Fan Fiction

Author’s Note: This story takes place in the immediate aftermath of the events depicted in the original Halloween I and II, thus in the same “timeline” as Halloween IV.

Six-year-old Laurie Strode shuffled through the tall grass of Carpenter’s Field, humming a song she’d heard in a commercial. It was summer and it was warm, Laurie’s mother dressing her in a light-colored dress that morning, the tall grass and prickly weeds tickling her ankles and knees and making her skin itch. Her feet were bare and she held her sparkly jelly sandals over her shoulder the way she’d seen her big sister do. Carpenter’s Field was an open space, a wilderness in the eyes of a six-year-old, that sat on the northwestern side of Haddonfield, a short walk or even shorter bike ride through Sutter Park and into the trees and then the open fields beyond. Laurie came here often, usually by herself, her mother allowing it as long as she never went out too far or stayed out too long. Today, she had no purpose, no goal; she was just walking.

     She heard something to her left and looked just in time to  see a wide-eyed bunny come crashing through the grass. It stopped and looked at her, its little nose and whiskers twitching furiously, before dashing off into the grass as she leaned in to pet it.

     “Come back, bunny!” she shouted after it. She glanced at the sky and saw thick, dark clouds rolling in and thought she might head back. Her mother would scold her for sure if she got caught in the rain. She turned to head back but then heard another noise: thup! thup! thup! She looked to her right and saw the shape of a boy crouching low to the ground. His back was turned, but from the longish, sandy-blond hair she could tell it was her brother.

     “Michael?” she said, “What are you doing here?” There was a hint of indignation in her voice and no small bit of resentment in her heart at finding him out here in Carpenter’s Field. Michael rarely left the house and when he did, Laurie had no idea where he went. Though it was close to their house, Carpenter’s Field was her place, a special, sacred place where she could go and be alone with the trees and birds and grass and bugs and away from the occasional darkness of her home, and she was unhappy to find him here. But still, he was her brother and a storm seemed to be coming and she didn’t want to get in trouble for leaving him out here in it.

     “Michael, it’s going to rain!” She walked closer to him. Thup! Thup! Thup! He was sitting on his knees working intently at something, his arm rising and falling. Laurie thought he might have been digging a hole. Frustrated that he would not so much as even look at her, she stomped up behind him. “Michael Myers, you’re gonna be in trouble!”

     She came to a stop just over his shoulder and saw what he was working at. In between his knees was another bunny, virtually identical to the one she’d seen just moments before. With his left hand, he pinned it by the neck to the ground while with his right, he stabbed it again and again with a screwdriver he’d taken from their father’s toolbox.

     “MICHAEL, STOP!” she screamed. Michael ignored her and seemed to tighten his grip around the dying bunny’s throat as it made a final desperate attempt to escape, spasming in Michael’s hand, its round little belly rising and falling rapidly as its final breaths left its tiny body. “Oh, Michael.”

     Michael looked down at his prey, cocked his head right then left as if analyzing a piece of fine art hanging in a museum. Then, almost in slow motion, he turned towards Laurie as if suddenly realizing she was even there. The face that looked up at her was not that of her brother Michael but his real face, the plain yet terrifying white mask and frizzy brown hair.

     Laurie screamed and bolted back the way she came. Overhead, as the storm rolled in, the thunder roared.

     Laurie, unstable, weak in the knees, wearing a hospital gown, stumbled through the cold, dark halls of Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, banging on windows, testing locked doors, screaming for help. It was a hospital, a fucking hospital, where the hell could everyone be? Haddonfield was a small town, sure, but it was big enough and it was Halloween, surely one of the busiest nights of the year for a hospital, but the place was as empty as a mausoleum.

     She came to the maternity ward, mostly dark inside but illuminated by the full moon looking in through the window, and saw the newborns stirring restlessly in their cribs. From the heart-shaped sticker on the side of the crib, she saw that the nearest baby was named Cynthia. She heard a door open on screechy hinges at the end of the hall and even though she didn’t have to look to see what it was, she did, finding Michael Myers standing in an open doorway, wearing his blue overalls, holding an improbably large butcher knife, his breathing loud through the small nostrils of his mask.

     “NOOOO!” she screamed, dashing back the other way.

     The dark halls of Haddonfield Memorial seemed endless, labyrinthine, confusing. Every hospital, every public building Laurie had ever been in had bright EXIT signs, but she found no such thing in the hospital. Just more and more dark halls, the moonlight glinting off the finely waxed floors, the heavy footfalls and raspy breathing of Michael behind her.

     She came to an open door and looked inside. It was a private room, and on the bed was a headstone. OUR BELOVED DAUGHTER JUDITH MYERS it said, but unlike the last time she’d seen it, it wasn’t Annie in the bed lying before it but Judith herself, beautiful Judith that was little more than a ghost of a memory to Laurie, nude and covered in bloody stab wounds.

     She turned to run, dashing right into Michael’s arms.

Haddonfield, Illinois.

 Early December, 1978.

     Seventeen-year-old Laurie Strode woke up screaming in her bedroom, kicking frantically at her blanket as if it was the strong, vice-like grip of Michael himself holding her down, her flailing arms knocking her half-full glass of water and lamp off her nightstand. Finally, she freed herself from the octopus-like tangle of her blankets and stood almost to full height on her bed like someone feeling a scurrying rat. As the familiar shapes of her bedroom took shape before her eyes, she realized that she’d been having a nightmare and that she was still crying out. She was covered with sweat and her heart was pounding rapidly in her chest, making her think of the rapid, dying breaths of the bunny in her dream.

     Her parents, Morgan and Pamela, came bursting into the room, calling her name. She leapt from her bed and into their arms like a little girl, nearly knocking them both on their backsides. Her mother stroked her hair, whispering reassuring things in her ear while her father sighed gratefully and leaned against the wall while rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Nightmares had been a regular thing in the Strode household for the last two months for all three members of the family, but whenever they were awoken by Laurie screaming, they seemed to worry that one of these nights, it wouldn’t just be a nightmare, that the Boogeyman (her brother) had come back.

     “I’m sorry,” Laurie said miserably, tears and snot running down her long, pretty face. “It was a nightmare.”
    “I know, honey,” her mother cooed, “I know.” Her mother used her sleeve to wipe Laurie’s face and looked her over for further injury. Pamela Strode had aged much since October 31st, her father had too. Hell, Laurie, not yet 18, looked years older since the night that had turned their lives, the lives of practically everybody in town, upside down. It was another thing she felt guilty about.

     Her mother cradled her to her breast and sang to her like she used to when Laurie was a little girl. Before Halloween, Laurie would have politely but insistently told her to stop, but there was something about facing death multiple times in one night that made you feel vulnerable again, made you feel like a child that needed protectors, and a comforting embrace and a lullaby from her mother felt like balm on the wounds of October 31st. While her father leaned against the wall, reflecting on whatever private misery he was going through, her mother softly sang “Oh Holy Night” to her. It was Christmastime, Laurie could see the colorful lights strung around the big tree in the Whitmore’s front yard across the street through her bedroom window, and her mother, who used to sing in their church choir when Laurie was a girl, always loved that one. Laurie did too. Their favorite was “Silent Night,” which Pamela Strode sang next.

     “All is calm … all is bright …” she sang, Laurie humming along with her.

     When she’d been a girl, it usually took no more than two songs to put Laurie to sleep. As a child, she was plagued with nightmares often, usually about burglars breaking into their house, police surrounding it, and clowns. Lots of nightmares about clowns. Eventually she found out why that was, but at the time, she thought it was just the silly phobias of a child. Her parents knew differently but had kept it to themselves most of her life.

     “Thanks, Momma,” Laurie said, wiping fresh tears from her eyes. “I think I’m good now.”
    “Are you sure?” Pamela asked, dabbing at her own eyes and brushing Laurie’s hair over her ear. “I can stay. I don’t mind. I can even sleep in here, if you want.”

     “No, that’s okay,” she said, nodding at the door. “Go back and sleep with Daddy.”

     Her father had quietly excused himself a few minutes before in what was now a practiced routine. Her mother, however, just rolled her eyes.

     “He won’t be in bed. Once he’s up like this, he can’t sleep.”

     Laurie knew what she meant, “like this.” She meant after Laurie had one of her nightmares.

     “Would you like another pill to help you sleep?” her mother asked. Ever since the nightmares had started the doctors prescribed her flurazepam to help her rest. It mostly didn’t work.

     “It’s okay, Momma. I’m fine. Really.”

     She heard her parents whispering in their bedroom a little bit later, the kind of stern whispering that indicated that they were arguing, and eventually she heard her father’s heavy steps as he went downstairs. In her mind’s eye, she saw him fill a tumbler with ice and then fill it almost all the way to the brim with Scotch. Morgan Strode was always a drinker, but ever since Halloween, ever since their daughter had nearly been murdered by her long-lost older brother and all her friends were killed, he was approaching full-blown alcoholic status.

     Laurie sat at her window and watched a gentle December snow fall on her street. She looked at the lights of the Whitmore’s house, glanced at the brightly lit Christmas tree in the front window of the Kowalski’s home. Downstairs, their own tree was probably still lit up in their front room. They had decorated it the Saturday after Thanksgiving like they always had, Daddy drinking his whiskey-Egg Nogg and Momma playing her Bing Crosby Christmas record like always, and while they smiled and sang along, it didn’t feel like Christmas. To Laurie, it was always Halloween.

     The dreamwas by and large ridiculous. Laurie had no idea her actual last name was Myers, had no clue that she had an older brother and (dead) older sister. She met Michael when she was eight after Pamela, in actuality her adoptive mother (against Morgan’s wishes), took her to Smith’s Grove to meet him (also against Morgan’s wishes). Michael killed Judith when Laurie was three-years-old, her biological parents dying in a car wreck soon after. She had no idea if he killed and tortured little animals when he was a boy. She supposed it was possible, maybe even likely. Once she knew Michael and her former family existed, her subconscious had concocted all sorts of scenarios that had never happened. Birthdays at the Myers house. Easter at the Myers house. Cocktail parties at the Myers house. Some of these dreams started out normally, but they always ended with Michael wearing the mask and chasing her, sometimes through Haddonfield Memorial, sometimes in the Doyle house.

     She went downstairs, got a fresh glass of water and heard her father watching Johnny Carson in the family room. She followed the electric blue glow of the TV screen, the sound of audience laughter and Johnny’s deadpan delivery and found her father where she expected him, sitting in his easy chair, sipping his Scotch. She cleared her throat to announce herself and he hid something in his lap.

     “Hey, honey. Can’t sleep?”
    “No, Daddy,” she said, entering the room and coming up to his left side.

     “Want a drink?” He raised his half-empty glass. “I won’t tell Mom if you don’t.”

     “No, I’m okay.”

     Her father nodded, tipped his glass to her and took a sip.

     “Are you okay, Daddy?”

     “I’m fine, sweetie,” he said dismissively. “Just couldn’t get back to sleep is all.” He shifted whatever he’d hidden in his lap and Laurie tried to appear inconspicuous as she tried to see what it was. On the TV, Johnny’s stage was replaced with a commercial, flooding the room with brighter light, light that glinted off the cylinder of his .38 revolver. She noticed that, while he was in front of the TV, he’d angled the chair so he could see through the window to the street, that he was keeping watch for her, for all of them.

     “Okay, Daddy.” She left him to this, his quiet time, his private hell, whatever it was.

     She felt bad for her father. Prior to Halloween, he had been one of Haddonfield’s most successful realtors, perhaps the most successful, but since then, things had been slow for him at work. Strange. While December was always a slow month for him, not a lot of people buying houses in Illinois in winter, most people really didn’t want to live in what had become one of the most infamous towns in America. If anything, they wanted to leave. What few requests he did get were morbid inquiries about the Myers house. Her house. Her childhood home. She shuddered.

     She went back to bed and when she fell asleep, she did dream but couldn’t remember about what.

     The next morning, in spite of the fresh snow on the ground and the freezing temperature, Laurie insisted on walking to school. It wasn’t far, she reminded her parents, and after a rough night of sleep or lack thereof, the biting air would help wake her, which was partially true. For the most part, she couldn’t fathom the idea of another slow, awkward ride with her mother to school as she assured her everything would be all right, that if she ever needed to talk to someone she could talk to her.

     Everything wouldn’t be all right, though. Laurie knew that. Her friends were dead, Ben Tramer, a boy she’d had a crush on since junior high but never had the courage to talk to was dead, hit by a car. So many other people were dead, killed by her brother, a brother who also tried to kill her with a body full of bullets. A brother she’d help blow up at Haddonfield Memorial. What about any of that suggested things would be all right?

     Eventually her parents agreed to let her go if for no other reason than Laurie started to raise her voice and cry about it, two things she hardly ever did in front of anyone.

     She bundled herself up against the cold as best she could, wearing multiple layers - gloves, snow boots, a cap pulled low over her ears - but it was still brutally cold out. She tried to walk briskly to warm herself but the ground was slippery with ice, so she had to step carefully. It was the kind of morning that Annie would normally have picked her up.

     Annie.

     Annie Brackett, her best friend. How she missed her. Annie who was everything Laurie was not, loud (and foul) mouthed, confident, fearless. They had been opposites in that way that best friends sometimes are, complimenting each other and helping each other though the situations the other couldn’t get out of. Laurie was quiet, reserved, brainy.  Annie was boisterous, lewd, funny. On a morning like this, she’d show up at Laurie’s house, smoking a cigarette (or something else) and blaring some Blue Oyster Clut or Credence from her car stereo.

     Now she was dead.

     Laurie had seen Sheriff Brackett once since November. Like all of them, he looked to have aged ten years and was rumored to be hitting the Jack Daniels a little too hard. Laurie supposed it was even harder for someone like Sheriff Brackett, a man who was so tough, so strong, to not have been able to protect his daughter or his town. He was still the Sheriff, still showed up at all the town functions, still signed all the paperwork, but more and more, the town saw Deputy Meeker taking calls and helping folks out instead of Mr. Brackett.

     She didn’t take the normal route to school for that would have taken her too close to the Myers house (her childhood home, her dark internal voice always reminded her) and thus Carpenter’s Field from her dream, instead opting for a more circuitous route that would only take a little longer for her to arrive. She forced a smile at the Christmas wreathes on the doors, the trees in the windows, the big plastic Santas and snowmen in the front yards. She looked forward to Christmas, even if everyone was going to be forcing the good cheer this year.

     She heard a car come rolling up behind her, looked over her shoulder and saw that it was a brown station wagon. She gasped, dropped her books and mug of hot cocoa she’d brought to keep herself warm and dashed behind a tree in someone’s yard. The station wagon, its engine rumbling like the belly of a hungry beast, was the same color as the one Michael had stolen to drive to Haddonfield, maybe the same make and model. Holding her breath as if he could hear her as it passed, she watched it roll by from behind the tree, ready to bolt in the other direction when she saw the occupants: a harried-looking mother with big pink earmuffs and a carload of bouncing children. Not Michael. It couldn’t have been Michael. He was full of multiple bullets and had third degree burns over 95% of his body. Her parents had been reassured time and time again he could die any day, that it was nothing short of a miracle that he was still alive at all.

     Not a miracle, Laurie thought. A curse.

     She watched the car disappear around the corner and then headed towards school, cursing herself for being stupid.

     Laurie had always liked school, had always been an A student. She was the nerdy girl the other girls copied off of after staying out late and drinking with their boyfriends. Like every other area of her life, Halloween had just about ruined all of that. She didn’t even go back to school until after Thanksgiving break, there were just so many damned doctor’s appointments, questions from police, questions from the FBI, requests for interviews from reporters, and funerals. So. Many. Funerals.

     Her teachers had graciously offered to freeze her grades but she was still so behind on content, she was about to fail Chemistry. She’d managed to keep a B in French and English, always her favorite, still was at an A but probably only due to the fact that her teacher, Mrs. Hill, adored her.

     It was a Wednesday, and Laurie went through the motions of school as best as she could. She was exhausted from little sleep and she had a churning pit in the center of her chest that never seemed to go away anymore, as if her heart was racing, as if she was always scared, always waiting for something to happen. When she came back to school, she insisted to her counselor Mr. King that she needed to be able to see the door in every class, a request that had been accommodated. In one class, Chemistry, that meant sitting where Lynda used to sit, which was cruel.

     She often ate lunch by herself most days, though there were plenty of kids that tried to sit with her, especially after first coming back to school. Some wanted to express their deepest sympathies, some seemed in awe of her, the last girl to face off against Michael Myers. She was sure the boys would stay away from her now. She’d poked Michael with a knitting needle, stabbed him with a butcher knife, shot him twice in the face, had walked away when so many others had not. The boys usually didn’t like her because she was too smart; now she was dangerous.

     Every class that day was a struggle. Halfway through each period she realized she had no idea what the rest of the class was doing, no idea what the teacher was talking about. She skipped French that day, sequestering herself in a far corner of the library to try and study and do make up work. But even though the library was quiet, the opposite environment of her classes had the same effect on her. It was too quiet, making her even more nervous.

     Sighing heavily, she leaned back in the uncomfortable library seat and tied her hair in a ponytail, her suspicious eyes moving over the room. Her eyes settled on a library poster, something advertising the value of reading. It had a panda on it munching contentedly on a piece of bamboo. The white face. The big black circles for eyes. It looked like a mask, the mask, the one that haunted her dreams.

     She got the hell out of there immediately.

     Sixth period. Choir. Practicing for the annual Christmas Concert. Her choir teacher, Mrs. Lodwick, told her she did not have to participate, but Laurie wanted to. It was one of the few classes she could keep up in, one of the few she enjoyed. She was in her place in line at the back and they were signing “Away in the Manger.” She knew it by heart, she liked the song, but the dark, musty emptiness of the auditorium before them unnerved her.

     The lyrics, too.

     Away in a manger, no crib for a bed

     The little Lord Jesus lay down his

     sweet head.

     The image of a crib came into her mind, a wooden crib that seemed huge to her, as big as a lion’s cage. It had plastic ABCs that twirled in between the bars. While the crib was outfitted with pink blankets, it was a boy’s crib. It had belonged to her older brother.

     She could almost picture the room. It was next to Judith’s, down the hall from Michael’s.

     “Cynthia,” she heard her mother call, “Cynthia, my big girl, are you awake?”

     Laurie pushed her way through the choir and ran out of the auditorium, crying.

     She was walking down the hallway, coming back from the restroom. Like all old schools, the halls were dark, dusty, thick with the memories, the hopes and dreams of the thousands of students that had walked through these halls before her. Maybe that is what a school ended up being, she wondered: a museum, a graveyard of dreams that didn’t come true.

     Up ahead, she saw a custodian mopping up a spill in the center of the floor. A custodian in a soiled, dark blue jumpsuit, frizzy brown hair.

     It isn’t him, she told herself. It can’t be him. He’s hundreds of miles away, wrapped like a mummy, at death’s door. This is just Dick Miller, who’d been custodian here as long as anyone could remember. He was a nice old guy. It wasn’t him.

     While she felt an icy hand close around her heart and lungs, she forced herself to walk forward, trying not to look directly at him but still watching him peripherally.

     His slow, methodical moping was almost hypnotic as she approached him, she even felt like everything was starting to move in slow motion when he suddenly stopped, taking the mop in both hands and snapping it in half.

     “No …” she whispered.

     Michael dropped one half of the mop and kept the longer, sharper one, looking up at her with that terrible, expressionless mask of his. Laurie screamed and bolted back in the other direction. Michael followed, not fast but slow as he always did.

     She ran down the hallways as fast as she could, pounding on classroom doors, all of which were locked. She came to a building exit and yanked furiously on the handle to no avail. She cried out to the students she saw milling around in the parking lot. Bob and Lynda were out there making out. Hearing Laurie’s cries, they looked at her and waived. Annie was out there too, sitting on the hood of her car and smoking a cigarette in that cavalier way she did everything. She waived at Laurie too, beckoning her to come with her.

     She heard Michael’s breathing behind her and she burst into a run.

     She got ahead of him and found another door, tried it. It wouldn’t budge.

     “Laurie!” she heard a voice say.

     She looked back down the hall. Nurse Franco, wearing her sweater, holding her purse, leaving for the night, had spotted her running down the hall.

     “Laurie!” she said with concern.

     Laurie opened her mouth to warn her, she knew what was about to happen, but before she could utter so much as a word Michael appeared behind Nurse Franco, plunging the sharp end of the broken mop handle in her back and lifting her off the ground with one hand.

     Laurie awoke screaming, launching her composition book and pencil in different directions. The kids around her recoiled and Mrs. Hill dashed over to her. She was in 7th period now, she realized. She didn’t even remember what happened between leaving choir and coming to this class.

     Mrs. Hill was at her side, asking her if she was all right, the whole class staring at and whispering about her, but all Laurie could think about was Michael.

     Laurie’s parents didn’t argue much. They had the usual marital squabbles: one of them spent too much money at the department store; one of them did or said something embarrassing at a cocktail party; her father worked too much. Those kinds of things. After Halloween, it seemed like they may never argue again, that all their petty tiffs seemed trivial compared to the fact they’d nearly lost their daughter to murder and so many had lost theirs.

     Once it was all over, the funerals and interviews and investigations, they argued often. Tonight, they were really going at it trying to decide what to do about their daughter.

     Her mother had picked her up from school, took her home where her father waited for them, and the first round of tonight’s arguing began. Her father remarked off-handedly that Haddonfield Memorial had a psyche ward and while a large portion of the hospital was still under reconstruction from the explosion, it shouldn’t have touched that area. Maybe they could take her there, he suggested, which caused Laurie to lose it.

     “Haddonfield Memorial? HADDONFIELD MEMORIAL?” she screamed. “You’ll never get me in that building ever again! Are you out of your fucking mind, Dad?”

     “Laurie!” her mother said evenly. “Don’t talk to your father that way.”

     Laurie looked at both of them, stunned. She rarely cursed and never cursed at her parents.

     “I’m sorry,” she said meekly. “I can’t go back there. Never again.”

     “We won’t make you,” her mother said.

     Instead, they took her to a hospital fifty miles outside of town and had the doctor, a nice but clearly out of his league man named Dr. England, evaluate her. He gave her a battery of physical tests which only seemed to suggest that she was exhausted and under a great deal of stress. The doctor asked her a number of personal questions and once he learned she was Laurie Strode, the girl from Haddonfield who’d faced down a killer, he seemed to understand. He took her parents out into the hallway, leaving Laurie to try and eavesdrop from her hospital bed.

     “She has like, shell shock,” she heard him tell her parents out in the hallway.

     “Shell shock?” her father scoffed, “What, like a GI?”

     “Yeah, sort of,” the doctor said. “GIs often still experience the horrors of war when they come back home. I think that’s what’s happening here.”
    “My father was a WWII veteran,” her father said, “He never had any of that.”

     “It’s not very well understood, and I am certainly no expert,” the doctor continued carefully, “but I think she needs help from a psychiatric professional, not a medical doctor.”

     He offered her medicine to calm her down, to which her mother explained they already had plenty of that, thanked him and took her home.

     That’s where they were now, home, trying to figure out what to do next. Her principal, while sympathetic, had politely reminded her parents that Laurie’s outbursts were disrupting the learning environment of the other students, all of whom had gone through their own ordeal and they couldn’t continue to allow her to frighten them.

     Dr. England had suggested a place called Hackberry, a facility (a loaded term if there ever was one) in upstate Illinois where people who’d experienced issues like Laurie’s could go to calm down, collect themselves, the doctor said. It was staffed with professionals that could help her, he insisted.

     Her parents argued about it and finally brought Laurie into the conversation. To their surprise, she agreed to try it out. Though she hadn’t been away from home since sixth grade camp, she knew she had to get away from here, from this house, from the Doyle and Wallace houses, from the Myers house, from Haddonfield Memorial, from school, from it all. Maybe it would be good to get away. Maybe she’d be able to sleep.

     A week later, they were in the car heading to Hackberry. During a light snowstorm on a bitterly cold day, they packed Laurie and her bags up into their car and left their street, passed the Myers house, passed Carpenter’s Field and the Tower Farm, and made the two-hour drive listening to Christmas music on the radio, Laurie resting her forehead on the cold glass of the passenger-side backseat window, watching the snowy landscape whisk by.

     They exited the main highway and followed a winding road through the woods. The constant turns in the road made Laurie feel carsick, so she closed her eyes, eventually falling into a deep (and blessedly dreamless) sleep. When she woke, they were there.

     The main outcropping of buildings sat up on a small hill surrounded by hackberry trees. It looked more like a winter lodge than a hospital, which Laurie’s parents had insisted it wasn’t. The buildings, five of them from where Laurie could see, with supply sheds and a barn off in the distance, were made of dark wood with rock veneer around the base. A couple of the chimneys had tufts of smoke emitting from them, and the air smelled of wood, ash, relaxation.

     “This looks lovely,” Pamela said, joining Laurie by her side and throwing an arm around her. Morgan busied himself with unloading Laurie’s bags.

     “It’s okay,” Laurie said, shivering against the cold.

     The door to the nearest, largest building opened and a man came out, waving from the doorway before plunging his hands into the pockets of his Southwestern print coat and hurried out to greet them.

     “The Strodes,” he said pleasantly, “I’m Dr. Barker. You must be Laurie.”

     He offered a hand to Laurie, which she took limply. He was a middle-aged man with long reddish hair streaked with white, pulled back into a ponytail. He didn’t look like a doctor to Laurie but more like a hippie. Her father seemed to feel the same, for he eyed the man disdainfully from behind her, not setting down a suitcase to shake the man’s hand but rather just nodding curtly at him.

     “We all spoke on the phone,” Dr. Barker continued. “It’s so nice to meet you all in person. Come in! Let’s get you out of the cold.”
 

     Dr. Barker had them leave their luggage at the front desk with a woman named Nancy. She was built like a football player, firm but friendly, and Laurie gathered she was the law and order around here. “We’ll get them to your room,” she said.

     Dr. Barker showed them around the lobby, which, like the outside, looked more like a ski lodge than a hospital or facility or whatever they wanted to call it. There was a huge fireplace at one end of it, a respectable library and table with a chess board set up nearby. Cages of little birds chirping happily were on the other side of the room, protected by a big, lazy mastiff.

     Dr. Barker showed them the cafeteria, the rec room, a sitting room, and a largely empty space with chairs folded up and leaning against the walls he called the “group room.” He showed them what would normally be a nice garden outside, now covered mostly by snow.

     They passed a few other patients – Laurie didn’t know if that’s what you called them – people who either smiled politely as they passed or refused to make eye contact.

     The last thing he showed them was her room, a small, spartan, private ward with a bed, an empty bookshelf, a small empty dresser, and a closet where her bags were waiting for her. The single window had a nice view of the snowy woods. A private room. Laurie wondered how much this had cost her father.

     “Well, here we are,” Dr. Barker said, “This’ll be your room, Laurie. Not much, but everything else you need is in the building. There’s more we didn’t get to, but I know we’re burning daylight and your parents have a long drive back to Haddonfield.” He stepped closer to Laurie.

     “I want you to know a couple things. First, you are perfectly safe here. The facilities are secure and locked at night and we’re a small group. Anyone tries to get in that doesn’t belong, we’ll know it. I know one of your parents’ concerns was reporters trying to get access to you. Won’t happen here. And I also want you to know you are not a prisoner. You are not a patient, as this is not a hospital. This is a place to share and to heal. If you want to go home, all you have to do is call up your parents, and that’s that.

     “We have two rules: One, be yourself. Two, treat others here well. You do those two things, you’ll be fine.”

     Laurie stayed in the room, looking glumly out the window, while her parents discussed final details in Dr. Barker’s office. It had started to snow outside, the fat, tumbling flakes having an almost hypnotic effect on her. While they did not call this place a hospital, it still sort of felt like one, at least an old folk’s home, and yet there was something peaceful about it. Maybe it just wasn’t Haddonfield and that was what Laurie needed.

     The next hour, with the tearful goodbyes with her mother and awkward but still emotional hugs with her father and promises to call passed in a sort of blur. Before she knew it, she was alone, here in this facility in the woods. Somehow, this was all supposed to help.

     She doubted that seriously.

     There wasn’t a phone in her room, but there was one in one of the sitting areas. Laurie was there now, sitting in the dark in a creaky wooden chair, sitting still and waiting, making sure no one was around. The mastiff, who she’d learned was named Mac, sat protectively by her.

She’d had a nightmare, one she couldn’t remember, and had woken up crying in her bed, her strange bed in her unfamiliar room. While she thought she needed to get away, in moments like these, familiarity provided at least some security. She slinked out of her room, tiptoed down the carpeted hall, and found the closest sitting room. It still smelled like smoke in here from the fireplace, now dark and cold. She picked up the receiver of the phone on the little table next to her, hesitated just a moment, then dialed.

     “Mt. Sinai Hospital,” the tired-sounding receptionist said.

     “Hello,” Laurie said, clearing her throat, trying to sound stable. “I need to speak with a patient, please.”

     “Patients do not accept calls at this hour, Ma’am, you’ll have to call back tomorrow morning after nine a.m.”
    “Yes, I am aware of that. This is Dr. Hooper, at Smith’s Grove. I need to speak with Dr. Loomis. Sam Loomis. It’s about a medication dosage for one of his patients. I’m sorry to bother you and him at this hour, but he does have an arrangement. It should be at the desk.”
    Laurie heard the woman on the other end sigh and shuffle some things around. Like her, Dr. Loomis had been plagued by requests for interviews and queries from all sorts of oddballs. Masquerading as another doctor was the agreed-upon strategy, and  it usually worked. Dr. Loomis had left instructions at the nurse’s station that they were to accept all calls from Smith’s Grove. She figured they made allowances for him because he was a doctor himself.

     “Here it is,” the receptionist said, “Transferring you now.”
    The phone rang so many times she thought he would sleep through it, but finally he answered in a pained, raspy voice. “Hello?”

     “Dr. Loomis,” Laurie whispered, “Dr. Loomis. It’s Laurie.”

     A long pause. “Laurie,” he said, “God, what time is it?”

     “Late, Dr. Loomis, I’m sorry.”

     “Did you have a nightmare?”

     “Yes. But that isn’t why I called.” She quickly told him about the incident at school, the fight with her parents, and being driven out here to Hackberry, where she was now. He didn’t interrupt her while she spoke, his raspy breathing on the other end the only sound.

     “Hackberry,” he finally said, “I’ve heard of it. A young doctor runs it. Parker?”

     “Barker.”

     “Yes, Barker. Young, idealistic. Considered somewhat unorthodox. I suppose I have no room to talk there.” He chuckled then erupted into a coughing fit, which made him grunt in pain. She waited while he got himself under control.

     “Hackberry,” he continued, “It’s good you got away, Laurie. Good to talk to people. Good to be away from Haddonfield. You stay there and you rest. Get well. Live your life.”

     “Dr. Loomis,” she said after a pause, “He’s not going to die, is he?” There was no point saying who she meant. They both knew. “Shot so many times. Burned up. He’s still alive and he’s not going to die, is he?”

     “I don’t know, Laurie,” he said ruefully, “I do not know. Only God knows. But me, I’m alive, too. They say I’ll be out of the hospital in a few weeks. Recovery will be long, I may never be myself again, but … I’m alive, too. I’ll never let him get out again. I’ll protect you, Laurie. I’ll protect all of you. All of you.” He sighed heavily and Laurie could hear the pain in his voice. From their previous conversations, she knew he was done, having exhausted what little energy he had on this conversation. It was a miracle he was alive, too, stabbed and burned the way he had been.

     “I know, Dr. Loomis. I know. Good night.”

     He mumbled a response, possibly a feeble attempt at wishing her a good night as well, more likely a warning about Michael. It was how he usually ended their conversations.

     On his end, the phone went dead. Laurie listened to the dial tone a moment and then hung up.

     “No one’s supposed to be out in the halls this time of night,” a voice came from the darkness. Laurie gave out a little yelp and scooted her chair away from the voice, which seemed to come right in front of her.

     “Who’s there?”

     A match sparked to life, illuminating the pale, pretty face of a girl sitting in a chair right across from Laurie. Completely shrouded in darkness, Laurie had no idea she’d been there at all. The girl seemed about Laurie’s height and close to her age, had dark hair and a pretty face. She lit a cigarette and took a drag.

     “I don’t think you can smoke in here,” Laurie said.

     “No, it is strictly forbidden,” the girl agreed, “I won’t tell on you if you don’t tell on me,” the girl said with a shrug. “Want one?”

     Laurie realized she did very much, and the girl got up, gave her one and lit it for her.

     “Thanks,” Laurie said. “I’m Laurie.”
    “Jamie,” the other girl said. “Welcome to the Funny Farm. What’re you in for?”

     Laurie hesitated. “I uh, I survived …” She searched for the words. “You hear of Haddonfield? Halloween night?”

     “Shit, that’s you?” the other girl said, “I thought you looked a little familiar. I saw you on TV when they brought you out of the hospital and then at the funerals. All those were on the news, too. Yes, I know who you are. Sorry.”

     “For what?”

     “All that shit you had to go through.”

     “Thanks. How about you? What are you here for?”
    “Dad was a drunk,” she said with a shrug, “Used to beat up my mom something awful. Me too. She finally left him. He found us, though. You know how it is.”

     “Yeah.”
    “Friendly advice,” she said, taking a big drag on her cigarette, “I’d finish your smoke and get back to your room. Nancy finds you here, she’ll give you hell. Don’t want to get set off on the wrong foot your first day.”

“Thanks,” Laurie said, taking a drag of the cigarette and putting it out in a nearby ashtray. “I’ll see you, Jamie.”

“Yep. See you in group.”

     Life at Hackberry was a strange mix of busy routines and lots of free time. They all got up at the same time and ate breakfast together in the cafeteria. The food wasn’t bad, certainly wasn’t great, at least it was better than the food at Haddonfield High School, then they had some kind of morning activity. The afternoon was taken up with individual appointments with Dr. Barker or one of the other staff members, lunch, some enrichment time doing other leisurely activities, then dinner and evening recreation. Once a week, they had group therapy.

     Laurie was one of about a dozen mostly young people who sat in a circle on uncomfortable metal folding chairs, Dr. Barker somewhere roughly in the center. New people would share their stories and sometimes there’d be an overall topic. Laurie didn’t share anything other than her name her first time; she couldn’t bring herself to talk about it yet. There was one other new girl who had killed a family of four after falling asleep at the wheel.

     Some of the other kids had been abused by family members, one had witnessed a woman committing suicide by jumping off a building. Another had a father who was killed in a botched liquor store robbery. Jamie had her alcoholic father who beat her and her mother. She finally left him and he found them at the motel they were staying at, strangled her mother, and shot himself while Jamie hid in the closet. They were all tragic stories, terrible stories, but to Laurie, they all felt minor league compared to her story.

     When she finally told it, the entire group was dead silent, slack-jawed, disbelieving as she described not only being that Laurie Strode from the evening news, survivor of the Haddonfield Halloween murders which claimed the lives of 16 others, she was also the sister of the killer, sister of his first victim. Oh, and don’t forget, her parents, her real parents, were killed in a car wreck and she was given up for adoption, the only parents she’d ever known turning out to not be her parents at all. Oh, and to add icing to the cake, she found out most of this on television.

     She didn’t like group, but she went, even went to all the social events, the arts and crafts, the singing of Christmas carols while Nancy played piano. She started off her first day eating alone, but now she ate with Jaime every day. The two of them had become friends of a sort. They ate together, they occasionally went on walks or played ping pong together in the rec room. They talked about school and boys and things like that. Laurie liked her. She was spunky like Annie with Lynda’s sex appeal. Again, everything Laurie herself was not. But that wasn’t quite true, either, for she was smart like Laurie, and while she could be spunky and sassy when pressed, she seemed to prefer being quiet, like Laurie. Out there in the real world, they could have been good friends.

     And they were both survivors.

     Laurie was walking through the woods that surrounded Hackberry. She wore a long coat, a pink knit cap, and even though she had on gloves, her hands were stuffed deep into her pockets. Her breath steamed out in front of her like a locomotive. Realizing she was lost, she thought to Dante, which they had read in English class earlier in the year, before Halloween. She recited the first line out loud: “Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward path had been lost.”   

     The woods did indeed get darker and colder, and she wondered where her Virgil would be, for she knew he was here, somewhere. She could hear his breathing through his mask.

     Suddenly there he was, his dark jumpsuit contrasting the snow and his mask practically blending with it.

     “Michael, no!” she shouted, bursting into a run. Michael followed behind her, steady and slow. No matter how fast she ran, he was still behind her, breathing heavily.

     She fell into the snow and scrambled to get herself up but found that the snow held her like quicksand. She thrashed her arms and legs, screaming for help, only succeeding in kicking up so much ice it looked as if it was snowing.

     Michael loomed over her, holding his knife above his head. He reached down, took her by the hair, and struck.

     She awoke in her room at Hackberry, her blankets cast aside, her body covered in sweat.

     “These nightmares, what do you think they mean?”

     She was in Dr. Barker’s office for their private one-on-one. She’d told him about the nightmares during their first appointment and he’d just nodded his head without comment. Today he wanted to know what they meant, which Laurie thought was stupid. What the hell did he think they meant?
    “I don’t know how to answer that,” she said, “Michael is chasing me. He tried to kill me. He’s still alive. I’m afraid he’ll come back.”

     “That’s part of it, sure. But the quote from Dante is interesting to me. Tell me: what is The Inferno about?”

     “Dr. Barker …”

     “Humor me. Please.”
    “It’s a trip through hell.”

     “Yes. And you said in your dream you knew Michael was your Virgil, your guide, yes?”

     “Yeah.”

     “And what is at the end of it all? Dante’s journey, I mean.”

     “If you think there’s some sort of paradise at the end of all this, I think I’ll be leaving today.”
    “No, not literal paradise, of course not. Just as you are not going through a literal hell. But, you have been through hell, Laurie, as close to a literal one as most people ever get. Almost killed, your friends murdered. And to top it all off, life isn’t what you thought it was. You find out your parents aren’t your real parents and you have an older brother, the same man that tried to kill you.

     “You are in hell, Laurie, navigating it, trying to find your way out. And you’ll stay in it if you don’t find a way to cope with these things. Face them. They won’t go away, they’ll never go away, but you have to find a way to live with them if you want a productive life. That’s a hard truth, but it is the truth.”

     Group, the next day.

     One of the girls, Tina, is weeping as she tells her story again, the one about killing the family in a car. Horrible, sure, but if Laurie could trade places with her, she would. She was driving a big metal box and hit another big metal box and killed some people. Tragic, of course. But she didn’t know the people who died, didn’t even have to see their bodies. It was an accident. Laurie had stared into the cold, evil eyes of her brother, sat huddled in a closet while he tore the door apart trying to get at her, found her best friend’s body with her sister’s tombstone placed above her head. Plugged her ears while a stranger she’d never seen before shot him six times. And that was just the first part of the night.

     “It’s just too much,” Tina said, crying hysterically.

     “What is, Tina?” Dr. Barker asked.

     “Like, life! It’s all so fragile and fucked up and wrong. A whole family driving in their car can just be killed in one second flat. It’s an accident, they tell you, something that just happened. Then you go home and watch the news and there’s like, wars and bad things happening all over the world! There’s all those people, that cult that died in Jonestown. People are dying in car accidents and of heart attacks all the time. What’s the point?”

     Laurie looked over the faces of the other members. Some of them were rolling their eyes, some were cleaning their fingernails, a couple shed tears with her. One of them, Bonnie, started to sob, too. Jamie looked pissed. Laurie actually started to feel a little bad for Tina. Her reaction, the way she was talking, she sounded like Lynda.

     “The point is to survive,” Jamie suddenly said. She leaned forward in her metal folding chair, apparently having heard enough. “You go on. You fight. You get up every day and say Fuck You back to the world. Bad shit happens, yeah. Did you ever go to history class? Bad shit isn’t new. It’s been happening since people started painting in caves. Ever see 2001? The monkey? First time he picks up a bone he decides to kill with it. People are fucked up. It’s in our nature.

     “Bad shit happens everywhere,” she continued, on a roll, obviously letting out something she’d been holding in for a while. “There was that psycho who killed those kids in Texas. Hacked them up and only one girl got away. All her friends, dead. There was that child killer in Ohio. How many little kids did he kill until the parents finally found him? Huh?”   

     Tina didn’t answer, she just continued to cry.

     “Jamie,” Dr. Barker said carefully, “No cross talk, remember?”

     “I know that,” she snapped, “but I get sick of it. Everyone here has gone through some bad stuff. Every one of us. You have to make a choice,” she continued, “Get off your ass, get out the door, and move on, or go upstairs, take a bottle of pills chased by some Jack Daniel’s. That’s it. That’s it, I’m done.”

     Huffing, she sat back in her chair, her foot tapping furiously on the tiled floor. She reached in her pocket and lit up a cigarette.

     “While the way Jamie articulated herself was less than ideal,” Dr. Barker said, “she’s right. There’s no question you’ve all been through hell,” Here he looked at Laurie, “but you have to find a way to move on. Work with your experiences. Not wash them away. You’re all young. You have your lives ahead of you. You can let your experiences define you or help refine you.”
    Laurie looked admiringly over at Jamie, who winked at her slyly.

     Later that night, Laurie found Jamie reading a book in one of the sitting areas, Mac lying at her feet gnawing on a bone.

     “What’re you doing?” she asked.

     Jamie shrugged. “Mac and me here are enjoying some quality time together.”

     “Can I sit?”

     “Of course.”
    Laurie sat in the chair next to Jamie and looked over the sitting room. They were alone save for the big dog, which was looking at her with expectant, sad eyes.

     “How do you do it?” Laurie asked.

     “Do what?”

     “Move on. Cope. Like you were saying in group today.”

     Jamie sighed, dog-eared the page she was on in her book and shut it. “Not well, obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

     “That’s not true. You are so together.”

     “I look like I’m together. Inside I’m a mess. Barely can see straight some days. Don’t know if I’m coming or going. But, the sun decides to get up every morning and so do I.

     “I listened to my mom be choked to death in the other room and heard my father’s body hit the floor right outside the door to the closet I was hiding in after he put a bullet in his brain. For some reason or the other, that is the noise that sticks with me the most. The finality of it. But it wasn’t final. I’m still here.

     “I had a shitty childhood that ended in a nightmare. But I am still here. I still draw breath. I can read books, listen to music, get a job, go on a date. I can do the things my mom can’t anymore. So I choose to do them. Not because I always want to, most days I feel like giving up, but because I can.”

     “You’re so tough,” Laurie said wistfully, “I wish I was as tough as you.”

     Jamie laughed.

     “You? Not tough? Are you shitting me right now? You’re Laurie Fucking Strode! You fought off an escaped mental patient who killed 16 people. You stabbed him, shot him, burned him up. If you’re not tough, I don’t know what tough is.”

     Jamie sighed heavily and stood up.

     “I think I’m going to my room now,” she said. “I’m tired. You remember what I said, kiddo, okay?”

     “Yeah, I will.”

     One morning, Laurie woke up and Jamie was gone.     

     She looked for her at breakfast like she always did but she never showed and Laurie ate by herself. After she finished eating, she looked for her in the sitting rooms, the rec room and she wasn’t there either. She went to Jamie’s room and found the bed empty and stripped of bedding. The cleaning lady told her she’d gone home.

     She left Hackberry the day before without saying goodbye, without even hinting that she might be leaving soon. Laurie had no idea why she left. She wasn’t “cured,” for the message of this place, Laurie had come to realize, was that none of them would ever be “cured” or “well” in any real sense. Maybe whoever had been paying for it couldn’t afford it anymore, maybe Jamie, who was impatient and irritable (another quality she shared with Annie), had got tired of everybody, even Dr. Barker, who could be intrusive and nagging.  

     Laurie sat in her room most of that day crying. Jamie was the only friend she’d had since Halloween, someone to talk to, not only about girly stuff but also the things that had happened to them. While there was nothing normal about their respective situations she made her feel normal, if at least a little.

     Nancy brought her an envelope later that day with Laurie’s name written on the front in Jamie’s handwriting. Inside was a handwritten note:

          Laurie,

               Sorry to sneak out like this. I just couldn’t do it anymore. All the whining, the talking, the BS. We’ve all got scars. They’ll never get any better if we just rip the scabs off everyday. And like doc says, they probably will never be better anyway, so what’s the point? I’ll go home and figure it out. Do crossword puzzles, finally learn to sew, maybe find religion (ha! Fat chance of that). Maybe I’ll just take those pills and JD like I said the other day. Just kidding.

               You’re a tough one, and you’re smart. Don’t let Halloween define you. There can be a whole other life out there for you, if you want it.

               Again, sorry to bail. I don’t like goodbyes. Name a kid after me or something. Maybe a dog. I like Cocker Spaniels.

               Remember, life’s a bitch. Be a bitch back to it.

               Jamie

     Laurie read the note three times, crying like a baby each time. After the fourth time, she got herself under control, wiped the tears and snot from her face, and tossed Jamie’s letter into the fireplace in the sitting room where they first met. She thought Jamie would approve.

     Michael came to her two nights later.

     This wasn’t a nightmare, she knew that right away, he was really there, in her room at Hackberry standing back in the darkness, mostly hidden, a single beam of moonlight shining in his black, cold eyes. She could tell he wasn’t wearing his mask.

     Laurie sat up and scooted against the wall in her bed. For just a second she was frozen in terror, but it was a second only, for once the surprise of seeing him in here had passed she started thinking of weapons, of fighting, escape. She didn’t call for help, for she knew he’d kill Nancy or Dr. Barker or anyone that came to her aid. Looking around her room she knew she didn’t have many weapons. In her closet her clothes hung on wire hangers, she’d twisted one into a weapon and poked him before, but the closet was behind him. On the nightstand next to her bed she had a family portrait of her and her parents. She could shatter that and use a piece of glass as a weapon.

     “Michael,” she said, “how did you get here?”

     He didn’t answer, he didn’t even move, he just stared at her with his black, deadly eyes. The Devil’s Eyes, Dr. Loomis had called them. Eyes that were blank and cold yet burning with evil at the same time.

     “Michael,” she said, “you are in the hospital. You’re burned and shot and poked. You’re hundreds of miles away. How did you get here?”

     He didn’t move, didn’t even blink, and Laurie suddenly realized that he couldn’t move, that he could be here, that he could somehow send his essence due to whatever connection there was between them, but he was not really here, not physically. Laurie saw him, the real him.

     For just a moment she was no longer in her ward at Hackberry but in a dark hospital, near a bed surrounded by machines. The large form of a man was in that bed, his face wrapped like a mummy, his breathing slow and labored. She was here with Michael just as he was there in her room.

     In one of their previous conversations, Dr. Loomis had described something like this to her. Loopy with drugs, he was going on one of his rants about how evil Michael was, how he sat there with him for years watching him stare at a wall, knowing if he ever got out of Smith’s Grove, he’d unleash hell on earth.

     “Dr. Loomis,” Laurie had asked him, “How did you know he was so evil if he never moved or talked?”
    Dr. Loomis paused, cleared his throat, and when he spoke again, he sounded less loopy and more clear.

     “He came to me one night. Was standing there at my bed, staring at me. I knew he wasn’t really there, knew he was still in Smith’s Grove, but yet he was there. Looking at me with those eyes of his. I knew then there was something wrong about him.

     “You see, I’m a doctor. I’ve treated psychopaths before. Murders, rapists, and the like. This was different. Michael was different. I knew then there was something evil about him, paranormal, for lack of a better word. As a doctor, those were two things I never believed in before: evil. The paranormal. But I knew I was looking at it then. I tried to tell the hospital, but they wouldn’t listen to me.”
    “What did he do?” Laurie asked him.

     “He eventually just left. I knew then something was coming. I knew I had to fight, probably the rest of my life, to keep him in the hospital.”

     And now here Michael was with her in Hackberry.

     Back in her bed, Laurie relaxed a little. She knew he couldn’t hurt her here.

     “Why, Michael?” she asked. “Why did you kill Judith? Why do you want to kill me?”

     Michael didn’t answer, she’d never heard him speak, even the time her mother took her to meet him at Smith’s Grove, even the fragmented memories she had of living with him back in the Myer’s house, she couldn’t recall ever hearing his voice. Instead, he just stood there breathing, tilting his head from side to side.

     “You can’t hurt me anymore, Michael,” she said. “I’m safe from you.” She said this to make herself feel better but realized she believed it, that she was right. He couldn’t hurt her anymore, and he wouldn’t. Somehow, she knew this. Michael, seeming to understand this, wrenched his fists in rage.

     “You can’t hurt me or anyone else. You’ve lost, Michael. Do you understand that? You’ve lost. You go away now. You go away now and never come back.”

     Michael stood there, unmoving except for the rising and falling of his chest and furious wrenching of his fists. Laurie didn’t want to but realized she needed to look away from him. She had wondered earlier about weapons and that was the weapon she had against him, the most important weapon anyone had against evil, the ability to turn away and not look at it, not fear it.

     She looked out the window of her room and watched the snow fall. She didn’t know how long she sat like that, but when she finally looked back into the darkness, Michael was gone.

     No, that wasn’t quite correct, he was still there, the essence of him was there and always would be there. She knew he’d still appear in her nightmares and she knew she’d still see him behind bushes and hedges and in the dark, cold hallways of hospitals and schools but those were just phantoms. That was what the Boogeyman was, after all, that dark, cold presence that followed us around but really couldn’t hurt us. A shadow, a reminder that there was evil in the world. But he couldn’t hurt her anymore.

     She lay back down and when she fell asleep, if she dreamt at all, she couldn’t remember them.

     It was Christmas day and even here at Hackberry, an environment pregnant with fear, anxiety, and trauma, the air was light with frivolity.

     They exchanged gifts that morning in one of the sitting areas, giving each other homemade crafts they’d made throughout the last two weeks. Laurie received a gift from Jamie, left behind with Dr. Barker, insisting Laurie be the one that get it. It was a little knitted doll, a white face, brown hair, blue overalls, black buttons for eyes. For a moment, Laurie was horrified, nearly dropping it on the floor, when she found a small note written by Jamie in the bag.

     Take the son of a bitch and throw him in the nearest fireplace. Watch him burn, all the way this time, and never look back. That’s the best gift I can give you and the best one you can give yourself.

               J.

     So that was what Laurie did. She didn’t even care if anyone saw her. She took the little effigy of Michael Myers by one of his limp little arms and tossed him in the fireplace. She stood there, a wry little smile on her face, watching the fire consume the little doll until its remains were indistinguishable from the rest of the wood and ash.

     Laurie wasn’t stupid. She knew this was a symbolic gesture, but damn, it felt good. In fact, in that moment, she felt better than she had in weeks.

     It was Christmas, and here, in this moment, all was calm. All was bright. Her parents would be here shortly and they’d join her for dinner. They were making a Christmas feast in the cafeteria that night and while it would be nothing compared to the food her mother normally cooked them, it would be all right. They probably had gifts for her and she found herself hoping they did, feeling almost like a little girl again.

     It was Christmas and, in a few days, it would be 1979, a year later it would be 1980, a new decade, 20 years away from a new century. She hoped eventually that everyone would forget about Michael Myers and Halloween, 1978.

     She hoped.