Elissa groaned and hit the snooze button for the second time. She felt as if she had not slept a wink at all the night before, and did not relish the thought of getting out of bed. The sound of rain hitting the roof in a rhythmic pattern didn't help much either. All in all it seemed a perfect day to stay in bed.
"Hey Elissa? You're going to be late if you laze around in bed much longer. Come on, get up, I have coffee going." Thora called from downstairs.
Elissa forced herself up from the mattress, and padded over to her closet. While she'd picked her outfit with a bit of care for the day before, this morning she didn't feel up to it, and settled on a pair of jeans and a gray t-shirt. She threw the clothes on the bed, and went to her drawer for clean panties.
"I'm on my way down, save me some!" She called over her shoulder while reaching inside for panties. Her fingers brushed against something stiff, and a bit sticky. Elissa looked down, and staring up at her was an old scrap of newspaper with a blurry photo, only this one seemed to have had something spilled on it.
She stood there for a long moment before snatching a pair of panties out of the drawer and slamming it shut, as if the act would somehow make both the paper and whoever had left it there vanish.
Elissa dressed quickly, her mouth set in a firm line. She wasn't going to say anything about this, not just yet. She still wasn't sure whether or not this was some prank pulled by Libby, or if that paper from the other day had somehow stuck onto something and wound up in the drawer, or if Michael Myers really was back, and in search of new prey.
Elissa shuddered at the thought, Adina's story from the day worming its way back into her mind. Forcing herself to take a deep breath, she opened her jewelry box and began rooting for the locket her parents had given her as a sweet sixteen gift. She couldn't find it, but she quickly forgot about it when she turned her head.
There was a strange stain on the floor of the landing that she'd never noticed before. Stepping away from her dresser, she approached the stain for a closer look. It wasn't a particularly large stain, nor anything she would have even really noticed if she hadn't been so keyed up. It looked for all the world like someone had spilled glue on the floor and let it dry. She didn't have time to clean it up now though, just another thing she'd deal with when she got home.
"Hey Elissa, how was your night? Sleep okay?" Thora asked, filling a mug of coffee for her as she stepped into the kitchen. "Chance already left, I'm glad I don't have to get out early to those 7:00 labs. Makes you feel sorry for the poor grad students that teach them. Can you imagine having to do that every day? Blech."
"Nah, that would really suck. I feel bad enough for Chance having to go once a week" Elissa said, taking the cup gratefully. Thora glanced out the kitchen window at the rain.
"You want to catch a ride with me up to campus today? You get out before I do, but it might stop before then."
"Yeah, yeah I'd like that. Thank you." Elissa smiled gratefully. She hadn't been looking forward to the walk to class. The rain might have been nice for sleeping in, but not so much for walking.
"No problem. I doubt campus security will be checking for stickers out in the rain anyway. Of course if they'd get those tags out in the mail before the second week of school it wouldn't matter much now would it?" Thora laughed.
"Guess not," Elissa finished her coffee and put the mug in the sink. "Just leave yours, I'm planning on cleaning up when I get home anyway."
"You always were Miss Susie Homemaker. What a wife you'll make one day." Thora chortled, setting her cup in the sink.
"Ha ha ha," Elissa deadpanned, grabbing her book bag as Thora retrieved her truck keys.
He'd watched her dress from behind the cracked door of what had been his old bedroom. A lot had changed since he'd occupied it all those years before. Toy trucks and picture books had given way to trendy clothes hanging in the closet and perfume bottles were scattered across the dresser top. It reminded him more of Judith's room more now honestly, even though her room was across the hall and equally littered with girlish items.
She'd found what he'd left her, predictably. After all he'd left it where she couldn't help but stumble across it. While she hadn't reacted as strongly as she had to some of her previous discoveries, he was sure that would change soon.
If she'd lingered on the landing any longer, she might have caught a glimpse of him standing in the room watching her, but she'd been too caught up staring at the mess on the floor, and then with going downstairs for breakfast. It might have been construed as a risky maneuver on his part, but he had the experience to know that people often didn't pay attention to what was going on right in front of their eyes. Little distractions always kept them from seeing the whole picture, and that was usually their downfall.
He'd simply waited, and when he'd heard the front door close he'd moved to the window to watch them pull away from the curb in Thora's truck and down the street. Then he'd turned and walked the hall towards Elissa's room.
Elissa smiled up at him from her silver frame as he rooted through his pocket. For a moment it seemed as if she were actually there in the room with him, and the notion caused his hand to clutch reflexively.
Motionless, his breathing behind the white mask audible over the raindrops hitting the roof in the otherwise silent house, he stared at the picture, focusing on Elissa, her smile, her eyes, her hair, ignoring all else in the photograph. It was as if the mere sight of her was enough to freeze him like a deer in headlights. Her mere appearance affected him far more than most of his victims seemed to be able to. Even those girls in Russellville hadn't managed to affect him quite like that.
His trance apparently broken, he retracted his hand from his pocket, a thin chain hanging from it, the chain of a necklace, of a locket to be exact. In a careful manner, he laid it down on her dresser, much like he'd done with the brush the day before, making sure that the locket itself would undoubtedly be the first thing she saw. His latest surprise for her, though it probably wouldn't be that surprising to her, given how the past few days had progressed.
Michael's attention drifted down to the dresser. In her haste Elissa had left her school ID card behind this morning. Her likeness smiling out from the upper left hand corner was no where near as defined as the one in the frame on the desk, but it still drew his eye. He reached out for the card and pocketed it before turning to go.
It would be very entertaining to see her reaction to his latest gift, and he didn't intend to miss out on that. But that would come later, and for now he'd go back to what he was best at. Watching and waiting.
Elissa couldn't wait for class to be over. She'd been barely following the lecture and had taken almost no notes. Every time she tried to focus on Mr. Richey droning on about Monroe's Motivated Sequence her mind had drifted back to her conversation with Adina at lunch the day before. There was only five minutes left until the end of class, something attested to by the growing shuffle of book bags and impatient wiggling of legs. Elissa knew she wasn't the only one watching the clock, but she was fairly sure her reasons for doing so were different from those of her classmates.
She'd been mulling it over for most of the period, and had come to the realization that if Adina's story were indeed fact it would have to be backed up somehow. A series of violent murders in a small town like Haddonfield or anywhere for that matter would have to have been documented somehow. A quick trip to the library would either confirm or deny it, she reasoned.
Then if it turned out to be nonsense she could breath a sigh of relief and go on with her life with only the knowledge she'd been taken in by a creepy urban legend hanging over her head. And if it were indeed true? Well, she really didn't want to think about that just yet.
One minute to go, and she could hear the rustling papers grow louder. Mr. Richey was admonishing everyone to be sure to bring in their workbooks for a group exercise next time, and with a sigh of relief she stuffed her notebook into her bag and made for the door. One way or another, soon she'd find out exactly how much, if any, of this Myers story was true.
Elissa sat at one of the town library's many computer terminals. Most people there were students like her, except they were there to work on school-related things. She was looking up any information she could on Michael Myers and she figured that the best place to start would be on the internet. Simply entering 'Michael Myers' on the search engine brought her hundreds of related results. National news articles, fan sites (if you could call them 'fans'), memorials dedicated to his victims, a couple photos of him as a child, and even one that someone managed to take of him while he was in a coma, his head wrapped in bandages.
She sifted through the information and realized that it all pretty much told the same story. On October 31, 1963, Michael Myers murdered his sister, Judith, in her bedroom after she had sex with her boyfriend. Michael was locked up in Smith's Grove Sanitarium, where Dr. Samuel Loomis attempted to treat him. When he turned twenty-one, he was supposed to go on trial for his sister's murder, but he managed to escape on the night he was to be transported, October 30, 1978, stealing the car Dr. Loomis and a nurse named Marion Chambers had arrived in. Heading back to Haddonfield, he somehow managed to track down his other, younger sister, Laurie Strode, and attempted to murder her as well, a couple of her friends dying in the process.
Fortunately for Laurie, Dr. Loomis knew where Michael was going and followed him to Haddonfield. Teaming up with the town's sheriff at the time, Leigh Brackett, he managed to temporarily stop Michael by shooting him in the chest six times with a revolver, knocking him off of the second floor balcony of a house. He was injured, but it didn't stop him, as he followed Laurie to the hospital she was taken to for her own injuries, murdering the staff there until he found Laurie again. Dr. Loomis managed to find them just in time once again though, resulting in a fight with Michael that ended in a explosion which caused massive damage to the hospital and severely burned both Dr. Loomis and Michael, leaving Michael in a coma.
Laurie herself tried to move on, marrying a guy that she met and in 1980, they had a daughter, Jamie Lloyd. Tragically, Laurie and her husband died in a car accident and Jamie was sent to live with a foster family in Haddonfield, the Carruthers. Then, it seemed to start all over again. On October 30, 1988, while being transported from the hospital he'd been kept at, Michael awoke from his coma, murdering everyone in the ambulance he was in before escaping and heading right back to Haddonfield. Dr. Loomis followed Michael once again, knowing that he had to protect Jamie and try to stop Michael anyway he possibly could. However, in the end, Dr. Loomis once again failed to stop Michael and Michael seemed to simply disappear from the world.
For over two decades, there had been no confirmed sightings of him. In a way, Elissa felt like that should comfort her, but it didn't. Everything Adina had told her was true. Even if Thora was right and Adina was one of Libby's friends, it didn't change the fact that they were indeed living in the house of a mass murderer. Maybe whoever she'd seen creeping around outside of their house wasn't Michael Myers, but it still scared her. At least she knew she wasn't crazy.
She tried to find any pictures of Laurie or Jamie, but there didn't seem to be any available. She supposed that was understandable. If some maniac tried to kill her, she wouldn't want her pictures plastered all over the internet either. Printing off some of the more informative articles, she paid for them and decided to have a look at some microfilm, hoping to find out more about Michael and his victims, especially his relatives. She figured that any locally written newspaper articles might have more information than anywhere else. She soon discovered to her dismay though that almost everything that mentioned Michael or his victims was either blacked out or removed entirely. Even the couple images of Laurie that had been originally printed were blacked out.
Returning the microfilm, she decided to ask one the librarian about it.
"I have a question," Elissa said. "What I wanted to look at was blacked out. Is there any way I can see what it originally said?"
Looking down at the date listed on the microfilm, '1978', the librarian gave Elissa a curious look.
"If it's blacked out, I'm sure there's a good reason for it," she said, avoiding Elissa's question.
Disappointed, Elissa started to turn around to leave, but then the librarian added, "The Haddonfield Herald keeps copies of all of their papers archived. You might be able to convince them to let you have a look."
"Thank you!" Elissa said, giving the librarian a quick smile before leaving.
Discovering that the Haddonfield Herald was located near the library, she found herself trying to convince the employee at the front desk to let her see the archived papers.
"We're not supposed to let just anyone back there," he told her.
"I promise I'll be quick," she said in return. "I just need to look up a couple things and then I'll be out of your hair."
"Why don't you just look it up at the library?" he asked. "They have most of our stuff on microfilm there."
"I tried that, but they didn't have what I was looking for," she answered, hoping that he'd believe her. "The librarian said that some of the older papers aren't on microfilm and that they'd probably be archived here."
He looked at her for a moment, before sighing and saying, "Okay, I'll let you look."
Standing up, he motioned for her to follow him. He led her down a hallway to a door marked 'ARCHIVE', which he unlocked and opened, stepping inside to turn on the lights with her behind him.
"See those big scrapbooks?" he asked, pointing towards an area of sectioned shelves that contained at least a couple hundred of the scrapbooks. "They're organized by year and month. I've got to get back out front, so I can't stay in here with you. Please don't tear anything up and please put everything back when you're done."
"Okay, thank you very much," Elissa said.
He then went away, closing the door behind himself, leaving her alone. She moved towards the shelves and began looking for the 1978 scrapbooks. The books each had four months worth of newspapers in them. Selecting the one labeled '1978 - Sep/Oct/Nov/Dec', she slid the heavy book off of its shelf. She then carried it towards one of the tables in the center of the room, hoping she wouldn't drop it as she wasn't sure she'd be able to lift it back up off of the floor. Setting it down with a thud, she opened the thick cover and began scanning through its many pages, skipping ahead to the November section. Eventually, she found the articles from the library that had been blacked out, though they didn't really contain much more information than what she'd managed to find online. The addition of the ages for some of the hospital staff that Michael Myers murdered was the only truly notable difference, as well as pictures of some of them, taken from what seemed like family and high school yearbook photographs.
Finally reaching a page that seemed to focus on Laurie Strode, she found that part of it had been removed. Torn out. She got the feeling she'd already seen the part that was missing though. The piece of newsprint that had been left on the porch Saturday. And then there was the business calendar from Sunday. She couldn't be a hundred percent certain without checking it again, but hadn't it been for a 'Strode Realty'? There had to be a connection. There was no way those were just two random pieces of garbage.
Continuing to flip through the pages, she noticed that a couple other Laurie-related articles and pictures appeared to have been torn out. Then she came across something new: a sketch of Michael Myers, as he'd looked on that Halloween night. There was the white mask and the black eyes. Just like the mask she'd seen the figure wearing outside of their house. Carefully, she tugged at the page, the old paper easily tearing free. More evidence to show to Thora and Chance. She didn't want to vandalize the scrapbook like that, but considering that other parts had been torn out already, she supposed she shouldn't feel too bad about it.
Deciding that she likely wouldn't be able to get anything more from that book, she closed it and hauled it back to its space on the shelves. She would try a different year instead: 1963. Again, she went to November and the very first article was on Michael's murder of Judith. It spoke of how the event shocked the community and how he'd stabbed her numerous times in her upstairs bedroom. Elissa's jaw had dropped after she read that. Sure, she already knew that Judith had died in the house from what Adina had told her and the other things she'd read that day, but to read it in such detail was something else. The article didn't say exactly which bedroom had been hers. The thought that either Thora, Chance, or herself were staying in Judith's bedroom sent a chill down her spine though.
Moving on to 1989, she was curious as to what exactly occurred during the last time anyone saw Michael Myers. There seemed to be plenty on that in the scrapbook. There was an explosion at the police station and at first, everyone thought a gas main had exploded, killing all of the cops inside the station, Michael, and Jamie Lloyd, but as the explosion was looked into, it was quickly discovered that the cops had been shot, a bomb was planted, and the bodies of Michael nor Jamie could be located.
Elissa was convinced more than ever that Michael Myers was back. She just hoped the information she'd collected would help convince others, mainly her roommates.
