Life couldn't get any better, no could it? I had work lined up for the next few months; work only I could do. It was delightful, really, to be so indispensable. By chance, I've managed to become the field expert in psychopathic killers. The sole expert, in the whole Northern New England region! Job security sure is sweet.
You may be wondering, how can someone become such an expert on a small percentage of the population whose minds seem so radically different from ours? Well, yours. The only way to understand someone is to be like them. I'm different from most psychopathic killers, I'm proud to say I've been clean for years. When given the choice between being with the law and being put on death row, you could see my train of thought. By the good graces of law enforcement, I was able to reform and rejoin society.
All the people I work with-police, detectives, even the government-they all know about my past. It's why they work with me. They also like to remind me a little too much about what would happen if I step out of line. Oh yes, they love to use Ol' Sparky as a scare tactic to keep me in line.
But being in such high demand isn't always a good thing. It's how I ended up deep in the forests of Maine, hunting down a particularly strange killer who had been described to me as "highly dangerous" and "sporadic". I've dealt with people described like this before, but the urgency of the call and the initial scene made me almost believe he wanted to be caught. So that had me thinking twice.
"Here" happened to be an old abandoned mansion, hidden away amidst trees and greenery. I stood in front of the entryway, admiring the architecture and contemplating what lay inside. From what I heard, this individual was prone to setting up traps to give himself the upper hand. Luckily, I had been much faster arriving than I thought, and now I hoped to catch him mid-preparation. The mansion was a vast area to prep for just one man.
Ready to act, I started walking around to the back of the house, looking for a rear entrance. I was able to locate the back porch, fitted with a rather large, rather broken sliding glass door. Since this would be the perfect place for a trap to have been set up, I was mildly surprised there wasn't. And more than mildly worried. Not setting up traps to give him the advantage meant he believed he already had an advantage, and I'm not quite sure how I liked that. I called in the waiting back-up before cautiously entering the building.
Now inside the house, I proceeded slowly and meticulously; searching for any signs of the man I was looking for. Dust was stirring in the air, covering every surface in a thick layer. A thick layer broken up by fresh footprints. This house was too far out in the country for many squatters to come in; it had to be the man I was looking for. No footprints went up either staircase, so I could stick to the ground floor. Room after room turned up nothing but dust and an uneasy feeling that I was being watched.
I had only a few more rooms to check; where could this man be? Getting to the salon of the house, after carefully searching behind the couches, I noticed a peculiar arrangement on the dusty coffee table.
What the...?
As I stepped closer to the objects on the table, my blood ran cold.
A photo. Of something. Why that? Why now? Only one other person knew about it, it can't be him!
Click.
Oh, of course it was him. The wraith, the avenger. His name unknown, the criminal underground shook whenever he struck. And he was right behind me.
I made a start for the floor-to-ceiling windows leading to the outside, to safety, but stopped abruptly when a shot flew past my ear.
"Now now now, we can't have that, now can we?" I knew that voice, I knew it. Deep and edged with ice, it commanded without effort. And for only the second time in my life, I was afraid.
"Let's turn around, hmm? It'll be much better for you."
Foolishly hoping it would extend my life, I slowly turned around. And there he was.
I never knew his name, but just then I finally got a look at him. Long, that's what stuck. From his long, black overcoat to his long stark blond hair. His tall, lanky frame to his long arms, long legs. Long, long, long. And the long silence. Oh, God.
After an eternity, he gestured to the photo with his outstretched pistol.
"Didn't think you'd see them again, hm? Thought you'd buried them, thought...no one knew? Well they're back. For you." A flash of a smile, sharp and predatory.
I said nothing, staring at him; his face framed by his hair. His long hair... Another long pause.
"Tell me, do you remember their last words? Their begging? I certainly do. It's always nice when they beg, isn't it?" The ghost of a smirk pinned me to my past as a spider is pinned to a board.
They did beg, they did. I was shaking, my fists clenched; I was furious. Furious that he'd finally caught up to me. In the euphoria of having a new life, I'd grown complacent. I hadn't buried them deep enough.
"Ah!" He sounded pleasantly surprised. "You do, don't you? Your own wife and child. How...tragic."
The last word he dropped like a bomb. They were the only reason I was doing this. As I had listened to the screams of my wife and son fading from memory, I vowed then and there that nothing like that horrible day would ever happen again. So I hoped the backup team was on its way, and stalled.
"You don't understand. If you did, you would walk away." Nothing. Desperately, I tried again. "I'm one of you. I can help you out of this; I know they're hunting you. I—"
"And who is helping them, I wonder? I don't need your assistance with anything, much less with this mess you got me into." He paused, head tilted slightly. "And you know I'm not 'one of you'. I'm the hunter, you're the prey. And that's why I'm here."
I met his gaze, grey and unwavering, straining to find anything to postpone the inevitable, and came up empty.
"You're not going anywhere."
Defeated, I sunk to my knees as the oh so small human part of me was overcome with pent up grief. The monster within just wanted it to end.
"Oh, shall we do this execution-style? This is really up to you."
"Just do what you came to do, I don't care anymore."
He paused, considering my answer. "Very well."
I felt the muzzle of the pistol press against my head.
"You have answered to me, now you shall answer to them. Good night."
And it was over.