He covers himself in filth. Since his soul will disintegrate after death, he commits himself fully to this world. He covers himself in filth.
Jacob did not sleep very well that night. He woke and slept, slept and woke, always on the cusp of some strange dream. Finally around 4 in the morning he could no longer bother with sleep. He woke up, got dressed for work, had his breakfast and his cup of coffee, and went down to the police station to have a look at the evidence. He didn't get a chance to check it out last night, so he assumed he could do so tomorrow. But this time he was openly rebuffed. They had brought in some experts, they said, but experts on what he had no idea. And so it was routine for him again. He didn't want to seem insensitive, but it was a fact that this murder was the most exciting thing on their hands in ages, and no one had any idea what to make of it.
Well, Jacob had a clue, but it just raised more questions instead of answering anything. Samhain. The word ran through his mind again. Pete told him nothing of its meaning that night, only asking him to keep it a secret. They would speak about it soon. Pete had yet another incident when he showed up to work today, clearly drunk, and when they told him to go back home he threw up. The funeral was tomorrow, and Jake dreaded it. There was no telling what Pete, a lifelong alcoholic, would do then.
Rumor had it that Pete and Liv were more than just half brother and half sister. Some said they even dated, when they were younger. True, they weren't related, but the thought of it still made Jacob feel uncomfortable. The same uncomfortable feeling everything else in this city gave him. He could never quite deduce what it was, but Haddonfield just felt... wrong. Pretty to look at, to be sure, but it felt like something was missing. But how? How could anything be missing? Thoughts like these made him sad, sad that he questioned a city in which he was born and raised, a city where, until now, there was no murder, where there were no diseases, where everyone had a job, where no one was homeless, or a drug addict. It felt like he was not seeing something that was right there, blatantly obvious to everyone else.
Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork. The only thing anyone seemed to be doing these days was paperwork. Oh, and keeping pirates out of the Dome. But paperwork followed even those momentary bursts of action. Haddonfield was not a violent place, but when it was, it was due to the outside world. But for the moment Jacob had some peace and quiet, sitting on a bench in the park, eating his sandwich. He took out his phone and entered the word 'Samhain' into the search engine. No results.
Jacob sighed. It was to be expected, though: the global internet had collapsed back in 2026, and then China's freakout in 2035 nearly obliterated what little of it remained in Europe. Each polis today had its own internet, merest fragment of a merest fragment.
Footsteps approached. Jacob looked up, startled. The officer with the mole again. „You mind if I take a seat right here?" he pointed at the empty spot beside Jacob.
„Oh, go ahead! I don't own this bench," the young man jested, and they shared a laugh.
The officer with the mole began to eat his own lunch, but paused, realizing he had never formally introduced himself to Jacob. „Name's Oliver, by the way," he said and reached out for a handshake.
Jacob's right hand was occupied with the phone. He placed it down on his left and shook Oliver's hand. „Jacob. Or just Jake."
„Nice to meet you, Jake! What a shitshow today, huh?"
Jacob nodded, laughing. Beyond that they didn't really have much to say to one another.
If there were answers, perhaps the pirates would know. They dwelled among trash heaps outside of the city, envious, ever conspiring to find their way in somehow, whether smuggling themselves inside or just through brute force. Parasites. But maybe, just maybe, there would be someone among them old enough to know the answer to the enigma of Samhain.
Jacob could not have any idea that the man who knew the answer sat right next to him. When Oliver had finished his meal he stood up, bade the young man goodbye, and walked to his car as nonchalantly as he could. He saw what the kid had been looking up on his phone. Now he drove to the city hall in the heart of Haddonfield, where the great and the good kept their vigil.
No building in the city could compare to the city hall – not even the local church gave off such a solemn, unnerving feeling, like one was treading upon holy ground, entering a temple. In the front was the portico, held up by four massive columns. The inside was dark even in the middle of the day; it looked like someone had emptied a cathedral of all benches and religious instruments to make room for bureaucrats that sat inside in neat rows, each desk divided by nothing but empty space. Oliver ran, his footsteps swallowed up by the darkness. Not one of these men even glanced at him as he made his way to the inner sanctum of Haddonfield's leadership.
Leadership was the right word. Haddonfield had no mayor. When the United States of America finally fell apart somewhere in the middle of 2026, two hundred good men upheld order. While their nation fractured, Haddonfield remained a secure island in the stormy sea. The level of respect the city held for them was comparable to the respect once reserved for George Washington.
Oliver had to shield his eyes as he entered the chamber of the Elders. It was bare of all decoration, brilliantly white, and in the middle of it were the Elders themselves: a single black cube, eighteen feet tall, long and wide. They were all on the cusp of becoming centenarians, and though medicines existed to extend their lifespans, they had decided that their watch was not just for a hundred years, but for all time. And so they had their minds uploaded into a supercomputer, to keep vigil over Haddonfield forever.
Oliver tried to still the frantic beating of his heart. No matter how many times he faced the enormity of the Elders, the awe and fear remained. „Sirs..." he gulped.
„WE KNOW," they answered. „WE KNOW THAT JACOB FRAKES HAS GOTTEN CURIOUS."
The camera feed appeared on the surface of the black cube: a view outside Liv Coburn's apartment, the entrance blocked by yellow tape. It rewinded rapidly to the night before, and in reverse it presented Jacob Frakes showing a piece of paper to Peter Coburn, then turning away and kneeling down. Here the feed paused and played again forward, with normal speed.
„HADDONFIELD IS THE CITY OF GOOD," the Elders declared as Oliver watched the kid discovering evidence while no one was paying attention. He would make a good detective, the man thought for a moment. „ONCE IT WAS EVIL, BUT WE AMPUTATED THE SIN. WE CUT IT AT THE SOURCE, UNTIL... THIS MOMENT."
The feed rewinded further back; Liv Coburn's last moments, entering her apartment. A man in a dark blue jumpsuit, whom no other camera had caught, charging the woman from the camera's blind spot and tackling her, stabbing repeatedly. Oliver was thankful that the Elders chose not to play the recording with the sound.
One could see the flash of a knife furiously stabbing into the victim and little else. The killer then stood over the corpse for maybe several minutes before finally walking out. The camera caught only one brief glimpse of it, but it was enough. There was the mask of a man with a vacant, hollow expression, eye holes that allowed no light. Oliver was just a teenager the last time he rampaged, no older than Jacob Frakes now, and he remembered that mask well. It was a mask of a man who, as far as the new Haddonfield was concerned, did not, would not and should not exist. Michael Myers.
„WE ARE GOOD. WE HAVE REMAINED GOOD FOR A LONG TIME. SUCH A LONG TIME THAT, IF EVIL IS ALLOWED TO RETURN, IT WILL NOT STOP WITH ONE STREET AND IT WILL NOT STOP WITH ONE CITY."
As the killer walked down the stairs, the surveillance switched to another camera, right outside the entrance to the building. But before Oliver could see what happened next, the feed shut down, and the cube was black again. The contrast between it and the pure white of the featureless chamber made it seem as if it was not only absorbing light, but actually radiating darkness.
A low whispering filled the room. The minds of the two hundred spoke among themselves, deciding upon the next course of action. Sometimes he thought he could make out words.
„...mask is different..."
„...copycat..."
„...legacy..."
„...door didn't open..."
Then they boomed in unity. „OUR DUTY IS TO FIGHT EVIL. THEREFORE, THE EVIDENCE YOU HAVE FOUND IN LIV COBURN'S APARTMENT WILL BE ERASED. PETER COBURN WILL BE IMPRISONED; AFTER ALL, MICHAEL MYERS BEGAN WITH HIS SISTER."
„Is he the killer?"
„WE DO NOT KNOW. WE WILL WATCH HIM CLOSELY TO MAKE SURE."
„And Jacob Frakes?"
„HE MAY YET BE OF USE TO US. LET HIM INVESTIGATE FOR NOW, BUT IF HE UNCOVERS TOO MUCH, BRING HIM BEFORE US."
And so Oliver went away. Firstly he would deal with the evidence, but when he got to the police station and to the evidence room, he saw something that made him stare blankly into the distance, with only his mind sounding the alarm but his body refusing to obey.
Liv Coburn was an amateur folklorist. In her notebooks she documented the history of Halloween, and incidentally she uncovered the bloody history of Michael Myers. And now that evidence was gone.