Chapter Five: September
It's Lynda who comes over to the house in the afternoon, angry.
And Laurie becomes a willing victim.
As she dices vegetables for the stew whose broth simmers in a pot on the gas-stove Lynda complains about her boyfriend over a cause long lost. Still, Laurie listens all the same. By the time a ladle dips into the stew and pours its contents into a bowl, Lynda is distracted from her tirade.
"That... smells great," Lynda says, prettily impressed.
Laurie smiles, pleased that someone would think so.
"Dinner for...?" Lynda asks as Laurie puts a spoon in the bowl and leaves it on the corner of the kitchen counter.
Her friend never finishes her question because the answer enters the kitchen in a plaid shirt and long khakis (courtesy of their mother's taste which decided that her son looked much better in loosely fit clothes like the hospital tunics uniformed at Smith's Grove). His back ramrod straight and his gaze perpetually set beyond the walls.
He takes the bowl and heads back upstairs.
In his brief passing, the kitchen had felt much colder to Laurie and the goosebumps on her skin are just now falling.
Once she is certain she hears his bedroom door close, Laurie rubs her hands down her face and groans.
Lynda puckers her lips in thought. Her hooded eyes are turned in the direction Michael disappeared and she bites her lip.
Laurie sees that look.
"You can't— be— serious." Each word is punctuated with disbelief.
"Don't think so?" Lynda blinks, shameless in her desires.
The corners of her mouth downturn in a moment of unpractised disgust. Laurie scoffs.
"He's my brother."
Lynda shrugs. "Hey, if it doesn't work out with that loser, mind if I come over tomorrow night since mommy and daddy are gone?"
Laurie almost bore an expression of horror to which Lynda laughs giddily.
"Not that I need your permission," Lynda says, twirling a pigtail draped over one shoulder. "Just your blessing."
Laurie rolls her eyes and turns off the stove. "You know what? Maybe, you two would be good for eachother. He doesn't say a word and you...well, you could do all the talking for him."
"Really?"
Laurie has never looked so solemn. "No. For once, could you please have something on your mind other than...that?"
"Like what?" Lynda asks, then her eyes narrow mischievously. "Like...Ben Tramer?"
Very quickly, her brother's image flees from her mind and Laurie pales. Lynda gauges her reaction and becomes emboldened in her teasings.
"The handsome…" Lynda began with a mock-swoon, "Athletic— takes up seventy-five percent of the pages of your diary— Benjamin Tramer?!"
When Lynda moaned, Laurie's face fell into her open palms to hide the tomato blush coloring her cheeks.
XXX
By dusk, Lynda is gone.
Laurie is left cleaning the mess of her visit.
An empty bag of chips on the ground. Kernels of popcorn scattered the floor. The pillows smashed on the couch. She contemplates vacuuming, but reminds herself that her parents won't be home until Sunday night. Her mother might live by the rule that a clean home is a happy home. But, Laurie's life doesn't hinge on it. So, she sweeps instead.
When the first floor is decently tidy, perhaps, not to the impossible standards of her mother, Laurie moves onto dishes. It's when she is in the middle of rinsing the kitchen knife, does Laurie remember...
It'll probably stay up in his room until her mother comes home. But, by the time that happens, the broth would've been crusted to the sides and become impossible to clean.
Laurie sighs and shuts off the sink. As she wipes her hands on her jeans, she is climbing the staircase to Michael's room, finding that his door is left ajar. Inside, the lights are off.
Before Michael, this bedroom used to be for guests, namely for their relatives when they visited from the city to quaint Haddonfield. Before them, this room belonged to someone Laurie believes never existed because six year old Michael Myers is but a legend, no matter how much her mother might think it to be true.
The thought that he may be sleeping doesn't hinder her. She knocks on the door which pushes inwards under the pressure of her touch.
"Michael?"
His name trails an echo down to the first floor, but receives no acknowledgement. She hoped to draw him from slumber, so as not to surprise him when she entered his room, but at this point Laurie doesn't care about boundaries or privacy.
Don't be rude, Laurie.
Her first couple steps are confident. Her last are hesitant.
The bed is not made. But, is not slept in either. The blankets are not pulled out. The pillows are fluffed not flattened. However, with the light coming in from the hallway, Laurie barely sees the imprint on the sheets as though someone has sat on the edge.
On the waist high dresser, she spots the empty bowl, the silver handle of the spoon sticks out. She turns around, one circle, eyes scanning warily for her brother. She half expects him to be watching her from a corner in the room. Paranoia gets the best of her as she goes to the sliding door closet, opens it and peers inside, but finds nothing.
As she strides over the bowl and collects it in her stiff fingers, Laurie concludes Michael is gone.
She gasps when the tingy ring of the phone cries from the kitchen downstairs. Laurie scowls marches down the stairs, runs the sink and places the bowl at the bottom of the basin. She takes her time, but whoever calls her is persistent.
Finally, Laurie strides over to the phone and answers.
"Hello?"
"Laurie! My god! Laurie," Annie sobs.
"Ann? What's— What's wrong?"
"I— I called my dad. He's on his way right now…"
"What for?"
"I…"
Annie doesn't continue. Her sentence shatters into a hundred of her cries and though she is primarily concerned, Laurie is secondarily frustrated.
"Annie, please, it's going to be okay. Tell me what happened?"
There is a sharp intake of breath on the other end. Then, it becomes fearfully quiet.
Laurie waits.
And then she hears a scream through the receiver which pierces her eardrum.
No matter how many times she calls her friend's name, there is no response.
Shortly, the call ends on Annie's side.