Chapter 6: The Sixth Visit

"They're starting to ask me where I keep going off every month," said Laurie. She scribbled out a comment on one of the papers she was grading and rephrased it in a kinder way, squinting at her work. "I tried going on weekends, but then I have to get a babysitter. But if I want to go on the weekdays, I have to take a day off, and…" She shrugged.

Michael just kept looking at her. It did not disturb her; coming now for six months (she could not believe, thinking it, but that was how much time had passed, amazingly), it had begun to lose its discomfiting effect, like she had built up a callus to it. Without his restraints, he had rested his hands on his legs, and hadn't moved from that position since. If she stayed on the other side of the table, she could pretend to herself that it was just like the other visits.

"Sometimes I'd say I was sick, other times I'd take a grading day, or say I have a meeting to go to," she continued. "But then they notice if I do that and I'm still behind on work." She flipped over the paper, scrawling out a grade and placing it in a slowly growing pile on her left. "And I don't like leaving the kids a lot."

Laurie sighed, rubbing her eyes. The room had a window, but the light wasn't very good, nor were the fluorescent lamps holding up well either. It would be better if she could move her chair to the left side of the table, so that the light angled across her work.

But that, of course, would put her closer to her brother.

In an attempt to put off the decision, she said, "They watch me." She scoffed. "It makes me sound paranoid, but a while ago, there was a… a book. People were angry about it, but some bought it anyway, and it… it told them who I was. Am."

It had been a slow thing, and had Laurie not been forewarned, she might not even have noticed it initially. Strange looks from her coworkers. Neighbors crossing the street when she walked. Children whispering to each other when she passed. All of a sudden, she was no longer Laurie Strode, daughter of Mason and Cynthia Strode, what a sweet girl, such a good babysitter, always reliable, gets good grades, probably going to do very well for herself. Now she was Angel Myers, sister of Haddonfield's only serial killer, they resemble each other, she had some problems in elementary school, guess that's why everyone close to her had been attacked, might crack from the stress of it…

"I couldn't get a job my first year," she mumbled, staring at her paper. "There were several openings, but it just didn't work out. And when I did, it was… hard."

It had been the sixth time the principal had visited her classroom, and she had only been teaching for two months. She noticed that he would grow more alert whenever she bent near a student.

Her support teacher told her that she should try not to touch her students in any way. No, she didn't think she was doing anything wrong, anything perverted. Just that it might make them nervous. With her background and all.

The parents would sometimes stare at her a little too sharply during conferences. The assistant principal advised her not to sound too angry during them (she had not been angry at all). He also said that he would sit in on all of them, just to make sure nothing got out of hand.

"I think the people I liked best were the ones who didn't care," she said. "Like, they really did not know or did not care. There were people who tried to act nice and like it was no big deal, but…"

They looked at her with pity and too-bright smiles, oh, it was just bad luck, everyone knew murderous tendencies were not in the genes, said as they stood feet away from her and avoided any topic that had to do with death and attacks and killing…

"Oh, there was one guy who was obsessed with famous murderers."

He looked at her with intense fascination and said that it was so interesting that their own town had such an infamous serial killer, and he had come back and she was the survivor and a relative, and it must have been terrible (was it terrible?) and seen horrible things (so what did he do exactly?) and she must read Dr. Loomis's book, it explained so much about the killer's psychology (did you see any of that?)…

She tapped the paper pensively. It was only twenty minutes into the visit, and she did not want to make the drive back yet. Maybe finish one class worth of work…

That wouldn't happen, though, if she kept working where she was. She bit her lip, considering it. Six months ago, she wouldn't have considered doing this – the further from Michael, the better, would have been her thought – but he was just so silent and unmoving that it was getting harder to keep herself alert.

Or maybe, she thought with a flash of paranoia, that was what he wanted her to think.

Still tapping her pencil, she chanced a look down at his chair. They had kept his legs chained together and to the chair, so he could not move from it.

But she had seen him break down doors and punch through walls and ceilings. A chair wouldn't do much to stop him.

Then again (another part of her mind argued), if he could do that, he hadn't taken advantage of it, even though he had had plenty of opportunities to do so. And there were guards in the room now. Two of them were standing at the door at that moment, staring at the wall with a look of boredom. The visitor's room was big enough that, if Laurie spoke in a low tone, they wouldn't hear her, admittedly one-sided, conversation with her brother.

But he was fast, fast enough that if she moved close enough, he could rip them off and snap her neck before any of them could react. They were many feet away, she realized – the distance growing in her mind.

The first anniversary of the Halloween attack, Laurie had not slept. Had not eaten. Had not showered. She had kept the radio and television on almost all hours she was awake, listening for news of a breakout. Whenever she heard a crime report, she would sit up as if hit with an electric wire, then slump again into a curled up ball as the report would inevitably describe a list of minor felonies or give the person's description. Knocking, growing more insistent as the day wore on, were ignored, as were conversations, people calling her name, pleas, and threats. When she fell asleep, it was out of sheer exhaustion, her eyes so dark as to look almost bruised.

The second anniversary would have been even worse, had Sheriff Brackett and Annie not pulled her bodily from her room and taken her to a therapist. She had sat in the office, jumping at the tiniest noise and insisting every few moments to keep the blinds closed so nobody could see inside – no, open them, so she could check outside – no, keep them closed. It was the only thing she did say; questions from her therapist were met with tight-lipped silence. Even though by then, she had known about her relationship to him, the knowledge so recent it had felt like it was burning her. She was sure he would come back that night – that he might possess some psychic link to her mind that let him know that she knew what they were to each other.

He hadn't, and when the third anniversary came by, Laurie was on different medication, was slowly weaning herself from her therapist, and had Jimmy. By then they were living together in their own little apartment. He let her keep the radio on but would urge her to stillness whenever she leaped up at some new crime report. He didn't force her to eat, but made her favorite meals anyway and let her pick at them, satisfied to see even a few small bites. He let her lock all the doors and windows, and would answer any callers himself. He tucked his lean body around her and whispered constantly through the night, so that she knew she wasn't alone and so the buzzing would quiet.

She was pregnant on the fourth anniversary, her hormones combining with her stress combined with having to deal with new medication to make for rampant reactions. Jimmy had anchored her again, calmly tolerating her bursts of anger, her moments of paranoia and distrust, and her dark dive into depression. He held her in their bed and stroked the curve of her belly, talking about what the baby would be like, browsing through toy catalogs together, and reading her textbooks to her to help her study.

By the fifth anniversary she had two children, and she could not stop watching John. He wasn't talking. (Jimmy said it was still too early for that.) He didn't smile like Jamie did. (Jimmy said John was just a more serious baby.) He didn't play with his toys. (Jimmy said it was because Jamie kept hogging them.) He looked like her brother. (All babies look alike.) She wanted to hold him; she wanted to put him down. She wouldn't go into the room; then she couldn't stay out of it. She wondered if her bloodline was cursed and she had doomed John to be like her brother; she wondered if her avoidance of him would do it anyway. She asked Jimmy if she was a terrible mother.

"You're a wonderful mother," he had said. "This is just a bad day."

Jimmy proposed something for the week coming up to the sixth anniversary – a call to the sanitarium. Explain who you are and why you are asking, he told her. There are psychiatrists there. They'll understand. She did. They did. They endured her calls, sometimes four or five times daily, asking if her brother was still there, in the week leading up to Halloween. The holiday was almost past when Laurie made her last call and fell into bed, tired but, for once, not exhausted.

She did that with less frequency in the seventh anniversary. The television and radio remained off. She could answer the door sometimes. She opened the blinds up as well. She thought she was going to be all right.

Jimmy died just a few months before the eighth anniversary.

It was a bad time. Grief on top of the loss of Jimmy, the loss of the one steadying force in her life, on top of having to help her children and hide her own terror.

She made it. Just barely. Delivered the kids to a babysitter and sat alone in her house. She had gone to the door to lock it and was thinking about pulling all the curtains closed and turning on the television, when she stopped, because it seemed like Jimmy was talking to her, telling her to breathe deep and to calm the sanitarium and that he was there, always there.

She left the door unlocked.

Two months after, Dr. Beckett had called asking her to visit her brother.

Laurie had been staring at the paper for five minutes, trying to make her decision. To move or not to move, that was the question.

She wished she still went to her therapist. Or still had one. Maybe Dr. Beckett would be one. He was already taking care of one Myers family member, why not another? A bubble of hysterical laughter threatened to burst out of her.

What would her therapist say? Probably something affirming ("your fears are valid, Laurie, and you should not be ashamed about trying to accommodate for them") followed by something to get rid of them ("let me tell you about these new cognitive behavioral techniques that could help"). It had always annoyed her, the seemingly unnoticed contradiction in her words – your feelings are normal, now let's try and fix them.

"Exposure therapy, Laurie. You may have heard of it. It involves placing you, the patient in proximity to the feared object or situation. No, not immediately, but gradually working up to it. I'll teach you methods of calming down, of monitoring your feelings, breaking them down. We'll start with very safe situations, the safest you can be – maybe imagining the situation. Or just a photo or video of something associated with it. We'll work from there."

Laurie was pretty sure, however, that her therapist had never intended for her to be in the same room as her actual brother.

Michael was sitting there, looking as calm and passive as someone of his size might be. Laurie took a breath, slowly putting her pencil down.

She remembered that she had been close to him before – quite close, and without any guards in the room. When she had thought to remove his mask.

He hadn't done a thing to her then.

Carefully, she pushed back the chair, its legs squeaking on the floor. Still cautious, she picked it up and moved it to the left side of the table. Then, just as slowly, she began moving her papers over.

Michael watched, giving no reaction that could tell her what he was thinking. His hands remained in his lap.

Her breathing was quickening, but not abnormally so. She sat back in the chair and picked up the pencil, looking at her papers. A dim part of her mind appreciated how much better the light was from this side.

A quiet rattle made her jerk her head up. Michael had shifted his leg slightly, making some noise. But he did nothing else. His eyes did not waver from her face. Now that she was closer, she could see a little more into them, though hair and the shadows of the mask (dark blue, almost black, with white spots where the glue had leaked out) still obscured them.

For the rest of the hour, there was silence between them. Laurie settled into the grading, quietly aware of her brother's presence but, for once, able to keep it in a distant part of her mind. On the brief occasions when she looked up, she found him still gazing at her. He made no noise, even his breathing quiet. The only movement came from the rise and fall of his chest, and she had the strange feeling that it was deliberate, he was holding himself still.

When visiting hours were over, she packed up the papers and pencil and stood, looking at her brother, wavering because something felt incomplete, unfinished. She almost wanted to say something to acknowledge whatever had occurred, but there was nothing she could think of.

In the end, she left without saying another word.

Only when driving home did she realize that it was the first time she had left without any feeling of fear.

Laurie wiped the droplets from her face, careful not to get shampoo in her eyes. "John, please stop splashing, I'm trying to get Jamie's hair done."

He stopped immediately, settling for swishing the water. His hair was soaked so that it was plastered to his head, water dribbling from the strands. Next to him in the bathtub, Jamie was squirming impatiently as Laurie scrubbed bubbles through the long hair, scratching firmly to get all the dandruff out.

"Okay, close your eyes," said Laurie, and she turned on the water, dunking Jamie's head under. Within minutes, all the shampoo was out, though now the bathtub was filled with soapy, dirty water. She drained it, ignoring the twins' shrieks of dismay as the cold air hit them, then filled it up and repeated the process with John ("Jamie, now you stop splashing").

"Done!" She patted John's head. "Now, hand me the soap-"

In her bedroom, the telephone rang.

Laurie bit back a swear. "Great." She tossed her hands under the sink faucet and quickly dried them, then ran to answer the phone.

"Hello?"

"Mrs. Lloyd. Is this a bad time?"

He must have heard her grumpy tone. "It's fine," she said, still failing at concealing it.

"I can call back another time-"

"No, it's fine, just – hold on-" She covered the mouthpiece and shouted into the bathroom. "Jamie! John! Wash yourself off, then get out and dry yourselves off, okay?" Back on the phone, "What is this about?" Her gut clenched. "Is he-?"

"No, Mrs. Lloyd, Michael is still in his room… though this is about him."

Laurie tugged off her glasses, rubbing at an eye. Of course it was; lately every conversation seemed to be about her brother. "What about him?"

"Your last visit went rather well, I thought. Exceptionally well, in fact." Laurie waited, a sense of uneasiness forming. In the bathroom, her children were squealing as they splashed about. "I was wondering, then, if you might consider coming more often – perhaps on bimonthly? Every two weeks or so?"

Her stomach felt like it had dropped out of her body. "What?"

"I just thought that perhaps in this way, we might encourage him to, er, stay-"

"You make it sound like it's his choice to stay-" she said, anger rising.

"No-"

Rage boiled over. "-when it should be about keeping your security high enough!" she exclaimed.

"Of course not, Mrs. Lloyd, it's just that we are seeing positive results in his behavior and your relationship-"

"Relationship?"

"-meaning only that, based on my observations, that your visits help him and he might want more-"

"So you're saying he misses me?"

"Mrs. Lloyd, please don't shout."

Belatedly, she realized that she had been doing exactly that, and that the bathroom had gone ominously silent. Covering the handset, she poked her head out so that she could see the bathroom. Her children were staring at her, eyes rather wide.

"Guys, get washed off and then get out," she said, in as normal a tone as she could manage. "I'll be with you in a second, okay?"

She waited until she heard them yelling at each other again, then uncovered the handset. "One visit doesn't mean anything."

"But it hasn't been just one – you've gone six times in total. I think there's an improvement. Yes, a very tiny one. But it's there." He paused. "Please, Mrs. Lloyd. Just try it. It's what you've doing all this time. Just go once. If it doesn't work, it'll be back to monthly visits. But don't refuse without trying."

She sighed, pressing her hand harder against her eyes. Why did he always do that?

"All right," she mumbled. "Fine. Two weeks. I'll see him again."

"Very good. Shall I schedule you for the 15th then?" When she mumbled an agreement, he said, "All right then. We will see you on that day, Mrs. Lloyd."

At least he hadn't asked about her children, she thought, hanging up the phone with hands gone suddenly numb.

Thirteen days left.

A/N: I completely forgot to mention this last chapter, but the fact that both Annie Brackett and Jamie Lloyd exist in this story is rather funny, since both were played by Danielle Harris. I almost put in a line about it last chapter ("Hey, how's your daughter? You know, the one that looks so much like me?") but I thought that would be a bit too meta.

Exposure therapy is also definitely a thing; Laurie's therapist is describing the systematic desensitization method. Of course, what Laurie is going through right now is closer to the flooding model, i.e. "We're going to toss you into the situation you fear the most; good luck surviving with your mental health intact!"