Halloween 2

by Jack Martin

  "Great!" That was Bud, the driver. He sounded genuinely angry.

  They do care about me, Laurie told herself. Finally somebody does. I'm going to be all right now. I know it.

  "What you got?" asked Jill, coming around from behind the reception counter.

  "Stab wound," said Bud. "Left anterior chest, possibly penetrating. Multiple contusions—"

  The door opened. Laurie craned her neck.

  It was the little boy, the pirate, and his mother. The towel had not stopped the bleeding. With each step, another drop hit the floor.

  Jill intercepted them, affording the boy only a cursory appraisal. As if she had seen a lot worse already tonight. I'm sure she has, thought Laurie. But that little boy is so handsome, his—

  "Fill out this form," said Jill to the mother. "Someone will be with you in a moment."

  "Oh, but we should see a doctor right away!"

  "He's with a patient. Would you please wait in Room A?"

  The mother steered her boy to a seat. "Come on, honey." She removed the towel. "Thank you," Laurie heard her say ironically.

  Then Laurie was moving again.

  As she was wheeled into an examination room, she caught a glimpse of the boy, seated but still hunched over, now without the towel. His mouth was open. He could not close it because of the double-edged razor blade wedged against the roof of his mouth.

  We also serve, she thought, who are too old for candy.

  The sight shocked her fully awake. Her nerves were alive again now, her senses heightened. She heard a muffled bell ringing somewhere, voices from all directions, the clatter of a tray, the whirring of a floor polisher in another corridor. The lights were brighter as she was lifted onto an examination table; the pattern of the ceiling's acoustic tiles burned into her eyes. She could feel her shoulder now. It screamed to be left where it was.

  Another voice: "It's Laurie Stro—"

  "Yeah, Janet," said Bud gruffly. "Come on, come on, let's go!"

  A new voice, weary but deep and authoritative: "Janet, get me some more coffee."

  Footsteps going away. New footsteps coming in.

  A doctor leaned over her. His eyes were red, as if they had seen too much. But he did not flinch. His breath smelled of bourbon.

  "Well, let's see what we have here."

  He even tried to smile down at her.

  "Ah, yes. You've lost a lot of blood. We'll need to type it."

  A young nurse joined him, holding a syringe. She had a plastic pumpkin on her uniform lapel. Laurie stared at it. The needle felt like a bee sting.

  "When was the last time you had a tetanus shot?" asked the doctor.

  "I don't know," was all Laurie could tell him. She was trying. But remembering was too much.

  "Get me some, uh, three-o nylon and . . ."

  "A cutting needle?"

  "Yes."

  "Right away." There was an older nurse. Her face was bland but determined, like a mother who knew her duty. Laurie felt better seeing her with the doctor. She left. Laurie hoped they would not both leave her.

  "We're going to have to put her out."

  "No! Don't put me to sleep!"

  They began to cut away her bloodstained blue blouse.

  She saw eyes trained on her. The ambulance driver and the other one, Jimmy.

  "No. . . no!"

  "Get them out of here," said the older nurse, returning.

  "Take it easy." The doctor inserted another needle. Blood filled the syringe. The red line moved up and up, as if it would never stop.

  "No," repeated Laurie. But her throat was dry and her voice merely a whisper. She had difficulty hearing it herself. "Don't . . . let them . . . put me out."

  "Try to relax, Laurie," came the optimistic voice of the nurse with the pumpkin. Jill, said her name badge. "Dr. Mixter will have you stitched up in no time."

  * * *

  "REPEATING FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO JUST TUNED IN. THREE PEOPLE ARE DEAD TONIGHT AS THE RESULT OF AN ATTACK BY AN ESCAPED MENTAL PATIENT. I UNDERSTAND WE'RE GOING TO STAY ON THE AIR NOW. ANY FURTHER DETAILS WILL BE FORTHCOMING AS SOON AS WE GET THEM. THIS IS ROBERT MUNDY . . ."

  Jimmy and the blonde nurse, Jill, sat listlessly in front of the television set.

  Jimmy got up and left the staff lounge.

  In the hallway, Dr. Mixter and the head nurse, Mrs. Alves, stood talking in low tones outside a room.

  "And keep checking her," the doctor was saying. "She ought to be coming around any time now. Where's Janet?"

  "She went to the cafeteria. She's on her break."

  "Her break! There are no breaks tonight. Did she call Laurie's parents?"

  "She tried. I can try again if—"

  "Wait," said the doctor, slapping his forehead. "They were at the party! Probably still there . . ."

  The doctor and head nurse hurried off. Jimmy waited till they were out of the corridor. Then he smoothed his hair and stepped up to the door.

  Inside it was dim. There was a shape on the bed. Jimmy opened the door carefully.

  The door hardly made a sound, but as soon as it opened Laurie's head rolled to the side. Her hair was spread across the pillowcase like fine silk. Incredibly, it shone, even in the moonlight coming through the blinds.

  Her eyes swam up to meet his.

  "Hi," she said.

  Her lips remained open. She was passive, waiting for him to say something.

  Before he could speak, the door opened again behind him. A silhouetted shape stood there. A white shape.

  Mrs. Alves stepped inside.

  "Jimmy, leave her alone." Mrs. Alves' voice was restrained but commanding. To the figure on the bed she said, "How are you feeling?"

  "I feel sore," Laurie said. Her voice was barely a whisper, her energy completely drained. She moved her tongue laboriously over her dry lips. "What happened?"

  "Cracked a bone," said Mrs. Alves, adjusting the dressing on Laurie's leg. The stethoscope around her neck swung like a snake with a silver head. "Lucky it wasn't a break. The doctor thinks we should wait until tomorrow before we put a cast on." She withdrew to the door. "See you tomorrow. Come on, Jimmy."

  Mrs. Alves closed the chart and went out to continue on her rounds.

  Jimmy kept looking at Laurie.

  "Can I get you something to drink," he whispered, "or anything?"

  "Mm-hm."

  "How about a Coke?"

  Laurie nodded.

  "Okay."

  "Thanks." Her eyes stayed on his without blinking.

  "Okay,"said Jimmy again, grinning foolishly.

  Bud stuck his head in. "Come on! Jimmy, we gotta roll. 'Nother call just came in."

  Jimmy turned reluctantly, then turned back to the girl on the bed. "I'll get you that Coke later."

  Mrs. Alves touched their shoulders. "Out!"

  On their way out of the building Jimmy saw the mother and son walking slowly back across the parking lot. He was still hunched over and holding the wadded towel under his chin, but now at least his mouth was closed.

  "Does it hurt?" the mother was saying. "It hurts, doesn't it?"

  "My moufe his hon fire," said the boy pitifully.

  "What, honey?"

  "Moufe his hon fire!"

  "Your mouth is on fire. I know, honey, I know. Oh, damn those sick, sick people for doing that to you kids! I should have checked your candy first. I'll tell the other mothers. . . . Gary, you've got to remember what house it was! I'm going to the police. They'll get him, don't you worry. And when they do, I hope they burn him good!"

  "MOMENTS AGO, POLICE REPORTED THAT MICHAEL MYERS, FORMERLY OF HADDONFIELD, WHO FLED THE SMITH'S GROVE-WARREN COUNTY SANITARIUM LAST NIGHT, WAS BELIEVED TO HAVE BURNED TO DEATH. MEANWHILE, THREE BODIES WERE DISCOVERED IN THE UPSTAIRS BEDROOM OF THE HOUSE DIRECTLY BEHIND ME. IDENTIFICATION OF THE VICTIMS IS BEING WITHHELD PENDING NOTIFICATION OF THE . . ."

  Farther along the sidewalk, out of camera range, a woman with a clipboard glanced along the block, at the lights an
d portable cameras in front of the Wallace house. Neighbors were clustered on the lawn, some in bathrobes, leaning closer together for warmth and information. Their faces were blank, uncomprehending, as if they had wandered by accident onto the set of a movie being acted out in a foreign language.

  Several children in costume sat beneath a tree, eating candy.

  The producer pointed at them with a pencil.

  "Forget Mundy for the next segment. I want to concentrate on the house. Talk to some kids, see if anybody saw anything."

  "Got it, Deb," said a young man in a jacket liner. He checked a stopwatch and made a note.

  "You need their parents' permission to use a statement. If you can't find the parents, get a statement anyway."

  She went to her cameraman and slipped inside the cables that connected him to the portable video unit. She screwed one eye shut and peered through the viewfinder.

  The Wallace house. All the lights on inside now. A pumpkin on the porch, its color washed out in the glare. Uniformed police and ambulance attendants wheeling another sheeted form out the front door.

  The sound of car doors slamming.

  She panned to the right.

  It was Sheriff Brackett, accompanied by a beefy deputy and a smallish, balding man in a trenchcoat.

  "Move in," said the producer. "Follow 'em, especially the bird dog in the coat. He might be a lawyer, doctor, something. I bet he's the one who knows what's really going on here."

  The camera zoomed in.

  "Not now," said the deputy as the producer closed the distance. He held out his arms to open a path for the Sheriff. Then, with great reluctance, he lifted a brown-stained sheet from the stretcher.

  Brackett stood very still. A vein stood out on his neck. He shut his eyes. Took a breath. Opened his eyes.

  It was true.

  Annie Brackett's head was centered perfectly on the pillow. Her dark, curly hair was attractively tousled. Only this time the hair at her forehead was stiff and caked, matted. Her pretty face was empty and without expression. Her throat had been cut in a brown line from ear to ear; a few thin vertical striations had dried on her neck and the collar of her blouse. She almost looked as if she had fallen peacefully asleep with her eyes open.

  A flashbulb went off, catching her hair in a nimbus around her head.

  Brackett said nothing.

  He leaned over her, directly over the stretcher, until his eyes locked with hers. Then, very slowly, so slowly you could hear the joints crack in his fingers, he reached down and shuttered his hand over her face, closing the eyes forever.

  He nodded to Hunt, the deputy. Hunt dropped the sheet.

  Hunt looked at him grimly, a bit fearfully. Brackett cleared his throat.

  "I, uh, have to, uh, go and tell my wife. Before somebody else does."

  Hunt let Jimmy and Bud carry the stretcher away.

  "Go on home, Leigh," said Hunt to the Sheriff. "Go on home. I'll take care of everything."

  Brackett turned his eyes on Loomis then. They were black and smoldering. He straightened his massive shoulders.

  "Damn you."

  "I'm sorry." began Loomis

  "What have you done?"

  Loomis attempted to explain. "I haven't done anything."

  "You let him out!" The Sheriff's growling voice rose to a howl.

  Hunt touched his shoulder and the Sheriff snapped out of it.

  He went back to the car before he could say or do anything else. His large hands were balled into fists at his sides.

  "I didn't let him out," Loomis explained uselessly to Hunt, to himself. "I gave orders for him to be restrained."

  Two more sheeted bodies were rolled out of the house, down the walkway and past them. Hunt watched them being loaded away. Flashing police lights reddened his face.

  "Now is there anything else that we can do for you?" he said to Loomis.

  "If that wasn't Michael Myers burning up in that car," said Loomis, no longer concerned about sounding reasonable, "then a lot of other kids are going to be slaughtered tonight." The words caught in his throat. Words that were thoughts, thoughts that were feelings. They made his voice break.

  Hunt cut him off. "He's dead. I saw him."

  "You saw a man with a mask," Loomis explained.

  "It was him."

  "I want to believe you." That, thought Loomis, is the truth. "But I've got to be sure. I can't stop until I'm certain he's dead."

  Now that the Sheriff was gone, a cameraman moved in on them.

  "You're talking about him like he's some kind of animal," said Hunt.

  "He was—"

  "Will you keep 'em back?" Hunt noticed the camera and motioned for assistance.

  Loomis stared past Hunt into the pumpkin on the porch, lost in its eyes.

  "He was my patient for fifteen years," he said in a low voice. "He became an obsession with me until I realized that there was nothing within him, neither conscience nor reason, that was even remotely human. An hour ago I stood up and—and fired six shots into him. He just got up and walked away." He moved in front of Hunt and grabbed his attention. Perhaps if this man would listen. . . . If Brackett wouldn't, maybe his deputy would. "I'm talking about the real possibility that he is still out there!"

  Hunt's face and eyes were as blank as a manikin's. He was waiting for the doctor to finish. Not so that he could believe him, but so that he could figure out what to do about this out-of-town official who had been sent here to give orders which even the Sheriff obeyed, albeit reluctantly. Hunt had that nonexpression of a man who is paid not to think. He was probably just now reassessing the authority which had been given to a doctor who specializes in the criminally insane. It takes one to know one, his eyes said. But I still sure wish I didn't have to listen to you.

  "Where did they take the body?" said Loomis.

  "Coroner's office."

  That's right, thought Loomis; nothing but the facts. But as a matter of fact that much might prove sufficient for now.

  "Get a dentist to meet me there in half an hour," he instructed Hunt, and did not wait to argue.

  Loomis glided away over the wet lawn, turning inward once more. The street, the police, the reporters grew vague and tenuous behind him in the mist.

  None of this matters, he thought.

  What is here and now has been here before and will surely be here again, unless I can do something to prevent its recurrence. The only permanence is the light eternally in conflict with the darkness.

  And the darkness still survives.

  Think! he told himself.

  He had waited. When the time came, by whatever method he measured it, he found the means to return. He has armed himself. He has killed. And he will go on killing. Unless. . . . When will it be enough for him? What is the final satisfaction he seeks?

  Try to remember it all. You might be forgetting something. Some small but crucial detail from his past which might save all our souls now in the hour of our need. Think!

  His face began to twitch involuntarily.

  It was a dream. He couldn't shake it.

  It was as if he had awakened to find himself trapped inside a nightmare from which there was no escape.

  GARY (Ty Mitchell) is rushed to Haddonfield Memorial by his mother (Leigh French) after biting into a trick-or-treat apple laced with a razor blade.

  Happy Halloween

  THE SHAPE (Dick Warlock) adds JANET (Ana Alicia) to his growing list of victims.

  Chapter Five

  The light came on.

  The producer's eyes were bloodshot. It was past time to wrap.

  ". . . CROWDS ARE MILLING AROUND AND THE POLICE HAVE CORDONED OFF THE ENTIRE AREA. TO REPEAT: THREE YOUTHS HAVE BEEN FOUND MURDERED AT 3250 WOODBINE STREET IN THE NORTHWEST SECTION OF HADDONFIELD. DIRECTLY ACROSS THE STREET, ANOTHER TEENAGED GIRL WAS FOUND ALIVE. SHE WAS EVIDENTLY ATTACKED BY THE SAME SUSPECT . . ."

  The producer wove through the crowd and ended up back at the camera truck.

  The por
table lights were emitting fine trails of steam that drifted upward and dissipated into the night sky, tracing a wispy path like the Milky Way through the stars. She pointed to her watch.

  Mundy did not see her.

  ". . . POLICE PUT OUT AN ALL POINTS BULLETIN WITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE ASSAILANT. BLOCKADES HAVE BEEN ESTABLISHED AT ALL OF THE MAIN ARTERIES IN TOWN AND DETECTIVE GARY HUNT OF THE HADDONFIELD POLICE DEPARTMENT FEELS THAT THE SUSPECT WILL BE CAPTURED WITHIN A MATTER OF HOURS. . . ."

  He was staring hypnotically into the lens. He appeared to be absorbed in a kind of onanistic communion with the crystal eye of the camera. It was eerie. Almost as if he saw, or believed he could see, the good people of Haddonfield growing drowsy in their darkened living rooms, hanging on his every word in an unholy electronic seance.

  "NOT SINCE THAT NIGHT FIFTEEN YEARS AGO WHEN YOUNG MICHAEL MYERS TRAGICALLY MURDERED HIS SISTER CAN THE TOWN OF HADDONFIELD RECALL SUCH A NIGHT OF INFAMY . . ."

  The producer exchanged glances with her assistant.

  "The camera loves him, Deb," said the assistant.

  "He thinks so," said the producer.

  "He's making ratings history tonight, that's for sure. Listen to him. Smooth as hammered shit. Mundy magic."

  "You think that's why?" She leaned in next to the camera and tried in vain to catch the announcer's eye. But Mundy's syrupy voice droned on. "There's nothing else on the tube tonight except old movies. Most people are still up hoping their kids come home. What are they supposed to do, wait for the morning paper?"

  "Word gets around fast when there's a murder in a burg like this. I hear the station switchboard's tied up with calls."

  The producer waved. Mundy ignored her.

  "Poor schmucks," she said. "They should lock their doors and leave it to the professionals. Nothing else is going to happen tonight. He's done his dirty work, whoever he is. Probably laid up on skid row by now, sleeping it off."

  "Yeah. But you can't blame them. What about the kids?"

  "I wouldn't let my kids out on a night like this," she said. "If I had any kids. Which is about as likely as rocking horse shit. Too many weirdos out there. Christ, this whole town's a mausoleum. They have to tie tin cans to their puppy dogs' tails for excitement, you know? I'm not kidding."