HALLOWEEN: ENDGAME
By
Reg Stacey
Disclaimer and Argument: Okay, kiddies, this is the part where I say that I don't own it, and I'm not making any money off of it; I just wrote it. With that said, I must confess that the story that follows is a bit of an oddity. The reason being, it follows the situations and events cumulating to the end of the rarely found and much sought after Original Producer's Cut to Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers. The original version of this film is rich with answers concerning many of the dangling plot lines and questions posed in the series. It also had the blessing of Donald Pleasence, whom believed the film had a strong story, with a great ending which he described as having "everything hanging in the balance of Loomis' hands".
Unfortunately, the powers that be, uncomfortable with the idea of breaking new ground for fear of abandoning the status quo, fired the original producer. They also re-shot half of the film, (including some re- shot footage around the parts with Donald Pleasence) making the film more confusing than enlightening, and left many a viewer dumfounded trying to sort out what the heck the abrupt ending (or non-ending, as I think of it) meant. Donald Pleasence probably rolled in his grave.
It would seem, that good old Donald Pleasence just can't get any respect, as the following film, H20, deliberately chose to ignore his efforts with Halloween 4-6. Furthermore, rather than simply sampling his infamous "blackest eyes" lines from the original classic, they used a sound- alike to recite them during the films opening credits. The final insult was the fact that they couldn't even be bothered to spell his name right with their "dedication" at the end of the film's credits. Check it out for yourselves, if you don't believe me.
That being said, I'm not implying that H20 was a terrible film by any stretch of the imagination, largely due to the excellent performance of Jamie Lee Curtis. However, the film is more of a Scream film than a Halloween film - Kevin Williamson's part in it aside, the soundtrack for H20 is literally lifted from Scream…again, check it out for yourself. Finally, H20 does itself a disservice by not linking itself to Halloween 4- 6, as the film begins with Michael Myers simply "at large", giving no explanation as to where he's been for 15 years, how he survived the fire at the end of Halloween II, or why he's dressed in the same outfit that was burned off of him during that fire. All of which is expected to be ignored by the fans, which, I must say is a little bit insulting. Do they think we've got rocks for brains? And where was the water? But I digress…after all, this story has nothing to do with H2O.
In summary, this story is for those of you who not only liked Halloween 4-6, but are interested in some closure for those movies we've devoted so much of our time watching and liking. Oh, and I'd like to dedicate this story to the memory of Donald Pleasence. That's with an "ence", people. Finally, this is a work in progress, merely the first chapter in a much longer narrative. For those of you who have not seen the Original Producer's Cut, I have integrated most of the significant events into this opening chapter, and will draw reference to the rest as we go along. Please submit any reviews, (either in this forum or at my personal e-mail at [email protected]) positive or negative. I would really like to get people's reactions, good or bad, and chew the fat with my fellow Halloween fans! Now, time for the story. Enjoy. I'm done blabbering, I swear!
HALLOWEEN: ENDGAME
-1-
THE DREAM
Midnight. The witching hour. The clock tolls. The pendulum swings, and in the sleep of one, the knife plunges.
She enters the car, singing absently, when he is upon her. Together, their breath combined fog up the windows as he strangles the life from her…
The pendulum swings. The knife plunges.
A policeman. Too stupid to live. He is fat and slow and he is in his way. The scalpel slides effortlessly across his throat…
The pendulum swings.
The knife plunges.
A young man spits into his face, in one last dying act of defiance. His neck crunches effortlessly in his hands, like dried timber.
The pendulum swings.
The knife plunges.
Lovers entangled. Mesmerized in the act. He brings the pitchfork down. Sighs of pleasure turn to screams of terror, and again
…the pendulum swings.
The knife plunges.
He awakens, this man, with little more than a gasp. His eyes open. Mechanically, he sits upright. Looking at him, one could never venture to guess that this is a man awakening from a terrible dream. But this is no ordinary man.
True, in his mind he wanted to scream, had he been any longer capable of such an act. But suffering in silence was a forced trait, learned long ago when as a boy, his will was taken by the curse of Thorn.
He would try to scream each time his consciousness emerged from the silent stasis that the Evil held him in, and found he could not. A helpless spectator in the prison of his own body, he could do nothing but watch the knife continue to plunge, as one after one he took them, the raging force within him unrelenting, driven into action by one simple motivation: severing his bloodline. Killing his family. It would seem that the Evil within knew no boundaries in terms of cruelty, as it wasn't enough to merely turn him into a killer. Rather, it was set on consuming him completely, destroying everything he ever knew, and everyone he ever cared about.
So many dead by his hand, one could loose count. But he hadn't. How could he? After all, he had front row tickets to the greatest horror show on earth. Sixty-four people dead, by his own hand. Countless others as a result of his mayhem.
Not my fault, he thought, with a sigh. He was, after all, just as much of a victim as the others, as he was forced over and over again to helplessly watch as his body churned on as an unstoppable engine of destruction.
Not his fault.
Sometimes it was easier to turn away and sink into the oblivion of unconsciousness. Better to cease to exist, than bear witness, as he was forced to play the Devil's Henchman. The Reaper.
Not his fault.
Each time, as hard as he tried, he could not stay his own hand. Except twice, he almost had. Both times had been to the desperate pleas of his family. The first time had been when his sister called out to him at the hospital, stopping him dead in his murderous tracks. The uttering of his name had rekindled a familiarity long since buried – there was a dizzying moment of being thrust into full consciousness, a moment of recollection, only to have the Evil drive him back within, and carry on.
The second time was even stronger, when the cries of his niece had stayed his hand from her sacrifice. Childishly, upon her request, he removed his mask – in itself a symbol of the evil which enveloped him – and showed her his face. Her caress of his cheek was tender and loving, and for the first and last time, he cried. The Evil was not pleased. And it was very, very strong. When it took his will back, it responded with rage. The mask was back on, and the murders began again.
Not his fault.
So it went, year after year, blood bath after blood bath energizing the Evil, making its vessel, his body, bloated and strong off the blood of innocents, each murder feeding the thing within him making it more and more unstoppable until the boy changed everything.
The boy.
Only the boy, who had first encountered him back 18 years before, during his first assault on his sister, was now a man - Tommy Doyle.
Tommy Doyle. He felt a strange empathy for this man, for like him, as a child, he was scarred by the scourge of this Evil, and like him, it had made him a prisoner to it most of his adult life.
Recluse and isolated, Tommy became obsessed with him, determined to find out what made him tick in order to stop it, and he had DONE it, barely seconds before he strangled the life from him. Somehow, he had figured it out, after years of obsessive research. The runes. The ritual. How to cancel the evil.
He remembers it well. He had them on the run, after Tommy had just saved Danny, Kara and the baby from Wynn's twisted sacrificial ritual. He remembers it clearly, despite the fact that the Evil was more strong and unstoppable than ever – it had reached a new peak, and it would not be stopped or denied.
They ran through the endless corridors. They were lost, and they were getting tired. He knew the halls well. His pace was constant, and his breathing steady. He would catch them. It was only a matter of time before he had them cornered. Then the moment came. The Evil took sweet pleasure in the dumbfounded look on their faces, as just outside the exit, they were denied by the barrier of the emergency security gate. With them less than five feet from freedom, he closed in on them, their expressions like deer caught in the headlights, while the corridor lights strobed in a mad epileptic dance.
Then, in a strange twist of fate, the Doctor appeared. So strange that he always managed to pop up as he had and foil his attempts right at the moment of the Evil's most insatiable state of bloodlust, stopping the sacrifices that it craved the most. He was a prickly thorn, a dormant cyst that always seemed to abscess at the worst possible times. But this time, the Doctor himself was on his last legs. The weight of age and burden had him faltering.
Doctor Loomis pulled out his gun, called to them, and shot the lock off of the emergency gate. Kara and the children spilled out and into his arms, and they disappeared down the exit elevator. No matter. Tedious clean-up for later. It would not save the boy. Whether he was immobilized with fear, or shock, he had failed to flee, and his inaction would be his death. It would be all too easy to snap his puny little neck.
He continued to close in. But the boy was doing something strange. What was it? He had dropped to his knees, and like a child rolling marbles out of a bag, he had scattered something on to the floor. Rocks? No matter. In ten seconds he would be dead.
The boy's behavior continued to grow stranger. In a bizarre masochistic turn, he drew a knife and sliced it against his palm. If blood was what the boy wanted, he was happy to oblige. Five seconds.
The boy, apparently delirious, was smearing his hand onto the floor when he was finally upon him. The boy tried to stand when his hand closed around his throat. He watched as Tommy Doyle's face constricted in a desperate grasp for air, his eyes bulging, the veins in his forehead protruding, his colour fading, when at the last possible second, Tommy had managed to utter one word…
Samhain.
Suddenly, the dark cloud, which had lied overcast on his soul for so many long years, had lifted. It left with a rustle, and his body went limp.
His death grip released, and Tommy dropped to his knees, dumfounded, his lungs rejoicing in a tremendous intake of air.
For a moment, all the two could do was stare blankly at each other in mutual disbelief. Then, with his brain finally receiving oxygen again, Tommy's wits returned to him, and he had fled. The boy was gone, leaving him standing alone in stunned uncertainty, as his mind tried to struggle past the shock to determine if what his senses were telling him was true.
The Evil was gone. Gone. For the first time since he was six years old, Michael Myers was in the driver's seat again.
There he stood alone in the hallway, for how long, he had no idea. He was hesitant to even move, for fear that this was nothing more than the Evil's sick way of taunting him. Then Wynn had found him, and his indecisiveness in action was solved in a fury of rage.
It was rather ironic that his first act of his own free will in 33 years would be one of murder, but he just couldn't help himself.
Wynn. The one who came to him in the middle of the night and told him to kill.
Wynn. The one who had inflicted this damn curse on him trapping him in his own personal hell for oh so many years. Wynn. The one who, upon his command, Michael was forced to bloody his hands with the lives of innocents. Wynn. The one ultimately responsible for the terror he inflicted on his family, and the little town of Haddonfield.
Wynn had found him still standing in the spot that Tommy had left him, inanimate, like a comatose zombie. Immediately, Wynn went to him, consoling him like some surrogate father, wanting to know what they had done to him. Between his slithery hands on him in embrace and that fake condescending voice of compassion and concern, it was more than Michael could take.
Michael's iron grip closed around Wynn's throat, and lifted him off the floor. With his other hand, Michael felt for the back of Wynn's spine, and with one quick whiplash gesture, he bent Wynn completely backwards.
Wynn screamed in excruciating pain, as his spine snapped, each vertebra popping in rapid succession. Contemptuously, Michael dropped him to the floor like a drooping bag of trash. He stood above him, watching Wynn grimace and moan until finally he slipped into the depths of unconsciousness. It wasn't enough. After 33 years, it wasn't enough. Wynn's suffering had been too quick. He needed something more, one more final act of vengeance.
He reached up towards his mask, and removed it, along with his overalls, shedding the skin of his mockery, his damnation, and exchanged them with Wynn's clothes. Let Wynn die wearing the guise of his own shame; may he burn in Hell.
Draped in Wynn's trench coat and hat, Michael made his way through the corridors down to the east exit. Above all else, he felt the overwhelming urge to run. To get out, away from Haddonfield, to clear his mind and come to terms with what had happened. With the others gone, it wouldn't take long for the police to come, and he had to make this place a memory if he was bent on maintaining his freedom.
As he reached the end of the hallway, he stopped dead in his tracks at the sound of an agonizing scream from behind him. But not just any scream. It was a voice that he recognized instantly.
Loomis.
Poor old Doctor Loomis. Ultimately consumed by the Evil he had sworn to destroy.
At the sounds of his cries, Michael had to resist the urge to turn back and save him. Help him. He did, after all, owe him that much. Although the Doctor could never have
known, his kind words were gentle and soothing for the first 7 years in the institution. With his parents abandoning him for his crime, Loomis had become the closest thing to a father he had ever known. So many times he wanted to reach out to Loomis – to connect, but the Evil would never allow him to swim to the surface, smothering him as its black eyes stared back out at Loomis, defiantly concealing the trapped little boy behind them.
Yes, he wanted to go back for him. But if he saved Loomis, then what? It wasn't like he would just let Michael waltz out of there after everything that had happened over the years, and things were liable to get ugly. Then, the screaming stopped. He was probably dead anyway, and once again Michael had to remind himself that the police were on their way by now. He had no further desire to kill anyone else.
So he had fled.
He stole Wynn's car from the lot – convenient, considering he was wearing Wynn's clothes, thus possessing Wynn's keys - and drove until the gas ran out. From there on, he lengthened the distance from Haddonfield through the means of continuous hitchhiking. This proved to be a rather difficult chore considering his burn-scorched face, and the fact that he had been draped in a hat and black trench coat. The persistence of human dignity won the day, however, and several brave souls stopped and helped him along his way, despite the fact that they were creeped out by him. Most of his successful rides were with pick-up or truck drivers, who usually made him ride in the back.
If they only knew, he thought. Drivers will pick up anyone these days.
Sneaking past the Canadian border was an exercise in child's play for him, as his life had been a career in eluding authorities. Once he reached the province of Ontario, he settled in a small town where he used Wynn's cash (with a little help from his own imposing countenance) to connect him with the wrong people, whom connected him with the right people, and before long, he was a bona fide born and raised Canadian citizen: Harold J. Callahan, social insurance # 455 457 876, thank you very much. His ingenuity and his resourcefulness allowed him to obtain housing and employment, and here he had stayed ever since, and tried to make Haddonfield a memory. Easier said than done.
All those people dead.
Not his fault.
But to the families and friends of the victims, it was.
To the authorities, who would hunt him down, it was.
To the townspeople who would have his head on a spit, it was.
And as hard as he tried to deny it to himself, in his own heart, it was.
As well, there was something else. The nightmares were only a part of it. Somehow he knew, he felt that things weren't over in Haddonfield. True, he had killed Wynn, and Wynn had been the only one with any real power – the source of the supernatural evil that held the town in siege – but was the Evil dead with him? It was Wynn who had come to his room those many summer nights and told him to kill, worming the curse into him, but the more Michael reached into his memory, the more he was sure that even though Wynn had uttered those words, it wasn't Wynn's voice that said them. The voice was something other – something alien – something that wasn't even human.
What the hell WAS Wynn? Was he even human? Was there something controlling him, just as something had once controlled Michael? Did it die with him?
The scream. Loomis' scream. What had caused it?
Too many unanswered questions. Too much uncertainty to let it lie, and in the dark of the night, he had finally admitted what he had been lying to himself about all of these years. He was responsible. He had to go back. Just to be sure.
Besides, someone had to rid the town of that fucking cult.
With the constellation of Thorn about to grace the heavens for the first time in 10 years, something was about to stir, and undoubtedly, the cult would be up to something. They may even try to get to his son again.
His son. The inbred offspring of himself and his niece. Once again, Michael was reminded of the cruelty of the curse, and how inch by inch, year by year, it had found new and creative ways to utterly destroy him. Even the act of love was not exempt from its corruption, as the Evil wielded by Wynn forced him to take his own niece during some obscene ritual. His poor niece, Jamie. Barely sixteen years old, a prisoner of the cult for six long years, she had never stood a chance. Why must so many be made to suffer so young? In an act of ritualistic rape they had destroyed her maidenhood, her innocence, in a rite of blood and tears.
Michael's blood boiled at the thought of this. Another all-time low for those vermin, another indecency to add to the list of his reckoning. There was no doubt in his mind, now. He would go back, and he would destroy them. They would ante up with blood for the job they had done on him.
Yet, there was something else. He wiped a cool bead of sweat off of his head, and realized he was experiencing a sensation that he hadn't felt for a very long time.
Fear.
Fear for himself? Hardly. Michael's life had been little more than a series of endless dark corridors, forever leading to pain and doom, and many a time he welcomed the idea of tranquillity in death.
No, the fear was for the others. It was for the little town of Haddonfield. It was also for his son, and those who had cared for him, Tommy, Kara and Danny. The fact was, Michael wasn't sure if he could trust himself, for although he had lived the last 10 years under his own free will, there was reason to suspect that the Evil may still lie dormant within him. Part of him couldn't shake the idea that he was playing into its hands; that the Evil was once again luring him back to Haddonfield to force him to work its evil deeds anew.
The symptoms were, undeniably, cause for great concern. For one thing, he still had the strength. He was inhumanly strong, far too strong for any average man, let alone one pushing towards the ripe old age of fifty.
Stranger still, was his body's unnatural resilience to heal and regenerate. After gaining status as a Canadian citizen, Michael obtained employment at a packaging company in a city neighbouring the small town where he made his home. His social skills were about as good as his appearance, and he was surprised that he had even got the job. The irony was that the hiring steward was an American immigrant, whom to his surprise responded with empathy to the bogus story he told her about being in Viet Nam in order to explain the ruins of his scarred face. As it had turned out, she had lost a husband in that same war, and was more than eager to do anything she could to help him out, which, of course, included hiring him.
Michael remembered his last day on the job, though he had no idea it would be such when he went into work that evening. He preferred the midnight shift – it meant fewer people, thus fewer questions. He was to work that night with André, assisting him in fixing an operating alarm sensor on one of the production line's cutter heads. The idea of working with André always irritated him, for André was a drunk, and almost always came to work intoxicated.
That night, André made two fatal errors. The first was a result of his indifference to the rules of upper management, as like usual, he didn't lock the power off as was policy before beginning work on a major piece of machinery. The second was backing into the power switch in his drunken stupor, the moment Michael had reached within the cutter head's cradle to clear the loose product debris from it.
The cutter head began to dance madly, as it came down, severing Michael's hand, tearing bone and tendons. It continued to piston and spin, the blood splattering one of Michael's co-workers in the face, sending her running in a screaming fit, in search of help. The pain was excruciating, yet during the entire incident, Michael hadn't let out one sound.
Immediately, André killed the power, and ran over to help him. The stench of his breath as he stood over Michael was putrid and foul. Michael veered up, and with his one free hand, locked a grip around André's neck, threatening to break his jugular. The old killing impulse seeped its way back into Michael's mind, a learned trait that curse or no curse, he had apparently not forgotten.
Then his mind cleared. He released André, and collapsed onto the floor.
The result had been a rather substantial permanent compensation claim. André appeared to be sincerely apologetic, although it did not save his job.
During the months that followed, Michael had just resolved himself to the idea of going through life single handed, when something very odd began to happen. At first, he entertained the possibility that he may have developed a tumor on the stump where his hand had been, but after 2 months, he was completely sure. His hand was growing back. After 4 months, it had completely taken shape, about the size of a baby's hand, and he was able to wiggle his fingers, in morbid fascination. After a year, it was fully- grown and restored. He never bothered to contact the compensation board.
In the midst of his reminiscing, Michael found himself pondering the question of what it would actually take to kill him. Well, one thing was for sure – he was relatively sure that chopping his head off would do the trick. How many rounds of ammunition had they fired into him back at that old well in 1988? And not a single head shot. They had actually managed to miss his heart as well, as impossible as that may seem. One would almost think that they were trying to take him alive. He had barely escaped that incident as it was, and it took his body a full year to recuperate from the wounds they inflicted.
Despite his healing abilities, his body was still human. He breathed. He bled. He ate. It would appear that the abilities as well, were limited; it took time, and the worse the injury, the longer it took. It had taken seven of the ten years he lied in a coma from 1978 to 1988 for his eyes to grow back, a little known fact that Wynn had manage to conceal from Loomis and the rest of the staff . As well, his regenerative powers strangely did not respond well to fire.
He still had the burns. So strange it was to look at his hands, one old and scarred by fire, the other new and flawless. It was all too bizarre to fathom.
So there it was, the justifications for his fear. He still had the strength. He still had the healing factor. However, the most unsettling of all, was the fact that he had almost killed André. Although the reaction under the circumstances was justified, it didn't change the fact that Michael felt that old all-too-familiar feeling of the bloodlust. This, more than anything, cemented his worries of the possibility of the curse still being present. He just wasn't sure if he could trust himself.
That was just a chance that he would have to take. He was responsible, and he HAD to go back. Besides, he would kill himself first, before he let the Evil take hold of him again.
Thus in the dead of the night, Michael Myers resolved himself to the fact that once again, he was coming home.
But there was somewhere else he had to go first.
By
Reg Stacey
Disclaimer and Argument: Okay, kiddies, this is the part where I say that I don't own it, and I'm not making any money off of it; I just wrote it. With that said, I must confess that the story that follows is a bit of an oddity. The reason being, it follows the situations and events cumulating to the end of the rarely found and much sought after Original Producer's Cut to Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers. The original version of this film is rich with answers concerning many of the dangling plot lines and questions posed in the series. It also had the blessing of Donald Pleasence, whom believed the film had a strong story, with a great ending which he described as having "everything hanging in the balance of Loomis' hands".
Unfortunately, the powers that be, uncomfortable with the idea of breaking new ground for fear of abandoning the status quo, fired the original producer. They also re-shot half of the film, (including some re- shot footage around the parts with Donald Pleasence) making the film more confusing than enlightening, and left many a viewer dumfounded trying to sort out what the heck the abrupt ending (or non-ending, as I think of it) meant. Donald Pleasence probably rolled in his grave.
It would seem, that good old Donald Pleasence just can't get any respect, as the following film, H20, deliberately chose to ignore his efforts with Halloween 4-6. Furthermore, rather than simply sampling his infamous "blackest eyes" lines from the original classic, they used a sound- alike to recite them during the films opening credits. The final insult was the fact that they couldn't even be bothered to spell his name right with their "dedication" at the end of the film's credits. Check it out for yourselves, if you don't believe me.
That being said, I'm not implying that H20 was a terrible film by any stretch of the imagination, largely due to the excellent performance of Jamie Lee Curtis. However, the film is more of a Scream film than a Halloween film - Kevin Williamson's part in it aside, the soundtrack for H20 is literally lifted from Scream…again, check it out for yourself. Finally, H20 does itself a disservice by not linking itself to Halloween 4- 6, as the film begins with Michael Myers simply "at large", giving no explanation as to where he's been for 15 years, how he survived the fire at the end of Halloween II, or why he's dressed in the same outfit that was burned off of him during that fire. All of which is expected to be ignored by the fans, which, I must say is a little bit insulting. Do they think we've got rocks for brains? And where was the water? But I digress…after all, this story has nothing to do with H2O.
In summary, this story is for those of you who not only liked Halloween 4-6, but are interested in some closure for those movies we've devoted so much of our time watching and liking. Oh, and I'd like to dedicate this story to the memory of Donald Pleasence. That's with an "ence", people. Finally, this is a work in progress, merely the first chapter in a much longer narrative. For those of you who have not seen the Original Producer's Cut, I have integrated most of the significant events into this opening chapter, and will draw reference to the rest as we go along. Please submit any reviews, (either in this forum or at my personal e-mail at [email protected]) positive or negative. I would really like to get people's reactions, good or bad, and chew the fat with my fellow Halloween fans! Now, time for the story. Enjoy. I'm done blabbering, I swear!
HALLOWEEN: ENDGAME
-1-
THE DREAM
Midnight. The witching hour. The clock tolls. The pendulum swings, and in the sleep of one, the knife plunges.
She enters the car, singing absently, when he is upon her. Together, their breath combined fog up the windows as he strangles the life from her…
The pendulum swings. The knife plunges.
A policeman. Too stupid to live. He is fat and slow and he is in his way. The scalpel slides effortlessly across his throat…
The pendulum swings.
The knife plunges.
A young man spits into his face, in one last dying act of defiance. His neck crunches effortlessly in his hands, like dried timber.
The pendulum swings.
The knife plunges.
Lovers entangled. Mesmerized in the act. He brings the pitchfork down. Sighs of pleasure turn to screams of terror, and again
…the pendulum swings.
The knife plunges.
He awakens, this man, with little more than a gasp. His eyes open. Mechanically, he sits upright. Looking at him, one could never venture to guess that this is a man awakening from a terrible dream. But this is no ordinary man.
True, in his mind he wanted to scream, had he been any longer capable of such an act. But suffering in silence was a forced trait, learned long ago when as a boy, his will was taken by the curse of Thorn.
He would try to scream each time his consciousness emerged from the silent stasis that the Evil held him in, and found he could not. A helpless spectator in the prison of his own body, he could do nothing but watch the knife continue to plunge, as one after one he took them, the raging force within him unrelenting, driven into action by one simple motivation: severing his bloodline. Killing his family. It would seem that the Evil within knew no boundaries in terms of cruelty, as it wasn't enough to merely turn him into a killer. Rather, it was set on consuming him completely, destroying everything he ever knew, and everyone he ever cared about.
So many dead by his hand, one could loose count. But he hadn't. How could he? After all, he had front row tickets to the greatest horror show on earth. Sixty-four people dead, by his own hand. Countless others as a result of his mayhem.
Not my fault, he thought, with a sigh. He was, after all, just as much of a victim as the others, as he was forced over and over again to helplessly watch as his body churned on as an unstoppable engine of destruction.
Not his fault.
Sometimes it was easier to turn away and sink into the oblivion of unconsciousness. Better to cease to exist, than bear witness, as he was forced to play the Devil's Henchman. The Reaper.
Not his fault.
Each time, as hard as he tried, he could not stay his own hand. Except twice, he almost had. Both times had been to the desperate pleas of his family. The first time had been when his sister called out to him at the hospital, stopping him dead in his murderous tracks. The uttering of his name had rekindled a familiarity long since buried – there was a dizzying moment of being thrust into full consciousness, a moment of recollection, only to have the Evil drive him back within, and carry on.
The second time was even stronger, when the cries of his niece had stayed his hand from her sacrifice. Childishly, upon her request, he removed his mask – in itself a symbol of the evil which enveloped him – and showed her his face. Her caress of his cheek was tender and loving, and for the first and last time, he cried. The Evil was not pleased. And it was very, very strong. When it took his will back, it responded with rage. The mask was back on, and the murders began again.
Not his fault.
So it went, year after year, blood bath after blood bath energizing the Evil, making its vessel, his body, bloated and strong off the blood of innocents, each murder feeding the thing within him making it more and more unstoppable until the boy changed everything.
The boy.
Only the boy, who had first encountered him back 18 years before, during his first assault on his sister, was now a man - Tommy Doyle.
Tommy Doyle. He felt a strange empathy for this man, for like him, as a child, he was scarred by the scourge of this Evil, and like him, it had made him a prisoner to it most of his adult life.
Recluse and isolated, Tommy became obsessed with him, determined to find out what made him tick in order to stop it, and he had DONE it, barely seconds before he strangled the life from him. Somehow, he had figured it out, after years of obsessive research. The runes. The ritual. How to cancel the evil.
He remembers it well. He had them on the run, after Tommy had just saved Danny, Kara and the baby from Wynn's twisted sacrificial ritual. He remembers it clearly, despite the fact that the Evil was more strong and unstoppable than ever – it had reached a new peak, and it would not be stopped or denied.
They ran through the endless corridors. They were lost, and they were getting tired. He knew the halls well. His pace was constant, and his breathing steady. He would catch them. It was only a matter of time before he had them cornered. Then the moment came. The Evil took sweet pleasure in the dumbfounded look on their faces, as just outside the exit, they were denied by the barrier of the emergency security gate. With them less than five feet from freedom, he closed in on them, their expressions like deer caught in the headlights, while the corridor lights strobed in a mad epileptic dance.
Then, in a strange twist of fate, the Doctor appeared. So strange that he always managed to pop up as he had and foil his attempts right at the moment of the Evil's most insatiable state of bloodlust, stopping the sacrifices that it craved the most. He was a prickly thorn, a dormant cyst that always seemed to abscess at the worst possible times. But this time, the Doctor himself was on his last legs. The weight of age and burden had him faltering.
Doctor Loomis pulled out his gun, called to them, and shot the lock off of the emergency gate. Kara and the children spilled out and into his arms, and they disappeared down the exit elevator. No matter. Tedious clean-up for later. It would not save the boy. Whether he was immobilized with fear, or shock, he had failed to flee, and his inaction would be his death. It would be all too easy to snap his puny little neck.
He continued to close in. But the boy was doing something strange. What was it? He had dropped to his knees, and like a child rolling marbles out of a bag, he had scattered something on to the floor. Rocks? No matter. In ten seconds he would be dead.
The boy's behavior continued to grow stranger. In a bizarre masochistic turn, he drew a knife and sliced it against his palm. If blood was what the boy wanted, he was happy to oblige. Five seconds.
The boy, apparently delirious, was smearing his hand onto the floor when he was finally upon him. The boy tried to stand when his hand closed around his throat. He watched as Tommy Doyle's face constricted in a desperate grasp for air, his eyes bulging, the veins in his forehead protruding, his colour fading, when at the last possible second, Tommy had managed to utter one word…
Samhain.
Suddenly, the dark cloud, which had lied overcast on his soul for so many long years, had lifted. It left with a rustle, and his body went limp.
His death grip released, and Tommy dropped to his knees, dumfounded, his lungs rejoicing in a tremendous intake of air.
For a moment, all the two could do was stare blankly at each other in mutual disbelief. Then, with his brain finally receiving oxygen again, Tommy's wits returned to him, and he had fled. The boy was gone, leaving him standing alone in stunned uncertainty, as his mind tried to struggle past the shock to determine if what his senses were telling him was true.
The Evil was gone. Gone. For the first time since he was six years old, Michael Myers was in the driver's seat again.
There he stood alone in the hallway, for how long, he had no idea. He was hesitant to even move, for fear that this was nothing more than the Evil's sick way of taunting him. Then Wynn had found him, and his indecisiveness in action was solved in a fury of rage.
It was rather ironic that his first act of his own free will in 33 years would be one of murder, but he just couldn't help himself.
Wynn. The one who came to him in the middle of the night and told him to kill.
Wynn. The one who had inflicted this damn curse on him trapping him in his own personal hell for oh so many years. Wynn. The one who, upon his command, Michael was forced to bloody his hands with the lives of innocents. Wynn. The one ultimately responsible for the terror he inflicted on his family, and the little town of Haddonfield.
Wynn had found him still standing in the spot that Tommy had left him, inanimate, like a comatose zombie. Immediately, Wynn went to him, consoling him like some surrogate father, wanting to know what they had done to him. Between his slithery hands on him in embrace and that fake condescending voice of compassion and concern, it was more than Michael could take.
Michael's iron grip closed around Wynn's throat, and lifted him off the floor. With his other hand, Michael felt for the back of Wynn's spine, and with one quick whiplash gesture, he bent Wynn completely backwards.
Wynn screamed in excruciating pain, as his spine snapped, each vertebra popping in rapid succession. Contemptuously, Michael dropped him to the floor like a drooping bag of trash. He stood above him, watching Wynn grimace and moan until finally he slipped into the depths of unconsciousness. It wasn't enough. After 33 years, it wasn't enough. Wynn's suffering had been too quick. He needed something more, one more final act of vengeance.
He reached up towards his mask, and removed it, along with his overalls, shedding the skin of his mockery, his damnation, and exchanged them with Wynn's clothes. Let Wynn die wearing the guise of his own shame; may he burn in Hell.
Draped in Wynn's trench coat and hat, Michael made his way through the corridors down to the east exit. Above all else, he felt the overwhelming urge to run. To get out, away from Haddonfield, to clear his mind and come to terms with what had happened. With the others gone, it wouldn't take long for the police to come, and he had to make this place a memory if he was bent on maintaining his freedom.
As he reached the end of the hallway, he stopped dead in his tracks at the sound of an agonizing scream from behind him. But not just any scream. It was a voice that he recognized instantly.
Loomis.
Poor old Doctor Loomis. Ultimately consumed by the Evil he had sworn to destroy.
At the sounds of his cries, Michael had to resist the urge to turn back and save him. Help him. He did, after all, owe him that much. Although the Doctor could never have
known, his kind words were gentle and soothing for the first 7 years in the institution. With his parents abandoning him for his crime, Loomis had become the closest thing to a father he had ever known. So many times he wanted to reach out to Loomis – to connect, but the Evil would never allow him to swim to the surface, smothering him as its black eyes stared back out at Loomis, defiantly concealing the trapped little boy behind them.
Yes, he wanted to go back for him. But if he saved Loomis, then what? It wasn't like he would just let Michael waltz out of there after everything that had happened over the years, and things were liable to get ugly. Then, the screaming stopped. He was probably dead anyway, and once again Michael had to remind himself that the police were on their way by now. He had no further desire to kill anyone else.
So he had fled.
He stole Wynn's car from the lot – convenient, considering he was wearing Wynn's clothes, thus possessing Wynn's keys - and drove until the gas ran out. From there on, he lengthened the distance from Haddonfield through the means of continuous hitchhiking. This proved to be a rather difficult chore considering his burn-scorched face, and the fact that he had been draped in a hat and black trench coat. The persistence of human dignity won the day, however, and several brave souls stopped and helped him along his way, despite the fact that they were creeped out by him. Most of his successful rides were with pick-up or truck drivers, who usually made him ride in the back.
If they only knew, he thought. Drivers will pick up anyone these days.
Sneaking past the Canadian border was an exercise in child's play for him, as his life had been a career in eluding authorities. Once he reached the province of Ontario, he settled in a small town where he used Wynn's cash (with a little help from his own imposing countenance) to connect him with the wrong people, whom connected him with the right people, and before long, he was a bona fide born and raised Canadian citizen: Harold J. Callahan, social insurance # 455 457 876, thank you very much. His ingenuity and his resourcefulness allowed him to obtain housing and employment, and here he had stayed ever since, and tried to make Haddonfield a memory. Easier said than done.
All those people dead.
Not his fault.
But to the families and friends of the victims, it was.
To the authorities, who would hunt him down, it was.
To the townspeople who would have his head on a spit, it was.
And as hard as he tried to deny it to himself, in his own heart, it was.
As well, there was something else. The nightmares were only a part of it. Somehow he knew, he felt that things weren't over in Haddonfield. True, he had killed Wynn, and Wynn had been the only one with any real power – the source of the supernatural evil that held the town in siege – but was the Evil dead with him? It was Wynn who had come to his room those many summer nights and told him to kill, worming the curse into him, but the more Michael reached into his memory, the more he was sure that even though Wynn had uttered those words, it wasn't Wynn's voice that said them. The voice was something other – something alien – something that wasn't even human.
What the hell WAS Wynn? Was he even human? Was there something controlling him, just as something had once controlled Michael? Did it die with him?
The scream. Loomis' scream. What had caused it?
Too many unanswered questions. Too much uncertainty to let it lie, and in the dark of the night, he had finally admitted what he had been lying to himself about all of these years. He was responsible. He had to go back. Just to be sure.
Besides, someone had to rid the town of that fucking cult.
With the constellation of Thorn about to grace the heavens for the first time in 10 years, something was about to stir, and undoubtedly, the cult would be up to something. They may even try to get to his son again.
His son. The inbred offspring of himself and his niece. Once again, Michael was reminded of the cruelty of the curse, and how inch by inch, year by year, it had found new and creative ways to utterly destroy him. Even the act of love was not exempt from its corruption, as the Evil wielded by Wynn forced him to take his own niece during some obscene ritual. His poor niece, Jamie. Barely sixteen years old, a prisoner of the cult for six long years, she had never stood a chance. Why must so many be made to suffer so young? In an act of ritualistic rape they had destroyed her maidenhood, her innocence, in a rite of blood and tears.
Michael's blood boiled at the thought of this. Another all-time low for those vermin, another indecency to add to the list of his reckoning. There was no doubt in his mind, now. He would go back, and he would destroy them. They would ante up with blood for the job they had done on him.
Yet, there was something else. He wiped a cool bead of sweat off of his head, and realized he was experiencing a sensation that he hadn't felt for a very long time.
Fear.
Fear for himself? Hardly. Michael's life had been little more than a series of endless dark corridors, forever leading to pain and doom, and many a time he welcomed the idea of tranquillity in death.
No, the fear was for the others. It was for the little town of Haddonfield. It was also for his son, and those who had cared for him, Tommy, Kara and Danny. The fact was, Michael wasn't sure if he could trust himself, for although he had lived the last 10 years under his own free will, there was reason to suspect that the Evil may still lie dormant within him. Part of him couldn't shake the idea that he was playing into its hands; that the Evil was once again luring him back to Haddonfield to force him to work its evil deeds anew.
The symptoms were, undeniably, cause for great concern. For one thing, he still had the strength. He was inhumanly strong, far too strong for any average man, let alone one pushing towards the ripe old age of fifty.
Stranger still, was his body's unnatural resilience to heal and regenerate. After gaining status as a Canadian citizen, Michael obtained employment at a packaging company in a city neighbouring the small town where he made his home. His social skills were about as good as his appearance, and he was surprised that he had even got the job. The irony was that the hiring steward was an American immigrant, whom to his surprise responded with empathy to the bogus story he told her about being in Viet Nam in order to explain the ruins of his scarred face. As it had turned out, she had lost a husband in that same war, and was more than eager to do anything she could to help him out, which, of course, included hiring him.
Michael remembered his last day on the job, though he had no idea it would be such when he went into work that evening. He preferred the midnight shift – it meant fewer people, thus fewer questions. He was to work that night with André, assisting him in fixing an operating alarm sensor on one of the production line's cutter heads. The idea of working with André always irritated him, for André was a drunk, and almost always came to work intoxicated.
That night, André made two fatal errors. The first was a result of his indifference to the rules of upper management, as like usual, he didn't lock the power off as was policy before beginning work on a major piece of machinery. The second was backing into the power switch in his drunken stupor, the moment Michael had reached within the cutter head's cradle to clear the loose product debris from it.
The cutter head began to dance madly, as it came down, severing Michael's hand, tearing bone and tendons. It continued to piston and spin, the blood splattering one of Michael's co-workers in the face, sending her running in a screaming fit, in search of help. The pain was excruciating, yet during the entire incident, Michael hadn't let out one sound.
Immediately, André killed the power, and ran over to help him. The stench of his breath as he stood over Michael was putrid and foul. Michael veered up, and with his one free hand, locked a grip around André's neck, threatening to break his jugular. The old killing impulse seeped its way back into Michael's mind, a learned trait that curse or no curse, he had apparently not forgotten.
Then his mind cleared. He released André, and collapsed onto the floor.
The result had been a rather substantial permanent compensation claim. André appeared to be sincerely apologetic, although it did not save his job.
During the months that followed, Michael had just resolved himself to the idea of going through life single handed, when something very odd began to happen. At first, he entertained the possibility that he may have developed a tumor on the stump where his hand had been, but after 2 months, he was completely sure. His hand was growing back. After 4 months, it had completely taken shape, about the size of a baby's hand, and he was able to wiggle his fingers, in morbid fascination. After a year, it was fully- grown and restored. He never bothered to contact the compensation board.
In the midst of his reminiscing, Michael found himself pondering the question of what it would actually take to kill him. Well, one thing was for sure – he was relatively sure that chopping his head off would do the trick. How many rounds of ammunition had they fired into him back at that old well in 1988? And not a single head shot. They had actually managed to miss his heart as well, as impossible as that may seem. One would almost think that they were trying to take him alive. He had barely escaped that incident as it was, and it took his body a full year to recuperate from the wounds they inflicted.
Despite his healing abilities, his body was still human. He breathed. He bled. He ate. It would appear that the abilities as well, were limited; it took time, and the worse the injury, the longer it took. It had taken seven of the ten years he lied in a coma from 1978 to 1988 for his eyes to grow back, a little known fact that Wynn had manage to conceal from Loomis and the rest of the staff . As well, his regenerative powers strangely did not respond well to fire.
He still had the burns. So strange it was to look at his hands, one old and scarred by fire, the other new and flawless. It was all too bizarre to fathom.
So there it was, the justifications for his fear. He still had the strength. He still had the healing factor. However, the most unsettling of all, was the fact that he had almost killed André. Although the reaction under the circumstances was justified, it didn't change the fact that Michael felt that old all-too-familiar feeling of the bloodlust. This, more than anything, cemented his worries of the possibility of the curse still being present. He just wasn't sure if he could trust himself.
That was just a chance that he would have to take. He was responsible, and he HAD to go back. Besides, he would kill himself first, before he let the Evil take hold of him again.
Thus in the dead of the night, Michael Myers resolved himself to the fact that once again, he was coming home.
But there was somewhere else he had to go first.