HALLOWEEN:
THE WRATH OF MICHAEL MYERS
By Randy Romero
Part Two: An
Old Friend
Michael Myers had one thing in
common with Doctor Loomis. He was also a survivor.
Michael survived last Halloween, just as Loomis suspected. A
hail of bullets had sent Michael tumbling down an abandoned mineshaft. But
bullets never stopped Michael before; they only slowed him down. So the state
police decided to throw a little dynamite into the mix.
The blast knocked Michael unconscious and tossed his body
from the shaft. A nearby river carried Michael upstream, where a young man
nearly tripped over his bullet-riddled torso as he walked home after dark. Bill
Tramer had been coming from a Halloween party. His mother begged him not to go.
Not after what happened to his brother.
Ben Tramer died walking home from a Halloween party. The
police mistook him for somebody else and tried to stop him on his way home. A
drunken Ben got startled and stumbled out into the street, where he was struck
by an oncoming police car and pinned against the side of a van, which burst
into flames on impact.
Bill’s mother implored him to stay home. But Bill didn’t live
under her roof anymore, and he didn’t play by her rules. Bill moved out as soon
as he was old enough to. He inherited his late aunt’s property and put college
on the backburner, started working full-time to keep up with the bills, started
seeing his friends less and less. So Bill wasn’t going to turn down a night out
and a chance to party with his friends just because his mommy asked him.
Bill examined Michael’s body. He was still breathing, barely.
He promptly identified the mask. It was a similar mask that got his brother
killed. And everyone in Haddonfield either knew the legend of Michael Myers, or
they lived through it.
The mask was infamous, not just in Haddonfield, but
throughout America. And Bill realized the mask could be worth a fortune to the
right collector.
Michael fell into a deep coma,
leaving him in Bill’s clutches. He dragged Michael’s unconscious body to a shed
in his secluded backyard, chained him up to a pole like he was an animal (which
wasn’t too far from the truth), and left him there to rot.
Bill assumed selling the mask would
be easy work. But he couldn’t exactly take out in ad in the local papers. So he
held onto the thing for nearly a year, coming across only a few potential bidders
he could trust with the knowledge of the mask being in his possession. But none
of them would seal the deal. Some would not pay the outrageous price that Bill
demanded. Others claimed there was a curse on the mask itself, that it drove
Michael to continue slaughtering people. And all of them seemed to question the
legality of the situation, and the obvious moral dilemma that accompanied it.
And Bill had been slapped by the
same ethical dilemma when the mask fell into his grasp. But his avarice eventually
exceeded his compassion and sympathy for the victims. He too had been a victim
of Michael Myers when he lost his brother. Bill believed that it was his right
to profit off of that suffering.
Stripped
of his mask, Michael remained in a coma for almost a year. Michael had played
this game before. He knew how to wait, bide his time. And with Halloween right
around the corner, he didn’t have to wait much longer. That mask would soon be
in his possession again.
****
Friday, October 27, 1989.
Loomis sat at the end of the smoke-filled bar, craving a
cigarette.
Ten years, Loomis reminded himself. You
kicked that disgusting habit over ten years ago. Have some willpower, for
Christ’s sake.
His eyes shifted from his beer to his wristwatch to the door.
Brackett was running late. Loomis didn’t want to assume the worst, but he
couldn’t help it. Especially around this time of year. Loomis had developed a
great aversion to this holiday. His colleagues referred to it as
Samhainophobia. But Loomis had coined his own phrase. Myers Syndrome. And
Loomis was an ongoing case study.
The door swung open and Leigh Brackett entered, scanning the room
for Dr. Loomis and finding him at the end of the bar.
Brackett looked older than Loomis remembered. He was
grumpier, fidgety. His slacks were too tight and he kept tugging at the legs of
his pans, fidgeting around on his barstool, trying to find a comfortable
position. And though he looked older, Loomis couldn’t deny that Brackett looked
better than he did. Brackett still had all of his skin. The years had not been
kind to either man.
But Brackett still had a lust for revenge. Loomis could almost
see it boiling under his skin. His rage was palpable.
Loomis bought him a drink and they let the awkward silence
pass.
“Here’s to old friends,” Brackett said and they clanked their
frosty mugs together.
“To old friends,” Loomis repeated. “I don’t think this place
serves any food besides pretzels. We could go somewhere else for lunch.”
“You know damn well I didn’t come all the way back to
Haddonfield for a bite to eat,” Brackett snapped at him. He was a changed man,
this much was clear. Losing a daughter will do that to you.
Brackett remembered the quiet,
peaceful days of Haddonfield. The bygone era. An era where children were safe
to walk unescorted to school. A town where the only criminals were the high
school kids selling dope or getting high. Michael Myers changed all of that.
The town gained a dark reputation. And Halloween never was the same again.
Brackett urged Loomis to cut to the
chase.
“Michael Myers,” was all Loomis had
to say.
“Michael Myers is dead.”
“You know that isn’t true, sheriff.”
“Don’t call me that. Those days are
behind me. And say Michael Myers is alive, what are we going to do about it?
Are you going to sit him down and have a talk with him? Another therapy
session? That worked great the first time.”
“I’ll admit my conversations with Michael were a bit
one-sided.”
“Tell me about it.” Brackett stared off, sipping his beer.
“We can stop him, Leigh. We can make this the last Halloween
for Michael Myers.”
“I’m old. You’re older. We can’t defeat him on our own.”
“We won’t have to. I have a plan.”
There was a moment of silent contemplation before Brackett
spoke again. “I’ll do it for Annie.”
They emptied their mugs.
“Did anyone ever tell you that you look like a James Bond
villain?”
“Once or twice.”
****
Tommy Doyle and Lindsey Wallace were
inseparable after that tragic, fateful night in 1978. They remained best
friends through the years, and started dating in high school. Less than a year
after graduation, they were married.
They knew things wouldn’t be easy.
They had bills, a mortgage to pay off, and all the other hardships that
adulthood would bring. But it didn’t matter so long as they had each other.
Tommy worked full-time as an auto mechanic. And Lindsey played the role of the
happy housewife. Though she hadn’t told Tommy about the novel she’d been
working on in her spare time. A novel detailing Haddonfield’s dark history.
Four more days till Halloween. Meticulously carved
jack-o’-lanterns sat on every doorstep. Plastic skeletons danced in every
window. Tommy Doyle was always on his guard during this time of year. As soon
as he was old enough to purchase and register a firearm, he was down at the gun
range practicing his shot.
“You’re sure it was Bill Tramer?”
Tommy asked.
“That’s what he said his name was.
Tommy, I have a terrible feeling about all this.”
“That makes two of us. Where’s the
address you wrote down?”
“Oh, Tommy, please don’t go. Not by
yourself. Can’t you call one of your friends to go with you?”
“No. I have to do this alone. If he
really has Michael’s mask, that means Michael is still alive. That means
everyone in Haddonfield is in danger. I won’t have another repeat of last year.”
****
Tommy drove to the address Lindsey
wrote down. The front door was ajar. Red flag number one, Tommy thought.
He nudged the door open with his
sleeve and called out. “Hello? Bill? Anyone?”
He looked down and saw the drops of
blood in the foyer. Red flag number two.
Tommy followed the red road through
the kitchen, to the back door where the trail seemed to end. He knelt and saw
specks of blood splashed across blades of freshly mowed grass. It continued
through the backyard, leading to Bill’s shed.
Tommy patted himself down, then
remembered his gun was in the glove compartment of his pickup. If Michael’s
in there…grab the closest thing you can find and bash his freaking head in, he
told himself.
He kicked the door of the shed open
and peeked inside. There was another trail of blood leading up to Bill Tramer’s
maimed, mutilated corpse. Red flag number three.
Beside Bill’s body was a pile of
steel chains. The links were ripped in half.
Michael was loose in Haddonfield. And
nobody was safe.
Nobody.
****
Tommy returned home a ghost of a man. He wiped away the beads
of cold sweat that had accumulated on his forehead. He was so distracted, he
didn’t even notice the additional car in their driveway. Lindsey was waiting at
the door for him.
“What is it?” Tommy asked.
“We have visitors…” Lindsey said.
“Sheriff Brackett and Doctor Loomis.”
“Better put on a pot of coffee,”
Tommy told her. “Please,” he added.
“Only ‘cause you said please.”
Tommy joined the two men in the
living room. They sat and Tommy heard them out. He waited until they were done
to share the latest development in the Michael Myers-Haddonfield saga.
“How are we going to take down Michael Myers? You shot the
guy, what, six times? Then tried to blow him up? How the hell can we stop him?”
Anger flashed across his face. He turned red hot with rage.
“We’ll use everything we’ve got. I don’t care what it takes.
I want this curse lifted. I want this evil cleansed from Haddonfield. I’ll blow
him up again if I have to. I’ll use grenades, a bazooka, a rocket launcher.
I’ll drop a nuclear bomb on his frigging head. I’ll bury him at the bottom of
the ocean. Whatever it takes.”
****
“How’s your arm feel?” Rachel asked.
“It feels like your sister bit me,”
Tina said, clearly vexed.
“I’m so sorry, Tina. I don’t know
what’s happened to her.”
“It’s okay, Rach. It’s not your
fault. Besides, I normally don’t mind it when someone bites me. There’s this
one guy who–”
“I’m just going to stop you right
there. I’m too sober to listen to any of this. Drinks first.”
They sat at the bar and ordered
their drinks; a cocktail for Tina, straight vodka for Rachel. Rachel was
finished with her drink and ordering another one before Tina took more than two
sips.
“Take it easy, Rach. Pace yourself.”
“Excuse me, Miss Carruthers,” an
older woman approached. Rachel recognized her as one of the nurses from Smith’s
Grove.
“Yes?” Rachel said, intrigued and
somewhat concerned. “Is this about Jamie?”
“Sort of…I started working there
when Michael was about 14. Quiet as a mouse. Never said a word. It was
unnerving. I knew Dr. Loomis was right, that he needed to be locked away from
the rest of society. I knew Dr. Loomis well. And I knew Jamie’s mother.”
“Laurie Strode?”
“Yes. But you know what her real
name was.”
“Myers.”
“Bingo.”
“I’m sorry but where are you going
with this?” Tina interjected.
“I want to help Jamie. But if you’re
going to help her, you have to start at the source. You need her mother.”
“Laurie Strode died in a car
accident.”
“Laurie Strode didn’t die...She’s
very much alive.”
To Be
Continued With Part Three: DEATH COMES TO HADDONFIELD
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