral traps that had ruined her mother’s life and deprived Karen of a normal childhood. Rather than a role model, her mother had become an emotional cautionary tale for Karen.

  “And I just want to prepare dinner for my family,” Karen replied, trying to steer her mother to the prosaic realities of daily life. She imagined the internal conversations her mother must have with herself and how often the words that bubbled to the surface and escaped her lips made no sense to the rest of the world. “The world is not a dark place. It can be full of love and understanding, and I don’t need your psychotic rants to confuse me or convince me otherwise.”

  That had been the heart of their mother–daughter dysfunction. Karen had grown up believing she was a disappointment to her mother for not embracing Laurie’s skewed view of evil around every corner, which waited for one momentary lapse in vigilance to strike. To live a happy and full life she’d had to ignore all her mother’s expectations. She couldn’t live the life her mother deemed necessary, so she’d chosen to live her own life her way, by her rules. Her mother was a reminder of everything she’d rejected. But sometimes, her mother was a reminder of everything the two of them had sacrificed by going their separate ways. Karen refused to apologize for the life she’d chosen, even if it had meant rejecting her own mother.

  “You need to leave, Laurie,” Ray said. “Or I’ll call the police. I will.”

  Looking first at Ray and then Karen, Laurie nodded with resignation. For now, at least, she recognized that she wouldn’t sway them to her way of thinking. From personal experience, Karen knew it wouldn’t stick. Her obsession came at them in waves, like the tide, never completely gone.

  Laurie walked between them and stepped through the open doorway. Pausing on the porch, she turned back and asked, “Did you get a gun?”

  Karen walked to the doorway and grabbed the edge of the door in her hand. “Of course not,” she said. It never ends with her! “Get out.”

  Before her mother could say another word, Karen swung the door shut and flipped the deadbolt.

  21

  As the red-and-orange-streaked sunset faded to darkness, children prowled familiar streets in costume, clutching bags filled with candy, some so heavy with sugary loot younger kids had trouble holding them aloft. Some children stumbled along behind plastic or rubber masks, turning their heads to compensate for blinkered vision. Others wore blinking lights clipped to their costumes as protection against distracted motorists. Friends exchanged tips on which houses had the best candy and the rare few giving out full-sized chocolate bars.

  Parents followed the youngest, pushing strollers or carrying heavier bags between homes to give their kids a break. They walked with flashlights, occasionally reminding the youngest to say the magic words each time a homeowner answered the door. Most welcoming homes sported a jack-o’-lantern or two and artificial cobwebs stretched across plants or around doorframes. Some parents took photos on their phones of the more imaginative decorations: a ring of ghosts holding hands around a simulated fire, novelty dismembered body parts dangling from ceiling fans on covered porches, front yard cemeteries with dark foam tombstones behind zombie hands clawing up from the ground. Most of the photos appeared on social media before the neighborhood photographers returned home with their exhausted children.

  Young teens sporting minimalist costumes—smudge-faced hobos, sports-jersey jocks, zombies with gruesome makeup and ripped clothing—carried converted pillowcases and ran from house to house as if hoping to get through the trick-or-treat process as soon as possible, some feeling the first stages of embarrassment in pursuing what would soon be deemed a childish activity. To compensate, they rebelled in their own way, setting off strings of firecrackers every block or two—POP! POP! POP!—shrieking with laughter as they ran from imaginary pursuers.

  Startled by a nearby series of exploding firecrackers, Jared, dressed as a cowboy with a boombox small enough to hold on one shoulder, stumbled and dropped his candy bag, spilling his treats across the sidewalk. Oblivious to his accident, his friends rushed along without him. As he dropped to his knees, putting down his boombox to scoop the spilled candy back into his bag, he looked up and
called, “Hey, wait up!”

  None of them heard, and they continued without him.

  Redoubling his efforts, he leaned forward and made a scoop out of both arms to pull the rest toward his bag all at once. While collecting the final pieces, he heard someone breathing louder than him. As he climbed to his feet, lugging his bag and the boombox, a dark shape moved from behind a tree.

  Determined to catch his friends, Jared lunged forward—

  —as The Shape stepped in front of him—

  —and bumped into him, this time managing to hold onto his bag. A quick glance up revealed a pale face that neither smiled nor frowned, no reaction at all—a mask!

  Jared might have thought the man too old for trick-or-treating, but he’d seen other parents walking the streets with their kids in full costumes or masks to get into the spirit of the night. Slipping past the unmoving Shape, Jared ran after his friends, shouting back, “Sorry, mister!”

  * * *

  After the collision with the boy The Shape turns to watch him run away—and sees a woman with a flashlight walking behind her house toward a dark utility shed. A moment later, an overhead light switches on. Wearing a red robe, her hair in curlers, she lifts the lid of a freezer and removes a frozen chicken. With the flashlight in one hand and the chicken in the other, she leaves the shed light on, walks out of the shed, and tries to close the door with her foot. On stiff hinges, the door stops short.

  As she returns to her home through the back door, The Shape walks toward the light spilling from the open shed door. Unhurried, breathing steady…

  Inside, on the floor, The Shape notices a red gasoline storage container next to a propane tank and hedge trimmers. On a cluttered work bench, several padlocks, a bunch of loose nails, a paintbrush, and—

  —a wood-handled claw hammer.

  A powerful hand closes over the handle, hefts the hammer, testing its weight.

  Leaving the light on and the door ajar, The Shape crosses from the shed to the back of the house, taking the same path as the woman, slipping quietly through the rear door.