Halloween: The Official Movie Novelization

25

With Julian tucked in and, she hoped, already asleep after those impressive yawns, Vicky padded down to the kitchen to wash dishes. She rinsed off plates, glasses, and flatware and loaded them in the dishwasher. Letting the hot water run, she hand-washed some pots and pans, making more noise than she intended but hoping not enough to wake Julian. She anticipated a fun and eventful evening ahead, so the last thing she wanted was a tired, cranky child ruining the mood.

Movement outside the window above the sink caught her eye. As she set the last pot on the draining board, she leaned forward to peer outside. She had to press her face close to the window to see past her own reflection to ghostlike shapes fluttering outside. Too late for trick-or-treaters, so—

Two white bed sheets, hanging on the clothesline, rose and fell with the breeze.

She wasn’t superstitious about Halloween, but being alone—relatively alone—in an unfamiliar—relatively unfamiliar—house at night could put anyone’s nerves a little on edge. So, she tried to lose herself in mundane tasks. When she returned the dish detergent to the cabinet under the sink, she noticed the small trash can was overflowing. Tugging the plastic bag out of the container, she knotted the drawstring closure, put in a fresh plastic bag and took the full one to the back door. For a moment, she considered going back for her tennis shoes, but she wouldn’t need to cross the yard, so she decided to forgo shoes for the sake of expediency.

Outside in the dark toting a load of trash, she shivered, her raglan shirt insufficient against the fall chill in the air.

She walked along the paved walkway around the house toward the large trash bin. Dried leaves skittered across the cement with intermittent scraping sounds. A couple crackled underfoot as she stepped on them. When she lifted the hinged lid on the large trash can, she looked up at the night sky and saw wispy clouds slide across the face of the waning moon. She dropped her bag on top of the other aromatic offerings that had accumulated since the last trash day. Wrinkling her nose, she mumbled, “Ew, that’s ripe!”

She rubbed her arms for warmth, then turned to hurry back inside and—

“Hey, there you are.”

Vicky shrieked. An involuntary impulse before her brain processed Dave’s familiar features. “Jesus, Dave!” she exclaimed, breathless. “You scared the shit out of me.”

He’d come to the Morriseys’ in costume as a farmhand, wearing a frayed-edge straw hat, a red plaid shirt and overalls. Under one arm he carried a child’s stick horse and in the other a jack-o’-lantern with carved hearts for eyes, what looked like an upside-down heart for a nose, and a smiling mouth. Not scary in the least, but he’d showed up out of nowhere in the middle of the night when she was already a bit spooked.

“Sorry,” Dave said. “I’ve been knocking on the front door for, like, five minutes. I didn’t wanna ring the bell and wake the kid.” She’d been washing dishes, but he must have knocked softly for her not to hear.

“Check it out,” he said, holding up the jack-o’-lantern. “Fresh from my patch.”

“Cute,” she said, laughing as her nerves calmed.

“He hearts you,” Dave said, dipping the eyes toward her.

“Well, you know what they say…”

“What’s that?”

“The eyes are the windows to a pumpkin’s gutted interior.”

“That’s awful,” Dave said, hugging the jack-o’-lantern as if it were a frightened child. “Why would they say that? Why?”

“I’m freezing,” Vicky said. “Come inside.”

He followed her through the open back door into the kitchen. “Are we alone?”

“Julian just went to bed,” she replied. “Should be in dreamland by now.”

“So, we have the house to ourselves?”

“Allyson and Cameron are gonna head over in a few.”

Setting his jack-o’-lantern on the kitchen table with the horse stick leaning against a chair, Dave said, “Should we make popcorn? Wanna watch TV?”

He looked up at her and she stared back, trying without much success to suppress an incipient smile. “No.”

When Dave smiled back at her, she leaned in for a light kiss on the lips. But after a moment, Dave pulled away. “Hold on a sec.”

“Okay,” she said, not sure where he was going. If anything, she’d expected impatience, maybe even exuberance, not stalling tactics. “What’s up?”

Instead of replying, he unfastened the top three buttons of his shirt, then tugged down the right side, pulling it under the overall strap to expose his right shoulder. “Check this out,” he said. “I did this for you.”

A fresh tattoo, black ink with specks of dried blood. No picture. Just a date: 10-31-18.

She looked from the tattoo up to his face.

“Because tonight is the night,” he explained. “And this is tonight’s date, which is Halloween.”

Her hesitant smile blossomed, spreading across her face. “Oh fuck yeah, Dave.”

She grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the family room.

“Restless” did not begin to describe what Laurie Strode felt as she drove through the streets of Haddonfield in her pickup truck, listening to the police scanner as if her life—and the lives of her family—depended on it. Instead, she experienced a gut-wrenching combination of dread and relief.

He had escaped. As she had long predicted he would. No denying it. She had expected and prepared for this night for forty years. Now, finally, the waiting was over. He was out—and he would come for her. She had no delusions about that. But knowing tonight would provide the chance to end him once and for all also gave her a sense of peace. He’d been out of reach for so long, untouchable, and yet a threat to her life so profound she’d been unable to live a normal life. She could never predict the day he would return, only that that day was inevitable. She’d had no choice but to prepare, to be ready when the moment came to reclaim her life—by ending his.

And now that the moment was hours, perhaps minutes away, she sensed the gears of fate turning, all too aware that any slight miscalculation could be fatal, for her and for her family. Since they refused to believe in the threat, chalking up her warnings as the ravings of a paranoid madwoman, the responsibility of ending him rested solely on her. Even though she had tried, unsuccessfully, to prepare Karen to fight the battle with her, deep inside, Laurie always expected the final confrontation to come down to the two of them alone.

She would stand between him and her family. Protect them long enough to kill him. After that, she didn’t care what happened to her. Dr Loomis had deemed Michael the embodiment of evil and wanted him dead from the start. Laurie had never questioned his assessment. Now she planned to carry out that sentence.

“You can’t kill the Boogeyman.”

“Shut up,” she said. “I will kill the bastard. If it’s the last thing I ever do, I’ll kill him.”

Not that she had to wait for him to come to her. Now that he’d had a taste of killing again, nobody in Haddonfield was safe. Eventually his killing spree would lead him to her, but not if she struck first. He wouldn’t expect her to come after him. As soon as she heard a report on the police scanner consistent with his attacks, she would strike preemptively. The element of surprise was her best weapon.

“You don’t know it, Michael,” she whispered intently, “but I’m coming for you.”

She reached over to the passenger seat and patted the cool barrel of her Smith & Wesson revolver.

Continuing to drive at school zone speeds through the neighborhood, she looked left and right, peering into the darkness for any sign of him in his dark coveralls, wearing that pale, lifeless mask. A few last groups of trick-or-treaters roamed the streets, either searching for final candy stops or headed home with their sugary bounty. Most houses had extinguished porch lights, which left the few kids out past curfew with slim pickings. But she had to respect their never-say-die attitude.

“No quitters in the bunch,” she said. Then, “Be careful out there, kids.”

The Boogeyman is back.

After Vicky dragged a more than willing Dave into the family room, she spun him around, his back to the sofa, grabbed his face between her hands and planted a quick but passionate kiss on his lips. Then she delivered a playful shove to drop him to the sofa. With him sprawled in a half-sitting position, she placed one knee between his spread legs and pushed his shoulders back, following his lips with hers until they were both horizontal, her weight on top of him. Judging by his reaction, he didn’t seem to mind.

Soon their kissing mouths parted, and she felt the light brush of his tongue against hers. Their breathing deepened, finding a rhythm between them. When her long blond hair fell across his face, his caressing hand tucked it behind her ear. Arching her back, she closed her eyes and pressed her pelvis into his hardness. His left hand unbuttoned her jeans and tugged on the zipper, while his right hand slipped under her raglan top, skimmed across her midriff and cupped her left breast over the bra.

Breathing deeply, a pleased smile on her face, she reached back and unfastened her bra, felt it loosen enough that his questing hand easily slipped under the left cup and palmed her breast, squeezing her erect nipple between his index and middle fingers.

Her excitement battled her impatience. She wanted to whip off her top and the bra—or have Dave remove them for her, but he was still bundled up in his farmer overalls. They’d waited a long time for this night. She was ready—so ready!

Dave tried to work his left hand inside the top of her jeans, slipping his fingers under her panties, caressing her sensitive skin with his fingertips, but the angle was awkward and even more constricted when she leaned forward to unhook the straps of his overalls. In the middle of their combined effort to get each other naked, Vicky tensed. She’d heard—something.

“What?” Dave asked, freezing. “Did I do something wrong?”

“Shhh… stop,” she whispered. “Dave. What was that?”

If she hadn’t been alarmed, the situation would have been comical. Dave paused to look around, one hand over her bare breast, the other warm and curled up inside the waistband of her underwear. “What?” he asked. “What was it?”

“I don’t know. I heard something.”

Dave listened for a few seconds and shook his head. “It’s nothing,” he said. “It’s Julian taking a dump or somethin’. C’mon…”

His curled hand flattened against her lower abdomen and moved lower.

Upstairs, a door closed.

Vicky grabbed Dave’s left hand and brought it back out in the open. “I’m serious,” she said. “Go see.”

“Go see him take a shit?”

Frustrated, he pulled his other hand out from under her shirt.

Vicky climbed to her feet, standing beside the sofa as she refastened her bra and buttoned her jeans. Unmoving, Dave sat on the sofa, staring at her.

“Don’t just sit there,” she urged. “Go!”

Raising his hands in surrender, he stood and composed himself, hand-brushing his hair as he backed away from her toward the stairs, a look of regret in his eyes, as if to say, “Really?”

Probably wondering if he jumped the gun on that tattoo, she thought. But it wasn’t a missed opportunity, just an opportunity postponed. Halloween wasn’t over.

With a dramatic sigh, Dave turned toward the stairs.

Julian stood on the top step, staring down.

“Oh, fuckme!” Dave exclaimed, flinching.

Vicky laughed in relief. “Julian?”

Julian hurried down the stairs, his small hand skimming across the top of the bannister.

Vicky slipped by Dave and kneeled beside Julian.

“What are you doing up?”

“I saw someone in the hallway,” he said, “standing outside my door.”

Dave tossed his hands up in the air in disbelief. “Aww, bro! Ghosts and goblins?” Turning away, Dave walked back into the family room.

“Shut up, Dave!” Julian said, following him. “I heard him breathin’, then I saw him. He was nasty. There was a fucked-up face watching me from the dark!” He looked back, his frightened gaze directed at Vicky. “He’s in here,” Julian warned her. “Boogeyman’s in this house.”