Halloween (1979) by Curtis Richards. Based on the screenplay by John Carpenter and Debra Hill.

Almost midnight. Time for one more post…

Readers unfamiliar with Halloween (1979) may prefer to read these notes only after reading the novel.

This week I read the 44-year-old paperback movie tie-in novelization Halloween by Curtis Richards. It was immensely enjoyable, and can be completed in a couple of sittings. Professional prose quickly advances the story. I read with particular interest the richly imagined interior lives of Michael Myers, Dr. Loomis, and the three doomed women: Annie, Linda and Laurie.

Since paperbacks of the novelization are today rare and expensive, I want to take note tonight of the treatment author Curtis Richards gives to backstories and illuminating episodes never part of the 1978 movie.

Prologue

The novel begins "on the eve of Samhain, in a foggy veil in Northern Ireland at the dawn of the Celtic Race."

Action commences at the wedding feast of Druid king Gwynnwyll's daughter Deirdre and her spouse Cullain. A rejected suitor named Enda takes bloody revenge. Enda has been physically crippled from birth. But his jealousy has allowed a new voice to guide his actions.

[....]  In his left hand he held a fat wineskin, from which he drank often. In his right he held a foot-long butcher blade which he used to cut the throats of pigs and chickens.

  His eyes were fixed bitterly on the figures of Deirdre and Cullain, whirling exuberantly around the fire, to the immense approval of the tribe. For their betrothal had been announced, to the joy and relief of all.

  Enda’s legs shook and his body trembled in the cold night, though the heat of the fire was intense. And when the couple pirouetted past him once more, he leapt like a wildcat on his twin prey. Unarmed, their elbows linked, they didn’t have a chance. Enda’s blade sliced easily through Cullain’s jugular and windpipe. His legs kicked out in a grotesque finale to his dance of life. Then he fell like a slaughtered bull, dragging Deirdre downward. Her head turned away, she laughed, believing that her drunken partner had merely stumbled. Enda’s blade caught her with laughter on her face, the same laughter that had mocked him after she had run safely into the arms of her tribesmen the day he had approached her at the stream. The highly honed weapon plunged into her breast up to the hilt. In the clamor, no one heard the explosion of wind from her lungs, the gurgle of blood, the whimper, or saw the look of dreadful recognition as the light faded from her eyes—except for Enda.

  The thrill of revenge was the last emotion Enda knew, for a moment later he was literally torn apart by the enraged tribe….

[....]  The king asked his shaman to pronounce a special curse over the remains of this vile murderer. “Thy soul shall roam the earth till the end of time, reliving thy foul deed and thy foul punishment, and may the god Muck Olla visit every affliction upon thy spirit forevermore . . .”

  The sky darkened and lightning flashed. The day suddenly grew black and cold, and out of nowhere gusts of snow lashed the tribal party. In the history of the tribe, it had never snowed so early in the year. Satisfied that Muck Olla had heard his prayer, the shaman summoned his people to turn their backs on Enda and return to their bereft village . . .

  The celebration of Samhain’s eve was transmuted over the centuries. The invading Romans carried the tradition back from the English Isles with them in the form of the Harvest Festival of Pomona, and the early Christians deemed their celebration Hallowmas. The popes of the Middle Ages consecrated November 1 as All Saints’ Day, and All Hallow Even slurred into Halloween as the holiday was transmuted over the next millennium.

  With the coming of modern civilization, the superstitions and traditions of the original festival lost their meaning and vitality. Token recognition could be seen in the custom of lighting candles in jack-o’-lanterns, hanging effigies of witches and goblins outside homes, and playing good-natured pranks that were a feeble cry from the mayhem of the old times. Children paraded about in costumes whose significance had long ago lost their correspondence to the terror of evil that had once gripped the world at the onset of winter. Halloween, like many of the holidays, had become an empty shame.

  Except that from time to time, the innocent frolic of All Hallow Even was shattered by some brutal and inexplicable crime, and the original spirit of the celebration was brought home to a horrified world. Then the people would bolt their doors.

  Scant good it did them . . . and besides, there were always the unwary.

*   *   *

Chapter 1

Richards sketches the final months of 1963 for people in Haddonfield, foreshadowing the coming decade:

[....]  The tensions of the Cold War, of Cuba, the dark stirrings in Southeast Asia, lapped at the door of this placid and undistinguished midwestern town, but didn’t really touch it. In less than a month, the president would be murdered in Dallas, signaling an era of tremendous violence and heartbreak….

We then join young Michael Myers and his mother as they visit his maternal Grandma. Family history foreshadows future events.

[....]  “What’s that supposed to be?” [Grandma] said, leaning forward in her recliner and adjusting her specs.

  “A clown, Grandma.” He ran his hand over the red and green nylon jester’s costume, with matching cap with a pompom on top.

  “A clown,” she sighed.

  “Now, Mother,” Michael’s mother, Edith, came to the rescue, “I know what you’re going to say.”

  “Well, it’s true, darn it. We never had that five-and-dime junk when we grew up on the farm. We took Halloween seriously. Why, when we set up scarecrows and jack-o’-lanterns, it was because we were genuinely trying to scare off the bogeyman. Bogeyman, now he played real pranks and did some real damage. He didn’t just go around like they do today, slapping people’s clothes with socks filled with chalk-dust and soaping their windows.”

  “What did the bogeyman do, Grandma?”

While Michael changes into his costume:

  “Now, what’s this about ‘problems’?” she demanded of her daughter.

  Edith Myers, a younger, darker-eyed replica of her mother, ran a hand through her curly blond hair. “I told you, he’s been getting into fights at school. At home, too, with Judith. He’s been wetting his bed again, which he hasn’t done in three years.”

  “Fighting about what?”

  “Mother, can we just forget . . . ?”

  The old woman’s eyes narrowed. “No, we can’t. What kind of trouble is that boy in?”

  “Voices,” Mrs. Myers finally blurted after a minute’s tortured pause. “He hears voices.”

  “Oh, Little Lord Jesus!” the old woman cried. She exchanged a long, meaningful look with her daughter. “I’m afraid to ask what these voices say.”

  “ ‘They tell me to say I hate people.’ That’s how Michael put it when I asked him. Don thinks maybe we ought to send Michael to someone.”

  “You mean a psychiatrist?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t put much stock in psychiatrists, but I don’t suppose it could hurt. And I don’t think it will help, if it’s what I’m thinking.”

  The younger woman began to get agitated. “I know what you’re thinking, and that’s why I didn’t want to get into this with you. You’re going to say that that’s how it started with Grandpa Nordstrom.”

  “We have to face up to it, child, that is how it started with your father’s father.”

  “Mother, all children hear imaginary voices. Don’t you remember my Bobby Bear, who used to . . . ?”

  “It’s not the same. At least, it’s not something you should ignore. Does the boy have dreams?” Her daughter nodded. “Does he remember any?”

  “Yes, and they’re very violent.” Her face reddened and she turned her eyes away from her mother’s piercing gaze. “Mother, when Grandpa Nordstrom . . . that is . . . Well, you’ve never spoken to us about that incident, and I think there are enough similarities . . .”

  “Hush, here comes Michael. When you get home, call me as soon as you can, I think the time has come to tell you everything. Ah, there’s my little boy,” she cooed as Michael came back into the room with a rustle, “right out of a Punch ’n’ Judy show.”

Chapter 3

Michael abandons trick-ot-treat early and returns home alone.

[....]  The voice in his head had become subdued for the moment as he listened to Judy and Danny, not really understanding the significance of their utterances except that it had to do with love. He had heard similar sounds coming from his mother and father’s room. But he had felt warmly toward them. They were making each other happy, his father and mother, and that made him happy too.

  Then why did he feel such poisonous rage against his sister and her boyfriend?

  It was the voice. The voice stirred up the hatred. It had done so in his dreams, and now it was doing so in real life. It had begun with the strange pictures in his head at night, pictures of people he had never seen—oh, maybe in comic books or on television, but never in real life. People in strange costumes, animal skins, armor, leather, drinking and dancing wildly around a fire. One couple in particular. They looked like Judy and Danny, madly in love with each other, dancing in a circle around the huge bonfire, while he, Michael, stood in the crowd hating them, burning up with jealousy.

  Then a voice had come into his head while he dreamt, a voice telling him to stop the dancing lovers. The voice had become louder, clearer, and more demanding lately, and its dictates more compelling. He had begun to believe that if he listened to the voice, did what it told him to do, maybe the voice would go away and leave him alone. It was no longer a dream voice. It spoke to him during the waking time too. It had spoken loudly to him tonight, even as he went from house to house begging candy, even as he played games at the party. It had directed him to return home at once.

The first six months at Smith's Grove: Michael Myers and Dr. Loomis.

*   *   *

Chapter 4

The fourth chapter covers Michael's first year at Smith's Grove.

Six months after he is sent there, Dr. Loomis¹ and the sentencing judge discuss his status.

             Six months had passed since the hearing, and, as required by law, Loomis now appeared before Judge Christopher in the magistrate’s chambers. As they sipped glasses of port, Loomis noted how much the judge seemed to have aged. Loomis tactfully said something to this effect.

  “It disturbed me deeply then, and it disturbs me no less deeply now. It haunts my waking hours and my sleep. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything so difficult in my life. But what could I have done? What would you have done? How is he?”

  “He is . . . fine. Of course, in my professional capacity, ‘fine’ must be defined . . .”

  “Please, no psychiatric rubbish, Loomis. Just tell me about his behavior in plain terms.”

  “In plain terms? He has done nothing, to our direct knowledge, that would indicate anything else but normality.”

  “Direct knowledge?”

  “Judge Christopher,” Loomis said, rising to his feet and distractedly running his fingers over the red and beige bound legal volumes on the judge’s shelves, “there have been some peculiar and unpleasant occurrences at Smith’s Grove in the last six months. Particularly in the juvenile ward.”

  The judge leaned forward. “Like what!”

  “Well, first of all, you have to understand that as Michael is by far—maybe eight or nine years—the youngest patient in the ward, he would ordinarily be the subject of a great deal of bullying, yes?”

  “I should imagine so.”

  “Well, there hasn’t been any attempt whatsoever. Not so much as a pinch.”

  The magistrate stroked his cheek. “And what do you make of that?”

  “The same thing you do, I’m sure. They’re afraid of him. I have seen him turn the hardest delinquent in the ward to stone with a stare.”

  The judge digested it. “And this is all you have to say? You feel this is sufficient reason for me to extend his incarceration . . .”

  “Then there was the matter of Gilden, the trustee. Gilden is known around the ward for his pranks. The children love him; he’s the only breath of fresh air in the place. One day, about a month after Michael’s arrival, old Gilden played one of his harmless practical jokes on the boy—one I’ve seen countless times.”

  “What was that?”

  “Oh, he loosened the cap on the salt shaker, so that Michael salted his dinner, the contents of the shaker fell into his food. As usual, it got a big laugh. It has become practically an initiation ceremony for the youngsters at the hospital.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “Michael didn’t think it was funny.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Nothing, at the time. But that night, Gilden came down with a case of cramps so severe he had to have his stomach pumped. It was analyzed as food poisoning.”

  “But you think . . . ?”

  “Yes, though I don’t know how the boy might have gotten to the kitchen or what he could have used. The juvenile ward is separated from the kitchen by a series of guarded or locked passages.”

  “I see. Anything else?”

  “Nothing quite as tangible. But the other boys in my charge have become . . . well, rather restless since Michael’s arrival. Like a herd of cattle that instinctively feels the presence of wolves out there in the darkness. They always seem to be on the verge of bolting. Stampeding.”

  The judge looked at him. “Dr. Loomis, I think you know how profoundly unnerved this matter has made me, and how desperately interested I am in seeing Michael treated and released. I’m not overly impressed by the observations you’ve made this morning, and it’s only your reputation that keeps me from making some rather critical remarks. Now, I want to know if the boy sticks to his story, understands what he did, feels remorseful, feels purged of the murderous hatred he described to us at the hearing, that sort of thing.”

  “Judge,” said Loomis, collapsing into a leather chair, “the boy’s story and attitude haven’t changed a whit since the hearing, though I have spent nearly two hours a day with him every day for six months. I have nothing to go on but my experience and my hunches, and I tell you out of the depths of all I have learned and observed in fifteen years of exploration of the human mind, Michael Myers may be the most dangerous person I have ever handled.”

The judge instructs Loomis to return for a second review in another six months.

             In the following months there were more “occurrences,” and in Loomis’s mind there was no doubt whom to ascribe them to. Every time Michael was slighted, or fancied he was, by a staff member or another inmate, some awful vengeance was visited upon the offending person. It might be a day, a week, a month later, but Michael got even.

  The problem for Loomis was that no one ever observed the boy doing it directly. One day, as the boys were watching television in the lounge, a fifteen-year-old got up and turned the sound lower. Michael rose and turned it up again. The other boy turned it lower again. Michael accepted the situation with a resigned shrug.

  That evening, as the older boy showered, the water turned scalding. The lad was harmed only enough to discomfort him for a week, but it could have been serious, and everyone knew who was behind it. Yet apparently Michael had not left his room.

Later, Loomis acquiesces to Michael's request for a Halloween party. 

             In the last week before Halloween, Michael began to get restless and excited, edgy and irascible. Loomis was well aware of the psychiatric phenomenon known as the “anniversary syndrome,” wherein mentally disturbed persons relive the events of the previous year’s trauma. Michael seemed to be following this classic pattern, and on the evening of October 31, Loomis placed the staff on what he only half-jokingly called red alert. The children (the girl’s ward had been allowed to join the boys for the occasion) were to be carefully observed, and Loomis wanted two staff members besides himself to do nothing else but watch Michael. Loomis needed not only an incident, but witnesses.

  The children were led into a little gymnasium, where black and orange streamers had been festooned, and cutouts of witches and goblins, black cats and pumpkins made by the children had been taped to the walls. The children wore their costumes, and even the nurses and orderlies donned clever masks, hats, or costumes to join in the fun.

  Michael was dressed as a clown….

             After cake and soda, the games began. For obvious reasons, they were kept simple and non-threatening. But after a round of musical chairs, in which a sixteen-year-old girl named Sophie had beaten Michael out for the last chair (had she known about the boy’s reputation, she’d have given it to him), Loomis leaned forward alertly, scrutinizing Michael. The stage had been set for something.

  The next game was ducking for apples. A huge vat had been borrowed from the kitchen, filled with water, and a dozen apples floated in it. The idea was for the children to pick an apple out of the water using just their teeth.

  After eight or nine children had gone, it was Sophie’s turn. Michael stood third or fourth in line behind her. She leaned over the lip of the vat, struggling to keep her hands behind her back to resist the temptation to grab the apple.

  The lights went out.

  It was not uncommon for the lights to fail at Smith’s Grove, especially on windy nights, when trees fell on power lines in rural areas. But it was not a windy night.

  Loomis had been prepared for anything but this. He leapt from his chair and ran in the pitch darkness for the spot where he thought the vat was. He bowled over several shrieking children and groped the last few steps until he collided with the platform on which the vat stood. At that moment the hospital’s own emergency generators, which tripped on automatically when the main utility system failed, brought light back into the auditorium.

  Sophie lay face down beside the vat, drenched from the waist up. Loomis searched the room for Michael. He stood under a basketball backboard, at least ten steps away, smiling. Loomis looked at the boy’s costume and hands: they were completely dry.

*   *   *

Annie, Laurie, and Linda

*   *   *

Chapter 8

On Friday, 31 October, Laurie Strode's high school English class discusses the subject of fate in a novel they have finished. As she tries to follow this, Laurie is distracted by the driver of a station wagon parked on the street near her classroom window.

            “. . . And the book ends, but what Samuels is really talking about here is fate.”

  Mrs. Fredericks shut the book with a thump, then went to the blackboard and with the side of a piece of chalk wrote the word fate in large bold letters. She then wrote the name Rollins in smaller letters about three feet away from fate, and connected the two with four arrows going from Rollins to fate, one of them direct, the other three describing large arcs.

  Laurie had not been paying much attention to the morning lessons, for her mind kept drifting to the image of a six-year-old boy with a gleaming butcher knife plunging it again and again into the softness of her body. Her legs were crossed and she squeezed her thighs tightly together to keep the imagined blade from making its most horrifying thrust of all.

  She looked down at her notebook and realized the symbolism of the doodles she’d been making absently during the teacher’s exposition of the novel: dagger-shaped arrows penetrating a Valentine-like heart. Perhaps that was why she sat up attentively when she noticed the arrows Mrs. Fredericks had drawn on the blackboard. They all extended from Rollins, and all went in different directions. Yet all ultimately arrived at fate.

  “You see,” Mrs. Fredericks amplified, “fate caught up with several lives here. No matter what course of action Rollins took, he was destined to meet his own fate, his own day of reckoning. The idea is that destiny is a very real, concrete thing that every person has to deal with.” She emphasized this by stabbing at the word fate five times in rapid succession with the chalk until it snapped. Two or three students giggled, but Laurie drew her breath in sharply.

  She mused about fate. Suppose it was my fate to die like Judith Myers. No matter which way I ran, no matter what I tried, that blade would be waiting for me. Gosh, that couldn’t be my fate. I’m too young. I’m too, well, too nice. But Judith Myers was young, and probably no less nice than I. It was just her destiny, that’s all. It had been determined by God a million years ago that on October 31, 1963, Judith Myers would be horribly murdered. But why would God do a thing like that to a nice girl? God wouldn’t do anything evil like that, would He? We were taught in Sunday School . . .

           I’m not going to look at that man, Laurie swore to herself as the boy two rows away muttered an answer. I can see him out of the corner of my eye, but I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of looking at him. Well, maybe just a bit to see if he’s still . . .

  She turned her head ever so slightly.

  He was.

  “Laurie?”

  The pronunciation of her name came like a thunderclap, and she jumped as if a bolt had struck her seat. “Ma’am?”

  “Perhaps you can answer the question.”

  She closed her eyes and brought the question to the forefront of her mind. Then she struggled for a moment to produce an answer.

  “Uh . . . Costain wrote that fate was somehow related only to religion.” The teacher’s smile of approbation prompted Laurie to go on and gave her fortitude. “Whereas, Samuels felt that fate was like a natural element, like earth, air, fire and water.”

  “That’s right,” said Mrs. Fredericks. “Samuels definitely personified fate . . .”

  He was gone.

  She’d decided, even as she spoke to the class, that she was going to whip her head around when she finished and glare at him, whoever he was, until he dropped his eyes in embarrassment.

  But he was gone.

At the end of the day's classes:

             She turned into her street, reflecting on the day’s strange occurrences. “Well, kiddo,” she said to herself, “I thought you outgrew superstition.” For a moment, before she stepped onto the flagstone path to her front door, she observed a group of kids parading down the street in their goofy, store-bought costumes and wondered where it had all started, these traditions: witches, hobgoblins, pumpkins, and black cats. And she had to admit she knew no more about Halloween than she knew about judo throws—less, since she knew at least how to throw one sheriff if he stood long enough.

  Dimly she realized that the celebration must hearken back to the old times when evil was more respected in the world. She’d seen The Exorcist and The Omen, and she knew it was possible that evil and its incarnations—like ghosts, the devil and witches—really existed. But she’d never met anyone who truly believed it, and deep down she certainly didn’t believe it herself. But what had changed since the time when people were afraid to go into cemeteries and attended rituals to make the devil appear or chase the devil away?

  Had I ever known anything truly evil?

Once home:

              Laurie unloaded her books on the kitchen counter and stretched her weary arms. She kissed her mother and dipped a finger in the apple glaze, touching it to her tongue. “Mom, have you ever known anyone evil?”

  Her mother cocked her head and looked at Laurie with arched eyebrows. “That’s quite a question!”

  “Well?”

  Her mother washed her gooey fingertips in the sink, then wiped them on paper towel. “Well, they said that Hitler was evil, but I was too young to remember the war, and of course the only thing I know about his atrocities is what I’ve read or seen in the movies. I mean, I’ve never experienced someone evil, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “I think it is. What about the little boy who stabbed the Myers girl?”

  Mrs. Strode shook her head. “You’re certainly thinking some dark thoughts today, young lady.”

  “I know.”

  “But it’s interesting that you mention it. If you went to church more often, you’d understand why.”

  “Huh?”

  “Yes. You see, the Myers case was mentioned by Reverend Peters in last Sunday’s sermon.”

  “It was?” Laurie leaned forward, fascinated.

  “Uh-huh. He started of reminding us that Halloween was coming up this week, and he said some real interesting things about the origins of Halloween, about how it goes back to festivals aimed at warding off demons at harvest time, way back when.”

  “What does that have to do with the Myers case?”

  “Well, Reverend Peters said the Myers case, which happened on Halloween fifteen years ago, reminds us that true evil still exists in this world. He said that like everything else, we’ve tried to deodorize evil and put it in a bright new package and you can buy it at the supermarket for five cents off with a coupon. Then along comes something like the Myers case and we’re left with our mouths open looking into the . . . what’d he call it? . . . the heart of darkness. Maybe that’s why God put devils like the Myers kid on earth—to keep us aware of the darker side of human nature. And maybe you ought to do some studying. I doubt if you’ll get much homework done tonight.”

  “Thanks, Mom. That was real interesting, what you said.” Her mother looked at her skeptically, but Laurie had no mischievous look on her face. “No, I really mean it.” She hauled her books up from the kitchen counter and lumbered upstairs.

  “Are you sure you’re not coming down with something?” Mrs. Strode called after her.

  “No, just a minor case of the spooks. It’s Halloween, after all.”

It's a nice dichotomy on evil: the chapter opens with a discussion of two varieties of fate as explored in literature, and ends with a concrete religio-social critique about the Myers case itself.

Chapter 10

As Laurie and Annie cruise Haddonfield before their evening babysitting jobs begin, literary shading and psychological insights are kibitzed:

            [Laurie] checked the rearview mirror again and he was gone. Too bad. Now she’d never know. But she had a thought by association, and she uttered it. “Have you ever worn a mask?”

  “Huh?”

  “When you wear a mask, like at Halloween? But I mean a really good one that disguises your face so that people really don’t know who you are?”

  “What about it?” Laurie’s brow wrinkled as she waited for the punch line.

  “I was just thinking, you can say or do anything from behind that mask, because people don’t know who you are.”

  “It’s like the Alexandria Quartet,” said Laurie. “Lawrence Durrell?”

  “I never read that.”

  “I’m sure,” Laurie teased. “Somewhere in one of those novels Durrell describes the terrible things that happen on carnival night because people wear masks. Murders, rapes, people hiding behind the anonymity to take advantage of each other . . .”

  “Oh, goody, can I get a student discount on a ticket to Alexandria?”

  “Be serious, Annie, you’re the one who started this conversation.”

  “Sorry. But see, that’s just what I mean. The idea of not being responsible for anything I do because I’m wearing a mask—it’s kind of arousing.”

  “For you, maybe. But then, you find everything arousing.”

  “Oh, well, that’s the kind of girl I am. Maybe you ought to put on a mask and let some of your inhibitions out, do something mad. It’s Halloween, what better time to raise a little hell? I’ll bet that deep down in you there’s a fiend who’d push little old ladies in front of cars if you thought you could get away with it.”

  “Never!” Laurie gasped. Then, pausing a beat as a sly smile spread over her face, “Little old men, maybe, but never little old ladies.”

  They burst into gales of laughter.

We also get a clearer understanding of Dr. Loomis as a parent. He has already spoken with his wife from a payphone, telling her not to unlock the doors tonight for any apparent trick-or-treaters. Now:

             As Loomis passed a liquor store, he nodded, remembering his teenage son’s recent tirade about the hypocrisy of Loomis’s generation that punishes drug use but proudly displays its alcoholic orientation as if drinking were a virtue to be encouraged. The boy was right….

Clearly, Richards is giving us a Loomis more rounded than the Ahab-level obsessive madman of the movies.

The chapter then moves to a pivotal conversation between Loomis and Sheriff Brackett as they drive to the Myers house:

            “Kids will be kids,” the sheriff laughed bitterly.

  Loomis still wasn’t sure Brackett had grasped the problem.

  As Brackett nosed his car into the dark, cloudy night, he reviewed for Loomis everything he knew or had heard about the Myers case. Loomis listened attentively, though from his half-closed lids Brackett might have concluded the man was dozing off. Brackett said nothing Loomis didn’t know, until something slipped out casually that made the psychiatrist’s eyes widen and his back stiffen. “Would you mind repeating that, Sheriff?”

  “I said, the kid’s great-grandfather had done something similar.”

  “Tell me about it.” Loomis was breathing harder. Brackett’s casual remark had excited him as if her were a starving man that someone had dangled a piece of cake in front of.

  “Well, I don’t know much about it, and it was never brought out in the hearings, but Mrs. Myers, that night, was overheard saying, ‘He’s come back,’ or maybe ‘It’s come back,’ Over and over again. I didn’t live here then, so this is all second-hand.”

  “Go on.”

  “So Ron Barstow, he was sheriff at the time, Ron asked her, ‘Who’s come back? What’s come back?’ And she mumbled something about the thing that had got inside her grandfather. I guess she meant taken possession.”

  Despite the coldness of the evening, Loomis had begun to perspire. His breath hissed noisily. “Did she explain, about the thing that had taken possession of her grandfather?”

  “No, but Ron went to the records at town hall and checked out the newspaper clippings at the historical society.”

  “And?”

  “It seems the man had gone berserk back in the eighteen nineties.”

  Loomis was on the edge of his seat, his eyes bulging. “Berserk? How?”

  “It was at a Grange dance, I think Ron said. The man just upped and pulled a revolver from his belt and blasted a dancing couple. They hanged him.”

  They drove silently for a moment, Loomis struggling to contain his excitement, almost savoring the next question. “When did this happen?”

  “Eighteen ninety-eight, ninety-nine, something like that.”

  “No, no, I mean what date?”

  “How should I . . . ? Wait a minute. Of course I know! Ron remarked on it.”

  “Yes?”

  “All Hallow Even. It was a harvest dance. Halloween!” Brackett’s toe unconsciously depressed the gas pedal and the car accelerated into the dangerous night. “Jesus,” the sheriff breathed.

  “Why wasn’t this mentioned at the hearing?” Loomis demanded, slumping back into his seat, still panting.

  “I think Ron said it was because the defense attorney thought it was either irrelevant or damaging to the kid’s case.”

  “Irrelevant? Damaging?” Loomis chuckled drily, a laugh totally devoid of humor, like a rattle. “Tell me, did your friend tell you anything more about this great-grandfather?”

  “I’m thinking.” The seconds ticked ponderously around the clock on the dashboard. “Voices.”

  “Voices?”

  “The man heard voices, voices telling him to kill these two.”

  “Kill those two specifically. In other words, he didn’t fire into a crowd at random? He knew the victims?”

  Brackett scratched his ear. “I’m a little confused about that part. The way Ron explained it, the guy claimed he knew who he was shooting, but when they asked him to identify his victims, he called them some weird names he said he’d heard in his dreams.” Brackett pointed to his own skull and made a rotary motion with his finger. “Crazy.”

  “Perhaps. These names, Sheriff. Were they Celtic? Would you recognize them? Deirdre? Cullain?”

  “Sorry, my friend, they don’t ring a bell. Who are they?”

  “Names of victims in Michael’s dreams. If we could establish a continuity from the great-grandfather to the boy . . .” the psychiatrist mused.

  “A continuity?” Brackett gasped. “Come on, Loomis. In order for a dream to jump two or three generations, you’d have to believe . . .” He shook his head. “Doctor, I think you may be touched yourself.”

  “Probably. It’s an occupational hazard.”

Chapter 11

The chapter is devoted to the interior stream of consciousness of adult Michael Myers:

             He remembered the clown suit he had worn that night, red and green with a lace ruff and a sock cap with a silly ball at the end of it that kept dangling in front of his nose. He remembered his grandmother’s smell as she took a tuck in the material of his costume. He remembered the taste of candy corn at the party that evening, remembered biting off the white tips of the pyramid-shaped candies, then the orange middle, then the yellow bottom, trying to determine if they were made of different-tasting stuff but they were the same candy dyed three different colors.

  He remembered too how, in the middle of it, in the middle of ducking for apples, the feeling had come over him, a force like an iron hand that virtually shoved him out of the door and into the street, his little legs carrying him home and a voice telling him what he had to do. In his mind’s eye he had seen, that night, a picture of his sister as he had seen it a few times through the keyhole of her bedroom or in the crack of the bathroom door, pink, firm, with beautiful tight buttocks and round high breasts with jutting nipples, and the voice told him he must carve those breasts and buttocks into a thousand slabs of bloody meat. He remembered his own internal voice protesting, but it was such a helpless little-boy voice the the grown-up voice had shouted it down easily and urged his little legs home faster, instructing him to go into the house through the kitchen door, remove the butcher knife from the drawer under the sink, and go upstairs.

  He remembered the look in her eyes as he entered her room, a look that darkened from surprise to recognition to horror in the space of a second. He remembered the little-boy voice crying What are you doing? but the grown-up voice crying Stick it in her belly! Stick it in her heart! Stick it in her face! Stick it in her arms. Stick it in her legs! Stab her! Cut her! Slice her! Slash her! KILL HER! KILL HER! KILL HER! KILL HER! KILL HER! KILL HER! KILL HER! KILL HER!

  He had known she was screaming because he saw her lips moving but he heard nothing but the roar of the grown-up voice in his ears. He remembered the heat of her blood as it splashed his hands, and the strangely familiar smell of it.

  He remembered looking at her almost unrecognizable remains on the floor and hearing the little-boy voice saying, Uh-oh, you’re gonna get in a lot of trouble when mommy and daddy get home. And that’s just what happened.

  Mommy and daddy were very mad at him when they came home.

  And now the voice was talking to him again, and it was almost the same way except that he was a grown-up himself now, and he was big and strong as his daddy, and this time nobody would be able to take him away and send him someplace….

Chapter 12

The chapter peaks with Annie's lonesome death. After multiple mishaps, including coming close to Michael's blade as she laundered her blouse in the out-building, she has banished Lindsey to Laurie's supervision at the Doyle's house. Now she will drive to her boyfriend's house for an association.

             Funny. She thought she’d left the car door closed when she left it a moment ago. “The old memory’s going,” she muttered. “Either that or the doors of the world have declared war on me.” She wriggled into the driver’s seat and inserted the key in the ignition.

  Before she could turn it, he sat up in the back seat, massive and powerful, hideous in his rubber Halloween mask. She had time only to glimpse him in the mirror, the beat of her heart cascading into a runaway frenzy. She screamed, but the closed car doors and windows muffled the sound. A second later his immensely strong forearm was under her chin, crushing her windpipe. She beat and scratched at his arm, but it was futile. Her lungs tried desperately to suck air into her body. In one last effort to free herself, she pressed the horn on the rim of the steering wheel. It blared loudly in the night for a long moment. Then the knife plunged into her belly.

  She could actually hear her mind contemplating the length and coldness of the long blade as it penetrated. But she didn’t really feel any pain. The terror and resignation had made her impervious to it. She knew she was dead, and in her last moment she was aware of a blend of surprise and regret that the event could be so peaceful and undramatic. She wished she could have said a proper good-bye to her parents. She wished she’d understood her father’s warning to be careful. She wondered if she’d be reborn and get a second chance to be careful. The light faded, and the last thing she heard was the car horn . . .

Chapter 13

We approach the climacteric.

Loomis has just run Keith, Richie, and Lonnie off the Myers house property.

             Sam Loomis grinned. It was a dirty trick, but he had to get them out of there, both for their sakes and for his own. Now he went back to his blind watching and waiting, shivering in the cold night air.

  He did not see the hand reach out for his shoulder, but at the first contact he whirled around in a fluid motion, the big gun materializing in his fist like a conjurer’s hare.

  “Hey, it’s me, don’t shoot!” Sheriff Brackett cried.

  “Good God, Brackett, don’t sneak up on me that way.”

  “Sorry, Loomis. It’s second nature to me. Put that bazooka away.”

  “Yes, of course. I’m rather jumpy, as you can see.”

  “But you’re all right.”

  “Sure. Has anything happened?”

  Brackett shook his head. “Nothing going on. Just the usual, kids playing pranks, trick-or-treating, parking and necking, getting high. I have a feeling you’re way off on this one.”

  “You have the wrong feeling,” Loomis said firmly.

  “You’re not coming up with much to prove me wrong. Aside from one half-eaten dog . . .”

  “Exactly what more do you need?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s going to take a lot more than some sophisticated psychological interpretation to keep me up all night creeping around these bushes.”

  Loomis looked at him with a directness that made Brackett extremely uncomfortable. “I watched him for fifteen years, sitting in a room, staring through the walls, if you can understand that, staring through the walls and seeing this night. He’s waited for it, planned for it, focused his life on it. He’s inhumanly patient. Hour after hour, day after day, waiting for some silent, invisible alarm to trigger him—a voice to tell him the time has come, a gauge to tell him his blood has begun to boil. Death has arrived in your little town, Sheriff. You can ignore it, or you can help me stop it.”

  Brackett shook his head skeptically. “More fancy talk. You want to know what Haddonfield is? Families. Children. Nice homes, all lined up in white rows up and down these streets. Oak trees. Picket fences. An old school with a new annex, a lot of churches, all denominations. A five-and-dime, a hardware store, a beauty parlor, a coffee shop, some bars and gas stations. I’m describing a small mid-western town to you, Loomis, not a slaughterhouse.”

  “You could be describing both.”

  “I’ll stay out with you tonight, Doctor, just on the chance that you’re right. And if you are right, then damn you for letting him out.”

  Loomis dropped his head. There was nothing he could say in reply.

Chapter 15

The film pace and the novel pace shock in their subjective temporal disparities. My sense of Carpenter's film is that Annie's death is the midpoint in running-time. In Curtis' novel we have finished 75% of the text. 

When Loomis has finally unloaded his revolver into Michael in the Doyle house:

             “What are you doing?” the girl [Laurie] asked.

  “Reloading,” he said, pushing the long heavy cartridges into the chamber of his gun.

  “Why?”

  Loomis shrugged. “It heightens my sense of security,” he said with an irony that was lost on her. He started down the steps.

  “”Where are you going?”

  “To examine the body. I would like you to go across the street and wait for the police.”

  “No,” said Laurie. “I think I’d like to come with you.”

  Loomis looked at her quizzically. “You haven’t had enough for one night?”

  “I want to make sure it’s all over.”

  “Suit yourself. I assure you it is.”

  Which is why you’re reloading your gun, Loomis said to himself, heading downstairs. From the way the girl clutched his arm he knew she was thinking the same thing. Poor child. If she knew what he knew, she’d be thinking darker thoughts than that even.

  She’d be thinking about the dream that little Michael, angelic choirboy face turned to the ceiling as if in prayer, had told him some fifteen years ago, a dream about his vengeance on a Druid girl who had not returned his love, and on her lover who had mocked him, a dream about a ceremony on an accursed gravesite, where his head and heart were left exposed to the elements to rot while some shaman recited an awful curse dooming him to roam the earth forever lusting for blood.

  She’d be thinking about Michael’s great-grandfather, who had been tortured by that identical dream, a dream that had inflamed both of them to commit deeds of wanton horror.

  She’d be thinking about the voices that spoke both to Michael and to his great-grandfather, urging them to take revenge against someone who had lived over a thousand years ago.

  She’d be thinking about a festival called Samhain, whose grotesque rituals designed to protect Druid harvests against the depredations of howling demons had been transformed over a millennium or more into the harmless holiday called Halloween.

  Halloween. Charming children in cute costumes begging sweets, cardboard cutouts of skeletons and witches on brooms, warmly glowing jack-o’-lanterns, artless parties and entertaining games, spooky movies on TV, innocent pranks, trick-or-treat.

  Loomis exited into the cool night air and rounded the side of the house, trailed by Laurie. Cautiously, he prowled toward the backyard, the moonlight glinting on the blue barrel of his gun. One more corner to turn. Loomis stuck his head slowly around it and focused his eyes on the place where the body had landed beneath the French windows.

  It was gone.

  He rushed to the spot, suppressing a sob of frustration. A patch of flattened grass surrounded by twinkling shard of glass. No other sign, not even blood.

  Above the thudding of his heart he heard the girl whimper behind him. He turned and put his hand under her arm to support her. Mutely they stared at the patch of grass.

  Until this moment he had hoped against hope that the entity he had pursued to this place was a thing of flesh and blood like himself, though deep in his heart he had known it would be otherwise. The evidence pointed not merely to another interpretation but, as he had said to Sheriff Brackett, to another dimension.

  He shuddered, wondering what little boy at this very moment was tossing in his sleep, tortured by a dream of tragic love that had occurred far away and long ago, tormented by a voice commanding the dreamer to take revenge.

  Laurie’s nails dug into his shoulder as she stared like a soldier in shell shock at the empty place on the lawn. “It was the bogeyman, wasn’t it?” she murmured.

  “As a matter of fact,” Loomis replied, “it was.”

It's a masterful stroke with which to end film and novel. All elements remain suspended in midair. Another eleven Michael Myers Mythos films and almost as many more novelizations may retcon and back-fill until the whole mass is corrupted into a frustrating loop of cynical pop chicanery, but at this moment – the end of the beginning – there is solace in apparent finality.

Jay

29 October 2023

"They shall not grow old."

 [....]  Halloween (1978) by John Carpenter became one of the first American slasher films in which an unknown killer slashes a group of adolescents one by one with a bladed object. A film with this story line, influenced by giallo cinema, usually concludes that the current events are linked to something wrong that happened in the past and generally leaves only one survivor – usually a female virgin. Carpenter’s film is set on Halloween night in 1963. That night, a six-year-old Michael Myers stabs his teenage sister after she has sex with her boyfriend. Due to this he is locked up in a sanitarium under the strict supervision of psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis but manages to escape at the age of twenty-one.

Michael goes to his old town of Haddonfield, Illinois and begins stalking his sister Laurie who was adopted by the Strode family. In the meantime Dr. Loomis also travels to the town fearing that Michael will kill on Halloween night. Michael steals the gravestone of his mother and begins killing each one of Laurie’s friends. In the end he makes every effort to kill his sister, who does not know she is Michael’s relative, but Dr. Loomis – the psychiatrist – saves her.

Michael Myers shares some elements with Norman Bates. Both use a butcher’s knife to kill their victims, and stab them in a similar manner. Both have voyeuristic fantasies. Michael observes his victims long before he takes action. Like Leatherface, Michael covers his face with a mask – a reference to the boogeyman – and does not talk. As a kid and as an adult, Michael stabs his victims after they have sex. In giallo cinema this is the general fate of the sinner, whereas from a psychoanalytic perspective, Michael’s behavior can be understood as a need for penetrating the victim because of an inability to engage in sex or as an impulse to remove the object that triggers unacceptable behaviors.

Following the DSM criteria, Michael Myers is portrayed as an individual with impaired social skills and communication. He is unable to talk. He lacks theory of mind and empathy. His pattern of interests seems limited to finding his sister and killing whomever he finds. In this case an argument that Michael Myers suffers from autistic disorder could be made....

1. Fernando Espi Forcen, Monsters, Demons and Psychopaths: Psychiatry and Horror Film, 2017, 235–37.

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