Guest: As FicAlthusserist pointed out, this is the first story he's ever commissioned from me. I have no reason to lie about stories being commissioned, and if I was lying, I'd write zany, memy off the wall shit like the stories in The Loud House Catch-All Drawer and pretend those were commissioned while acting like the good stuff was my own idea.

Guest: In the Producer's Cut of the film, Wynn "passes" his role as leader onto Loomis by grabbing his hand, whereupon the mark of Thorne appears on his wrist.

STR2D3PO: I watched it on Amazon Prime because I hadn't seen it before either, only the theatrical cut years and years ago.

October 23, 1996

Lucy Loud thrashed in her sleep, her head whipping from one side to the other and a frightened whimper trembling in her throat. She kicked, flopped, and tangled herself in the sweat-soaked sheets. No matter what she did, she could not escape the bogeyman. Stiff and unbending like a statue come to life, his face white and rubbery, he chased her through the shadowy corridors of her nightmare, a knife in his hand. Blood oozed from the walls and the floor gripped her shoes like mud, slowing her down. Every time she looked over her shoulder, he was coming at a leisurely walk. He didn't need to run. He would get her in the end.

Just before dawn, she sat bolt upright, a scream lodged in her throat. She looked around, disoriented, and for a second she could swear she saw him standing there, watching from a corner. She quickly turned the bedside lamp on, but it was only Lynn's hockey mask propped on a baseball bat. Gasping for air, she swallowed around a cold lump of fear and drew her knees to her chest. The oppressive sense of dread and danger from her dream did not dissipate, but only seemed to get stronger. She cocked her head as if to listen; aside from the cold wind slipping through the boughs of the trees, the world was silent.

When she finally began to calm down, she slipped out of bed and padded to the window on bare feet. Lynn lay on her side, one arm jutting over the edge of the bed, and the back of Lucy's neck prickled as she passed, almost certain that Lynn would wake up and grab her, only it wouldn't be Lynn, it would be the man from her dream, the one with the white face and black eyes.

Lynn didn't wake and Lucy made it to the window un-grabbed. She pulled the curtain partially aside and peered out the gap. Dead leaves swirled and danced in the street like ghosts and the trees along Franklin reached up from the gray ground like withered hands from shallow graves. The moon was almost all down, and its faint, silvery light fell across the facade of 1209, making strange and threatening shadows. Lucy held her breath and scanned the night, sure that she would see him standing in the darkness, the bogeyman made flesh.

She saw nothing.

Her eyes went back to the house and stayed there.

It had been two days since the new neighbors moved in. Lucy expected the boy to start at Royal County Elementary and planned to talk to him, but he never showed. Maybe his records were in transit from his old school, maybe his Mom simply hadn't registered him yet.

For some reason, Lucy didn't believe that.

Ever since the man and his wife and kids moved in, Lucy had been keeping an eye on the place. The windows were always dark, the driveway always empty. She could sit on her window seat and watch the door for hours, and no one would come in or go out. She expected the man to have a job somewhere but she never saw him going to work or coming home. She figured the boy would come out and play, but he never did.

The sense of strangeness that she felt the first time she saw them grew stronger by the day. She thought back to the man she had seen in her dreams and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She wanted to dismiss him as a figment of her overwrought imagination and ascribe her feelings about her new neighbors to paranoia left over from hers and Haiku's experience Sunday night, but she couldn't. There really was something strange about them.

And the man in her dreams…

God help her, he was real.

Lucy sighed, let the curtain fall closed, and climbed back into bed. The alarm would go off in less than an hour and she didn't think she would be able to fall back asleep, so she sat up and reached for a massive hardback on the nightstand. An Encyclopedia of the Occult. She sat it in her lap, opened it, and flipped through the pages. She called up a vision of her dream, and a sudden memory returned to her: The killer's arms above his head, a massive knife in his hand. There was something on his wrist...a tattoo, maybe, or an oddly shaped scar. It was a straight line with a triangle growing out of it, looking almost like a crude drawing of a flag. She was sure she had seen that same marking somewhere before...somewhere associated with the occult. This book? A movie? Another book? She studied the topic voraciously and had checked out tons of books on the matter from every library in a fifty mile radius. She could have seen it in any one of a thousand places, but the more she turned it over in her mind, the more certain she became that it was occultic.

And evil.

Shortly, the alarm went off and Lynn reached out, slapping the off button. She sat up, hung her head, and looked like she was summoning the energy to stand. "Don't you ever sleep?" she asked thickly.

"No," Lucy said, "sleep is for mortals."

Lynn snorted, got up, and staggered into the hallway. Lucy flipped through the book a few minutes more, but gave up and sat it aside. She knew someone who might be able to help.

Getting up, Lucy went into the hall and fell in line behind Lincoln. Everyone was sleepy and leghatic and not a single fight broke out as they waited for the bathroom, which was a rarity. With their many different friend groups, after school activities, and individual interests, the Loud siblings were hardly ever in the same place at the same time, but when they were, all hell broke loose eventually. Last week, Luna, Luan, and Leni ganged up on Lori with pillows and almost put her in the hospital. To be fair, Lori called them the 3 Stooges and said they would never amount to anything. To be fair to Lori, though, Luna was blasting Shine by Collective Soul for the billionth time. Luna went through phases where she would listen to the same song fifty or sixty times in a row. At first it was Waterfalls by TLC, but she bought a Collective Soul cassette from the five and dime and switched to that. Leni and Luan, clearly suffering severe brain aneurysms, wound up liking it too, so when Lori came for Luna, the other two jumped in. If Lola, Lincoln, and Lynn didn't pull them off, they might have killed her.

The bathroom door opened and Leni came out in a puff of steam, one towel wrapped around her body and another around her hair. Eyes closed, hands up and curved down like a doggy begging for a treat, she disappeared into her room humming a tune and Luna took her place. One by one, the line whittled down until only Lucy remained. She did her business, brushed her teeth, and combed her hair. Her black bangs covered her eyes so she couldn't see the disquiet she knew was there, which was for the best, she figured.

In hers and Lynn's room, Lynn sat on the edge of her bed and pulled on a pair of red Air Jordans. She wore jeans and a red Chicago Bulls jersey with Michael Jordan's number across the chest. Lynn loved sports. Like...really loved it. She watched football, basketball, baseball, pro wrestling, and boxing. Her favorite football team was the Dallas Cowboys (but only because they won the last Super Bowl), her favorite boxer was Mike Tyson, her favorite wrestler was Bret Hart, and her favorite of all time, dwarfing all the others, was Michael Jordan.

"Your favorite holiday's coming up, Spooky," Lynn said.

"I know," Lucy said. She didn't sound excited, but she was. Halloween was the one time of year where she wasn't a freak for liking horror and the supernatural. Everyone loved it in October. "I can't wait."

Lynn got up, shrugged into a red, white, and blue Starter jacket, and zipped it up. "Don't eat too much candy. Your ass is already made of the stuff."

"Ha, ha," Lucy said.

Lynn grabbed her backpack and left the room. Lucy dressed in a black dress and a leather jacket. She gathered her books and followed Lynn downstairs, where the rest of their siblings sat at the table eating cereal and teasing each other. "Lincoln's wearing his hat backwards just like Bobby," Luna said.

He also wore a long sleeve shirt, one half dark red and the other half dark blue.

"He wants to be just like Bobby," Lori said.

Lincoln grinned. Growing up with so many girls, he really wanted an older brother and found one in Lori's boyfriend.

"Because they're fags," Luna said.

Lincoln's smile fell and everyone laughed.

Lucy already knew that if she ventured in there, she'd wind up on the menu next, and she wasn't in the mood to hear Elvira jokes, so she made a B-line for the door and left.

The morning was cool and foggy, the trees leering through the mist like monsters in a child's fairytale. She stopped, considered going back inside, but forced herself on.

Instead of cutting to the left, crossing the driveway, and picking up the sidewalk in front of Mr. Grouse's house, she made her way across the street, 1209 drawing closer like the rotted prow of a ghost ship. She instinctively held her books to her chest and slackened her step. Her heart rattled in her chest and her throat felt dry and tight. Perhaps it was her imagination, but a dark force seemed to radiate from the house like cold from a block of ice. She stopped at the foot of the drive and considered going up to peek in one of the windows, but she had the sudden, skin-crawling sensation that she was being watched. She lifted her gaze to a second story window but saw nothing.

Lowering her head, she hurried away, casting one last glance over her shoulder.

Again...she had a bad feeling.

In his nearly seventy-seven years of life, Dr. Sam Loomis had always done the right thing. Rather, he had always done what he believed to be the right thing. The human mind, which he had been studying since the 1930s, was a vast and complex network of thoughts, memories, and intricate wiring, a virtual universe unto itself. Because of that, we all see and process the world differently. What is right to one man may be absurd to another and so on. For instance, Loomis was raised in a traditional working class British household during the 1920s. While considered "liberal" for his time, he was today something of a traditionalist. Younger doctors had long called him a reactionary and asserted that he was wrong in his approach to psychiatry. Were they wrong? Was he? Objectively, perhaps the problem really was him, but he did what he felt in his heart to be right and he had never apologized for it. He didn't apologize for it when his colleagues criticized him for still trying to reach a catatonic little boy named Michael Myers in 1967, and he didn't apologize when they criticised him for saying What he needs is the electric chair while tipsy at a Christmas party in 1977.

The latter group was aghast more at his dramatic change in attitude toward Michael than at his insinuation that a clearly mentally ill man should be put to death. He recalled arguing with another doctor the next day, a young, bleeding heart sort. You were his biggest advocate, the man said, flustered. What happened?

I changed my mind, Loomis said in a tone that closed the matter.

And that was that. Humankind often decides that what was right yesterday is no longer right today, One need look no farther than slavery. Slavery was an instituiton, both legal and morally justified. One day, it wasn't, and civilized men looked upon it with sneering contempt. Loomis, too, was not beyond realizing that what he believed was right was, in fact, wrong. In the beginning, he thought Michael sick. He tried to reach him, to save his soul and restore life to his limp, staring body. Over time, he became convinced that Michael was actually evil. He changed his tune, so to speak.

It wouldn't be the last time.

Sitting in the back of a cultist driven Lincoln on the afternoon of October 23 and staring out at the flat Missouri countryside, Loomis thought back to the man he had been just last year. When he and Tommy uncovered the Thorn cult and their plan to sacrifice Jamie Lloyd's baby, he was sickened. More, he was frightened. Frightened at the prospect of such a tiny life being snuffed out and frightened of the curse residing in Michael like cancer spreading to Danny. He had spent the better part of seventeen years fighting to end Michael Myers and the idea of allowing another Michael to be created seemed the ultimate insult heaped upon the ultimate injury.

Then Dr. Wynn, the administrator of Smith's Grove and head of the Throne cult, passed his unenviable position onto him, and he was confronted with the terrible reality that he had been wrong. All wrong. Thorne came to him in dreams and showed him chaos and destruction, planes flying into buildings, upheaval in the streets, a million people in medical masks cowering in their homes as a Chinese dragon slithered overhead, spreading sickness and death. He saw war, famine, rising temperatures, the ocean flooding the land, people going insane and tearing one another apart. In short, it was hell.

Kill for me, Thorne told him. Kill for me.

Loomis had always believed that dreams were a window into the human psyche and nothing more, but he knew in his old bones that these dreams were actually visions of things to come. Thorne would sew havoc through the world if the curse was not passed on. If He did not receive His sacrifice, the price would be paid by millions of dead women and children.

Were a baby, a little boy, a woman, and maybe a few others worth it? Were they worth such untold pain and suffering?

It is said that when confronted with two evil options, one must choose the lesser of those evils, Loomis would choose good if he could, but he didn't have that luxury, so he naturally chose the next best option. He understood now that Dr. Wynn was faced with the same choices and struggled greatly with them. He knew why Wynn wanted him to take over the burden and did not blame his friend for it. Wynn couldn't take it any longer and wanted out, so he chose Loomis to replace him, then sank smiling into death.

Loomis wished even now for this cup to be taken from his lips, but it remained, and so, too, would he. There is nothing more dangerous than a man who wants to make the world a better place, he had heard, and that made Loomis deadly. He did not relish the things he had to do along the way - such as ordering murders - but they had to be done. If they weren't, the entire world would be consigned to a fate worse than death.

He did these things for the right reasons.

But that didn't mean they felt right.

Ever.

Reaching into his coat, he pulled out a half-empty bottle of Tums, shook three into his gloved hand, and tossed them into his mouth. Beside him, Sheldon stared down at a comic book, his lips slowly forming the words on the page. Loomis glanced at it. Ace something or other. Sheldon got stuck on one of the words, trying to sound it out two, three times, and his face, normally open and cheerful, turned dark. His chest began to heave and his powerful arms trembled like high tension wires. He was so thin that bones poked through his sallow flesh, but he was ungodly powerful. Loomis had seen him fight five men at once without breaking a sweat. To quote one of the superheros Sheldon loved so much: You wouldn't like him when he was angry. "Sheldon," Loomis said and patted the man's big, knobby knee, "what is it?"

Sheldon held the comic out for Loomis to see and grunted. With a cracked and yellowed nail, he tapped a word. Loomis took out his reading glasses, slipped them on, and read. "Preposterous," he said. "That means something is laughable."

The big man favored him with a blank stare.

"For example, the idea of me doing a backflip is preposterous because I'm an old man."

A light of understanding flickered in the giant's eyes and a big smile spread across his face, revealing his rotting teeth. He let out a hitching giggle and clapped his hands. Loomis couldn't help smiling at Sheldon's delight. "I could do it once but -"

The car jumped and the front end swept violently from side to side. Loomis's heart jumped into his throat and he grabbed the handhold over the door. Sheldon was thrown against the door and let out a fearful screech. The driver, a black man in his fifties, wrestled for control of the wheel, and pulled to the gravel shoulder. "What's happened?" Loomis asked.

"I think we blew a tire," the driver said. He threw open the door, got out, and walked around the car. A moment later, he returned. "Yep, back right." He shrugged off his Members Only jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his plaid shirt. "I gotta change it."

He went around to the back and opened the trunk. Sheldon looked around, agitated, and Loomis patted his knee. "It's alright," he said, "we're safe."

For the moment, he thought but did not say.

Outside, the driver cursed to himself.

Loomis stuck his head out the window. "What is it?"

"We have a spare but no jack," he said.

Damn it.

Loomis opened the door and got out with a weary sound. "Come," he said.

He and Sheldon met the driver at the trunk. "Who was in charge of supplying the car?" Loomis asked. Anger burned in his chest but he shoved it back down. There were other units on their way to Chicago. Even if he didn't make it in time, they would find Tommy.

"I don't know, sir," the driver said. "I'd have to ask."

Loomis sighed and looked at Sheldon. "Your name is Jack now."

The giant cocked his head in confusion.

Loomis hobbled over to the tire and nodded. "Pick up the car."

Sheldon understood. He had done this before.

Walking over, he slipped his massive hands into the wheel well and lifted. The car's back tires left the ground and Sheldon grunted with exertion. "Hurry up," Loomis told the driver.

Nodding, the driver got the spare and a tire iron from the trunk, knelt down, and switched the old tire out for the new as quickly as he could. The road was two lane blacktop surrounded by forest, only a few cars passed. Loomis leaned on his cane and watched Sheldon's face. It was as serene and untroubled as that of a man holding nothing heavier than an empty cardboard box.

When the driver was finished, Sheldon sat the car down and dusted his hands. Loomis gave him a pat on the back.

The rest of the drive, Sheldon read his comic and Loomis stared out the window, the uneasy feeling in his gut getting worse and worse the closer they got to the city. He was not looking forward to what was to come and a small, selfish part of him hoped that they were wrong, that the man who bought runes mail order was not Tommy Doyle.

It was early evening when the flatlands gave way to spreading suburbs that came right up to the edge of the interstate. The city skyline stood against the darkening sky like the sails of a ship at sea, lights twinkling as if to bless Loomis's quest.

A carload of cultists had been stationed outside the post office where Tommy kept his PO box since just after noon and hadn't seen him.

Instead of going straight there, the driver took Loomis too a hotel three blocks north on Grove Street. It seemed somehow fitting as all of this had started, for Loomis at least, at Smith's Grove Sanitorium.

The room was small but clean with two beds and a table near the window. A portable TV with knobs and rabbit ears sat on the dresser, and as Loomis sank into the chair, Sheldon turned it on. Perching excitedly on the foot of the bed, he cycled through the channel until he found a station playing a rerun of Tom and Jerry. Loomis picked up the phone, dialed, and pressed the handset against his ear. Someone answered on the fifth ring.

"Has anyone seen him?" Loomis asked without preamble.

"Not today, sir."

Loomis sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Keep the post office under surveillance. Are the other addresses being searched?"

For nearly a year, Loomis and his group had been two or three steps behind Tommy. Every time they managed to root out an address, they arrived only to find out they had left weeks before. They never left a forwarding address, not that they needed one since they didn't receive mail, and paid for everything in cash. They were as elusive as Michael himself.

Back in California, Loomis's people came up with a list of ten addresses that the Doyle group either used or were suspected of using.

"Yes, sir," the voice replied, "so far, we've found nothing."

Loomis sighed. "Alright. Keep me informed."

He hung the phone up and sat back in the chair. It cracked under his weight.

It was imperative that they find Tommy before Michael did. Michael was little more than a mindless machine who would stop at nothing to kill the remaining members of his "family" with no regard for anything else. If he killed Danny, Kara, and Steven, the ritual would be spoiled and all of the terrible things Loomis had seen in his dreams would come to pass.

Sheldon's high, giggling laughter roused Loomis from his thoughts. The giant's face hovered inches from the screen, a big smile plastered to his face. "You better be careful," Loomis said with a phglmy laugh, "you'll ruin your vision."

The giant didn't listen, but does any child?

Loomis turned to the window, where the night pressed insistently against the pane.

Tommy was out there somewhere.

And so, too, was Michael Myers.

When you're hiding from a cult and a cursed serial killer who can't be stopped by guns, fire, or decapitation, every trip out into the world is a dangerous mission.

Even buying diapers.

It was midafternoon and Steven had been in his last diaper for two hours. Tommy knew he would have to go out eventually, but he kept putting it off. When he was in the open, where anyone could be hiding, he felt exposed, and feared that he would inadvertently lead the cult - or even the bogeyman - back to kara and the kids. When he went abroad, he did so alone and carrying at least two guns, a .45 hidden in the small of his back and a sawed off AR-15 stashed in the car. He left his most powerful weapons with Kara: Runes. As far as he knew, there were few runes that could actually destroy the evil inside of Michael Myers, but there were many runes that could repel him like a cross to a vampire. Every time he and Kara moved into a new place, which was every few weeks to a month, he sat runes at every door and window. If Michael came to one, he would be powerless to pass. He could still lay in wait, though,

They had to come outside sometime.

At three, Kara was making sandwiches in the kitchen and Steven was sitting in his high chair, chubby legs kicking back and forth. Tommy came in and the first thing out of Kara's mouth was, "Are you going to the store soon?"

Tommy's step faltered.

"Sure," he said evenly. "What do we need?"

"I wrote a list," she said and nodded to the counter beside her. Tommy walked over, picked it up, and scanned it. "Why don't you take Danny with you? I know he'd love to get out of the house."

Venturing outside was dangerous and nerve-wracking, even more so when Tommy had Kara and the kids with him. His first instinct was to say no, but he didn't. Being cooped up inside all the time, staying away from windows and not turning lights on at night, was hard on everyone, but especially on Dann, who had just turned nine in September. Tommy tried to give the boy as much freedom as he could, but he worried.

"Alright," he said and pecked Kara's cheek. "We'll go now."

He found Danny sitting in the living room play the Sega Tommy had gotten him for his birthday. "Hey," Tommy said, "you wanna help me pick out some stuff at the store?"

The little boy's face lit up. "Yeah!"

Tommy grinned. "Come on."

In the garage, Tommy lifted the roll top door, expecting to be stabbed in the throat the moment it was up.

Michael Myers wasn't there.

He climbed into the car, backed into the driveway, and closed the door again. He got behind the wheel, pulled his seatbelt on, and backed into the street, swinging left. In the passenger seat, Danny gazed out the window with the wide-eyed excitement of a tourist exploring a strange new land, and Tommy's heart twinged with regret. It wasn't right that Danny couldn't have a normal life. For almost a year he had been living out of bags, isolated from other kids his own age. He was a bright kid and understood the fear and stress Tommy and his mother were under, so he rarely voiced any complaint, but you could see in his eyes that this was beginning to wear on him. He was lonely and depressed and cried himself to sleep some nights. It killed Kara that her son was in such pain but what was the alternative?

Worse, that's what it was, much, much worse.

"How'd you sleep last night?" Tommy asked, breaking the deep silence.

"Okay." Danny said.

"Have any good dreams?"

Tommy phrased the question in the most casual way he could, but Danny picked up on his meaning instantly. Starting last year, the boy began to have nightmares about a man in black telling him to kill. It was the malignant and supernatural influence of Thorne, whose dark spirit wished to move on from Michael Myers and into someone new...someone innocent.

A major component of the curse was the corruption of purity. It wasn't enough to shed blood, an innocent soul needed to be defiled and made evil for Thorne to be satisfied, which is why the cultists placed the curse on a child and not an adult. If the Thornes had their way, Danny would take Michael Myers' place and kill in his stead. When his soul was destroyed, Thorne would move on yet again, to another child, and then another, and then another.

The only way to stop the evil was to contain the spirit. Contain the spirit, the logic was, and you contain the curse.

Tommy and Danny's first stop was at a K-Mart on the edge of Royal Woods' downtown district. They picked up a few things for the house - bedding, cookware - and some new clothes for Danny. Remembering the basketball hoop over the garage door, Tommy bought a basketball as well.

Next, they stopped at a supermarket called Meijer's. Tommy got a cart and threaded his way through the store, picking up everything on Kara's list. Danny stayed close without being asked, and Tommy's heart jolted with fear every time the boy drifted out of his sight. At one point, Danny had to go to the bathroom and Tommy went with him just in case. The rest rooms were in the back behind a set of double doors, the perfect place for a cultist to make his move.

By the time they put the groceries in the car and started home, Tommy was an anxious, paranoid mess, looking over his shoulder and wondering who was really in the next car over: A sweet old lady...or a potential attacker. As they made their way back toward the house, the buoyancy that had come over Danny faded and a dark pall crept over him. He didn't want to go back. Tommy didn't blame him.

In an attempt to make it up to him, Tommy stopped at a place called Flip's and bought them milkshakes, which they drank while sitting in the car. "Don't tell your mom," Tommy said and slurped his shake, "then she'll want one."

"Isn't that lying?" Danny asked, kidding.

"Not really," Tommy said. "It's only a lie if she asks did we have milkshakes and we say no. Otherwise, we're okay."

Done, Tommy drove back to Franklin Avenue. It was getting late now and school had let out for the day. Kids walked along the sidewalk in big groups and Danny watched them with a longing expression that would gut Tommy if he gazed upon it for too long. "One day this will be over," Tommy said. "And we'll be normal."

Danny sighed deeply. "Yeah."

He didn't sound convinced.

"I know it's hard," Tommy said, "and I'm sorry."

Danny looked at him funny. "Why? It's not your fault."

Maybe that should have made him feel better, but it didn't. He searched his mind for a wise, fatherly response, but he didn't have one. Up until last October, he lived alone, ate his dinner standing over the sink, and watched cartoons. People called him "weird" and "off-beat" and they weren't wrong. He had devoted much of his life to studying the mystery of Michael Myers, almost to the point of obsession, and because he spent so much time alone, his social skills withered away. He had never given consideration to the thought of one day having children - he was basically a child himself - and wasn't prepared for being Dad, that all-seeing, all-knowing man's man who always had the right words and the right advice.

Then he found Steven squirreled away in a bus station women's room, a tiny, pink newborn wrapped in a blanket. He awkwardly held him and felt so out of place that his head spun, but over time, he fell in love with the baby. And with Danny and Kara too. He was still wet behind the ears, but the boys needed a father and he did his best.

His best wasn't always good enough, just like now, he wound up feeling like the biggest fuck up in the world. He didn't know what he was doing even on a good day, and he hadn't had very many of those. Being a parent to a kid is hard, but it's a whole lot harder under circumstances like this.

"No," he finally said, "but I know this is rough on you. And your mom. It's rough on me too. But we're gonna do it, alright? We're gonna get through this and one day we won't have to run around and hide anymore." He cut himself off, but added, "I promise."

Danny looked down at his lap and nodded.

"You wanna try out that new basketball we got?" Tommy asked as they pulled into the driveway.

"Yeah," Danny said excitedly. "First one to ten gets to stay up late."

Tommy chuckled.

Little did Danny know, Tommy didn't like staying up late.

That just meant extra time to worry.

He killed the engine and Danny jumped out.

"Help me take the groceries in and we'll play," Tommy said.

Thankfully, Tommy lost one-on-one.

Which meant an early bed time for him.

Oh, man.

As soon as she got home from school that day, Lucy Loud grabbed her book, sat on the window seat, and went looking for that symbol.

It had been dancing mockingly on the tip of her tongue for most of the afternoon. It was right there, so close she could almost taste the shape of the words, but nothing she did would jog it loose. She had planned to go into town and see Matilda, the owner of The Third Eye, an occult bookstore, but as soon as she walked out of school, Lucy was mobbed by her sisters and swept toward home in a teeming mass of excited girls.

"I had literally the best idea ever," Lori said. Bobby was with them, his arm around Lori's shoulders. Luan's friend Maggie and Lincoln's "friend" Ronnie Anne, Bobby's sister, were along for the walk as well.

The idea, Lucy soon learned, was to turn the garage into a haunted house for Halloween. "We can invite everyone," Lori gushed. "I'll be the most popular girl in school."

Any other time, Lucy would have been just as excited as the others, but she had too much on her mind to care about some rinky-dink arts and crafts project.

She carefully went through every page, suspense building in her chest, but it wasn't here. This was the most comprehensive single-volume book on worldwide witchcraft, black magic, and ancient rites, it had to be here.

What if she was wrong? Maybe that symbol wasn't even real. It was possible that she dreamt it up and only thought it was familiar. If not, why wasn't it here? Why did she come across every important symbol from the Sanskrit swastika to the classic five sided pentagram except for that one?

No, that wasn't right. She was in tune with herself. She knew that she had seen that symbol before, she just couldn't remember where or what exactly it meant.

A flicker of movement in her periphery drew her attention to the window. Across the street, the boy stood in the driveway of 1209 and shot a basketball at the hoop above the garage door. For reasons she couldn't explain, her stomach dropped to her feet and a cold chill spread through her body.

Book forgotten, she scooted closer and pressed her face against the cool glass. The ball hit the hoop, bounced off, and rolled into the grass. The boy ran after it, grabbed it, and dribbled it, weaving it clumsily between his legs. It wobbled but he never lost control of it. Seeing him - or anyone in that family - outside struck her as deeply odd, even though they had been there only a few days.

Should she go talk to him?

What would she say? Hi, I'm Lucy. Who's the guy with the weird symbol on his wrist?

An image from the dream flashed back to her, and her brow pinched. Shadows cloaked the man in her dream so she didn't get a very good look at his face, but all at once, it hit her.

She knew him.

She had focused so much on the symbol that she all but ignored his face. It was white and his eyes were black and gaping, standard demon/zombie stuff. She didn't give it much thought, but straining to recall the finer details (and largely failing), she was certain that he wasn't a generic monster. He was…

In a single, blinding flash of revelation, a name came to her and her eyes widened.

Michael Myers.

One of Lucy's many interests was true crime. She owned a dozen books on serial killers and one of them was a paperback called The Night He Came Home by Dr. Sam Loomis. Published in 1981, it told the story of the infamous 1978 Babysitter Murders in Haddonfield, Illinois. The killer, Michael Myers, was being held in a mental institutoion after the 1963 murder of his older sister Judith when he escaped, returned to his hometown, and killed fourteen people in a Halloween night rampage. The primary target of Michael Myers' bloodlust was his younger sister, who had been adopted after their parents were killed in a car crash.

Myers was nearly killed in an explosion at a hospital and spent ten years in a vegetative state before escaping once more on Halloween 1988 and attempting to kill his sisters' young daughter. He was shot and killed by police...only somehow he came back again the following year. Then, finally, he came back a fourth time last year.

Michael Myers was the most deadly and inexplicable of all American serial killers, returning to kill again and again. Every time he was captured, he slipped away again, like a ghost, and just when it seemed he was dead, he rose from the grave and carried on.

Loomis, his psychiatrist, believed that Myers was "evil incarnate...less a man and more an elemental force of nature bordering on the supernatural." Loomis had been bashed in the media and in academic circles as mad and superstitious, but Lucy couldn't say she entirely disagreed with him. No other killer had survived the things Michael Myers had, and no other killer kept escaping custody like him. The closest Lucy could think of was Ted Bundy and he was a far, far distant second.

Why was Michael Myers in her dreams?

Was he the one the ouija board was trying to warn her about?

Lucy swallowed hard.

The boy missed another shot, and Lucy realized that she had been staring into space for so long that the light had begun to fade and the streetlamps were on. Making up her mind, she got up and hurried down the stairs. She went outside and shivered at the chill in the air. She considered going back for her jacket but decided against it; he might go inside, and she really wanted to talk to him.

Taking a deep breath, she went down the steps and crossed the yard, pausing to let a car pass in the street. The boy took another shot, this one hitting the backboard and falling through the net with a swish. As the house drew closer, seeming to get bigger, darker, her heart knocked and an inexplicable cold sweat sprang to her forehead. She still didn't know what to say. She wanted answers, pure and simple, but she wasn't sure how to get them. She was confused, unsure of any of the conclusions she had reached thus far, and, honestly, scared.

She stopped at the foot of the driveway, then forced herself on. The boy's back was to her as he weaved the ball once more between his legs in a zigzag pattern. He laid up a shot and took it. The ball hit the bottom of the hoop and fell to the pavement, where he snatched it up. Lucy stopped, crossed her arms, then uncrossed them so she didn't look nervous or defensive. "Hey," she said.

The boy jumped like a frightened cat and whipped around so fast that he almost lost his balance. His sudden movement startled Lucy and she fell back a step. She didn't know what to expect when she came over here, but it wasn't exactly the welcome mat. Nor, for that matter, was it the deep, soul-petrifying terror she saw so starkly in the boy's eyes.

For a moment, they stared at each other, him panting and her doing her level best to show no emotion one way or the other. Being stoic and expressionless was not something she worked at to be cool or mysterious. It's just how she was. Even so, there are some circumstances where keeping a poker face is about as hard as keeping in a fart.

Finally, the boy started to calm down. Color returned to his white face and his shoulders untensed. His eyes, sparkling with fear just a moment before, seemed to change, becoming guarded and suspicious, which Lucy couldn't help but see as a step in the right direction. "Hey," he said warily.

"Sorry I scared you," Lucy said.

He cut her off. "You didn't scare me. I didn't hear you coming."

Oh, she scared him alright, but in his defense, he probably wouldn't have reacted so dramatically if he wasn't expecting someone else.

"Yeah, I walk quiet," Lucy said. "I didn't mean to sneak up on you, I just wanted to say hi. I live across the street. My name's Lucy."

The boy looked her up and down, reminding Lucy of a timid animal sniffing around a new human to make sure they were safe. "I'm Danny," he said.

"You just moved here?" Lucy asked. She already knew the answer to that question and felt stupid asking it, but she realized that she couldn't just come right out and start talking about Michael Myers, prophetic dreams, and ouija boards. She was certain that Danny and his family figured into this somehow, but even so, she'd sound like a nutcase. Danny and his family were obviously hiding from something, or someone, and if she walked up and said I know something's up, she got the feeling that they would be gone before sunrise, moved onto a place where inquisitive little goth girls couldn't bother them.

Danny nodded. "Yeah, the other day."

"Cool," Lucy said. "Are you going to school? I haven't seen you there?"

"I'm homeschooled," Danny said quickly.

Homeschooled? That...actually made a lot of sense. Lucy knew that homeschooling was a thing, but she rarely ever heard about it and tended to forget that it existed. She should have guessed that he would be homeschooled given his family's secretiveness. "That's cool," Lucy said, "do you like it?"

A shadow flickered across Danny's face and his eyes darted to the ground. They don't call telling little gestures "body language" for nothing. They do it because those gestures speak. And Danny's told her that no, he didn't like being homeschool. "It's okay," he said with a shrug.

"I don't see you outside very often," she said, "I guess you have a lot of homework." She flashed a wan smile. Danny looked confused. "It's a joke," she explained.

"I come outside all the time," he said, a defensive edge in his voice. "I just go in the backyard."

Okay, that was fair. She could only see the front of the house from her window, so it was totally possible that he and his family were always outside and not hiding under their mattresses all the time. It had only been a few days since they moved in. When was the last time she went outside to play with other kids? It really wasn't fair of her to think Danny weird because he didn't come outside two days in a row, but it wasn't just that. It was the look on his father's face that first day, it was the look on his face just now. It was the dream and the ouija board and the other things that she couldn't name or explain, all of them conspiring to color 1209 Franklin Avenue in shades of darkness.

She didn't know how all of this tied together, but as she subconsciously turned the subject of Michael Myers over in her mind, she was beginning to guess. After last year's bloodbath, conflicting reports emerged about Michael Myers' fate. Dr. Loomis, the Van Helsing to Myers' Dracula, told the press that Micheal was dead "once and for all" but the coroner couldn't prove that the charred remains found lying in a field near Haddonfield were really Myers's. If she recalled, he - the medical examiner - told a newspaper reporter that the body appeared to belong to a man in his sixties and that it lacked the many broken and rehealed bones that Myers had suffered over the years. Of the ten people Myers killed during the rampage of '95, only one of them had never been recovered: Dr. Terrance Wynn, the head of Smith's Grove Sanitorium. Officially, he was still considered missing, but a lot of people thought that the burned corpse was his, not Michael Myers'.

If Michael Myers was still out there, maybe...just maybe...he was after Danny and his family for some reason.

That didn't make a whole lot of sense, but it was all she had to go on.

Assuming she was right and Michael Myers was after them, why weren't they under police protection or something?

Or were they?

She glanced around the street, but didn't see any unmarked sedans. All of the cars in their driveways and along the curb were supposed to be there.

"That makes sense, I guess," Lucy said. "Not that I'm watching you or anything, but my window's right there and I sit there to read. I don't really go outside too much either. What do you like to do?"

For the first time, Danny smiled. It was a twitching-in-one-corner of his mouth affair, here and gone in an instant, but it was a sign of life. "I like video games."

"Yeah? My brother loves video games too. He saved up a bunch of money and bought a Nintendo 64."

Danny blinked in surprise. "That just came out."

"I know," Lucy said. "We were at the store at midnight and almost didn't get one."

"I see the commercials all the time," Danny said. For the first time in their conversation, animation crept into his face. It was only then, seeing him lively and excited over something, that she realized just how down and dour he was. An air of darkness and depression clung to him like a cloud of stench and his face was a mask of perpetual worry.

Lucy found herself feeling very sorry for him.

"You wanna come over and play it sometime?" she asked. "I'm sure the two of you would get along."

Danny's eyes lit up. "That'd be great."

A car passed in the street, and Danny craned his neck to see it around her, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. Lucy turned to look at it. "That's Old Lady Semple. She used to be a teacher." She turned back to Danny. "Did you think it was someone else?"

Danny shook his head. "No." He said it just a little too quickly, a little too sharply. He did, in fact, think that it was someone else.

The door opened and the woman Lucy had briefly seen the other day came out. She was tall with curly hair and tired eyes. Up close, she looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties. Though relatively young, she had deep lines around the corners of her eyes and mouth. She wore a button up Cardigan over a long floral print dress that fluttered around her legs in the cool evening wind. She crossed her arms against the chill and walked up, her eyes darting to Lucy. For a brief second, Lucy was certain that she saw suspicion, then it was gone as she deemed Lucy not a threat. "Dinner's ready," she said.

Danny glanced at her and then Lucy. "I gotta go," he said. "I'll see you later."

"Okay," she said. "Later."

He and his mother went inside, and Lucy watched them until they were gone. Walking back across the street, she regretted not bringing up Michael Myers. In a way, she was glad that she hadn't, though. The best way to go about this, she decided, was to befriend Danny first. Juist coming right out and saying something about Double M might scare Danny off. If, of course, she was right about her suppositions.

It would take time, she figured. She was patient. She could wait.

Maybe.

Inside, she went to her room, sat in her window seat, and went back to watching Danny's house. The windows were dark, the driveway empty. If she hadn't seen him and his mother disappear into the front door, she would swear that the place was empty.

When she was done looking, she picked up her copy of The Night He Came Home, opened it to a random page, and began to read.

I shot him six times at near point blank range and he stumbled backwards, jerking as each round entered his chest. I had no thought in that moment but to put an end to the madness. Perhaps for the sake of Haddonfield, perhaps for the sake of the sobbing and hysterical girl he had just been about to murder, or, perhaps, for my own sake. I did not have to empty the chamber. I could have shot him once and been done with it but I was beside myself and all of my repressed emotions came to the fore: Frustration, shame, and, yes, even hatred. I shot him six times and he fell over the balcony, but he managed to get up and walk away. Those rounds were subsequently removed from his chest, one from his very heart. What kind of man can withstand a bullet to the heart?: What kind of man?

"You don't talk much," the old hillbilly said around a mouthful of Grizzly.

It was late evening and he was rolling south on Highway 6 in his battered Ford. Garth Brooks whispered from the radio that he had turned down when he picked up the hitchhiker five miles back and the hum of the tires singing over the pavement filled his ears. A tall man in jeans and a red flannel shirt, the hillbilly was on his way to Ann Arbor and had been on the road since early that afternoon. He was on an isolated two lane running through dense forest when he came across the hitcher. Normally, he didn't give rides to strangers because there were too damn many nutcases out there, but he couldn't live with himself if he left someone way out in the middle of nowhere. Wolves, bobcats, and Democrats might get him.

In the fifteen minutes he'd been sitting in the passenger seat, the hitcher hadn't spoken a single world. He sat with his back straight and his hands on his knees, eyes pointed forward. The hillbilly wasn't nosey or anything, but he'd stolen a few glances at his passenger, and couldn't help but notice the scars crisscrossing the backs of the man's hands.

Now, all of that was fine and dandy - the hillbilly knew people who were quiet and didn't like to talk, and he himself had all sorts of scars - but the thing that really creeped him out was that the man was still wearing that expressionless white mask. It was Halloween season and there were bound to be costume parties and stuff from one end of the state to the other, so a guy wearing a mask wasn't exactly strange. A guy keeping it on after getting picked up...now that was a little different.

"I still don't know where you're going," the hillbilly said. The cold silence radiating from the man was getting to him and he was beginning to regret picking him up. "I'm going to Ann Arbor. If you wanna go all the way, that's alright with me. Just say the word."

The man did not say the word.

In fact, he said no words.

The hillbilly shifted uncomfortably in his seat and tightened his grip on the wheel. He watched the man from the corner of his eye. How could he be so still? He didn't scratch his nose or change positions, from the looks of his chest, he wasn't even breathing. For some inexplicable reason, the hillbilly thought of an android from some dumb old sci-fi movie standing there, hands up and slightly bent at the waist, waiting for someone to turn it on. The hillbilly's heartbeat sped up and he suddenly had a very bad, nauseous feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Swallowing hard, he leaned forward and turned the radio up. Brooks and Dunn came on and the hillbilly tried to lose himself in the music, but the man filled his periphery like a dark mass, and every so often his eyes were drawn back to that blank white face. It was almost full night now and stars twinkled above like knowing eyes. The thought of being alone in the dark with the man frankly scared the hillbilly.

He would pull off at a gas station and make him get out, he decided.

A few miles up, a green road sign informed him that the next town up had plenty of public places to do something like that. The hillbilly changed lanes, and all at once, the man was on top of him, his breathing ragged and his ice cold hands wrapping around his throat. The hillbilly let out a strangled cry and jerked the wheel hard to the right, and then the left, making the truck fishtail. The man pressed his thumbs into his throat and squeezed. The hillbilly let go of the wheel and tore at the backs of the man's fire-scarred hands. The truck went off the road and jolted down an embankment before coming to rest against a tree. The whole time, the man throttled the hillbilly, his breathing excited.

The hillbilly's vision began to gray and weakness flowed through his body. He realized with a twist of terror that he was going to die, and panic overcame him. He lashed blindly out and battered the man's face in one final attempt at survival. He inadvertently ripped the mask off, and what he saw stopped his heart.

That terrible visage followed him into the fuzzy chambers of death.

When Michael Myers was sure that the man was dead, he pulled the mask back on, threw open the door, and got out. The truck sat at an angle in tall grass and the beams of its headlights shone against the tree trunk inches from the bumper, the glare finding Michael's eyes. He did not notice it. Nor, for that matter, did he notice anything. Like a robot, he turned around and walked up the embankment, back straight, shoulders out in a perfect posture...a perfect inhuman posture. When he reached the gravel shoulder, he turned and started south, passing a road sign that said:

ROYAL WOODS: 100