Halloween IV: The Ultimate Edition Read online

  HALLOWEEN IV

  The Ultimate Edition

  Based on a screenplay

  by Alan B. McElroy.

  Nicholas Grabowsky

  Copyright © 1988, 2003, 2013 by Nicholas Grabowsky (under the pen name Nicholas Randers).

  All rights reserved. Based on the screenplay by Alan B. McElroy, from an original story by Danny Lipsius (as Dhani Lipsius), Larry Rattner, Benjamin Ruffner and Alan B. McElroy for the motion picture from producers Moustapha Akkad and Paul Freeman.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author, who maintains independent legal copyright ownership of the novelization only.

  A Diverse Media Book,

  Antelope, CA.

  Visit Nicholas Grabowsky’s official website at

  WWW.DOWNWARDEN.COM.

  And his horror publishing company

  BLACK BED SHEET BOOKS

  on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Youtube, Pintrest, Buzznet, Wordpress and most major social media sites.

  ISBN-10: 1494721724

  ISBN-13: 978-1494721725

  Halloween IV

  The Ultimate Edition

  A Diverse Media Book

  Antelope, CA

  Also by Nicholas Grabowsky

  Fiction Series:

  Halloween IV (1988)

  Novels:

  Pray, Serpent's Prey (1988) appeared as:

  Variant Title: Pray Serpents Prey (1988) [by Nicholas Randers ]

  Variant Title: Pray, Serpent's Prey (2005) [by Nicholas Randers ]

  Sweet Dreams, Lady Moon (1988) [by Marsena Shane ]

  Tattered (1989) [by Nicholas Randers ] also known as The Rag Man (1989)

  June Park (1990) [by Marsena Shane ]

  The Everborn (2002, 2009)

  Collections

  The Wicked Haze (2005) [by Nicholas Randers ]

  Diverse Tales (2005)

  Red Wet Dirt (2009)

  Anthologies:

  Fear: An Anthology of Horror and Suspense (Introduction)(2006)

  Read Us or Die (2013) with Jason Gehlert

  When Night Darkens the Streets (2013) with Horns and John Grover

  From the Shadows (2008)

  Echoes of Terror (2007)

  The Best of The Horror Society (2013)

  Welcome to Your Nightmare (2013)

  Satan's Holiday (2013)

  Comics:

  Looks Like A Rat to Me (Shot in the Dark Comics)

  The Father Keeper (Graphic novel-Shot in the Dark Comics)

  The Yuletide Thing (Shot in the Dark Comics)

  Cutting Edges

  Chapterbooks:

  The Easy Way to Great Legs (1988) [by Marsena Shane ]

  Your Heart Belongs to You (1989) [by Marsena Shane ]

  Sweet Dreams, Lady Moon (2005) [by Marsena Shane ]

  Nancy (Nancy Reagan bio) 1989 [by Marsena Shane ]

  Flatty Kat: Tales of an Urban Feline (2006) with Phyllis Haupert

  Nonfiction:

  Nick Reads & Reviews (2008)

  Screenplays of note:

  Wes Craven's Shocker II (unproduced)

  Shortfiction:

  Sweet Dreams, Lady Moon (1988) [only as by Marsena Shane ]

  Blind Insight (2005)

  Among the Mint Leaves (2005)

  Galewood Baptist (2005)

  Newspaper Rack (2005)

  The Wanting Seed (2005)

  Bring Back Eden (2005)

  The Falling (2005)

  Granny Geraldine (2005)

  Mental (2005)

  The Rose Hole (2005)

  Trancer's Time (2005)

  Mannequin Aardvarks (2005)

  Extras: Of Lost & Young Persuasions (2005)

  Billaby at the Woods' (2005) [only as by Nicholas Randers ]

  Berny Runs Into Someone (2005) [only as by Nicholas Randers ]

  All Hell Breaks Loose, Quite Accidentally (2005) [only as by Nicholas Randers ]

  Pastor Birthday & the Golden Urinal (2005) [only as by Nicholas Randers ]

  Crooked Urinal (2005)

  A Bowlful of Nuns (2005)

  Off the Bridge (2005)

  Flatty Kat: Tales of an Urban Feline (2006) with Phyllis Haupert

  Looks Like a Rat to Me (2007)

  The Freeway Reaper (2008)

  The Yuletide Thing (2009)

  The Festival of Fallen Souls (2009)

  The Father Keeper (2009)

  The Afterworld (2009)

  Cutting Edges (2009)

  Extras: Extracts from File Cabinet Hell (2009)

  The Adventures of Goldenfish (2009)

  The Night Shubs (2013)

  The Inspiration & Horror of George and Hugh (2013)

  Poems:

  Thoughts & Tots (2005)

  My Body & the Tree (2005)

  This Green & Dewy Fern (2005)

  Toilet Humor (2005)

  Essays:

  Introduction (Halloween IV: The Special Limited Edition) (2003)

  Introduction (Diverse Tales) (2005)

  Entertainment Newsflash (2005)

  Robert E. Lee (2005)

  Introduction (The War of the Worlds) (2005)

  Introduction (The Invisible Man) (2005)

  Introduction (Embark to Madness) (2005)

  Introduction: Shocking Tales of Murder & Insanity (2005)

  Introduction: The Thing About Randers Novels (2005)

  Introduction (You're Dead Already....Living in Hell) (2006)

  Introduction (Fear) (2006)

  Foreword (From the Shadows) (2008)

  It's Not Just About You (2008)

  To All Horror Writers (2008)

  Publisher's Note: On Forrest J Ackerman (2009)

  Halloweened Be Thy Name (2010) (October issue of Shroud Magazine)

  Foreword (Masters of Horror: Damned If You Don't) (2011)

  "Keep 'em coming, Nicholas!"

  --Stephen King

  "Nicholas, I salute you: your ambition, your dedication, your achievements…your fertile and blissfully complex imagination…."

  --Clive Barker

  "Grabowsky succeeds in making the whole world creepy!"

  ---E! Entertainment Television

  "Impressive storytelling…"

  --Wes Craven

  "All hail Grabowsky!" -Horrorweb.com

  Halloween IV

  The Ultimate Edition

  Nicholas Grabowsky

  Halloweened Be Thy Name

  (Essay concerning the effects of the Halloween movies on the author, originally published in Shroud Magazine, Fall 2010)

  By Nicholas Grabowsky

  1971: Charles Manson trial is going on, Nixon’s still the U. S. President, Apollo 14’s on the moon, and in the meantime there was this six-year-old Southern Californian suburban boy who was no more or less significant than you or you or you reading this. But then there’s the fact that during or around that year, I became fascinated one night with the pilot light in the hallway furnace in my family’s middle-class home and stuck the ends of a few Hot Wheels flexible orange plastic yard-long racing tracks over the tiny flame, had myself a torch-sized fire a-goin’, and stuffed it under my bed to hide it when my folks rounded the corner. Burned my bed and half my room something fierce. Before the fire truck people came, my dad went after me with a toy car track that had my ass’ name on it, and after an escape outdoors I made my getaway down the lengthy driveway on my sleek 1969 Marx Big Wheel plastic trike.

  I didn’t get too far. It wasn’t because of my dad eventually catching up to me, although it inevitably really was, but what
made me slow down was a vision of a full moon and the figure of a man cast in shadow, standing still and silent as if he was waiting for me to come to him. Never knew what that was about, and he disappeared into nowhere before Dad could descend in impending doom.

  I think my fascination with who that was and what would have happened if I met him fueled my love for entertaining my fears with fiction and movies since.

  ***

  I used to preach against Halloween.

  In order for you to digest that, you have to understand a thing or two about my past. Here’s a thing: I was brought up by steeplechasing parents. Here’s two: I was always trying to be accepted by my social church life…to the point of making every effort to be in the limelight. I was often told that my passion for Halloween and scary movies (and writing stories of that nature) was a sign that I wasn’t truly saved by Jesus and I had to suppress it, and I wasn’t about to let anyone else entertain themselves in the ways of the Devil, either. I was young back then, not even out of high school, scolding my friends for their love of Michael Myers and Fangoria, freaky flicks and October 31st, and I secretly dug those things too. But there was something to be said, I suppose, for being that young and preaching and singing original Christian Rock songs to thousands of people. Really, it was a girl who ruined all of that through a sexual scandal, but the incident set me free enough to love Halloween and scary movies again because my church life reacted so negatively to my circumstances I began to hate it began to hate me.

  That same year Church and I parted ways completely, by that Fall, I had my first novel in the paperback racks at supermarkets. And not only that, but a proud little novelization to Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers right along side it, also written by yours truly, which came along with the publisher’s belief I was to be a big name soon. Like that ever happened. So I came out of the whole religious thing into one of the best Halloweens I ever had. I’ve always said since how ironic it turned out that a guy who specifically targeted the Halloween franchise often in his sermons wrote the book to Halloween IV.

  Halloween IV made me a celebrity of sorts in my neck of the woods, even when I fell under the radar in my career as a horror writer for the next decade. While penning work-for-hire fiction, self-help books and such under pseudonyms, doing heavy drugs and bouncing in and out of more jobs than my parents went through churches, I was known as the guy who wrote the Halloween IV book. Verbatim, it was more like “he wrote Halloween IV,” and when I would try to educate them of the differences between writing the story for a film (specifically Alan B. McElroy’s) and my adapting it into book form, they either didn’t care or just didn’t get it.

  Back in those days, I hung out with a lot of underground Los Angeles/Orange County bands, slept on some of their couches or even in closets….bands like The Mentors, Adolescents, Christian Death, Berlin, Poop, and I was always a respected writer among them because of Halloween IV, got a lot of free drugs. I also got people who normally didn’t read to read. El Duche, the drummer/lead singer for the Mentors, the guy conspiracy theorists claim Courtney Love hired to kill her husband, was one of my biggest fans. He later stepped in front of a speeding Amtrak. One band stopped in mid-song at one of their concerts when a member saw me just to scream into his mike, “Halloween IV!!” and point to me.

  When that phase of my life had passed and my writing career was getting back on track, and I bought my first computer, I was blown away with what I found on the internet concerning my older works and especially Halloween IV. So I came to Malek and Moustapha Akkad at Trancas International Films with the idea of publishing a special edition of the novel with some extra chapters. The deal was sealed, and just in time for me to receive an invite as a special guest to the now-legendary Halloween: 25 Years of Terror convention in Pasadena. I never previously knew what that type of experience was like: having a nice plush complimentary hotel room, coming down the hotel elevator where girls screamed in a group of people after hearing my name, sitting down to my own signing table next to the great Dennis Etchison before a line that went halfway down the room of fans anxious to meet me and buy books. I got to hobnob with the best of the bunch in the franchise, was near-front-and-center in the media event where they cut the anniversary cake, did panels, and I was treated like a king at every hotel party I stumbled upon.

  With my writing career, particularly since that event, I’ve been respected by the genre as a whole, especially by those in the independent crowd, had a lot of big breaks, and my name keeps going around the block. That’s awesome for what I do. And I love doing what I do.

  Thing is, and I’ve always said this, that deal I made in 1988 to do that novelization could have just as easily been a deal for any other film adaptation, and as far as books-from-films go, their writers either are already well into their careers and such a deal is just another work-for-hire that comes and goes in the night, or those books are just not memorable. I mean, for the most part, doing a novelization in itself just never seemed that huge of an accomplishment to me.

  But we’re talking Halloween here, and that is just my point. Halloween, not very arguably, is the most iconic, most influential, most successful franchise of its kind in history.

  Now, there’s all sorts of reasons for that. Many have tried to explain it away, and here’s my take:

  Our perceptions of life itself and the many ways we deal with it, live it, scrutinize it, take it for granted, from the first steps of our earliest ancestors to nowadays where no Joe or Judy can get anywhere without a cell phone, all involve how we deal with death, tragedy, and fear. That being so, it is a genetic trait shared by all us human beings to entertain ourselves with death and fear, since our beginnings, regardless of how we celebrate life. Life would be stagnant without drama, stories about life passed down through generations would be as commonplace and boring as all the begats in the Christian Bible, and where there is drama, there’s always an element of horror in the mix.

  Just look at Lifetime Television.

  Halloween as a film and a series of films and all else that it is, played so well with our inherent love of drama and scary stories dealing with simple elements we can all relate to that it even became bigger than it was, blossomed over time into the stuff of legend and

  an iconic, ever-expanding universe full of fans and fanatics throughout the world. Michael Myers is a household name. A phenomenon. Each film isn’t merely a film, but an event. Hardcore fans take it as seriously as Star Trek fans do Star Trek, but whereas Star Trek fans have a reputation of being nerdy, Halloween and Horror fans are more hardcore and underground, but it’s always been odd to me that I’ve found it more accepted among those fundamentalist Christians I used to know who do have traditional October 31st celebrations to wear a Michael Myers costume than a Starfleet uniform.

  My wee involvement in the Halloween franchise and degree of success as a writer as a result is testament to the extent of the impact it’s made upon society as a whole, from 1978 when Carpenter’s original film first hit the screen to Zombie’s later stuff, to Hutchison’s comics and even some of my own Myers Universe endeavors.

  My involvement was just a bit of dumb luck, as far as I’m concerned.

  But as an ex-preacher, I still believe in God and fate.

  So perhaps, just perhaps, the shadowy man waiting for me at the end of the driveway after I hopped upon my Big Wheel to escape my dad’s wrath when I set fire to my room was a glimpse of the future.

  Let’s face it. The image sure was.

  Introduction

  (Original introduction for the Special Edition)

  One day, Michael Myers came knocking at my door.

  I wasn’t prepared. From what I’ve come to know of Michael, I can’t imagine ever being prepared. Yet as far as writing was concerned, I guess one can say I’d been preparing all my life.

  Back then, my life-long dream of writing a novel and having it published had at last become a reality. Nothing could compare with those first feelings I
felt when I found my “Pray Serpent’s Prey” novel among the Stephen King paperbacks at the supermarket up my street, and as I held it in my hands.

  If it wasn’t for that book, a Halloween IV novel would not have existed, or would’ve simply been handed over for some other writer to pen, and Michael never would have come calling on me.

  In the spring of 1988, with Alan B. McElroy’s script Fed-exed to me by my publisher, it took me less than a month to turn it, scene by scene, into a novel. The deadline I had never gave me a chance to absorb the story to my liking. It was a unique opportunity to inject elements uniquely me into the Halloween lore. Because I was ordained to do what I wanted in translating the script into paperback form while remaining true to the story, the urgency in getting it done quickly left me with feelings that the final product was incomplete.

  Hence, I present to you Halloween IV: The Special Limited Edition.

  By special arrangement with Trancas International Films, the novelization is able to live again and this time with all the additional elements I was at liberty to include, the same elements which separate a good novel from a good movie.

  A word of advice:

  If ever Michael Myers comes knocking on your door, you better do what he says.

  Or he’ll kill your ass.

  And he doesn’t speak very often.

  ---- Nicholas Grabowsky Summer, 2003

  PROLOGUE

  Haddonfield, Illinois, at one time long ago had been a peaceful town, just like any typical town away from the boisterous rumblings of factories and packed, bumper-to-bumper cars and buses and cabs on busy streets and intersections. Instead of smog, pollution, and haze, in Haddonfield there was only clear air and the sweet smell of home- baked apple pies cooling off on country porches and the joyous cries of children’s laughter echoing forth from games of tag and jumprope beneath the shade of maple trees. This was a town of the seasons, a town where the magic of Christmas and the building of carrot-nosed snowmen waltzed with time’s glorious dance of tradition, where Easter egg hunts and the July Fourth fireworks show down at Fallbrook Park were anxiously awaited by everyone year after year.