Ah, the Halloween season: Pumpkins, scarecrows, all things spooky. A lot of you might not know this, but outside of LH fandom, I'm a horror writer...so I'd be very remiss to let the horror-est of all horror seasons pass by without writing a horror story. In this story, Michael Myers, of the Halloween movies, sets his sights on the Louds. Will they survive...or will they die one-by-one? Find out in Halloween: A Special in Three Parts.

It was midnight, and Doctor A. Script was beginning to fall asleep behind the wheel. He rolled down the windows, turned the A/C on, and fiddled with the radio until he found a station playing loud music...but every time he stopped moving, he began to drift. Just fifty more miles he told himself as he glanced in the rearview mirror. Behind the mesh screen separating the front from the back, Michael Myers stared blankly out the window, his eyes unblinking and his mouth slightly parted. He wore a hospital gown and a pair of handcuffs.

Myers was an interesting case. On Halloween night, 2001, when he was ten, he killed his sister Judith with a kitchen knife and lapsed into a catatonia so deep that he hadn't moved a muscle in over sixteen years. His previous doctor, Loomis, was convinced that Myers was faking it. "He's biding his time, waiting, watching...one day he'll make his move and you'll be sorry...you'll all be sorry," he said as the board stripped him of his certification and sacked him. Poor bastard had been working with the mentally ill for so long that he became one. Script shook his head. It was sad: Loomis was a good doctor once, one of the best in the country. After taking over the Myers case, however, something changed in him...he became strange, obsessed. He claimed that Myers was pure evil. "I can see it in his eyes," Loomis would say. "He has no soul. Can't you see it?"

That was the kind of backwards thinking that psychiatry had been combating in this country for decades. Mentally ill people were just that – people who were ill. They needed care, not to be written off as evil and stuffed into a padded room for the rest of their lives. Script glanced into the mirror again: Myers' position had not changed, and it would not change until they arrived at the minimum security hospital in Ann Arbor and orderlies led him to his room.

Just fifty miles. Fifty long, dark miles.

Script regretted his decision to leave the interstate: At least on the interstate there were other cars and lights and stimuli. He was loathe to deal with the traffic, though, and currently they were travelling along a dark two lane highway flanked on either side by black forest. Twice a deer had leapt across the road and nearly caused him to crash. Fool. What a fool.

Sighing, he fiddled with the radio again, sending the dial up and down the band, getting staticky stations playing everything from modern pop-country to classical. He settled on one out of Battle Creek playing oldies, and sang along to Wooly Bully, his hand tapping rhythmically on the wheel.

Focused on the road and the music, Script did not see Myers blink and close his mouth...did not see him turning...did not see him pulling his hands apart and breaking the handcuffs.

With the clang of ripping metal, Myers' hand shot through the screen and grabbed Script's face. Script screamed and jerked the wheel; the car crossed the center line, left the road, and jostled down a slight embankment. Myers' wrapped his forearm around Script's neck and squeezed. Script kicked and fought, his body twisting this way and that in a desperate attempt to break free from Myers' grasp. The world started to go gray, then black. As he died, Script's bowels and bladder released, filling his pants with piss and shit.

Satisfied that the doctor was dead, Myers pulled his hand back through the screen, balled his fist, and smashed it into the window, which shattered. He reached out, opened the handle, and got out into the chilly October night. Staring straight ahead, he walked up to the highway, where a pick-up truck was passing. It slowed to a stop and a man in a hat poked his head through the driver side window. "Hey, feller, you okay?"

Myers grabbed the man by the face and pulled him screaming out of the window. He wrapped his hands around his soft throat, and squeezed until his thrashing stopped. Myers got up, but stopped as he eyes fell on the man's black coverall jumpsuit. He unzipped it, pulled it off, then put it on. It was a little snug, but it was better than a hospital gown.

He climbed into the truck and pulled off, heading toward home...Royal Woods.

"Alright, losers, listen up," Lori said.

It was 6pm on Halloween. Mom and Dad had just left to take the younger kids trick or treating, and Leni, Luna, Luan, Lynn, and Lincoln were sitting on the couch watching Pumpkinhead when Lori came in and unplugged the TV to a chorus of "Heys."

She fixed her siblings with a withering glance. "My party starts in half an hour, and you can all come...but if you mess it up, I will turn you not into a pretzel but a corpse. A literal dead body that Mom and Dad will have to pay to have put in the ground. Got it?"

Lynn waved her hand. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now plug the TV back in. I was watching that."

Sighing, Lori plugged the TV back in and then went into the basement. On the screen, a horrible monster backed someone into a corner and savaged them. "When you have ten sisters," Lincoln said, looking dead at the fourth wall, "Halloween can be pretty crazy. Take Lori's bossy ass. Every year she throws a party and every year she freaks out, but in the end, everything ends up going great. She worries more than I do."

He turned back to the screen and leaned forward as the monster was brought down by the protagonist. The credits rolled, and he sat back.

"That movie was bomb," Lynn said, jumping up. She spun on Lincoln and threw her arms up, her hands bent and her fingers clawed. "I'm Pumpkinhead," she intoned, "and I'm gonna get you!"

She dug her fingers into Lincoln's stomach, and he laughed, his entire body jerking. "Stop!" he cried and swatted her arms.

She tickled harder.

"Lynn, you're gonna make me piss myself!"

"Oh?" she asked, and tickled even harder.

"Knock it off, Lynn," Luna said and got up, "unless you wanna clean piss off the sofa."

Lynn snickered and yanked her hands away. "It might be worth it just to see Lincy pee himself like a baby." She went over to the foyer and snatched up her football. "When did Lori say her dumb party started?"

"Eh, I wasn't paying attention," Luna said and went into the kitchen, where she grabbed a soda from the fridge.

Lori had been planning this party for almost a month, and yesterday she recruited all of her siblings to help her plaster the basement with Halloween decorations: Streamers, balloons, vinyl stick-on skeletons and bats. Lucy was the only one who enjoyed it. "This place looks like my heart," she said when they were done, her hands on her hips and a ghost of a smile on her lips.

"Come on, it'll, like, be fun," Leni said, then half-lidded her eyes, "there will be boys."

Luan perked up, Lynn rolled her eyes, and Luna arched her brows. Lynn didn't give two shits about boys (or girls), Luna was gay (something her family found out when Dad walked in on her and Sam rubbing each other off), and Luan...well, Luan was kind of boy crazy, but Luna suspected that that had more to do with her wanting to feel loved and desired than being a slut or something (she had serious self-esteem and self-image issues...poor girl thought she was ugly because some asshole kids picked on her in elementary school and she had braces).

"Whatever," Lynn said, "I'm going for the snacks."

"I'm staying right here," Lincoln said, "Night of the Living Dead is coming on and I love that movie." No one saw him smile nervously.

Across town, a man with a bald head and a graying beard walked into the police station. He wore a long brown trench coat and a green plaid scarf. His cheeks were flushed from the unseasonably cold air and his hands trembled. That was from age, however. He was sixty-five and not in the best of health: The doctors thought it was a mild form of Parkinson's.

At the desk, he waited for an officer in a green jacket to come over, his fingers drumming impatiently. It was late afternoon and he came directly from the hospital here, a good two hundred miles of speeding and worrying that he was too late to stop what he knew would happen. "Can I help you?" the cop asked.

"I'd like to speak with the sheriff."

"About?"

"An important matter."

The cop nodded and went away, returning a few minutes later with a short, rotund man about fifty with glasses. "I'm Sheriff Katz," he said.

"Dr. Sam Loomis. I'm here because a former patient of mine, Michael Myers, escaped last night, and I believe he may be heading this way."

Katz's eyes widened. "Myers, you say?"

"Yes," Loomis replied. "I assume you're familiar with the case."

Katz nodded. "I am. I was the one who put that little bastard in cuffs. You said he escaped?"

"Yes," Loomis said. "He murdered two people while doing so."

"Holy hell," Katz said, and put his hands on his ample hips. "What's he want here? His folks moved years ago."

Loomis nodded. "I'm aware. The house, though...is it occupied?"

Katz thought for a moment. "I believe so. Let me check."

A few minutes later, Katz, sitting at a computer, looked up at Loomis, who bent over him. "Yep. 1216 Franklin Avenue is currently owed by Lynn and Rita Loud."

Loomis nodded. When the hospital called him to say that he has escaped (and asked for his help...after the way they fired him), he knew in an instant that Myers would come here, and though Myers didn't know them, the occupants of 1216 Franklin were in danger. "We must go there."

Katz stood. "Hold on now. We don't even know if he's here, and we can just run into someone's home all willy-nilly based on a hunch."

"I'm telling you, Sheriff, he's come back, and he's going to murder whoever's in that house. If you choose to do nothing, that's on you. I, on the other hand, will not allow a massacre."

With that, Loomis spun and left the police station. Pausing on the stairs, he felt for the gun in his pocket, its weight comforting. No one ever listens to me, he thought as he crossed the street. His Intrepid was parked at the curb in front of the town barber shop. And I always turn out to be right...unfortunately.

He was just opening the door when Katz came out and waved him over. Loomis shut the door and crossed the street again, waiting for a van to pass. "Alright, you win," Katz said, "come on."

Katz led Loomis to a white police cruiser and climbed in behind the wheel while Loomis slid into the passenger seat. "You've made the right choice, Sheriff," Loomis said.

"I hope you're wrong about this, Dr. Loomis," Katz said as he started the engine.

"So do I," Loomis replied.

On Franklin Avenue, a pick-up truck pulled to the curb in front of a two story house, its front lawn littered with toys. A man in a white mask sat behind the wheel, his hands perfectly at 10 and 2. He turned and regarded the house with cold hatred as a group of teenagers walked up to the porch and knocked. A girl with short blonde hair answered, and the man's grip tightened on the wheel. He hated a lot of things in the world, but the thing he hated most of all was teenage girls.

Grabbing the butcher knife from the passenger seat, he got out of the car and crossed the street.