Chapter Text
Laurie doesn’t wake early enough to see her father leave. God forbid he ever runs late because otherwise he’ll catch up to that poorly timed four way intersection light where Sheriff Brackett usually camps on the corner. Although she has missed the bus, Laurie’s never missed a day of class in her life, and it’s no wonder where she gets it from.
Except, today, she hasn’t woken up early. And God doesn’t forbid. Instead, it’s her father who leaves for work late and there isn’t a situation Laurie could think of where her father would ever allow himself to roll out of the driveway after a quarter before 8.
But it’s there in the kitchen where she catches him just in time as he’s preparing his toast, about ready to take it with him. He burns his finger tips taking it out of the toaster and curses, unbeknownst that his daughter is nearby. As Laurie stands in the cased opening leading into the living room, her father looks over his shoulder as though finally sensing her, notes her disheveled hair and bleary eyes. Amusem*nt colors his middle aged face. Through his eyes, he sees little Laurie, all the times she had guiltily come up to him after she woke up from wetting her bed. Thankfully, she grew out of that.
“Woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?” He turns away to grab butter from the fridge.
There’s a wrinkle on the back of his shirt and it irks Laurie because she recalls ironing it out a week ago, even burned herself trying. Yet, she knows her father plans for an outfit that would impress his peers the day prior because otherwise he’d hardly have enough time to fix himself breakfast the day of. However, this morning it seems he only has time to whip up two slices of overly toasted bread. It must be tearing him apart on the inside.
While a stranger might not be able to tell, Laurie knows her father woke up on the wrong side of the bed too.
“Didn’t get much sleep?” She asked.
“Not the most sound.” He beamed at her ironically. “An hour here, an hour there. But who’s counting? We’ll sleep when we’re dead.”
He searches through the drawers, pauses, sighs and glances at her almost abashed.
“You know where your mother keeps the butter knives?”
“Left of the sink.”
“You know, she got on me when I stacked the dinner plates on the serving plates. I asked her why it mattered. She said they were a gift from her mother. Can you believe that? She hates her mother, hates her. When was the last she cared for anything from that—”
“Shouldn’t you be at work by now?”
“Well, of course. But, you know, I’m taking my time. Older you get. Can’t rush, I mean, where’s to rush when you all end up in the same place—”
“Dad?” She prompts, a touch concerned.
She watches her father’s hands still on the counter before the toaster pops up. He could be looking through the window above the sink, watching the birds chirp merrily perched on branches balding of leaves, trees robbed by the presence of fall. But, Laurie is to know her father looks at nothing. Nothing but the glare of police sirens flashing through the tunnel of his mind from 15 years ago.
“You know, it’s not that hard to lock the door…” Then he turns to her. “But, you still lock yours, right?”
When she does not answer him, so too do her eyes as she drops her gaze to the floor.
“Laurie?”
He has stepped towards her, his hand gently taking her jaw.
“You are the center of my life.”
The watery blue of his eyes are a reflection of the autumn light. If she looked hard enough in them, she could have seen herself the way he sees her — his little bubbling girl. “Really...You’re such a good kid. Made it easy, you know? One day you’re in your crib and then you’re practically a woman now. Smart, independent. Not pregnant, but that goes with being smart... All those moments in between feel wasted.”
“Why waste it then?”
He looks at her as though seeing something unfamiliar when he lowers his hand from her face.
Did her mother’s judgment affect him as much as hers?
Then, for once, he peels back the facade, blindly crafted to reflect everything he’s been taught in his generation to aspire to: unemotional, inexpressive, tough. What he thinks it means to be a man.
Right now, without the facade, Laurie sees honesty in her father as plainly as she can tell the sky is blue.
“Cowards run away from things that matter, and chase the things that don’t. But, you’ll always be better than that.”
She hears his mirthless laugh like the weak scratchy tone of an untuned violin. It annoys her.
“Good thing you didn’t get that from me,” he says.
“I don’t know about that one,” Laurie admitted.
She leans her hip against the kitchen counter, worries her lip. Thinks about crying but she can’t because her father doesn’t understand. She doesn’t want to burden him with that.
But Mr Myers can tell when a woman is upset, even though he’s good at pretending he isn’t.
“What’s wrong Laurie?”
“I don’t run away…but I ought to open my mouth more.”
“You’ve always been quiet. Don’t think I can tell the things you’d like to say when Lynda and Annie aren’t around.”
Laurie looks at him.
He smiles. “But keeping your mouth shut might be the wisest thing to do.”
The grandfather clock tolls 8 and her father grabs a napkin, and places his buttered toast on it. As he leaves, he tells her to wake her mother who is usually up by now.
His parting goodbye to her is his lips on her forehead, although he may have approached her a little stiffer than his usual casual affections.
“Your mother might need some help this morning,” he says before he leaves, “Better you than me.”
Did her mother’s judgment affect him as much as hers?
Laurie knows.
It didn’t.
XXX
When Laurie enters her room the curtains are still drawn. A sliver of light escapes through the crack and cuts through the murky shadows of her parents’ bedroom. The dust particles are suspended, moving haphazardly so unlike Laurie, whose careful steps aren’t given away by the floorboards.
At her mother’s bedside, there is the mound under the blankets. Laurie needs to stop moving in order to make out her mother’s nocturnal groaning. It’s like that of a sleeping bear whose sharp odor of sleep and a dry mouth forces Laurie to steel herself from wrinkling her nose.
That’s all it takes for her to shake her mother gently awake.
“Mom…”
Her mother doesn’t respond, but her breathing has been disturbed. Laurie shakes her again.
“Mom, you have to get up. I’ve got school soon and you don’t want me to miss it.”
She hears a muffled sniff and then a moan.
“Is the sun out already?”
“It’s been out and dad’s left,” Laurie replies.
If Laurie hears her mother mutter “that bastard” in response, she doesn’t think twice about it. Instead, she rubs her hand down her mother’s back.
“I’m going to get a bath running for you.” Laurie rises, but her mother’s hand latches around her wrist.
The blankets fall from her face and Laurie notices even in the dark, her mother’s supple skin takes on an unusual puff. The woman sniffs as she sits up and rubs her red eyes with the back of her hands. Laurie wastes no time to head to the master bathroom and run the bathtub a little hotter than lukewarm and returns to the bed just as the air breaks with her mother’s cries. Crying ought to come easy to her if that’s all she was doing the night before. Laurie can’t blame her father for waking up late this morning.
If there was ever a time Laurie felt bad for her mother (and there were plenty), this would not be that time. At least not anymore. You can’t always feel bad for someone whose misery has become a part of their personality.
But, this doesn’t stop Laurie from grabbing the large sugar pillar candle from deep inside the bedroom closet. Briefly smelling the apple cinnamon scent, she lights it with a box of matches she knew to find on her father’s bedside drawer, and places it into a glass vase on her nightstand. Another gift from Laurie her mother likely forgot was given. At least, it made the room smell better.
“You know, I’ve never been more proud…” her mother starts gently.
Laurie might be able to say she is surprised by these words. So much that by reflex she says,
“Thank you, ma—”
“--of your brother. I thought I’d never see him again before this year. And look how Michael pulled through. You can see it right? He came out a better man for this.”
“Then you ought to let him know that,” Laurie replies hollowly.
“You’re right, you’re right.” Her mother’s expression brightens and instantly sags, as though optimism (or feigning it) is tiring. She already knows her mother is not okay.
You’re just saying that.
Her mother’s brow wrinkles.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
It takes Laurie a few seconds to realize she was thinking out loud.
“I just…” Laurie reminds herself she doesn’t need to feel apologetic. She is actually quite curious about not being a coward for her mother this once.
“Yesterday he made you cry. Don’t you think you should stop lying to yourself?” Laurie asks.
Why can’t you admit there’s nothing you can do?
Because sometimes a person can admit she’s not a good mother. Honesty is the best policy right? Especially to oneself? After her first born daughter was murdered, and her second born son was practically ripped out of her custody, can Mrs Myers really call herself a good mother after that? Her brother coming out of Smith’s Grove was not her mother’s doing; it was coincidence. Or better yet fate. Fate landed Michael back into the Myers family and his mother had nothing to do with it.
For her to blabber like she deserves any credit, to fawn over Michael so that she can disguise the grief of what today really means for the family, disgusts Laurie the most.
“Today is Judy’s day. Not yours. Not Michael’s.”
She always felt her mother at an arm’s length. Now, she feels as though they’ve been separated by a mile.
Laurie hears the subtle spill on the linoleum floor and she bolts for the overflowing tub. Half heartedly, she turns off the faucet and puts down a few towels to soak up the spill. In the back of her mind, Laurie knows when she isn’t wanted, and that’s why she's leaving the room as fast as she can and says nothing else to her mother whose narrowed eyes are on her back.
“Go to school, Laurie.”
“Yes mama,” Her compliance is a bad habit and she hates herself for how easily it comes.
The floorboards creak as she walks away, grabs her backpack from her room and stomps down the stairs. Never mind telling her mother to not forget about the candle from burning for too long.
She’s a grown woman. And Laurie is just a silly, quiet girl who needs school as a distraction.
It’s on the eighth tread down that suddenly she remembers the first time she gave a presentation on the history of potatoes for her 5th grade History class. Her heart was at full thrust, beating as a train chugs. Her face was on fire. In front of two dozen pairs of eyes belonging to her classmates, Laurie felt weak and bare.
She experiences this same feeling not as she leaves her parent’s bedroom but as she walks down the stairs and spots her brother’s silhouette. His back is to her. It surprises her how in as little as two months Michael had graduated from incompetent 22 year old man who had his mother fetching his breakfast to a less incompetent 22 year old man who can now sate his needs on his own.
As though sensing her, he stops on the third tread from the first floor.
Laurie dreads.
He’s waiting.
How long he’d wait, she can’t guess. Would he wait on her forever?
Laurie knows she barely has the patience to wait on herself. So, she urges down the stairs and successfully brushes past him without flinching. She can play indifference as well as him, feigning her ignorance of his existence, when in reality she notices how he wears a dark blue jumpsuit and thick black boots and has a lump in his pocket as though something were stuffed in there. But, in order for her to play the part successfully, she can’t ask questions, she can’t seem intrigued. And as she makes her way to the kitchen, expecting him to close in on her, she instead hears the front door shut and her brother nowhere to be sensed in the house. Her resolve cracks as she finds herself walking towards the foyer but not enough for her to follow him out the door.
And like Mr and Mrs Myers, their daughter knows how to lie to herself too:
“Good riddance,” she mutters.
XXX
For evening to come, the children would need to return home from school, Mrs Blankenship from across the street would have to sit outside her porch plopped in her creaking rocking chair watching Sheriff Brackett’s patrol car make its daily rounds through Lampkin Lane. For evening to come, the residents needed to go about their monotonous routines, as such was the clockwork of Haddonfield.
And when this evening came, it heralded the tricker treaters and soon the streets became littered with bargain based costumes racing door to door. One house whose blueprints were identical to that of the others on that street, is eyed curiously by not children, but parents passing by, some slowing their gaits as though in waiting for a hair-raising chill to seize them.
But, Laurie, who waits outside with a plastic bowl in her arms, waves.
“Hi Mr and Mrs. Tyler! Would Jack like to stop by?”
The couple exchange murmurs and glances, and as their ten year old son steps toward the house, his father grabs the boy’s hood and yanks him back.
“Let’s try the next one, son,” Mr Tyler orders and Laurie can only watch the family hastily depart with a smirk on her face.
One hour after dusk Laurie finally stands up to see a familiar face ambling towards her. She looks at the boy fondly.
“And what are you s’posed to be?” She asks
“Can’t you guess?” the boy tilts his head, the pillowcase he held open for her lowers from his face to his chest as his lips worry into a frown.
Her finger presses against her mouth, when she shrugs aloofly.
“Not a clue, Tommy. And if you don’t scaddaddle, you’re gonna create a line.” Even though, she’s aware that only a few youngsters have ventured to the door tonight.
Tommy simpers at Laurie, bewildered and if not hurt that his own baby-sitter and first-grade crush can’t recognize him for the character he imitates after he’d spent several hours working on it while she came to babysit him in his home.
“Well?” Laurie prompts, dropping two slap-stix into his bag.
Tommy, who turns on his heel with a slouch, swings his pillowcase over his shoulders. As he lugs away, Laurie calls playfully, “Don’t fly into any meteors, Buzz.”
The boy in the astronaut jumpsuit glances back at her, looking less put-out with a mock scowl and waves his hand dismissively.
Watching Tommy, she recalls a time when she dressed up as Jane from the Jetsons for trick or treating. Her parents were on vacation but Annie’s mother offered to babysit her. It was truly innocent fun, her and Annie, before Annie became obsessed with boys and the want for them to want her and before Laurie was old enough to finally understand the difference between ‘died’ and ‘killed’ and which correctly applied to her sister on Halloween night.
The rush of children went very much the same for the next two hours: somebody’s finger jabs the doorbell or knuckles rap against the door, Laurie answers, there’s usually a parent lingering behind the child or from the sidewalk, attempting small talk while their child’s little greedy hands rifle through the contents of the candy bowl.
When Razzles are the first to go, Laurie decides she’ll dole out the sweets. As the night soldiers on, well until her Jack-o-lantern flickers and dims, the tip of its wick dying out in an orange glow, she counts the remaining candies in her bowl, and casts an indifferent glance at the other houses on the streets. Porch lights wink out for the night, the most obvious indicator that parents intend to tuck into bed while their children are stolen away by their cavity agonizing bounties.
Her mother might have already turned in. Her parents closed bedroom door was the only indicator of her mother’s whereabouts.
As for her father, he hadn’t come home yet and while little Laurie of yesterday would have brushed it off as another late one at work, Laurie of today knows better.
Still, a shame her parents don’t come to see the trick or treaters— they seldom did. Laurie saw a few good ones but she'd have to say that the twins down the street that dressed up as Mickey and Minnie took the cake. She’s sure her mother would have fawned over a few of them.
Laurie looks down at the bowl and shakes it; the handful of pieces shuffle about. She imagines Annie might appreciate the gesture at lunch tomorrow if she gives it to her. Maybe some chocolate will soothe her ever-broken heart.
A small patter of footsteps on the sidewalk grabs Laurie’s attention. Looking up, she sees the burlap sack fashioned into a dress by merely cutting out holes for the arms, head and legs. On the child, it reaches as far down to the knees, not swaying with every step, instead as stiff as cardboard. The paper mache face of the child is crudely disturbing; Laurie doesn’t know what gives her a shiver. It could have been the black smile, crookedly spray painted. Glued around the perimeter of the smile were white little pebbles, probably fetched from the lake, that looked like teeth from afar. Or it might have been the eyes, which she can see are just painted yolk yellow pieces of an egg carton with a single red dot in the center.
She quirks a brow.
“And what are you supposed to be?”
The mask looks fixed on the candy bowl. Red paper mache claws hold no pillowcase nor pumpkin basket unlike all the other kids who came upon the Myers’s doorstep. Instead, the arms raise, claws poised in a steeple, shoulders hunched up to the ears. Laurie’s body tightens in surprise. Her hand has never left the door handle.
The child replies, in a queer gravelly voice, “I’M THE BOOGEYMAN.”
“Christopher Samuel Tramer, you get your candy so we can go home!” Mrs. Tramer yells irritably from the other side of the street, clutching her son’s candy bag. “You have me chasing you all over this goddamn neighborhood all night, I’m about ready to leave you on the streets to freeze!”
It’s the first time Laurie has seen Ben’s younger brother, and even now she isn’t even looking at him. This also marks the first time she’s seen Mrs. Tramer since the funeral. The woman is far away, but some color has returned to her skin, not as jaundiced as when Laurie saw her on that miserable afternoon. If Laurie could guess, Mrs Tramer might have graduated to the next stage of grief by the way she scolded her son: anger.
Laurie is decidedly unsure about whether she should wave to Mrs. Tramer; not that she’d recognize her (they’d never met) but Laurie entertains the scenario in her head, and imagines that her and Mrs Tramer would engage in a conversation and eventually, they’d fall on the topic of her son, and Laurie would confess to her all the great and wonderful things Ben was and always will be (even though he’s dead)— if only, to make the woman smile.
But, Lauries knows this is merely a fantasy, even though it may help Mrs. Tramer feel as though her son had done something for this world before he died, something that made him worth living on this planet.
The boy approaches Laurie, claws overlapping and brought together as he sticks them out to her in waiting. With a wry smile Laurie pours the remainders of the bowl into his cupped hands. A tootsie roll slips through and falls to the floor but the boy simply says,
“You can leave it. I hate those.”
And then he turns away slowly, and walks towards his mother. He says hurriedly over his shoulder. “Oh and thank you. Happy Halloween!”
Laurie smiles. “Happy Halloween! And good night Mrs Tramer!”
The woman’s cool gaze lingers on Laurie for a few seconds before she and her son depart.
When the neighbors’ porchlights wink out, Laurie calls the night and brings in the single Jack-o-lantern adorning their house where the smell of apple cinnamon traces under her nose. She decides the remaining candy will go to Tommy Doyle (instead of to Annie) when she babysits him this weekend— it could be used to incentivize good behavior.
Entering the living room after she got rid of the pumpkin, Laurie turns on the TV, flips through three channels and lands on one that plays a movie about a man being the last human being on earth. She can’t remember the last time she’s snuggled on the sofa, swaddled in her grandmother’s quilt. She’d always get carried away by sleep, just as she does now. And as she dozes off after what might be ten minutes, she hears a scream and awakes to see that the main character is speeding in his truck past a horde of mutants.
Though her heart is already racing and her mind tries to deduce how long she’s been floating in half-sleep, the phone rattles in its crate. She has a quarter of the mind to curse the caller, and the rest compels her to rise from her spot (where she wouldn’t have minded if she slept there for the remainder of the night) to the annoying device which calls for her attention.
Rubbing sleep from her eyes, she grumbles, “Hello?”
“LAURIE!”
Her eyes open with a wild lucidity at the sound of Annie’s voice. And just as quickly, the hammer of her heart suspends and halts in her chest as Laurie explodes, her throat tight, pressure building in the forefront of her skull:
“That’s enough, Annie! You’re so full of sh*t. You only ever try to get a rise out of me because you’re miserable and no one else wants to give you attention.”
When Laurie pushes hot air from her nostrils that must have come from her brain, there’s silence on the line.
Then…
“Do you really mean that?”
The question is drawn tight.
Laurie almost can’t answer.
“Yes. I mean it. With every bit of my heart.” And with every bit of her heart, it hurt to say it because it is a lie. But, the need to hurt — the want to hurt is so formidable, only conviction stops her from betraying her anger.
“My Laurie would never say that.”
Laurie knows she must say something as her heart is screaming at her to do, but there is not a sentence in her mind or a word on her tongue.
“Why are you so different now…I don’t know who—”
She hears Annie suck in a sharp breath.
“Lynda was right. You’re acting weird lately.”
And those words she dreads because Laurie thinks she hasn’t changed at all. She imagines herself as the only constant in her life whereas everyone around her has turned for the worst. She’s perfect, she’s right, she’s the most sane person she knows. And that’s why she’s been scribbling comments so hard in her diary, that they leave indentations on the other page. That’s where people she dislikes are torn apart with her criticisms and insults because she can’t tear them apart in real life. It’s her passion and frustration poured out onto loose pages. If Annie and Lynda saw— in fact, if the whole town only knew what she wrote about them she’d make an enemy of them all.
And somehow, they still don’t know and they wouldn’t know because she’s always kept a cap on her anger. She has neither the courage nor honesty to say it to their face— and it has made herself a prisoner in her own head.
A prisoner.
Wouldn’t it have been better if she told ….
If she told Ben Tramer that she loved him. Instead of fear the humility that would wound her if he said no. Instead of resenting him for dying.
Then, the line drops.
Annie is gone.
Laurie slowly replaces the phone in the cradle. The complete realization of her actions doesn’t hit her until the phone rings again.
She swiftly picks up the phone.
“I didn’t mean it Annie! I was just on edge that’s all! I didn’t mean it! I’m sorry!”
“Laurie? Laurie, is that you?”
The cultured voice of Dr. Loomis that once captured her ear a week ago, almost feels like an entire lifetime since then, does so again now laced in urgency.
Laurie swipes under her nose, drags the back of her hand across her wet eyes. “Why are you calling so late?”
“ Listen, please listen to me very carefully,” Dr Loomis intones. “Do you know what day it is?”
“Tuesday?”
“No, you poor silly girl, it’s the anniversary of—”
A frown pulls at her temples. As much as she respected his work and the years it took him to acquire it, she would much rather call back her friend to apologize.
“Dr. Loomis!” she snaps so harshly her voice carries off the walls. “I know this day better than I know my birthday. Don’t you undermine my grief just because I can hide it.”
Because even if she didn’t know what it’s like to come back from the movie theater and enter the house to find your bloodstained daughter spread across her bedroom floor and your six year old son taken away, she still wonders if the floorboards are still stained with her sister’s blood, petrified with the smell of rust. Still wonders if on those stormy Illinois nights, the window rattles with an echo of a teenage girl’s horrific scream.
It’s not enough receiving those pitying glances at school from her teachers who are so old they also taught Judith.
And her parents, who must bear this day, weighed down by 15 years— she can tell they’re picking apart eachother’s insecurities as though that would answer why anyone would want to kill their daughter. She almost knows what they’re thinking:
Did we not teach her to be leery of the boys she dated?
Was she a dreadful person at school and we never addressed it?
Did we not love her enough?
Was I too harsh with her when I said she needs to be smart enough to be accepted into college otherwise I’m kicking her out of the house?
Wasn’t I a good mother?”
“You don’t understand Laurie,” Dr Loomis insisted. “Please, get out of that house. There must be someone you could go to—”
“If you’re going on about how it’s haunted, then you’re no better than the kids at my school.”
“Good God child! Enough! If you don’t listen to me, you will die in that house like your sister!”
Pin pricks are on her skin, a hollowed cold in her chest as the man sputters with panic.
“He will wear you down for slaughter if he hasn’t by now. You can’t trust him. You can’t trust anyone.”
“Who are you talking about?”
A string of choked noises trickle from the speaker, which is much too like the sounds her mother made when she discovered her husband was cheating on her: panicked frustration.
“How many years I’ve studied the behavior of a human that isn’t there because it was all an act! I-I…” A huff. He collects himself, if only by the threads. Calmer, he says, “By the clinical definition he meets every symptom of catatonic except one. Tell me, Laurie, have you ever cooked for him?”
“Yes?—”
“Does he like your food Laurie?”
“Well, he always eats it.”
“All his meals?”
Michael generally took his meals upstairs and rarely ate with her and her parents. She assumed since she washed most of his dishes, an empty plate meant the food was digesting somewhere.
“...Yes. I don’t think I know where you're going with this.”
“For fifteen years, he has eaten every meal without prompting or interruption from his other behaviors.”
“And?”
“It’s highly unusual of catatonic patients. I’m certain that there’s—”
“Listen, I think its real disingenuous of you to invalidate someone’s mental illness by one—”
“Clearly, I’m not getting to you, am I? It’s not enough to convince you.” Dr Loomis sounded defeated.
Laurie assumed he ended the call, because there were no words for a little while.
“Dr Loomis?”
“Michael was only six when he first came to Smiths Grove. He had a blank pale emotionless face. I spent eight years trying to reach him, y’know. I truly did care for him— just as I imagine you care for him Laurie, as does your mother and your father. Does it make your family feel just a little more complete even though your sister isn’t there?”
“Y-yes.”
“Did your parents ever tell you what they found besides your sister that night?”
While Laurie doesn’t answer, Dr Loomis went on.
“As I recall, Danny Hodges was charged with second degree murder. Although, there were no prints on the knife he used because it was found in Michael’s hand. The police chalked it up to mere childish ignorance and I can understand that—him picking up the knife after your sister’s boyfriend was done— then holding it in his hand and walking out of the house which unknowingly erases the evidence. But, what I can’t understand is— Well, I’ve worked with children before who’ve witnessed their grandparent or even parent dying. It’s almost haunting, their discovery of death. You can see it in their eyes, and it stays with them for years. I can’t tell you what it looks like, but it makes you feel aged,” he says. “That wasn’t in Michael. There was…nothing like that.”
“You said eight years,” Laurie whispered. “What happened in the last seven?”
The phone drops to the floor, bouncing from its cord as Laurie’s feet stomp up the stairs after Dr Loomis gives his answer:
“I tried to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind those eyes. Do what the dead can’t, Laurie. Live.”
XXX
Trusting a man on the phone she's never met seemed so unlike Laurie and it astonishes her how swiftly she reacts at the urging of a stranger. But it’s not that she’s entirely trusting of Dr Loomis because instead of bolting from her house, she stumbles into her room and locks the door.
Could it have been as simple as that? Would her sister still be alive if that was the case or was Judith slated to die no matter what she did? Laurie stands in the center of the room, turns in a circle once, twice and waits. Judith would be 31 now. Maybe, Laurie would be an aunt if her sister ever dared to have children, ever married— that’s if Judith’s free spirit could ever embrace family life.
Could Michael have been capable of stealing that away from Laurie at six years old?
What is she saying?
It can’t be Michael.
He can’t have done it.
It’s ridiculous.
He’s far too dumb.
Laurie didn’t even know what murder was at six let alone imagine how to kill someone. That young, they’d really have to be disturbed…soulless really. And yet, at times, her brother seemed just that. Soulless. Empty. Without morals to ground him, without thoughts to make him second guess himself.
Maybe he was so traumatized from stabbing Judith through her stomach that he’d lost himself to guilt? Maybe the shell Laurie sees now is the result of a six year old Michael having withdrawn into himself. Could he have really used a kitchen knife as an instrument to her sister’s death?
But there is a whisper in her mind, seducing her with a horrifying double entendre:
Shouldn’t it be obvious that the only instrument Michael knows how to play with are the organs?
He loves looking for yours doesn’t he, Laurie?
And when she has almost convinced herself to banish the notion of her brother being her sister’s murderer altogether, Laurie nearly screams when there is a knock at her door.
The handle shakes and then when she expects her door to swing inwards she remembers she locked it.
“Honey?”
The placating voice of a woman seeps through the grains of the door. A calling to six year old Laurie. But, a warning otherwise to a daughter who knows better.
“I heard you come up here. Sweetie? Please open the door can’t you? Please? Let me see what’s wrong.”
Laurie stared at the door with a sort of frozen avidity, despite her mother’s increasingly desperate persuasions.
When her mother becomes cross with her, much like this morning, the cold shoulder and a flat tone are the first indicators. As a result, Laurie would always feel unwanted and it would take all of her humility to apologize to her mother only to receive a half hearted sigh and comment, “I should’ve raised you better.” Hearing that often made Laurie feel worse but, at least life would return with tolerable balance.
However, with her mother sounding conciliatory without any initiative to display remorse on her daughter’s part, this behavior strikes Laurie as strange.
A phantom instinct keeps her still and her breath a dry rasp in her throat.
“Do I tell you I love you enough?” Her mother said carefully.
Does anyone ever say they love someone enough?
The question never escapes Laurie’s lips, instead falling into the well of her mind. When she hears the woman break out in a nervous, low atonal nursery rhyme, it tickles Laurie’s ears. In her locked concentration, Laurie barely becomes aware that because she is so scared she is crying.
“Stop it! Leave me alone.”
There is a dull thud against the door, and Laurie daringly crouches down and through the gap, sees her mothers feet ensconced in her pink house slippers.
She hasn’t left that room all day.
“I was good to you wasn’t I? I was a good mother. I let you bring those boys over, those sweaty, dirty boys who were too good for you. And all I asked was for you to watch Michael for the evening.”
The door shudders as her mother screams.
“You did this to him! You ruined my boy! You whor*!”
It’s the strength of her fists pounding against the door and her mother repeating the same accusation over and over. Laurie scoots backwards across the floor until her head hits her vanity and she buries her face between her knees.
“Stop it!” Laurie wails and in that single request she wants her mother to stop tormenting her, to stop mentally making comparisons of her to her dead sister, to stop living in self pity, to stop putting up with her lying father, to stop lying to this Godforsaken town that she’s trying to be a perfect mother and failing in the attempt because everyone knows she’s a lousy wife who can’t keep her husband leashed and who can’t keep her children alive whether they’re still breathing or not.
“You’re just crazy mama because you can’t live with it can you? You’re a failure! You failed as a mother!” Laurie throws her head back, muffles her cries to control her breathing. “But, I still love you.”
Laurie knows for sure that she hasn’t told her mother she loves her enough.
And despite her mother’s wild tantrum against her bedroom door which Laurie is sure will dwindle once she’s used up all her energy, Laurie can hear her father’s hesitant voice cut through the flurry,
“Edith? What… are you doing?”
Laurie runs to the door fearfully giddy because there is a young girl that still exists in her hoping someone will chase the monsters away. And in her mind there is that same little girl from years forgotten running down the driveway to greet her father after she sees his car pull up the street and she yells “Daddy’s home!”
“Put that down, Edith,” she hears her father say carefully.
“Or what, Peter? You’ll leave me again? Didn’t care enough to be discreet about it all these years! I wish I knew when I stopped impressing you.”
Her father laughs humorlessly. “Is this why you’re acting like this? I thought we discussed it. You and I could go our separate ways once Laurie leaves the house.”
“We have Michael now,” she says hopelessly. “You can’t abandon us!”
“He’s not your boy anymore, he's a grown man. Honestly, look at yourself.” Although her father sounds firmly exasperated, Laurie knows it is the only way for her mother to think she’s overreacting so that maybe she’ll collect the crumbling pieces of herself and make anew the facade of the woman she wishes to be. “Is that Laurie in her room? You’re scaring her honey. I know you’ve been having a bad day—”
“My days have been bad for the past sixteen years,” her mother seethed.
“I know…and I’m sorry. In another world, maybe we’d be happy. But we have to make do with what we have. That’s what makes you a strong woman, that is why I loved you. Now, I’m going to leave the house and I want Laurie to grab some frosties with me, be out for a few hours to let you relax. Does that sound good darling? Can we do that?”
Laurie waits several of her breaths for her father to call out.
“Laurie! Your mother might appreciate some alone time. Let’s go out for a little bit.”
Laurie throws open the door.
Here I am, you called me.
She sees her father at the top of the stairs, his hand extended out toward her, and her mother standing several feet away from him, her knuckles white around the handle of a kitchen knife.
Laurie gives Mrs Myers a wide berth as she tiptoes around her as though avoiding the licks of an open flame. Her side brushes against the walls. Her mother’s face is turned away, but Laurie feels as though harm will come to her.
As soon as her father’s palm molds to her shoulder and pulls her ahead of him down the stairs, Laurie suspects that they won’t be going to get frosties and they won’t be coming back.
His mouth is near her ear as she passes, and releases a rushed whisper:
“Get in the car—”
“Say you love me, Peter,” her mother interjects.
Her father stops, turns his head. Laurie mirrors the same. He doesn’t give his wife his full attention because he is determined to leave— that’s how little regard he has for her. He isn’t worried except for himself.
He doesn’t need to speak for Laurie to know his brain has stuttered.
“I just did,” he says automatically.
Laurie sees her mother’s face at the top of the stairs, and Mrs Myers holds her husband with full contempt because it is the only salve to years of hurt.
“‘Loved’,” her mother corrected.
Her father may have experienced an instance of confusion and then an instance of realization before her mother lunges forward and runs the knife through his neck.
She yanks the handle out and something wet splatters against Laurie’s cheek. Laurie screams until it’s her father’s body that falls towards her. She is able to brace his weight and push him off to the side amidst her mother’s cackles. His limp body slides down the step head first and stops somewhere short of reaching the first floor.
“You took advantage of me all those years. Ha! Look who’s laughing now!”
Certainly not Laurie. Certainly not her father, whose life drains crimson on the staircase.
“You must think I’m totally out of it darling,” Edith says to her, “But, I’m more in it than I’ve even been. It’s so clear to me now, I see the truth. I’m free.”
Like her hands, Laurie’s throat trembles. “You killed him…You killed him!” Her fingers biting into her palm.
When her mother looks at the stained metal in her hand, her eyes flutter as though in a trance and the laugh lines disappear, she falls beneath the high and becomes as empty within as it is possible for a mother to become. Blankly, she says, “It had to happen. I couldn’t hold on to it anymore…I was just so…”
Mrs Myers’s breath hitches.
“...I couldn’t help it.”
Then, the weight of her actions crush her, and Laurie sees her mother visibly transform, like a flower wilting, like watching the wax of a candle melt to the center of its thin flimsy wick.
Her mother’s pupils become dots in the center of her eyes. “I couldn’t help it!”
The knife clatters on the top step and tumbles down the stairs, and imbeds itself somewhere in Mr Myers’s body.
Her mother’s hands come up to her mouth; her voice cracks, her sobs spill.
“God help me…”
He can’t.
When Laurie was a baby, her mother may have been the only person she loved most in the world. And when Laurie was a baby, there may have been a time where she believed this woman could protect her from anything. Now, Edith Myers is merely broken beyond repair. And while an ice pick is piercing Laurie’s heart at the loss of her father, she understands what drove her mother to kill…
the woman had nothing to lose.
In that moment, Laurie swears she can claim clairvoyance because she can imagine her mother’s shame, glimpses of a woman secretly scorned throughout her life. She envisions Edith picking up her youngest daughter from daycare and the other mothers cast their judgemental sidelong glances as they tither among themselves:
“That Edith. Had the nerve to tell me how I don’t dress my son warm enough.”
“Isn’t it just annoying how she tries to teach us how to parent? If she weren’t so busy nosying in other people’s lives, maybe her daughter would be alive.”
“And don't forget her son…that thing probably wouldn’t be in the loon.”
Laurie feels Edith’s disappointment as she listens to a neighbor inform her that Mr Myers was acting oddly familiar with the busty cashier at the grocery store:
“I hate to break this to you…but you know Peter went to the store the other day…Oh yes he’s very kind to do that. I wish my husband could just do my errands for me, but I have my wifely duties. Anyways, I’m getting distracted. I really just wanted to tell you Peter…your husband…Well you know that tart, Trixie or Chrystie, was it? Yes, yes, the one at the grocer’s line. I think there’s something going on. I’m deathly serious, dear. You need to get on that, from one wife to another…”
Hears Edith cry as her mother lectures her over the phone…
“You were always like this though. Never too keen on the small details. But they build up over time. I’m not sure if there was anything you could do. Really, dear, that Judith—... I’m only stating a fact. You were too young when you had her. Oh, and Michael… Lost causes… At the very least you have one more. Maybe God is giving you another chance. Now stop crying, it’s been over a year—”
And as Edith decays before Laurie’s eyes, an overwhelming power possesses Laurie, bequeaths her with light feet towards her mother.
Their eyes are locking, blue for blue. Identical. Even those threads of green which branch out from their irises. Laurie grips her mothers shoulder’s, tight, her fingers indenting her flesh through her pink robe. And she draws her mother into her, before the older woman collapses to her knees.
If there was a way Laurie could ease Edith’s soul into heaven, a place void of pain, she would make it happen.
“Take me to bed Laurie.”
Laurie complies, lets her mother lean on her as they trudge to the bedroom. They go to her side of the bed and Laurie lets go as she sinks into the mattress.
“Light the candle for me.” Her mother says, wooden.
Although the smell of apple cinnamon is overbearing, Laurie complies.
“I thought I could sleep through it but I blew it out before it could catch fire,” Edith says, “I was too afraid of dying. Now, the decision doesn’t feel like it matters.”
She is already dead.
On her back, Edith pats the side of the bed that is empty.
Laurie doesn’t move at first.
“Come, dear. Let’s sleep.”
It is wrong. Laurie should be calling the police. Her father is rotting on the stairs. Dr Loomis told her to leave. She should be calling the police. She should be running away.
You’re doing this because you love your mother don’t you?
You don’t want her locked up. You saw what that did to Michael.
Laurie abandons sense and eventually complies. Gives in to doubt as she has done countless times before.
And as she lays next to the woman she remembers as a child she would flee to escape the monsters under her bed. It is her sanctuary. If only she knew, the monster found a new bed.
Turning to her side, her mother’s hand floats between them to cup Laurie’s face.
“Close your eyes.”
Laurie closes them.
“Sleep.”
Laurie feigns it as best she can.
The voice dooms her:
Remember all the hateful things you wrote in your diary?
You deserve this Laurie.
This is punishment. Now obey.
Do something good for once.
For seconds. For minutes.
Her mother does not speak. The candle flickers. Its light is a low, modest orange behind Laurie’s eyelids. Then, time loses itself on Laurie and her mind is lured into a languid tango of consciousness and dream. Reality is at the end of a long tunnel. Whatever sounds are created outside of this tango, reaches Laurie as a distorted echo.
From far away, she feels pressure on her stomach and registers warmth.
From far away, featherlight touches ghost her neck and she registers security.
But, there is a circle around the column of her throat and that circle shrinks.
Instantly, the blood flowing into her brain cannot escape whilst the blood flowing out of her brain cannot enter. Her head begins to feel like a teapot on the verge of boiling.
There is something cruel in all of this, Laurie knows.
Her mother, undeserving of all the accusations and scrutiny which made people, supposedly friends but nothing more than strangers, believe she was the cause of her first child’s death, finally caves in and lives up to false expectations.
Her mother is killing her because that is all her mother now believes herself to do.
Laurie’s eyes snap open. Her mother is sitting on her chest.
“St—p!”
She begins to claw at the constriction which threatens to crush her esophagus, but her mother has unbidden strength. Or maybe Laurie is still too much of a coward, crippled by her own compassion towards mother’s unescapable misfortune, and her own self hatred.
But she wants to live.
“Get…”
God does she want to live.
Or at least, die on her terms.
Not like Judith.
“...off!” By her body’s reflex, Laurie’s arms flail out, her legs kick. Her spine squirms. Her hand catches the smooth surface of glass and she scarcely hears something shatter to the ground.
It’s all from far away. Sensations disappearing below the horizon.
As her mother squeezes, a bright scarlet rises from the corner of Laurie’s vision. Their eyes are locking. Except Her mother’s are blue like a sea for dead fish.
Fear dissolves into dizzy exhaustion.
Laurie’s last thought:
Michael isn’t the one killing me is he, Dr Loomis?
XXX
Beyond the master bedroom, the knife which had found itself in Mr Myers is dislodged from his flesh. In the gloom, it drips black, a signature for every step up the staircase. Its ascension is smooth and slow, floating.
There is a song of high pitched whimpers, of screams escaping in short staccato notes. It’s an alarming serenade and the metal vibrates from it.
As the knife draws closer, its slick blade reflects flame, the dancing scalding heat of the fire advancing across the carpet. In the center of the room, its reflection shows the back of Mrs Myers in her pink robe sitting in the center of the bed, and beneath her are feet kicking out uselessly.
The knife’s task is then decided for it. And as it advances silently through the quickly scorching air, the single floor board in the room that was never properly nailed to the subfloor creaks.
Sweat is dripping off her brow as Mrs Myers looks over her shoulder, eyes widening as she sees a white mask stare back at her. She skims over the blue jumpsuit and spots the rigidness of shoulders, the stillness of his stance, and her voice emerges tender:
“Michael…”
The knife vibrates violently in an iron grip.
Mrs Myers must not have noticed because her smile grew.
“Did you need me dear?”
Yes. The knife needed her.
As snakes coil to strike, so too did the sharpened steel, swift. The tip of it slices through the center of her ribcage.
The epitome of Edith Myers’s fate was that there wasn’t a single man who didn’t fail her. Not, even her son.
XXXX
When oxygen floods into Laurie’s lungs, her vision improves. Shapes converge into one. But the air is tainted, and as the left side of the room burns, smoke billows. She is granted only a second of respite.
Turning onto her side, simultaneously coughing and gasping, hoping she can dispel the carbon and salvage the quickly depleting oxygen in the quickly heating room, the sense of urgency doesn’t come to her until a hand closes over her bicep.
She screams, but the old psychiatrist shushes her.
“It’s me Laurie! it’s me!…”
The accented voice fills her with ease and she allows him to pull her out of the burning room. But, not before she notices her mother’s body deposited on the ground as she steps over her.
Motionless.
“M-mom?”
“Come Laurie! We don’t have much time!”
She doesn’t give resistance. Not as the distance grows between her and the fire, her dead mother. Not as Dr loomis leads her down the stairs, carefully and as respectfully as he can avoiding stepping on her father’s body. His trench coat billows as they burst through the front door.
The wind has picked up. In the distance thunder. The trees shake and rustle in anticipation of the storm. The first of the season.
From outside, the fire spreads to her father’s study on the second floor. It will only be a matter of minutes until the entire second story is engulfed in flame.
Beside her, with his hands on his knees, Loomis is panting. Fully seeing him, he is what she imagined he would look like. His brow fixed into a subtle furrow of clinical curiosity, hair thinning to indicate his age. His slight build makes him unassuming. But, his eyes are piercing— analytical especially now during her observance of him.
“Laurie,” Dr Loomis begins, soft spoken. Gentle. If only she could feel what he was trying to convey to her. “It will be alright.”
“You lie,” Laurie says.
Loomis has nothing to say especially now, caught in his own consoling deceit. He appears remorseful. She prefers that better.
The front top windows burst from heat, and as the shattered glass sprinkles over them Dr Loomis flinches, but Laurie does not. One hits her cheek, leaves a mark.
“I’m going to call for help. Can you manage to stay where I can find you?”
Laurie nods.
His look betrays an instance of doubt, but regardless he needs to call a fire station. Luckily, there were a couple neighbors, whose silhouettes he can espy from their windows. Certainly someone is awake. Hopefully someone has already called.
As he jogs to the nearest house, the flames continue to rise and color the belly of ascending smoke. Looking at it, smelling it, it didn’t feel real for a while. No shadow stays still from the honeyed light of pirouetting flames. Except for one.
When Laurie spots it, she doesn’t react at first. In fact she nearly mistakens it for a tree. But, missing it would be the greatest regret of her life. And when the shadow finally moves with mechanical purpose towards the back of the house, Laurie follows.
It takes her two steps for every single one it took in order for her to finally catch up with it. Her breathing surprisingly labors.
She yells his name with hurt, unable to mask it.
“Michael!”
Their backyard is not fenced. It leads directly to the edge of the woodland. He could move a few feet forward and melt into the verdure and trees and she would lose him.
She cannot lose him.
"You…you…” she pants. “It was fine before you! Do you know that?”
She stares at his back.
Does he not even deign to look at her?
Her life was largely mundane before him. She may have resented it at times but at least she could tolerate the morbid domesticity of being the spare child for a couple more years and then graduate, and leave Haddonfield. It wouldn’t have deserved her second glance.
But, Michael’s return ruined everything. It created a tumult of emotions within her which otherwise wouldn’t have given rise in the form of smart remarks, balled fists, or tears. Laurie was good at controlling her emotions— yet Michael, by apparently doing nothing, seemed to have provoked her indiscipline.
Could the same have been done to her mother? Had he silently undone her straitjacket, unleashing the years of suppressed rage onto her husband?
But how? How can a mute be capable of physically doing nothing, verbally saying nothing, and exert so much influence onto the family?
It is unexplainable.
It is abnormal.
It is supernatural.
“This is all your fault!” Laurie screams. “I hate you!”
Michael is a blur and when Laurie finds his hand around her neck, her heels lifted slightly off the ground but her toes still in contact, she finds that his face is white, misshapen and rubbery. But it is merely a white mask. Still, through the holes she knows it is Michael because his gaze burns into hers, like hot black coals glinting from the house fire behind her, and she thinks he might kill her.
“Do it!” Laurie hisses. “Isn’t this what you wanted? This chaos! Locked up for so many years, you must’ve missed what you did to sissy! You couldn’t wait for a chance to do it again!”
She is astounded because she sees the emotion, subtle, but to her, as obvious as a blood stain on white sheets. The mask can't hide it, she thinks he could kill and not care one bit. Like the clouds above, his rage has gathered, hanging low, and she waits to see that torrent, the release that will feel like downfall.
Her death.
But, although his hand has wrung her by the neck, he doesn’t move a single sinew of muscle.
“What are you waiting for?” Laurie grits out.
Dr Loomis was right. Michael has worn her down for slaughter. Right now, she is so emotionally spent, nothing could happen to her which she would care for.
Her father is dead. Her mother much the same.
What is she to turn to once the fire is out and all that remains is an ashen pile of her childhood home?
Then, Michael’s hand drops to her side. She is firmly rooted to the ground again. Confused and disappointed, Laurie goads:
“You can’t fool me. I know what you want.”
The mask tilts, a childlike gesture conveying curiosity.
“You’ll wait for the moment I don’t see you coming,” Laurie rushes, “Y-You’ve waited 15 years already, what’s a little more right? But why don’t you just take it? I’m more willing than Judith! I have nothing to lose! You took that all away!”
When he steps back she feels discouraged and slightly panicked.
Why is he retreating? Shouldn’t he end it? Surely, they would both benefit. He’d get his pleasure, she’d get her freedom.
“Why not?” Her question drips with desperation. “Why don’t you do it?” Her lips quiver and her nose run as do her eyes. “I don’t understand you. I don’t know why—what—”
She swallows and then:
“What do you want?”
Still, Laurie expects him to say nothing. He could stand there, in perfect statuesque posture forever, and she would expect nothing more. Because it is all he’s given her. If there is anything that keeps Laurie from allowing herself to be attached to him, it is him. He has been a driving wedge. Yet, Laurie still clings hopelessly to the man.
She hates him.
That will never change.
Similarly, she loves him.
And that will never change.
When the last vestige of Laurie’s hope unravels like a ribbon, this once, Michael answers.
Reaching into his pocket, he extends a crumpled picture. Laurie, focusing through a film of tears realizes the polaroid, which glows from near the firelight, was of them that evening of homecoming.
In Judith’s frilly pink dress, Laurie doesn’t attempt to smile— her face as stoic as her mother’s on her worst days. But, standing next to her, even in his later years, there is a young man, one not truly devoid of emotion, perhaps dwelling in a moment of joy— and Laurie can tell this not by Michael’s rigid stance or that he is looking down, or his dark bangs shadowing his eyes, but it is his lips, the ones she craved at Judith’s burial, the ones she waits to hear words draw. Maybe not in this lifetime but the next.
It is his lips bent into an ugly smile.
If someone has never smiled in their life, their first one will certainly be ugly.
And thus this face—his face— becomes the most cherished picture in the gallery of her worst memories.
Laurie knows now what Michael wants:
Just the two of us.
She surges forward, wraps her arms around him and for good measure so that he can’t leave — not that it will do anything — she presses her fingertips into the small of his back.
Burying her face into his sternum, she says, “I can live for this.”
Somehow, he must know that. Perhaps, that is why she isn’t dead.
With her face pressed to the center of him below his heart, the earth has marked him because she can smell the moist dirt clinging to his mechanic’s suit as though he has been loitering in the forest all day. Petrichor. This is fitting. Not a hospital scent, or her toiletries. He doesn’t smell like society or imprisonment. He smells free.
Impulsively, Laurie does it.
Her lips rise to the mask, against rubber, where they think his mouth may be. And she feels pressure in return.
XXX
“Laurie?”
Dr Loomis was deathly afraid…
But, with a little search he finds her kneeling in the grass behind the burning house, head turned towards the forest.
Vulnerable does she look, that Laurie Myers. He removes his jacket and drapes it around her shoulders and attempting to follow her gaze but nothing lies beyond the brush…at least nothing his old eyes can distinguish.
“I’ve contacted the fire department. They should be here soon.” Dr Loomis eyes her worriedly. “Why are you here, child?”
“Because I couldn’t follow him…”
Anxiety manifests like a toxic spore releasing a gas which makes Dr Loomis sick.
“Michael was here? Where Laurie? Where did he go?” Dr Loomis urges. “We need to catch him. He’s too dangerous.”
“I don’t know! I’m sorry, I can’t help you find him…”
All he hears is ‘I refuse.’
“Im sorry…” Heartache pours from her mouth, flowing uncontrollably, as a dam breaks and the sky finally opens up and joins her.
Harsh reality hits Dr Loomis, despite his reluctance to accept it:
Laurie is a lost cause.
“Does that make me Evil?” she asks.
And yet he can’t be angry with her. He begrudgingly understands.
Dr Loomis pats her back. “No, child. It means you…”
He trails off with no ready answer…
are an unwitting victim?
A fool?
With Dr Loomis hopelessly crouched beside her, Laurie feels fire…
“...you care for him because he is your brother,” he finally says.
but she also feels the rain.
After an October-long dry spell, petrichor is a welcome scent.
