Page 20 of The Silent Night Stalker
“God, you may as well know. It’s all over. I’m done… Oh, god!” He cries out and drops his head. With a deep breath and exhale, he says, “I’m the person they’ve been calling the… Silent Night Stalker.”
My eyes go wide, and I fall on my ass, but I don’t take the gun off him. Holyfuckshit. Yep, this hasgotto be some fucking fever dream. I must still be hallucinating. This night has gotten crazier and crazier. I’ve heard on the news about this guy. How does someone so bumblingnotget caught by the cops? That can’t be right. No way. He’s got to be lying.
“Impossible. That serial killer makes no mistakes. That can’t be you.”
His face turns beet red, and he clenches his jaw, snarling. He went from zero to a hundred in a second. The mood shifts so fast, it stuns me. “I’m not a serial killer! I’m not Steve! I’m an angel of deliverance!” He growls out his frustration before he looks at me with terrified eyes again and withdraws into himself.
I’m still coming to grips with the fact that I have a literal serial killer sitting handcuffed on the floor of my bedroom. And who the fuck is Steve? This dude belongs in a loony bin. “You’ve killed a lot of people.”
“No! No, no, no. Ihelpedthem! Theyneededme. I saw their pain and suffering. The holidays make people suffer. Just likeme. I suffered a lot. I know it when I see it. For so long, I wished someone would save me, too. No one came. No one saved me. So, I had to save myself, and God helped. Yes. Yes. He helped me. But a person? No. I didn’t get any angels. Don’t you understand? I thought you would. You were supposed to understand and accept my help, but you…hitme. That really hurt. That was so mean. Steve hit me all the time.”
A picture is starting to form in my mind. Years of my own abuse have taught me to recognize trauma and PTSD when I see it. It takes me a moment to process his rambling and crying.
Even in my roughest times, I had Enrique by my side to help me get through it all. It’s clear this dude had no one. You don’t break so hard with a support system, right? Then again, everyone copes differently. So, someone named Steve must have really hurt him, and hurt him enough to make him truly believe he’s doing good in the world, and that he’s not a murderer. He truly believes he’s saving people. It doesn’t seem like he’s lying. He’s too erratic. His emotions are all over the place.
Then the epiphany suddenly hits me like a hammer to the head as I slide to the floor. I lost Enrique on the day I was at the bar. Arthur—or Constantine—saw me there in my grief. He must have assumed…Jesus.
I cross my legs, only slightly relaxing now that I know he hadn’t killed Enrique. If he had, he’d be dead on the spot.
Before I can open my mouth, he says, “You’re also an angel. I see all your pain.” His eyes have stopped leaking. They’re wide and pleading for me to understand.
I shake my head slowly, not sure I should bother trying to rationalize with this person, who’s clearly missing a few bolts. “I’m grieving. I just lost my brother… well, my foster brother, but he’s still family. Someone murdered him, and until now, I thought it was you. He was shot in the head twice, execution style.”
Constantine’s eyes turn sad, and his frown deepens. “I don’t shoot people. And I haven’t saved anyone this year yet. It wasn’t me.”
“I see that now.”
“Y-you don’t hate Christmas? It doesn’t make you hurt or sad? You don’t want to die?”
I huff a laugh at the strangeness of it all. He really did seem to care. He was royally fucked up, no doubt about it, but he really believes he’s the good guy in all this. Well, he could be playing me, but I don’t think so.
“No, I don’t want to die, and no, I don’t hate Christmas. I’m just grieving my loss and that we haven’t found his killer yet.”
Arthur… Constantine sags, and his head droops as a sob escapes him. “I got it so wrong. I’m so sorry. God, what am I going to do now?” He lifts his head and glances at the clock. His face grimaces, and he cries harder. “It’s… Christmas Day. It’s too late. It’s over.”
Then, he simply falls on his side and curls into himself much like I’d found him earlier. Fuck, this is weird.
“Why didn’t you run?” I ask him.
“Panic. Anxiety attack. I… freaked out. When you hit me… it brought me back to Steve. All those years. All those Christmas Eves. Those gifts. The pain. For so long… I was a prisoner with no friends. No help… He kept Mom drunk and drugged. So alone. All alone.”
“Fuck…” Weirdly, I almost feel sorry for him. He’s clearly messed up from all this, enough to kill people. And in a doubly weird way, I feel like I almost know him. Like he’s not a stranger who nearly killed me at all. For a murderer, he sure is forthcoming with information.
“How many years? How long did he hurt you for?” I ask him. Do I really want to know? Yes. Call me intrigued. Any anger I had from his attack is long gone as I watch this simpering man melt down from his pain.
“Ten years.”
“So long… Did you try to get away?” I swallow at the growing lump in my throat, fighting off memories of the worst moments from foster care, like that fucking belt. Every time I have to wear one, I’m brought back to my childhood. Clearly, this man had it worse.
“So many times. He always found me. I had nothing. No money at all, or anyone to turn to. He kept me weak, too.”
“How did you finally escape?”
“That last Christmas Eve after I’d turned eighteen. I couldn’t take another gift. Gifts of horror. Mutilated and rotting animals. He eventually moved up to humans. Christmas Eve, when I was seventeen, was the last time he gave me a gift. It was a severed human hand. I think he truly believed they were gifts, and he’d get angry when I threw up or was afraid of them. But the following year, I found his gun and shot him. After I killed him, I shot my mother for her uselessness. Ihate guns. So much. I never used one again. But I wanted to get away quickly.”
I probably would’ve killed them, too, had it been me. “Did the police not catch you?”
He shook his head and sniffled a couple of times, not sitting up yet. “I told them someone broke in. I said I came home to find them like that, and I called the police after.”
