Halloween:

Return to Haddonfield

Prologue.

The girl might have been pretty, when she was still alive. Her long red hair almost shone like copper in the bright, cold lights of the morgue. Her skin was pale with some freckles scattered over her skin. The right side of her face had been carved in by a heavy blow with a shovel and one of her grey green eyes was gone, leaving only a black pit behind.

Lindsay Wallace let out a heavy sigh as she stared down at the body, it was always harder when dealing with the younger ones. You got the sense of how much life they might have had and it had all been stolen away before it should have been. She turned away from the body and walked down to the clipboard at the end of the metal slab and glanced over the details once again.

Her name had been Trisha Pitchell, she was seventeen years old and she had been going into her final year in high school, and it had all been stolen away when her Father had too much drink one night and had beaten her to death with a shovel. Said Father was now behind bars of one of Chicago's many police stations. Lindsay hoped that he rotted there for the rest of time, for a monster like him it was no more than he deserved.

Lindsay glanced down at the age that had been printed on the page, the black letters stark against the white paper. Seventeen, the same age that Judith Myers had bee on that night back in Sixty-Three, the same age that Annie Brackett had been the Halloween when she had been babysitting Lindsay, the same age that Laurie Strode had been when she had kept her and Tommy Doyle safe from the Boogeymen.

She tried not to shake, the night had been nearly forty years ago but even now the thought of it was still enough to terrify her. The sight of the pale face with black pits for eyes, coming up the stairs behind Laurie with a blood stained butcher's knife. It had been burned into her memory and when she was a girl she had been too scared to move, it had been Tommy pulling at her arm and Laurie pushing at her that had gotten her into the bathroom, Tommy locking the door once they were inside.

The time that they had been trapped in that tiny bathroom had seemed to be forever, the sounds of Laurie screaming and the Boogeyman's harsh painting breaths had been so loud that they seemed to be like they were in the bathroom with them. The silence had fallen suddenly and Lindsay had clutched at Tommy's hand as the sound of footsteps on the carpeted floor got closer.

And when she heard Laurie's voice on the other side of the bathroom door, she had been so happy. They had opened the door and she had looked so tired and sad but when she had pulled them into her arms, Lindsay had felt so safe. She had sent them to a neighbours horse to get them to call the police and most of what happened after she and Tommy had run into the night had become a blur to her.

She was fairly certain that they had gotten to the neighbour's house and they had called the police, there had been sirens and blankets and warm hot chocolate and for her, the nightmare had ended then and there. Her parents had come home and they both cried when they saw her, taking her into their arms. They couldn't stay at their horse that night so they had gone to stay with her mother's sister for the next few weeks.

Even when they had finally returned home, it hadn't been the same. Even with everything else that had happened that night, her house had become known as the new horror house of Haddonfield. Her parents had done everything they could to shield her from the worst of it but that didn't stop all the kids at school form taunting her about how she shared her house with the Boogeyman and how he was going to come and get her.

And within six months, Lindsay and her parents had moved away from Haddonfield and had come to live in Chicago. It hadn't been out of state, like her Father had wanted, but it was far enough away from Haddonfield that they could all start to forget. Lindsay had started in a new school, she had made new friends and she never saw Laurie Strode or Tommy Doyle ever again, except for one time.

For the next ten years everything had been quiet, she had the odd nightmare every now and then but that wasn't anything unsual according to all of the therapists that her mom had spoken too. But then one day, the most normal day in the world, the news on the TV had spoken about how Laurie Strode, the survivor of the Babysitter Murders, had been killed in a car crash.

She didn't know why it had affected her so much at the time, she hadn't seen Laurie since that night and it wasn't like she had been murdered by her brother. She died in a car crash, it had been terrible but it happened. Those were the words that her mother had told her but at the time, they hadn't been able to stop her from crying.

And then, on November the first, nineteen eighty-eight news had come from Haddonfield of even more murders, her parents had been terrified and there had even been talk of leaving the country but they had eventually decided against it. Life went on, every few years news of more killings from their old town, most put down to being copycat killings.

But twenty years after that fateful night, news had come that she would have never expected. Laurie was still alive, her death had been faked. She had been going under the name Keri Tate, she had been the headmistress of a private school and her brother had come to see her. Laurie had fought back, but in the end she had killed the wrong man and she was catatonic.

Lindsay had gone to see her and Laurie had just stared at the wall. She didn't recognise her, she didn't respond when she told her who she was. She had just stared at the wall. Seeing Laurie reduced to this had been too much and she left, never seeing her again.

She wasn't surprised when the news came of Laurie's body being found on the mental hospital's grounds, a stab wound in her back and her body having been thrown from the roof. Apparently a mental patient who was obsessed with serial killers had broken out of his room and had killed two security guards before killing Laurie and returning to his room, polishing his knife like he hadn't even been gone.

Lindsay knew the truth, the Boogyman had come for her. He was always coming for her.

Lindsay shook her head and placed the clipboard down, she needed to learn to stop thinking about it. The past was in the past, even if Michael Myers was still alive, she had only been a little girl on that night and she was now a nearly fifty year old woman. She was unrecognisable from the little girl that she had been back then, he had no reason to come after her. He wouldn't come after her.

She turned her attention back to the body, she had completed the autopsy, established the time of death, established the cause which had been blunt force trauma to the head combined with heavy brain bleed. She had stitched the body back up and now it was time to call it a night and go home. Lindsay placed the body back in the freezer and sterilized her instruments and her hands and left the morgue.

She made her way to the elevator and took it up to the ground floor, saying good bye to the receptionist on her way out. Night had fallen on the city and the staff parking lot was far more quiet than she was expecting. The sound of her sensible heels clicked against the asphalt was her only companion as she made her way to her car.

Lindsay had just taken her keys of her pocket and was about to get into her car when she felt it, the feeling of someone's eyes burning into the back of her skull. A chill ran down her spine and she gathered all of the strength she had to turn around, to keep her hand from shaking. Whatever happened, whatever she saw. She was not going to drop her keys.

Nothing, there was nothing. Just long lines of cars and lights casting an eerie pale glow, making it look like every shadow was going to jump out at her. Lindsay let out a nervous chuckle at how silly she was actually being, it was always bad in the days leading up to Halloween. She was just being paranoid, that was it. She turned back to her car, unlocked the door and slid in.

The key slid into the ignition and the head lights flickered on and Lindsay pulled out of the parking lot, her manicured fingers came up and turned the radio on. Most of it was just static hissing, not much on this late. She settled on a music station which the soothing sweetness of Mister Sandman filled the car, her fingers tapping against the steering wheel.

After another hour's of driving she found herself driving through her neighbourhood. Wooden cuts out of witches, ghosts and Frankenstein's monsters were on every yard and dozens of jack-'o-lanterns were burning on every porch and landing and quite a few windows. She hadn't been able to take much joy in the holiday any more but that didn't stop all the people around her from doing so.

She pulled up in front of her house and jumped out of the car, making sure that it was locked, before she walked up to her porch. Before Lindsay took out her house key from her other pocket, a flickering orange light drew her attention and made her turn. A misshapen jack-o-lantern was resting on her porch swing, the mouth was asymmetrical, the nose was triangular in shape but there was a thin line cut down from the bottom of it through to the mouth. It's eyes were roughly cut holes, like someone had stabbed into the flesh and pried the thick flesh out.

A half melted candle was burning low inside of it, it must have been burning for at least a few hours by now, since it had started growing dark. She hadn't carved it. She had hated looking at pumpkins since that night. There were jack-'o-lanterns burning on every porch, her house had looked quiet bare. Chances were someone had just decided to put on there, yes. That was it.

Lindsay swallowed harshly and tried to convince herself that all was well as she turned and dug her house key out of her pocket. Try as she might she couldn't stop her hand from shaking from how cold it had gotten all of a sudden and it took her nearly half a dozen tries to get the key into the lock. The relief she felt when it finally slid in and turned was almost overwhelming.

She stumbled in and slammed the door shut behind her, sliding the chain on and slamming the deadbolt shut before locking the door with the key. Lindsay rested her back against the door for a moment and shut her eyes, breathing deeply and counting to ten inside of her head. She was just letting her fear get the better of her, that was all.

Once she reached ten her eyes opened and the hall was exactly as it was, she ran her fingers through her hair and laughed at herself for being silly. Her stomach growled and she knew that she wanted something to eat, it wasn't exactly the cleanest of jobs and you needed a strong stomach because within the same day you could be cutting into corpses but you still needed to eat.

The refrigerator yielded up some ham and cheese and the bread box generously donated half a loaf of white, with two ham and cheese sandwiches Lindsay soon found herself in front of the TV which she turned on with the remote, she mindlessly surfed through the channels until she finally a showing of Casablanca, there were plenty of horror movies on this time but she had lost her taste for being scared a very long time ago.

The movie was at the halfway point when she heard the first loud thump, coming from the basement. At first, she thought it was just her mind playing tricks with her again. And the movie was still playing, chances were she had just been hearing things. It was another half an hour before she heard it again, the next one after that coming five minutes later.

There was something down there.

Lindsay put her plate down on the coffee table before she stood up and walked over to the door that would take her down to the basement, she pulled it open and looked down the basement stairs. She couldn't see anything except a few feet on concert. Lindsay glanced back at the front door, she could leave right now. She could leave and get in her car and drive away and never look back.

No, she wasn't going to let fear rule her anymore. But that didn't mean that she wasn't going to be smart about it.

Lindsay stepped back from the basement door and walked over to the closet one, pulling it open she reached up to the high shelf and pulled down a large flashlights with extra heavy duty batteries as well as a large chrome glock. She didn't like having a gun in her house but at the moment, she would rather have it more than anything else in the entire world.

The flashlight's beam cut through the darkness as she slowly descended down the stairs, each step seemed to take a hundred years longer than the last one. Soon she was at the bottom, the silvery blue light showing her the washing machine in the corner as well as a few boxes. Other than that, the basement was sparse and still.

And then boxes jolted, something was moving inside of them and the movement had been so sudden that Lindsay had nearly squeezed the trigger in a panic. She slowly stepped forward, keeping the gun trained on the boxes as she moved forward. A dark shape lunged out of the boxes and Lindsay fell back on to her ass with a cry as the cat ran up the stairs.

For a moment, she just sat their on her smarting bum. A laugh escaped her throat, just a cat. The noise would have just been the pipes banging in the walls. It was an old house. That was it, that was all of it. Lindsay got to her feet and bent over to pick up her gun before she turned around to make her way back to the stairs so she could get back to her movie.

Michael Myers was standing at the bottom of her stairs, Lindsay stood there as though she had just been thrown into a vat of ice water. He stood there as still as a statue, that pale mask covered his features and black eyes stared back at her. In his hands was quite possibly the longest knife that she had ever seen in her entire life, the blade was clean but she knew that it wouldn't stay that way.

They stood staring at one another for what seemed to be an eternity, this nightmare that had somehow crawled it's way out of her dreams. He made the first move, taking a step towards her. Raising the knife.

Lindsay raised her gun and fired, the bullet struck the monster in the shoulder holding the knife but it didn't seem to do anything. The monster tilted his head at her and took another step, Lindsay pulled the trigger again and again and again and again and again. The bangs that filled the room were deafening but she didn't dare stop shooting, with each bullet that hit his chest the monster stumbled back a little bit more.

Soon, the gun ran dry and the clip ejected from the gun. Micheal Myers stood against the back of the wall for half a heartbeat before he began to slide down it, leaving a trail of blood as he went. The monster fell into a siting position, staring at nothing.

The gun slipped out of her shaking fingers as she stared at the body, she had done it. She'd killed him. But as she stared at him, a voice from her past came back to remind her. You couldn't kill the Boogeymen, she had to go. Someone would have heard the gunshots, would have called the police and they would come and she would be safe and all of this would just be another nightmare.

She ran, taking the stairs two at a time and ran for the door. She slammed into it and fished her key out of her coat which she had hung on the peg, she tried to fit it in to the lock but it just wouldn't go and it took her a moment to realise that she was trying to use the car key to unlock the door. She fished the other key out of the coat and slid it in and unlocked the door and pulled it open, or tried to.

She had forgotten the bolt and the chain, a scream of terror and frustration filled the air as she scrambled to remove them both. She opened the door and just took her first step into the night air, ready to scream for help when a hand clamped around her arm and pulled her back into the house, slamming the door shut as he pulled her in.

Lindsay screamed and cried, hit the monster in the chest with her firsts and tried to scratch at his eyes through the holes in his mask but it was no use, it was like trying to fight out of an iron cage. The monster took hold of her hair and threw her across the living room, into the coffee table. The glass cut into her skin and her entire body felt bruised.

Trying to get up to her feet to run just caused a searing pain to shoot through her hip, she glanced down and saw that a large shard of glass had embedded itself into the meat of her thigh. A whimper escaped from her mouth as she tried to pull her herself along the ground, the bits of glass cuttings into her palms. But it was no good, the Shape was on her soon enough.

He stared down at her, and Lindsay stared up at him and she could actually see his eyes. They weren't full of anything, not hate or rage or any reason to harm her and in that moment, Lindsay understood her mistake. The Boogeyman didn't need a reason to come and find you, the Boogeymen didn't need a reason at all. A storm didn't need a reason, it just happened.

She didn't scream as the knife was plunged into her chest, she liked to think that Laurie would be proud of her for that. The world was growing dark as she lay there, bleeding out. Listening to the sound of Michael stepping on the glass as he walked across the room and the sound of sirens in the distance.

The darkness claimed her then, and it did not let her go.

End of Prologue.

Welp, this is new for me. I have never written a purely horror story before aside from my Resident Evil fics. Halloween is one of my favourite horror franchises and I always wanted to write a fic about it.

I hope you enjoyed, please feel free to review.

With much love,

DiscordantSymphony