Halloween

by John Passarella

  Two figures joined the witch, a skull head and a pumpkin head.

  Kids. Out too late for their own good. Fooling around. No idea how dangerous this night—this block—has become.

  “Get away from here!” Laurie yelled. “Go home. Get inside!”

  Laughing, the three of them ran in the opposite direction, candy bags swaying behind them.

  Laurie turned toward the house, her gaze moving to the upstairs windows. To the left, in a corner window, she saw a cop, Hawkins, gun drawn, tense. Detecting sudden movement to her right, she turned toward the window of the next room and saw The Shape standing there, staring at her, their locked gaze spanning forty years.

  After so many years of preparing herself, she thought she’d be ready for this moment, that an icy calm would take hold of her. But she was wrong. Her heart raced in her chest and her breath froze in her throat after she gasped in alarm. Her muscles tensed so much that her whole body trembled.

  She fought for control, forcing herself to take a few deep breaths, trying to regain her composure before she lost the moment, the chance to end him. Raising the revolver in her right hand, she braced her hand with her left palm. Her bolt-action rifle would have increased her chances of hitting him, but she’d had plenty of practice with the Smith & Wesson. She had to take her shot, literally.

  BAM!

  For a moment, she thought she’d scored a direct hit, and the sound of glass shattering seemed to come from the upstairs window breaking. But The Shape—the image of The Shape—split apart in several jagged pieces and fell away. Where he’d stood, she saw only the wooden backing of a full-length dressing mirror.

  He was in the house—but she’d shot his reflection.

  * * *

  Hawkins had checked the closet, finding only bike helmets and toys on the shelves and some clothes on plastic hangers, and then peered under the bed, a less likely hiding space, when he heard the gunshot. If he could trust his ears, somebody outside the house had shot a bullet through a nearby room.

  For a moment, he considered the possibility somebody outside had targeted him, so he placed his back to the wall, away from view through any of the windows. But a motion in the hallway caught his attention, a dark shape passing. In a crouch, he hurried out of the room, gun aimed down the hall.

  The shape of a man in dark coveralls—identical to those worn by Stallion Service Center employees—descended the stairs, a large knife clutched in his right hand.

  Son of a bitch!

  “Stop or I’ll fire!”

  The Shape continued unabated down the stairs.

  Tracking his movement, Hawkins fired two shots at a downward angle.

  BLAM! BLAM!

  The Shape moved out of sight.

  Hawkins hurried along the hallway, rushed down the stairs.

  At the bottom he paused, unsure which way the murderer had gone. Then he noticed a trail, drops of blood leading toward the living room and the faint sound of the television. Proceeding with caution, he approached the archway into the living room with his gun raised. From a distance, he had the advantage against someone wielding a knife, but entering a new room with an unknown layout diminished that advantage.

  He could see a wing chair and sofa, the windows overlooking the street, but the rest of the room remained out of sight. With a quick motion, he stepped through the archway and spun to his right, ready to counter an ambush with a quick shot or two.

  Instead, he took an involuntary step backward, lowering his gun hand as he shook his head in dismay. Oh, Christ, another one.

  A male teenager in a red plaid shirt and farmer overalls. But what drew Hawkins’ eyes was the manner of death. The poor kid was pinned to the wall, suspended several inches off the floor, the hilt of a large kitchen knife stuck through his neck. His face, turned to the right, had been smashed against the wall; the right side of his jaw looked broken, his eye bulging from the socket.

  Mounted, like a ceremonial slaying.

  Hawkins checked his right shoulder. The plaid shirt had been pulled down, exposing the skin and a simple tattoo: 10-31-18. For a fleeting moment, Hawkins had the weird idea the kid had a premonition of his own death and had the date tattooed on himself. Checking the ink, and the stippled blood near it, the tattoo was fresh, possibly done earlier in the day. He doubted the killer had tattooed his victim pre- or post-mortem. So, the victim must have placed some significance on the date.

  All he could do was note it on his report.

  Right now, he had a killer to apprehend.

  * * *

  Having missed with her first shot, Laurie crossed the yard, waiting to see if The Shape would emerge from the front door. But then, with a cop inside the house, and shots fired at him from outside, she decided he would most likely exit through the back of the house. Hawkins remained inside, no doubt conducting a search of his own. Laurie would guard the back.

  Circling around the garage, she held her gun high, ready to fire at the first sign of him. No hesitation. Just put him down.

  As soon as she cleared the corner, she saw him walking in the opposite direction, around the far side of the house. The darkness had nearly cloaked him, but the pale mask flashed the moment he turned. Moving forward hurriedly, she aimed and took a shot before he disappeared around the corner.

  BAM!

  The Shape staggered, taking a bullet to the back of the left shoulder, and fell from view on the far side of the house.

  This is it, she thought, sensing her chance. Got him!

  Eyes focused on the corner of the house, Laurie ran in pursuit.

  29

  Breathless, Laurie turned the far back corner of the house, gun aimed down where he had fallen…

  But he was gone. Nothing but grass.

  She looked up, toward the street. No trace of him.

  “Where is he?” a voice whispered behind her.

  Reflexively, Laurie whirled and lashed out with a fist—

  —punching Officer Hawkins in the face.

  “Fuck!”

  The veteran police officer dropped to one knee, hand to his face.

  “Jesus, Frank!” Laurie exclaimed, shaking from the adrenaline rush.

  “What the fuck?” Frank said, rubbing a bruised jaw. Staggering to his feet, he said, “You were told to go home.”

  “He’s here,” Laurie said. “Michael Myers. It was him.”

  Hawkins wiggled his jaw side to side. “I know. Took a few shots at him inside the house.”

  “I shot—I hit him,” Laurie said, leaning against the side of the house, suddenly exhausted. “He fell right here. I thought… ‘this is it,’ you know. Thought I finally had him.”

  “Slippery son of a bitch,” Hawkins said. “Murdered two teenagers in there.”

  “He’s not done yet,” Laurie said. “You know that, right?”

  Hawkins nodded grimly.

  * * *

  Shortly after Laurie and Hawkins returned to the front of the house, other police cruisers arrived. Moments before their arrival, Laurie stashed her Smith & Wesson in the glove compartment of her pickup. Open carry was illegal in Illinois, and the last thing she needed was to be booked and detained for waving a handgun around in the middle of the night. Hawkins looked the other way, but the sheriff might see the violation as an easy way to take her out of circulation while they attempted to apprehend the notorious killer. Officers with K-9 units searched the streets branching off from Meridian, trying to catch a scent of the killer. With each passing moment with no news, Laurie’s impatience grew.

  Now she was kicking herself. She’d had him in her sights—twice! She’d wounded him. And still he got away.

  Standing around while police and the crime-scene unit examined the scene wasn’t getting her closer to finishing her mission. She had no interest in collecting evidence or giving a statement or aiding in his prosecution. As far as she was concerned, there would be no due process for Michael Myers. The system had failed her twice, with his initial Smith’s Gro
ve escape and killing spree in 1978, and now again, forty years later, another escape followed by another killing spree. How long before they realized Dr Loomis was right. Killing Michael was the only solution, the only way to end his evil.

  About the time Laurie’s patience reached its limit, the sheriff’s cruiser pulled up to the scene, with an older man in the passenger seat. Sheriff Barker, dressed sharply in a black cowboy hat and a black suit with a gold patterned tie, climbed out of the car and called out, “Hawkins, look who’s up!”

  Barker’s passenger, a familiar, graying gentleman with a full mustache, wearing a brown suit with his left arm in a sling, stepped gingerly out of the car. To Laurie, he looked like a professor at a liberal arts college, but he must be connected to the case. Then she remembered where she’d seen him. Boarding the bus at Smith’s Grove. Out of context, she probably wouldn’t have recognized him. She’d been parked too far away from where they loaded the transport bus to distinguish individual faces. She concluded the graying man was either a hospital administrator or a doctor.

  He looked around the scene, turning in a slow circle. “Where is he?” he asked, with a clear accent. Indian, maybe?

  Hawkins walked up to the other man. “You tell me, Sartain.”

  Of course, Sartain was at a loss and clearly confused by Hawkins’ irritation. But the man had not seen the victims and the circumstances of their death. And while Laurie had not been allowed inside the house, Hawkins told her enough while they waited that she had a clear and gruesome picture of the tableau without having seen it in person.

  A middle-aged couple from a house on the opposite side of the street approached, a pre-teen black child in pajamas and an oversized coat between them. They walked as far as the sidewalk, where the boy seemed to freeze, his eyes wide. After they signaled for the sheriff’s attention, another officer approached them. Laurie drifted toward the curb to eavesdrop. Apparently, the boy lived in the house Michael had targeted and had run to the couple’s house for help during the attack. He’d been frightened and incoherent and it had taken a while to calm him down and determine that he would not return to his house and that his parents were not home, only a babysitter and her boyfriend. They’d made the 911 call to report the intrusion. The couple agreed to watch the boy until his parents returned home at which time the police could question him, but they weren’t sure he would have much to add.

  “Why not?” the cop asked, genuinely curious.

  “He keeps repeating the same thing, over and over,” she explained. “‘It was the Boogeyman.’”

  Laurie felt a chill, recalling the night forty years ago, when Tommy Doyle had been terrorized by the same Boogeyman and had also survived, but not without scars of his own.

  “I wanted to be brave…” the boy lamented.

  The cop patted his arm. “You are brave, son,” he said. “Don’t worry anymore. We’ll catch the man that did this.”

  As the couple led the boy away, Laurie drifted closer to Hawkins and the others. They stood before the open garage doors, the interior lights flooding the driveway. Someone had knocked over a black-and-silver Harley Davidson. She wondered if Michael had tried to ride the bike at some point during the evening. He drove cars but, as far as she knew, he’d never been on a motorcycle.

  Sartain, now in visible pain, winced as he fidgeted with the sling. Apparently, Hawkins and Sheriff Barker were waiting for an explanation from him. After another officer draped a coat over his shoulders to ward off the chill, Sartain spoke and, she wasn’t surprised, sounded like a professor giving a lecture to a freshman class.

  “The bus lost control after Michael overtook the first guard, then the driver,” he explained. “He is no longer dormant. I saw him kill with my own eyes. He only knows how to keep moving and to keep killing, and he will kill again unless he is captured.”

  Sheriff Barker frowned. “What I want to know is, why didn’t he kill you?”

  “I tried to hide,” Sartain said, “but he found me. Chained me to a seat. He looked down at me. I closed my eyes and when I opened them, he walked away.” With a slight nod toward Hawkins, he added, “I was rescued by this officer man.”

  “Hawkins,” Sheriff Barker said, “come talk to me for a second. Doctor, please wait here.”

  So, Sartain had been Michael’s doctor at Smith’s Grove.

  The sheriff and Hawkins walked halfway down the driveway to talk discreetly, where Sartain couldn’t overhear them. Of course, Laurie trailed a bit behind them, close enough to hear, even if the injured doctor could not.

  “He’s an asset,” Barker said.

  “He’s not an asset,” Hawkins countered. “He’s a liability.”

  “You’re going to take him,” the sheriff told him. It was an order, not a suggestion. “He knows Myers better than anyone.”

  Hawkins looked flabbergasted by the suggestion. “You want me to take this injured civilian to search for a psychopathic serial killer?”

  Barker cleared his throat. “You were right,” he conceded. “I was wrong. We’re clearing the streets. Patrol cars on every corner. I’m going statewide with this. Let’s find this son of a bitch. You hear me?”

  Laurie moved into the light flooding the driveway. “Sheriff Barker, Officer Hawkins?”

  If Hawkins was on her side, he had his limits. “We don’t need your help right now, Ms Strode,” he said sharply.

  As Laurie backed away, Sartain noticed the three of them together and came forward, veering to Laurie, who stopped.

  “Excuse me, officers,” Sartain called to the men while looking at Laurie as if she were a long-lost acquaintance, clearly awaiting an introduction.

  Barker said, “Laurie Strode, meet Dr Sartain.”

  “I’m Michael’s doctor,” the man said. “Ranbir Sartain.”

  “You’re the new Loomis,” Laurie said. “I can tell by the classy accent.”

  If Sartain sensed an insult, he chose to ignore it. Instead, he seemed invigorated by the introduction. “I’ve read everything about you in his case files.” He raised an index finger for emphasis, another professorial gesture. “Did you know our friend Mr Hawkins here was the responding deputy when Michael was apprehended in 1978?”

  Barker gave Sartain a curious look.

  Laurie noticed the sheriff’s reaction before returning her attention to Sartain, who displayed more interest in Michael’s violent history than compassion toward the teenaged victims who’d been murdered no more than thirty feet from where they stood. Was that interest professional or monetary? He wouldn’t be the first expert looking to cash in on a notorious killer by writing a true crime book and hitting the interview circuit.

  Placing the hand of his good arm on Hawkins’ shoulder, Sartain continued, “He lawfully stood between Dr Loomis’s vindictive tirade and the right to a fair trial.”

  “Loomis calling for his execution didn’t persuade you?” Laurie asked Hawkins.

  “I used to believe that due process balanced the power of the law of the land,” he replied, almost wistful, as if referring to a simpler time. After more than forty years in law enforcement, had his faith in the system faltered gradually, or just after the events of the past two days?

  “And now?” she asked.

  “I’m not so sure anymore.”

  Apparently disappointed in their shared skepticism—or perhaps simply weary from the discomfort of his injury—Sartain walked to Hawkins’ cruiser and climbed into the passenger seat, taking care not to jostle his left arm in the process.

  Ignoring the doctor’s departure, Laurie glared at Hawkins. “I prayed every day that he would escape.”

  “What the hell did you do that for?”

  “So I could kill him.”

  Sheriff Barker shook his head in disbelief, but Hawkins considered her words for a moment. He’d been there at the end, before they’d locked up Michael, but he’d missed most of the horror. At least the first time around. “Well, that was a dumb thing to pray for.”


  The words sounded like typical police practicality, but she wondered if he could sympathize with her now. She could be wrong. Maybe it wasn’t enough to see the horror Michael left in his wake. Maybe you had to experience it personally, as a target, and be lucky enough to survive. Perhaps Nietzsche had it right. “When you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”

  If you’d stared into Michael Myers’ eyes, you’d stared into the abyss.

  “You can’t reason with him,” Laurie said. “You can’t bargain with him. There is nothing human there. The sooner you realize he is evil—and only evil—the sooner you’ll understand what must be done.”

  “Depraved men commit evil deeds,” Hawkins said. “But evil is not a thing itself. Myers is as human as you or me.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Hawkins,” Laurie said. As he gave her a dismissive wave of his hand and headed toward his cruiser, she called after him, “Believe in the Boogeyman or don’t believe. He’ll kill you all the same.”

  Dr Sartain pushed himself up from the passenger seat to stand within the open door and waved to Laurie. “Ms Strode. Please come with us.”

  Standing in the middle of the driveway, Laurie crossed her arms and shook her head. Her impatience with the inflexibility and inactivity of Haddonfield’s police force had reached its limit. “No, Doctor,” she said. “You’re on your own. You need to protect yourself. I need to protect my family.”

  Barker overheard her comment and came forward. “We got you covered with personal security, ma’am,” he said, sounding like a man who wanted everyone around him to believe he had an extraordinarily bad situation under control. But she detected a manic note in his voice. She had the impression he’d ignored or vastly underestimated Michael’s capacity for violence. And now he was in catch-up mode.

  “You and your family will be safe,” he assured her.

  Comforting words. But she doubted that was a promise he could keep.

  30

  Before Allyson could storm out of the gymnasium, Matt Evans—dressed as a scarecrow and losing bits of straw from his sleeves and pant cuffs with each passing minute—rescued her phone from the oversized bowl of nacho cheese. As she silently fumed, staring at the slow-motion descent of her phone into the sea of cheese, Matt approached with a paper plate of tortilla chips and said drily, “That can’t be good.”