3

Lester could have phoned for backup, bringing armed response units to the door within moments, but he didn’t want their help. He wanted to do this alone.

The bodies had stiffened, rigor mortis had set in. He didn’t need to venture close, didn’t need to touch them or look into their glazed-over pupils to know they had probably been dead for some time. There was a good chance Herman had killed them before he had set up the spectacle at the church, which meant that all of this was just a game.

He sat on the edge of his mother’s bed. It felt strange to be in the same room as her and to have the opportunity to talk. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been able to look at her without hearing about her new foot fungus, how she suspected the mailman was screwing her neighbor, or how every single one of her friends had some form of terminal disease or knew someone who had recently died.

“I’m sorry,” Lester said softly, his chin still on his chest, his voice sounding empty and hollow. “For this, for everything. I should have never let the kids leave. I should have spoken to you more, I should have—” He finally dragged his eyes to her and found that he couldn’t finish his sentence. He wanted to embrace her; she was his mother and that’s what mothers were for, but the person that lay on the bed next to him, cold and pale, no longer had a strong shoulder for him to cry on or a warm embrace to envelop him. The last time she had done any of those things was when his wife died and she had been the only one to remain strong. She had been there when he needed her, but he wasn’t there when she needed him.

He stood, facing the door and telling himself not to look, not to let himself see her in that way again.

And then there were the kids. When had he ever been there for them? He still loved them, he always had, but if he allowed himself to admit it, he had begun to despise them lately. He had grown bitter, resentful, taking their actions to heart and allowing it to affect his emotions, emotions that should have always remained true and should have never been altered by words spoken in anger. They loved him deep down, or so he believed, and he should have been there for them.

He walked back across the hallway, no longer worried about bumping into Herman. He had nothing to fear from him anymore. He paused outside of his daughter’s door, his hand caught in transit as he reached for the handle. He had been in that situation so many times at home, hoping to talk to her after an argument, to calm her down and to put his mind at ease—contemplating knocking, contemplating walking in, contemplating walking away. More often than not he walked away. When he did knock, she rarely let him in, and when he walked in unannounced, she had never welcomed him or his chats. If anything, it had just led to more arguments.

He sighed, moved his hand away, and wiped the sweat from his palm onto the back of his pants. He did the same outside his son’s door, his temporary bedroom and his haven for whenever he wanted to get away from his father. It had also been Lester’s haven, as it had been his bedroom when he was a child, though he knew that Damian would have refused to sleep in there if he had known.

He left them both to it. For a moment, he felt a stab of déjà vu, remembering the countless times he had been in the same situation following an argument. There was often more shouting coming from Annabelle’s room, and the noise of rock music or computer games from Damian’s, but the setup was the same: anger, disappointment, and grief leading to emptiness and loneliness. Except this wasn’t one of these moments. His kids weren’t angry at him. They were dead.

He poured himself a large measure of gin in the kitchen. He hated the stuff; it tasted like perfume, but it was the strongest alcohol in the house. It got the job done. He refilled his glass and knocked back another before he carried a third glass into the living room. When he snapped on the light and raised the glass to his to lips, he got his fourth fright of the night and dropped his drink.

There was writing across the walls. Big, sweeping letters, arcing their shapes in vivid and intimidating forms. It was red, but he didn’t know if it was actually blood, and if it was, he didn’t want to speculate as to whose it was. He took a step back, standing in the doorway, and read what he saw.

THE CHORDS THAT PLAY IN THE HEARTS OF THE MOST RECKLESS.

He frowned. It sounded like a quote, but if it was then he had never heard the play, had never read the poem or the story. He moved forward—his legs had lost the anxious, jelly-like sensation they’d had upon entering the house, and it now felt like he was walking on air, as though his body was no longer connected to his mind. He was empty, devoid of life and of everything that had made him scared, anxious, and human.

He ran his finger over the words. It was blood. And it had been laid on thick, congealing on the walls before drying into a lumpy paste. He pulled his finger back when he realized, disgusted at the thought.

He read the words again and again, hoping to make some sense from them, but nothing clicked. He stared at them for a few minutes, waiting for something to jump out of his emotionless mind and to scream a realization at him, but nothing came.

Instead he headed back to the kitchen, decided that as disgusting as it was, the bottle of gin would help with his misery. It was then that he noted the other words, splashed across the opposing wall. These were smaller, yet somehow more sinister: LET US PLAY THOSE CHORDS TOGETHER, LESTER; LET US DANCE AND REVEL THIS NIGHT, AS TOMORROW ONE OF US WILL BE DEAD.

It struck a spot that Lester didn’t know was still capable of feeling. He swallowed thickly. The writing was followed by a timestamp, as big and bold as any of the letters behind and in front of him. It declared, MIDNIGHT, which seemed both apt and chilling.

Lester fumbled in his pocket for his phone, punching in his passkey on his way to the kitchen. He wanted the gin, but he also wanted to get out of that living room as quickly as he could. The letters were mocking him, towering over him and threatening him.

He typed the quote into Google on his phone and was immediately greeted with “The Masque of the Red Death,” a story by Edgar Allan Poe, one that a few journalists had drawn comparisons to in the past. It had been paraphrased, of course, and Lester found that amusing. He had always seen Herman as a man who craved attention, someone who wanted people to be scared of him. The incident in the church was a one-off; he wasn’t usually that showy, that grand, that obvious. As a boy, he had butchered eight people in a single night, striking fear into the hearts of generations. As a man, he had killed without preference, without spectacle, and he had been equally feared for it. But Lester couldn’t help but feel that that was just a prelude, that the last few years were just the beginning and that something bigger was about to go down, something that would make the Whitegate massacre look like a picnic.

He read the quote again. “What the fuck does it mean?” he asked himself.

He took a swig from the bottle and cursed after the flowery alcohol burned its way down his throat. Already it was working its magic, burning a bigger hollow hole in his soul, digging at the edges of the one that was already there.

He searched for what he could find on the Poe story and he even read it. It was short, a quick read, but there was nothing in there that connected anything that had happened. He saw the connection with midnight and a man in a mask. It was the time the villain in the story struck, the time that he killed everyone at the party and—

“Shit,” Lester cursed, his chaotic thoughts hitting a roadblock. “He couldn’t …”

He quickly searched for local parties, doing his best to check social media and local online newspapers to scan for fancy dress parties, costume parties, events. Several were being held miles away, but they seemed irrelevant. He knew that the story had nothing to do with Herman or The Masquerade. If he had some sort of literary background, one that he was displaying with each subsequent kill, he would want the world to know. He would leave clues and references at every turn. The story was a clue to find him, a clue to lead Lester right to him.

Herman knew Lester would make the phone call; he knew he would make the journey and he knew he would find his family dead and then find the message. It was all prearranged. He could have waited, but one on one in a dark house with a grieving man wasn’t his style. He would want something bigger, something grander, something that would live long in his and the public’s memory.

It occurred to him that this wasn’t the main event, that everything that had gone before wasn’t the prelude. This was how he wanted to end it. Lester knew that the Whitegate massacre was more than a random spree killing, even if everyone else had ignored the clues. Herman was a killer; he had no intention of stopping after those murders, no intention of taking his life or going into hiding. It had always bugged Lester why Herman had been so open and so obvious, but what if that hadn’t been his intention? What if he had wanted to kill quietly, to live in the shadows as he was doing now? What if something went wrong, he made a mistake, and he was forced to act on impulse?

Lester swallowed dryly, the moisture gone from his mouth, leaving a dry, flowery taste in its place.

He wondered if the same thing was about to happen again. Mistakes had been made, identities had been exposed. Herman couldn’t go on killing as he had been, which meant he had two choices. He could put an end to it, go into hiding. Or he could do as he had done before, committing an act so violent, so catastrophic, that everyone would pay attention. The world would continue to fear him, and he would have a legacy like no other.

Lester knocked back half the bottle and ventured into the living room again. He scanned the quotes a few more times, running all of them through search engines. Nothing new came up. He flopped on the sofa, his eyes still on the walls and the huge bloody letters. He mouthed them, he whispered them, but the more he stared and the more he spoke, the less he understood and the more frustrated he became.

In his frustration, he tossed his phone at the wall, watching as it flew through the air before shattering. It did a good job of holding together, but the screen split and the battery broke free, landing on the coffee table in front of him. He stared at it vacantly, as if this detritus, this product of his anger and his frustrations, could hold the answer he needed. The longer he stared, the less he focused, and the less he focused the more he noticed the leaflet lying on the coffee table underneath the phone’s battery.

He saw the red writing first, then the mask. His heart raced in his chest and all the muscles in his body seemed to spasm at once as he grabbed it, ripping the leaflet away and sending the battery crashing to the floor.

It was an advertisement for an adaptation of “The Masque of the Red Death.” “A modern, twisted and surreal take on the Poe classic,” the leaflet said. They were due to perform the opening night in over a week. It had nothing to do with midnight, certainly nothing to do with tonight.

The show was being performed at an old building in town and would no doubt be practiced over and over until it was ready, until all the actors knew their parts, until all of them were—

Lester felt his muscles turn rigid, his jaw tense, his eyes widen. He turned it back over and looked at the smiling faces of the cast. They were all young, all beautiful, all of them with their whole lives and careers ahead of them.

He checked his watch and saw he only had an hour and a half until midnight, ninety minutes to make it to where Herman wanted him to be. It would take him less than twenty minutes to drive to where the rehearsals were being held, but he knew he had to get there sooner.

He wasn’t going to be responsible for any more deaths.