Halloween (5 page)

"Are you sure you don't want us to have one?" Michael asked. His feelings were clearly very strong.

"Of course I'm . . ." He caught himself in mid-sentence, and suddenly he realized a Halloween party might be just the thing. A plan formed in his mind, and after a moment's reflection he said, "Well, actually, I see no harm."

The mere announcement of the party proved therapeutic for most of the boys in the ward as they set to work industriously to create costumes and decorations. The costumes they chose were revealing of their deepest fantasies, and this was an unexpected bonus for the psychiatric staff who might otherwise have had to probe for months into their minds for the same material.

In the last week before Halloween, Michael began to get restless and excited, edgy and irascible. Loomis was well aware of the psychiatric phenomenon known as the "anniversary syndrome,'' wherein mentally disturbed persons relive the events of the previous year's trauma. Michael seemed to be following this classic pattern, and on the evening of October 31, Loomis placed the staff on what he only half-jokingly called red alert. The children (the girl's ward had been allowed to join the boys for the occasion) were to be carefully observed, and Loomis wanted two staff members besides himself to do nothing else but watch Michael. Loomis needed not only an incident, but witnesses.

The children were led into the little gymnasium, Where black and orange streamers had been festooned, and cutouts of witches and goblins, black cats and pumpkins made by the children had been taped to the walls. The children wore their costumes, and even the nurses and orderlies donned clever masks, hats, or costumes to join in the fun.

Michael was dressed as a clown.

After cake and soda, the games began. For obvious reasons, they were kept simple and non-threatening. But after a round of musical chairs, in which a sixteen-year-old girl named Sophie had beaten Michael out for the last chair (had she known about the boy's reputation, she'd have given it to him), Loomis leaned forward alertly, scrutinizing Michael. The stage had been set for
something
.

The next game was ducking for apples. A huge vat had been borrowed from the kitchen, filled with water, and a dozen apples floated in it. The idea was for the children to pick an apple out of the water using just their teeth.

After eight or nine children had gone, it was Sophie's turn. Michael stood third or fourth in line behind her. She leaned over the lip of the vat, struggling to keep her hands behind her back to resist the temptation to grab the apple.

The lights went out.

It was not uncommon for the lights to fail at Smith's Grove, especially on windy nights, when trees fell on power lines in rural areas. But it was not a windy night.

Loomis had been prepared for anything but this. He leapt from his chair and ran in the pitch darkness for the spot where he thought the vat was. He bowled over several shrieking children and groped the last few steps until he collided with the platform on which the vat stood. At that moment the hospital's own emergency generators, which tripped on automatically when the main utility system failed, brought light back into the auditorium.

Sophie lay face down beside the vat, drenched from the waist up. Loomis searched the room for Michael. He stood under a basketball backboard, at least ten steps away, smiling. Loomis looked at the boy's costume and hands: They were completely dry.

With a nurse Loomis applied artificial respiration, and after a moment the girl brought up a large quantity of water, sputtering and gasping. The party was over. Loomis's trap had failed. But ultimately, Loomis won. For, on the day he was scheduled to drive up to the county seat to plead his case with Judge Christopher, he received a phone call from the bailiff of the juvenile court.

The night before, Judge Christopher had had a massive coronary and died on the way to the hospital.

Judge Christopher's successor was far less sympathetic to Michael Myers. He had only read about the case, and was convinced Michael was the brutal killer that the psychiatrist claimed. Loomis presented the new judge with a forty-five page paper describing Michael's personality and the incidents of the last year, and though there was still not a shred of evidence to support Loomis's contention that Michael was a homicidal psychopath, the new judge accepted Loomis's opinion that it was best to keep the boy behind institutional walls.

And so it was that fifteen years passed . . .

On the evening of October 30, 1978, a new Buick station wagon sliced through the blackness of a rainy night on State Highway 116, heading east toward the Smith's Grove state facility. On the front door of the sleek car was the institution's emblem. The only other thing that distinguished it from an ordinary car was the chickenwire grating that separated the front and back seats.

Inside, her face illuminated by the eerie glow of the dashboard and the occasional orange light of her passenger's nervously puffed cigarettes, Marion Treadwell, R.N., peered into the jet night. She wore a crisply starched white nurse's uniform and hat, and a navy cape with red piping around her shoulders. Her knuckles on the steering wheel were white. As if she weren't nervous enough about tonight's assignment, the foul weather made her as uptight as a drug addict looking for a score.

As her passenger smoked and talked, Marion resisted the temptation to look at him. She'd heard so much about Dr. Loomis, both good and bad, and after glimpsing him when she'd picked him up in front of his home she could see why he was spoken of with that mixture of reverence and dread that people reserved for a Rasputin. His head was shaved bald, but he wore a gray goatee, giving him a slightly diabolical appearance. He dressed in a limp, wrinkled brown suit and not-very-rain-proof trench coat, and apparently gave no heed whatever to the conventions of good dress. His crystal blue eyes were awesome in their intensity, and you knew at once that mundane matters like proper attire were beneath the interest of a man with such eyes.

In his lap he held a manila folder whose notes he tried to follow With his index finger in the light emanating from the dashboard. ". . . Then he gets another physical examination by the state, followed by an appearance before the judge. Bear in mind that this is not the judge of the juvenile court, because the subject is no longer a minor. In any case, the procedure should take four hours if we're lucky. Then we're on our way. As before, he will be heavily sedated."

"What did you use before?"

"Thorazine."

The driver frowned. "Why, he'll barely be able to sit up."

Loomis smiled grimly. "That's the idea. Here we are." He gestured toward a large white sign fixed to a low brick wall on the left. It said:

Through the blackness and the downpour she could make out the shadowy mass of the institution looming up on the hillside surrounded by a sturdy steel fence above which ran three strips of no-nonsense barbed wire.

"The driveway's up a few hundred yards on your right," Loomis indicating, gesturing with his cigarette.

The nurse, an attractive redhead, was slightly disappointed that Loomis hadn't asked her anything about herself. She guided the station wagon around the approach road. Loomis's indication that he intended to keep their charge drugged was typical of the rumors she'd heard about this rugged-jawed, single-minded man. It was said that the patients he treated successfully returned to the world completely adjusted and capable of leading normal lives. It was also said that those he thought incapable of recovery, he sedated until they were no more dangerous than a row of stringbeans. "Are there any special instructions?" she asked.

For the first time he looked at her directly.

"Just try to understand what we're dealing with here. Don't underestimate it."

Her eyes narrowed. "Don't you think we should refer to 'it' as 'him'?"

Loomis shrugged. "If you say so," he said without conviction.

"Your compassion is overwhelming, Doctor," she said, reaching for a pack of cigarettes. She took one out and slipped it between her full lips. Then she groped for her matches. Loomis reached into his coat for his lighter, but she found her matches first and lit her own cigarette. Now Loomis did look at her for the first time, noting the sheen of her auburn hair, the high cheek-bones, the pert nose, as the flare of the match momentarily illuminated her attractive features. She put the matches up on the dashboard, but they slipped off as the car lurched to the right. Loomis picked them up off the carpeted floor. They said, "The-Rabbit-in-Red Lounge—Entertainment Nightly." An odd name, he thought, and wondered whether the young lady frequented the place and what sort of entertainment one might be fortunate enough to see there.

"Ever done anything like this before?" he asked.

"Only minimum security."

"I see," he said, failing to keep the pity out of his voice.

"What does that mean?" she said defensively, picking up his tone.

"It means . . ." He gazed at her, assessing her maturity and concluding she didn't have too much of it. "It means
I see
, that's all."

"You don't have to make this any harder than it already is," she said forthrightly.

Loomis's smile was devoid of humor. "I couldn't if I tried."

"The only thing that ever bothers me is their gibberish. When they start raving on and on . . ." She finished the thought with a shiver and a look of disgust.

"You don't have to worry about that," said Loomis. "He's scarcely spoken a word in years."

Suddenly, in the middle distance, the car's headlights detected a ghostly shape about twenty-five yards away. Loomis leaned forward and peered, eyebrows knit in dismay. "Something is wrong."

Marion lifted her foot from the gas pedal and hovered it over the brake, awaiting instructions as she squinted through the windshield into the troubled night. The wraithlike figure had momentarily disappeared. Then five of them appeared. Patients clad in windblown, rain-soaked white gowns, wandering or cavorting around the field outside the fence. Their eyes were hollow and almost zombielike, their faces ravaged by decades of incarceration.

"Since when do they let them wander around?" Marion asked cynically.

"They don't," Loomis replied unnecessarily, gesturing impatiently for her to drive the rest of the way to the gate, where there was a telephone. "Drive, drive!"

A figure stepped in front of them, a male patient with an insane grin and red-rimmed eyes. Marion had to stop the car to avoid running him over. Loomis thrust open his door and jumped out. He trotted over to the bewildered escapee and asked him a question. The man gesticulated with wild, gnarled hands. Loomis's eyes clouded with fear. He rushed back to the car and hopped in, rivulets of rain trickling down his bald head into his face and beard. "Pull up to the entrance!"

"Shouldn't we pick him up?"

"Move it!"

Marion pressed the gas pedal. The rear tires whined on the wet pavement, then grabbed. The powerful car almost knocked the hapless inmate down. "What did he say?"

"He asked me if I could help him find his purple lawnmower."

"I don't think this is any time to be funny," Marion declared indignantly. "After all, I'm . . ."

"He said something else," Loomis said ominously. "He said, 'It's all right now. He's gone. The evil's gone.' "

They exchanged a serious look. "What does that mean?"

"Wait here," he said, leaping out of the still-rolling car and rushing to the guard booth. He slid the door open and stepped on something soft. He knelt over it. It was the guard. His head was twisted on his neck as if some giant hand had tried to unscrew it. The man's eyes bulged hideously, and his tongue lolled over bloody lips. "My God!" Loomis gasped as he reached for the phone.

Inside the car, Marion drew nervously on her cigarette as the escaped inmates did their
danse macabre
around the parking lot. The driving rain drummed on the roof and hood, and Loomis's contorted face in the guard booth as he shouted his message to the main house did not make her feel any easier.

All at once there was a tremendous thump on the roof, which buckled momentarily before popping back into shape. Marion glimpsed a flutter of white cloth out of the corner of her eye and realized what it was. "Oh, no, one of them is on the roof of the car," she muttered, rolling the window on the driver's side down to plead with the inmate to get down. The noise on the roof was unimaginable, like someone dancing on it. Marion stuck her head out of the windoW. "Okay, that'll be enough . . ."

She did not see the powerful hand extending from the roof, but a moment later it had her by the hair and was attempting to pull her through the window. When the intruder realized he couldn't do that, he attempted to get a grip on her jaw to twist her head off.

For a moment she shrieked with helpless panic, but Loomis either didn't see what was happening or couldn't help. There was only one solution before this monstrous hand snapped her neck. She groped desperately for the knob of the window and found it after what seemed an eternity.

She gave it a quarter turn with her free hand, but the problem was that her head was out the window and the man's grip was too strong for her to pull back inside the car. Frantically she clawed at the hand. A finger passed over her open, screaming mouth. She clamped her teeth on it with all her might. The thing let out an inhuman howl and momentarily relaxed its grip. She yanked her head back inside and closed the window on his hand. He roared again and pulled his hand out of the window before her last turn on the knob clamped him irrevocably.

Marion clutched at her throat and gasped for air. She was momentarily safe, but an instant later she had her hands full at the window on the passenger side. The inmate, still on the roof, had struck the window with shattering force, and the window's protective glass had cracked into a thousand geometric splinters that adhered to each other for the moment but would fly into the car the next time he struck it. The thing peered upside down into the car, and Marion saw a ghastly rain-soaked creature made even more horrible by the spiderweb pattern of the cracked window.