Halloween 2

by Jack Martin

  I don't need to tell her that it's a game, Laurie realized. She already knows it.

  Maybe she even knows how bad things can get. Like what happened last night. Maybe that's why she's always laughing.

  And Annie?

  Good, kind, funny Annie. This has not been my night. My clothes are in the wash, I spilled butter down the front of me, I got stuck in a window . . .

  Annie, she thought. Annie, you're right. I want to tell you that I know it now, too. It doesn't make any sense. It's crazy, all of it, our lives. You're right! There are things out there, aren't there, Annie? terrible things coming that we'll never be ready for no matter how long we wait. We should make a joke out of everything, bitch to the high heavens . . . it's the only way to keep from flipping out.

  I wish I had, she thought. That boy I went out with last month. He told me I talk like a book. And you know what? He was right.

  And for what? All my studying didn't do me any good tonight. It didn't save me.

  That funny little man in the trenchcoat saved me, I don't know why. And I never even knew him.

  Annie, she thought. Lynda. I thought I knew more than you. But I was so wrong.

  She wanted to tell them that, lying there half-awake in the blue dark.

  Annie. And Lynda.

  Laurie gave up and drifted.

  The bed melted away and she was flying. Over the trees, the housetops of Haddonfield. There was the high school, miles below. "E" building, Mrs. Eddington's Junior English Class. And there was Laurie herself sitting by the window, doodling in her composition book. Dreaming herself out the window. Barely listening.

  Can you see me? thought Laurie, flying over. Can you see what's happened to us?

  Her own voice rose up to her on the air, as clear and precise as a silver bell. What was she saying?

  ". . . Costaine wrote that fate was somehow related only to religion, where Samuels felt that fate was like a natural element . . . like earth, air, fire and water. . . . "

  She saw herself waiting for the teacher's approval.

  "That's right," said the teacher, "Samuels definitely personified fate. In Samuels' writing fate is immovable, like a mountain. It stands where man passes away. Fate never changes. . . ."

  School, she thought, drifting higher. It seemed so far away from her now.

  "He got in here."

  The third grade schoolroom contained exactly what was to be expected: rows of desks, pictures painted to oversized proportions with coarse brushes and garish tempera to paper the walls. But as Loomis scrutinized the room, he made out at once the details that set it apart from other elmsrooms at the school.

  He stepped gingerly to the windows, following the beam of a patrolman's flashlight. He heard Hunt's shoes crunching the floor.

  Beneath a locked window was a pile of broken glass. The pieces lay like sharp diamonds reflecting the yellow beam. The knifelike edges of the window pane transformed the lights of the police ears outside into angular red slashes.

  "And look over here . . ."

  Up the aisles. The desks were so small.

  Could Michael Myers ever have fitted behind one of them?

  Yes.

  Was this the very same desk, the one with still-wet blood dripped on it?

  The trail of blood led them to a larger desk. The teacher's. A curled drawing, signed RANDI, lay on the desk. There was blood splashed on the paper.

  The drawing depicted a family outing. The sun took up a third of the paper, sprouting joyous rays. Crooked green crayon lines to indicate grass. A brown dog with a long tongue curving out of its louvered snout. Five human figures, all round heads with dotted features and stick-figure arms and legs, hands joined. Crescent smiles.

  A large kitchen knife pinned the drawing to the desk, impaling the smallest female character.

  "Is that it?" said Hunt impatiently.

  "No," said the patrolman. Flashlight up.

  "Here. Up here. On the blackboard."

  Hunt: "What's this?"

  "It's gibberish."

  Loomis felt the hairs on the back of his neck rising like quills.

  "S-A-M-H-A-I-N," read Hunt. "What is it, somebody's name? Check and see if there's a Sam—"

  "That's not chalk," said Loomis. "Look here. It's written in blood."

  "Does the name mean anything to you?"

  "It's a Celtic word. 'Samhain.' The Lord of the Dead. The end of summer. The Festival of Samhain. October thirty-first."

  "He didn't write that. He couldn't write, could he?"

  Who knows? thought Loomis. "Don't underestimate him," he said.

  "Jesus, how could we now?" said Hunt. "He's killed—"

  Loomis touched the lettering.

  With a snap the other half of the blackboard, a map of the Old World, rolled up into the ceiling. Hunt and the patrolman jumped. But not Loomis. He was ready for anything at this point.

  A crunching of glass came from the doorway. A woman's voice:

  "Dr. Loomis?"

  It was a nurse from the clinic at Smith's Grove. She had been with him in the car. Last night.

  Marion, he thought her name was.

  "I have to talk to you," she said.

  He was instantly ashamed. Why had she come here? To assign blame for the escape? Go back to your patients, he thought, and leave me to do the rest of what must be done. Help those who want to be helped.

  "I didn't recognize you," he said. His eyes narrowed. "What are you doing here?"

  Marion avoided the policemen. Her eyes were fixed and watery, as if she, too, had not slept since. Her eyes would not release him. "Privately," she said.

  He led her into the school corridor and lit a cigarette for her there next to the lockers. Farther along the corridor a janitor operated a vacuum cleaner—no, it was not a vacuum cleaner, it was a floor waxer—oblivious to what had gone on. Better get in there and whisk away the blood, he thought. Make everything ready for another happy day at school. But be sure to bring everything you've got. It will take more than wax to disinfect this place of the evil that has walked here. He left his mark in stains you may never be rid of.

  She blew a cone of smoke at a hall fire alarm box and fixed him with her unyielding eyes. "Dr. Rogers sent me down here. He's extremely concerned about you."

  The janitor sniffed at the surprising scent of cigarette smoke on the school grounds, shrugged and resumed his work.

  "I'm not the one to be concerned about."

  "I'm afraid he doesn't agree with you. You've been ordered back to Smith's Grove."

  "Ordered?" Loomis smiled mirthlessly. "He can't order me."

  "No, no, but the Governor can. He spoke to Dr. Rogers personally a few hours—"

  "The Governor! Well, well." They're bringing out the big guns, he thought. They wouldn't listen to me when it could have made a difference. And now they're trying to stop me from cleaning up their mess for them.

  The nurse was not amused. "Dr. Loomis, this thing is all over the state. Your patient escapes once, murders three teenagers, you shoot him with a gun and he escapes again."

  That about summed it up. Loomis fingered the lighter, Hunt's lighter. It was useless. He didn't have any more cigarettes, and he surely was not going to ask this messenger girl for one. His skin was prickling with anger. He tried to hold his blood pressure under control.

  He could not avoid saying, "If someone had listened to me earlier . . ."

  "I know. I'm sorry."

  So say we all, thought Loomis.

  "But Dr. Rogers is afraid this could jeopardize our whole rehabilitation program. He doesn't want anyone from the Mental Health Department anywhere near Haddonfield."

  "Why'd he send you down here, then?"

  "In case you'd already found him. Alive."

  "Tell Dr. Rogers—tell him you couldn't find me. Tell him anything. I can't leave Haddonfield now."

  Marion finally broke her gaze guiltily. "Sam, I'm afraid you don't have a choice. There's a Marshal waiting for yo
u outside."

  Laurie felt the wind ruffling her eyelashes as a bleached white sky rushed by overhead. She put her hand out and cupped the air currents. It was like flying.

  A man's voice said, "I told you we shouldn't have brought her."

  She was suddenly afraid beyond all reason that she had done something terribly wrong. But she could not figure out what it was. She folded her hands in her lap, over her white nightgown with the little blue flowers. She hung her head.

  "Please don't fight," she said.

  The sky continued to fly by outside.

  "He saw her," said the man. "He saw her!"

  "Who was it, Mom?" asked Laurie. "Why don't you tell me? Why won't you ever tell me anything?"

  In the front seat of the car, Laurie's mother turned around. "I told you," she said. "I'm not—"

  "But he saw her!" said the man, who was Laurie's father. He was much younger than she remembered. Handsome.

  "Don't," said Laurie. She was certain now that it was somehow magically her fault. She placed her hands over her ears. "Don't fight, Mom!"

  "I told you," said the woman, changing subtly. It was her mother but—

  Laurie clutched her doll tighter.

  "I told you I'm not your mother!"

  Her doll's eyes were closed, rust-stained in the corners.

  "Mikey," she whispered. "It's okay, Mikey. Don't cry."

  The car jolted. The doll's eyes popped open.

  Laurie whimpered.

  "Laurie," said another voice. It was near and far away at the same time, in front of her and behind her and above her.

  Her eyelids fluttered, trying to wake up. They were stuck together.

  "Hey, Laurie. You don't know me very well. But I just wanted to let you know that I'm not going to let anything happen to you, okay? Promise."

  Her eyelids unsealed stickily.

  There was no more sunshine. Only moonlight, blue as the barrel of the gun in the shaking hands of that short, bald man a while ago when it happened. She could still see it.

  "Laurie?" came the voice again. It was that boy's voice. Jimmy's. She could hear him but not see him. Where was he? She strained to control her head. It sank deeper into the pillow like a stone.

  She collected breath in her lungs to speak. The air slipped back out. She couldn't hold it. In, out.

  Tell Annie, she wanted him to know. And Lynda. They were right and I was wrong. I know that now. Will you do that for me? Of course you will. You'd do anything for me, wouldn't you, Jimmy? Tell Annie and Lynda they can come in when they're ready. Are they ready now? Are they in the hospital? Or did they get hurt, too? Are they in the room next to mine? I want to know! I love them both. They're my best friends. I want to—

  Then she remembered.

  Annie. Lynda.

  They were dead.

  Dead and never coming back.

  She would never see them. Now she would never be able to tell them anything, ever again.

  Unseen by Jimmy, a quick tear ran from her eye along a silvery track on her cheek and buried itself in her pillow.

  Her chest contracted. The sob never came. Her breath went out. In, out. Out. Out.

  Her skin tingled and everything was blue and then white as she began to lose consciousness. Her eyes remained open. She was not even able to blink them. They began to burn. . . .

  "Laurie?" said Jimmy. "Can you hear me? Are you all right?"

  His fingertips touched her face. It was the lightest touch she had ever known. She was almost able to feel it.

  He reached for her wrist, her pulse.

  "Shit!" said Jimmy.

  He dashed out of the room so fast he knocked over a chair. The door whispered shut on Laurie Strode's room like enormous wings folding over her.

  Horrified at her discovery of MR. GARRETT'S (Cliff Emmich) body, LAURIE STRODE (Jamie Lee Curtis) struggles through a basement window, eluding THE SHAPE'S (Dick Warlock) grasp once again.

  The Harvesting

  In a desperate attempt to save her life, LAURIE STRODE (Jamie Lee Curtis) pulls the trigger as the seemingly indestructible SHAPE (Dick Warlock) advances towards her.

  Chapter Ten

  Jimmy sprinted out of the room and down to the nurses' station.

  Jill was very small and alone at the desk. Around her it was dark. The uncertain jack-o'-lantern cast a feeble circle around her. She was talking on the phone.

  She looked up from behind the black carapace of the mouthpiece, her eyes wide and round as the pumpkin pin on her lapel.

  "Jimmy, what . . . ?"

  "Something's wrong with Laurie! I can barely feel her pulse. I think they gave her too much Diazepam."

  "I'll call you back," she said into the phone. "Stay where you are, Jan. I may need you."

  "You mean the phones are working again?"

  "Sort of." She dialed.

  "Get Dr. Mixter!"

  "I'm trying. He doesn't answer. He must be sleeping it off."

  Together they hurried to Laurie's room.

  In the blue darkness Jill felt for a pulse, then lifted Laurie's eyelids. She held her penlight over the pupils.

  Jill tensed. She was all nervous angles and bones as her professional training took over. "Looks like an anaphyllatic reaction. She may need adrenalin."

  "Where is everybody? God damn them!"

  "Take it easy, Jimmy. She'll be okay. All I need is authorization from Mrs. Alves or Dr. Mixter. I'll send Janet. She'll find them—even if they're both sleeping it off together."

  It was not normal.

  True, the hospital was small and activity was usually at a minimum at this hour of the night. But even in the darkest hours before dawn, a few of the skeleton staff could usually be found chatting in twos or threes at the oases of the nurses' station in each wing, standing on one foot and then the other in front of the elevators, or lounging in the staff cafeteria.

  But now, tonight, the darkness seemed to have taken over.

  With the lighting still at half-power, scrubbed hallways pointed like tunnels deeper and deeper into recesses of the complex with no safe, lighted desks at the end, no promising flurries of conversation around each intersection and only the unblinking eye of an occasional, very occasional patient call light over a doorway to break the monotony of blocks of sickrooms and sleeping wards.

  Pale green walls fell away into shadow at unexpected intervals every few feet beneath blacked-out fixtures, so that doorways and drinking fountains took on the ominous appearance of unexplored waystations marking entrance into the unknown. Corridors intersected in near-darkness, the passages and byways of an unfamiliar geography. A water cooler hummed, chilling downdrafts of air into frost across the floor. Signal bells chimed their blue tones as if muffled by great pressure. Storage cabinets and janitorial closet doors stood noticeably ajar, the cracks widening when passed, as if pails of darkness inside were running out to cloud the institution with ink from an enormous aquifer rising up from the depths of the earth below.

  Now Haddonfield Memorial was a place where the few remaining staff passed their hours on the edges of their chairs with backs to the walls and telephones close at hand; where patients lay unmoving in their sarcophagus beds, unwilling to venture even to the bathrooms; and where a young nurse in candy stripes, alone on an errand, might find herself hurrying on her way faster than ever before, eyes downcast, never leaving her feet, hands clenched in her pockets so as not to find her knuckles sinking into the walls which pressed so close at her sides.

  None too soon, Janet arrived at the door to the security center.

  She touched the knob tentatively. Instantly she snatched her hand away, as if she had made contact with the vibrating plasma separating her from the secret chambers of an underworld.

  "Mrs. Alves? Are—are you in there?"

  The only response was a high-pitched whine.

  "Mr. Garrett?"

  She pressed her face near to the door, almost touching it.

  "Is anyone there?"


  No answer. Only the high-frequency oscillation.

  She swallowed. "This is ridiculous," she said. "They have to be somewhere."

  She put her shoulder to the door.

  It swung open slowly, as if against a viscous pressure.

  The security center was unmanned. Rows of video monitors like lidless subaquatic eyes peered back at her. The high-frequency whine was louder.

  "Mr. Garrett, this is an emergency! I have to find Mrs. Alves immediately. Have you seen—?"

  A shape passed across one of the screens.

  Could it be Mrs. Alves?

  No, it was too tall. Straight legs, walking slowly. Dr. Mixter, then?

  She entered the room and approached the monitor.

  The shape was moving away from the camera, which was set high in a corner of a corridor, so that it would appear to shrink and devolve into darkness as the perspective increased.

  This shape, however, did not lose size.

  "Who is that?" she muttered. He had to be tall, the tallest man in the hospital. She had never seen anyone so tall.

  She stepped back to catch him coming into range on the next screen.

  Her foot touched something.

  A hat. Mr. Garrett's hat. Why should he leave his hat on the floor like that?

  And was that an open door to the storage rooms in back?

  "Mr. Garrett?"

  She crossed the room and entered a narrow passageway.

  A storage closet stood open.

  Its lock was broken, just as Mr. Garrett had reported.

  She moved closer.

  The end of a flashlight rolled out from under a cabinet. Its bulb was still on, though weakly, and as the flashlight rolled back and forth in a half-circle its yellow beam lapped at

  her ankles, sending long shadows across the floor behind her.

  Her eyes followed the beam.

  Each time it tolled it illuminated less of her ankles and more of another object. Large. Round, like a caved-in soccer ball. Lying in an expansive, amoeba-like puddle. . . .

  The handle of Mr. Garrett's claw hammer protruded from the ball. Even in the yellow light it was discolored. At first it seemed to be moving, but that was only the rocking of the light.