When it comes to fan fiction, I'm not one to write an alternate version of an episode, movie, etc and tell the same story my way. "It'd be better if so-and-so did this instead and my OC was there, oh, and if the sisters got called out and punished for some minor mistake." After seeing Halloween Kills, though, I started to think how I'd have done the story if I was in charge.
To be brief, I would have centered the story around Brackett. Things would play out roughly as they did in the finished product until the hospital scene. Brackett, who would be retired and living in town rather than a security guard, would come in, having heard about the killings on the police scanner. He would whip the crowd into a frenzy and then take them out in search of Michael Myers. He would be something of a Captain Ahab character, blinded by his own desire to destroy the man who killed his daughter and not caring who or what got in the way.
He would eventually figure out that Michael Myers was making his way "home" and it would end with the following sequence. I was going to write it all out, but this scene is the one that I really wanted to convey, and once it was done, I was happy, so I'll let it stand on its own.
When Brackett reached the Myers house, a mob had already formed in the street. He heard them before he saw them, a low, uneasy buzz that vibrated your eardrums and made your fillings ache. There were a dozen of them, maybe two, a mix of men and women, young and old, black and white, all driven on a tide of fear and anger. Fear of what lurked in the shadows, and anger that people they knew and loved were even now cooling in the morgue beneath Haddonfield Memorial. A pick-up truck was angled across the street, its headlights trained on the front of the house, and a line of cars made their way down the street from the direction of Mercer Street.
Brackett drove up onto the sidewalk, the Blazer's big tires easily jumping the curb, and rolled to a stop in the well-manicured lawn fronting the Myers house. A curtain fluttered in the front downstairs window and his heart skipped a staggering beat.
Was it Myers?
He couldn't be sure, but he thought he saw a faze staring out at him, a face that had haunted his dreams for forty years, a face that he saw almost as often as he saw his daughter's as they carried her body out of the Wallace house.
Maybe it was Myers...maybe it wasn't...but one thing was sure. Myers would come here. Of that, he was certain.
Grabbing the revolver from the passenger seat, Brackett swung the door open and lumbered painfully out.. The night air was crisp and damp, the moon peeking through skeletal tree tops like the face of a cruel god smiling on his infernal handiwork. The restless din of three dozen voices blotted out the crickets and a bitter breeze swept over the assembly, rustling the trees towering over the street. A few good old boys with rifles walked into the yard and the rest of the crowd pressed closer. Cries of "Fuck Michael Myers!" and "Burn the place!" went up, and someone threw a rock that landed in the bushes along the porch. Another rock came down on the porch with a thud, and a black man in a baseball cap helped an old redneck make a torch from rags and a thick branch. A teenage boy hit the mailbox with a baseball bat and it flew off, tumbling across the yard.
Brackett leaned against the door of the Blazer and braced his arms on it, pointing the revolver through the open window. Another rock sailed through the night, and the bay window exploded into a million pieces. There was a crackle of nervous energy in the air, and Brackett sensed that he was no longer in control - nobody was. He didn't care about that, however, didn't care about anything as long as that son of a bitch Myers answered for what he'd done to Annie.
The front door creaked open, and Brackett's heart launched into his throat. He curled his finger around the trigger and held his breath. Little John, clad in a robe and boxer shorts, came out. His face was drawn, worried. As soon as the people saw him, they started to scream for blood. "Where is he?" someone shrieked, as though Little John were knowingly hiding Myers.
Little John looked around, scared and confused. Big John came tentatively to the door, bent defensively at the waist and looking ever more scared than his lover. Little John turned and motioned Big John back into the house.
The redneck held his torch up and another rock smashed through an upstairs window. Tommy Doyle broke from the pack and went up the walk, Lonnie joining him. Little John tensed but Tommy held up a staying hand. They exchanged a few words, and Brackett clearly heard, "The hell you are."
"Burn it!" someone screamed.
Little John threw up his arms. Brackett couldn't make out what they were saying, but it looked like they were asking if he'd seen Michael Myers. "Get 'em out of there!" Brackett called. He meant Little John and his partner no harm and didn't want to see either one of them hurt. It wasn't them he was after...it was the house. It was a beacon for Myers and if he wasn't here already, Brackett wanted to make sure he wouldn't have the chance.
A few other men went up onto the porch. One tried to go into the house, but Little John shoved him back. Suddenly, Russ Evans had him in a headlock and Dan Joiner and Billy Hoktchkiss were dragging him into the yard. Brackett's mouth went dry and his heartbeat sped up. He didn't want to see Little John hurt, but if physically moving him was what it took, so be it.
The crowd roared, and all at once, the floodgates burst. An army stormed the yard, some running into the house and others surrounding Little John. Someone punched Little John, and in seconds, he was on the ground, curling into a ball as a dozen feet lashed out at him. Brackett's stomach knotted and something like fear gripped his chest. "Cut it out!" he yelled.
Big John staggered from the house in a panic and tried to flee, but someone tackled him from behind and slammed him against the ground. Little John got to his knees, nose busted and face bloody, and someone kicked him square in the stomach. "Stop!" Big John screamed as a dozen of his friends and neighbors began to kick and beat him. These were people he talked with at the grocery store, people he had known for years, people he loved and who loved him in turn. Tonight, though, things were different. Forty years of pent-up fear and anger were coming out and they didn't care if their victim was Michael Myers...or Little John.
For a moment, Brackett was frozen in place, not sure what to do. Forty years ago, as sheriff of Haddonfield, he wouldn't have hesitated to stop an innocent man being beaten in his own front yard, but this was different. He wasn't the sheriff and tonight, his daughter's murderer was out there, doing to other parents what he'd done to Brackett so long ago. If these two men had to die so that Brackett could see that bastard in pieces...was that too high a price to pay?
No, he decided, it wasn't. It wasn't pleasant, it wasn't right, but there was no room for moralizing tonight. He had spent the last four decades believing that he would leave this earth while the man who murdered his daughter sat in a cushy asylum. He longed to see the bastard suffer, to see the bastard die, and now he was so close that he could taste it.
His father had a saying. Sometimes it's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to ask permission.
Those words had never rang truer to Brackett than they did tonight.
A terrible clatter rose from inside the house as frenzied gangs searched for Michael Myers and destroyed everything in their path. Through the now broken front window, flames raced up the curtains and crackled as they spread from the sofa to the carpet.
Sirens rose in the distance, and Brackett turned just as two patrol cars came to a screeching halt less than thirty feet away. A uniform jumped from one of the cars and drew his gun on the crowd. He was young and Hispanic, but Brackett didn't see that.
He saw Frank Hawkins. Forty years ago, Frank Hawkins kept Dr. Loomis from killing Michael Myers.
He wasn't going to do it again.
Like a man in a dream, Brackett watched himself raise the revolver and aim it at the deputy. Before he could pull the trigger, however, someone screamed his name. He brought the gun around. Sheriff Barker knelt behind the open door of the second cruiser, his gun thrust through the open window and trained on Brackett. The red and blue lights painted his black face in a sickly, throbbing beat. "Drop the gun!"
The mob that had been working on Big John and Little John fell back. A few men aimed their rifles at the deputy and several other deputies ran for cover behind trees and parked cars. The fire in the Myers house had grown exponentially in the last minute. Now the entire living room was consumed and thick smoke poured out of the shattered window. People leapt from first story windows and staggered out the front door, coughing. None of them seemed to realize that they were in the middle of a standoff, and none of them tried to attack. There had to be others inside, Brackett thought crazily.
Hopefully one of them was Michael Myers.
"Drop the gun, Brackett!" Barker called again.
Brackett's heart slammed in his chest. He hadn't had a gun pointed at him in forty years and he forgot how invigorating it was. He hadn't felt this alive in years. "Hawkins got in the way of justice once," Brackett yelled, "it's not happening again."
In the front yard, Little John crawled over to a sobbing Big John.
"This isn't justice, Brackett, now drop the goddamn gun!"
The two Johns held each other and cried. In the firelight, their faces were bloodied and bruised. Little John's nose was lumpy and misshapen, and both of Big John's eyes were swollen shut. Looking at them, really looking for the first time, Brackett felt a chill.
This isn't justice.
This isn't justice.
Brackett started to lower the gun. At that exact moment, two things happened simultaneously. A dark figure stepped into the light cast by the fire, and someone cried out, "There he is!" in an excited tone. Their words ran together and were largely blotted out by the rising roar of the inferno sweeping the Myers house.
The gunshot, however, was clear as a bell.
In an instant, all hell broke loose. Barker fired and something punched Brackett in the guts, driving him back against the Blazer. On instinct, Brackett fired back; the first shot tinked off the squad car, and the second struck Barker in the shoulder. The deputy lay stretched out in the front yard, bleeding, and the men who had beaten Big John and Little John took cover, one falling as deputies fired from concealment.
Brackett's knees quivered, and numbness stole over him. He started to fall, grabbed the door, and held himself up. Barker popped his head up and fired again. The bullet shattered the back window, shards gouging the side of Brackett's face. Brackett stuck his arm out and jerked the trigger three times in rapid succession. The first round went wild, disappearing into the night. The second tore out Barker's throat in a spray of blood, and the third knocked the cowboy hat off his head. His eyes went wide, and for a brief second that lasted far too long, Brackett saw shock and panic on his face before he fell limply to the side.
Gunshots sounded all around Brackett, but they were distant, faraway. His knees gave out and he spilled to the pavement, the gun flying from his hand. He felt no pain, no fear, only a deep and coddling sense of warmth. He stretched out on his side and tried to get his breathing under control. It occurred to him that he was dying, but he didn't care. Dying was painless...a whole lot more painless than living.
His vision started to gray, but cleared when something moved. He blinked, and the world was on its side. Even so, he saw the white-faced apparition walking toward him, its expression fixed, its eye black as the night around him.
Michael Myers.
Myers held a long metal pole in his hands.
Deep down, Brackett felt a stirring of hatred, but it was masked by the warmth of coming death. Myers stood over him and tilted his head quizzically to one side. Brackett's breathing was ragged, labored. "You killed her," he said through cold lips. "You killed my little girl."
Myers raised the pole over his head.
"You killed my Ann -"
The pole came down in a flash and broke through Brackett's skull. Brackett jumped, and darkness stole over him. Michael Myers watched the blood and brain matter oozing from the old man's nose and years, then turned and walked calmly away.
By now, the house was fully engulfed, smoke pouring into the night and timbers breaking like old bones. A woman jumped from a second story window and landed in the yard with a thud. Someone else ran out on fire, but fell and died before reaching the sidewalk. The remnants of the mob regrouped on Main Street in front of the drugstore, a dozen people turning into two, and two into three. People who had heard the commotion at the Myers house came out to see what was happening, and shouts filled the air. Tommy Doyle dropped onto a bench and ran his fingers through his hair, sickened by what had been done to Big John and Little John. He hugged himself tightly and took a series of deep breaths.
"Man, fuck this shit!" someone yelled. They grabbed a metal trash bin and launched it through the drugstore's plate glass window; it crashed with a sound like judgement day and the alarm bell began to ring. Just as it had with Big John and Little John, the mob's furry at Michael Myers boiled over, but he was not there to take the brunt of it, so something else stood in this place. A man kicked over a newspaper dispenser, and copies of The Haddonfield Register spilled out across the sidewalk. Someone climbed through the ruined window, perhaps to look for Michael Myers inside, and then another person followed. A boy with a baseball bat took out his anger on a car parked at the curb, and more people went into the store.
Tommy could only listen as the violence spread. More windows exploded. People he had known his entire life, people who loved Jesus and obeyed the law, came out of shops with armloads of stuff and ran off into the night. Tommy's mind rebelled at the reality of what was happening. Maybe they thought they were helping. Michael Myers might be in this flatscreen TV, they surely thought, I better take it home and find out. That had to be it, otherwise...what were they doing?
What was happening?
A car drove into the town square, and it was instantly surrounded. People battered the hood and tried to pull the driver out. The driver hit the gas and the car took off with a guttural vroom, knocking someone down and rolling over another person's foot. A fire started in the post office, and a thousand alarms formed a skull cracking cacophony of noise. Someone took a jack o lantern from a stoop and threw it at an approaching squad car; it landed on the hood and burst wide open, showering the windshield with seeds and slimy entrails. A voice came over the car's loudspeaker/ "Disperse immediately. Go back to your homes."
Like the hapless motorist who had just narrowly escaped the violence earmarked for Michael Myers (or current resident), the squad car was mobbed. A thousand fists smashed the windows and people rocked it from both sides. Someone jumped up onto the hood and kicked the windshield, cracking it. The car pitched from side to side like a tempest tossed ship, then finally rolled onto its roof. The crowd cheered and jeered, and several people climbed up onto the car to raise their fists and bask in the dark adulation of their neighbors.
Tommy sat on that bench, dazed and cold, his arms wrapped around him and his body shaking with chill and fear.
Forty years ago, Michael Myers stalked the teenagers of Haddonfield, but tonight...tonight he came for its very soul.
And tonight, Haddonfield let him have it.
Screaming, fire, and sirens filled the town for hours to come, and above those sounds of destruction, as omnipotent as God in his heaven, was the rasp of heavy, ominous breathing.