(Audiobook starts at 10 minute mark)
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, dam 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 off to her girlhood, and her head nodded in memory of some awesome event. "Once he burned somebody's barn down. Was it Winfield? No, Winterfield. Burnt Mr. Winterfield's barn down to the ground, livestock and all." She looked at the wide-eyed boy, then at her horrified daughter, and realized she'd gone too far. "Of course, Michael, we always suspected it wasn't the Bogeyman. Perhaps neighbors getting even with each other for some slight. In costumes and masks, it was easier to get away with that sort of thing. But I do remember one incident..."
"Not the chimney story," begged Mrs. Myers.
"Oh, tell me the chimney story!" implored the grandson.
"Well," the woman said, "it was Halloween, nineteen-ought... nine? Nineteen ten?"
"Just tell it," said Michael. Even at six he recognized a boring attack of grandma's Whatyear-was-it-again?
"Yes. It was Halloween, but way after midnight. Maybe two or three in the morning. We'd all gone to sleep, leaving the fire burning in the parlor because it was a terribly cold night. Well, suddenly I hear my brother Jimmy shouting, 'Smoke! Smoke! Wake up everybody, the house is on fire!' I grabbed my robe and rushed down the stairs right behind my daddy, who'd picked up the bucket of water we always kept filled at the top of the landing. Sure enough, the whole downstairs was thick with woodsmoke. But I couldn't see any fire. The smoke was coming from the fireplace, and it looked as though the flue had been closed."
"What's a flue?"
Grandma explained what a flue was. "We put out the embers and opened the doors and windows to let the smoke out. Then daddy looked at the flue and - glory be - it was open. Something was jamming up the chimney. Now, we didn't have a ladder on account of daddy having just taken it apart to replace some rotten rungs. So Jimmy had to shinny himself up the drainpipe to find out what was obstructing the chimney."
"What was it?" the boy asked, while his mother shook her head in painful anticipation.
"A dead hog."
"Wow!"
"Someone - or something - had cut out our hog's throat and laid it atop the chimney." She laughed humorlessly. "The thing is, that hog weighed near three hundred pounds. How did it get up there without a ladder? Without our hearing anything? Without our dog, Toby, raising hob with his barking like he usually did when he heard something prowling? Without disturbing a gate or making a footprint? Answer me that, Mister Woolworth Clown Costume."
"I don't know."
"Well, I do. 'Twas the Bogeyman, that's all there is to it."
"Mother, that will do!" Mrs. Myers snapped. "The boy's been having problems enough at night without your adding to them."
"Problems? What kind... ? Um, Michael honey, run into the bedroom and try the costume on for Grandma. I'll tuck it if it's too baggy."
"It's supposed to be baggy," said the little boy, carrying the box into the next room.
"Now, what's this about 'problems'?" she demanded of her daughter.
Edith Myers, a younger, darker-eyed replica of her mother, ran a hand through her curly blond hair. "I told you, he's been getting into fights at school. At home, too, with Judith. He's been wetting his bed again, which he hasn't done in three years."
"Fighting about what?"
"Mother, can we just forget... ?"
The old woman's eyes narrowed. "No, we can't. What kind of trouble is that boy in?"
"Voices," Mrs. Myers finally blurted after a minute's tortured pause. " He hears voices."
"Oh, Little Lord Jesus!" the old woman cried. She exchanged a long, meaningful look with her daughter. "I'm afraid to ask what these voices say."
"'They tell me to say I hate people.' That's how Michael put it when I asked him. Don thinks maybe we ought to send Michael to someone."
"You mean a psychiatrist?"
"Yes."
"I don't put much stock in psychiatrists, but I don't suppose it could hurt. And I don't think it will help, if it's what I'm thinking."
The younger woman began to get agitated. "I know what you're thinking, and that's why I didn't want to get into this with you. You're going to say that that's how it started with Grandpa Nordstrom."
"We have to face up to it, child, that is how it started with your father's father."
"Mother, all children hear imaginary voices. Don't you remember my Bobby Bear, who
used to... ?"
"It's not the same. At least, it's not something you should ignore. Does the boy have dreams?" Her daughter nodded. "Does he remember any?"
"Yes, and they're very violent." Her face reddened and she turned her eyes away from her mother's piercing gaze. "Mother, when Grandpa Nordstrom... that is... Well, you've never spoken to us about that incident, and I think there are enough similarities..."
"Hush, here comes Michael. When you get home, call me as soon as you can, I think the time has come to tell you everything. Ah, there's my little boy," she cooed as Michael came back into the room with a rustle, "right out of a Punch 'n' Judy show."
He stood before them, an angel in red and green nylon, elastic ankle and wrist-bands making the costume cling at the extremities and bag out everywhere else. A ruff around the neck and the little droopy pompom cap completed the charming picture.
"Grandma's baby!" she laughed, clasping the boy to her bosom. "Edith, please fetch me some cold cream and lipstick from the tray in my bedroom. Might as well complete the picture."
"I don't want makeup," Michael protested.
"Of course you do. You don't want anyone to guess who you are when you go around playing pranks."
"I'm not going to play pranks. I'm just going to ask for candy."
"You do that, child. You just have an innocent, Woolworth kind of Halloween."
She saw them out the door. "Remember, Edith, call me as soon as you can."
"I will, Mother. And don't worry."
"I won't," she said, shutting the door. She began to tremble, wondering if she should have said something to her daughter about Grandpa Nordstrom's dreams.
