Halloween: The Official Movie Novelization

20

By the time Karen picked up groceries and was returning home, the afternoon sky had begun to dim. It was not quite sunset, but younger children had already taken to the streets. She glanced around at the various costumes: a mummy, a princess, a firefighter, a vampire, a cowboy, a pirate—accompanied by his mother who also wore a pirate costume—assorted superheroes, and a taller kid dressed as a wizard with a conical hat and a robe decorated with stars and crescent moons. Wary of a kid potentially darting across the street, she slowed her station wagon to school-zone speed and crept along until she made the turn into her own driveway.

As she glanced out the rear window, someone slapped the hood of her car with enough force to startle her. She caught a brief glimpse of an older kid dressed in a black cloak and hood, wearing a ghoulish rubber mask that hid his identity. Brazenness and rude behavior born of anonymity. Cross-reference the comments section on most of the Internet.

Next time, wear a troll costume, she thought, chuckling as her nervous reaction waned.

Karen walked to the rear of the car, opened the hatchback, and grabbed her two bags of groceries, hoping to make one trip into the house. A young cowboy, ninja, and skeleton walked past her, a few steps ahead of one of their parents.

“Happy Halloween!” the cowboy called.

“Trick or treat!” the skeleton said.

Nodding, the ninja remained silent, maybe an attempt to stay in character.

One boy carried a canvas sack for his candy, hand-drawn pictures of bats, skulls, bones, and tombstones decorating one side, along with the misspelled CEMATERY in all capital letters.

“Hi, kids,” she replied as she wrangled the two bags in her arms after closing the hatchback. “Have fun.”

With her jacket on, they wouldn’t see her Christmas sweater, which was just as well. She had no desire to stand around discussing why her family failed to embrace this popular holiday.

On the porch, she set down one bag to unlock the front door. Inside, she found the upstairs hallway light on, illuminating the staircase, but the house was silent. “Ray?” she called.

No answer.

Walking into the house, listening for any sound, she neglected to close the front door behind her and made her way to the kitchen. “Allyson? Anyone home?”

As she set the grocery bags on the counter, she heard a sound from upstairs. Halfway between a creak and a squeak. Maybe a random sound of the house settling. Or possibly something more. She thought about the anonymous ghoul kid slapping the hood of her car and started to wonder if that had been a postscript to vandalism or theft inside the house—or maybe a warning to his compatriots to get out…?

Leaving the kitchen, she walked slowly back toward the stairs so as not to make a sound of her own while she listened for more noises upstairs. Near the stairs, she craned her neck to look up the staircase to the hallway—and heard footfalls above her.

Someone’s in the house!

A moment later, she noticed movement at the periphery of her vision as someone stepped into the open doorway. Her head whipped around, heart racing—

Ray.

“Karen?”

She exhaled in temporary relief, raised a finger to her lips, warning him to keep quiet. He mouthed a question and she pointed to the second floor. When she turned back toward the staircase, her gaze raised to the top of the steps, a figure stepped into view, holding a handgun—

—Laurie!

Her mother aimed the revolver at the bottom of the staircase.

“Bang,” Laurie said matter-of-factly. “You’re dead.”

Karen gasped. “You scared me,” she said, incensed. “What are you doing in our house?”

Every time Karen saw her with the sheathed hunting knife strapped to the belt of her jeans, she absurdly imagined her mother hunting squirrels and rabbits and skinning them with the blade. When has she ever had to use that knife? The thought usually made her chuckle. Not this time. She was too angry to find any amusement at all in her mother’s eccentricities and obsessions.

Laurie stood there, unapologetic. “Side window was unlocked,” she explained. “No security system. Sometimes I can’t tell the difference between your ignorance and your stupidity.”

“I know jujitsu, Laurie,” Ray said indignantly. “I can apply pressure points, chokes, and holds to use the opponent’s force of attack against them.”

Both Karen and Laurie replied simultaneously, “Shut up, Ray.”

Ray meant well but this argument was between Karen and her mother.

Laurie descended the stairs. Before she reached the bottom, she said, “The bus crashed.”

Karen shook her head, confused. “What?” Okay, now her mother talked in non sequiturs. Or was it some code only she understood?

“I have a plan,” Laurie continued. “We’re going to get him before he gets us. Where’s Allyson? We have to get out of here. Now.”

“What bus crashed?” Karen asked, trying once again to grasp her mother’s madness. “Mom, no one’s coming after us.”

“Maybe you should put down that gun?” Ray suggested in a calm voice, clearly open to the possibility that Karen’s mother was unstable and potentially dangerous.

“You need help,” Karen said to her mother, with a nervous glance of her own at the revolver. “You’re not welcome here until you get it.”

As always, Laurie had her own agenda and was unwilling to listen to reason, only to the scared voices in her own head. “Evil is real,” she said. “You don’t know what it’s like to feel true terror. To be powerless.” Her voice softened. “I don’t ever want you to feel that way. I only want to prepare and protect you.”

The same excuse for her mother’s aberrant behavior Karen had heard a hundred times. The same fears and obsession. She was a broken record of paranoia, a danger to herself and—Karen was forced to admit—possibly to others.

Karen had spent her whole life trying to avoid the behavioral traps that had ruined her mother’s life and deprived Karen of a normal childhood. Rather than a role model, her mother had become an emotional cautionary tale for Karen.

“And I just want to prepare dinner for my family,” Karen replied, trying to steer her mother to the prosaic realities of daily life. She imagined the internal conversations her mother must have with herself and how often the words that bubbled to the surface and escaped her lips made no sense to the rest of the world. “The world is not a dark place. It can be full of love and understanding, and I don’t need your psychotic rants to confuse me or convince me otherwise.”

That had been the heart of their mother–daughter dysfunction. Karen had grown up believing she was a disappointment to her mother for not embracing Laurie’s skewed view of evil around every corner, which waited for one momentary lapse in vigilance to strike. To live a happy and full life she’d had to ignore all her mother’s expectations. She couldn’t live the life her mother deemed necessary, so she’d chosen to live her own life her way, by her rules. Her mother was a reminder of everything she’d rejected. But sometimes, her mother was a reminder of everything the two of them had sacrificed by going their separate ways. Karen refused to apologize for the life she’d chosen, even if it had meant rejecting her own mother.

“You need to leave, Laurie,” Ray said. “Or I’ll call the police. I will.”

Looking first at Ray and then Karen, Laurie nodded with resignation. For now, at least, she recognized that she wouldn’t sway them to her way of thinking. From personal experience, Karen knew it wouldn’t stick. Her obsession came at them in waves, like the tide, never completely gone.

Laurie walked between them and stepped through the open doorway. Pausing on the porch, she turned back and asked, “Did you get a gun?”

Karen walked to the doorway and grabbed the edge of the door in her hand. “Of course not,” she said. It never ends with her! “Get out.”

Before her mother could say another word, Karen swung the door shut and flipped the deadbolt.