Halloween IV: The Ultimate Edition (16 page)

Chapter Twenty-four

Candles glowed and flickered with a subtle resplendence atop the television set and the fireplace mantle, providing a maudlin atmosphere for the two lovers embracing, stretched across the carpet below. They were lying there together, alone, and their kisses grew long and passionate as time vanished into a vague simplistic notion called the past; they were entranced inside the shear delicacy of their intermingled world.

Kelly leaned up from the carpet and gazed down dreamily upon Brady beneath her. Her long t- shirt draped downwards and spread across the faded logo of his own shirt. Brady’s hands moved underneath and up along the smoothness of her skin.

Kelly spoke softly, “Let’s go upstairs.”

“I don’t want to wait,” Brady whispered in reply.

The girl was thoroughly delighted with livingrooms as much as bedrooms or
anywhere
for that matter. She smiled down upon him teasingly. Slowly, she slipped off her t-shirt, pulling it over her head and dropping it to one side. Her eyes were saturated into his, watching with playful curiosity the somber yet hungry expressions his face displayed. She reached behind her and unsnapped her bra. She allowed it to slide to the carpet. Her panties were of lace, and as Brady’s eyes glided across her body and downwards, he could see the triangle of pubic hair daintily exhibited before him.

“What do you think?” she breathed.

Brady let out a sigh of ecstasy. “I think I’m in heaven.”

He reached and pulled Kelly on top of him, and as they kissed he writhed out of his shirt and flung it over the coffee table nearby. Kelly worked her lips erotically down across the surface of his chest, her hands skimming past his sides and to his waist. Her fingers played with the buckle of his pants until it separated, and she drove her mild hands into his underwear, searching and grasping, afterwards sliding his pants down to his knees. His skin rippled with desire. He brought her down to him once again, and as tongues caressed he held her, his hands moving down the backside of her voluptuous body, finding her panties and bringing them down to her legs. She kicked them off of her feet.

The two fondled and caressed there within the sensuality of the semi—darkness. As the minutes ticked by and the quickened heat increased, Kelly wrapped her legs around his, welcomingly, and he moved his body upwards to enter her.

“Oooh, Brady,” she moaned.

“Oh,
shit!”

Headlights flooded the livingroom mingled with the whining sounds of a car engine. Brady sat up in terror. Kelly joined him, sitting up also. Immediately, her hands went for her clothes and she proceeded hurryingly to get dressed.

“It’s my dad,” she muttered. “If he catches us like this he’ll skin you alive for starters.”

“For starters?” Brady panicked, reaching for his clothes in a frenzy. “Christ. Oh, man.”

Nothing seemed to fit right for him, and he nearly put his pants on backwards. God knew his underwear didn’t feel right, and he thought he heard the ripping of its pliant fabric.

Outside, Sheriff Meeker brought out his house keys, fussed for one, and inserted it into the doorknob. Behind him, Rachel and Jamie stepped up to the porch followed in turn by Doctor Loomis.

“Where’s the deputy?” Loomis questioned, anxious.

Meeker answered him as the door opened, “He’ll be here in a minute.”

Just as the deputy’s presence was mentioned, Logan’s squad car approached, highbeams piercing through the darkness of the driveway with near blinding brilliance. It pulled up and halted, Logan stepping out onto the cement.

Meeker turned and entered his home, all others following in turn.

As he stepped across the foyer and into the livingroom, his eyes beheld his daughter and the boy. Their gazes met but for a moment, the two standing dead center near the fireplace and the television amidst the moderate blaze of the candles, their appearance was as if they had just completed a night’s rest but their faces were sweaty with guilt.

The burly sheriff’s gaze shot past them as if they virtually did not exist.

My God, he’s ignoring us
, Brady told himself, trembling.
Holy shit, he’s gonna act like we’re not here, and then he’s gonna let me have it. That’s it. Let me have it when I least expect it, and then there won’t be anything left of me to send back home

Meeker’s urgency and alertness confused the boy momentarily, until it suddenly struck him that the sheriff had more important matters at hand; he remembered what the announcer said on television.

Then he saw Rachel, and their eyes met. Quickly, and with utter embarrassment, he turned away.

“Rachel,” Meeker promptly ordered, “take your sister upstairs. Last door at the end of the hall.”

Rachel nodded and took Jamie upstairs.

Her mind swirling amidst the abrupt confusion, Kelly went to her father. “Dad, what’s going on?”

He turned to her, eyes serious and demanding. “I want you to secure all the downstairs windows. Cover all the downstairs windows.”

“Why?”

“Just do it!”

Without further hesitation, Kelly complied. “Where’s the radio?” Loomis said.

“Through the kitchen to the basement door,” Meeker directed. “Take my flashlight.”

Loomis reached and took the flashlight Meeker held, turned, and exited out the kitchen in a hurry, nearly knocking over Meeker’s daughter as she went about her business.

Now for the boy.

Meeker turned and grabbed him, clenching his arm firmly. Brady broke out in nervous perspiration, knowing he was about to get hurt. Instead

“You know how to handle a gun?” Meeker said.

What?

Meeker repeated himself. “A gun. Know how to use one?”

“Yes, sir.” His voice shook.

At the same time, Logan entered through the front door and joined them, standing, awaiting the sheriff’s next orders. Meeker took the boy over to a closet door down the hallway near a back storage room. He opened the door, revealing racks of various shot guns. He let go of the boy and reached inside, immediately gripping a double barrel. He handed it to Brady.

“Think you can handle that?”

“Easy enough,” Brady said, confused. “You want to tell me what’s happening?”

“When I have time.” Then, to Logan, who was stepping up to their right, “Where’s your riotgun?” “In the trunk of my squad,” was the reply. “Get it.”

Logan turned on his heels and exited quickly back down the hallway. Meeker returned his gaze to the innards of the closet, reached in once again, this time removing a tool box and handing it to Brady also.

“There’s shells for that shotgun in there,” he explained. “You also got a hammer an’ four boxes a roofing nails. I want you to go up in the attic and secure it so nobody can get in.”

Brady wasn’t about to panic. But the urgency was there and he could not deny that. “If something’s happened I should call my parents....”

“You just get up in that attic,” Meeker commanded. Once again he went into the closet, and this time he pulled out an SPAS-12 gauge autoloader. This one was for himself. As he loaded shells into the weapon with long practiced ease, he looked back at Brady, who was disappearing down the hall. “Oh yeah. I catch you groping my daughter, and I’ll use that shotgun on you.
Understand
?”

Brady understood and nodded, then fearfully went his way.

Outside, Logan hustled back to the squad. As he went around its side, he noticed the rear door open on the driver’s side. Quickly, he looked in and saw nothing. Shrugging, he slammed the door and went over to the trunk. There was a riotgun inside the trunk, and he removed it along with two large boxes of shells. This was all he needed. Carrying them under one arm he slammed the trunk down hard, and he hurried back into the house, closing the front door behind him.

Inside, on the first floor of the house, Meeker assisted his daughter in locking and securing the shutters and windows. Kelly’s nervousness was altogether gone, having fled and replaced by the present’s urgency, although deep inside she regretted the sudden intrusion on a salacious evening. She could sense her father’s hardened glances, but when she would glance back she saw him exigently tending to his business.

Logan stepped up to the sheriff, riotgun in hand. Meeker turned to meet him.

“Get the outside shutters,” he instructed.

Logan appeared both dazed and alert at the same time. “What are we doing?”

“Making sure nobody can get in here.”

“Isn’t all this a little paranoid?”

Meeker’s glance was stern. “If you’d seen the station house, you wouldn’t even ask.”

Logan turned again and moved down the long side hallway of the first floor. As he went, he passed a partially opened doorway, and if he had glanced within, even momentarily, he would have seen the blackened view of the figure standing motionless within the darkness, waiting in the shadows.

Inside the basement, Loomis scanned the flashlight over dusty obstructions and obscurities. The basement was a dark, eerie place made up of workbenches, a couple of broken—down ten—speed bikes, an old freezer, boxes upon boxes of junk and unwanted items. His flashlight brushed into a stringy cobweb, and the doctor tore it away and stepped backwards from it. His beam then trailed down to yet another workbench.

There, at the far end, was the radio.

***

Brady passed by a window on the way down the upstairs hallway and peeked out for a second’s time. He could view the deputy slamming shutters closed over the windows down stairs. After another brief glimpse into the outside darkness of the streets across the way, he moved away from the window and strode through the hall to the partially opened door at the far end. Slowly, he creaked the door opened further and leaned his head inside.

There, in the shadows on the bed, were Rachel and Jamie. They were sitting there, ever so quietly, Rachel holding her younger sister protectively yet calmly.

“Are you two okay?” Brady asked, breaking the silence.

Rachel didn’t bother to turn.

“We’ve been better,” she replied sourly. “What’s going on?”

“Michael Myers.”

“Who?”

Rachel then finally looked at him. “Ten years ago, Halloween. He’s Jamie’s uncle.”

“The kids at school were right,” Jamie interrupted, and suddenly she began to sob.

Rachel turned her gaze away from Brady and rocked her gently, comforting her, wishing they were someplace else....someplace far away. Far away from uncles, far away from Brady.

Far away.

Politely, Brady retreated from the bedroom and quietly shut the door, leaving them in the darkness.

At the other end of the hallway, past the staircase, Brady set down the gun and the toolbox and reached above his head to the ceiling. His fingers fumbled for the handle to the attic door, then grasped it and brought the attic staircase down. He propped it against the floor before him. Kneeling, he opened the toolbox and fished out a flashlight, closed the box once more, then brought everything into his arms and climbed the wood stairs into the dust and the blackness.

***

“That’s all the windows, Dad,” Kelly proclaimed.

Meeker, his daughter, and Logan now stood together near the front door, gazing around, thinking if there was anything left to do; anything they just might have overlooked.

“Okay,” the sheriff said. Then, “Logan, I want you here on the front door. Here’s the deadbolt key.”

“Thanks,” he said, not knowing why. He took the key from the sheriff, turned, placed the key in the deadbolt, and turned it. The bolt flew home with a dull
clack
.

“We’re secure,” Meeker said. “I padlocked the back door. This is the only way in or out of the house.”

After another glance toward the door, he turned and went into the kitchen in the direction of the basement staircase.

Logan surveyed the foyer momentarily, then, turning, he accidentally bumped into Kelly. The seriousness had left her eyes, replaced with an enticing glare. She grabbed the riotgun barrel with her left hand and, before the stunned deputy, gently stroked it suggestively.

Logan then tugged it from her. “Back off, Kelly. I like my job.”

Playfully, seductively, Kelly stepped closer to him. “Just wondered if it was loaded.”

Kelly brushed past the deputy and moved off, past the livingroom candles and into the long side hallway, disappearing.

Logan scratched his head feverishly, then, turning to the rear of the door, wondered what would happen next, and whispered a prayer for daylight.