Halloween III - Season of the Witch

DO YOU KNOW
WHERE YOUR KIDS ARE
TONIGHT?

The streets are quiet. Dead quiet as the shadows lengthen and night falls. It’s Halloween. Blood-chilling screams pierce the air. Grinning skulls and grotesque shapes lurk in the gathering darkness. It’s Halloween. The streets are filling with small cloaked figures. They’re just kids, right? The doorbell rings and your flesh creeps. But it’s all in fun, isn’t it?

No. This Halloween is different. It’s the last one.

THE WITCHING HOUR

Dr. Challis sat up. There was a sound like nothing he’d ever heard before. A muffled groan. Then a shriek. Then a high, steady, inhuman wailing that went on and on. It was not of this world. It was a sound made in Hell.

And it came from Marge’s room . . .

MOUSTAPHA AKKAD
PRESENTS

HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH

A
JOHN CARPENTER/DEBRA HILL
PRODUCTION

STARRING
TOM ATKINS • STACEY NELKIN
AND
DAN O’HERLIHY
AS COCHRAN

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY:
DEAN CUNDEY
ASSOCIATE PRODUCER:
BARRY BERNARDI

PRODUCED BY
JOHN CARPENTER
AND
DEBRA HILL

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS:
IRWIN YABLANS
AND
JOSEPH WOLF

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY
TOMMY LEE WALLACE

HALLOWEEN III
SEASON OF THE WITCH

A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

PRINTING HISTORY
Jove edition / October 1982

All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1982 by Pumpkin Pie Productions

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016.

ISBN: 0-515-06885-3

Jove books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016.

The words “A JOVE BOOK” and the “J” with sunburst are trademarks belonging to Jove Publications, Inc.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO
D
ENNIS
E
TCHISON

If a way to the better there be, it lies in taking a full look at the worst.

—T
HOMAS
H
ARDY

It was my intention to set down the story of what happened to myself and to a little group of my friends—and I soon discovered that what was happening to us was happening to everyone.

—K
ENNETH
P
ATCHEN
,
The Journal of Albion Moonlight

HALLOWEEN WILL COME, WILL COME,
WITCHCRAFT WILL BE SET AGOING,
DEMONS WILL BE AT FULL SPEED
RUNNING IN EVERY PASS,
AVOID THE ROAD CHILDREN,
CHILDREN.

—Traditional

Prologue

Challis was dead.

“EIGHT MORE DAYS TO HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN . . .”

Children’s voices drifted into the room, thin and tinny, sinuating from the corridors into the bright light, bouncing off sterile walls and ringing like beaten silver over the bowed head of the man in the white lab coat.

Which, of course, did not move.

“EIGHT MORE DAYS TO HAL-LO-WEEN . . .”

The insistent refrain, chanted inanely to the tune of “London Bridge Is Falling Down,” was for a few moments everywhere, even cutting into speakers which were set to carry only a steady drone of Muzak around the clock throughout the hospital and, it had seemed to Challis lately, the entire world.

But tonight he was feeling no pain.

“. . . SIL-VER SHAMROCK!”

At last the advertising jingle wound down, followed immediately by a few bars of what sounded like Madison Avenue’s idea of an Irish jig. Then that, too, faded and a syrupy sea of characterless middle-of-the-road orchestral pop music washed over everything once more. It was a thick, blue sound, like Bow bells muffled by fog, and it fell softly on the ears, demanding nothing but passive consumption. On a night like this even Challis might have found it soothing. It was the music of merciful oblivion.

Challis was slumped forward, his forehead distorted against the ersatz woodgrain of a table in the staff lounge. There was no one else in the room. In the distance a bell was ringing dully. There was the creak of a stainless steel cart wheeling through the halls, somewhere the squeak of rubber soles on polished floors followed closely by clipped, efficient voices as brittle and cold as window glass, and the thumping of doors opening and closing in another part of the building.

At this hour, just before the majority of the hospital staff changed shifts after dinner break, no one had found him yet.

Challis could not have planned it better if he had tried.

Above and in front of him hung an institutional TV set. Its sound was off, a badly adjusted picture rolling from top to bottom like an out-of-control microfilm scanner.

Nothing else moved.

Now, however, there was a new sound: an electrical buzzing. It came from the lighting fixtures, as if an insect were trapped within the panels of the ceiling. The buzzing continued for a few seconds. Then suddenly one of the neon tubes sizzled and flickered out, as though dark wings had settled over that part of the room.

Outside the windows there was a blinding flash.

Instantly the other lights shut down. The fluttering TV picture popped and shrank to a tiny point, a single glowing eye receding rapidly away down a tunnel, and gone.

The lounge was plunged into darkness.

Rain scattered against the windows, illuminated from behind by headlights in the night. Drops clung to the panes, suspended there and seemed to turn, each an individual lens reflecting cars that passed on the road, then quickly flowed together and ran down the glass in sheets as the landscape blurred.

The first crack of thunder hit. It shook the walls and the cold fluorescent tubes vibrated back to life. The squares of the low ceiling brightened in no particular sequence, flicking back on in random order until the overhead checkerboard was complete.

In the peculiar strobing, Challis’s arm appeared to twitch on the tabletop. His head seemed to raise uncertainly an inch, two inches.

A running in the halls.

The door burst open.

A nurse stood there, hands on hips. She hesitated before coming in all the way. She was on the downhill side of middle age, resignedly overweight, and wore the perpetual expression of a woman who has seen enough of all the wrong things to last two lifetimes.

“Doctor? You all right?”

She paused, glanced back at the commotion in the hallway, and came to a decision. She took two more steps into the lounge.

“Is that you, Doctor Challis?” Her face relaxed a bit. “How did you like the fireworks? Another one of life’s little tests—a power blackout, wouldn’t you know. As if we didn’t have plenty to worry about already. That old emergency generator kicked in, praise the Lord. But I don’t know how much longer Mr. Garret can keep it . . .
Dan
? Are you all right?”

She pursed her lips and crossed the room.

“Poor man. Working too hard, same as always.” She sighed wearily. “Well, it’s that way for everybody these days, I reckon. Seems like the Last Times, doesn’t it? You look like you’re dead to the world.”

She reached up and twisted the knob of the TV. The picture steadied, but immediately broke up into a swirling vortex of snow. She slapped the side of the cabinet. The picture pulsed into temporary focus. It was the Seven O’Clock Report with Robert Mundy, the local plastoid TV newscaster.

She adjusted the volume.

“. . . AND LATER, IN TONIGHT’S SPECIAL EYEBALL-TO-EYEBALL SEGMENT, TRINA WILL SHOW US HOW TO MAKE A BRIGHT AND BREEZY REPAST WITH A FLAIR BY DRESSING UP A CARD TABLE. AND WE’LL HAVE THE LATEST ON THAT UNUSUAL CASE OF VANDALISM OVER IN MERRY OLD ENGLAND. BUT FIRST, LET’S PAUSE FOR THIS IMPORTANT MESSAGE.”

The nurse rested her spotted hand on the back of Challis’s neck.

On TV, a grinning witch’s face filled the screen. Gnarled skin glistened, a warty nose inches from the camera as the witch peered down into the room through a storm of salt-and-pepper static. The effect was grotesque.

“Those masks,” said the nurse with distaste. “They’ve gone too far this year—too realistic.” She shuddered. “Wish we could hurry up and get Halloween over with. Nasty holiday. Nothing but trouble for children—for all of us. It’s un-Christian.”

“EIGHT MORE DAYS TO HALLOWEEN . . .”

The picture destabilized again as a new round of lightning split the sky outside. The commercial broke up and began to roll vertically, but the chorus of taunting, pre-teen voices continued to nag from the cracked speaker.

“HAL-LO-WEEN, HAL-LO-WEEN . . .”

Again a blast of thunder shook the walls. This time some of the lights went out and stayed out, as the small hospital’s emergency system struggled to maintain half-power.

In the wavering light, Challis moved. His neck swelled angrily beneath his white collar.

Startled, the nurse snatched her hand away.

“Don’t they ever give up?”
he roared.

“EIGHT MORE DAYS TO HAL-LO-WEEN . . .”

“Turn that damned thing off!”

The nurse regained her composure. “Yes, of—of course.” She reached to lower the sound.

“I said
off!
Now! Will you do that little thing for me, Agnes?”

Quickly she touched the knob again and the image collapsed and faded from the screen.

“Thank you, Agnes. Thank you very much.”

“It does get on one’s nerves, doesn’t it?” she said sympathetically. “Dan, it’s after seven. When you didn’t sign out, well, I was worried.”

“I know, I know.” Challis rubbed his face as though to brush away cobwebs. “Sorry, Agnes. Really. I must have dozed off.”

“Passed out from exhaustion is more like it.” She positioned herself behind him and began kneading his hunched shoulders through the coat.

He didn’t seem to notice. He shuttered his fingers over his eyes and let out a sour breath. “What else is new? Christ, this is getting to be a regular part of my rounds, isn’t it? Tell me the truth, Agnes. I can count on you. You always tell me the truth. Don’t you.”