This Is How You Die Page 24

  “I should have waited for you,” I told him. “And for that I apologize. But I was so eager to start. I mean, look at this!” I threw my arms open. “Isn’t it fucking beautiful?”

  I could tell by the look on his face that he didn’t think so, but he didn’t say anything. He walked up to the stage, doing his best to slalom through the bodies, but not seeming to care about the blood. He trod in a sticky patch left by the director and left singular crimson footprints as he approached the stage.

  “And your kids,” I said. “I guess I have to apologize for lying on that one, as well. I jumped the gun a bit.”

  “I did what you asked.” His voice was barely audible. It was gravelly, tired. “I went there alone, and yet you killed them anyway. Why?”

  “Why did I kill?” I asked. “That’s what I do. You know that better than anyone.”

  He shook his head. “My kids were different. You did that to get at me. This was vengeance, this was a game. But why them and why not me?”

  “Ah.” I pointed at him. “But why not both?”

  “They did nothing wrong. The people you killed, they had their faults. Darren Henderson bullied you, the priest, well, you knew him, so I’m guessing he had a hand in making your youth a misery, as well.”

  That amused me. There was a twinkle in his eye. He was trying to get to me. He wasn’t intimidated by the mask, by the knife in my hand, or by the bloodshed around him.

  “But my kids,” he continued. “They did nothing wrong. Neither did any of these.” He gestured around him.

  “And what about Darren’s brother? What about the boy in the church? What about all the others I killed that did fuck-all wrong? This isn’t a mission of vengeance or righteousness, Lester. I’m not a fucking vigilante. If people wrong me, they die, but that doesn’t mean that everyone else gets off the hook. Stop looking for reason in this, because you won’t find it.”

  He nodded slowly and then he turned away, gazing around the room. “So that’s what this is all about?” he asked. “You brought me here so you could kill me? Why the pomp, why the flair, why not just wait for me at home and kill me then?”

  “Ah, Lester, you disappoint me.” I shook my head, showing my disappointment. “I mean, where’s the fun in that? As you said, this is a game, and games should be fun. If you make them too easy then they stop being fun. Am I right?”

  He didn’t answer and continued to look up at me. I felt powerful on the stage. It gave me such a thrill to be above others, to be looking down on them and to be leading the show. It was a shame I had no interest in acting or singing. I was a great performer, of course, but although my performances would soon be famous in all four corners of the world, it wasn’t the sort of thing people paid money to see. At least not the normal ones.

  “Why me?” he asked eventually.

  “You exposed me and my past. You gave the media a taste of my true self and you dug up old bones that should have remained buried. I wanted to show you that you’re not the only one who can excite the press or toy with the public.”

  “That wasn’t my intention,” he said.

  I shrugged. “That’s all irrelevant now anyway. What’s done is done, and what I did was fucking fantastic, so I would never take that back.” I had a bright smile on my face and although it didn’t show through the mask, it did carry in my voice.

  “You’re fucking sick.”

  “You’ve only just realized?”

  He stood still, staring at me, unmoving, unblinking. Eventually he asked, “So what are we going to do now?”

  “You tell me.”

  He shook his head defiantly. “This is your show, this is your setup. You decide.”

  I put my hands behind my back and waited patiently, not saying a word.

  “Are you going to stay up there?” he asked.

  “I belong here.”

  “You belong in an asylum.”

  “I beg to differ.”

  “This is what all of this is about, isn’t it?” he asked, a cheeky smile spreading across his face. “Delusions of grandeur. You want to get back at the world for bullying you, for calling you ugly and weird, that’s why you kill, that’s why you destroy families, that’s why you wear a mask.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Don’t underestimate me, Lester. I’m not one of your pathetic criminals that you can manipulate with a few emotional tricks. I kill them because I like it, pure and simple.”

  “It’s sickening.”

  “Again, I beg to differ. As a race, we humans kill for food on a mass scale. We torture intelligent beings who feel pain just as much as we do, and we do it so we can buy ten hamburgers for a dollar, or have something to jam in our mouths when we get bored between TV programs. We torture them for cosmetics, just to make sure the shit that’s killing them doesn’t turn our eyebrows green or make our hair fall out. At least what I’m doing makes sense. I kill for pleasure, for a feeling that is unrivaled and cannot be achieved by any other means.”

  He didn’t seem to agree. “We kill for food, to survive; you kill for fun.”

  “To survive?” I laughed. “You’re telling me that an overweight Westerner with his Big Mac, his bacon sandwiches, and his heart clogged with ten pounds of animal fat, needs to kill an animal to live? Fuck off, Lester, I thought you were more intelligent than that.”

  “So what are you, some sort of radical vegetarian?”

  “Again, stop fucking around. I like meat just as much as the next man. I was making a point. This thing that you and society deem as unforgivable is no different from what man has been doing for centuries, no different from what we’ve been doing as a race since we crawled out of the ocean, developed brains, and then spent thousands of years trying not to use them.”

  “So if you kill at random, then why my kids?” he begged to know. “You didn’t need to do this. You got the fame that you wanted, the world is paying attention to you now. Why me, why my children?”

  I shrugged. “This was personal. I wanted to test you. To take away everything, to bring you to your knees. The great men are the ones that make their own way in life, the ones that drag themselves from the bottom and make it to the top. I did that and—”

  “Bullshit,” he spat, interrupting and infuriating me. “What bottom? You were a middle-class white boy with clothes on his back, a bed to sleep in, and a roof over his head.”

  “How dare—”

  “Let’s be honest, you’re just some puny little twit with maternal issues. A pathetic kid who was bullied all his life. There’s no two ways about it, that’s why you do what you do.”

  “That’s nonsense and you know it,” I said, trying to keep my cool but getting increasingly annoyed.

  “I beg to differ.”

  That, along with the smug smile on his face, was what tipped me over the edge. I jumped down from the stage and grabbed him by the throat. He was still smiling and didn’t seem to care when I tightened my grip. His expression also didn’t change when I pulled the switchblade out of my pocket and opened it close to his throat.

  “This is my show, Lester, stop trying to spoil it.”

  “But aren’t I part of the show, as well?” he asked. “Otherwise, why haven’t you killed me already?”

  We locked stares for a moment and then I stepped back, ripping off the mask. “You know what I look like, so there’s no point in hiding it.”

  Lester nodded and instinctively rubbed the spot on his throat where my hand had been. “The whole world has seen you, or at least a representation of you. And once this is over, everyone everywhere will be doing their best to find you. How do you plan on staying hidden?”

  “I have my ways,” I told him confidently. “But mostly I will be relying on others, because believe me, people are not as smart as you’re giving them credit for.”

  “Killing will be impossible. If there’s a murder in your area then someone will see you, they’ll put two and two together. Hell, they might even check CCTV. That didn
’t exactly work out for you last time, did it?”

  I shook my head, maintaining a smile. He was trying to mess with my moment, to cast doubts on my future and throw me off guard, but I knew exactly what he was doing and was happy to play along.

  “You see, that’s the issue with England, and with smaller countries. They don’t cater to the serial killers who truly want to make a name for themselves. They’re too small, too claustrophobic. The cities are the lifeblood of any country and the excitement that lures any killer, but here the cities are wrapped in cotton wool, mollycoddled by a paranoid government intent on making sure that every burglar, every mugger, every rapist, and every pickpocket is accounted for. Whether you’re strolling to the shops in your pajamas to buy some bread and milk, fucking some local fancy down some piss-stained alley, or relieving yourself against a lamppost in the dead of night, you’re watched and studied all hours of the day.”

  Lester shrugged. “I don’t know about that. You did well as The Masquerade.”

  I grinned. “Thank you for noticing, but that’s different and it bores me. These shitty little towns have nothing for me. I want something bigger, something more exciting.” I paused to allow myself a laugh. “That is, unless you stop me.”

  He didn’t find it as funny as I did.

  “It’s places like America where I can truly shine,” I continued for my one-man audience. “A country so vast and so grand that hundreds of people are murdered every day without anyone knowing and without anyone caring. There are probably hundreds of serial killers that have been unaccounted for, people without rhyme or reason who drive from state to state, ticking off prostitutes and hitchhikers to rack up a high score. With a bit of invention and the balls to own up to your crimes, a prolific killer could really make a name for himself there, cementing his place in history.”

  “And is that what you want?” Lester asked. “A place in history? Is that why you do what you do?”

  I could see that he didn’t have a genuine interest in what I had to say. He was playing my game, trying to lure me into a false sense of security, be my friend, but it wasn’t going to work. I was, however, willing to play dumb, but only because he intrigued me, because these were the moments that I longed for, the moments that I dreamed about. Here I was, face to face with my adversary, my equal in many ways, albeit to a much lesser extent. He was an adversary like Darren Henderson, a comrade like my father. He was both and neither, and he was the only non-blood-related person I had enjoyed speaking to since the cold December night I had ended Darren’s life.

  “That’s not the only reason,” I told him. “I enjoy what I do. And most of them have done something to deserve it anyway.”

  He shook his head. “Many of them were young girls. Innocent girls. They don’t deserve that; what could they have possibly done to deserve that?”

  I laughed and shook my head. “No one gets it, no one truly understands. It hasn’t changed and it never does. These people are locked away in their pathetic little lives, completely oblivious to the outside world, to all the little demons that scurry about and threaten their perfect families, their perfect careers, their perfect selves.” I stamped my foot and expected Lester to jump. He didn’t even flinch. “I’m the threat, I’m the demon, I’m the one who disrupts, causes chaos. These people do nothing wrong on the face of it. They’re not killers, they’re not abusers, but they deserve to die, because ignorance and stupidity is just as bad as all of those things.”

  “I get it,” Lester said, nodding. “I really do, and I believe you. I’ve walked in your shoes, I know how you think. I know how your brain operates.”

  I laughed at him, giving his pathetic response the reply that it warranted. “You don’t have a clue what I do or why I do it. I’m not on a mission for the greater good, I’m not a whack-job who thinks that by stripping away the rust of civilization the foundation will thrive. I do what I do for myself and no one else. I do what I do because I like it.”

  “And why the women?” he asked. “Why, if there is no sexual motive, did you kill so many young girls?”

  “Ah!” I put my hands together and squeezed, allowing him to see my face light up as if I were recalling a fond memory. “Back to this. Why indeed? I have no idea. Maybe it just feels right, maybe it’s just easier, maybe—”

  “Maybe they remind you of your mother?”

  I thrust the knife at him, the point of the blade just a few inches from his throat. “Don’t you dare talk about my fucking mother!” I ordered.

  “But that’s it, isn’t it? That’s what all this is about. That’s certainly what Irene Henderson was all about.”

  I kept the knife pressed to his throat, lifting the blade up and down as he swallowed, tracing the movement of his Adam’s apple. “Believe me, Lester, I have killed many men. Maybe not wearing that mask, maybe not under the guise of The Masquerade, but many men and boys have died by my hand. Your son included.”

  He flinched at that.

  I grinned, eased off. “Irene Henderson. Now, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.”

  “You ruined her life.”

  “That may be so, but I didn’t kill her.”

  “She would have been better off dead. You scared the life out of her and left nothing but an empty shell.” Lester spoke without emotion, without the crippling fear or the capitulating emotional anxiety that I could forgive him for expressing. This lack of emotion had nothing to do with the fact that he was a policeman. I had encountered plenty of them, both experienced and naive, and they hadn’t shared this apathetic facade, this vacant stare. It was something else entirely and it intrigued me.

  “And what about you, Lester Keats? Why are you an empty shell, as you so eloquently put it? What or who scared the life out of you?”

  Lester continued to stare, not flinching. “That’s none of your fucking business,” he said slowly.

  “You realize I have a knife pointed at your throat, right?”

  “Do you think that scares me?”

  “Evidently not.”

  We locked stares again.

  “I like you, Lester.”

  “I want to kill you, Herman.”

  “You’re not the first.”

  “But I will be the last.”

  I pulled back, keeping the knife close. “The truth is, I know why you broke, Lester. I know about your wife. I know your kids grew to resent you for her death.”

  “That had nothing to do with it.”

  I shrugged. “You’re right, maybe they just thought you were a useless cunt. But either way, they hated you.”

  I could see the anger flare behind his eyes as he recalled everything they had put him through and everything he regretted saying and doing to them.

  “I know about the incident with the drug dealer. In fact, that’s when I really started to like you. You see, you’re a lot like me, Lester. You may not realize it, but we’re very similar. In a different time, a different place, we could have been good friends. Brothers.”

  I could see the anger increasing; his lips were instinctively curling in distaste as I spoke those words.

  “You’re not as pure as I am. You’re not as honest with yourself as you need to be. But … you remind me of someone I respected once.”

  His demeanor changed in an instant. He grinned. “The Butcher?”

  My face dropped. I gave him a curious, shocked stare. “What did you say?”

  “You’re not always the most intelligent person in the room, Herman. You don’t always know more than everyone else. I figured it all out. Your father was The Butcher and you tried to follow in his footsteps, but you failed.”

  His grin was bigger, his confidence had increased. I was speechless.

  “He died, so you tried to take on his legend, didn’t you? That’s what all of this is about. You want to do what your father didn’t, you want to become the person he failed to be. The person you failed to be when you let your anger get the better of you fifteen years ago.”


  “Anger had nothing to do with it,” I said. “They weren’t where they should have been. That was their fault, not mine.”

  Lester laughed. “Well then, I guess they paid for that mistake, didn’t they?”

  “How do you know about my father?”

  Lester was enjoying this. I could tell. He shifted forward, but I reacted quickly, pressing the knife back to his throat. He didn’t seem to mind and spoke like nothing had happened. “If you really want to know, it occurred to me a number of years ago. A woman I was looking into was reported missing around the start of The Butcher’s reign. I wondered if the two were connected. Your father always fit the profile and as soon as I realized that she couldn’t possibly still be alive, I made that connection.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “That woman was your mother, Herman. I know your father killed her.”

  I didn’t speak a word, but I watched his face change as he stared at me, and I realized that my expression spoke for itself.

  “You didn’t know? Come on, you must have.” I could feel his breath on my face. “Did you know the police investigated your father after your mother went missing? Did you know they suspected he had killed her, but couldn’t find any proof? There were at least half a dozen reports of assault, none of which she followed through with. He beat the shit out of her, Herman, but every time he convinced her not to press charges. He manipulated her like only a true sociopath can.”

  “You seem to know a lot about common assault, Lester. Did you beat your wife, as well?” He laughed again. I knew he could sense the unease in my voice. “It must have been hard to grow up around all of that violence,” he said. “Witnessing all of that anger and then losing your mother …” He shook his head slowly, the point of the knife tickling the skin on his neck. “God knows what that would have done to a child’s mind. That’s why you kill, isn’t it? That’s what turned you into a monster. Your mother was the only person you loved and having to watch her suffer before losing her completely, that fucked you up.”

  That amused me immensely and I laughed to express this amusement, but in doing so I gave him the opportunity that he had been waiting for. He swung his arm and caught me on the wrist, not enough to knock the knife out of my hand, but enough to direct it away from his throat. Then, with his free hand, he punched me in the face. I was still taken aback, still a little fazed, so I didn’t see the punch coming until it landed.