Chapter 7: The Seventh Visit

The past

Two days out of the hospital, medication in hand and system, Laurie felt well enough to think back on Halloween without a panic attack and to ask after the others involved in the attack.

"The kids are fine," Sheriff Brackett had said, referring to Tommy and Lindsey. "No injuries. Just scared. Their parents are grateful to you. They came to the hospital to tell me."

And the old man who had rescued her?

Sheriff Brackett's lips had twisted. "Dr. Loomis. Michael Myers was his patient. He survived, just barely. He's probably gone back to his home now."

And now that old man had a new book out. Laurie had seen the billboards put up around the outskirts of town, the flyers hanging from bookstores. She had also seen them smeared with graffiti. Read reports of Dr. Loomis coming under attack from residents of Haddonfield.

"Why are they doing this?" she asked the sheriff.

He had smiled with no humor. "Some people feel like he's profiting off this town's misfortunes. All those people killed – do their families benefit from this publicity? His book sales? No."

The sheriff had sounded so bitter she had dropped the subject. Then they heard that Lynda's father had been arrested for attempting to kill the doctor on his publicity tour. They heard he had tried to shoot Dr. Loomis, screaming that he had created the monster that murdered his beloved daughter; that he had been jailed; and that the gun wasn't loaded.

"Why do they blame him?" Laurie mumbled, curled up in her chair. "He didn't make Michael Myers. He was his doctor. He tried to help." She remembered how he had appeared at the last minute, trying to save her. How he had shot his own patient several times. How he had sacrificed himself to give her time to run.

The look on Sheriff Brackett's face seemed to indicate that he knew this, and that for her sake, he was going to soften some of his own opinions. "They blame him for not doing enough. He didn't cure Myers, and that led to people dying. Now he has a new book out, and some people think maybe it was deliberate – he didn't help Myers because then Myers would kill a bunch of people, and he could make more money."

Whatever happened to Lynda's father, the incident just generated more press. Stores started putting the book, and its predecessor, in their store windows, hoping to get a cut of the profits. Laurie saw them as she walked to work and home every day. At first, she kept her face averted, not wanting to see the masked face staring out at her. Then she realized that there was a picture of a boy, a picture of an unfamiliar, pumpkin-like mask on the cover. It was still him, she knew, but not the face that she had seen. She could manage it.

And then, one day, with a bonus from work in her pocket, she had stopped at the store, walked in, and bought copies of both Dr. Loomis's work. She didn't really have any reason. Her therapist was helping her to work past the events, and had suggested she try to expose herself to some of the things that would trigger her fear – small things, manageable things. She had tried, in the privacy of the office – envisioning the man in her mind and working on calming exercises, looking at photos and quieting the panic it would bring. A book… that might be the next step. And maybe now she would have some idea of what Michael Myers was and how to prevent herself from being attacked – and all from the nice old man who had rescued her.

She flipped through the first book as she walked home, staring at the photos – a pretty but tired looking blonde woman, described as Myers's mother; a teenager with dark hair and slanted eyes who could have come from her school, labeled as Judith Myers; and a young boy with long hair and flat eyes. Arriving back at the Brackett's house, she had tossed them on the living room coffee table and gone up to take a shower, intending to read the books after.

When she came down, hair damp, Sheriff Brackett was sitting on the sofa, books in his lap, looking very old.

"Laurie," he said. "We need to talk."

The present

Two weeks was too early.

Ever since she had scheduled the visit, she had been living with a pit of dread in her gut. Thirteen days (then twelve, then eleven…) had been so little, so short, compared to twenty-nine (then twenty-eight which was still many weeks away, twenty-seven was still plenty, twenty-six…). She had clutched onto each day, waking as early as she could, staying up as late as possible, trying to drag out each hour before she had to come back, but time had run out like water between her fingers, and now she was back.

And she had been stupid. It had been stupid. She had spent the last two weeks almost a zombie, stress building up in her, not getting enough sleep, waking to nightmares or spending hours imagining horrible scenarios in her head. School was ending – she had a mountain of papers and final projects to grade, and her students were running wild, seeing summer vacation nearing. Her own children had been the same, and she had snapped more at them in the last few weeks than she had all year.

So when she woke up the day of the visit, it had been to a ringing alarm clock informing her that she was late.

She had been stupid. She had to rush the twins through their morning routine, then raced to drop them off at school. She had to call the office and apologize and say that she had overslept and was going to be late and could they get someone to watch the class for the first half hour – the office receptionist had not been happy. And in the chaos she had forgotten to take her medication, had thought "Screw it" and dumped the bottles in her purse, intending to take it during her prep period or while the kids were working.

But the class had gone a little wild and she had to spend the day herding them to do their assignments. Then she got called in to watch over another class during her break period – the receptionist's revenge for being late, she thought. And she had to prepare for her last two classes during lunch and barely had time to eat. And now she was sitting here, nerves on fire, looking at an insurmountable pile of papers that needed to be graded by the end of the week, clutching her pencil so hard it might shatter. A pounding migraine was developing in her right temple, and there was a prickle going all over her.

And her brother was there, sitting silently and watching her with still, shadowed eyes. She hadn't said a word to him the entire visit, just slapped down her work, dragged her chair over, and tried to drown out the buzzing in her head with essays.

It wasn't working.

She shut her eyes a moment, wanting nothing more than to rest her head against her arms. The small type face and the inevitable grammar mistakes was only making her headache worse – it felt like there was a throbbing weight against her eyelids. She was distantly aware that her left hand was trembling, while her right had such a death grip on her pencil that it was going numb. The prickling under her skin was turning into a tingling, almost feverish in its heat and intensity.

Breathe, she thought. Her brother, the visit, the papers, she tried to put aside, focus on breathing. Breathe. Calm down. Think.

When she opened her eyes, there was a woman standing in the corner of the room.

Laurie swallowed back a gasp.

Oh God, no, not again…

The woman stared directly at her. She was very pale, and almost fuzzy around the edges – a ghost, wavering in and out of existence. Laurie did not have to look behind her to know that the guards did not see her. They would never see her. Not even Michael could see her; he was still looking right at her, totally unaware of anything else in the room.

Not this, please, not now… Laurie squeezed her eyes tight again. Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. Count to ten with each one. She sucked in wavering breaths, hand shaking from the effort to keep herself still.

She opened her eyes.

Deborah Myers remained where she was, staring implacably at her.

Laurie's entire body was beginning to shake. No, she told herself. It's not real. Calm down. Sometimes it takes a while to go away. She fumbled around in her pocket for her pills, then swore internally – she had left it in her purse, which had been taken away from her.

No! She could make it go away. It wasn't happening. It wasn't real.

She counted to twenty, and when she opened her eyes for the third time, the woman was still there, her gaze almost challenging.

I won't go away.

Laurie pressed a fist to her mouth, stifling a scream, as she curled back against her chair. And that caused another reaction: out of her peripheral vision, she saw Michael turn his head from where he was sitting, following her gaze to stare at the corner. Her hands curled around the pencil, preparing to stab at the vision, just to make it go away, go away -!

Wait –

Michael was looking at it.

She thought at first that he was just tracing her line of sight, but – no. He was looking right at the exact corner – his head was even tilted up to look exactly at Deborah Myers's face –

His mother's face. Their mother.

Laurie knew what had happened. She had finally, totally, gone insane. Her mind had snapped under the stress and now she was sharing the same hallucinations as her equally insane brother – and soon they would be hauling her away, never to see her children, putting her under drugs and restraints and just waiting for her to get loose and start murdering nurses –

Yes.

The word reverberated in her head, isolate and foreign – not her thought. Another's voice. Deborah Myers seemed to shimmer, wavering out of focus, only to dart forward, several feet closer. Her mouth was moving, and even though there was no sound, Laurie could almost hear the tone, her hand rising to beckon both of her children forward –

Yes…

No! No, she didn't want to, she didn't want it, but her mother was coming inexorably closer as Laurie shrank back, her legs gone numb, unable to escape – and the buzzing in her head was rising to a shriek, pulsing out all other impulses and thoughts and rationality, and Laurie knew, from the last sane part of her mind still trying to take control, that she was twisting her hand around the pencil to bring it up –

Without warning, Michael stood.

She could not see anything at that point except the figure of her mother bearing down at her – but she could hear. And she heard Michael stand, the restraints on his legs rattling. And she heard the creak as he shoved back his chair. And most of all, she heard the shuffle of his steps as he got up and walked right. Next. To her.

Deborah Myers stopped, and the whine in Laurie's head dimmed for one moment.

The two figures stood in front of her like a tableau only Laurie was audience to – her mother in front of the table, her brother next to her. He towered over them both; she had forgotten about the sheer size of him, even more noticeable with her sitting scrunched into her chair.

He was staring at his mother. And if Laurie had still harbored the delusion that he could not see her, that he had just been looking where Laurie was looking – she forgot it now. Because the hallucination, or ghost, had moved, yet he was still staring right at it.

And Deborah was staring right back.

She didn't know what was happening. All she could see her viewpoint was her mother's expression; her brother was too tall, his face turned away from her and anyway, hidden behind a mask. But she did see Deborah's face change. She looked surprised.

Could hallucinations look surprised? Could ghosts?

Whatever Deborah Myers was, her confusion lasted only a moment. Her face shifted – not in any way human, but like her entire head had simply gone soft, like clay, melting and reforming into sudden, terrifying wrath that made Laurie curl all her limbs into a ball –

Michael moved.

It was a tiny thing, but Laurie, sitting so close to him, saw it anyway. He shifted his stance just a few inches – a few inches closer to Laurie. His hand, the one closest to her, jerked, moving towards her.

And Deborah Myers stopped. She stopped, and just looked at her son.

Laurie didn't even dare to breathe. The buzzing in her head had gone utterly silent.

Michael looked right back at her.

Deborah's form flickered again, her face gone blank. The edges of her were growing hazier. Laurie thought she might have stepped back, just a bit – but then she blinked, and when she looked again, Deborah Myers was gone.

Her head was quiet.

For several moments, she sat frozen in the same position, barely daring to breathe. She kept waiting for Deborah to reappear, to hear her gently coaxing tone urging Laurie to grab the pencil, but nothing happened, except that she kept sitting there, breathing sharply, and Michael kept standing next to her, staring at the same spot as her.

Then he moved again.

She saw him shift again out of the corner of her eye, and turn his head. At first, not looking at him closely (she was still waiting for Deborah Myers to reappear), she thought he had resumed looking at her again. But then he turned fully to look down at her, and she jerked her head up, and saw that he was not staring at her at all, but at the pencil she was still holding.

Laurie looked and swallowed through a suddenly dry throat. Her hand was still curled around it – not like she was writing with it, but like it was the handle of a knife.

Michael kept staring at it. Confused, Laurie looked at him, then back down at it, not sure what to do. Finally, she dropped it. It clattered quietly along the tabletop as she stretched out her stiff fingers.

When she looked up again, Michael was looking at her, just as steadily as he had all the other visits.

Was that the only thing he had wanted her to do?

Her head felt fuzzy, but not with the buzzing that had nearly overcome her. It was more similar to the light-headed wobbliness she felt after a long day of work, the kind that left her barely functioning and just about ready to collapse into bed. But penetrating it was a sense of confusion.

What had happened?

"Hey! Hey!"

Laurie jumped, startled out of her numbness. Michael, as was to be expected, did not react at all. One of the guards was striding over, his baton out.

"Myers! Get away from her, right now!" Behind him, the other guard was standing at the ready, mumbling something into his walkie-talkie. To Laurie, the first guard said, "Miss, don't move, let me handle this."

She couldn't have moved even if she wanted to. She watched the guard approach Michael with detached fascination. Her brother was giving the guard all the attention he might give to an ant – that is, none at all. His gaze was focused only on her.

"Last warning, Myers," the guard said, one hand going for the cuffs on his belt, and Laurie had to admire his persistence. "Get back in your seat, or we'll be telling the doctor and ending this visit-"

Laurie started out of her seat. "No, no." She uncurled herself from the seat and stood, hoping that her legs wouldn't give way. "It's okay, he's not doing anything."

The guard looked decidedly unconvinced; Laurie had, after all, been sitting hunched in her seat for several moments right around the time Michael had stood, so of course their only conclusion was that he was the cause. "Miss, please, back away and we'll take care of him-" He raised his baton threateningly.

"No," Laurie said more firmly. Some inner sense was telling her to get them away – maybe the minute observations of Michael's body: a twitch of his hand, the stiffening of his shoulders. "It was nothing. I'm fine, really. He can stay here."

The guard looked as if this was the last thing he wanted to do, but Laurie just glared at him. She felt bad – he was only doing his job, and at any other time she would have been grateful for their intervention – but she was too bone-tired, too filled with the after-buzz of terror and adrenaline, to really care. With a distinctly disgruntled expression, he backed away.

"We'll be watching, Myers," he said as a final warning. "No funny business."

Michael did not even look at the guard as he stalked off. Only when they were a sufficient distance away did Laurie sit down. Her brother remained standing, still regarding her.

She wished, suddenly and more strongly than ever before, that she could see his face. Maybe it would give insight into what he was thinking. And maybe, it would tell her what he had done.

When she left the room at the end of the visiting hours, she was still thinking about what had happened. She answered Dr. Beckett's questions in a daze, not really thinking about her answers (no, she did not know what happened, no she wasn't hurt, yes, he just stood up and went next to her, no idea what had happened, yes, two weeks, see you then). There was no mention of seeing Deborah Myers – if there was anything most likely to get her committed, that would be it. As soon as she had her purse, she rushed to the bathroom and downed several pills, even though her mind was remarkably clear, and had been the rest of the visit.

The drive home was a blur of fields and brown, rounded plains, and she almost missed the sign welcoming her back to Haddonfield. At home, she watched her children play in the backyard; with summer approaching, even the evenings were still bright and warm, and she could sit on her lawn chair with them, mulling over the events.

What had happened?

She could put together a rough series of events. One: under intense stress, she had forgotten to take her medication. Two: because of that, she had hallucinated her mother, probably because she had been reading Dr. Loomis's books pretty intensely in the last few months. Three: she almost had a breakdown during the visit because of said hallucination. Four: Michael saw the hallucination as well. Even though that should be impossible. No, he had just been following her line of sight. Maybe. Five: Michael had gotten up and stood next to her. Why? Because he saw the hallucination – no. Because he wanted to, for some unfathomable reason she was not privy to. Six: the hallucination had disappeared.

Jamie slipped in the long grass, squealing as John threw himself atop her, shouting that now she was "it". Laurie watched but did not quite see them, head still far away.

So the questions were: Did Michael see the hallucination? If so, then how? And if not, why had he acted the way he did? And why did the hallucination disappear?

There was the scientific explanation. No, he did not see it; he just looked at what she was looking at. He had stood near her because he was crazy and who knew why crazy people did what they did? And the hallucination disappeared because that happened – they came and went because of weird disturbances in her brain chemistry or something.

Plausible, maybe. But it did not match up with her intuition, that something else had been going on – that most of all, Michael had seen it. If so, how?

The first explanation was obvious. Her brother was insane, and so was she, and in their matched nuttiness, they had hallucinated the same thing.

Only she had never heard of such a thing happening. Which was why (she tried to convince herself) that he was just curious what she had been staring at and had looked in the same direction.

Except that the hallucination had moved, and he had tracked that movement, and he had even known where the… thing's… face was. Laurie resisted the urge to bury her head in her hands and moved onto the next question: what had happened to make it disappear?

Somehow (and screw the scientific explanation), she knew that it was connected with Michael standing up. He had never done that before in all their visits. And when the hallucination had drifted closer, he had moved towards her as well – so close, he had almost been standing in front of her.

Forgetting about her children for a moment, Laurie closed her eyes. She tried to visualize the scene exactly as she remembered it. She had sitting in her chair, legs and arms drawn around herself, the table before her. At the other end, the shimmering form of Deborah Myers. At her side, Michael, standing very close.

At her side…

And she remembered how he had inched even closer to her as their mother approached. How one hand had twitched so that it was almost in front of her.

Like he was guarding her. Shielding her.

The thought made her shiver.

And that had pissed off the hallucination, or ghost, or whatever the hell it was. Mother and son had stared each other down for several moments – or seconds – or hours. She could not be sure just how much time had passed. Then, the form of Deborah Myers had disappeared.

It made no sense, Laurie thought, opening her eyes. Maybe it was some kind of ghost, or demon, of Deborah Myers, come to beckon her youngest child into crazy-land. But then, why would Michael act the way he did? Even Dr. Loomis had thought that Michael was close to his mother, or as close as someone like him could be. But… and Laurie felt surer of it the more she thought about it… her brother had actually defied that ghost. He had stood over her and made it go away because… why?

Because it was causing her distress…

Because he didn't want her to go mad…

And maybe because she was still his baby sister and despite everything that had happened, he still wanted to protect her.

The thought settled into her with a certain finality. On some gut level, she knew it was correct.

When she opened her eyes, John was standing in front of her.

She started, laughing. "John! You snuck up on me, huh?"

He grinned. "Mommy, you were sleeping."

"Was not," she retorted, but smiled. "Just thinking." She brushed the hair from his eyes, regarding him. There was little of her family in him, she thought. His eyes, his hair, his face – it was all Jimmy. Same with Jamie.

"Hey," she said softly. "Stay in the yard, okay? I'm going to make a call."

Inside, she dialed the number for Smith's Grove Sanitarium and waited for Dr. Beckett to pick up.

"Hello Dr. Beckett. It's Mrs. Lloyd. Yes… yes, fine. I'm just calling to say… for the next visit…" A reward, positive reinforcement… "…I think I'm going to bring my children."

A/N: This chapter was fun to write, even though I might be stretching characterization a little. I always considered the visions of Deborah Myers to be sort of demonic, a manifestation of mental illness rather than an actual ghost.