4

Lester drove with his foot down and his mind empty. Empty of the grief and the memories, both young and old; empty of the anger, the frustration, and the vengeance that had manifested as a bitter bile crawling its way up his throat. He was determined. He wanted to get to where he needed to be and to get there as quickly as he could. That was all that was important, that was all that mattered. Everything else, all those thoughts and emotions swimming erratically through his mind, pulling at his heart strings, poisoning his blood, only served to weaken his resolve, to stop him from concentrating on what was important.

He allowed himself to remember the faces he had seen on the leaflet. All of them happy, all of them young, all of them attractive. He knew they were Herman’s type. He liked to take everything from the ones who had the most. He liked to take away what had made them superior, to eradicate what had made them special and expose them as the bland, boring individuals they were—the humans that they were. At least, that’s the way he saw it. He knew there was no rhyme or reason to what Herman did. The people who wrote about him, and the sick bastards who praised him as a child, said that he was justified. He was killing his tormentors, after all. But they conveniently ignored the fact that he killed his uncle, as well as an innocent father and an innocent child. He wasn’t on a mission to make the world a better place back then and it was no different now. Lester suspected that Herman probably thought otherwise, but it was clear Lester wasn’t dealing with a sane individual.

And then there was his mother and his father. They were usually the ones to blame, but while his mother was relatively blameless, Lester suspected it was a different story for Herman’s father. In the early days, there were those who suggested that Herman had been inspired by The Butcher, a killer who plied his trade across most of the country. It made sense, as Herman was just the sort of warped individual to take the lead of a serial killer. Those words, that statement, had never left Lester. It didn’t leave him when The Butcher became inactive, and it didn’t leave him when he began to notice similarities in the way The Masquerade killed his victims.

Lester could only take so much. He could only take so many vacant, empty faces, could only see so much chaos, so much bloodshed, and so much pointless destruction. Herman had turned him into a bitter, resentful, and disinterested prick, and then, when it seemed like there was nothing else to take, like there was no way he could make things worse, he took away his family.

Lester was just as empty and soulless as Herman’s victims were, but at least he was still moving, at least he was still alive. He could use what he had left—whatever pathetic remnant of existence that was—to stop Herman and make sure he didn’t hurt anyone else.

There was a theory that The Masquerade was a revamped version of The Butcher—the same man, with a slightly different appearance and a slightly different agenda. Lester didn’t believe they were two and the same, but he had suspected there was a link and now his suspicions had gone into overdrive.

It was a murky night, as expected for the time of year, but the streets were dead, which wasn’t as expected. As he paused at a set of traffic lights, he saw Christmas decorations hung in sporadic strings across nearby streetlights. Half of the bulbs were broken and the other half anemic, unable to give off enough light to penetrate the darkness. Lights in nearby houses were just as pathetic; few in number, tacky, weak, miserable. The spirit of the season failed to shine through in any of them; the darkness of the winter and the shadows of the night overcame each and every one, enveloping them in a blackness that seemed to intensify as he drove on.

The theater was located in an industrial area. It had once been home to booming businesses and factories, but they had decayed through the decades and the buildings were now dust and memories. It had been saved from demolition by an ambitious theater fan with a half-assed dream, little business sense, and a truckload of money. Its seats were never full and its shows didn’t set the world on fire, but Lester knew that if he didn’t make it on time, then tonight would be the night it went down in history, the night where the performance of a lifetime was played out for a sadistic audience of one.