Salutations, fair readers! It is with the utmost regret that I inform you I made a slight boo boo in not mentioning that none of the Loud House characters are related to each other outside of Lincoln and Lemy. In this tale, Lyra is not Lemy's sister at all, simply his girlfriend, and Luna was merely Lincoln's wife rather than a blood relation. Please accept my sincerest apologies.
In the heat of the day, the killer retreated into his lair, the curtains drawn heavily against the pressing California sun. The TV was on, but he wasn't watching it; naked save for a Nazi armband, he paged lazily through a cracked leather-bound book. PRECIOUS MEMORIES said the gold script across the front, and the killer smiled knowingly to himself every time he read it.
Inside, the pages were stiff black cardboard. Carefully taped to each one was a newspaper clipping. The earliest was dated December 15, 2013. MAN ATTACKED IN HOME blared the headline. Below that: Studio City Man Beaten With Tire Iron. The next was dated December 28, 2013: MAN SHOT, WOUNDED IN ENCINO. The most recent was dated June 1, 2018. WOMAN BEATEN, RAPED.
As the killer flipped through book, his mind drfied. It started, more or less, when he was fifteen. At night, when the world slept, he'd walk the neighborhood, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. Whenever he passed a house with blue TV glow in the window, he'd stop and wonder what it would be like to kick the door in. How would the owner react? What would they do? What would he do?
The subdivision he lived in at the time covered twenty acres north of the city, an endless nervous system of streets, roads, and avenues lined with expensive houses and fat, ancient trees. Sometimes he imagined going into the houses and killing people, clearing entire blocks before sunrise. He could do it, he was certain, as long as none of the houses had security systems, which he knew they did.
When he was seventeen, he finally worked up the courage to break into one. It was a tall, three story adobe structure with a red terra cotta roof and palm trees lining a flagstone walk. The guy who owned it travelled a lot and was never home.
Deep in the dark night, the killer broke the lock on a back window and climbed in. He wandered the halls and sitting rooms, touching things, moving things, relishing the secret POWER he now wielded. In the master bedroom, he found a Colt Woodsman in a nightstand drawer, and tucked it into the waistband of his jeans. This belongs to me now, he thought, and there's nothing you can do to stop me.
By the time he got home an hour later, he was shaky and weak, and as he drifted to sleep at dawn, he realized he wanted to do it again.
Two weeks later, he did, picking a house at random on one of his nightly walks and watching it for three days before jimmying open a sliding glass door and slipping in like a shadow. He went from room to room, rummaging through drawers, dressers, cupboards, and cabinets, touching everything, eating food from the fridge, and leaving a turd in one of the toilets. He found photo albums on a bookshelf in a living room, and sat down in the middle of the floor to read them. Vacation photos. Christmas. Birthdays. A black family. Two boys and a girl, mother, father.
He took the photo albums with him when he left. They were still in his closet, and he flipped through them from time to time, studying the smiling faces and trying to feel what they felt. He smiled at himself in the mirror in the bathroom, and while it was convincing, it wasn't real. It felt cold and alien on his face.
It took him awhile to realize that that's how it was supposed to feel. Joy, love, happiness...it was all fake. The only joy he ever felt was when he was breaking into houses, and after a while even that started to lose its luster.
When he was nineteen, he figured out a way to make it fun again.
He would break into a house with someone in it.
The first was a one story Spanish style house at the end of a dead end street. An old woman lived there alone. Her name was Mrs. Johnson and she was a teacher at one point. The killer cased the place for two weeks, building himself up only to chicken out at the last second on several occasions. Finally, on a Sunday night, he removed a screen from a window and climbed in, his heart slamming and adrenaline coursing through his veins. He crept through the darkened rooms with a smile on his face, feeling alive for the first time in months. He fingered drapes and couch pillows, rubbed his crotch against a doorframe, and ate an apple from a basket on the counter, leaving the core on the dining room table as a calling card. Apples...forbidden knowledge, it was in the Bible.
Before he left, he went into the old woman's room and stood over her sleeping form, his hard eyes boring into her and his lips arranged in a hateful sneer. He could kill her...break her neck like snapping a toothpick...her life rested in his hands, and the godlike feeling made him erect.
On his way out, he stole a handful of costume jewelry...not because he wanted it, but because he wanted to remember the rush of power he felt being in her room...at night...undetected.
He did it again three nights later, breaking into a house through the back door. Ancient linoleum cracked underfoot, shadows fled across walls, and in one of the rooms off the main hall, a TV played. His heart slammed as he went to the closed door, his eyes going to the soft electric glow filling the crack underneath. A TV being on meant that someone might be awake...he could be caught...forced to flight...or fight. His nerve endings crackled with energy, and as he pressed his ear to the wood, his penis began to harden.
Seinfeld.
They were watching Seinfeld. The episode where Jerry's girlfriend has 'man hands.' The killer flashed a wide, toothy grin. He liked that one. Maybe he should go in...and watch it with his new friend. If he or she was awake, they could laugh along with the audience, and it he or she wasn't, The Killer could sit on the edge of the bed and risk them seeing him.
That sounded fun.
Instead of doing that, though, he went into the kitchen and made himself a sandwich; he leaned against the counter as he ate, mentally daring one of the occupants to come out and challenge him. None of them did, however, and before he left, he took their DVD player away. Two blocks south, he smashed it against the street and kicked the shattered pieces along the pavement, hoping someone ran it over come morning and wound up with a flat.
Sneaking into occupied houses became a twice weekly ritual for him, then a thrice weekly ritual as the warm glow it provided began to diminish. When he was entirely bored of it, he started to carry the Colt...and a tire iron. He itched to use it, prayed that someone would catch him, but no one did. He grew bolder. One night he went into someone's bedroom and nudged them awake, a man with a bald pate and a pug nose. He muttered and snorted.
Like a pig.
Disgust came over the killer, and before he knew what he was doing, he was raising the iron above his head...then bringing it down. The end hit the man's head with a hollow thunk, and he jerked as though he'd been shot. The Killer did this twice more before leaving him for dead. He read in the next day's paper that he survived.
Pity.
He went farther afield the next time, driving to Encino. Inside a lower middle class bungalow with peeling paint, he was caught: A man walked out a bedroom while The Killer was looking through a living room bookshelf.
"Hey!"
Instinct took over; he whipped out the Colt, aimed, and pulled the trigger, the round catching the man in the shoulder and spinning him around. Panicking, he ran, and for a long time he was hesitant to do it again, but the call was too great.
No one knew it, but this city belonged to him. He walked the streets at night like a demon, wielding such unimaginable power that mortal men would quake before him if only they imagined.
Presently, the 12 o'clock news came on, and the killer looked up. When the anchor started talking about what he'd done the night before, his stomach dropped. Double murder they said, violent home invasion, they said.
He closed the book and set it aside. Moving deliberately, cat-like, he got closer to the TV, until he was sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning forward, his hands clasped on his knees.
Wow.
He was somebody now.
He grinned like a shark.
Just wait until tonight, Mr. Anchorman...just wait until tonight.
Lincoln Loud came slowly and groggily awake in a spill of weak afternoon light. He was lying on his stomach, the side of his face buried in the pillow and his knees digging into the mattress, elevating him slightly.
Blinking the sleep from his eyes, he stared at the face of the digital alarm clock until the numbers made sense: 5;45pm.
Sighing, he rolled over, kicked his legs over the edge, and sat up, his head spinning. He raked one hand through his white hair and rubbed the heel of his palm against his aching temple.
It happened again.
The dream.
Hot tears welled in his eyes, and he blinked them back; he saw Luna on the backs of his eyelids, her face sunken, skin wan, eyes muddled gray with sickness and coming death. As always, he was standing by her bedside, her hand in his, just as he had in real life. Only in the dream, she wasn't dying...she had already died but came back and was dying again. Her touch was cold, dry, that of a corpse, and when she spoke the words I love you, Lincoln, her voice was a hissing rattle.
He never dreamed of her any other way. They had nearly twenty-five happy years together, so many precious memories, so many laughs and tender kisses...and he only dreamed of her sick and dying.
With a sigh, he got to his feet and shuffled into the master bath on socked feet, snapping on the light and peeling out of his wife-beater. Next came his pants, underwear, and socks. Naked now, he turned the water as hot as he could stand and got into the shower, where he let the water cascade over his tense, tired body. Not for the first time, he considered retirement. He was just over ten years from his pension - something that every homicide detective works toward - but he didn't know if it was worth it anymore. The stress, the hours, the not being there for his son…
He let that thought trail off and sought refuge in the only thing he had to hide himself behind: Work. The ballistics should be back by now, and maybe, just maybe, they'd have gotten lucky with a witness.
When he was done, he got out, toweled off, and then went into his room. He took underwear and a pair of gray pants from the dresser and pulled them on, then a white button up. He shrugged into his shoulder rig, clipped his badge to his belt, and slipped into a gray sports coat. After putting on socks and shoes, he went into the kitchen and found Lemy leaning against the counter while waiting for something in the microwave, his arms crossed over his chest and his head bowed. He looked up when Lincoln entered and smirked. "Look who's up."
"Barely," Lincoln said, going to the fridge. He opened it and grabbed a can of Coke. "It was an early day."
"I figured," Lemy said, "you were gone when I got up. Someone do somebody wrong?"
Lincoln chuckled and took a long, grateful drink, the liquid cold against his dry throat. "Three somebodies," he said.
Lemy's brow furrowed in confusion. "Three people were done wrong or three people did somebody wrong?"
"Triple murder."
Lemy winced.
Before Luna died, Lincoln discussed his cases with her. He had to - you can't keep all of that bottled up inside of you...if you try, it'll eventually come out and you'll wind up sticking your service weapon in your mouth. Now that she was gone, it was Lemy; the poor kid bore the brunt of L.A.'s worst on a daily basis, but he did it without complaint, and even gave thoughtful advice where he could just as his mother had done.
Lincoln took another drink. "Three women." His mind flashed back to the crime scene, and a rush of hatred went through him. "One of them raped."
"Jesus," Lemy breathed, then shuddered. "Man, I don't know how you do it. I couldn't take dealing with that shit."
"Someone has to," Lincoln said. He finished his soda and dropped the empty into the trash. "I'll try to be home early tonight," he said and clapped Lemy's arm.
Lemy smiled. "Alright."
As Lincoln drove to the station, he tried to pinpoint just exactly it was he saw in his son's eyes as he spoke that final word. He was walking into the bullpen when it hit him: Doubt. I'm not holding my breath, that look said. Been there, done that.
He started to feel sorry for himself, but didn't have the time: Clyde was already at the desk, and when he saw Lincoln coming, he waved him over.
"Mr. Sleepy-Head," Clyde said as he walked up, "you missed a lot."
Lincoln's heart jagged. "What?" he asked.
Clyde snatched a paper off the desk and held in up so he could read it. "Ballistics are back. The bullet we dug out of the wall? Came from the same gun used to kill Ray Mancini."
Lincoln's brow shot up. "The same gun?"
"Yessir," Clyde said. "Whoever did him did the girls on 38th." He picked an envelope up from the desk and handed it to Lincoln. "Plus...you got mail, buddy."
Lincoln took is hesitantly, looking from Clyde to it with suspicion. The writing on the front was blocky and red. DETECTIVE LINCOLN LOUD it said. The return address was: 123 FAKE STREET, HELLTOWN USA, 6666666.
He looked at Clyde, and the same thought passed between them: This can't be good.
Swallowing, Lincoln ripped open the envelope and pulled out a single sheet of paper. As he read it, his heart dropped.
"What?" Clyde asked.
Lincoln read it aloud.
Dear Lincoln Loud,
I heard it through the grapevine that you're dealing with what I did last night. Same old song and dance, my friend. But you know what? Hell ain't a bad place to be, not when you've gone shootin like I have. Speaking of shootin, I shot that Mancini guy. Put three in his tummy. I didn't like it though. Guns are too impersonal. I like to get up close. Like I did last night.
You could say it was love at first feel. I plan to killing more. Many more. It ain't no fun waitin round to be a millionaire, and I'm done waiting for the powerage. By the end of the summer, the whole world will know my name.
Come along for the ride? You'll be famous too. We'll ALL be famous.
See you on the other side. It's time to ride on.
PS If you want to find out who I am, do your homework.
Love,
The Night Prowler.
Though Clyde was fairly dark, his face was white now.
Lincoln scanned the note again, and shook his head. This was bad. Real bad.
They were dealing with a serial killer.
After meeting with Captain Reynolds, Lincoln called Lemy. He answered on the third ring.
"Hello?"
"Hey, it's me," Lincoln said. He was standing in the hallway. Cops were moving around him, some speaking, but many silent.
"Hey, dad, what's up?"
Lincoln licked his lips. "Look, something came up. Something big. I won't be home for a while."
When a case blew up the way this one had, Lincoln slept in one of the conference rooms off the hall he was standing in. He didn't know if he'd do that tonight (he wasn't planning on it), but he knew like hell he wouldn't be home before midnight at the earliest.
He felt a twinge of shame when he told his son this.
"Alright," Lemy said. "I'm out with Gordon and Lyra anyway. I probably won't be home until midnight either."
Gordon was the lead singer of Lemy's band. Lyra was Lemy's girlfriend. Though she wasn't officially their manager, she knew people (thanks to her rich daddy); in fact, it was her who booked last night's show.
"Alright. I'll call you later."
"Okay," Lemy said.
"I love you," Lincoln said, and he meant it.
"I love you too, dad."
The killer drove aimlessly north on the freeway as afternoon gave way to evening, lost in the constant flow of Los Angeles traffic.
From Downtown, he headed west, through Beverly Hills, with its manicured gardens and fashionable shops. He watched the pretty girls walking along the sidewalk, their skirts short and their sunglasses big, and briefly considered kidnapping one of them. If he was lucky he'd get the daughter of a famous actor. That'd Make the world sit up and take notice.
The only thing that stopped him was the realization that the law would come down on him hard. You take a black prostitute and no one cares, but you take a Kardashian and they'll send the fucking military after you.
Shaking his head, he drove south toward Santa Monica. Purple dusk lay over the city now, and by the time he reached Santa Monica Blvd, stars twinkled in the sky.
For a long time, he sat in a parking lot overlooking the Pacific, smoking and listening to the radio. The surf had been gnarly that day, bro, and a group of surfers sat around a bonfire laughing and drinking beer, enjoying the night. The killer remembered a scene from The Lost Boys where a similar group of beer drinkers fell victim to a bunch of rabid vampires, and smiled. He briefly considered getting out of the car, walking over, and blasting all of them, but thought better of it. Herb Mullin had done something similar in 1973, blasting a bunch of boys on a camping trip, but he did that in the mountains north of San Fran, not in the middle of a fucking city. Someone would see him, the killer realized, and he'd be caught.
With a sad sigh, then, he put the car in drive and drove east, eventually joining the southward flow of traffic on the San Diego Freeway. At Culver City, he got off and parked across from a Shell station at the foot of the off-ramp. As he waited, he scanned the radio news. Earlier he heard something about the two bitches he killed, but that was it. Nothing since. Nothing about them. Nothing about the letter. Nothing at all.
Rage swept through him. He did not like to be ignored. God, what do you have to do in this day and age, blow up a daycare center?
Guess he'd have to make tonight's outing extra gruesome.
At midnight, the killer drove further away from the highway. At a cul-de-sac lined with two story homes, he parked under a streetlight and killed the engine. On Sirius XM Hair Nation, Accept was blistering through Balls to the Wall. The killer tapped the wheel to the beat as he surveyed the houses around him. He hadn't staked these out. But that was okay. The not knowing was half the fun.
Finally, he decided on the only one story house on the block, a withered little thing nearly hidden between two of its larger neighbors. He took his kill kit from the passenger side footwell and took out the mask, the knife, a length of rope, a screwdriver, and the flashlight. The pistol was already in his pocket.
At 1:58 AM, he got out of the car and walked across the street. A narrow alleyway ran between the little house and its western neighbor: A green garden hose lay coiled in the dust, next to a battered red Radio Flyer wagon. The backyard was full of shadows. Standing here, the neighbors on either side could see him if they were awake.
Trembling with excitement, he tried the back door. It was locked, but he had the screwdriver.
After jimmying the door open, he slipped into the kitchen and closed the door behind him. The house was dark and silent, save for the distant sound of snoring.
Moving as silently as possible, the killer searched the house, but save for the snoring fucks, it was empty.
Perfect.
The master bedroom door was slightly ajar. He eased it open and slipped in. Two forms lay under the covers. The killer crept to the larger one and squinted down. A man. Chubby. Late thirties. Stupid goatee. Sudden hatred gripped the killer's heart, and he raised the flashlight over his head.
Sensing something, the man stirred, and his eyes fluttered open.
The killer brought the flashlight down square on the man's face. He gasped and jerked. The killer struck him again, harder this time, bringing the flashlight down with such force that the man's nose broke in a burst of blood.
On the other side of the bed, the woman sat up. "Wha...?" she started, then, seeing him, screamed and tumbled out of bed. Bitch. The killer scrambled across the mattress (and over the man), grabbing a handful of her hair before she could flee. She cried out, but he clamped a hand over her mouth and dragged her back, over her husband's trembling body. On the floor, over her, the killer raised his fist and smashed her in the face, once, twice, three times. He was panting now. Losing control. "You fuck," he growled, grabbing her by the throat and squeezing. "You fucker!" She thrashed and tried to scream, but could only gurgle deep in her throat.
"Bitch. Bitch, bitch," the killer chanted, his fingernails digging deep into the soft flesh of her throat.
He eyes rolled back into her head and she went limp.
Panting even harder now, the killer got to his feet and kicked her in the leg. Behind him, the husband moaned.
The killer had almost forgotten him.
When he turned, the man was starting to stir.
The flashlight was on the floor, where he'd dropped it. He grabbed it and hit the son of a bitch again, and again. When he was as limp as his wife, the killer rolled him onto his stomach and straddled his back. He slipped the flashlight lengthwise across his throat and pulled back with both hands. Get along, little doggy!
When he was sure the fat fuck was dead, he got up and went back to the woman. She was unconscious but alive, blood trickling from her nose and her busted lips. Using the knife, he cut her thin nightgown off and threw it aside. She was a beefy woman; her nipples were large and pink, and her rank passage was hidden by a tangle of dark, curly hair.
Panting, he killer fumbled at his belt. When he was free, he thrust deep into her. Her eyes opened, and she tried to scream, but he had the knife, and cut her throat before she could.
He fucked her as she died. The moment her spirit left her, he came, shooting hot ribbons of semen deep into her belly.
For a while, he simply lay on the floor next to her, breathing deeply of the scent of blood and sex. After nearly a half an hour, he got up and went into the bathroom abutting the room. His hands were bloody, and splatters marred his face and hair. He stripped, climbed into the shower, and let the hot water sluice over his body. When he was done, he got out, dressed, and smashed the mirror on the way out.
In the bedroom, he did a quick search and found a jewelry box on the dresser. He took a tangle of necklaces out and stuffed them into his pocket.
Before leaving, he grabbed the flashlight and the knife. He tried to turn the flashlight on, but it was dead.
In the kitchen, he stopped at the fridge. Inside, he found a Coca-Cola. He grabbed it, popped it open, and drank deeply, savoring the sweet, cold liquid.
When he was done, he crumpled the can and tossed it over his shoulder.
At the back door, he stopped. Oops. Almost forgot something.
In the bedroom, he removed a red marker from his pocket and wrote a message on the far wall, so that whoever entered couldn't help but see it.
Then he left, disappearing into the night like a bad dream.