Chapter 5: The Fifth Visit

The past

"Who… was… he?"

A sigh.

"His name is Michael Myers."

"…Myers?"

"Yeah. You've probably heard of him. Used to live here in Haddonfield. Seventeen years ago, he killed his sister and three others. Two of them were also in his house. One was a kid about his age."

"He… he…?"

"They had him locked up in a sanitarium, far away from here. A few nights ago, he broke out. Came back here."

Breath.

"Why… me?"

Eyes lowering.

"…I don't know. We'll be looking into that. But what matters is you're safe."

"…Safe?"

"Yeah. We got him, Laurie."

"…Got him?"

"Police picked him up around the time we found you. They've already sent him back."

"Back?"

"Yeah."

His name is Michael Myers…

Is Michael Myers…

"He's… alive?"

"…Yes. The shot – it grazed his head, didn't quite hit his brain. Lost a lot of blood from the other shots, but Jesus… guy is almost inhuman."

"No…"

"Laurie, he'll be locked up again, under even tighter security. He won't come out again."

"No!"

"Shit… nurse! Nurse, I need a nurse!"

The present

"A pencil?" The receptionist frowned. "Let me check with Dr. Beckett." She picked up the phone and dialed a number, still pursing her lips.

Laurie sighed, tapping said offending object against the marble table. She shifted the heavy pile of papers from her right arm to her left. All the visits were taking their toll on her grading; with the stress of anticipation the week before each visit, and the nervous letdown for a week after, it meant two weeks where she was useless at home. She could barely drag herself to the school some days, fighting with painful effort to keep smiling at her students, to get them through each lesson. Some days she would just give up and have them watch a movie instead, so that she could close her eyes and push away thoughts of Michael standing at the window, staring up at her…

So in an attempt to catch up, she had decided to bring some work with her. It wasn't as if Michael talked much, or did anything, right? And she was not going to spend the entire half hour filling up the silence. She'd done her research, checked up on what was allowed into visiting areas, and paper and pencil was definitely on the list, so long as it was not given to the patient.

Then again, those rules applied when visiting normal patients, not maximum security ones.

The receptionist was nodded, speaking too softly for Laurie to hear. After a few more seconds, she hung up the phone. "He says it's all right. Just don't leave it behind."

Laurie nodded. Obvious. She allowed herself to be escorted through the layers of doors, dropping her purse in the same locker. The ever-present bottle of pills rattled in her long coat as she walked to the visitor's area, and banged against her leg as she sat down.

She noticed something different, then. The chairs and tables weren't bolted down.

"Hey Laurie."

Laurie blinked as she held the phone, recognizing the lilting, slightly throaty voice. "Annie?"

"Mm hmm."

"Oh. Oh wow. Annie! Um… how are things?"

"About the same." Annie had decided to go into accounting. Something safe, normal, and where Annie would probably never encounter any blood or injuries. Laurie sympathized. It was why she had finally chosen to go into teaching.

But then they had to take CPR lessons, and – she still flushed with humiliation at the thought of it – in the middle of pumping the dummy's chest, Laurie had suddenly found herself bent over Lynda's nude body, begging for her to wake up. Stupid, it had looked nothing like Lynda, but that was what she saw. And when a dark shape approached, she had screamed, lashing out and hitting it, before fleeing the room. Later, she found out it had been the instructor coming to check on her.

Jimmy had finally given her lessons. He had said that his were better anyway.

"How's your dad?" asked Laurie, shaking off the memories.

"Same too. He likes retirement. Says this place needs more looking after."

They had moved to California, where it was constantly warm and autumn barely noticeable, to a neighborhood full of elderly couples and singles living alone. Less chance of Halloween celebrations or trick-or-treaters decked out in costume.

"What are you up to? Anything new?" asked Annie.

Yeah, I'm visiting my psycho brother and trying to make sure I don't have a panic attack every time I go. But Annie hated to have the subject brought up. That had been another difference between them. Annie didn't like to think about that night. She didn't want to talk about it. She'd rather move someplace completely unfamiliar, so long as it didn't trigger any memories. When her father had been trying to sell the house, she had pleaded with Laurie to stop apartment searching and to just come with them. What was so great about Haddonfield anymore that she wanted to stay?

Laurie could not explain it, not when she felt so similar to Annie in some ways. She couldn't stand Halloween anymore either. She would call in a substitute teacher on that day, so that she didn't have to see the kids in costumes. She could not go to certain homes or streets. She hated to be out at night, thinking that each person walking in the evenings was him, come to kill her. Her own children did not celebrate Halloween, despite their pleas. So why didn't she leave?

She didn't know, only that she felt as if moving would be running away. Giving in to her messed up brain. If she just stayed and toughed it out, she explained to Annie, it would all get better. Things would go back to normal. "They'll never go back to normal," had been Annie's reply. And in a month, the house had been sold, the furniture packed up, and the Bracketts gone, to a town where Michael Myers was an unknown name.

"I'm just… teaching. Kids are pretty good this year."

"That's nice. They're probably going to make me a full-time employee, so I can finally get out of Dad's hair."

Annie had taken a while to decide what to do as well. Laurie hadn't figured it out in her last year of high school. "You haven't even finished applying yet, sweetie," her mother (adoptive mother, her mind hissed) had said. "Just focus on getting into a good school. There's plenty of time to decide what you want to do. We'll talk about it then."

But they hadn't, and then they were dead and Laurie had left her college applications unfinished her last year of high school, and spent the next year wandering in a haze of confusion grief and and loneliness.

"Find anyone… special?" There was a distinctively casual, subtly flirty air to Annie's voice now. It made her seem younger, more like the friend Laurie had played with since elementary school.

"No." Laurie forced a laugh she didn't feel, because she rarely heard Annie sound like that anymore. "You know Jimmy was the only guy for me."

"Oh come on, Laurie. The guy was great, but you've got to move on. Find some other men. You know, I think Ben Tramer's still around…"

"Ben Tramer's been married the last five years," exclaimed Laurie with real amusement now. "I'm pretty sure he has a kid, too."

"Oh. Huh. Well, his loss." She could almost imagine Annie shrugging it off. "My point still stands. Seriously Laurie, when Jimmy was around, you were the happiest I'd ever seen you. You need a guy in your life!"

Annie sounded like him…

"Look," Jimmy had said, "I know things have changed a lot since back in high school, but sometimes it helps to go back to that. What made you happy then? What'd you like to do?"

Other than being with her friends, talking to her family? It had taken a long while to remember, to come out of her haze and actually try to recall what it had been like to be happy, to be carefree. But she had remembered that she liked babysitting.

"You like kids, then? Maybe think about going into teaching. It doesn't have to be with kids like the age you babysat, either. Older kids still need teachers. If not, we'll think about it some more. We've got plenty of time."

She sighed. "I've got Jamie and John, and teaching. It's kind of hard to find time to date."

"Well, try. Do you really not have anybody new?"

She did… but Laurie shoved the thought away, hard. "No. No, nobody new."

"I remember it started after reading Dr. Loomis's book." She snatched a glance up at Michael, wondering if he would react to the name. He didn't. As always, his eyes remained fastened to her face. She wondered if he ever blinked – she certainly hadn't caught him doing that. What did he find so fascinating anyway? She had thought that maybe he was staring into space, but she was a teacher; she could spot a glazed look a mile away, and that was not what she was getting from Michael. He seemed interested. She just didn't know why.

Laurie picked at a paper, not seeing the words written on there. "I read the second one, and I found out about… me…" She curled the corner with her fingers. "And then I went back and re-read the first one and looked at all the photos. Of… Judith Myers. My sister." The word felt strange on her tongue, when for nineteen years she had thought herself an only child. "Deborah Myers. I started having nightmares then. Seeing… um… my mother."

It felt so odd to call her that. "Mother" would always be Cynthia Strode, cheerful and bustling around, making sure her absentminded father wasn't tripping over his own briefcase going out the door. It did not feel like Deborah Myers, of whom she had no memory except as a smiling woman in a photograph.

"I would dream about her, and sometimes of… you."

After seeing a photo of her brother as a child. Strangely, she did not dream of Judith; it was always Deborah Myers and Michael. She would dream they were following her, nebulous figures staring at her, never speaking, but waiting for something she could not guess. All she knew was that she would wake up from those dreams soaked with sweat, a scream lodged in the back of her throat and looking frantically around the room for those same figures, so convinced that they were real.

"And then it got worse… I started seeing them even when I was awake."

She had woken up, looked around, and actually screamed, because Deborah Myers was standing near her closet, beckoning her. She had screamed so much that Sheriff Brackett had come running in with his gun drawn, thinking she was under attack. In the panic, he had turned on the lights, making the figure of Deborah Myers disappear.

"Hallucinations. That's what my therapist said. She said it could be stress. Not sleeping well. Even my PTSD. They tried medication. Eventually it went away."

Most of the time. Sometimes she would see it again – a flash of white in the corner of her eye, the figure of a boy, but gone when she turned around.

"Sometimes I see you."

He'd appear in the reflection of her mirror, or against the glass of a window. The first time, she had whirled around and hurled a mug in that direction, only to see it shatter in the empty kitchen. The second time, she had simply froze where she stood until it disappeared. Now, she would close her eyes and count to ten, heart in her throat the entire time. It had worked, so far.

Michael was still looking at her. As always, the gaze made goosebumps stand on her skin, and she wondered if he had heard or understood anything she had just said. Did he care at all that he was the cause of this? The urge to see his face under the mask came over her once more, but she resisted, the doctor's words from her last visit echoing in her mind.

She tapped her pencil on the paper, words drying up. And just like before, she was the first to break the gaze. As she stared down at the worksheet, she thought she saw Michael shift, adjusting his arms. Was he uncomfortable, being restrained like that? Then she shook herself. Who cared about his discomfort? If it kept him from attacking her, or anyone else, then she was definitely in favor of it.

Shaking her head, she tried to get back to grading, but she had broken her concentration – now aware of Michael all over again, it was difficult to work, knowing he was staring at her the entire time.

If only she could see his face.

"You must really like masks, huh?" she blurted out. "Is that all you do here, is make them?" She looked at the one he was wearing, trying (but probably failing) at making her stare as uncomfortably intense as his was. The doctor's words rang like a warning, and she knew she was probably taking a big risk just talking about his masks, but shit – she had been coming here for the last five months, disrupting her life and her children's lives, and with nothing to show for it, so why the hell not?

"They don't look very good," she continued recklessly. They didn't – for someone who supposedly spent years making similar masks, the papier-mâché was crudely laid on. "How much time did you spend on it? A few minutes?" Dabs of dried glue could be seen around the edges. The holes for eyes looked as if they had been torn out, and only a rough attempt at coloring had been made – like someone had scribbled red crayon over most of it and thought it good enough.

She stood up. "Take it off."

Michael's head tilted, the hair falling out of his face.

"Take if off!" she demanded, coming around the table towards him – realizing suddenly that her hand was moving of its own accord for the mask –

Michael jerked his arms up. The movement caused his wrists to pull against his cuffs. Laurie heard the chains rattle against the chair, and then squeak as they were pulled taut against the belt.

She leaped back, almost screaming, and crashed against the table edge. Without bothering to grab her things, she ran for the door and fled, once again, into the hallway.

"Mrs. Lloyd, please understand, that was not necessarily a bad thing."

Laurie released a hysterical sob. "He tried to attack me!"

"We don't know that."

"Then what do you think it is?" she almost shrieked – almost said, but just managed to bite back, whose side are you on?

"He reacted, Mrs. Lloyd." There was an undercurrent of excitement under the calm overtones. "Usually he barely reacts to anything I say, barely even seems to notice what's going on around him."

"So this is a good thing?" Laurie exclaimed. "That he's – he's – waking up or – getting ready to kill me or-"

"No, no, Mrs. Lloyd," Dr. Beckett said, looking shocked at the very thought. "It's just as likely that he was responding to your, erm, request."

She stared at him, then began to laugh, bitterness turning it harsh. "Responding? So he was actually trying to do it because… what, I asked him to?"

"It's a possibility."

"It's wrong!" The hall rang with her voice. "He doesn't want anything to do with me, he wants to kill me! He spent Halloween night trying to find me, and when he did he tried to kill me!"

"I find that difficult to believe, given what we've seen of his behavior." When she looked away, Dr. Beckett sighed, placing his hands in his pockets. "I am on your side, Mrs. Lloyd. When I first came to this case, having read Dr. Loomis's case files and the police reports, that is what I believed of him too." He hesitated, eyes distant. "I don't know what went on exactly between you two on Halloween – I do not need to know, Mrs. Lloyd, I am not your doctor and that is your personal information. But… am I correct in thinking that maybe he did not, initially, try to kill you?"

Laurie looked away. That seemed to be answer enough for him.

"Dr. Loomis did think he had a sort of obsession with you. In his files – not his book, mind you, but his private reports – he could not seem to decide if it was a good or a bad thing. That might explain why he did not try to exploit it – to use that obsession to try to understand his patient. He eventually settled on bad, which is understandable, given what he saw and especially after what happened to him Halloween night. But my own observations differ somewhat from his. I do think there is something there, though like Sam, I don't know yet if it's for good or ill. And… callous as it is… I, unlike Dr. Loomis, am trying to take advantage of it." He shrugged. "Michael Myers is my patient. I want to help him because I am here to help him. But admittedly, it would also be quite beneficial to me, personally."

Laurie waited, not sure what to say. Was this supposed to convince her…?

"So yes, I called you in to see if we could create some kind of reaction in him. I was not expecting much… even his mother could not get him to respond after a while. But still… that photograph…" He frowned, but did not continue the thought, even when Laurie looked at him. "Well, anyway… you can call it wishful thinking, but I do think his reactions have been, shall we say, positive?"

She continued to look at him, not quite believing what she was hearing.

"His alertness around you, his docility… the fact that you can touch his mask without him attacking-"

"Am I supposed to be thankful for that?" she interrupted.

He shrugged helplessly. "With Michael Myers? Maybe." When she did not respond, he continued, "It may seem like very little to you, and certainly frightening, but I have been observing him for the last eight years, and this is more than I ever seen in all that time. You are helping him – and helping yourself."

Laurie swung her head up. "Helping myself?" She stood on wobbly legs, pressing an arm into the window sill. "I can't stand to be in the same room as him for more than half an hour. I have panic attacks every time I come here. When I go home, I jump at every sound. I can't let my children answer the door because I think he will be there. I can barely let them go to school because I'm afraid he'll have broken out and taken them."

"Yes, yes," he said, holding his hands up in a placating motion. "No, I should have been clearer – psychologically, it is a toll, and I am sorry. Were there any other way, I would suggest it. What I meant, perhaps, was what I said the first time I called – so long as he stays, you will come. You will visit. Escaping means he will lose that. In some way, you are giving him a reason to stay here, and so keeping yourself safe, at least physically."

She closed her eyes, the conversation playing back like a recording. It had been burned into her memory, those words. She went over them the nights before and after each of her visits, wondering if the doctor was correct. Or maybe he had gone just as crazy as his patients.

"And…" she said numbly, "what is to stop him from deciding that… the visits aren't enough… and that he should come out and just… see me?" See me all the time, trapped with my psychopathic brother for the rest of my life…

Another shrug. "I don't know." Laurie rolled her eyes. "But I do know this – stopping them would probably have a far more harmful effect than continuing them."

She didn't answer, preferring to look out the window. The sun was shining dully over the small yard outside. Some patients were sitting out there, accompanied by a few nurses, and she watched one of them shuffle near the wall.

Dr. Beckett cleared his throat after a moment. "I know this is not the best time, but you did notice that the furniture was not bolted down this time?" Laurie nodded, still watching the distant patient. "I thought it might be a way of, maybe rewarding behavior. Being more responsive, showing a lack of aggression – it's a way of providing positive reinforcement for them. Loosening of restraints, so to speak. And speaking of restraints… perhaps next time we might remove them."

She snapped her head around, patient forgotten. "What?"

"Not all of them. Maybe remove the handcuffs, but keep him held to the chair and make sure he can't walk-"

"No!" It was completely crazy – let her psycho brother have more freedom?

"Security will remain the same. Cameras in the room, guards at the window – we'll have them inside too, just at a distance-"

"But-" The idea of guards with her mollified her for a second.

Dr. Beckett swooped in, taking the advantage. "Then we'll try it. Just one visit. If he does anything threatening, it will be just like before. One visit, Mrs. Lloyd?"

She tightened her grip on the window. One visit. She could do one visit, right? And it would not be as if all his manacles were off –

And maybe, if he did attack her, she could end this insanity and never come back again.

She nodded.

She didn't remember the dream afterwards. Only the dread lingered – the feeling that something dark, something evil, was lurking around her. And the heavy weight of the nightmare world – that stayed with her as well. She could not remember the details of it, but the overpowering sense of foreboding was there.

What she also remembered was waking up screaming. Her throat was burning, as if she had been doing it for hours. Her sheets were soaked with sweat and cold in the night air; one of them was twisted around her leg, the rest kicked off. She was still crying even as she realized where she was, not knowing why, only thinking that something had happened in the dream that had terrified her into wakefulness.

"Mommy?"

Laurie gasped, gulping air down her raw throat. She flailed about, momentarily confused – then her eyes landed on the alarm clock at her table, the window lightening the familiar contours of the room.

She put a hand to her head. A dream.

"Mommy?" There was a hesitant knocking at the door. "Are you okay?"

And she had awakened her children. She curled her hand into a fist against her eyes. That was the last thing she wanted to do – to let her children see her distress. It had frightened her as a child, to see her parents on the rare occasion when they had cried or been afraid. She didn't want Jamie and John to see it too.

Too fucking late.

"Mommy?"

She swung herself out of the bed, shivering still. "It's okay," she called out to the closed door. "I'm all right."

"You were screaming," John murmured fearfully. "It woke us up."

A sigh, and Laurie opened the door. Her two twins stood in the doorway, illuminated by the moonlight, both in their pajamas. Jamie's hair was pulled into a braid falling to her back, while John's was tangled and falling over his eyes.

"See?" she said, in what she hoped was a reassuring tone. "Perfectly fine."

Jamie rubbed an eye. "Were you having a bad dream?"

"Um…" Oh well. "Yeah, sweetie. But I'm awake now, so I'm fine."

"You sure?" John mumbled, his stifled yawn still not hiding the concern in his voice.

She smiled wanly. "I'm sure, honey. Come on, back to bed with you both."

The two trotted off to their room, Jamie wobbling like she was about to fall asleep while she walked. Laurie shut the door and went to her medicine cabinet. Take one for to prevent disturbing dreams and to induce sleep.

Strangely, as she lay in bed, slowly growing drowsier with each second, she remembered Dr. Beckett's other suggestion:

Have you considered bringing your children?

She rolled over, punching her pillow into shape. No, she thought hazily as she fell off to sleep, thinking of their pale little faces, their round eyes filled with fear. Not them. Not ever.

Twenty-nine days left.

A/N: As a teacher, I can tell you that when you have a crap ton of papers to grade, more coming up, and a tight deadline, you will start dragging your grading with you everywhere you go.

The whole "Laurie and Michael share a psychic link and can see the same hallucinations" thing in H2 was pretty wild and I didn't really want it in my story, but I thought I might acknowledge it and try to make its source as ambiguous as possible. And it will important in a later chapter.

Also, I haven't said it before, but thanks for the favs and reviews from the few people who have done it! I feel like this story is a bit different from what's usually posted, but any comments or alerts/favs are very much appreciated!