Halloween: The Official Movie Novelization

13

Mt. Sinclair Cemetery had seen better days. Or better care. At least, one would hope, Dana thought.

She and Aaron followed the caretaker, a large black woman, through tall brown grass, navigating the rows of crooked tombstones. After an invigorating morning with a most memorable shower, the day had taken a grim turn. But that was the nature of their chosen profession. And their current story.

“My cousin works at a graveyard not too far,” the caretaker said.

Once they told her whose grave they wanted to see, she hadn’t needed to consult the massive map on the wall of her office or check any charts or forms in her filing cabinets. She knew precisely where to take them. With a simple, “Follow me,” she led them across the graveyard.

“Over there,” she said, “they got war generals, philanthropists, a beatnik poet. They got Muddy Waters and Bernie Mac. People come from all over to pay respects.” She shook her head in professional envy. “But this is Haddonfield. This is our only claim to fame.”

Aaron asked, “How much farther?”

“Just ahead,” the woman said, pointing toward a slight rise.

They walked for a minute at most before the woman stopped and pointed to a tombstone. Dana edged around Aaron for a closer look, dropping to her knees as she read the name: JUDITH MYERS.

The caretaker folded her arms and said, “Maybe you can explain to me what’s so spectacular about Judith Myers.”

This is it, Dana thought, fascinated. Where—how—it all began.

Hard to believe they stood so close to the infamous history of this place, this town, connected to another fateful night, one that had inexplicably forged Michael Myers into the madman he would become.

She couldn’t let this moment pass without revisiting that history, crucial background for their story. Reaching into her bag, Dana pulled out the recorder and spoke into the mic. “As she sat combing her hair. Unaware. Her six-year-old brother crept in quietly with a kitchen knife.”

Glancing up, she noticed a look of disgust on the caretaker’s face before the woman looked away and said, “Damn.”

Dana couldn’t blame her. It was a dark story. And they wanted visceral reactions.

Aaron motioned for the recorder, so she passed it to him to continue the background information. “He then proceeded to slice the base of her skull, scraping down her spinal cord, here…” He demonstrated the incision on himself, using the recorder in lieu of a kitchen knife. “Then, as she turned and raised her hands in self-defense, he continued stabbing into the arteries and nerves of her palms, like so…” Again, he mimed the cutting motion and paths with the recorder. “Once she collapsed, three more stabs in her sternum, piercing her heart.”

Judging by her sickened grimace at the lurid re-enactment of Michael Myers’ first murder, the caretaker clearly regretted asking the question and hoped she’d forget it all before it became nightmare fodder. “I don’t know about sternums,” she said with a shudder. “All I know is, we’ve had to replace this stone two times. People come around and put demon pentagrams and voodoo shit on it.” She shook her head. “Every Halloween. Crazy coconuts.”

Dana looked up at Aaron. “We should use that,” she said excitedly. “As part of the background, and as a postscript to Laurie’s story.”

“Agreed,” Aaron said. “Reminds me of the ham and eggs fable.”

“What?”

“The ham and eggs breakfast fable,” Aaron prompted. Dana shook her head. “What’s the difference between the chicken and the pig? The chicken contributes the eggs. The pig gives up its life. So, the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.”

“How’s this related?”

“Graffiti and vandalism versus a lifetime commitment.”

Dana arched an eyebrow. “So, in this scenario, Laurie is the pig?”

“She gave up a lot,” Aaron said defensively. “Obsession, a lifetime of fear. Lost her child to social services.”

Frowning, Dana said, “We are definitely not using that fable on the podcast.”

“Well, it was…”

“Seriously,” she said firmly. “Not a chance.”

Aaron raised his hands in surrender.

Dana stood, brushed off the knees of her black slacks, then reached into her bag and removed a camera to take pictures of the grave and the tombstone from various angles. She planned to use the images in their promotional material, their website, and for any mailers.

The caretaker stood nearby while they wrapped up.

Dana wondered if the woman suspected they’d steal the gravestone as a macabre souvenir to take back to the UK.

Across the cemetery, standing inhumanly still under a group of shady trees that have shed their leaves, The Shape watches them. The tall man taunted The Shape with the Mask. And the woman carried the Mask in her bag.

From the man’s words and taunts, The Shape knew they would come to this town. To this place. And that they still possessed the Mask.