This Is How You Die Page 9

  I nodded. “Just give me some time and I promise, you’ll be a different man when I’m finished with you.”

  He seemed content with that, and I was happy that he was happy, because it gave me something to look forward to.

  We watched television in silence for another two hours, during which time he slipped into the abyss that had been calling his name all day. Realizing it was time to do what needed to be done, I turned off the television and walked over to him. I stood over him and watched him for a few moments, wondering just how bad one person’s life had to be for them to turn into the polar opposite of what their brother had been. He had always insisted that life hadn’t given him the breaks, but it couldn’t have been just that. You make your own luck in life and you create your own breaks; there are options, get-out clauses if you will, that can take away your pain and make life more bearable, but these options come with side effects and invariably leave you a worthless, decaying pile of flesh by the time you reach middle age. My uncle had taken every available get-out clause and now his existence was an excuse, a lie. He lived to pretend that he wasn’t living; he drowned out his mind, silenced his body, and dumbed down everything that made him human in an effort to ignore the pain, the regret, the fear, and the doubt, emotions that make us human to begin with.

  I put my hand on his throat and wrapped my fingers around. I stared at his eyelids as I did so and he didn’t stir. I tightened my grip, feeling his warm flesh yield against my palm. I felt a pulse; it was incredibly faint but it was still there. He would be lucky if he ever woke up again, but there was a good chance that he didn’t want to anyway.

  I backed away, picked up my Santa sack, and then left. I was heading out into the night, into the blackness and the chill of Christmas Eve, just a couple hours from Christmas morning. I was leaving my house a virgin and a child, but I would return as a man with experience. I was leaving as a nobody, but I would return as The Butcher.

  PART 2

  1

  Lester Keats held his hands over his mouth as he watched the video, and with each passing second, he felt like pushing them up over his eyes. The onscreen image seemed fairly innocuous, just one young man walking down the street, in tune with his festive surroundings and as innocent as innocent could be, but this wasn’t the first time he had seen the video and Lester knew what came next.

  He still remembered the first time he had seen it. He had been one of the lucky few who hadn’t witnessed the crime scene in full, the ones whose dreams wouldn’t be haunted by everything they had seen and the ones who wouldn’t need to be medicated to keep those dreams at bay. But he hadn’t really been lucky; it had only intensified the shock of what he had seen in the video.

  The boy was wearing a Santa Claus outfit with a sack thrown over his back and a big white beard covering much of his face. It was Christmas Eve, just a few hours before the big clock in the town square rang out the sound of midnight and the climax of the festive season. The streets were empty and, although there was no sound on the video, Lester had always been able to hear the dull, crunching footsteps of the boy’s big boots as they slapped on snow-encrusted pavement. It wasn’t quite a white Christmas, but it was close. He had actually remembered the year and the excitement because his two children had been watching out of their bedroom windows when the snow began to fall.

  “Daddy, Daddy! It’s snowing, it’s going to be a white Christmas after all!”

  They were half-right, but just twenty-four hours after their excited cheers, as Lester finished stuffing their presents into stockings and preparing for bed, someone was preparing a different-colored Christmas on the streets of a small town many miles away. He remembered the mince pie he had left out for Santa Claus and he remembered the bite he had taken out of it before leaving it on the table. But after that night, and across the entire country, Saint Nick had lost his saintly image.

  This Santa left red footprints in the snow as he walked. The prints were too faint to be seen on the old CCTV recording, but they were still there in the morning when the press arrived. The image of those bloody boots backtracking to a slaughter in the town square was what many people saw on the morning news. Lester had lived a good hundred miles away from the town, but he still remembered the impact the prints had. He still remembered how that single image had come to personify evil, to strip a season of its joy.

  The footage changed as the boy crossed the street and stepped out of one camera shot and into another. That followed a period where the boy disappeared down a side street and the camera seemed lost. It cut to another camera, this one located in the town square, which was surrounded on three sides by woodland, the fourth open to the main street. The camera pointed at four youngsters, roughly the same age as the kid in the Santa suit. There were two boys and two girls. They were nuisance kids who got into a lot of trouble, but were ultimately good at heart and certainly didn’t deserve what they got.

  Lester removed his hands from his mouth and sighed. He knew every detail of the video, but the next part was what haunted him the most. The young boys and girls were drinking and smoking, having their own little holiday fun. Their attentions were diverted when the kid in the Santa suit appeared, stepping out from the forest and stopping a short distance from them.

  They were all sitting down, smiling and smirking at him as he stood there. Lester didn’t know if the boy in the Santa suit spoke; he always imagined he remained silent, like some horror movie villain, waiting for the others to react. And react they did.

  Barry Barlow, the bigger of the two boys, stepped forward first. He walked up to the boy in the costume and began talking down to him. He prodded him in the chest, laughing, joking, before turning around to face his friends and to get their support. He was facing his friends when the boy in the Santa suit pulled a machete from his sack.

  They realized what was about to happen, but they were too shocked to react. Barlow, still playing the clown, never stood a chance.

  The first blow was quick and deadly. Lester had always been shocked by how cold and simple it seemed. It was as if he expected some backing music, an excessive amount of blood squirting from the wound, or a kung-fu twirl from the attacker. But it was just a simple hack, the blade catching Barry on the forehead and penetrating his skull.

  Barry slumped to the ground like a sack of potatoes. That was the first strike, the first casualty. It wouldn’t be the last.

  The boy moved quickly, taking his sack with him. One of the girls fought back, but he killed her just as quickly as he killed Barry. The blade severed several arteries in her neck and, just to make sure, he delivered another blow to her arm and then to her face as she fell, her body collapsing in stages.

  The killer seemed to make a beeline for Darren Henderson, the second boy. In his desperation to escape, Henderson threw the other girl in his way, using her as a human shield before sprinting into the forest.

  The killer was taken by surprise and nearly dropped his weapon. The girl could have stopped him there and then. If she had possessed the same spirit as her friend, the murder spree might have ended, but she was too feeble, too scared, and too submissive. He twisted her around, pressed her up against him, and then forced the blade through her back, into her heart, before throwing her limp body on top of her friends.

  For a moment, he watched Darren trying to escape, beating a hasty and almost drunken retreat as adrenaline and fear took over. He looked over his shoulder several times, and with each glance he seemed to become a little slower, a little clumsier. The killer seemed to enjoy watching him run away. Eventually, he dug around in his sack and took out a crossbow. He stood on the nearby wall, took aim, and put an arrow through Darren’s calf, just as he disappeared from view.

  Acting as though he had all of the time in the world, the killer carefully reloaded and put an arrow through the head of each teenager. They were already dead, but he clearly wanted to make sure. He then took his sack over to Darren, out of view of the camera.

  Lester had s
een the pictures of the butchered boy. He had seen the agony and the humiliation that he had suffered. Lester had grown violently sick the first time and he hadn’t been able to sleep properly for weeks. He was glad the rest hadn’t been caught on video and that he didn’t have to watch it happen in real-time. He had been on the force for two decades, he had seen children abused and raped, and he had also seen his fair share of graphic traffic accidents and murders, but none of that had prepared him to see what had been left of Darren Henderson, some fifteen years ago now.

  “Right. Turn it off. That’s enough,” Lester said, slowly shaking his head. The tape continued for another hour and in the final moments of that hour, they would be able to see the killer walking back across the town center on his way home. But watching those dead bodies on the floor and knowing what was happening just a dozen feet away from them was still too much for Lester.

  They didn’t have much to go on, but they caught a few lucky breaks. The cameras themselves had been one of those breaks, and an ironic one at that. They had been installed a couple weeks prior to the event. The city’s hand had been forced following a number of thefts from shops in the area, most of which had been committed by Darren Henderson, Barry Barlow, and their friends.

  “This was the first time he struck, huh?” Matt Steinberg asked. He was one of the pencil pushers in the office. He hadn’t set foot on the streets for years and had spent that time in the office, filing papers, scanning documents, and digging through the archives when requested.

  “No. He was at the house first.”

  “Ah yes, that’s right. I remembering hearing about this kid,” Matt said. “Brutal stuff. He killed a young ’un as well, didn’t he?”

  Lester ran a hand through his hair and nodded. He hadn’t slept much, the case playing heavy on his mind. He had been short with his kids and popping a few too many of the pain pills his “doctor” prescribed him. His mind was on the edge and the costumed killer he had just seen was the main reason.

  “Just before he headed to the town square.” Lester began, reciting a story about which he knew every detail, “he went to Henderson’s home. He was expecting to find Darren there, but he wasn’t. They had argued, changed their plans at the last minute. That was why Darren was out getting drunk and avoiding his family on the one night of the year he should have been with them.” Lester sighed. He hadn’t been there, but he had been fascinated with the case and the brutality of it. He had seen everything it had produced, including crime scene photographs and evidence.

  “He killed Darren’s brother and his father, but he left the mother. He tied her up, sat her down, and then spoke to her. She said he was bitter, that he had a lot of issues. She said he told her things about her son and his friends, how they were vermin and how they served no purpose. He told her that he wasn’t a vigilante and he wasn’t doing it to be a hero, but that Darren’s death would be for the best.”

  “Jesus.”

  “He let her go after that. There was something about her, something that he liked. He didn’t try anything, no sexual contact or anything like that, but she sensed there was something there.”

  “Odd.”

  Lester nodded. “Hardly the oddest thing he did though, was it?” Lester allowed himself a cheeky smile. “She reckons that he had a thing for her. She said she could see it in his eyes, as if he was in a trance, ‘like he was there but wasn’t there,’ was how she put it, if I remember.” He knew that was exactly what she had said because he could remember every single word on her statement.

  “Didn’t he kill eight?”

  Lester nodded. “He returned home to slit his uncle’s throat, at least as far as we could tell from what was left of him. He burned the house down after that.”

  Matt shook his head in a moment of disbelief and reflection. “All that from a sixteen-year-old kid, amazing.”

  Lester nodded, although he didn’t think that amazing was the right word to use.

  “In hindsight, I suppose it’s a shame he killed himself. It would have been great to know why he did it,” Matt said.

  “You think he killed all those people and then committed suicide?” Lester asked.

  “Happens all the time, doesn’t it?” Matt sat back, released a slow breath. “Wouldn’t be the first bullied kid to go on a rampage and then kill himself.”

  It did happen all the time, but Lester had always suspected something was different about this time. The murders were swift and brutal, but he had known what he was doing. Not only did it take a lot of power to overcome four teenagers, and a lot of guts to butcher them, but to overpower three grown adults, tying one of them up and killing the other two, that required something else. There was a method to his madness. This was backed up by the fact that Herman’s childhood home had been burned to the ground on the same night. It was an arson attack that cooked the remains of Herman’s uncle and conveniently destroyed any evidence in the house.

  “You realize they never found the body, right?” Lester reminded him. He’d heard the theory that Herman had died in the fire, as if his remains turned to dust. He hoped Steinberg wasn’t dumb enough to believe that, but he wouldn’t have been surprised.

  Matt shrugged. “Doesn’t mean anything.”

  It meant everything, actually. It also meant that Steinberg didn’t know what he was talking about, which, Lester suspected, was why his role in the force now consisted of shuffling papers and making cups of tea.

  Matt flopped forward on his chair. He shot a curious glance at Lester, as if he could hear his thoughts. “He was a loner. What was his name, Herman something, right?”

  Lester cringed when he heard the name. Steinberg sensed his discomfort and mirrored it, shifting in his seat, looking around for a distraction and then settling for an exaggerated yawn.

  “So how you doing?” Steinberg continued awkwardly. “Word around the station is that this Masquerade guy is sending you stuff, mementoes and what not, is that right?”

  “That’s confidential.”

  It was also bullshit. Lester’s attitude had taken a nose dive over recent months and a rumor had spread that the reason he was so snappy, the reason he was constantly in a bad mood, and the reason he always looked tired was because The Masquerade had been toying with him. Lester was just fed up, sick of his life, his surroundings, and his job. It also didn’t help that he had been working on this case for years and only seemed to be getting further and further away from discovering just who the killer was.

  “I understand, I’m just saying, there’s a serial killer out there that’s targeting you. Mocking you. I can understand what you must be thinking and feeling. It’s natural to jump to conclusions.”

  Lester glared at the man opposite and then picked up the remote for the television. “Stick to your computers and files, Matt,” he said, handing it to him. “Leave the thinking for someone else.” He left without saying another word.

  2

  The Masquerade had been active for eight years, killing a dozen people that they knew about. He wore a mask and he talked to his victims, unleashing a torrent of cynicism, telling them they were worthless or that he was doing them a favor by taking their life. There were few connections and he seemingly killed at random. At least, that’s what the reports said and that’s what the press said. Lester had his own suspicions. He considered The Masquerade to be some kind of fucked-up vigilante. Batman without a conscience or morals. Many of the people he killed had been on the police radar; some of them were just out-and-out cunts, by all accounts. Of course, there were also those who had done very little wrong, people who would be considered normal, even likable to the average person. The Masquerade was not the average person and he clearly didn’t suffer fools.

  None of them had survived to tell anyone about his proclivity towards soliloquies, his need to make them suffer, but there had been a couple of witnesses. The first was a homeless addict and not the best witness, but his story had been enough to give the press what they needed. The seco
nd witness had been there for the fourth murder, by which time the killer was already well known by his theatrical nom de plume. This witness had been an elderly man who lived in the apartment next to the victim, and although he hadn’t seen anything, he had heard most of it.

  “He told her how he thought what she did was pointless,” Lester remembered the elderly man saying. “How being a nurse helped nobody and only served to prolong the lives of those already destined to die.” The man also recounted a conversation about the army, most likely after he had seen pictures of her husband, who was serving in Iraq at the time. He belittled that just like he had belittled everything else, and he did it so he could be the center of attention and so he could have his moment while his victim breathed her last breath.

  The old man hadn’t known what was going on and didn’t call the police until she screamed. By the time they arrived, the killer was long gone, leaving no sign of ever being there but for a bloodied and butchered young woman and an elderly neighbor whose life would soon be cut short by a massive heart attack, precipitated by chronic night terrors and unremitting paranoia.

  Lester had another theory about the killer, something to do with the Whitegate massacre fifteen years earlier, but so far that was all it was, a theory. He hadn’t told anyone about it yet, but Matt was a gossip, running his mouth to make himself feel important. It was just a matter of time before he put two and two together and Lester’s theory became widespread knowledge throughout the office. Once that happened, Lester’s life would be even less worth living than it already was.

  “Keats, get in here!” He looked up to see Atwood standing in the doorway to his office. He was displaying a mean and self-important look, like he was ready to tear someone apart. This was normal. He scared the shit out of rookies because even when he was praising them, he looked like he was about to ram a fist up their ass and use them like a sycophantic puppet to sing his own praises.