By the time Elissa, Thora, and Chance returned home from school that afternoon, Michael, Tyrone, and Lonnie were long gone, the only evidence that anything had happened in the house during the day being the dried mud in Libby's room, the scuffs on the wall, and a small spot of blood on the railing upstairs. There were splashes of blood on the ground in the backyard too, the grass painted a dark red where it landed, but it wasn't likely that the girls would ever notice that, not before it could rain again to wash it away.

Elissa was very much expecting something else to be waiting for her on her dresser when she headed upstairs to her room to put away her backpack, but to her surprise, there was nothing, or at least nothing that she was noticing right away. Everything appeared to still be as she'd left it. Had Michael, who she was certain it still was, decided to give up on tormenting her? It seemed unlikely to her and she was cautious as she moved across the hall from her room to the bathroom. As she flicked on the bathroom light, she was surprised again to not find anything that was not obviously out of place.

After she used the toilet, she washed her hands and that was when she noticed that the hand towel that they'd been using to dry their hands was missing. Perhaps Thora or Chance had put it in the laundry for some reason. Trying to brush it off as nothing more than that, Elissa reached under the sink and pulled out a fresh towel, before heading back downstairs.

She found Thora and Chance in the kitchen. Chance had taken stuff out of the refrigerator to make a couple of ham sandwiches, as well as the jug of milk.

"Do you want a sandwich, Lis?" Chance asked, looking up at Elissa as she entered the room.

"No thanks," she replied. "I will have some of that milk though."

As Elissa moved towards the cabinets to retrieve a glass for herself, Chance and Thora exchanged a quick glance, both surprised themselves that Elissa wasn't upset yet again about Michael Myers and that house. They still didn't know about the locket that Elissa had discovered the previous day. The locket with 'L.S.' engraved on it. And she didn't plan on telling them how she hadn't discovered anything that day either. She desperately wanted even one of them to believe her, but she didn't want to push them away either by continuing trying to convince them that she had seen Michael. So she was simply going to leave them alone about it.


Once the girls ate their sandwiches and drank their milk before moving on to the living room to sit and chat, he felt that it was safe enough to let himself back inside, the back door opening and closing in complete silence. He then slowly walked across the kitchen floor to the refrigerator, which he opened and stared into. There was nothing special about the inside of the fridge though and it wasn't long before he reached into his jumpsuit, removing an object that was a lot bigger than any newspaper article or locket, which he set down inside on one of the shelves.

Closing the refrigerator, he turned around and slowly approached the dining room, standing in the doorway between it and the kitchen. From there, he could clearly hear everything the girls were saying.

"I meant to tell you," Thora started, "I managed to convince them to come back out here tomorrow to finally hook up our cable and wi-fi. I don't have class tomorrow, so hopefully it'll be all ready by the time you two get back from class."

"Finally!" Chance said in return. "I've missed TV."

"You mean you've missed Skinemax," Elissa responded, which caused all three girls to break out into laughter.

"Forget Skinemax," Thora said. "I want some real skin soon."

Laughing again, Chance then said, "Maybe a repairman like you'd see on Skinemax?"

Again slowly, Michael moved around the dining room's table to the right where a door led to the front hall. Opening the door, he was unable to prevent that one from creaking, which caused him to freeze. The girl's chatting and laughing continued uninterrupted though, so he moved through the doorway, leaving the door open behind him, not daring to attempt closing it and knowing that the girls would also likely wonder why it was open.


After talking for a while, about finally getting their cable and wi-fi hooked up, how their classes were going, and one of their two recent most popular topics, Libby (the other being Michael Myers, a topic they carefully avoided), they decided to go ahead and have dinner. Deciding that they wanted hamburgers, Thora offered to cook them on the stove. When she entered the dining room, she immediately noticed that the door leading to front hall was partially open. Puzzled, she walked over to it and, peeking into the front hall to see if something had somehow bumped it open, she closed it again, pulling on the knob once it was closed to make sure it wasn't loose.

Shrugging it off, she continued to the kitchen, where she turned on the radio, 'The Ballad of Harry Warden' by John McDermott playing through the speakers. Pulling out a frying pan from the cabinets, she then turned to the refrigerator, opening it only to find something very peculiar sitting on the top shelf, right in the front. It almost looked like a piece of raw steak, a small amount of blood have seeped out of it onto the shelf.

"God dammit," she said to herself, feeling a bit disgusted at the idea that one of her roommates would just so carelessly leave something like that in the fridge without anything even underneath it.

She reached out to grab it, cringing at the feel of it, and she pulled it out for a closer look.

"Holy fuck!" she then shouted when she noticed the veins sticking out of it, dropping it to the floor where it landed with a wet smack.

Elissa and Chance came running into the room, wondering what happened. Thora had backed away from the fridge, the door still open, and she had one hand over her mouth while she pointed at the heart with the other.

Elissa didn't, couldn't say anything as she put her own hand over her mouth, just as shocked and disgusted. Chance however, while shocked, wasn't nearly as disgusted. She was majoring in biology, after all. It wasn't her first time seeing a heart like that. Looking around for a moment, she saw what she wanted and grabbed a pen that she had left on the small kitchen table. Approaching the heart, she crouch down and prodded at it with the tip of pen before using the pen to flip it over on the floor.

Studying it for a moment, she then said, "Well, I'm pretty sure it's not a human heart. I'd say it belongs to kind of a small animal. Maybe a dog."

"I don't care what it came from!" Thora replied. "It's still awful! Who would do something like this?"

Standing up, Chance started to set her pen back on the table, but thought better of it and dropped it into the trashcan instead. It wasn't a big deal. She had plenty of other pens.

"Well, my guess would be Tyrone," Chance answered, looking at Elissa briefly, who still didn't say anything.

Elissa was certain it wasn't Tyrone, but she wasn't going to argue. She'd been down that road already and she knew how it ended.

"Should we call the cops?" Thora asked, looking at Elissa too and then back at Chance, her hand no longer over her mouth, but she still had a look of fright upon her face.

"I'll call them," Chance said, pulling out her cell phone and dialing '911' as she closed the refrigerator.

She looked down at the heart as she waited for the operator to pick up. It seemed to take longer than it should have and she almost hung up when someone finally answered.

"911, what is your emergency?" asked the operator, a woman.

"Can you send an officer to 45 Lampkin Lane?" Chance replied. "We've found...um...a heart."

The operator was silent for a moment.

"A heart? Ma'am, is this a joke? Because we're busy enough tonight, with the sheriff missing."

"Missing? What do you mean?"

"Yes, he's been missing since a little before noon. Turn on the news if you want details. I'm not a reporter."

"Well, this isn't a joke. We've found a heart in our refrigerator."

"Is anyone currently in danger?"

"No."

"Then an officer will be by later. No officers can be spared at the moment. Is that all?"

"Yeah. Thanks."

Chance then hung up and looked at her friends. Elissa had moved closer while Chance had been on the phone.

"She said an officer will be by later," Chance told them. "She said something about the sheriff missing."

Not knowing what else to do with the heart, Chance got a Ziploc bag and scooped the heart into it. She and Thora then scrubbed their hands before attending to the mess the heart had made on the shelf in the fridge and on the floor. None of them felt very hungry anymore, not for hamburgers.


Libby checked her phone for what seemed the hundredth time that day. Still nothing. She frowned. It was as if Tyrone had disappeared into thin air. He hadn't shown at their designated meeting place, on the corner a few blocks away from the house, and she'd circled the block for what seemed like forever before giving up and returning to the apartment.

Several times she'd started to send him a message before pausing, wondering if he were still hiding in the house waiting to make his move. She didn't want to text him and risk having his phone going off. She rolled her eyes. Of course she'd reminded him to turn the ringer off right before dropping him off, but Tyrone had a way of forgetting things. So she didn't call or text, not for the first few hours.

But now it was getting close to ten, and there had been no texts or calls telling her to come get him, nor had he called to say he'd walked to a friend's house, or had someone else pick him up. She wondered if he'd chickened out, and simply waited for her to drive away before calling one of his friends to come pick him up. That didn't seem too far beyond the pale, either.

She gripped her phone tighter, struggling to think of something. She didn't want to call the jail and ask if he were there, because that would look awfully suspicious, and might have ramifications for her as well. Shit! She hadn't even thought of that! What if they HAD picked him up and he'd blabbed that she had been the one to put him up to it? Would they come for her too? Could they be headed to the apartment right now with a set of special silver bracelets for her to wear?

She jumped up, grabbed her keys and bolted out of the apartment, her heart pounding like a drum. What to do? Libby threw open the door of her beat up VW, climbed in and started it up, pulling away from the apartments as smoothly as she could, her mind going a million miles an hour. Whatever was going on, she didn't want to be at the apartment if there was a chance the police were en route thanks to Tyrone's big mouth. She needed to get away, to think.

Driving down the main road aimlessly, she struggled to clear her mind enough to think logically. Spotting the Burger Basket at the next light, she pulled in and parked, shutting her lights off. Okay, think. She drew a deep breath, willing her mind to stop racing.

There was no guarantee Tyrone was in jail, but she also did not want to call up there and risk having suspicion cast on her regardless. She didn't have any of his friend's numbers stored in her phone, and Tyrone had always been very protective of his own phone, griping if she as much as even touched it. So calling any of his friends was out.

Driving by the house might work, she thought, if only to see if there were cop cars out front. That would be a fairly good indicator shit had gone south. There was always the chance of arousing suspicion, and if there WERE currently police there it was the last place she wanted to be.

And if the coast appeared to be clear, she could call one of her ex-roommates under the pretension of coming to collect the rest of her stuff. She HAD put it off for the most part, and her weekend deadline to be out was rapidly approaching. Yeah, that would be a plausible reason to call, and if they happened to mention Tyrone she could simply claim to have not seen him. That would likely work as well, and it wasn't even technically lying.

Satisfied with her plan, she started her car back up and pulled out of the Burger Basket, headed for the house. As she drove, she felt her anxiety lessen, confident in her plan. After all, there was no law against driving past a house, especially one that happened to still have most of her belongings inside.

The more she thought about it, it couldn't even be considered suspicious, if one of the girls happened to see her drive by, what of it? They didn't own Lampkin Lane. She could drive wherever she pleased, whenever she pleased, and there was not a thing wrong with that.

It was with a burst of confidence she made the turn onto Lampkin, sure that no matter what she had the wits to handle it. She felt as cool as the proverbial cucumber.

Then she saw the police car parked out front, and Chance just opening the door for the officer on the porch and Libby's foot reflexively mashed the gas pedal fighting the sudden urge she had to vomit.


"So let me get this straight. You're saying your roommate opened the fridge, and this was sitting on the top shelf?"

"Yes, sir. I'm not sure, but I think it's a dog heart." Chance said, Elissa standing behind her silently while Thora sat on the couch, her brow creased. Officer Pickford gingerly lifted the Ziplock bag containing the chunk of tissue, and turned it from side to side once. "I'm almost certain Tyrone Bradford did it. In fact, I'd bet money on it."

"Was this man here? Did you see him? Did you see him place this... thing in the fridge, or did you see him going out the back door, or did you see him on the lawn? In the street? Did he say anything to you to make you think he had anything to do with this?"

Chance paused for a moment, her face falling as she understood what the officer was trying to say, in so many words.

"Well, were there any signs of forced entry?"

"No, not to my knowledge." Chance said quietly, looking over to Elissa. Elissa blinked, and shook her head no. Pickford scanned both girls faces before looking back to the gruesome contents of the bag.

"Okay. Here's the thing Miss Ruskin. I'm not saying you are wrong, and that this Tyrone is not be the person responsible. In fact, I'd be willing to go as far as to agree with you that you are more than likely right. But, and this is a big one, I can't go around arresting people based on 'I'm sure it's him.' It just doesn't work that way."

"I understand, Officer." Chance said, looking rather deflated. Pickford held up his free hand, as if attempting to wave away the look of disappointment off her face.

"You were right to call, and I want you to call again if anything else happens. You definitely did the right thing, don't think you didn't. This-" He lifted the bag and made a slight face "- is definitely not something I would want to see in my fridge, and I'd seriously question the mental state of whomever left it. That guy...Doc Loomis would have a field day with this, if he were here. Anyway, I don't blame you for calling, and on any other night I'm sure we'd have much more time and manpower to devote to this. But with the Sheriff... well..."

Elissa looked at him at the mention of the missing lawman, and he shook his head.

"Never mind. Look, I really need to get back out there. I'm going to take this... thing with me, and see if someone can give it a look over later and determine exactly what it is. And in the meantime, if you need us, do call."

"All right, Have a good evening, Officer." Chance said, as he turned to leave. He paused for a moment, and almost looked as if he were going to say something else before thinking better of it. Then walked out the door and towards his car, where he seemed to spend a moment staring at the house again before departing, lights flickering as he went to rejoin the search for Sheriff Elamb.

"I'm still sure it's Tyrone. I get what he's saying he can't just go out and arrest people based on someone else's word, but couldn't he at least go question him?" Chance said, shutting the front door and making certain it latched and that the lock was engaged properly.

"He said they were having manpower issues. That's probably why." Thora answered, having sat on the couch quietly through the exchange. Chance and Elissa glanced over, both secretly thankful to hear her say something finally. In a strange way Thora's silence had bothered both of them more than anything else that had happened that evening.

Ever since she'd clammed up after finding the lump of bloody tissue in the fridge, Chance had been bothered by the fact that her usually vocal and no-nonsense friend was so shaken up over what she perceived as another one of Tyrone's pranks, albeit disgusting and disturbing. Elissa was disturbed for several reasons. She felt almost guilty for the small surge of 'I told you so' that had welled up in her guts almost to immediately dissipate after seeing the horrified look on her friend's face as she digested what had just happened. For a brief moment Elissa understood exactly how she must have looked and come across after that first scare, and how it must have felt for her friends to witness that. The fact that Thora had been involved at all in this latest event also bothered her on several levels.

Before tonight, Elissa felt that SHE had been the target of all these disturbing happenings, everything centering around her to the point that for a while she'd questioned her own sanity. Chance and Thora and even Libby had not seemed to even be on the radar as it were; everything seemed to happen to her, and her alone. The fact that the heart had been left in the fridge for any one of them to come across was especially bothersome when she contrasted it with the very personal trend the strange items she'd seen over the last couple of days had taken. They'd been appearing in her room, in her drawers, on her dresser, and now suddenly they were being left in the fridge where Elissa was not guaranteed to be the one to find them.

What could that possibly mean? Elissa wasn't sure, but she did know that it certainly did not bode well. Leaving the heart there had been a bold move, and if pushed to explain its significance she would have guessed that it was a message that he felt comfortable enough to not care if the other girls began to think something really was amiss. Sure, the clipping had been out on the porch, as had the small promotional Strode Realty calendar, but those had all been things easily explained away. A heart? Not so much. While it was feasible that a scrap of paper might blow on a porch, or fall out of a nook in a long vacant house, there was no fucking explaining away a dog's heart in the refrigerator. No, he was getting bolder, and that worried her.

However, this knowledge was not the only thing Elissa had taken away from this evening. While Officer Pickford had not really been any help in Chance and Thora's eyes, Elissa felt very differently. Sure, he hadn't gone out and arrested either Tyrone or Myers, he had given her something. An idea.

She honestly hadn't thought about it before now, and felt rather foolish for not thinking of it when she'd pored over all those articles the day before. There had been a constant in every one of the accounts she'd read other than Myers, an unfortunate family member, and a trail of grisly deaths. And Pickford's offhand comment had brought it to the forefront of her mind.

Loomis. Myers' doctor. If anyone knew Myers, it was Sam Loomis. The man that had spent decades trying to keep him under lock and key while warning the world of his danger, as well as pursuing him with an almost sixth sense. In fact Loomis had been mentioned in almost every single article to the point where it seemed as if without one there couldn't be the other. As if Loomis were a modern day literal Captain Ahab.

And Michael was his white whale.

Elissa had not ironed out the logistics of her plan just yet, but she knew that if anyone could possibly help her and her friends, it was Loomis. She had to contact him, somehow.

Before they tried to settle in for the night, Chance checked the backdoor too. Discovering that it was unlocked, she locked it, unable to help wondering how long it'd been like that. Peeking out of the window briefly, she then turned around and left the kitchen to join her friends in the living room.