Halloween: The Official Movie Novelization

36

After the exhaustingly futile effort to free herself from the backseat of the police cruiser, Allyson pressed herself against the door, cowering from the unconscious murderer sitting mere feet away from her. To her, he was a ticking human time bomb. She feared the moment he regained his senses, he would lean across the backseat and kill her. While he remained unconscious she was safe. And unless she somehow got out of the police car before he began to stir, she was doomed.

Knowing that, she stared across the seat at him, trembling from the rigidity of her body, all her senses on edge. Shadows shrouded his face, providing no clue. He might already be awake, toying with her. Were his eyes—the undamaged one anyway—open at that very moment? She couldn’t tell. His body seemed to sway with the movement of the car, nothing more.

When Sartain made a left turn, Michael’s body began to tilt toward her, teetering on the brink of falling against her again. Gripping the wire mesh with one hand and the back of the seat with the other, she swung her legs up and pushed him back to his side with her feet. She had a stark fear that if she touched him again with her hands, he would snatch her wrists, pull her to him and—

Stop it!

Taking deep breaths, she shook off the paralyzing thought. She had to keep calm, to stay alert to the slightest opportunity for escape. In the back of her mind, a thought bubbled forward.

What would Grandmother do?

Laurie Strode had survived Michael Myers. Allyson had to remember that, to cling to the hope that she could survive too. Of course, she had no idea how… but she had to stay open to the possibility. If she gave up hope, she created a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Sartain glanced back through the steel-wire mesh at her. “People want to kill Michael, but these observations are an opportunity,” he said. “My question now is… who must be protected from whom? His pursuit of your grandmother seems to be what keeps him alive. The notion of being a predator or the fear of becoming prey keeps both of them alive.”

Allyson considered his words, wiped tears from the corners of her eyes and said, “You’re right.”

“What?” Sartain asked, showing mild surprise. Of course, he believed his own words, but he seemed to have doubted she would agree with them so readily.

“I think you’re right.” Though she was woefully unprepared for her current predicament, she knew someone who had spent years—decades—preparing for just such an encounter and looked forward to its resolution. “I’ll show you where to go. Before he wakes up and kills us both… I think I know someone who would like to say goodbye.”

Allyson gave Sartain the address.

With an anticipatory smile, Sartain turned right at the next intersection.

Seconds seemed to pass with agonizing slowness…

…struggling to amount to minutes.

As she had every other second of the nightmarish drive, she glanced toward the dark shape of Michael Myers on the opposite side of the police cruiser’s hard bench seat. Like a crushed face, now seemingly impotent, the flattened mask lay in his lap. When Sartain cleared his throat, Allyson turned toward him expectantly.

“Michael?” Sartain said. “Are you awake, Michael? Our friend Allyson has been so kind as to invite us to the family homestead. We’re almost there.” After a pause, he added ominously, “You have what you need, you know?”

“What does that mean?” Allyson asked nervously.

“You have what you need,” Sartain repeated, his eyes, visible in the rearview mirror, focused on Michael in the shadows of the backseat.

Heart racing, Allyson examined Michael’s still form, leaning forward without moving more than an inch or two closer to him. Was he talking about the mask? What—?

Then she saw it—and gasped.

The dark handle of a kitchen knife protruded from the left pocket of his grease-stained coveralls. Immediately, she tried to calm herself, to not reveal that she’d seen the knife. Let Sartain think she was clueless to his meaning. With her gaze flickering between Sartain and the dark shape next to her, Allyson began to subtly reach across the backseat.

While Sartain’s attention was on the road ahead, her hand extended inch by inch, past Michael’s right leg, then over the pale mask in his lap, ever careful not to nudge or even touch the unconscious psychopath, but her arm wasn’t long enough. Gradually, she leaned sideways, no sudden movements, as her fingers reached for the handle—

Sartain’s gaze flicked to the rearview mirror and he shouted, startling her, “That’s for him!”

Before she could reach across the remaining distance, Sartain jerked the steering wheel hard to the left. Unbalanced, she fell back against her door, banging her head against the window. To avoid ditching the car down the left embankment, Sartain swerved again to the right, pitching Allyson in the opposite direction. Frantically, her right hand snagged the wire-mesh barrier to stop herself from crashing into Michael.

With the car back in its proper lane, Allyson regained her balance and her composure. Sartain chuckled as if the reckless driving had been nothing more than an innocent prank to startle her. But when she looked to her left, she noticed something—missing.

The pale mask was no longer in Michael’s lap.

As she looked up, she gasped, a sudden chill racing down her spine. Even in the shadowy corner of the backseat, she could see that The Shape now wore the mask—

—and was staring at her.

From impossibly far away, Allyson heard Dr Sartain.

“Wake up, Michael!”

Before Allyson could scream, The Shape grabbed her by her hair and hurled her against the rear passenger door. For the moment, it wasn’t an attack. She was simply in his way. He scooted toward her, leaning back, and raised his leg, boot poised more than a foot from the window of his door. Suddenly, he slammed his boot against the glass. With the first impact, the glass seemed to give slightly in the frame.

Distracted by Michael’s action, Sartain lost control of the car and swerved back and forth across both lanes of the rural road. Allyson hung on, fingers gripping the steel mesh, pushing herself against the door, trying to stay in place and far away from Michael.

He kicked the window a second time, fracturing the glass.

Sartain slammed on the brakes. The cruiser screeched to a halt in the middle of the dark road with the smell of scorched rubber. Shifting into park, Sartain left the car turned at a slight angle, headlights piercing the night.

After spending so much time unconscious and waking to find himself trapped in the back of a police car, Michael raged against his confinement, throwing his shoulder against the door, his back against the seat, his forearms and fists against the wire mesh.

For the moment at least, killing Allyson wasn’t his top priority, so she rode out his violent storm, pressing herself against her door, as much out of his way as possible. If he saw her as part of his confinement or an obstruction to his freedom, she didn’t like her chances—at all.

Instead of watching Michael, Sartain stared calmly through the windshield. Allyson followed his gaze and saw what had his attention. They were within sight of her grandmother’s property—and a flicker of hope.

A police cruiser guarded Laurie’s gate.

While they waited for Hawkins to arrive with Allyson, Officers Phillips and Francis sat in their police cruiser listening to rock music and eating Vietnamese food. Since they dropped off the other three members of the family, including the supremely paranoid Laurie Strode, they’d had a quiet night. They’d heard the dispatch call, acknowledged by Hawkins, that the suspect had been sighted and that his unit was in pursuit, but nothing since then. They assumed it had been a false alarm, though nothing had come through on the radio. Once you told the public the Boogeyman was on the loose, every Nervous Nellie peeking through her curtains saw something in the shadows. Halloween only made it worse with the morbid decorations, more elaborate each year. Skeletons and zombies and scarecrows propped up on porches, sitting in front yards, dangling from trees. A bunch of props designed to scare the neighbors, so of course the neighbors started seeing prowlers near every bush and window. Typical bullshit.

“You know what goes good with a banh mi sandwich?” Phillips asked, while chewing a wad of said sandwich in the side of his mouth.

Though the cruiser sat off a dark, deserted road, Francis thought he’d heard something in the distance. He leaned forward and saw a car in the distance, headlights and flashing lights. An emergency vehicle—or another squad car.

“An IPA,” Phillips answered his own question.

“What the hell?” Francis said, pointing.

Phillips turned in his seat, straining his eyes to see. “Looks like it’s in the middle of the road…”

“Just sitting there,” Francis said, nodding. “Alone…”

Utterly silent and desperate to remain unnoticed as much as possible, Allyson watched The Shape kick the window again, determined to break free of the police cruiser. In the front seat, Sartain spoke calmly, as if he were unaware of the turmoil right behind him. “What greater spectacle than to reunite two old friends. Michael Myers and Laurie Strode. An historic reunion.”

Cloaked in shadows, The Shape sat motionless.

Was he listening?

Allyson couldn’t tell. His body language was impossible for her to read.

A moment of quiet passed, broken by Sartain. “Michael,” he said. “She’s been waiting for you. Are you ready?”

Sartain turned in his seat to look over his shoulder as Michael lunged forward, ramming the steel barrier with ferocious strength. Possibly loosened by his earlier fit of violence, the entire barrier bowed inward and broke free of its restraints, striking Sartain violently in the head.

Michael drove himself forward, over the front seat, fingers gripping the loose barrier as he slammed it repeatedly against Sartain’s head until he was motionless, pinning him against the steering wheel. The car horn blared like a banshee’s wail.

The sudden burst of violence shattered Allyson’s stoic resolve. She’d been utterly still and silent, but the brutality of the attack rekindled all her suppressed fear, and she screamed.

“Something’s wrong,” Phillips said. “Why is he sitting there?”

The flare of the cruiser’s headlights blinded them to whatever was happening inside. Was he waiting for them? Suffered a mechanical breakdown? Injured, unable to drive the rest of the way? Those and other questions ran through Phillips’ mind. But now he heard…

Phillips rolled down his window to the blaring of a car horn.

That settles it. Squeezing his shoulder mic, he called, “606, 601? 606 to 601? Hawkins. Turn your fuckin’ radio on. Hawkins?”

Not a peep. Not even a burst of static.

Francis nudged his shoulder. “Let’s check it out.”

Nodding, Officer Phillips put the car in gear and pulled out of Laurie Strode’s driveway to investigate.

With Sartain motionless, slumped against the steering wheel, Michael settled back into his seat.

Allyson clamped a hand over her mouth.

Michael raised his left elbow and drove it through the fractured side window. Chunks of glass exploded outward and rained down on the concrete. He reached through the window opening and yanked the handle to open his door.

Inhaling deeply through her nose, Allyson fought against the wave of panic that would overwhelm her. She pressed herself into the shadows, hoping—praying—he would want to get away from the cop car, that he would somehow forget about her and disappear into the night.

After he had climbed out of the back, Michael pulled open the driver’s door and grabbed Sartain by his feet, dragging him out onto the road. Sartain’s head whacked against the concrete with enough force to make Allyson wince. Not that she cared what happened to the doctor at this point, but she feared she was next.

The blow seemed to have roused Sartain, unless he’d been playing possum all along, hoping Michael would move on. He struggled, but his feeble resistance could not deter Michael, who dropped to one knee beside him and began to choke the life out of him.

When the radio suddenly squawked, Allyson bit down on a reflexive scream, drawing blood from her lower lip.

“Hawkins, please respond.”

The Shape released Sartain’s throat, standing to look down the road, in the direction of Laurie’s compound. Allyson looked, saw a car approaching—another police cruiser.

With Michael distracted by Sartain at his feet and the oncoming police car, Allyson scooted across the backseat, ducked below the window’s edge of the open door and slipped out of the car. This was the moment she’d been waiting for, her one chance to slip through Michael’s grasp and certain death.

Once again, she ran for her life, veering right into the line of trees beyond the shoulder of the rural road.

As The Shape stands beside the injured doctor, watching the approaching police car, the girl slips by, running toward the trees. For a moment, The Shape turns to follow her progress, but she is lost in the shadows. At his feet, the doctor reaches out, clutches his ankle to command his attention.

The Shape looks down expectantly.

The doctor speaks, his voice weak and raw, “But you promised I could watch.”

The Shape no longer needs the doctor. As The Shape lifts a boot over Sartain’s head, the doctor grins, blood oozing from his split lips and loose teeth. The Shape wonders if this is what the doctor wants after all. To serve The Shape’s purpose—but only for a moment.

The Shape stomps on the doctor’s skull, feels bones crack and give way. Raises the boot—stomps again, harder. The skull caves in completely, blood and wet chunks of brain splatter across the road.

Crouching low beyond the first line of trees, Allyson couldn’t help herself. She had to look back, but then wished she hadn’t. She turned just as Michael shattered the doctor’s skull. She gagged and felt the burn of bile surging up her throat.

In contrast, Michael looked down at the splinted bones and lumpy gore, and tilted his head, as if curious about the result of his violent actions.

No disgust, no remorse, no humanity.

He had an emptiness inside him he could never fill.

Turning away from the madness, Allyson ran as fast as she could.