Halloween IV: The Ultimate Edition by Nicholas Read Free Book Online

drive. You can reach me there through the local police. Four hours should be long enough for you to find him if he’s here. If you don’t, then I am sure I will…..”
    Hoffman and the other trooper gazed on as the doctor strode up the muddy embankment using his cane as a lever. For one moment, it appeared as if he were about to fall. He reminded Hoffman of some sort of minikin nobleman, waving his cane about in effort to gain footing up the slope. He gave a disconcerted sigh as Loomis disappeared over the shoulder and onto the highway.
    Even with all the pandemonium of the searchers, Loomis’ sedan engine could still be heard. “What’s his story?” the trooper asked Hoffman. “You don’t want to know.”
                 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Five
    It was another peaceful Autumn morning in the tranquil community of Haddonfield, Illinois. Birds sang gleefully within the auburn branches of maple trees and the cool morning breeze scattered leaves playfully over grass dampened by the previous night’s showers. An occasional car cruised leisurely down the quiet street, every so often catching a puddle and splashing it over the curb. In the distance, a lone paperboy was making his rounds, hurling morning editions with long practiced ease from a sturdy blue bicycle.
    The very first sounds in the kitchen echoed
throughout the Caruther household, and soon
afterwards were followed by the usual, daily hustl e -
and-bustle of hurried family members moving to and
fro, munching down some sort of breakfast so they
could hurry to work or to school; the kind of confusion which had become so commonplace that no one had time to give any thought to how confusing things were. Richard Caruthers had just finished pouring a cup of hot coffee into his I HATE MONDAYS mug. He was dressed in a white button-down shirt, grey slacks and a silk tie which was now absorbing a new decoration while floating in the mug as he brought it to the kitchen table.
    “Damn it,” he cursed as he noticed it, then called to his wife. “Darlene.”
    The phone began to ring, and Darlene entered the kitchen in a hurry to answer it.
    Richard continued to call her, ignorant to the ringing.
    Darlene silenced him. “There’s a clean one in the laundry room next to your blue slacks.” Then she silenced the phone. “Hello?”
    Richard followed his wife’s directions and exited into the nearby laundry room.
    Darlene was a typical, clean scrubbed midwestern housewife, modestly attractive. She bore little resemblance to her seventeen-year-old daughter, Rachel, but what the two did have in common, aside from good-looks, as Richard frequently pointed out, was gentle, compassionate eyes. Actually, Richard claimed that none of these traits were exactly hereditary; Darlene acquired her beauty from hanging around her husband for a long time, and Rachel well, she was their daughter. Darlene always teasingly pushed him away whenever he joked around like that; a tradition he managed to keep alive within the Caruther household.
    It was Rachel’s turn to enter the kitchen, and the first thing she went for was the refrigerator; another daily tradition. She yanked open the door, peered inside for a moment, found what she wanted, and grabbed a carton of nonfat milk and a bagel.
    Richard complained yet again from the laundry room. “Darlene, this tie has a spot on it. I can’t wear this today! I have a ten-thirty with Chuck.”
    Into the phone, Darlene told a Mrs. Pierce to hang on, then shouted, “Not that tie. On the other side.
    Look….. ” She spotted her daughter’s breakfast. “That’s not all you’re eating, young lady.”
    “Oh. I found it, honey,” Richard shouted back. “Mom,” Rachel explained, “I’m on a diet. You want an oinker for a daughter?”
    Darlene sighed and returned to the phone. “Sorry,” she said into the receiver, “do you think Susan could just bring her crutches?