Halloween: The Official Movie Novelization

39

Clutching the rifle in both hands, Laurie stepped into her bedroom.

Unlike the clutter on the first floor, her bedroom décor tended toward the tastefully minimal, fewer distractions for the eyes. Limited hiding places. So, naturally, her gaze shifted to four standing mannequins posed in silhouette against the open glass balcony door.

He’s been busy…

Distracted by the sight of the mannequins, which obviously hadn’t been in her room before, she suddenly registered another person breathing nearby. With a quick turn, she faced her closet, a glance down revealing a trail of blood leading right to it. At that moment, she heard another noise from within the closet. Without hesitation, she worked the rifle bolt and fired into it.

Wary, she waited a moment or two before yanking the closet door open. And saw a lifeless body slumped on the floor of the closet—Ray!

Gasping, Laurie turned away from his body back toward the balcony and the three standing mannequins. Three!

Suddenly, in a blur of movement, The Shape attacked from behind, wrapping powerful arms around her. She somehow managed to work the bolt of the rifle but couldn’t bring it to bear. Leaning forward to break his grip on her, she staggered toward the balcony. But he matched her step for step. He knocked her right hand clear of the rifle’s wooden stock and wrested it away. In her attempt to regain the rifle, one of them pulled the trigger. The shot gouged a hole in the ceiling before the rifle spun away and slid across the floor.

Fortunately, she slipped free of Michael’s grasp the same moment she lost possession of the rifle, but her momentum carried her into the mannequins, knocking them to the ground and falling herself in the process. Amid the tumbled mannequins, she clawed at her belt, yanking her hunting knife free of the sheath. In a moment, she sprang to her feet, knife in hand.

As he stepped close, she swung the knife at him.

He caught her hand and stopped her mid-thrust. With his superior strength and despite how much she strained against him, he twisted her hand around, turning the blade toward her instead. With a violent shove, he drove the knife into her gut.

She doubled over in pain.

Then his hand clamped around her head, fingers clawing into her hair, and lifted her face high enough to look into her eyes, maybe one last time before the end.

Is the moment enough for him? Does it even matter?

He hurled her backward with more force than she would have thought possible. Her body smashed through the glass of the balcony door with enough momentum that she continued to flail, over the waist-high railing, one heel brushing the edge before she plummeted to the ground below.

Walking past the jumble of fallen mannequins, The Shape steps onto the balcony, booted feet crunching on broken glass, and peers over the edge.

The Shape sees her body sprawled below, utterly still.

The Shape stands there. Breathes.

Wants nothing…

“Mom?”

The voice calls from beyond the bedroom.

And The Shape recognizes the voice. From the police cruiser.

The youngest one—Allyson.

Turning, The Shape looks to the open bedroom door. Listens for a moment.

Then turns back to the balcony, breathes the night air, glances down again—

Laurie is gone.

“Mom?”

From the depths of the basement shelter, Karen heard her daughter’s voice. Without any thought for her own safety, she raced up the steps and located Allyson in the middle of the living room. Even in the relative darkness, Karen could tell her daughter had been through an ordeal: ripped clothing, forehead and chin smeared with grime, hair mussed. And she smelled like she’d slept in the woods. But there was no time for questions.

“Baby,” she called urgently, “come and hide!”

Allyson looked around, worried. “Where’s Grandmother?”

The Shape walks from Laurie’s bedroom down the hall to the far bedroom and stops at the security gate barring the door. The Shape grabs the bars, testing the strength of the gate, but the gate doesn’t budge. The Shape knows Allyson is not in this room, turns around and walks to the stairs.

Karen heard a heavy footfall at the top of the stairs.

Urgently, she whispered to Allyson, “He’s coming.”

“I’m scared.”

Karen took her daughter by the hand and led her through the archway back to the kitchen. She pointed to the opening in the floor. “Go!”

She followed Allyson down the stairs, twisting around to close the door quietly behind her, then turned the switch to reset the island above it.

At the bottom of the stairs, The Shape scans the living room, notices the hole in the closet door and checks inside. Nothing. Silence. After walking down the short hallway, The Shape finds security gates on two other rooms. Dead end.

The Shape hears a sound—

—turns suddenly, startled.

Returning to the living room, The Shape grabs a fire poker from behind the wood-burning stove. The Shape turns in a slow circle, notices unusual light shining upward in the kitchen.

Crossing through the archway, The Shape looks down at the source of the light: holes in the tile floor—bullet holes.

After setting the fire poker on top of the counter, The Shape grabs the island and rocks it, pushing and pulling…

First, Karen heard the heavy footfalls above, walking across the kitchen, the slight groan of the floorboards and joists. Then she saw a shape move past her line of sight through the bullet holes in the ceiling. Next, a heavy clank, something metallic hitting the countertop.

“What is—?” Allyson whispered anxiously.

“Shhh!” Karen motioned her daughter away from the stairs.

Just in case he…

A moment later, she heard a struggle—no, not a struggle, someone heaving a heavy weight. Wood cracked, metal creaked, straining, the ceiling above her trembling.

“Oh, no!”

“What?”

“Stay back,” Karen whispered as she scurried up the steps.

Michael had discovered their underground hiding place and was trying to knock over the kitchen island to get to them. Unless he figured out how to rotate it first, and then—

At the top of the stairs, she heard a loud squeal of metal, the tortured rumble of the damaged island rotating out of its normal position to expose the shelter door. Karen had only a second or two to recover from her mistake—she’d forgotten to lock the secret door behind them. Grabbing the knob of the slide bolt, she slammed it into the locked position just as Michael tugged it upward. The door shook against the lock housing holding it in place. But she knew it wouldn’t be enough.

Scrambling back down the steps, she picked up the Smith & Wesson revolver her mother had left on the bed for her. A last resort.

The door rocked again, then shuddered as Michael’s boot slammed on it. Still it held. For a moment, everything was quiet.

“Mom, is he—?” Allyson asked softly, a hopeful note in her voice.

Karen knew better than to think he’d give up. Her mother had certainly taught her that much in their years together.

Karen shook her head grimly, waiting…

And flinched as a heavy object slammed into the door.

Then a metal spike burst through the wood, wrenched back and forth until long cracks began to split the door panel. Not a spike, she saw, as the wrought-iron shaft dipped lower through the hole it had gouged—a fire poker.

In seconds, he ruined the integrity of the door, breaking it free of the slide lock. His hand reached down and pulled the damaged door up and out of his way.

Karen shifted her position to stand at the base of the stairs and aimed the revolver up to the dark open space above. She hadn’t noticed Allyson move to her side until her daughter’s hip pressed against hers. Knowing she should make her daughter back away, Karen swallowed hard, unable to speak. Staring at the opening above.

Any moment, he…

“Mom…?” Karen called out in a quivering voice, finding a sliver of hope inside herself, hope she thought had been snuffed out. She had always feared that when the moment ever came—if the moment ever came—she would not find within herself the power to act as her mother had, that she would freeze, never pull the trigger, paralyzed by fear or the inability to take a human life. Now she tapped into those lonely nights of self-doubt and called out, “I can’t.”

Allyson wrapped her arm around her mother’s waist.

And as the moment of self-doubt seemed to have overwhelmed Karen, The Shape appeared, framed in the opening, clutching the fire poker, looking down with soulless eyes from that ghoulish mask. Even at the bottom of the stairs, she could hear his heavy breathing, as if he wanted to inhale her fear and that of her daughter, to saturate himself with it before snuffing out their lives.

Karen whispered, “Got you.”

With her arm rock steady, she squeezed the trigger—BLAM!

The shot slammed into his chest.

He stumbled back out of view.

Standing in the shadows of the kitchen pantry with Michael’s back to her, Laurie stepped forward quietly, grimacing in pain as the fire in her bleeding abdomen flared anew. Her voice measured despite the throbbing pain, she said, “Happy Halloween, Michael.”

Wounded himself, The Shape turned toward her, fire poker in hand, but she had already closed the distance between them and, with no hesitation, plunged the large kitchen knife into his shoulder. He staggered back a step, trying desperately to regain his balance, but she was relentless, chopping downward into his flesh over and over, refusing to give him a moment’s respite from her attacks.

Somehow, he halted his retreat toward the hole in the floor and swung the fire poker like a bat, to strike her on the skull. At the last instant, she managed to duck to the side, taking only a glancing blow to the head, but she lost a step in the process, staggering backward.

As he raised the poker overhead, she dove toward him, knife outstretched. She hit him low as she fell, knocking him back, off-balance, and he toppled down the shelter stairs with a thunderous crash.

Laurie lay prone on the cool kitchen floor, the sudden silence broken only by her labored breathing…