Halloween 9; The Veil between the worlds

Halloween in Haddonfield.
Dozens of police cruisers prowled the streets, shotgun wielding state-troopers nervously scanning the shadows, clutching their weapons protectively to their chests. A National Guard helicopter clattered overhead, it’s searchlight probing the darkness. It might have disturbed the residents of Haddonfield if there had been any left but most had long since fled for the week, the few brave souls who remained securely locked behind their bolted doors, shotguns and hunting rifles kept to hand.
All except at the Myers house
The street was deserted. The houses empty, abandoned. Michael had killed more than just human beings. He had killed a town. Forlorn real estate signs projected from every garden with no takers in sight. There were no Jack O’Lanterns, no children trick or treating. Haddonfield would never celebrate Halloween again.
But this Halloween they were spared. There were no killings, no murders to break the peace of the night. This would go down as another good year, a year when the curse would not claim any more victims.
*
“Call it a night Sheriff?”
He nodded. The state police SWAT team commander peeled off his night vision goggles and gave the orders to his men. One by one they emerged from their hides, snipers with their long range rifles equipped with fancy optical sights, wearing cammoflague ‘ghillie’ suits and face paint that made them all but invisible in the bushes and gardens they had concealed themselves in. The takedown team exited the houses, festooned with sub-machineguns, pump-action shotguns and stun grenades, the heaviest weaponry they could legally use and few other items that would never be referred to in any court. Magazines were removed, rounds unloaded from chambers, safeties applied. Tired, stiffened limbs were stretched, body armour laden with gear removed, cigarettes lit and mobile phone calls made to anxious families.
“Do you want us to hang around for the debrief?” the SWAT commander asked.
The Sheriff shook his head, replacing his own shotgun into its’ carrying case. “No, I think we all know the routine by now.” They shook hands.
“Same time next year?”
The Sheriff nodded. “Until we have a body, living or dead. And maybe even then. Your grandson will probably be doing this duty”
They shared a mirthless smile and then went their separate ways, to well deserved breakfast and sleep. The SWAT commander was slightly disappointed that nothing had happened, the Sheriff hugely thankful, muttering a silent prayer of gratitude to a god most townspeople were convinced had deserted them. It was one of many given that morning.
The TV crews packed up as well, disappointed that there was no story this year. Reporters did bland stand-ups to camera, futilely trying to make the fact that nothing happened interesting. Then they were gone too. One by one the fans drifted away as well, the obssessives who sent fan-mail to imprisoned serial killers and kept clippings of their crimes, free to visit the house now the police no longer threatened to arrest them for doing so. They left soon after, keen to share their frustration at the lack of action with fellow ghouls on the internet.
The Myers house was alone once more, empty and abandoned, the scene of so much suffering. It seemed to soak up the night, even as the first rays of the false dawn started to light up the eastern sky, the constellation of the thorn burning in the heavens beginning to fade slightly in it’s faint aura.
It was then that Michael came.
Foolish, foolish little men, thinking they could stop him, with all their weapons and technology, all the false gods they prayed to. They were naught but vulnerable flesh and bone, he had watched them all night long, invisible to their lights and night-sights, concealed in shadows with a degree and art of stealth they could never hope to comprehend. He could have killed them all, felt that glorious tear of knife through flesh and heard their pathetic, delightful screams as he added them to his tally of sacrifices.
It never occurred to him that what he did was pointless, that the Toymaker had been killed decades before, his plans for mass sacrifice thwarted the moment his Silver Shamrock factory had blown up, taking him and the devices necessary to activate the killer Halloween masks with it. Michael had slaughtered Wynn and the rest of the pagan cult that had created him. They were unworthy, more interested in exploiting him to gain power for themselves, they had strayed from the path of the true believers, no longer believed in killing for killings sake. Without the Toymaker they were errant children, playing at evil. Michael practised evil for it’s own sake. There was nothing else.
He’d let the SWAT team live. They couldn’t kill him. He’d killed everyone that could possibly end his existence. But they could wound him, wound him badly enough for him to be captured, restrained and placed in a cell once more.
He would escape, nothing in the world would stop that. But it would take time. He had wasted so many years in captivity. And in that time so many might evade the death he yearned to visit upon them, he would miss the time of the constellation, the time of the blooding. He couldn’t allow that. He had to prepare, had to track down Laurie’s son, his cousins and his child…
So he let the SWAT team live. Let Haddonfield think it could breathe again. Then one day, when they least expected it he would be there again. Whenever they thought they were safe he would shatter their complacency and punish them once more for their failure to pay tribute to the gods of autumn.
This year he was content to walk through the rooms of the sacred place, wallowing in the wonderful memories of what had been. He could almost hear the screams, taste the blood once more, smell the fear, revel in the dying, visceral agony. It was quite fantastic, nothing else compared. It was a pilgrimage for him, one that he was irresistably drawn to every year.
It was enough to sustain him. For a while.
He walked down the stairs. Walked past front the room where he had first felt the euphoria of death, taken the life of his sister, the first precious, precious sacrifice. The first of so many.
He couldn’t linger any more. He walked to the door.
“MICCCCHHHHAAAAEEEELLLL”
He stopped. He looked around him, craning his neck curiously, attempting to puzzle out the impossible sound he had just heard. It wasn’t his name. Not any more. Names were for humans and he was far beyond human now, he’d left that far behind. But the memory was still there and he recognised the name, the title they had called him before his deliverance. How could this be?
Then it happened again, soft and almost songlike but just as clear.
“MICCCCHHHHHAAAAEEEEELLLL”
TBC