Chapter Text
September 23rd, 1980
3:45 AM
The sterile and fluorescent lights of the station’s briefing room hummed with a clinical, unforgiving brightness in the darkness of midnight. The lights almost made Paul’s hospital scrubs look unnaturally blue and his face a ghostly pale. He sat across from Deputy Barker, his hands clasped so tightly the knuckles were white as he stared at the grainy black-and-white security monitor. Leigh Brackett stood in the corner, a dark silhouette of fatherly grief and professional focus.
On the screen, the Figure—pale-faced and silent—lurked in the hallway shadows. Then the audio played: Annie’s voice, playful and light at first, teasing the caller about being "sexy."
"God, Annie," Paul whispered, burying his face in his hands. The sound of his own name being used by a killer to bait his girlfriend made him feel physically ill.
Leigh turned his heavy gaze toward Paul. It wasn’t a look of accusation, but it was weighted with the terrifying reality of how close they’d come to a funeral. "You were supposed to be there, Paul. You told her you were bringing dinner."
"I was!" Paul snapped, his voice cracking as he looked up at Leigh and Deputy Barker. He reached into his pocket with trembling fingers and slammed a crumpled slip of paper onto the table. Deputy Barker placed a calm hand on his shoulder to try to calm the two down "Both of you, fighting isn't going to calm this situation." His voice was steady and calm, everything Paul couldn't be in this situation "Mr. Freedman, do you recognize that type of voice modulator?"
"I don't own one, Omar. I don’t even know where you’d buy a voice modulator. The only one I recognize is Darth Vader's voice modulator from the movies and those are expensive," Paul said, his voice cracking with a mixture of exhaustion and fury as he ran his hands through his messy hair. He knew that the Sheriff wasn't really angry at him but worried---both of them were and it was coming out wrong "And the egging? The pranks? That ended the second I saw Annie in that hospital room almost two years ago. I don't play games anymore, Deputy."
"1:42 AM. That lines up, Sheriff. He was at the restaurant right when the call was logged at the desk." Looking at the receipt in purple ink, Omar Barker nodded grimly as he scribbled into a notepad. "We believe you, Paul. We just had to clear the timeline." He tapped a manila folder on the table. "I spoke with your supervisor at the Memorial burn unit. Dr. Karas. He confirms you clocked in early, as per usual. Said you only took twenty minutes for a sandwich at noon before heading back to the ward for the rest of your shift. He actually joked that he had to scold you for not taking a full hour."
Paul let out a breath that was more of a shudder. "I just wanted to get my shifts done so I could get home. I went straight from the hospital to Luigi’s for dinner when Annie would get off shift---all just so she would have something to eat at the table...." It was something he and Annie did as a ritual of sorts due to their crazy schedules: the first one who got home would make dinner and leave leftovers out for the other. That or go get takeout if they weren't feeling like cooking, which Paul had done "Then....I came straight here when I heard the sirens coming here. I was four miles away when she was fighting for her life."
Leigh stepped forward, the floorboards groaning under his weight. He looked at the receipt from the Italian restaurant, then at the young man with a somber, grim look that Paul recognized.
"We know it wasn't you, Paul," Leigh said, his voice gravelly. Deep down, he knew Paul would never pull such a phone call on Annie---especially with it being so close to the two-year anniversary of what happened in 1978. "But whoever did this—whoever put on that mask—they knew us, they knew your schedule down to the minute." The very idea of someone from the outside still not over what the administration of Smith's Grove had done over the past fifteen years, even with proof that multiple investigations had provided, was beyond disturbing "They knew when the station would be quiet, and they knew exactly which buttons to push to make Annie think it was a joke until it was too late."
"But who would do this, Dad?" Annie's broken voice spoke from the doorway. She was wrapped in a heavy wool blanket Nancy had brought, but her eyes were a mixture of teary and confused and cold and tactical at the same time. She looked at Paul, then at her father. "Whoever was on the other line....they knew about Lynda and Bob, about Ben Tramer and Alice Martin. This isn't just a random lunatic. This is someone who’s been studying us from the outside."
Paul stood up and went to her, wrapping his arms around her and their unborn baby, hidden under the blanket. "I'm sorry," he whispered into her dark, curly hair. "I'm so sorry I didn't get here in time..."
"Don't be sorry," Annie replied quietly, her gaze fixing on the evidence bag containing the shattered picture frame from the station hallway "Just....whenever you're alone at the apartment, Paul, have the shotgun ready. Because that person will be coming back for those in the lawsuit trials."
The early morning light in the Strode household was gray and grim. Morgan Strode sat at the kitchen table, his head in his hands, while Pamela gripped the telephone receiver as if it were a life preserver. Across from them, Dr. Loomis stood by the window, his coat still buttoned, looking like a man who hadn't slept since 1963.
"Laurie? Laurie, honey, wake up," Judith said into the phone, her voice trembling. Her own hair was pulled out of its night-bun the moment she got the news "There’s been an attack. It’s Annie. She’s... she’s alive, she’s okay, but she was attacked at the station."
On the other end of the line, three hours away in her college dorm, Laurie Strode’s sleepy confusion vanished instantly. The fog of dreams was replaced by the cold, sharp clarity of survival. She sat bolt upright in her dorm bed, her hand tightening on the cord.
"Annie?" Laurie’s voice was a jagged whisper. "Is she hurt? The baby?"
"She fought him off, Laurie," Pamela explained, looking toward Loomis, who was staring out at the Haddonfield fog. "But Morgan and I and Judith... we’ve been talking with Dr. Loomis and Sheriff Brackett. Annie thinks there might have been two of them. One on the phone, one in the building. It happened too fast for one person."
Sam Loomis stepped closer, his voice low and urgent. "Laurie, listen to your mother and older sister. October is days away. The two-year anniversary is a beacon for these... whoever these masked individuals are. We don't know if they'll stay in Haddonfield during all of October or if they'll come for you." He advised worriedly, fearing what would happen to the young Strode hours away with no one to protect her.
"Your father and I want you to promise us," Pamela suddenly interrupted, her voice gaining a desperate edge. "Stick to your dorm-mates. Stay with Lacie and Katie. Don't go to the library alone. Stay with your tutoring group. If you’re in class, stay in the middle of the room. Just... do not be alone, Laurie. Not for a second."
Laurie looked across the small room at her sleeping roommates, Lacie and Katie. For a moment, the dorm felt less like a sanctuary and more like a target. She felt the old, familiar weight of 1978 settling back onto her shoulders, but there was a new, cold resolve beneath it.
"I won't be alone, Mom, Jude," Laurie said, her voice dropping into a steady, flat tone that made Pamela’s blood run cold. "I’ll stay with the girls. I’ll keep the tutoring group in the common room. I’m not going to be a sitting duck."
"Good," Morgan called out from the table, his voice thick with emotion. "We're sending you extra money for taxis. Don't walk the campus or go to movies at night. Not even for a minute."
"I understand," Laurie said. She hung up the phone and sat in the silence, watching the sun rise. She looked at her closet, where a small, heavy box was hidden beneath her sweaters. Annie had the badge, but Laurie had the memory, and she wasn't going to let another October take what she had left.
The station office felt like a cage, the air heavy with the scent of old files and the lingering metallic tang of the struggle. Dr. Loomis sat at the scarred oak table, his hands trembling as he laid out a yellowed transcript from Michael’s initial commitment hearing in May 1964.
“I stood before that board and pleaded,” Sam Loomis said, his voice a dry, haunted rasp as he read over the file. All it did was bring horrible memories back---even if the worst hadn't started yet, he trusted his intuition given what happened with Norman Bates....and that intuition was ignored “I told them that he needed to be in a medium-security sanitarium for everyone's safety because even if things weren't happening then, I trusted my intuition that something was going to happen. They chose to see a manageable tragedy who could be rehabilitated instead of a void.”
"He almost killed me, Dr. Loomis," Judith whispered seethingly, grasping the folds of her blouse. Her lips pulled back into a snarl even if her face was as cool as ice. She had to maintain composure for Annie's sake "And given the distance, there's no telling what he would've done to my parents prior to that!"
Had Deputy Barker not been present in the room, Judith would've brought up Laurie and how at two-years-old, she was also in danger prior to that night in 1963----especially being in her crib and vulnerable with no one to protect her. But Loomis and Brackett looked at her knowingly with sympathy in their eyes.
They knew who she spoke of...
Sam Loomis tapped the paper, his gaze moving to Leigh Brackett. “They ignored me for fifteen years, Sheriff. And in that time, the rot didn't just stay in Michael. It spread through the staff, the orderlies, anyone who looked into that room...." His eyes shone with grief as he remembered Jennifer Hill and the injustice done with her murder---how it took eight years for the Hill family to finally get justice on what happened to her.
With some effort, Leigh Brackett and Omar Barker cross-referenced the staff logs from Smith’s Grove Sanitarium---While half the administration now rots in jail and the rest are buried under crippling fines, the trail has gone cold. Without more evidence, digging further into the lives of former employees (especially those who were innocent during the night he escaped) risked crossing into stalker territory—a line Leigh wasn't willing to cross, even for his own daughter.
"So basically, we have no way of knowing who's been calling me---who's been calling your wife and now your daughter, Sheriff?" Judith realized as the pieces started to come together, her voice cold and steely but the fear within her threatening to wash over her like a waterfall "Whoever the caller and attacker are....they could be basically anyone who still believes that the administration of Smith's Grove is innocent, even after everything that's come out?"
"Family members? Friends? We have plenty we could be talking about...." Omar Barker rationalized, his eyes widening in horror as he realized the large scale of people they could be talking about. Leigh turned back to the group with a grim look on his face and Annie knew that she wasn't going to like what her father said "Not to mention the calls to Nancy and Mrs. Hodges were traced back to the same payphone that you found the mechanic back in 1978, Dr. Loomis..." He ran a hand through his hair under his cap "They’re looking at the cameras but I doubt they'll find anything of use..."
...This leaves us back at square one, basically...
The realization that it really could be anyone hung in the air like a cold draft. The threat wasn't just a single burned man in a coma at Ridgemount; it was the corrupt ghosts of Smith's Grove finally coming home to Haddonfield.
The rain drummed against the station windows, a relentless, rhythmic sound that Loomis found increasingly difficult to distinguish from the breathing he’d heard in his nightmares since 1963. He looked across the table at Leigh and Morgan, his face etched with a desperate, worried clarity of a soldier.
"It isn't just about your daughters anymore," Loomis said, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper. "If this truly is a coordinated effort—if we truly have one on the line and another in the shadows—then we are dealing with a cult of personality. A collective obsession."
Leigh Brackett leaned forward, the light catching the silver of his badge. "You want us to start making calls? Beyond the department?" He inquired, wanting to understand what the doctor was saying.
"I want you to call the Freedmans," Loomis urged, his hands trembling as he gestured to the room at large. "Call the families of the victims—Bob’s people, Lynda’s. If these... these disciples----whoever these masked individuals happened to be, if they are seeking to finish the work Michael started, then anyone tethered to that night is a potential target. We need a network. We need every house on alert."
Morgan Strode wiped a hand over his face, looking older than he had that morning. "You're talking about a town-wide panic, Sam. If we tell the Freedmans that their son’s pregnant girlfriend was attacked by a ghost-faced lunatic, word will get out." He advised calmly yet understanding, he knew that the doctor had good intentions but they needed to think things through.
"Let it!" Sam Loomis snapped, his eyes flashing with a familiar, haunted fire from 1978 aas Judith nodded. "Panic is better than multiple funerals. Smith’s Grove spent fifteen years trying to keep a lid on the truth, and look where that got us---multiple people dead on both the inside and outside." Judith nodded in agreement, running her hand through her messy hair, the dark bags under her eyes prominent but the look in them steely "Silence is what allowed this town to almost be a sitting duck, never again can that happen. We have to let this town know and prepare themselves."
Leigh looked at the phone on the desk, then at the list of names Barker had compiled. He thought of Annie alone at the station, fighting for her life, and Paul pulling doubles at the hospital----going out to his car alone with no idea of what was happening....or who could be lurking within the shadows near the hospital.
"Barker," Leigh Brackett said, his voice finally firming into the tone of a commander. His face was in deep thought "Get the Freedman family on the line. Then call the Van Der Klok and Simms families. We aren't going to let Haddonfield sleep through this October. Not again."
As the calls began to go out, the air in the room felt heavy with the weight of the past. They were no longer just a police force or a group of survivors; they were a community arming itself against a shadow that refused to stay buried.