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Every little town has its ghosts.
Ghosts, ghouls, and goblins that hide in the shadows, waiting to strike at the right time, when the vulnerable are weak and disadvantaged, or worse, the folly of man invites them in. Holidays, celebrations, and festivals draw their interest, plucking unsuspecting locals from the presumed safety of the city streets.
But modernity brings a lack of belief in the old ways. Festivals of offering and faith become celebrations, and then Hallmark cards and cheap candy, worn costumes, and the numbing forgetfulness. Misunderstanding of nature enacts a lack of belief, and that lack of belief leaves the modern man unable to defend himself against his nature, the nature of evil.
Evil didn’t come to Haddonfield; it was born there, and it intended to return. In 1957, Michael Audrey Myers was born healthy and assumed happy. He smiled, babbled, and did everything he was supposed to. In 1962, he became troubled. In 1963, he became unbearable, bordering on unmanageable. Judith, his older sister and senior by eleven years, no longer wanted anything to do with him. Babysitting him was a chore, no longer a pleasure, and she only indulged because she had to. Watching Cynthia was easy, but Michael was a problem child in the making, and by the time he was six, she could hardly stand to look at him.
When he wasn’t arguing with her, he was getting into fights at school, wetting the bed, ripping pages out of her diary and scrawling terrible imagery into it, and staring out her window. He would burst in on her, watch her when she was naked, and pinch at her breasts and rear end, laughing maniacally before fleeing. When her boyfriend noticed, she knew she had to isolate Michael from her social life at the very least. Unable to exile him from the family, she decided that at eighteen she would leave, move in with Danny, and distance herself from Michael entirely. The older she got, the older he got, and with age came swagger and strength. He would eventually get taller than her, grow broad in the shoulders, square in the face, and dangerous. She felt he was dangerous then, but no one listened, no one cared, and thus nothing could be done because it was too late.
The evil has consumed Michael, leaving nothing but a shell of rage with a singular, unresolved goal.
Kill. Destroy. Kill. Hurt. Kill. Maim. Kill. Stalk.
Kill. Slaughter. Kill. Behead. Kill. Stab. Kill.Kill them. Kill them. Kill them!
Hurt, hurt, hurt. Hurt, hurt, hurt.
Hurt, hurt, hurt. Hurt, hurt, hurt.Hurt, hurt, hurt. Hurt, hurt, hurt.
Hurt, hurt, hurt. Hurt, hurt, hurt.
Hurt, hurt, hurt. Hurt, hurt, hurt.
Hurt, hurt, hurt. Hurt, hurt, hurt.Kill them. Kill! Kill! Kill!
Despite her complaints, she was called dramatic, sometimes extreme, and Michael, with his lack of playmates and forced interactions, was noticeably different from other children. Where he once socially thrived, he became withdrawn, moody, and wept to his mother about awful nightmares. Voices that seeped from his dreams into reality, telling him to hate people, even hurt them. He wanted to strangle the neighbor’s dog to death, how he hated Judith, and that he was seeing visions beyond his comprehension.
As he got older, the voice became more like a suggestive companion. He could ignore it when he wanted, or use it as a basis for what to do and when, but overall, he became more self-reliant as he got older.
This was a problem.
Is a problem. Still.
As he developed, adapting to his anatomy and autonomy, he was too good at balancing the requirements of his head voice with the desires of his private will. The voice merely instructs him, telling him to kill. To hurt. It never insists on setting up elaborate traps, acting sentimentally towards his sister’s headstone before turning into a macabre display, and luring victims like a predator lures its prey.
Michael is independent, and at first, he was rather talkative. He admitted everything, refusing to let someone else take the fall. He insisted it was him, giving the best explanation he could, and it mortified the community; it struck a chord in the hearts of those who felt sorry for him. But that sorrow morphed into fear, some speculating Michael would return or claiming to see Judith’s ghostly visage wandering the halls of the Myers house, peering out the window of her bedroom with a ghastly, pained expression. Some swore they saw a child dressed as a clown, while others promised they could hear her screams from upstairs as they passed.
Michael went from cherub child gone awry to local legend almost overnight. Children feared him without ever seeing him, and adults whispered about what he had done, how he was a tortured little soul, and wondered what became of him. If he were still alive, locked away in that sanatorium miles out, and if he grew up. At twenty-one, they gave their best guesses about his physicality, assuming he would be tall, fearsome, and possibly disfigured, even though most had seen him as a boy, and knowing he was mostly normal aside from the dismantling of his psyche.
After he became a spectre, they feared him, even calling his former childhood home haunted. The Myers family, or what remained of it, fled, money bleeding into the property, and then they died too.
But Loomis, in the back of the courtroom, saw not only an opportunity but the depths of something he could not understand then. When they locked eyes, he knew. Michael was his patient, his magnum opus, his everything. Michael’s case would fix everything. It would propel Loomis to the top, make up for past mistakes, and boost pre-achieved accomplishments. He would reach into the boy’s soul, rip out the source of his sickness, and dissect it. Whatever was plaguing Michael, Loomis would figure it out. There is always a cause, an illness to assign, and a solution. Always a way. If he cannot find a solution, he can medicate Michael and lock him away, omitted with the rest of the doctor’s failures. Laurels be damned after such a splash in the ocean of his field, and Loomis would soar to the top. He would finally gain the recognition he deserved.
And Michael would be the one to get him there.
But Michael has other plans.
Going catatonic had been part of that. He had done everything he wanted to by then. At fifteen, he had said all he needed to, enacted all his little revenges, and made his claim on the ward he dominated in Smith’s Grove clear.
If he wanted a smoke, someone would fetch it for him, and many hands would come to light his cigarette. If he desired to see outside, they offered him the best view. When he requested to learn how to drive, they taught him with no questions asked. If he wanted to touch a pretty nurse, she would stand idle by his side as his hand wandered her backside and hip, staring off at something no one else seemed able to see. Hearing dog whistles no one else could hear, he would drop his hand, tilt his head, and listen.
Had he wanted to leave, they would have let him.
Therefore, his orchestrated escape was entirely unnecessary.
All for show—and all for Loomis.
To make a display, to send a message to the doctor.
Because if he had asked, they would have given him the keys, along with a new outfit, and let him go. The staff would have turned their backs on him and unlocked the doors. No one would have questioned him because they learned fast not to.
When Loomis drove up to the rainy gates that night, he knew something was wrong. In Michael’s disruptive and confusing unleashing of the other patients, he ensured not only that he would get away, but a few lucky ones with enough conscience and soul remaining would escape into the night.
Thanks, Mikey! See ya on the up n’ up!
White gowns scattered in the wind, hooting and hollering, drowned out by the storm as they shouted to the thundering sky. Michael took the car, but they claimed the prize. They proclaimed what they knew in their hearts, unable to bear the heavy weight of his mere presence.
The evil has gone!
Gone away! Gone away from here!
So, they danced as Loomis glared at the fleeing taillights in the rain, feeling the water drip down his bald head like tears, and he knew. He knew the evil might have separated itself from here, but the truth was more terrifying. Planned! From the very start! Damn him! Damn him to a hell that won’t have him!! For he knew. That is the dastardly truth to it all, isn’t it? That he knew. He knew it was called back to a place unable to handle the crushing weight of its mere existence; called back to its source. Its place of origin.
It was going home.
Without question, Loomis will follow.