"...Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows..."

-John Betjeman

(A/N: The beloved Michael Myers will make an appearance near the end. But don't expect too much of an appearance though D: )

"Vanessa?"

Two figures sit across each other on a gray, makeshift picnic table. The sky is clear and the weather is perfect; the larger of the seated figures takes good note of this, taking time to pause and take a whiff of the clean, crisp air, reminding his companion to consider doing so too. He tries not to notice the high electric fence that surrounds them, also the dry smell of cement and absence of grass beneath their feet and that all around them stank the paleness, the emptiness of imprisonment.

"Vanessa." Dr. Gray repeats her name gently. He is a patient man, "You've not spoken a word ever since you came here."

Across him, the small, dark haired figure in the white patient's gown sat quite still.

"I know the enclosure of the walls during your previous interviews might have caused you some discomfort; But see here now, it is only you and me, outside. Nobody else can hear us."

The patient's head moves slightly, eyes resting on the tape recorder on the table between them.

"It's only a recording, Vanessa. It is needed as proof to convince the higher powers that you may go home."

The eyes moved their focus from the tape recorder to the outside...beyond the electric fence, beyond the barren wasteland that surrounded the back of the sanitarium.

"Yes. Home. You want to come home, don't you, Vanessa?"

Her eyes do not see him, her ears do not hear him.

"Don't you want to come home, Vanessa? Back home to play with Jimmy?" Dr. Gray watches as the child's eyes stare past him. He sighs and takes another whiff of the air. "Can you not hear it, Vanessa? It's the spring breeze taking its last breath; soon it will be fall...It's going to be Halloween in a few months too. Don't you want to be home in time for Halloween? To make masks with Jimmy again?"

Dr. Gray tries to look deep into those blank eyes for a spark...any other hint of nostalgia.

"Vanessa? Don't you want to come home?" Dr. Gray then pauses, braces himself for another method. And then, "Sam?"

Something in the child's eyes flickered as she turns them to glance at him; it was not even a second and she looks away again.

"Don't you want to come home, Sam?"

Sam lifts her head slightly, eyes glinting through the mop of very dark hair.

Almost there, Dr. Gray reminds himself. Almost. For now at least, he has her attention.

"Now," He takes out several papers from his briefcase and places them on the table. "Let's talk about these drawings you've made."

A spark of recognition: She looks at the drawings and then to him.

"Yes. Jimmy lent them to me," Dr. Gray points to a drawing that resembles a potato man with a striped apron, a mop or curly dark hair and a barely distinguishable face, even for a kid's drawing. The potato-ish drawing stood amongst a field of carefully drawn sunflowers, with a smaller drawing in a blue garment beside it. (***see pt. 1 for this) "Who are these people, Sam?"

Sam doesn't respond. She simply stares at the picture, her mind obviously elsewhere, her eyes flickering as if in a dream...like she was reliving another moment, seeing another scene as she sat there.

"Is this you?" Dr. Gray points to the smaller drawing clothed with a blue crayola triangle. Up close, it resembles a small girl with long dark hair.

Sam doesn't respond. She is still dreaming wide awake.

"Jimmy said this one here...this one with the curly hair...is called Bubba. He taught you how to make masks."

And finally, a hint of a nod.

"And these others..." He points to other drawings: a thin, squiggly, colourful character with a part of its head colored gray, a vividly orange and pink figure with a mess of yellow crayon hair, a drawing of an old woman with a chicken, a man with a large mouth and a large spoon, and a stick figure in what looked like a wheelchair, "Do you remember them, Sam? Do you know where they are?"

A shake of the head.

Dr. Gray sighs and pauses for a long time. Recorded in the tape, it is the longest silence between the two of them.

"I must be honest with you, Sam." Dr. Gray says after a while. "We are not making much progress. In fact, I think this is the last time that we'll...ever see each other.

"I am leaving, Sam. But it's not my decision. The board is completely convinced that there is no hope for your progress and so they have, say, relieved me, of the position as your therapist.

"Also...The Foster Care Program is releasing their hold on you. The Chases are also no longer financially able to cover your care here..."

Dr. Gray pauses. The child had put her hands on the table and was beginning to look at him intently, as if listening carefully to every word he was saying, She looks apprehensive and alert, and even almost wary.

"But you needn't be worried, Sam." Dr. Gray says comfortingly, despite being unsure whether or not she is really worried. "You are being transferred to the care of Dr. Wynn, the administrator. You are in good hands."

For the first time, she gestures; it is the first time she attempts to communicate with him: She spells Jimmy's name on the table and looks up at the doctor almost inquiringly. Dr. Gray begins to pity her; the small, seemingly frail figure across him. She only wants a home. But flashbacks of the crime scene photos, of the blood drenched axe, of the hysterical Mrs. Chase..."...she's a monster. She's a fucking monster; I don't want her anywhere near my children anymore, you hear me?..."

"No, Sam. I don't think the Chases are coming back."

At that, the alertness, the apprehensiveness vanishes; she seems to wilt in front of him, but her eyes, her face is completely void of emotion.

"Sam..." Dr. Gray says. "I know that for what you've done, you have been called countless things...but evil is not one of the truths, Sam. I don't think you are."

Sam looks up at him, really looks up at him. And then, in a voice that does not sound as if it is actually hers, low, hoarse and fragmented, she says with a deadening weight. "Am I?"

Immediately, she takes her hands from the table, and despite Dr. Gray's frantic urging, stays as still as she ever was until the guards come and take her back inside.


"Like a what?"

"Like when you take the cutout letters from a newspaper and put them together to form a word." Dr. Gray explains as Dr. Terence Wynn leads him down one of the vast white hallways of the Smith's Grove Sanitarium, "One only needs to do such in the case of the incapability to write or—"

"Or when they're asking for a ransom." Dr. Wynn presses a five-number combination and a metal door swings open to admit them.

"No...it's when you don't have your own signature...your own handwriting. It's like she's parroting; taking imitations of words and emulating them herself...fragments of, of other people's words, she imitates them and strings them all together." Dr. Gray sounds excited; by the time they reach the bottom of the stairwell Dr. Wynn is leading him to, he is breathless. "But for explanation of this strange behavior—Could it be that in imitation...an early stage of ..."

"Nobody could care any less if she does have a personality disorder; everybody in this building has it." Dr. Wynn brushes the other doctor aside, sounding almost sympathetic for the other's incredulity. "In case you've forgotten, Dr. Gray, this facility holds among the worst cases in the state." They walk down a wider hallway, but it is lit dimly, "Take my advice; hold out no more hope. She is not getting better." They take a right, down a flight of steps and through another locked door. Soon, Dr. Gray gets the feeling that they are in a completely different building.

"Are you awake? Why, hello." Dr. Wynn speaks into one of the few cells that run along this hallway. Instead of grilled doors, there is bulletproof glass and a door unlocked only from the outside. Dr. Gray looks into the cell and sees a young man pacing to and fro and to and fro, only to stop when seeing the two doctors are watching him.

"Excited?" Dr. Wynn asks the young man. Dr. Gray watches the interaction, mainly one sided as the young man does not respond, despite seeming to catch everything that has been said.

"Michael, don't be rude. Say hello to Dr. Gray."

Dr. Gray turns to Dr. Wynn, surprised. "This...this is Michael? Michael Myers?" He then looks at the young man again, notes the somehow angelic face and the brown hair...he doubts it for a moment, then the young man tilts his head ever so slightly, takes one step closer to the glass and stares, he stares deep into Dr. Gray's eyes, a deep, dark stare.

Dr. Gray almost hops back.

The other doctor finds this amusing. "People do that all the time; don't worry, he won't get you."Dr Wynn walks off and Dr. Gray follows, completely aware of Michael Myers' stare burning his back as he left. "Now him, he's a find. So don't concern yourself over some deranged little girl." Dr. Wynn stops before a cell which is smaller than the others, and has worse lighting. Inside, on an elevated platform lies Sam on a lump of a mattress, her back to the world. She is curled up and making gestures and drawings in the air.

Dr. Gray looks worriedly at the small back, and then at the hallway and its cells which holds a handful of the patients that had been abandoned completely by the outside world. "What are you to do with them? To her?"

"Ah." Dr. Wynn grins cheerfully. "Nothing fatal. And all, I assure you," he adds, "For the betterment of the future of Man."

Somewhere deeper into the underground facilities, Dr. Gray thinks he hears someone screaming in horrific pain. But he disregards this; as being in a place like such, hearing voices comes off as a normal occurrence.

"She'll be transferred to the cell across Michael's; it's bigger and better lit than this one."

"Pardon?" Dr. Gray blinks. He is certain that the cell in question, is occupied. "But is there not somebody in there already?"

"He won't be there forever, you know." Dr. Wynn winks and laughs. And right there, Dr. Gray realizes the purpose of the hidden facility, but says nothing. Resigned, he gazes at the small, still quite innocent child drawing figures in thin air, unaware of what was to befall her. In his heart he bids her farewell, hoping dearly, that she would somehow hear.

(A/N: there are references to the transient pt. 1, but if you won't be bothered with reading another lengthy story, the reference is about the Sawyer family from the first two Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies, as my OC, Sam has stayed with them when she was younger. Also in this fanfic is the time when the scheming Dr. Wynn (not mine) experiments with the pure evil of Michael Myers in the underbelly of the sanitarium. Anyways....comments, flames, violent reactions as R&Rs please and thank you :D )