Evil had lived in Michael Myers for fifty years, festering inside of him like a disease, poisoning his veins with a darkness that blackened his eyes. Innocence had been ripped from him at the young age of six and he had never once reclaimed it. Halloween night belonged to him in Haddonfield ever since the night his evil had driven him to brutally murder his sister. Had he not had the naiveté to walk expectantly into the arms of his disbelieving parents he would have had many years of freedom to lay his blade into the residents of that little Illinois town.
But something small had remained within him that night, a last shred of childlike innocence kept burning in the surrounding darkness like Hope at the bottom of Pandora's Box.
He refused to let that spark thrive, even in the asylum where his only defence against the mind numbing boredom had been to withdraw into himself completely. Catatonia they had called it, brought on by the shock of what he had done that night. He'd managed to fool them all for seventeen years, delaying natural responses, refusing to let humanity in, continuously dwelling on keeping that damnable light suppressed. It was a meditation of sorts, letting his hatred for those who should have taken care of him and his sister snuff the child within out like the flame of a jack-o-lantern.
Only Loomis had seen through it. Patient and genial at first the good doctor become both a friend and foe of Michael, who had viewed the man with a great deal of curiosity and mingled irritation. The man's feeble attempts to help Michael had both fuelled his malevolence and worked to add minuscule kindling to the little boy who was crying out from underneath that darkness. As the years passed and Loomis' attempts to reach him transformed into a quest to see him properly locked up Michael had almost wanted to laugh. It was funny to him, to the evil shape that had filled itself into the form of a human, to see this middle aged fatherly man brought onto near hysteria by his efforts. People had started whispering about Loomis in the halls of Smith's Grove, saying that he was getting as crazy as his patients.
Michael had not been able to tolerate such slights. He had but to stare at the offending orderlies who dared mock the only person who could somewhat understand him and they would scurry away like frightened rabbits.
Had Fate not intervened that weekend in autumn when he was no longer a lanky teenager but a powerful young man he would have gladly continued his game of mental tag with Loomis until old age finally claimed the man. But on that overcast, chilly day one of the new orderlies, a youth haling from Haddonfield, had ignorantly let it slip that Michael's s sister had recently made the honour roll in high school.
With that, the eye of his seventeen year long psychological hurricane had finally passed and a storm was unleashed upon Smith's Grove Sanitarium. He had foggy recollections of a sister, not the one who had been so derelict in her role as his protector that night but another one, a smaller one, with a soft voice and ribbons in her hair who had only once ever laid eyes upon him once back in his teenage years at the sanitarium.
He had to see her again, to see if she had been saved from that facade of a happy home the way he and the other had been.
He thought nothing of the lives that got in his way. Loomis had inadvertently provided his vehicular escape from the hospital. He'd never as much as played with a toy car during his stay at the hospital let alone learned how to drive one but the evil within had expertly handled the wheel of the hospital car and once on the inner state a rambling drunk had provided a less conspicuous means of transport.
Haddonfield had been asleep in those seventeen years but that night he'd sent it hurtling headlong into a waking nightmare, a grisly reminder of what it was that they should never have forgotten.
He hadn't meant to at first.
But seeing her with her vapid friends and they slipshod way that they regarded their task of taking care of children had brought back memories of the sister whose life he had taken all those years ago. She should have been watching him. This other sister, with a new family and no memory of where she had come, was so similar and yet also miles apart from the other. Michael had seen in her a maternity, a true determination to care for her charges in spite of her youth and inner desire to be more like her two friends. Somehow it had endeared both the evil and the child to her. The child wanted to be with her, to play games of hide and seek to go through a haunted house together on Halloween night.
And so had the evil. Only it had twisted the child's desires into something monstrous. And even then it's singular rage at the girl'a friend's disregard for responsibility had made it seek them out, both bearing the face of his dead sister. They'd squirmed in his grasp, desperate to survive but they had been no match for his bloodlust. He'd taken his sister by surprise when he'd driven the knife into her flesh. He was older, stronger and far more driven now. The two young women had been no match. Neither had the young man who Michael had surprised in the kitchen of that dark house. He'd never gotten a chance to make his sister's lover pay for being the reason she never took proper care of him that night. The boy's face was a blur in his memory and as Michael had watched him from the pantry closet all he saw was that here again was a person who had shirked responsibility. The child cried for attention and the evil thirsted for blood. He'd come at the boy like a moving shadow, pinioning him to the wall and driving the blade him in a matter of seconds. So far had his knife been driven that the boy had been pinned to the wall, suspended like a decoration and it had almost been enough to make Michael giggle.
Had he known the good doctor was on his heels he wouldn't have gone through the trouble of luring his sister over to the macabre haunted house he'd set up across the street. But he'd wanted to see her again, to see how she handled herself.
She'd fought him. He had anticipated a struggle but never a fight. She'd been desperate to protect herself and her charges and no matter how many times he got back up she would be there to bring him down again. It had made him angry at the very end. He just wanted her to give up like the rest. Why couldn't she just die? Even when he'd gained the upper hand she'd been rescued from the jaws of death by Loomis who had coldly emptied his pistol into his old patient.
And still that did nothing to stop Michael. Laurie had become his obsession. Never had a path so bloody been carved into a town so normally idyllic. And just when he'd finally gotten his sister trapped, Loomis once more had to play the hero and trap them both in an explosion that should have been the end of both of them.
Perhaps their was a light in Loomis in the way that there was a darkness in Michael that sustained them both in spite of lethal injuries. Michael had allowed himself to dissemble after that night, turning off all senses and letting them think that he was comatose. For a full decade he'd remained shut down, hearing no news of Loomis or Laurie for ten full years. And then once more the ignorance of those in charge of him spelled their doom.
Laurie was dead.
That in and of itself had been enough to rouse both the trapped child and the ever present darkness. As the child cried at the extinction of his family the evil crowed in triumph. He woke that night and killed only those who stood in his way, a mere two security officers and an intern.
After that he'd set out for the wilderness, seeking shelter from anything resembling Haddonfield. The evil was at bay unless anyone stumbled within range of his home and then he would strike out them, once more out of necessity to keep himself secret from the rest of the world although he revelled in the sport of it. They all seemed so similar to him, these young people who enjoyed abandoning rules and responsibility for the untamed forests. After a while people avoided his neck of the woods like the plague and he was perfectly content to live out the rest of his existence in solitude.
Fate, cruel mistress that it was, had other plans for him in mind. He'd been trekking through the woods of Northern California, hunting for anything that could be killed when he'd heard the loud blaring noise of a radio coming from the nearby dirt road. He'd expected another group of teenagers, ripe for the killing, but instead had watched from the bushes as two men leaned on an old pick up truck drinking beers and talking about a school of some sort that their children had been accepted to. Michael had been all for moving on when something they'd said made him freeze instantly.
"Some folks are sayin' that the headmistress was the one who survived all that shit that happened in Haddonfield all those years back..."
It had just been a rumour. Neither of the men seemed to take much stock in it but the evil within Michael did. It roared back to life, desperate to find out for himself. He had hunted for the truth all that summer, eventually finding himself trailing the nurse that had accompanied Loomis in the night he'd escaped Smith's Grove. Loomis had died several years previously as Michael found out which meant that the nurse was the only one who knew the truth anymore. Michael had taken out her family before finally killing the woman himself and in the process had discovered that Laurie had not died at all.
She'd faked her death only months after Michael's attack on the hospital and had started a new life for herself in California...and had even had a child.
For once the child within him shared the rage of the evil. How dare she lie to him, her only sibling, and start over, keeping him away! They were family and family did not lie! Why couldn't she have had the courage to face him once more?
She had to pay...and so did her son.
Michael had made his way across the country, donning his old mask until he'd reached Laurie's private school in the valley. Her son, a handsome young man, had piqued Michael's interest the second he'd set eyes on the boy. He looked much like his mother and dimly Michael wondered if that was what he had looked like at that age. But the boy, much like his mother's deceased friends, did not adhere to responsibility and the child cried out for him to be punished, not only for disobeying his mother but for being so ungrateful. He knew what she had survived and had the gall to act as though her devotion was a burden.
He had to be taught a lesson. He and his equally juvenile friends. It had been like old times. His stalking in the mountains had been brief and done out of necessity at best. He had not enjoyed such a spree in two decades.
And when once more he was reunited with Laurie he had anticipated her to cower, and this time there was no Dr. Loomis to save her.
She'd surprised him with her own steely resolve. She ran from him but this time it was out of preservation rather than fear and when she and her son had reached safety she'd done the most unexpected thing of all: she'd marched right back into that school and given him the fight of his life. She could have ended him once and for all but the evil refused to let it's prized vessel die. Michael had crawled away, incapacitated a medical worker and switched clothes with the man, willing to wait to strike Laurie down when the time was right.
For several years he'd waited in anticipation, desperate to hear word of her. From various sources he learned that she'd decapitated the man he'd switched clothes with and had been sent, of all places,to Smith's Grove, for psychiatric care. In all that time Michael hadn't heard anything of her son and presumed the boy to have died. And if he hadn't died...well...Michael would rectify that situation in due time but first he'd determined to see Laurie one last time, a time that had nearly turned into his own end but it was Laurie's turn to make an error. Foolishly she'd believed that somehow his evil had deteriorated and left behind a frightened child. She'd reached for him...and he'd struck, hardly believing his luck when at long last he'd plunged his knife into his sister.
She'd fallen, a look of almost relief on her face and Michael had felt the strangest feeling of disappointment. Not because he'd finally purged his nearly twenty-five year long fixation but because all this time he had somehow expected that with he death would come release from either the darkness or the child in him.
But there was nothing but dull surprise that finally she was gone.
He'd done the only thing he could think to do.
He'd returned to Haddonfield, back to his old home.
To his annoyance he'd found it occupied by a host of young people, none of whom stood out to him the way Laurie had all those years ago. They were nothing more or less than the same idiots who had dared trespass on whatever land he had been occupying when he'd lived in the mountains. Bodies with different faces. It was all in a night's work for him although he thought that, with his family gone, the next time death came for him he would not emerge triumphant. He'd wanted to make his massacre grandiose and he certainly had, but even after his old home lay in ashes he still crawled from the rubble unscathed.
Only this time he wasn't thirsty for vengeance. He did not feel that pull to any of those who had bested him the way he had with Laurie.
He felt oddly tired.
He left Haddonfield that night for Canada, and lived once more in solitude in the mountains. As before he only killed when necessary, which was surprisingly sparse. The people of that country were rather attuned to their surroundings and he only ever caught the really ignorant ones off guard. Once or twice they would fight back and escape but he never lingered long enough to be caught.
Something was happening to him. He couldn't move as he once had. His bones felt heavy, his reflexes slow. Before he could crush a man's windpipe with as much effort as breaking a tree branch but now he could barely pick up an axe without his muscles giving over to gnawing pain.
The evil had saved him from stab wounds to the neck and eye, more gunshots than he could remember, falls that could kill the most rugged of men and numerous fires and explosions but it seemed the one thing it could not fight back against was mortality.
Michael Myers was getting old and the evil was getting restless. It had no use for an aged vessel.
He woke up that cloudy Canadian October morning slowly and painfully. He hadn't had much activity in recent years and the fact that he awoke sore every morning only furthered his realization that he was no longer anywhere near his prime.
He needed to go home before the years finally claimed him.
Yes, back to Haddonfield where the evil first claimed him, just in time for Halloween.
Back for one last scare.
