Howlingween

Synopsis

A strange curse has taken hold of a hospital in Montana: for decades the first born on Halloween is blinded by a vengeful wolf-spirit. However, when Katrina is the first to give birth this Halloween, her newborn, Tracy, is spared blindness. Instead the wolf-spirit attempts to use Tracy as a fifth columnist in its war against humans.

Years later, with five-year-old Tracy in tow, Katrina flies to Sydney, Australia, to search for Tracy’s human-father: cheating married executive Thomas. Of course, Thomas avoids any contact with the pair.

While driving, Thomas is destined to be hit on the driver’s side by a Hummer running a red light, probably killing him. But an image (Tracy’s) on his windshield is mistaken by Thomas for a real child and he stomps on the brakes and inadvertently avoids being hit by the Hummer.

After the near-death experience, Thomas turns over a new leaf. He leaves his stressing career behind and takes wife Sandra and six-year-old daughter Belle on a tour around south-east Australia in a Winnebago.

His intention is to re-bond with Sandra and for the first time become a for-real dad to Belle.

Stopping in a desert, Belle discovers a skeleton (Katrina’s) with a bullet in its skull. Her father makes light of the matter for Belle’s sake, but he suspects foul play.

Along the way the family comes across an apparently lost little girl (Tracy), who appears nameless and muted but is determined to reclaim Thomas as her father by ridding Belle, whose life twice comes under threat by a huge wolf.

To make matters worse, the Winnebago comes under attack by men hired by Dr Baier (who runs a human-organ processing plant) resulting in the capture of the family.

When still-alive Belle is about to have her heart and lungs removed, with the blessing of Tracy, she and her family are puzzlingly saved by Tracy’s wolf-father.

In the up-and-down battle against Dr Baier, joined in by Tracy’s adoptive Aboriginal tribe and her wolf-father, Dr Baier’s mercenaries are finally defeated and the children saved, but only to be followed by a bizarre finalé: a battle to the death between Thomas and the wolf to see which father is to have custody of Tracy.

Tracy saves Thomas and she is adopted by him and Sandra.

(Howlingween is the first in a quintuple of stories. Howlingween 2: Clarry the Clown is the sequel, which takes the Forran family from regional Australia to an island off the coast of India to battle a murderous clown. In Howlingween 3: Red River County, the hapless Forrans are happy to have an event-less, even boring, holiday in Florida – alas, it is not to be. But, having survived killer Jack O’Beggar and upon leaving Red River County, the hapless family meets its greatest challenge in Howlingween 4: Beastly Mist … an intelligent swarm of voracious flying mites. It appears the fourth instalment may be the final as Wolf becomes mortal, a normal sized wolf, who joins a pack of wolves in Montana, where the story began in 1891. We’ve seemingly come full circle to a near perfect ending to the series. However, life is full of the unexpected: I've finished Howlingween 5: Trip Along. Once the Forran family leaves Wolf in his natural environment, and while still in Montana, the family encounters an inordinate number of missing persons. To their horror, the family soon finds out why).