Джон Пассарелла - Halloween - The Official Movie Novelization

“Mom,” Karen said, overlapping Ray’s admonishment. “Mom!”

A hush fell across the restaurant.

Tranquility shattered , Allyson thought, lowering her head. Hard to remember I ever felt relaxed here . And it was all her fault. Trying to force her mother to invite her grandmother. Inviting her grandmother without telling her mother. What could go wrong?

She wanted to hide under the table.

Breaking the abrupt silence, Karen spoke to her mother in a tone that had the air of finality. “Remember what you said? You said you were going to put your past behind you. Do it now.”

Embarrassed, or maybe defiant, Allyson could no longer tell, her grandmother couldn’t look Karen in the eye. But when she spoke, her voice dropped to a pained whisper. “I can’t.”

After the rollercoaster of emotions, Allyson’s eyes filled with tears. It was too much. First, she’d been disappointed that her grandmother hadn’t shown up, followed by a warm sense of relief that she’d come—better late than never. Then everything crumbled into more disappointment as the family gathering hadn’t turned out anything like she’d hoped. And if that hadn’t been bad enough, now she had to deal with public embarrassment in front of Cameron and the entire evening crowd at Bellini’s—all before her grandmother even had time to take a bite of food at their table. She wondered if she could ever show her face in Bellini’s again.

Without saying another word, Laurie turned and walked out.

Not wanting to face Cameron, Allyson looked through the window to follow her grandmother’s retreat across the parking lot toward the busy boulevard. A moment later, Allyson clutched the edge of the table. Her grandmother stepped off the curb without even acknowledging traffic. A car swerved. Multiple horns blared.

Laurie caught herself, stepped back up onto the curb, as if only then realizing where she was and where she’d been about to walk. Something in Allyson jarred her out of her own embarrassed paralysis. Scooting out of her chair and ignoring the voices of her family calling after her, Allyson hurried through the door, across the lot, and made her way across the street—after checking traffic—to join her grandmother by her pickup truck.

Without a word, she wrapped her arms around the older woman, who hugged her back as fiercely. For the moment, Allyson’s embarrassment was gone. Her grandmother was safe. Right then, nothing else mattered.

After the Wildcats game, fourteen-year-old Kevin and his father stopped at Parisi’s Pizza Palace for an early dinner of their “world famous” deep dish pepperoni and sausage, which had become a bit of a tradition after they attended one of Northwestern’s games. Though, with each passing year, Kevin viewed the “world famous” claim with a little more skepticism. But the trips were infrequent enough to stir a bit of nostalgia for father and son, which made it worth sitting in traffic and waiting for a table.

By the time they began their return trip home in the old Bronco, the sun hung low in the autumn sky. Within thirty minutes, darkness fell, and the weight of the long day settled in. Traffic thinned to the point of occasional headlights becoming lonely beacons zipping by in the northbound lanes while, in front of them, the scattered string of red taillights dwindled to single digits.

Still miles from home, Kevin realized they were alone by the time his father turned onto a state road that would complete the final leg of their journey. Without streetlights, the rural road gave the impression that they were driving across an uninhabited island of encroaching darkness. The Bronco’s headlights revealed the dashed line in front of them separating the two lanes of the road, narrow dirt and gravel shoulders on either side edged with tall grass and weeds. But beyond the reach of the headlights and immediately behind them, darkness ruled. The science geeks in school would probably love the lack of light pollution. Perfect for stargazing, they’d say. Fine, if you didn’t mind a swarm of bugs eating you alive.

Rather than gaze up at the stars, Kevin imagined what would happen if his father’s old Bronco broke down out in the boonies, and what a massive pain in the ass it would be to walk home. Because he had no doubt cell reception would suck—if it existed at all out here. No chance of calling a tow truck to rescue them from bugs-burg.

Radio stations had become few and far between. As one faded, the next was slow to come into range. His father worked the radio dial, searching for anything that sounded better than an annoying jumble of static punctuated with snippets of news programs or blips of top-forty radio. But static ruled the night.

“I can’t get reception on this thing,” his father grumbled, “ever since the antenna was bent at the car wash.”

“Maybe there’s nothing out here,” Kevin said.

“Oh, there are plenty of signals, believe me,” his father said. “I should’ve made the car wash pay for a new antenna.”

“On this car?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s old, Dad.”

“Vintage.”

“Fancy word for old,” Kevin said. “You could buy a new radio.”

“How many times—?” his father began. “It’s not the radio. It’s the antenna.”

“Whatever.”

“Now that I think about it, maybe you’re right,” his father said. “Maybe I can get them to pay for a new radio. That’s what I should have done. But no, try to be the nice guy. Oh, no big deal, just an antenna. Don’t worry about it, Mr Carwash Owner.”

Kevin chuckled. “You called him that?”

His father frowned. “No, of course not. Don’t know the man’s name. I just—didn’t want to make a fuss.” Sighing, his father gave up searching for a station and turned the static down to a soft buzz, hoping something would resolve. “Let’s talk about something else.”

Great , Kevin thought. First the radio craps out. What next? Maybe it’s a warning, a bad omen or something, that the Bronco is about to throw a rod or explode or something . Weird how the darkness—the complete isolation—made him worry. He’d heard the expression of whistling when you walked past a graveyard, a way to avoid dwelling on unpleasant thoughts. And Kevin kept circling back to the idea of the Bronco dying and him becoming an unwilling blood donor to the airborne bug population of Illinois, so he was happy to talk about his favorite subject. College football. “Can you believe that game?”

“Can’t win ’em all,” his father said, which seemed like someone ending an uncomfortable conversation.

“Imagine if they had won last week,” Kevin pressed on. “They got hit with that eighteenth-ranked offense, but they totally failed in ball protection. The season-worst marks of negative-eight rushing yards, 295 total yards and five turnovers.”

“When it rains it pours.”

“Five frigging turnovers,” Kevin said. “Doesn’t that get in your head?”

“You play the game, you gotta have short-term memory, Kev.”

“Yeah, right,” Kevin said, unwilling to give up on his argument. “Randall scored twenty-eight points off those takeaways, including twenty-one in the decisive second half.”

“They got rolling, never lost momentum,” his father said with a slight shrug, hands remaining on the steering wheel. “It happens.”

“Our guys completely lost confidence after that,” Kevin said. “Played scared. And if you play not to lose, what usually happens?”

“You lose!” they said in unison.

Static crackled through the speakers, rising above the low hum. His father turned up the volume and started punching buttons for preset stations, but they were probably still out of range. Frustrated again, his father worked his way up and down the dial, trying to find anything listenable.