Halloween

by John Passarella

  He examined the bloody blade extending from his custom pen for a moment, then twisted the barrel and—

  Click!

  —the blade retracted, hidden from view.

  As he returned the pen to his jacket pocket, he turned toward Allyson who stared back at him in shocked disbelief from the back of Hawkins’ cruiser. When he spoke to her, he raised his voice, but his tone was measured and calm. “Do not move, young lady,” he said. “Do not scream. Stay where you are.”

  She couldn’t open the car door, but he preferred she not spend the rest of the night screaming her fool head off, attracting unwanted attention and giving him a headache. She was a minor player in what was to come and should not try to rise above her role.

  * * *

  Panicked, Allyson immediately reached for the door handle only to find the door locked. Of course, she realized belatedly, police cars transport prisoners! Between the locked steel-mesh barrier, the uncomfortable seat and the locked doors, she basically sat inside a mini jail cell.

  Without a weapon, she was trapped and helpless.

  Movement at the front of the car caught her eye. As she looked, Sartain squatted before Michael Myers and dropped out of sight. He was right near the body, but she couldn’t tell what he was doing. Then, a moment later, he shifted position, moving forward, placing one knee on Michael’s chest, leaning forward… jostling for a moment or two, then he was suddenly still. His head bowed forward, and she saw his arms move, fussing with something. His back rose and fell as he took deep breaths.

  When he stood up, his back to her, his hair seemed different somehow… disheveled.

  Then he turned around to face her—

  —wearing Michael’s mask.

  The shock of seeing it again was too much.

  Cowering down, out of sight, she screamed, finally losing control of her fear, giving in to the terror of what she had witnessed earlier—and in this moment.

  Sartain began to scream with her.

  He pounded on the hood of the car with his fists, his own scream almost muting hers. Suddenly, he stopped moving, straightened, and stared at her through the mask.

  Breathless, she stared back in new horror, crying now, tears streaming down the sides of her face. She pleaded, “Please… Don’t.”

  Sartain walked calmly to the side of the car and stood by the back window, staring eerily at Allyson. He had control. While the doors remained locked to her, all he needed to do was reach out to the handle and pull the door open to get to her. Whether he was pretending to be Michael or wanted to be Michael, the difference didn’t matter. He was armed, and she was not. He had killed someone in cold blood. For all intents and purposes, he might as well be Michael Myers. She braced herself for a fight—a fight for her life—with no tangible weapons and no combat training. All she had was desperation and her instinct for self-preservation. A potent combination of doubt and dread clawed at her insides. She held her breath…

  He raised an index finger to the mouth of the hideous white mask and made a shhh sound at her. Then walked away…

  She exhaled so forcefully she had to grab the wire mesh to stop herself from doubling over in relief. Don’t relax, she warned herself. It’s not over. Not even close…

  Lacing her fingers through the openings in the wire mesh, she pushed and pulled, testing for any give. If she could pry either side loose, she might be able to squeeze through to the front seat where the doors weren’t prisoner-proof. Despite a little flex in the center of the cage between front and back, farthest from the anchor points, it held firm. She checked the edges, tugging with all her might, praying for loose bolts, then ran her fingertips along the edge, seeking a gap wide enough to reach through and pry back one of the corners. Here and there the metal squeaked, but nothing moved. Stronger arms than hers had probably tested the wire-mesh barrier in a cop car with similar results.

  Allyson checked on Sartain through the windshield. He stood over Michael, talking to him, attempting to coax him awake, “This is a dream, Michael.”

  No, it’s a nightmare! What are you—?

  Sartain crouched close to Michael and slipped his right arm under his prone form. Then, with a grunt of effort, he lifted Michael first into a sitting position, before placing his left arm—still in the sling—against Michael’s chest. Straining, he stood, pulling a groggy Michael up with him. Sartain braced himself, supporting most of Michael’s weight, and slowly walked him toward the police car.

  Allyson pounded on the mesh and the side window, trying to get Sartain’s attention. “No!” she shouted. “Please no! Please!”

  When they were close enough, Allyson saw beads of sweat on Sartain’s forehead. The effort of bringing Michael to the car with his injured arm taxed him to the point of exhaustion. Allyson prayed for the deranged doctor to have a massive coronary. But the man was determined to finish what he’d started. Propping Michael against the side of the car, he pulled the back door open.

  Allyson pushed herself to the far side of the car and slammed into the opposite door, her head bouncing off the glass so hard she saw stars.

  With much grunting and shifting of his feet, Sartain wrangled Michael’s listless body into the backseat with Allyson. Bending over, he picked up Michael’s legs and pushed them inside the car, so he could close the door. With his knees pushed up out of the way, Michael flopped backward, bumping into Allyson; his sparse hair, greasy with sweat from the mask, brushed her arm, and she shuddered in disgust.

  “Make room, my dear,” Sartain said to her with his hand gripping the edge of the doorframe, his face hidden behind the creepy mask. “Beautiful girl. Mindful of my patient.” He looked down at The Shape sprawled across the backseat. “Are you with us, Michael? Are you listening?” No response, but Sartain nodded anyway and looked at Allyson again. “I do believe he hears everything.”

  For a brief, anger-fueled moment, Allyson’s revulsion overcame her fear and she shoved Michael away from her, pushing him to the far corner of the uncomfortable seat. An instant later, she backed away as far as possible within the confines of the backseat cage and huddled in the corner.

  Before closing the door, Sartain tugged off the hellish mask and tossed it on the seat, where it landed in the gap between Allyson and Michael. When Sartain slammed the door, locking her in with the murderer, she flinched. Panicked, she banged her fists against the wire-mesh barrier and screamed at him—at anyone who could possibly hear her, “NO! LET ME OUT OF HERE! HELP!”

  Glancing down, she saw the flattened mask, how the empty eyes seemed to stare back at her. She had the creepy idea that it had inched closer to her thigh. Disgusted, she pinched a clump of the fake hair between her thumb and index finger and flung the mask as far away from her as possible. It slapped against the door window—the rubber clinging there for a moment—then tumbled into Michael’s lap.

  And despite knowing the doors would not open, she banged on the door and the window, throwing her body against it, praying that somehow her weight might pop the door free of its lock.

  Sartain put the car in gear, steered around the lifeless body of Officer Hawkins and drove into the night.

  36

  After the exhaustingly futile effort to free herself from the backseat of the police cruiser, Allyson pressed herself against the door, cowering from the unconscious murderer sitting mere feet away from her. To her, he was a ticking human time bomb. She feared the moment he regained his senses, he would lean across the backseat and kill her. While he remained unconscious she was safe. And unless she somehow got out of the police car before he began to stir, she was doomed.

  Knowing that, she stared across the seat at him, trembling from the rigidity of her body, all her senses on edge. Shadows shrouded his face, providing no clue. He might already be awake, toying with her. Were his eyes—the undamaged one anyway—open at that very moment? She couldn’t tell. His body seemed to sway with the movement of the car, nothing more.

  When Sartain made a left turn, Michae
l’s body began to tilt toward her, teetering on the brink of falling against her again. Gripping the wire mesh with one hand and the back of the seat with the other, she swung her legs up and pushed him back to his side with her feet. She had a stark fear that if she touched him again with her hands, he would snatch her wrists, pull her to him and—

  Stop it!

  Taking deep breaths, she shook off the paralyzing thought. She had to keep calm, to stay alert to the slightest opportunity for escape. In the back of her mind, a thought bubbled forward.

  What would Grandmother do?

  Laurie Strode had survived Michael Myers. Allyson had to remember that, to cling to the hope that she could survive too. Of course, she had no idea how… but she had to stay open to the possibility. If she gave up hope, she created a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  Sartain glanced back through the steel-wire mesh at her. “People want to kill Michael, but these observations are an opportunity,” he said. “My question now is… who must be protected from whom? His pursuit of your grandmother seems to be what keeps him alive. The notion of being a predator or the fear of becoming prey keeps both of them alive.”

  Allyson considered his words, wiped tears from the corners of her eyes and said, “You’re right.”

  “What?” Sartain asked, showing mild surprise. Of course, he believed his own words, but he seemed to have doubted she would agree with them so readily.

  “I think you’re right.” Though she was woefully unprepared for her current predicament, she knew someone who had spent years—decades—preparing for just such an encounter and looked forward to its resolution. “I’ll show you where to go. Before he wakes up and kills us both… I think I know someone who would like to say goodbye.”

  Allyson gave Sartain the address.

  With an anticipatory smile, Sartain turned right at the next intersection.

  * * *

  Seconds seemed to pass with agonizing slowness…

  …struggling to amount to minutes.

  As she had every other second of the nightmarish drive, she glanced toward the dark shape of Michael Myers on the opposite side of the police cruiser’s hard bench seat. Like a crushed face, now seemingly impotent, the flattened mask lay in his lap. When Sartain cleared his throat, Allyson turned toward him expectantly.

  “Michael?” Sartain said. “Are you awake, Michael? Our friend Allyson has been so kind as to invite us to the family homestead. We’re almost there.” After a pause, he added ominously, “You have what you need, you know?”

  “What does that mean?” Allyson asked nervously.

  “You have what you need,” Sartain repeated, his eyes, visible in the rearview mirror, focused on Michael in the shadows of the backseat.

  Heart racing, Allyson examined Michael’s still form, leaning forward without moving more than an inch or two closer to him. Was he talking about the mask? What—?

  Then she saw it—and gasped.

  The dark handle of a kitchen knife protruded from the left pocket of his grease-stained coveralls. Immediately, she tried to calm herself, to not reveal that she’d seen the knife. Let Sartain think she was clueless to his meaning. With her gaze flickering between Sartain and the dark shape next to her, Allyson began to subtly reach across the backseat.

  While Sartain’s attention was on the road ahead, her hand extended inch by inch, past Michael’s right leg, then over the pale mask in his lap, ever careful not to nudge or even touch the unconscious psychopath, but her arm wasn’t long enough. Gradually, she leaned sideways, no sudden movements, as her fingers reached for the handle—

  Sartain’s gaze flicked to the rearview mirror and he shouted, startling her, “That’s for him!”

  Before she could reach across the remaining distance, Sartain jerked the steering wheel hard to the left. Unbalanced, she fell back against her door, banging her head against the window. To avoid ditching the car down the left embankment, Sartain swerved again to the right, pitching Allyson in the opposite direction. Frantically, her right hand snagged the wire-mesh barrier to stop herself from crashing into Michael.

  With the car back in its proper lane, Allyson regained her balance and her composure. Sartain chuckled as if the reckless driving had been nothing more than an innocent prank to startle her. But when she looked to her left, she noticed something—missing.

  The pale mask was no longer in Michael’s lap.

  As she looked up, she gasped, a sudden chill racing down her spine. Even in the shadowy corner of the backseat, she could see that The Shape now wore the mask—

  —and was staring at her.

  From impossibly far away, Allyson heard Dr Sartain.

  “Wake up, Michael!”

  Before Allyson could scream, The Shape grabbed her by her hair and hurled her against the rear passenger door. For the moment, it wasn’t an attack. She was simply in his way. He scooted toward her, leaning back, and raised his leg, boot poised more than a foot from the window of his door. Suddenly, he slammed his boot against the glass. With the first impact, the glass seemed to give slightly in the frame.

  Distracted by Michael’s action, Sartain lost control of the car and swerved back and forth across both lanes of the rural road. Allyson hung on, fingers gripping the steel mesh, pushing herself against the door, trying to stay in place and far away from Michael.

  He kicked the window a second time, fracturing the glass.

  Sartain slammed on the brakes. The cruiser screeched to a halt in the middle of the dark road with the smell of scorched rubber. Shifting into park, Sartain left the car turned at a slight angle, headlights piercing the night.

  After spending so much time unconscious and waking to find himself trapped in the back of a police car, Michael raged against his confinement, throwing his shoulder against the door, his back against the seat, his forearms and fists against the wire mesh.

  For the moment at least, killing Allyson wasn’t his top priority, so she rode out his violent storm, pressing herself against her door, as much out of his way as possible. If he saw her as part of his confinement or an obstruction to his freedom, she didn’t like her chances—at all.

  Instead of watching Michael, Sartain stared calmly through the windshield. Allyson followed his gaze and saw what had his attention. They were within sight of her grandmother’s property—and a flicker of hope.

  A police cruiser guarded Laurie’s gate.

  * * *

  While they waited for Hawkins to arrive with Allyson, Officers Phillips and Francis sat in their police cruiser listening to rock music and eating Vietnamese food. Since they dropped off the other three members of the family, including the supremely paranoid Laurie Strode, they’d had a quiet night. They’d heard the dispatch call, acknowledged by Hawkins, that the suspect had been sighted and that his unit was in pursuit, but nothing since then. They assumed it had been a false alarm, though nothing had come through on the radio. Once you told the public the Boogeyman was on the loose, every Nervous Nellie peeking through her curtains saw something in the shadows. Halloween only made it worse with the morbid decorations, more elaborate each year. Skeletons and zombies and scarecrows propped up on porches, sitting in front yards, dangling from trees. A bunch of props designed to scare the neighbors, so of course the neighbors started seeing prowlers near every bush and window. Typical bullshit.

  “You know what goes good with a banh mi sandwich?” Phillips asked, while chewing a wad of said sandwich in the side of his mouth.

  Though the cruiser sat off a dark, deserted road, Francis thought he’d heard something in the distance. He leaned forward and saw a car in the distance, headlights and flashing lights. An emergency vehicle—or another squad car.

  “An IPA,” Phillips answered his own question.

  “What the hell?” Francis said, pointing.

  Phillips turned in his seat, straining his eyes to see. “Looks like it’s in the middle of the road…”

  “Just sitting there,” Francis said, nodding. “
Alone…”

  * * *

  Utterly silent and desperate to remain unnoticed as much as possible, Allyson watched The Shape kick the window again, determined to break free of the police cruiser. In the front seat, Sartain spoke calmly, as if he were unaware of the turmoil right behind him. “What greater spectacle than to reunite two old friends. Michael Myers and Laurie Strode. An historic reunion.”

  Cloaked in shadows, The Shape sat motionless.

  Was he listening?

  Allyson couldn’t tell. His body language was impossible for her to read.

  A moment of quiet passed, broken by Sartain. “Michael,” he said. “She’s been waiting for you. Are you ready?”

  Sartain turned in his seat to look over his shoulder as Michael lunged forward, ramming the steel barrier with ferocious strength. Possibly loosened by his earlier fit of violence, the entire barrier bowed inward and broke free of its restraints, striking Sartain violently in the head.

  Michael drove himself forward, over the front seat, fingers gripping the loose barrier as he slammed it repeatedly against Sartain’s head until he was motionless, pinning him against the steering wheel. The car horn blared like a banshee’s wail.

  The sudden burst of violence shattered Allyson’s stoic resolve. She’d been utterly still and silent, but the brutality of the attack rekindled all her suppressed fear, and she screamed.

  * * *

  “Something’s wrong,” Phillips said. “Why is he sitting there?”

  The flare of the cruiser’s headlights blinded them to whatever was happening inside. Was he waiting for them? Suffered a mechanical breakdown? Injured, unable to drive the rest of the way? Those and other questions ran through Phillips’ mind. But now he heard…

  Phillips rolled down his window to the blaring of a car horn.

  That settles it. Squeezing his shoulder mic, he called, “606, 601? 606 to 601? Hawkins. Turn your fuckin’ radio on. Hawkins?”

  Not a peep. Not even a burst of static.