by Nicholas
No men. What the hell?
He turned to see for himself.
Suddenly, a hand smashed through the driver’s side window, shocking Rachel and Jamie out of their half-sleep. Earl shrieked in unexpected horror, his hands losing control of the vehicle and his body losing control of his mind. The truck swerved violently. In one swift movement, the shape’s hand gripped the bartender’s neck and broke it, bone snapping, body twitching uncontrollably.
The girls screamed.
Rachel pushed aside Earl’s body and grabbed for the steering wheel, shoving the corpse out the side door and then closing the door immediately. The shape’s hand searches for a new victim. It searched for Rachel.
Rachel veered back and forth across the highway---swerving erratically, trying desperately to shake loose the figure of their attacker. A fist swung down hard against the windshield, smashing, creating a webwork of cracks. The shape’s inverted masked face lowered before the girls, fully into view, the darkness where the eyes should be was hollow and vast.
Rachel slammed both feet onto the brake petal. The pickup’s wheels locked up instantly, screeching, throwing the dark figure from the truck’s roof. The two terrified girls watched as he slammed down onto the surface of the road pavement before the truck and into the brightness of the headlight beams. It rolled thirty yards or so before it finally splayed out, face down.
Rachel gripped the steering wheel nervously, her mind racing within her head, her knuckles whitening. Beside her, Jamie cowered on the floor in front of the passenger seat, trembling, eyes wet with tears.
“Is it over yet?” she spoke out, her voice wavering. “Is my uncle dead?”
“I hope so,” Rachel replied, half-whispering.
Then, through the windshield cracks, Rachel beheld the shape as it began to rise to its feet. Rachel shook her head in a fit of frenzy and disbelief, her face evolving, twisting with new anger. As the figure proceeded towards the front of the pickup, its movements zombie-like, Rachel threw the vehicle into gear and gunned the engine.
“No more!” she shouted out to the thing before her, and to all the powers of fate. “NO MORE!!”
The truck raced directly toward the shape, speeding relentlessly, highbeams reflecting off the pasty white Halloween mask. The shape continued forward, making no attempt to avoid the collision.
The pickup then slammed with full force into the shape, accompanied by a horribly loud and sickening sound, like something to the extent of a hand slamming palm-down onto the fullness of a tomato. The shape sailed backwards into the night, bouncing and rolling as Rachel made the truck come to an abrupt halt.
Rachel watched, Jamie continuing to cower beside her, eyes closed to the outside world.
The shape rose.
Rachel slammed down hard on the accelerator, the engine roaring once again. The pickup’s rear wheels screamed on a cloud of blue smoke. Suddenly, the entire vehicle fishtailed, swerving, the rear end spinning forwards as the truck became a projectile, slamming into the shape once again, thunderously. The shape was sent flying backwards over the road shoulder onto a narrow dirt road, into the darkness and the fog.
The pickup raced after it, plummeting off a small, narrow embankment and onto the dirt road. The truck’s highbeams found the shape once again coming to his feet. Rachel did not slow, but rather continued, slamming the truck hard into the shape’s bulk, his body crashing violently with the truck’s grill.
The shape came to his feet again.
Wham!
The body tumbled and crashed to the soil face down, unmoving.
Rachel panted like an animal, eyes wide, unblinking, expecting more. It was her will verses his, neither relenting until the very end when, finally, one must give up to fate.
The shape once more began to move, rocking to his knees slowly, rising up and moving again towards the truck within the beams of the headlights, advancing one step at a time.
Rachel shifted into gear and planted her foot on the gas, burying the petal into the floor, face full of cold determination.
“Die, you son of a bitch!!!!”
The pickup rammed into its target head-on. The grill dented with the impact, penetrating the radiator. The hood broke loose from its mountings.
The shape wheeled backwards through the air, crashing hard, with enough force this time to break bones. This time, the dark figure did not rise. Spread eagled on his back, his fingers uncurled from the knife in which he held.
Panting exhaustedly, Rachel rested her head against the sweaty steering wheel, weeping with both utter relief and misery, her nerves completely shot. She wondered what it was like to have a nervous breakdown, and she figured that if she wasn’t having one then, she probably never would know. Jamie slowly got up from under the glove compartment. Sitting up, she stared out the shattered windshield onto the motionless configuration of her nightmare man.
The shape rested beyond the truck under a cloud of settling dust, the pickup’s headlights just within his range. No sign of life. Nothing. Nothing but silence.
The sounds of engines announced two townie vehicles and State Police cars rushing down the embankment and the dirt road, slowing to a stop behind the pickup, bringing a darkened trail of dust along with them. Loomis climbed out of the lead patrol car, Sheriff Meeker along with him.
Truly relieved, Rachel climbed out in turn of her own vehicle and walked over to meet the arriving convoy. At the same time, at first unnoticed by the others, Jamie climbed out and proceeded to walk towards the unmoving bulk of the shape. When she arrived, she slowly and reservedly knelt beside him. She saw that the body lay just shy of an abandoned well shaft which seemed to have been long since boarded over. She leaned over quietly, reaching for her uncle’s bloody right hand, the hand which once held the knife, the hand which had viciously slain many victims. She held it with all the reserved quietude of a priest. Then very silently, she whispered something out to his stillness.
“I forgive you, Uncle Michael.”
The milling crowd suddenly noticed where she was. Heads turned in urgent dismay.
Rachel’s face filled with panic. “Jamie! Get away from him!”
There were other shouts, shouts from Loomis, from Meeker, from others, telling her, warning her to stay back or to not touch him--- to get away.
But it was too late. Jamie turned just in time to see the shape rising once again to his feet, Rachel screaming in the distance.
Suddenly, Meeker yelled to the little girl.
“Jamie. DROP!”
At once, Jamie obeyed, dropping onto her belly. Meeker, the State Police, the townies, all opened fire upon the thing. Jamie covered her head and her ears as did Rachel who stood beside Doctor Loomis. The world came alive with a storm of bullets and double—ought, thundering through the night.
Michael was thrown backward, blown over the boarded well shaft. Immediately, the planks gave way and the shape plummeted into the abyss.
Unger and another man came forward, dynamite sticks in hand. Each lighted one and hurled it into the shaft. Quiet. Then, suddenly, the shaft exploded, rocking the ground beneath their feet. The shaft at once began to collapse in on itself amidst a shower of debris and dust.
Gradually, everything began to fall into silence, highbeams cutting through the dust’s whirling clouds. No one uttered a word; all eyes rested upon the space where the shape of Michael Myers had been, and they began to realize that, finally, he would never return.
Michael Myers was dead.
Chapter Thirty-one
The nightmare was over. The Caruthers could try to live peacefully, knowing that time would ease the traumatic memories for both Rachel and Jamie. Darlene and Richard each took turns holding and hugging the two girls, exchanging and offering love where death had once stalked. Tears began to flow amidst the sounds of relief and joy.
A State Trooper helped a battered Loomis into the front hall of the home, over to Meeker, who shared in everyone’s relief and sorrow, remembering h
is own daughter.
He turned to the doctor. “Is it over, Loomis?”
Loomis was too weak to smile. “Michael Myers is in Hell where he belongs. I hope we can forget about him now.”
Meeker motioned to the family in the livingroom. “Those kids aren’t likely to forget.”
“They’re strong,” Loomis said. “They survived the ordeal. They’ll survive its memory.”
Rachel collapsed on the livingroom couch while Jamie wandered off towards the kitchen.
Darlene stood up and proceeded towards the stairs, speaking to her husband as she went. “I’m going to run a bath for Jamie. Talk to Rachel.”
Richard got up and went over to his wife. They embraced. He watched her as she ascended the stairs. Richard turned and moved to where Rachel sat. Taking his daughter’s hand, he sat beside her. They held each other, and Rachel suddenly began to weep.
Upstairs, Darlene began to run the water in the bathtub. She gathered fresh soap and towels, humming something that sounded like I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles.
***
A mask was raised. Feet climbed the stairs to the second floor. The figure eased its way down the hall to where Darlene was, her back turned towards the door. A small pair of hands clutched scissors from the vanity. Darlene turned to her daughter, offering her a warm, maternal smile.
Her high pitched screams echoed throughout the upstairs rooms, finding their way downstairs to the startled souls in the livingroom and the front hallway.
Desperately, feet raced up the stairs. At the end of the hallway at the bathroom’s threshold, all eyes beheld little Jamie, her hand clutching the pair of scissors, her body and hands stained with fresh blood.
And there, inside the bathroom, was the blood—drenched body of Darlene Caruthers, quivering until she finally dropped into a silent, horror-stricken gaze into nothingness. Forever staring.
Forever staring as was the little girl. Little Jamie, her eyes soulless…….
……just like her uncle. Just like the evil.
The pure evil.
Loomis stared in horror. Mindlessly, his hand reached for the pistol within his coat. Meeker and the troopers clutched at him, trying to stop him. The doctor’s screams echoed into the night, outside, into the streets of Haddonfield.
For in Haddonfield, the horror never dies.
Epilogue
(Author's note: this is the original epilogue
omitted from previous versions because I felt the story was better served without it. I included it here as a fan extra.)
“I forgive you, Uncle Michael……”
Jamie Caruthers should have remained upon the passenger seat of the old pick-up truck. She very easily could have, traumatized as she was from the climactic horrors this Halloween night had put her through, from all of the senseless, terrible death. She could have remained frozen where she sat, surrendered herself to the paralysis grimly beckoning from every corner of her six-year-old mind.
Yet a greater force beckoned, overwhelming the temptation to give in to absolute shock. It was a force outside herself, yet tugging and pulling from everywhere within.
Uncle Michael had to be dead.
Her foster-sister Rachael had seen to that when she ran him over with the truck several times just now. Though her uncle seemed superhuman in his restless pursuit of the little girl’s life throughout the greater part of the day up until this very moment, Jamie understood that Michael was a man and not a supernatural ghost.
And a man could be stopped, could be killed.
Somehow.
But even after the police and the other townies, Sheriff Meeker and Doctor Loomis arrived seconds afterwards, Jamie knew the nightmare would not be over unless she vacated the truck and made it so. Rachael wasn’t available to protest; she’d abandoned her to greet the onrush of vehicles arriving at the scene.
She pushed open the passenger door and her feet dumped onto the asphalt. Before she even realized she’d taken her first step forward, the pick-up’s front headlights were already several paces to her rear and her feet brought her to the ravine where her uncle lay.
Uncle Michael.
The Nightmare Man.
The very embodiment of unstoppable evil now vanquished by a repetitive collision by a beat-up old Ford.
He lay there bloodied and motionless, ragged and sprawled upon his back against tall grass and shards of weathered wood trailing from a darkened obstruction only a few yards ahead.
She knew what that obstruction was, with what she’d heard about and seen of the old mineshafts on the outskirts of town, from the frightening tales whispered by Rachael’s friends of the Wicked Hermit of the Haddonfield Mines and nonsense like that.
The culmination of everything frightening about the small Illinois town of Haddonfield was right before her now, and, without even contemplating, Jamie knelt down and took it by the hand.
“I forgive you, Uncle Michael.”
His hand was oversized against hers, hardened with calluses and laden with scars of twisted flesh just the way Frankenstein’s monster’s had been when the doctor reached for it as it moved for the first time while he shouted it’s alive!
She did not linger long; she returned her uncle’s lifeless hand to his side upon the wet grass. She lifted herself up, turned to head back to the truck. After only the first step or two but too quickly for even that, Jamie raised her gaze before her in the direction of the truck and found herself facing a congregation of the entire cast of the townies and officers who’d just arrived. Their gazes all upon her, they were standing all in a row with weapons drawn and aimed and readying to fire…..
……upon her??
A voice cried out from one of them, from whom she wasn’t certain. Sheriff Meeker? “Jamie, drop!!!!”
No time to think, and it all happened to rapidly after that ---- her spinning to catch a view of Uncle Michael towering above her, arisen from death, knife poised and readying to strike her as it had meant to all weary night long.
Jamie threw herself to the ground. Gravity’s aide sent her tumbling away toward the asphalt at the edge of the grass.
Every one who drew a weapon opened fire, and the air became filled with deafening bursts in rapid succession as each rifle, shotgun and pistol set the night ablaze and blasted into Myers’ body. The force propelled the Shape backwards as bullets flung past into dense underbrush and through the wooden boards sealing the entrance of the mine shaft behind him.
Another shotgun blast. Another.
The boards gave way as Michael’s body spilled onto them against the impact of firepower, plunging him deep into the abysmal mouth of the shaft.
The air grew silent in the aftermath. Two of the townies approached just then, lighting dynamite sticks and hurling them into the shaft after Michael.
More blasts, cataclysmic, disturbing, resounding…..
……resounding into memory.
She recalled one lingering thought before she collapsed backwards into her own horrible abyss, finally surrendering to her body’s desire to lapse into shock.
One thought.
One damnable, awful, unspeakable thought:
Michael lives……somehow, he’ll always live, even if he didn’t survive the assault of gunfire and the fall. Michael lives…..he lives, because now he lives in me.
The next thing little Jamie knew was the sensation of standing at the head of the stairway back home…..back at the Caruthers’ home…..fully garbed in the Halloween clown costume she’d worn for what was to be a fun frolic of trick-or-treating before all hell had engulfed her world…..
…..Doctor Loomis was at the foot of the stairs facing upwards at her, shouting in terrified desperation as he drew his pistol from beneath his coat…..
……she could feel her own breath from beneath the cheap masquerade mask which covered her eyes and the cotton ball red clown nose glued upon the tip of where her nose should be. She could feel the rubber band which held the mask around her head press
ing against her hair…..
……she could even feel the dual handles of the scissors she clenched, its blades dripping with the blood of Mrs. Caruthers, her foster-mother…..
The Falling
(Author's note: this story was inspired by my experience at the Halloween 25th Anniversary convention in Pasadena, California 2003 and mentioned in an interview at Halloweenmovies.com.)
Sometimes when I used to dream of falling, I’d dream of never hitting the ground. Just before I would, I would always wake up. And then one day I hit the ground, and I don’t think I was dreaming that time.
It was at the La Heridan Hotel on Halloween night when I learned to bleed, really bleed, doing just that.
Falling.
I had been attending a convention that day, a grand horror industry extravaganza showcasing such fanfare as horror films, film industry icon artists, costume contests, and little old me.
Thirty-seven years old, and I’d finally made a good name for myself. I’d written a handful of successful novels that reached enough readers in the world to fill a convention, and most of them had been there that day. I was treated like a celebrity from the time I introduced myself to the guests in the hotel lobby and things only got better throughout the duration of my stay, which in the very least placed my shoulders a few inches above the poor persecuted soul I was in high school, and yards above the ones that insisted I’d never amount to anything.
The attendance mushroomed into the thousands on that day alone, and the hotels and motels were packed with fans and celebrities and the countless eccentric personalities crossing paths with the average attendee enough to make anyone know who they were by the end of the day if you hadn’t heard of them at any time before.
Given the nature of what brought us all together to this specific geographic section of the earth and the nature of the people that gathered there, this was indeed Halloween. What’s more, I’d heard whispered rumors from passers-by that the area was haunted, of all things, haunted by the ghost of some poor soul who’d taken a plunge from an umpteenth-floor hotel room window. Or something like that. It was believable, because shit happens. It certainly made for great lore, considering the conventioneers and the basis of the weekend’s festivities.