Disclaimer: All recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. All original characters and plot are the property of the author. No copyright infringement is intended.

Deputy Rathmore pulled her cruiser into the station at the end of her shift. Only the one ticket and it had been a quiet night. Quiet nights always made her nervous.

In the break room, Sheriff Lee Brackett was pouring coffee into a pre-used styrofoam cup.

"Save some of that for me." Rathmore said as she pulled her hat off, she was almost as tall as Brackett, "I need to grease up my wheel bearings."

Brackett chuckled, his horseshoe mustache widening with the pull of his cheeks, "Funny Judith. Everything alright out there?"

"Just a lead foot bimbo out by Pine Ridge…" sighed Judith as she took out the paperwork to file.

"Did you hear about the death at Smith's Grove out there?" asked Lee as he sat back down at a worn table.

This brought Judith's head around, "Death? Who? A patient?"

Not seeming to notice her flared interest, Brackett took a sip from his cup. His face soured, "Oh that is...really bad. What? Oh no...a staff member I thought. It's being handled by Kane county."

Judith rolled her shoulders, trying to ease the sudden snaggs in them.

"Do we know what happened?" She tried to make her voice casual.

"What brand of joe is this?" obsessed Lee as he sat the cup down sulkily.

"Lee…" Judith's patience was tightening but she knew the sheriff could be somewhat absent minded this time of night,

"I don't know Judith. The dispatch just said a homicide but that the situation was contained. It's not in our jurisdiction and Kane didn't ask for any help so I didn't get into it."

Carefully, Judith sat down at the table the paperwork in her hand forgotten.

Smith's Grove. He was there. Just the thought of him weighed her with nausea and oily hate. And if she was honest, it wasn't the first time she'd hoped an incident report from the sanitarium was about his death. She had had 15 long years to remember him since that Halloween night.

Putting her hand to her side where the scar was still rigid her skin in knotted purple and white, Judith could remember him only as that 10 year old boy. Bow-legged and fat, stringy, pale hair, those droopy eyes and fish lips.

Still in her mind she could see him in that stupid clown mask he always wore. Constantly vying for her mother's attention and getting it. She hated him, she always had. He was slow, a whiner, a squealer and completely embarrassing. Their mother had always said the two of them didn't get along because of the difference in age and it was probably part of it. But Michael, he had turned her stomach to even look at him. There was more to it of course. Her own father was nonexistent in her life so she had hoped when her mother married Michael Myers Sr. he would provide the love she had been deprived of. And he did for a while until 'The Curse' was born. They even gave him the same name! Judith had taken Myers as her last name and now she had had to share it with the new baby. To even call him her brother, then it was sickening, now she never would. And nobody knew she was his sister.

After Halloween, they had sent her to the hospital, barely saving her life. She hadn't expected to wake up but she did. She refused to testify in person, she was terrified of what might happen. They sent her to a youth facility in Chicago until she got into the foster system and suffered through the abuse and mistreatment there. At 18 she finally was out on her own and worked like her mother had. It was a weary life, she only worked to fund her addictions and it seemed no amount of chemical could satisfy her or fill the emptiness she felt. One night a man tried to overpower her and she sent him to the hospital with a broken bottle in his leg. It was in self defence of course, but just the feeling of control it had given her for the first time in years, she decided to apply to become a law enforcement officer.

When she graduated, certain, unforeseen circumstances had her look for a job back home, in Haddonfield. It was where she belonged. A place to fix all that had happened to her. And she found she was comfortable here and knew every street and their workings.

She knew Michael was nearby but he might as well be dead for what kind of life he had. And he deserved it for the misery he'd caused her her whole life.

Her's was a consuming hate and resentment she had for him. Never would she forgive him and even as poisonous as that was to her, she wallowed in it.

Angel? The ridiculous name was even worse than Michael's. Most the time she had completely forgotten her existence. Another person trying to replace her in their family. As a teenager her strategy was to just ignore the baby. She had her friends after all and the drinking and partying pushed her cares far from both her younger, unwanted siblings.

Once, on a whim, Judith had tried to see what had become of the toddler but the information was sealed and she would have had to get a court order per the insistence of the adoptive parents. Judith felt no connection or desire to reunite with Angel. Not right now anyway.

Life had moved on and Judith married a lawyer who died unexpectedly only two years after their wedding day. Judith wished she had cried more, felt more. But she hadn't. Any sort of tenderness she had ever had had long since hardened and slept, never to awake again.

"Well, I'll see you tomorrow then Lee." Judith kept her voice casual as she headed home.

Sammy sat in Klein's office, her hands in her lap as she waited to hear how he would respond.

She had told him she was finished there. That she felt like she wasn't contributing and that she needed some space to deal with Amanda's murder that was affecting her more than she had expected. The youth center was more than willing to take her on for the rest of the summer and the next year if she decided. Perhaps her ambitions to be a forensic psychiatrist were changing.

Klein just sat there. His analytical eyes diagnosed her and she tried not to let it irritate her.

"Loomis. In all my years as a therapist, I have tried to understand the labyrinth of the mind. We are creatures of control. As a species we have always put ourselves to the edge of the unknown. Exploration of our world and all that happens on it. Our very existence we demand to know how it has come about. Perhaps one of our final explorations will be our own minds. That we cannot always control it like a computer. Turning emotions on or off, selecting only the thoughts we want to think, frightens us. That we cannot always control our own selves, it makes us feel powerless."

Listening, Sammy was confused at the man's rhetoric. What was it for?

He turned to look at his painting of the ship. "Sometimes I feel that in that state, feeling powerless and fearful, we do things that perhaps aggravate the situation. Then we pay the consequences. But, should we survive, we learn. If we do not, others learn from our mistakes and carry on. Someday I do believe we will conquer our own psychotic features. Maybe even some of our patients here will. Most of it is biology isn't it? And it could have been us on the other side of the door? Maybe it should be. We may not be able to fix Michael Myers, but I hope that you can prevent the next one."

To work here in this place, it made a person think. Think about how fragile sanity and balance were. Sammy had had her own rants like Klein's and so could relate to it. She only nodded, taking it as his blessing for her resignation.

She had tried to talk to Conner before she left. With everything that had happened, she felt it wasn't the time for them and to have to work together, maybe it would be easier if they weren't together. He seemed changed. Distant and stony. He only shrugged, "K."

Sammy knew there was no point, but she still felt as though she had to say goodbye to Michael and, with an orderly looking on, she went to his door.

An extra sliding screen had been put onto the access.

"Michael I'm leaving and probably won't be back. I only have one more year of clinical residency and then I'll go on to do my psychiatric studies. I just...wanted to wish you the best. I kind of feel like I failed you in a way. But you failed yourself too. But there's time, you're still breathing."

And that was it. After another week, Sammy went back to New York.

Jackknifing up in her bed, Laurie gasped as she searched the shadowed room for what had been chasing her. A ghostly face, smiling and freakish. Red lined it's lips and blotted its nose. A sharp knife it gripped in its hand as she had tried to escape it through a dark street layered in leaves. Not just escape it, but run to someone. She knew who it was and it made no sense. 'Michael!' she called to him, 'Help me!'

Whatever was behind her was almost upon her. Just before her was the Shape of her brother, she knew it was him. Putting out her hand to grab him she woke up now, pulse rushing and her t shirt damp with sweat.

She had read about the murders. What they say had happened 15 years ago and the nightmares had started shortly after.

The little letter she had tucked away after her mom had begged her to trash it and move on. To forget all of this. And so Laurie hadn't mentioned it since that day. But she had taken a picture of the note with her phone and tucked it away. She read the words every day. It just didn't match up. The monster that everyone said he was against how humble and beseeching the words were in the letter struck her as contradictory. But everyone in that house he had gone after mercilessly but her.

'You should have died too but I got you.' He had spared her and she wondered why.

It would be awhile before she could close her eyes again, if sleep came at all, so she grabbed her laptop and closed her eyes against the bright glare of the startup screen.

First she put 'Deborah Myers Haddonfield' in the search bar. Most of the retrieved hits she had already read and she scrolled down a little until she came to her obituary. A typical, generic tribute someone who didn't know her might have copied and pasted it. Her birthday and her parents who had passed on already. She had taken a little girl into her first marriage then had two more children and was a dedicated mother after her husband died in an accident. She was a wonderful person, lively, had many who were fond of her but there were no names, only the number of the funeral home.

The next day she called them and a girl answered. She must not have known the stigma of the 'Myers' name for she said nothing when Laurie asked if they had a contact number from that funeral 15 years ago. Surprisingly the girl found one and Laurie called it, thinking no one would have the same number after this long.

"Hello?" A woman answered.

"Oh uh, hi! Lillian Farmer?" Laurie pushed her voice pleasantly, "My name is Laurie Strode. I...I don't know if I have the right number and I'm sorry to bother you but I'm looking for information about Deborah Myers…"

She barely got the name out before the woman cut her off, "Now look here, I'm not looking to get back into this after you people finally are leaving me alone. You want a story you can read the news accounts like everyone else. I don't have nothin' to say."

It was prelude to hanging up and Laurie hurriedly begged her not to.

"No Ms. Farmer! I'm not... looking for a story. I think...I'm Angel." Laurie hadn't planned on saying that but if felt liberating. There was no reply and Laurie thought for a moment that the woman had hung up or she'd been cut off.

"Ms. Farmer?"

But there was the static of a long breath in the phone and so Laurie quickly spoke again.

"I just, wanted to know something about her. What she was like…"

"You're Angel huh? That's a new one." The lady scoffed into her ear, but there was a hitch to her skepticism.

"I'm pretty sure. I have a birth certificate, 'Angel Deborah Myers' and my parents are having an out of body experience about everything." Laurie decided not to mention Michael's letter.

After another short pause, Lillian said, "Text me a picture of you."

Frowning, Laurie was hesitant, "A picture?"

"Yeah. You expect me to trust you on this? Send me a picture of you, I'll know if you're her little girl."

Sending pictures of herself to strangers was obviously something she didn't feel comfortable doing but it made sense to some degree. After all, what could it hurt?

"Ok, hold on." Laurie looked through her gallery.

So she did, it took a couple minutes before the woman finally said, "Baby, you look just like your Mama."

What was probably a common complement Laurie felt disconnected from. To be told she looked like a woman she couldn't remember, that had died in such a terrible way. Even more strange was her calling her her 'mama'. It brought a repulsion and a protest from inside and Laurie kept herself from correcting the woman sharply. It made Laurie feel lost and alienated to everything she thought was knew in her life.

But the way Lillian said it was thick with a sad reminiscence and Laurie could tell she must have been somewhat close to Deborah.

"Thank you. I was hoping to hear a little about her...in the news reports there's not a lot of information…" Laurie said.

"No of course not. They just said she had birthed a demon. That she must have been a bad mother, it must have been partly her fault. Don't listen to them. She loved you. All of you!" Declared Lillian vehemently.

Lillian told her that she used to work with Deborah after the death of Laurie's father and sometimes she would babysit them. The fact that the woman had given her a bath was somewhat awkward but she spoke of how hard her mother worked to keep food in their stomachs. That she would do anything for them and gave up so much for them.

It wouldn't be the last conversation she had with Lillian. Over the summer they spoke many more times. Laurie asked about Judith whom the woman said was neck deep in adolescent angst and rebellion, running her mother ragged.

She told her how she had advised Deborah many times to leave Ronnie. He was a truck driver who frequented the bar. Deborah was a person who needed companionship and love and would settle for even the worst of both.

But Angel was her little breath of fresh air. Even with her troubles with Judith and Michael. She said that Deborah had told her that when she was with Angel, there was nothing else in the world.

There was a reluctance, even a dread in Lillian when she talked about Michael. She would skip over him or keep her details vague, like someone who had to cross an asphalt road in bare feet in 110 degree weather. At the end of the summer and quite a few phone calls. Laurie finally begged her to tell her about Michael. Was he really such a disturbed child? Was there any warning of what would happen? It took some coaxing but the woman finally talked about him.

To be around him, he was very quiet. Deborah said before his father died he had been a happy boy, obedient and sweet. He did well in school and was always outside playing. He loved playing with Angel.

After the accident, it was like someone had turned off a light in him. There were fights at school and his grades diminished. It moved on to more troubling things. Regularly he and Judith were at odds and he wore a mask constantly. Then his mother found mutilated and dead animals about the yard, then his behavior involved such things as putting Angel in danger. It broke Deborah heart but she still loved him very much.

The night of that Halloween, Deborah left work, telling Lillian she was excited to watch a scary movie with her kids and sleep in the next day. Angel and Michael always crawled into bed with her and it was one of the things she looked forward to most in the world. She knew that she'd have to kick Judith's boyfriend out and the girl most likely wouldn't want to spend family time with them but Deborah would always try.

When Lillian heard of the massacre, and that Michael had been apprehended for it but that Angel was still alive, Lillian couldn't believe it. Michael, although disquieting, loved his mother, held her to be the most wonderful thing in the world. But Angel was alive, that she could believe.

What was left of the semester, Laurie barely earned a B. The uncovering of her past, with all it's bloody skeletons, had her brain shooting in dozens of different directions. The first time she thought of going to see Michael, she had only just found out he was being held at the creepy mental hospital just 45 miles away. Of course she dismissed it immediately. Like Cynthia had said. Leave him locked away. Leave him buried.

Time meant nothing to him. Day and night had long since melded into the same dark room with one lightbulb radiating a synthetic, dead glow. The desk was clear in front of him. The paints lined up and capped. The two usable brushes lay dry and clean. A stack of newspaper and magazines stacked at the edge of the desk, unshredded.

Nothing had bothered him before. Things happened or didn't happen, it was all the same to him. All that mattered was his routine, and knowing they were out there. Judith and Angel. Maybe someday he'd see them again. Sometimes he wondered why his mother wanted them to die.

Loomis.

Like an interrupting, annoying tear in a mask he would fabricate, Loomis had disrupted his routine. Before, he knew what he would think and what the day would not bring. But somehow he couldn't ignore her. When she had not come to the door for ages, he made the mask almost without thinking. He'd remembered the picture she left at the window, studying it as he could hear her yelling down the hallway about Conner's favorite, Lacey. Sometimes Conner gave Lacey extra pills, sometimes Conner gave Michael some. It made sleep come, if only for a little while. So he told her with paint on the window what happened to Lacey: Conner.

Loomis.

At first the visits were uncomfortable and he was anxious being out of his cell. Then he realized he might be able to leave. Loomis had keys to open doors. He could hear them in her pocket when she moved. But he never went through with the impulse. He fought it for an hour each time. To break the chain. After that the thought stopped. What would he do after? She would scream and try to run. Others would be watching and come. No, it was not the time.

So he would sit and listen to her talk. Not hearing her at first. It was all he could do to deal with the overwhelming stimulation of light and sound of her voice for he was used to none.

She talked about things that reminded him of before. Normal life. Books, camping, cereal, rivers, freeways, gas stations, cheese in a can, movies, dentists, pianos, stars and the moon, snow, mosquito bites, lightning and thunder, running, dancing, sports, jeans, babies crying…

Angel.

The other woman talked about her: Angel. And about his mother. She sat there, telling him about what he knew. It was wrong. She was wrong. Then she was against the wall. It's what she wanted. It's what she told him he was. Like Loomis said, a 'monster'. Holding her there, it wouldn't take much to finish her. Two, three more inches.

Loomis.

She came at him. Trying to stop him. She couldn't stop him. She fell and he thought of her keys. The chain, it kept him from getting to her so he broke it. Loomis had moved quickly but he didn't have to move so fast. He would take his time. Because time meant nothing.

But as he had thought, they came. There would be another time.

The other woman died and Loomis was mad. It was his fault? He could barely remember. 'I failed you, but you failed yourself too.' Michael stood to see her. She was leaving. Everything would be normal again. Why did it sicken him?

It had been weeks now and he sat, straight backed in his chair. Staring out beyond the desk in front of him through the wider than usual eye holes of his mask.

Loomis.

The sound of the key burrowing into the slot and retracting the bolt registered in his ears. Conner. No. Conner had a specific sound, more forceful and rushed. This was slow and luring. Michael didn't look as he listened to the door swing open a couple of feet, soft footsteps, then it closed.

Loomis.

The scent reached his nostrils almost as soon as the door had opened. Redolent and fresh like how he would remember rain in the woods. It was Loomis' smell. It made his muscles warm and ache.

Even if her footsteps were not as careful, he could still feel their reverberation of the floor. Standing next to him, he could feel warmth from the blood circulating in her body. He could find her in the dark if she was hiding.

Thoughts of reason did not always pester him but he thought of many things right now. She said she wasn't coming back but she was here, alone. Why had she come? To talk at him again? To tell him how he should think or act or what to remember and how to feel about it?

And so they were still for a moment, only the air stirred from their trading breaths.

She was moving and he felt her hand at the edge of his mask to take hold of it. His own hand shot up to prevent the violation, clamping around her wrist angrily. She of all people should know not to do it. But she didn't cry out or even whimper as he jerked her for emphasis. Whether or not it was intentional or because she lost her balance she dropped onto him and he had to reassess what was happening all over again. His first reaction was to throw her. She might hit the wall or roll to the floor. An impulse he forwent, almost curious at what was happening.

Mostly it was her eyes, even shadowed he could see them, rusty gold searchlights shining into the black limbo of his. Her mouth was prone to a resident, hushed smile even if she wasn't inclined.

Holding her wrist still, their arms crossed between them, Loomis still wore her blue uniform. The halo from the lamp highlighted the hair strands glowing pink-white in coronal loops. Michael tried to remember if he had ever noticed his mother's hair do that and his lungs seized. For a moment he couldn't remember what his own mother looked like and he couldn't break off Loomis to search his memory for her.

Again he was suddenly angry. Angry that Loomis could affect him like that. His free hand reached for the foot bed that was just next to him, fingers working under the mattress.

With a slight tilt of her head, Loomis leaned towards him, her eyes falling from his to the opening about his mouth. Strangely he wondered why he left such a gap there. There was no reason for it, no one would ever need to hear him. The mask blocked her gentle breath on his cheeks but it wavered his stringy hair that draped over it and brushed like an invisible feather across his lips. And she was very close. Without intense thought, Michael brought out the sharpened piece of metal he had torn from the underside of his bunk a long time ago. It crossed her throat, just grazing the smooth skin there. She had nearly reached his mouth, the wiry whiskers above his lip touching her lips when she had to stop or press into the blade.

His heart wasn't rushing. It was pounding; but slow powerful contractions that infused fresh, hot blood all through him. She could die, right here, it would be so easy. To move his hand the shortest of inches. Instead he eased the press of the knife slightly and she met his face with hers.

Neither moved for a moment. Loomis seemed to wait. Michael had no instinctual hint as to what he was supposed to do. It was a paralyzing experience for him, stunning and binding him more securely than the chains or a tranquilizer injection. Then she started to move her lips softly, stroking slowly at his stationary ones through the opening of his mask. Intermittently lowering the knife, his other hand released the wrist he had grasped the whole time. Her hand moved over to rest on his shoulder.

Michael was torn between two instincts. The familiar, savage desire that he felt he had a duty to or a new, foreign push that was just as persuasive. To pull her closer without causing fear. He wasn't sure he was capable of it. His free hand finally took her, probably more roughly than he intended, and lifted her up off of him as he rose as well. She was so much smaller than him he had to arch his shoulders and neck to keep a close approximation to her, he had to. She didn't fight, she didn't talk but she wrapped her arms around his neck, her face still close to his.

Hunching over he put both hands on the desk on either side of her and moved his mouth to hers. He wanted her to do it again, perhaps willing this time to participate. His one hand still clutched the makeshift handle of the knife, the metal scraping into the desktop. Little by little he tried to respond awkwardly which seemed to intensify her hold to him. His mask, it had always been a part of him, he was uncomfortable even by himself without it. Now it felt a hindrance, scratching and pressing at his face, distracting him from...enjoying...this. He pulled back and grabbed the chin of the dried paper mache. Sliding it upward he looked down on her as she patiently waited with beckoning eyes that now could scour his uncovered face. The demon in his head roared in rage and Michael suddenly raised his 'knife' and brought it down with all the force in his body.

He hit the dusty, cold concrete. Blankets wrapped around his leg and neck, weakly strangling him.

Loomis.

Where was she? No. He had not been awake. It had been a-

"Mikey!" A sharp knock came at the door and he could see Conner's face peering in the elongated window at him. With an amused grin, the orderly studied him.

"You have a bad dream and fall out of bed buddy?"

There was a muffled laugh and Conner moved away from the window.

Michael freed himself and went to the desk taking the blue paint and a brush. At the window he began to write. SimooL, simooL, simooL, simooL, simooL...