Halloween IV: The Ultimate Edition Page 12

  “Where’s the deputy?” Loomis questioned, anxious.

  Meeker answered him as the door opened, “He’ll be here in a minute.”

  Just as the deputy’s presence was mentioned, Logan’s squad car approached, highbeams piercing through the darkness of the driveway with near blinding brilliance. It pulled up and halted, Logan stepping out onto the cement.

  Meeker turned and entered his home, all others following in turn.

  As he stepped across the foyer and into the livingroom, his eyes beheld his daughter and the boy. Their gazes met but for a moment, the two standing dead center near the fireplace and the television amidst the moderate blaze of the candles, their appearance was as if they had just completed a night’s rest but their faces were sweaty with guilt.

  The burly sheriff’s gaze shot past them as if they virtually did not exist.

  My God, he’s ignoring us, Brady told himself, trembling. Holy shit, he’s gonna act like we’re not here, and then he’s gonna let me have it. That’s it. Let me have it when I least expect it, and then there won’t be anything left of me to send back home

  Meeker’s urgency and alertness confused the boy momentarily, until it suddenly struck him that the sheriff had more important matters at hand; he remembered what the announcer said on television.

  Then he saw Rachel, and their eyes met. Quickly, and with utter embarrassment, he turned away.

  “Rachel,” Meeker promptly ordered, “take your sister upstairs. Last door at the end of the hall.”

  Rachel nodded and took Jamie upstairs.

  Her mind swirling amidst the abrupt confusion, Kelly went to her father. “Dad, what’s going on?”

  He turned to her, eyes serious and demanding. “I want you to secure all the downstairs windows. Cover all the downstairs windows.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it!”

  Without further hesitation, Kelly complied. “Where’s the radio?” Loomis said.

  “Through the kitchen to the basement door,” Meeker directed. “Take my flashlight.”

  Loomis reached and took the flashlight Meeker held, turned, and exited out the kitchen in a hurry, nearly knocking over Meeker’s daughter as she went about her business.

  Now for the boy.

  Meeker turned and grabbed him, clenching his arm firmly. Brady broke out in nervous perspiration, knowing he was about to get hurt. Instead

  “You know how to handle a gun?” Meeker said.

  What?

  Meeker repeated himself. “A gun. Know how to use one?”

  “Yes, sir.” His voice shook.

  At the same time, Logan entered through the front door and joined them, standing, awaiting the sheriff’s next orders. Meeker took the boy over to a closet door down the hallway near a back storage room. He opened the door, revealing racks of various shot guns. He let go of the boy and reached inside, immediately gripping a double barrel. He handed it to Brady.

  “Think you can handle that?”

  “Easy enough,” Brady said, confused. “You want to tell me what’s happening?”

  “When I have time.” Then, to Logan, who was stepping up to their right, “Where’s your riotgun?” “In the trunk of my squad,” was the reply. “Get it.”

  Logan turned on his heels and exited quickly back down the hallway. Meeker returned his gaze to the innards of the closet, reached in once again, this time removing a tool box and handing it to Brady also.

  “There’s shells for that shotgun in there,” he explained. “You also got a hammer an’ four boxes a roofing nails. I want you to go up in the attic and secure it so nobody can get in.”

  Brady wasn’t about to panic. But the urgency was there and he could not deny that. “If something’s happened I should call my parents....”

  “You just get up in that attic,” Meeker commanded. Once again he went into the closet, and this time he pulled out an SPAS-12 gauge autoloader. This one was for himself. As he loaded shells into the weapon with long practiced ease, he looked back at Brady, who was disappearing down the hall. “Oh yeah. I catch you groping my daughter, and I’ll use that shotgun on you. Understand?”

  Brady understood and nodded, then fearfully went his way.

  Outside, Logan hustled back to the squad. As he went around its side, he noticed the rear door open on the driver’s side. Quickly, he looked in and saw nothing. Shrugging, he slammed the door and went over to the trunk. There was a riotgun inside the trunk, and he removed it along with two large boxes of shells. This was all he needed. Carrying them under one arm he slammed the trunk down hard, and he hurried back into the house, closing the front door behind him.

  Inside, on the first floor of the house, Meeker assisted his daughter in locking and securing the shutters and windows. Kelly’s nervousness was altogether gone, having fled and replaced by the present’s urgency, although deep inside she regretted the sudden intrusion on a salacious evening. She could sense her father’s hardened glances, but when she would glance back she saw him exigently tending to his business.

  Logan stepped up to the sheriff, riotgun in hand. Meeker turned to meet him.

  “Get the outside shutters,” he instructed.

  Logan appeared both dazed and alert at the same time. “What are we doing?”

  “Making sure nobody can get in here.”

  “Isn’t all this a little paranoid?”

  Meeker’s glance was stern. “If you’d seen the station house, you wouldn’t even ask.”

  Logan turned again and moved down the long side hallway of the first floor. As he went, he passed a partially opened doorway, and if he had glanced within, even momentarily, he would have seen the blackened view of the figure standing motionless within the darkness, waiting in the shadows.

  Inside the basement, Loomis scanned the flashlight over dusty obstructions and obscurities. The basement was a dark, eerie place made up of workbenches, a couple of broken—down ten—speed bikes, an old freezer, boxes upon boxes of junk and unwanted items. His flashlight brushed into a stringy cobweb, and the doctor tore it away and stepped backwards from it. His beam then trailed down to yet another workbench.

  There, at the far end, was the radio.

  ***

  Brady passed by a window on the way down the upstairs hallway and peeked out for a second’s time. He could view the deputy slamming shutters closed over the windows down stairs. After another brief glimpse into the outside darkness of the streets across the way, he moved away from the window and strode through the hall to the partially opened door at the far end. Slowly, he creaked the door opened further and leaned his head inside.

  There, in the shadows on the bed, were Rachel and Jamie. They were sitting there, ever so quietly, Rachel holding her younger sister protectively yet calmly.

  “Are you two okay?” Brady asked, breaking the silence.

  Rachel didn’t bother to turn.

  “We’ve been better,” she replied sourly. “What’s going on?”

  “Michael Myers.”

  “Who?”

  Rachel then finally looked at him. “Ten years ago, Halloween. He’s Jamie’s uncle.”

  “The kids at school were right,” Jamie interrupted, and suddenly she began to sob.

  Rachel turned her gaze away from Brady and rocked her gently, comforting her, wishing they were someplace else....someplace far away. Far away from uncles, far away from Brady.

  Far away.

  Politely, Brady retreated from the bedroom and quietly shut the door, leaving them in the darkness.

  At the other end of the hallway, past the staircase, Brady set down the gun and the toolbox and reached above his head to the ceiling. His fingers fumbled for the handle to the attic door, then grasped it and brought the attic staircase down. He propped it against the floor before him. Kneeling, he opened the toolbox and fished out a flashlight, closed the box once more, then brought everything into his arms and climbed the wood stairs into the dust and the blackness.

  *
**

  “That’s all the windows, Dad,” Kelly proclaimed.

  Meeker, his daughter, and Logan now stood together near the front door, gazing around, thinking if there was anything left to do; anything they just might have overlooked.

  “Okay,” the sheriff said. Then, “Logan, I want you here on the front door. Here’s the deadbolt key.”

  “Thanks,” he said, not knowing why. He took the key from the sheriff, turned, placed the key in the deadbolt, and turned it. The bolt flew home with a dull clack.

  “We’re secure,” Meeker said. “I padlocked the back door. This is the only way in or out of the house.”

  After another glance toward the door, he turned and went into the kitchen in the direction of the basement staircase.

  Logan surveyed the foyer momentarily, then, turning, he accidentally bumped into Kelly. The seriousness had left her eyes, replaced with an enticing glare. She grabbed the riotgun barrel with her left hand and, before the stunned deputy, gently stroked it suggestively.

  Logan then tugged it from her. “Back off, Kelly. I like my job.”

  Playfully, seductively, Kelly stepped closer to him. “Just wondered if it was loaded.”

  Kelly brushed past the deputy and moved off, past the livingroom candles and into the long side hallway, disappearing.

  Logan scratched his head feverishly, then, turning to the rear of the door, wondered what would happen next, and whispered a prayer for daylight.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Haddonfield Park, or the Terry Grounds as it was sometimes called for a reason long forgotten by most, was the blackest part of town at night. This was due to the fact that someone had flung bricks at the two light posts situated at both ends, and since that incident a few days ago no one had time to fix them.

  The darkness was interrupted by the brightness of the headlights of a pickup truck, and the air became filled with the roar of an engine and the multitudinous voices of townies.

  Earl Ford’s pickup rounded the corner slowly making its way past the park, high power flashlights shining from the hands of the men at the back, scanning the surrounding area carefully. On the opposite side of the street, their beams came across driveways and trash cans, piles of deadened leaves and the front porches of various shaped houses, some baring the flicker of candles from behind closed drapes within the windows.

  The men were armed, some with pistols and others with shot guns, ready for any encounter, grumbling to themselves about catching the son of a bitch who had returned to wreck devastation once again upon this town of theirs.

  Suddenly, one of them, the one called Orrin, raised a pointing finger and called out, “There he is!”

  From the front seat, Earl snatched his Remington twelve gauge pump beside him and immediately bailed out of the truck.

  The men hopped from the truck’s bed and joined him, Orrin continuing to point out the direction which he referred to. Earl slowly marched up toward that direction, pumping the shotgun to ready. Orrin came up beside him, leading him further, then stopped in his tracks and rested his finger in the direction of a series of heavy bushes beside a modest colonial house.

  “I seen his face!” he half yelled. “Right there, Earl. Right in those bushes.”

  The other men readied their rifles and shotguns and pistols, all nervous, all shaking, but all as damn well ready as they could ever be in such a desperate moment. Fingers were tense on triggers. There was a long pause of silence before the bushes began to rattle and rustle, then there was a flash of something pale white which darted across the steady beams of their flashlights and seemed to move toward them.

  It was then when Earl shouted, “FIRE!”

  The air turned thunderous with the intensity of the pandemonium of shotgun blasts as the men opened fire upon the entire range of the bushes. A deafening firestorm of buckshot grew into a violent crescendo which echoed throughout the expanse of the town, and various front doors in the surrounding area opened, curious and startled heads popping out to view the commotion.

  Quickly, the bushes began to disintegrate under the constant blasting, and several languished seconds passed before the last gun finally emptied completely.

  Smoke eddied above the ruined hedges. Leaves and branches were blasted virtually to dust. The entire row of what was once hedges stood naked and bare before the determined lynch mob. Nothing was left untouched; toothpicks and sawdust was what their flashlights now beheld, and as the group of men slowly advanced, their flashlights beheld blood.

  Then the pulverized body of a man.

  One man cried out in horror, “Shit, Earl, that’s Ted Hollister!”

  Earl swung around to Orrin. “You told me you saw Myers!”

  Orrin backed away, defensive, yelling. “You told us to fire, not me!”

  Earl dropped his shotgun and hurled a fist at the man, smacking into his left jaw. Jolted backwards against the grass, Orrin rose to his feet and roadblocked Earl into the nearby dust. As both men began to wrestle, others tried despairingly to pull them apart.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  The darkness of the attic tended to be a bit haunting for Brady as he finished hammering another window shut. Then again, considering the unnerving circumstances, he had every right to feel scared. He remembered the stories about Michael Myers, and he remembered standing there as the ambulances and paramedics surrounded Laurie Strode’s house after the bodies had been found---he was only seven years old at the time, but tonight the images wore crystal clear in his mind.

  Jamie’s uncle.

  It was difficult to believe. Yet the whole thing sounded vaguely familiar to him; he was almost certain he heard this about Jamie Lloyd before, but he figured he must not have paid any attention to it. It was like a dream, or, more precisely, like deja vu, this sudden news.

  And Jamie’s uncle was here, somewhere, within this very town.

  God only knew how many people have been killed already, somewhere out within the depths of the blackout. He realized it could’ve been him out there, dead, later to be driven away on a stretcher with dozens of eyes gazing on after him. But he wasn’t out there now; he was in here. He was safe.

  Then again, for some reason, he didn’t feel safe.

  He felt vulnerable.

  Yet he had no reason to be. He was truly safe here. Everyone was truly safe here. They had weapons, and there was Sheriff Meeker and a deputy there to protect them. And he would protect Rachel and Jamie. Oh, and yes, he would protect Kelly too. Mustn’t forget about Kelly.

  That was another matter. As he moved on to the very last window (there were only three windows in the attic, each side by side towards the front of the house), he remembered a few of the momentous times he had shared with Rachel, and he remembered how each one of those times ended with a slight shove from the girl whenever Brady would try to go too far. Kelly wasn’t like that. In fact, with Kelly, he didn’t even have to make the first move; it was like he was a magnet to her, and she just came to him. Some people called her a slut at one time, with the suicidal boldness to even do it in front of her father, and the ordeal went on until it ended with rock salt up a boy’s ass from Meeker’s gun. So when it came to notions about sluts, well, let’s just say it was all hush hush.

  Besides, Kelly was a babe, wasn’t she? And there were definitely a few horny guys out there who’d die just to see what Brady saw tonight.

  But Rachel; well, that was a different story.

  A final swing of the hammer landed painfully on Brady’s thumb. The surge of pain shot up through the throbbing bone, and he let out a sudden yelp.

  “Jesus!”

  He heard a sound from behind him. Something fell from somewhere on the attic’s far side. Startled, nearly forgetting his aching thumb, Brady reached for his flashlight, groping. He could only see a slight portion of what the moonlight allowed him to see, and the darkness of the room encompassed the space where the flashlight was supposed to be. As soon as he found it, it toppled over and rol
led away from his grip. Finally, he retrieved it and flicked it on. He began to scan the room.

  Silence.

  “Who is it?” Brady called.

  As far as he could see, the attic was vacant. There was nothing but clutter and stored memorabilia, old picture frames and dusty paintings, archaic sculptures, prescriptive metal objects and a boxfull of what seemed to be dartboards. His flashlight beam then centered on a moose-head rocking, slowing into a halt.

  Cautiously, Brady advanced deeper into the room, occasionally glancing back at his shotgun resting propped up against the wall where he finished the windows. The blackness descended behind him and he continued, and his figure was chased by numerous shadows.

  Still, he found nothing.

  ***

  Rachel stared blankly out the room’s window. She gazed down upon the deserted streets across the way, the only illumination being that of the moonlight. Her eyes had become accustomed to the dark. Her thoughts were on fear, on Brady, on the night.

  She realized she was growing to hate Halloween. Everything bad happened on Halloween, and she didn’t know why. Come to think of it, the same rang true for all holidays. She couldn’t understand it. She’d ponder upon it in depth later; for now, all she could do was continue to gaze blankly out this window, the possibility of certain doom for both herself and for her foster sister hanging over her head like a curse.

  Yes, she was afraid. Deathly afraid. But she knew she mustn’t let Jamie know she was. Rachel was there to protect her foster sister. And the only way to protect your foster sister from the nightmare man was to not have any nightmares yourself.

  Right?

  Rachel managed to move. She turned slightly to Jamie, whose figure she could see on the bed. She was sitting there motionless, gazing down into the palms of her hands. Rachel then stood and crossed over to her, kneeling down beside her.

  She spoke in a soft, comforting whisper. “I want you to lie down and try to go to sleep.”

  “I can’t sleep,” the little girl responded gazing up at her darkened outline. “The nightmare man will come. He’ll get me.”