Chapter 10
Lost
The Tower Farm
6:25 P.M.
The Tower Farm party was in full swing. People ranging in age from thirteen to twenty-five were partying the night away. Most of them were dressed in costumes. But a few of them were in plain clothes. A few girls dancing on a dinner table wore nothing more than their socks, Emily among them. Empty, full, and half-empty beer cans, bottles, and Dixie cups covered nearly every square inch of the house.
Slater made his way through the dense crowds, a Dixie cup full of homebrew in his hands. He wore a beret on his head and his long, wavy hair flowed from underneath it.
"Party on, man," he shouted to a nearby person dressed as a fairy. Emily turned to face Slater head on.
"I'm no man," she screamed in a drunken slur and grabbed her own breasts as if to prove it before walking off. Slater just smiled and, in his purple haze, said, "Whatever, man."
Carrie was too preoccupied to notice any of the festivities. At the moment, she was tied up with Travis. At the moment, they were alone in a bedroom at the back of the farmhouse. Travis was holding Carrie close to him, his arm draped across her belly and gripping it tightly.
Carrie sighed as Travis kissed her on the neck, smearing his expertly-applied Joker makeup.
"What's wrong?" Travis asked, never looking up.
"It's nothing. I just got a really bad feeling." Carrie replied.
"Bad like how?" Travis asked.
"I don't know," Carrie said. "It's, like, women's intuition or something like that."
"Well, don't let it bother you. It's probably nothing."
Carrie rolled over and faced Travis. "I hope you're right."
With that, Carrie leaned over and kissed him with such ferocity that it began making more than the hair on the back of Travis's neck stand up.
"You know, Doc, we've been searching this town all damn day and haven't found shit."
Sheriff Brackett was getting impatient with Loomis. Brackett had been driving his squad car around all day with Loomis in the passenger's seat.
"Are you sure Michael's here, Loomis? We haven't seen hide nor hair of him all day."
"I'm sure of it, Brackett," Loomis said. "I've studied this man for nearly a decade, and everything my grandfather told me about him is true. That he shows no pity, or remorse. No guilt or conscience, absolutely no sense of good or evil, right or wrong."
At that moment the police radio let out a garbled radio transmission at Brackett. Brackett picked up the mike and pressed the talk button.
"Say again, please," he said.
Radio Dispatcher: "Sheriff, we need you to respond to a 911 call at Kim's Auto Shop on East 9."
Brackett: "What is the nature of the emergency?"
Dispatcher: "Homicide."
Silence gripped the vehicle for five long seconds.
Loomis spoke first. "So what was it you said about not finding anything?" He then pulled out a large .44 revolver and checked to see that it was fully loaded before spinning it.
Brackett looked straight ahead with a panicked look on his face. He whipped the vehicle around in a 180 and turned on the noise and cherries, and then he sped down the road into the night.
Stephen and Amber walked slowly through the fog. Karl was right behind them. They had been walking for who knew how long now. They had gone too far to turn back in case they were lost. Amber clutched to Stephen's arm tightly. Clearly, she had been freaked out by what they all saw at the house.
Karl was a few steps behind them. He was perusing the album he swiped from the home and looking at all the pictures, hoping to make a connection.
"Hey, Stephen," he called out. "There's a picture of your mom with that Laurie Strode chick. You're right: they were cousins."
"Were?" Stephen and Amber stopped.
"Here's a picture of the two of them. They're younger, but still recognizable. Then there's this photo right alongside it. If I'm right, it means Laurie's dead."
Stephen looked at the photo. Sure enough, there was a photo of two tombstones side-by-side. The first one read, "Laurie Strode: 1961-1987: Wife and Mother." The second one was very disturbing.
It read, "Jamie Lloyd-Caruthers/Strode: 5/13/1981–10/30/1995: Sister, Mother."
"Well this is a very interesting clue. Jamie Lloyd died the day you were supposedly born." Amber chimed.
"An amazing coincidence," Stephen observed.
"Can we go now?" Amber asked. "These woods are really creeping me out."
Sheriff Brackett stood next to Kendall's body as it was carted into the back of the medical examiner's vehicle. Over near another body on the ground, an eighteen-year-old boy appeared to be sobbing into the arms of a female officer. Loomis was standing next to Brackett.
"Haven't seen anything like this in-"
"Ten years," both Brackett and Loomis said.
"I was there, too, remember?" Loomis noted.
"What the hell are we dealing with, Loomis?" Brackett asked. "How can a man do this?"
""Okay, you have to stop thinking that we're dealing with a normal man here. We're talking about a soulless killing machine driven by pure animal instinct."
The radio in Brackett's car chose that particular moment to begin squawking. Brackett walked back to his patrol car, opened the door and grabbed his radio.
"Brackett, we got a call about five minutes ago regarding a prowler and a possible break-in at the Myers place, possibly related."
Sheriff Brackett smiled and said, "Thank you." He looked over at Loomis.
"Loomis!" Brackett yelled. Loomis looked up from his conversation with Deputy Stubbs.
Brackett signaled for Loomis to approach him. Loomis walked up to the car to see what Brackett wanted.
"It looks like you're going to get more than you bargained for tonight, Loomis. We just got a call about a prowler and a possible break-in at the Myers home."
Loomis looked at Brackett in horror and whispered, "Goddamnit."
Brackett must have heard him, because as he walked away he shouted back, "God won't have anything to do with this town."
"I think the mist is starting to clear," Karl offered hopefully.
"No," Stephen said. "If anything, it's gotten thicker."
Amber was definitely scared now. "We're going in circles, Stephen."
"What makes you say that?" Stephen asked.
"Because we've already passed that dead skunk twice," she said, pointing to a skunk corpse nearby.
"Face it, Stephen," Karl said with less optimism. "We're lost. We've been walking for an hour already."
Stephen contemplated the options. If they kept going, they might wind up very lost. If they stopped, they might not start moving again.
"Let's take a moment to rest and grab out bearings," he finally said. Immediately, Amber fell to the ground exhausted. Karl took the opportunity to look over the photo album more.
Stephen looked around for any sign of the farmhouse. He didn't get it. They should have been there in fifteen minutes. But the farm was nowhere in sight.
"Stephen," Karl called out. "Here's something else." Stephen sighed and walked back to Karl.
"I've been looking at this photo album. I've seen a dozen pictures of Kara before and after you were born. There's this one that looks like it was taken three days before Halloween…" Karl pulled out a photo of an entire family. Kara stood in the middle with a young boy in front of her. To her left was a grumpy looking, middle-aged man with short golden hair holding a woman who looked to be just as old. She wore coke-bottle glasses.
On Kara's right was a man with long brown hair and seemed to be a living embodiment of the grunge style of the mid-nineties. Not all that dissimilar to how Danny looked now...
"...and then there's this one, taken that Christmas judging by the dates at the bottom of the photos."
Karl removed a second photo and handed to Stephen. It also contained Kara, but she was holding a newborn baby.
"Don't you find it odd that she never appeared pregnant before Halloween that year and suddenly she has a newborn child? A son, it looks like?"
"What's the big deal?" Stephen asked. "She may have been babysitting." He said hopefully.
"Babysitting in every single photo of her afterwards?" Karl countered.
"No," Stephen said. "Are you suggesting that Kara isn't my real mom?"
"You don't find it odd at all that there are no photos in your house showing Kara carrying you? It doesn't bother you that Kara isn't pregnant in the Halloween photo or that you're not in it? The boy in the photo is too old to be you, so it has to be Danny!"
"Shut the fuck up, Karl!" Stephen shouted, startling Amber. "I've had enough of your fucking bullshit! I went to the Myers house looking for answers and all I found was a shitty fucking photo album and you trying to fucking build a fucking puzzle with pieces that fucking don't fucking exist!"
He intermittently punctuated his sentence by poking Karl in the chest with his finger.
"Stephen," Amber said with a frightened voice. "Calm down. It's just a suggestion. It doesn't mean anything."
"Look," Karl began. "I know this thing is making you a little crazy. But it just doesn't fit…"
Karl's words trailed off as Stephen was drawn to a new sound: the snapping of dead twigs. He was sure they were alone, but he definitely heard footsteps. He looked at Amber and Karl, but neither of them was moving.
The sound grew louder, closer. Stephen turned away from Karl and Amber to look for the source of the sound. Everything seemed to slow down, maybe even stop. He gazed through the fog. Movement caught his eyes. A dark shadow was moving in the mists.
"Hello? Is anyone home?" Karl's voice slowly drifted back to Stephen's senses. Stephen turned back slowly to his friends.
"Can anyone else hear that?" Stephen asked.
"I don't know! All I heard was me preaching to the motherfucking choir!" Karl yelled. "You know what, Stephen? I've had it with your bullshit! I'm fucking leaving!"
Stephen hadn't heard him. He was too busy concentrating on the sound again.
"Hey, fuck-face!" Karl yelled approaching Stephen with a fist. "I ain't done talking to…"
SNAP!
Karl stopped. He definitely heard it. He loosened his fist and walked up beside Stephen.
"You heard it too?" Stephen asked.
"Of course I heard it that time? How could you not? It was like it was right behind… Me!"
Karl dropped the photo album and turned around fast, but saw nothing.
"Stephen," Karl said, searching wildly for something, anything. "Let's get out of here!"
"I ain't going to argue with that!" Stephen said. He reached around for Amber. But she was gone.
"Hey, where's Amber?" Stephen asked.
Karl looked around him, but saw no trace of her. He shrugged his shoulders at Stephen.
"I have no clue. She was right there behind you before we heard that noise," Karl said.
Stephen opened his mouth to say something else, but was cut off by a terrified scream that seemed to echo everywhere.
"Was that…" Karl began, but he was cut off by another loud scream.
"Oh, no," Stephen said. The two broke into a run from a dead stop and chased after the source of the noise.