6:33 p.m.
Annie blew her car horn impatiently. "Come on Laurie, where the hell are you!?" she muttered out loud. She'd made it very clear she'd be by at six thirty, and yet no sign of Laurie at all.
With a loud sigh, she got out of the car and marched over to the Strode house. Jamming her finger down on the doorbell so it rang repeatedly, she glanced in through the front window. No sign of anyone inside at all.
"Did she go ahead to the Doyles' earlier?" she wondered to herself, "I wouldn't be the least bit surprised given how mental she's been all day. Might as well just head on out; she'll call later with some crazy excuse."
With a final shrug of her shoulders, she walked back to her car and drove off-not noticing the beige car with the Illinois state seal and words FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY emblazoned on the sides that pulled out of the nearest alley and started following her...or the yellow car following it...
"So no sign of the Strode girl at all?" Loomis grimly asked his future self as they tailed the present Michael down the streets of Haddonfield.
"None whatsoever," Samuel grumbled, detectable bitterness in his voice, "It looked like a mild struggle took place. If I hadn't been called away..."
"And for the fifth time, that wasn't my fault!" Loomis shouted defensively, "That truck came out of nowhere! By the time I managed to get out of the wreckage he was already long gone! I had no other choice but to call you in!"
"Perhaps you're right," Samuel took several deep breaths to calm himself down, "I am certainly glad for both our sakes you weren't harmed. But now since the stakes have gotten so much higher, I think we have little choice but to call in the authorities to assist."
"I don't really think a full-scale dragnet is the best idea at this point," Loomis argued, "If it gets out on the news, they'll look for him in every...now what's he doing?"
Michael had pulled over to the curb ahead of them and stopped for the moment. "Waiting until the authorities turn their backs," Samuel instinctively turned right down a side street to keep Michael from seeing them behind him, then hung another right at the intersection after that, "The sheriff's up there, investigating the hardware store robbery he just pulled. You go get him once we circle back around. I'm going to explore a hunch I have."
"And would you mind sharing that with me?" Loomis raised an eyebrow.
"Unfortunately, I can't," Samuel shook his head emphatically, "It's something I have to do on my own. You just do your part of the equation and call me if you don't hear from me in two hours."
He swung back onto the main street right behind where they'd pulled out, just as Michael was pulling back into traffic. The older man turned down the next street after him, then pulled over to the curb next to the hardware store and all but forced his younger self out onto the sidewalk. Loomis stared in wonderment at his future self gunning out after Michael again, then shrugged and hustled over to where Sheriff Brackett was standing by his cruiser. "Sheriff," he waved him down, "Pardon me; I'm Loomis, Dr. Sam Loomis..."
7:02 p.m.
The sun sank beneath the trees. Darkness, glorious darkness was falling again. For Michael, huffing his way through back hedges with Her prostrate form slung over his shoulder, it couldn't have come at a better time. Now he felt comfortable again.
He cut around the last hedge and found himself standing in front of the Myers house. Hearing some early trick-or-treaters coming up the street, he quickly strode inside and shoved the door shut. Now all he'd have to do was put her in the closet and wait...
Just then he heard an unmistakable clattering noise from the chamber below. He frowned; had a cat gotten in while he'd been out? Or someone or something else entirely? He dumped Her into a chair he'd set up in the middle of the closet and tied her hands together behind it; just enough to make sure she didn't go anywhere if she woke up while his attention was occupied elsewhere. Then he drew his knife and slowly crept down the stairs to the torture chamber. All was quiet inside the chamber now as far as he could tell at first. He stuck his head in the door and looked around. No sign of anyone around, and everything seemed as he'd left it...
And then without warning, a hard blow slammed into his side, sending him flying to the floor. A squat, misshapen form jumped on top of him and pinned him down. "So you're the thief that took my personal belongings," Dr. Clugg stepped out of the shadows, holding a sledgehammer, "Well you're about to find why nobody crosses Thaddeus Clugg and lives to tell about it. Hold him down, Klaus."
He began raining down sledgehammer blows on Michael that would have killed a normal person. Michael looked around for a way to turn the tables. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed the small wand in Clugg's coat pocket that he used to hypnotize-genuinely hypnotize, no less-his subjects and victims. It would have to do for the moment, particularly given Clugg had set down the sledgehammer and was now hefting an ax. The moment he stepped close to Michael, the killer grabbed hold of the wand and turned it on the magician in a flash. "Hey, give me that...you...can't...!" Clugg's voice trailed off as he fell under the spell of his own device. The ax clattered to the floor as he slumped face first to the ground in a stupor. "Give me that, you!" Klaus grabbed for the hypnotizer, but Michael flipped the hunchback onto his back and held the device right in his face until Klaus too was zombiefied. The killer snapped his fingers, and his two assailants stepped backwards, allowing him to get back up.
Before he could do anything else, however, there came the sound of the front door slamming upstairs. He frowned; now what was going on? Picking up his knife, he crept back upstairs into the closet. Intoxicated laughter filled the Myers house. Michael peered through the keyhole to see the attractive girl that had encountered his sister the previous night when he'd been following her in Vett's van hanging over the staircase railing, making bizarre love to a boy in a skeleton costume. "Are you sure we should really be in here, Janet?" he asked between kisses, "This place might not be safe, you know."
"Oh come on, Dick, don't tell me you believe those kiddie stories about how this place is haunted?" the girl retorted.
"No, but I don't think we should stay here too long if you ask...what was that?"
There was a low moan behind Michael. His sister was coming to. Digging through his pocket for the chloroform, he dumped half the bottle on the rag and jammed it over her face. She moaned in protest before slumping unconscious again.
"Ah, it's probably just the wind," the attractive girl scoffed, "I'm going to go see if there's a bathroom in this dump."
She staggered comically up the stairs, laughing loudly for no apparent reason at all. The boy pressed himself against the wall, looking around nervously. Michael saw an opportunity at hand. He slowly crept out of the closet when the boy's back was turned and sneaked up behind him. In a flash he drove the knife home. His victim let out a low howl before collapsing, but the girl apparently didn't hear this from upstairs. Michael dragged his latest kill into the closet and closed the door. Then he took out the hypnotizer and took his place at the bottom of the stairs. It took a few minutes, but eventually the popular girl came stumbling back downstairs. "No bathroom, Dick," she announced out loud in a drunken stupor, "Guess we'd better get...Dick? Where'd you go, Dick?"
Michael leaped out from his hiding place next to the stairs. He covered her mouth with one hand and held the hypnotizer in front of her face with the other. The initial look of sheer terror on her face at the sight of him quickly gave way to entranced indifference. Michael beckoned for her to follow him into the closet, then pointed for her to sit down on the floor; as long as she was hypnotized, she wouldn't be going anywhere at the moment, although better if he could secure her better in a minute. In the meantime, he hefted her boyfriend's corpse and carried it down into the chamber below. Soon it would be time to put Phase 2 into effect...