Halloween - Curtis Richards, ebook, CALIBRE SFF 1970s, Temp 1
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Halloween
a novel by Curtis Richards
based on the screenplay by John Carpenter and Debra Hill
dedicated to the memories of Donald Pleasence and Debra Hill
Copyright 1979 by Bantam Books, Inc.
Prologue
The horror started on the eve of Samhain, in a foggy vale in Northern Ireland at the dawn of
the Celtic race. And once started, it trod the earth forevermore, wreaking its savagery suddenly, swiftly,
and with incredible ferocity. Then, its lust sated, it shrank back into the mists of time for a year, a
decade, a generation perhaps. But it slept only and did not die, for it could not be killed. And on the eve
before Samhain it would stir, and if the lust were powerful enough, it would rise to fulfill the curse
invoked so many Samhains before. Then the people would bolt their doors.
Scant good it did them, for the thing laughed at locks and bolts, and besides, there were the
unwary. Always the unwary.
Samhain. The Druid festival of the dead. The summer had passed, and so too had that
outburst of early fall warmth now know as Indian summer. The green had gone out of the land, the
crops harvested, and the chill of winter had descended like an angel of death. The people, fearing the
sun might never again warm the land, held their festival to appease Muck Olla, their deity. On hillsides
and in the caves and daub-and-wattle huts great fires were lit to which the spirits of the departed were
invited by their kinsmen to warm themselves, to be cheerful before the snows blanketed the earth.
Druid priests divined who would live and die in the coming year, who would marry, bear children, wax
rich, enjoy good health. And they attempted to hold at bay, through sacrifices and other rites, the
witches and goblins that ran amok at that time, stealing infants, destroying crops, killing farm animals...
and sometimes worse.
Deirdre was the third and youngest daughter of the Druid king Gwynnwyll. Her hair was
sandy brown with amber highlights, her eyes sea green, her complexion cream and wild rose. She was
already taller than her older sisters, and her early development had been the cause of much concern in
the tribal community. The other virgins tittered with envy; the married women voiced disapproval and
counseled her mother to marry her off before the girl yielded to her budding impulses; the young
warriors eyed her yearningly, and the old warriors thought forbidden thoughts and reflected on their
faded memories.
His name was Enda. He was fifteen, and he loved Deirdre with a secret passion that
tortured him and at night caused him to cry out in his sleep. When it became rumored that Deirdre's
father, the king, was preparing to offer her hand in marriage, Enda consulted his kinsmen and asked if
they thought his suit would be looked upon in favor. He suspected what the answer would be, but his
longing overcame his embarrassment.
“Ho! Deidre marry you?” his father cackled. “With your shriveled arm and your twitching
mouth?” For Enda had presented himself wrong end first when his mother birthed him, and the
midwives had made a botch of his delivery.
“She would as soon marry my goat!” howled his uncle.
“Or Bulech!” his brother added, pointing to the runty dog worrying a greasy bone in the
corner of their hut.
“Besides,” said his father, “I'm told she's but betrothed to Cullain.”
“Now there's a lad worthy of that wench's pretty hole!” his uncle burst out, raising his
wineskin to his fat lips, and they continued to discuss Deirdre's charms as Enda retreated miserably
from the hut into the cold night.
The boy suffered tortures such as only the adolescent can. At length, he determined on a
plan. If he could somehow get directly to Deirdre, he would convince her that though he was ill-
favored physically, he was in every other respect a fitting candidate for her hand. This was easier said
than done, however, because virgins were closely watched by their mothers or by truculent warrior
brothers. Nevertheless, one day Enda seized an opportunity when Deirdre went to fetch water from the
stream at the foot of the hill. He followed her furtively, darting from tree to tree until he found her
stooped over the stream, singing softly to herself as the water filled her clay pitchers.
“Deirdre?” he called timidly.
She turned and gasped, eyes round with fright.
“You! What do you want?” Her body tensed, and she seemed ready to bolt.
“I... I want to...” The panic in her face alarmed him. He had expected to startle her, but had
not imagined she would greet him with such revulsion. He stepped forward, hand extended pacifically.
But she jumped back, misinterpreting the gesture. She stumbled, almost falling into the stream, and
Enda moved swiftly to rescue her.
“No!” she shrieked. “Get away from me, monster!” She found her feet and burst into a run,
crying, “Help! Help! He means to rape me!”
Enda's body had been deformed at birth, but not until that moment had his soul been
formed...
And now it was Samhain, and Enda humiliated beyond reason, stood on the perimeter of
the celebrants dancing and chanting around the bonfire. 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. Only his head and his heart were preserved, gathered up after the frenzy
had subsided, at the request of the grieving king. After Deirdre and Cullain were buried on the
hallowed ground the following day, Enda's head and heart were carried to the summit of the Hill of
Fiends, where cowards and other outcasts were left to rot unblessed. 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 hand 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
It was 1963, and America was sure of itself, or at least seemed to be. Particularly in
Haddonfield, Illinois. 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 that would reach deeply into the homes and hearts of Americans across the land.
But that was in the future, and tonight, October 31, was a time for fun. It was Halloween.
Perhaps even more than Christmas, it was the most innocent holiday on the calendar. Yes, more than
Christmas, because Christmas celebrated a happy event, and jolly St. Nick was a benevolent symbol
anyway. But Halloween's origins were darker, very much darker, and if the children celebrated it as a
happy event like Christmas, it was a symptom of how far we'd come from the time when mankind
respected the forces of evil.
Little Michael Myers's grandmother clucked her disapproval as the visiting rosy-faced six-
year-old showed her the costume in the Woolworth box. “What's that supposed to be?” she 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?”
Mrs. Myers shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “I don't think Michael wants to hear that,”
she said looking significantly at her mother. “It might give him bad dreams.”
But grandma wasn't taking the warning. “Nothing wrong with bad dreams. At least they
remind us that things aren't hunky-dory in this world. Lord, everything is so clean and – phony these
days. Just one big television commercial. Clown costumes!” she sighed, fingering the cheap material in
the Woolworth box.
“What did the Bogeyman do?” Michael insisted.
The silver-haired woman leaned forward confidently, a perverse smile lighting her
pleasantly lined face. “Well, if you were lucky, you got away with nothing worse than finding some of
your chickens beheaded.”
“Beheaded?”
“Their heads cut off,” she explained with a relish. Micheal's eyes widened; his mother
grimaced and picked up a copy of Look, riffling nervously through it. “If you weren't lucky, you lost a
cow or two.”
“Unheaded?”
“Be-headed, yes.”
“Were the heads just lying there next to the cows or were they... ?”
“Mother, that will be enough. Really!” Mrs. Myers gasped, snapping the magazine shut.
But grandma had warmed to the subject. Behind her spectacles, her blue eyes had drifted
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