She shuddered with a sudden chill, witness to an act of evil that had occurred maybe only a few hours ago, on a street she passed every day. An act of evil removed from her yet connected to her. As one of the onlookers reached up tentatively to touch the dog, to confirm it was dead or to untie it and lower it to the ground, Allyson turned away. She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling her sweat dry, delivering a renewed chill.
Whatever meditative calm she had achieved on her morning run was effectively shattered now. At the end of the block she saw an unfamiliar car—an old brown-and-tan Bronco—parked at the curb. A driver sat behind the wheel, face cloaked in shadows, unmoving. Indistinguishable, but the shape of a man.
Behind her, she heard her neighbors lowering the dead dog to the ground.
Laurie awoke to a frightening variety of physical discomforts. Either the pounding in her head or the deep throbbing in her lower back woke her. But the brute force of the morning sun beating down on the windshield of her pickup truck kept her gritty eyes in a squint worthy of Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti western. Hand fumbling overhead, she plucked a pair of sunglasses from a case clipped to her sun visor and slipped them on, grateful for the temporary relief.
No longer blinded by the early light, she assessed her surroundings. Two old boyfriends shared space on the passenger seat: Jim Beam and Jack Daniels. Both nearly as depleted as she felt. Was it possible for every bone in the human body to ache simultaneously? Or maybe it was just all the muscles attached to those bones that were sore. And her throat couldn’t have felt more swollen and dry if she’d gargled sand all night. Even so, she resisted the urge to wake up Jack or Jim.
Cast aside on the passenger-side floor mat, a white paper bag with the name and dual-tipped liquor bottles logo of Bucky’s Beverage Barn sparked a memory. Apparently, she’d made a stop after leaving Bellini’s to drown her parental and grandparental shortcomings.
She recalled the drive back to her house. Both bottles had remained in the bag until she reached home. After that, her memory had a few holes in it. She’d sat outside, drinking, lamenting the years of her life surrendered to the cause, the fight. At some point, she’d had too much to drink to bother leaving the truck. An internal struggle had raged. A desire to blot everything out feuded with her determination not to seek any comfort in her own house, in the warmth of her own bed. In her warped thinking, she thought she’d stay in battle-ready mode if she forced herself to stay upright in the truck.
After all these years she continued to misjudge her own capacity for reckless indulgence. If there was a line she shouldn’t cross she stumbled blithely over it and forgot to look back to figure out where it was.
Laurie decided more of her problems were alcohol-related than she wanted to admit to Ray. Or to herself. Easy to keep a secret when everyone refuses to talk to you.
A glutton for punishment, she twisted the rearview mirror down to look at herself and instantly regretted it. “Oh my…”
With a groan, she pushed open the door and stumbled down from the pickup, her legs so stiff she almost fell on her face before regaining her balance. After a few deep breaths of the cool autumn air her dizziness passed, and she lumbered toward her front door, keys in hand.
Filling a glass with milk, she added some powder and stirred the mixture to make her strawberry drink. Behind her, an anchor for the local news station prattled on about one misfortune after another. A story about a sinkhole downtown segued into footage of a warehouse fire, arson suspected, and so on… Laurie’s attention wandered as she tried to recall where she’d left the bottle of extra-strength aspirin. Wasn’t in the medicine cabinet, so where…?
“Police have not determined the cause of the accident,” the news anchor said, after switching to breaking news that apparently trumped her scheduled misery playlist. If it bleeds, it leads. “But we do know there are multiple fatalities.”
Laurie stopped stirring her drink.
Her attention locked on the news report.
“According to sources, the bus was transporting personnel from a local state hospital.”
At that moment, Laurie felt an electric jolt galvanize her body. Though she’d spent a night wallowing in self-pity and self-recrimination over her life choices, she had made those hard decisions for a reason. Even in hindsight, she wouldn’t change anything. Michael had waited forty years, but his patience had finally paid off. And if Laurie had chosen any other path, she wouldn’t have been ready for this day.
The stiffness in her muscles and the aches in her joints faded away as manic energy flared inside her. First, she switched on the police scanner. Then, she made a circuit of the house, securing the doors with bolts, locks, and bars on the top, middle, and bottom. The first-floor windows might shatter but the steel-mesh barriers would keep any intruder at bay. If, by chance, he brought a hacksaw to work on the thick mesh, she’d have plenty of time to blow his brains out. Even so, she zipped her canvas curtains closed. No need to give away her position within the house.
With the perimeter of the house secure she needed to check her supplies—and her arsenal. Returning to the kitchen, she approached the island in the middle and leaned into it, twisting it counter-clockwise. The island rotated away on one corner revealing a hidden door underneath, flush with the floor.
Opening the door, she peered into the darkness of her storm shelter. From where she stood, she could make out the first three steps of the staircase, enough to descend without breaking her neck. Once low enough, her hand reached out in the darkness and flicked on a light. Now that she could see below, she reached up and closed the door behind her.
13
Mt. Sinclair Cemetery had seen better days. Or better care. At least, one would hope, Dana thought.
She and Aaron followed the caretaker, a large black woman, through tall brown grass, navigating the rows of crooked tombstones. After an invigorating morning with a most memorable shower, the day had taken a grim turn. But that was the nature of their chosen profession. And their current story.
“My cousin works at a graveyard not too far,” the caretaker said.
Once they told her whose grave they wanted to see, she hadn’t needed to consult the massive map on the wall of her office or check any charts or forms in her filing cabinets. She knew precisely where to take them. With a simple, “Follow me,” she led them across the graveyard.
“Over there,” she said, “they got war generals, philanthropists, a beatnik poet. They got Muddy Waters and Bernie Mac. People come from all over to pay respects.” She shook her head in professional envy. “But this is Haddonfield. This is our only claim to fame.”
Aaron asked, “How much farther?”
“Just ahead,” the woman said, pointing toward a slight rise.
They walked for a minute at most before the woman stopped and pointed to a tombstone. Dana edged around Aaron for a closer look, dropping to her knees as she read the name: JUDITH MYERS.
The caretaker folded her arms and said, “Maybe you can explain to me what’s so spectacular about Judith Myers.”
This is it, Dana thought, fascinated. Where—how—it all began.
Hard to believe they stood so close to the infamous history of this place, this town, connected to another fateful night, one that had inexplicably forged Michael Myers into the madman he would become.
She couldn’t let this moment pass without revisiting that history, crucial background for their story. Reaching into her bag, Dana pulled out the recorder and spoke into the mic. “As she sat combing her hair. Unaware. Her six-year-old brother crept in quietly with a kitchen knife.”