Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1796yuq/a_serial_killer_is_copying_horror_movies/
I was sitting outside Vivi’s hospital room when Mark walked up to me. I stood up immediately and took a step back, as if I was expecting him to tackle me again. My head still hurt where he’d slammed it against my car door.
Mark held up his hands, as if to show that he wasn’t going to hurt me.
That just made me even more mad. Mad at him, yes, but mostly mad at myself. Why was I scared of him? I had handcuffs. I had a badge. I had a taser. And I had a gun. He wasn’t my husband anymore. Maybe I was scared because, despite of my weapons and my badge and my uniform, he’d still slapped me. Mark had never hurt me before, not physically, but now that he had a line had been crossed. He could do it again.
The deputies standing on either side of Vivi’s door stood straighter. One of them took a step toward Mark.
I held up my hand.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“I want to see her,” he said.
“She’s sleeping.”
Mark nodded. He was blond, fit, and had a golfer’s tan. Mark’s father, my former father-in-law (thank God for that “former”) owned the biggest car dealership in town. He bought a lot of homes or had them built, then let Mark rent them out.
I was too busy with work, they said. I had been drinking after my dad’s death, a bit too much. I got distant. I got angry.
After we split up. Mark got to keep our house. His house, I guess. It had never been mine. After I moved out, my place was a one bedroom apartment on the bad side of town. My income wasn’t enough to give Vivi and Chris the life they’d gotten accustomed to. So Mark got full custody.
I saw my kids on weekends, but not every weekend because of work.
“Maybe I made a mistake,” Mark said. “Vivi’s been acting out for the last couple of months. Sneaking out, like when she stayed over at yours a few days ago. She got a tattoo, she tell you about that?”
“No,” I said.
“I just hope she wasn’t doing drugs,” Mark said.
“How is this helping?” I asked. “Look, I have a lot of shit to do.”
“Then why aren’t you doing it?”
As much as I hated to admit it, as much as I wanted to punch his smug, country club face in, Mark was right.
“Watch him and Chris,” I told my deputies, then I walked out.
I paced around my office, looking at the crime scene photos laid out below me, on every available surface. Dead kids. Too many of them.
That was when it hit me.
I felt like a character in a movie. A detective, looking over crime scene photos, trying to find the killer just beyond the frame, off camera, working a few hours before the photos were taken, taking lives and playing a sick game.
This was like a movie, wasn’t it?
The killer had made sure of that.
What if he wanted me to act the part? To make my own references?
I thought back to Se7en. It had to be the killer’s favorite movie, if all of this was a reference to it. I’d seen it a few nights ago, with Vivi. I remembered it well. I remembered, too, how Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt had found the killer’s address.
Our town’s local library was small, but welcoming. It was pretty much all ran by Brenda Peterson and her husband, Ralph. There were others, mostly volunteers, a committee, a board, etc, but Brenda and Ralph were the beating heart. They were always there, even at night.
I walked up to Brenda. She’s a thin woman in about her 70s. Fit. Active. The type you see finishing a jog at 7 AM. She was watching TikTok, of all things.
“All the knowledge in this place and you’re watching that,” I said.
“I’ve read more books than most people do in their lifetime,” Brenda said, with a smile. “Don’t try to shame me for keeping up with the times. What can I help you with, Ana?”
In Se7en, Morgan Freeman notices that the killer is well read, so he makes a list of books the killer was referencing or would be interested in, and asks a shady guy from the FBI to give him a list of people who had checked them out.
Now, Brenda and I went way back. She’d worked at the library since I was a kid. That didn’t make what I had to do easier, it made it harder. It’s hard to lie to someone whose known you since you were little. You feel like they should know the way you talk, the way your face moves, that they knew when you were lying as a kid so they should know now. Luckily, I didn’t have to lie to her. Not really. I just had to bend the truth a little. Smudge it.
But that’s still wrong. Every cop knows that.
“You heard about Paul and Jordan,” I said. Not a question. It was an undeniable fact. Everyone in town had heard about them.
“Yes,” Brenda said. Leaning in. Her eyes were wild with excitement she was trying very hard to keep under wraps. I could feel the air around us change, suddenly becoming charged with the sparks of small town gossip.
“We think that whoever did it likes violence,” I said. “You know. Gets off on it?”
Brenda narrowed her eyes and nodded.
“I was wondering if there’s anyone in town who’s been checking out gory books recently? Or maybe violent movies?”
“I can’t give out any information regarding our patrons,” Brenda said. “It’s ALA policy.”
“What?” I asked.
“The American Library Association,” Brenda said, proudly. “I could help you if you subpoenaed me. Sorry.”
I should’ve guessed that librarians were loyal to their readers and upheld the ALA’s standards like I was supposed to uphold the law. Still, I had to try something.
“You can tell me if there was anyone suspicious in here though,” I said. “Or anyone new? Someone who didn’t fit in?”
Brenda’s eyes lit up.
“I could do that, yes,” she said. “I’m almost certain.”
“Yes,” I said. “Now was there anyone wearing a hood? Acting strange? Hovering around the movie section maybe? Looking at violent things?”
“There was one person,” Brenda said. “Wearing a black hood. He actually tried checking a some violent movies but…again. Subpoena.”
“Right but you’re not telling me what he checked out,” I said. “Just that he was acting strangely. So you’re not giving out any confidential library records. You’re a valuable witness in an ongoing police investigation. Was his name, by any chance, John?”
Brenda’s eyes lit up again.
“How did you know that?” she asked. “He tried to register as ‘John D.’ I told him that an initial wasn’t allowed as a last name. He put in John Donovan.”
“Did he put an address in when he registered for a library card?” I asked.
“Oh, he didn’t actually register,” Brenda said. “He didn’t have an official ID. He didn’t even get through all the personal details.”
“Did he start to write an address? Or maybe mention where he was staying?”
“You know what was weird? He actually put in Donovan Street. That made me think his name was fake. What are the chances, right?”
That was all I needed. Donovan street was full of businesses. Restaurants. Car dealerships. A laundromat. There weren’t many residences there. But I knew one.
“Thanks Brenda,” I said. “If anything comes of this, we’ll ask you to testify as a witness. You think you’d agree to do that?”
Brenda perked up.
“Yes of course!” she said. “What should I wear. To court?”
“If we ever catch this guy,” I said. “I’ll let you know.”
The house on Donovan street had been empty for years. Like the abandoned bus station, it was an eyesore. The owners of the neighboring businesses signed petitions every year, saying that the property drew in rats and the wrong kind of people, and that it was bad for business.
Every year, old Mrs. Mayhew paid exterminators and landscapers to make the house look a little better, then went back to doing absolutely nothing with it. She didn’t want to rent it, tear it down, or sell it. She just liked looking at it, she said. Liked driving past it.
It was the perfect place for what I knew was coming. It’d be just like Se7en.
I didn’t have to kick the door in. It was open a smidge.
I pushed it with my foot. My hands were a little occupied. One with my service weapon. The other with my flashlight.
“Sheriff’s department!” I shouted into the home. “If there’s anyone in there, make yourselves known and come out with your hands up!”
I heard the man before I saw him. The sound of boots slamming into the sidewalk, getting closer and closer.
I turned just in time to see a man wearing a hat and a leather coat drop a bag of groceries and raise a gun toward my head.
He shot several times. At the wall, mostly.
I slid down to the sidewalk, rolled into the grass. For once, I was furious at Mrs. Mayhew for having it cut.
I looked up to see the man running into an alley between two of the restaurants.
As I stood and started running, I noticed the dinner crowd and most of the waiters spilling out into the street, looking at me in an anxious daze.
“County Sheriff!” I shouted, flashing my badge. “Get back inside!”
I ran into the dark alley. My gun out and shaking in every direction. Every shadow, every trash bag, every nook, every dumpster. I was convinced, every time, that the killer would pop out.
Was there any horror move death that took place in an alley? I remembered one. The actress was the girl from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There a parade going on in town and she was running through an alley.
Right before she could escape out into the parade, the killer stabbed her with a hook.
Was that going to be me?
Was Vivi going to wake up in the hospital and hear that her mother was killed to reference some stupid horror movie?
Vivi and Chris loved their weekends with me, loved a break from Mark. With me gone, they’d have nowhere to go.
I heard footsteps again, then the whistle of something hard, metal, and thin, shrieking through the air and slicing down in an arc.
The blackjack hit me in the back of the head. I dropped instantly, my gun spilled out of my right hand and the flashlight out of my left. I turned around, looking up to see a black figure standing over me.
I cowered. My hands rose up instinctually. I didn’t want to get hit again. That’s what was on my mind, all that was on my mind. I’d forgotten about the gun. I’d forgotten about the killings. I just didn’t want him to hit me again.
And he did.
He brought the blackjack down on my left forearm. I heard it snap before I felt it.
The figure above me pressed his gun into the side of my head. I could’ve tackled him. I could’ve tried something clever, but my head was a mess and my arm hurt. That was my world. Just that pain. That pain and the feat that more pain could be coming my way.
The gun left my head and the man walked away.
As I lay in the alley, hugging my broken arm, I kept thinking about the fact that, in Se7en, the killer overpowers Brad Pitt’s character in an alley and lets him live. After that scene, Brad Pitt’s character wears a cast for the rest of the film.
Say what you will about the killer, he was making me remember a lot of details about horror movies. If that was his goal, then he was accomplishing it.
I stood and walked out of the alley. The world was a blurry, intangible mess, but I did my best to keep it steady. I had to walk back into the house. There was something there. I was sure of it.
I crawled up the stairs, dragged myself through the front door, and made my way into the house.
And it was empty.
Completely empty.
In the film, the detectives enter the killer’s apartment and discover that it’s filled with hundreds of notebooks explaining the killer’s motives, as well as religious iconography and a seven display cases for elements used in each of the crime scenes.
There was none of that. It was just the same empty, eyesore of a property that Mrs. Mayhew refused to rent or sell or tear down.
I collapsed on the floor, vaguely aware of the police sirens and the shouts outside the front door.
And there, beneath me on the hardwood floor, was a single Polaroid photo.
I picked it up with my good hand.
It was a photo of a bookshelf…no…of one corner of a book shelf. There were a few DVDs. Six, to be exact.
Se7en.
Scream.
The Ring.
The Exorcist.
A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Saw.
The last thing on the shelf was an old VHS tape. Loose. There was no label because there was no box. It was a black spine. The label was on the other side, facing the other films or the shelf.
I slipped the photo in my pocket, even if I felt like balling it up and throwing it away in anger.
I had walked into the house hoping to find notebooks filled with the killer’s thoughts. I wanted a dozen notebooks, one for each film. Instead, all I found was a photo.
But maybe the photo accomplished the same thing. Maybe it said that, instead of notebooks, the films were what the killer had seen again and again.
Those films, on that shelf. A black shelf, in the corner of a room with a white wall. It could be anyone’s room, anyone’s shelf, anyone’s movies. But it looked vaguely familiar. I tried thinking, in the haze, if I had ever been to Jordan’s house…or maybe it was the shelf on the library…or the…
I felt myself collapse, but it was a distant thing. Someone else’s pain. Someone else’s body hitting the ground.
I woke up in a hospital bed. My left arm was in a cast. The room’s light was too bright, too blurry, too much all at once.
Mark and Chris were standing in front of me. So were a few of my deputies.
I tried getting out of bed immediately.
“What are you doing?” Mark asked. “The doctor said you suffered a concussion.”
“What?” I asked.
Mark repeated what he’d said, and told me that it was exactly why I had to stay in bed.
“I’m fine,” I said. “What are you gonna do if I leave. Arrest me?”
The deputies in front of the door looked at each other, like they were unsure what to do.
Mark reached out to steady me, and I pushed him away so hard he hit the wall.
“Mom!” Chris shouted. I turned to look at him. I had been so wrapped up in the case, so focused on it and on Vivi that I had barely thought about my son. What must he think, seeing me like this? Seeing his sister in another hospital room, with an oxygen mask?
I reached out to him and he recoiled, taking a step back.
“Let’s go, Chris,” Mark said, grabbing my son’s hand. “We’ve been here too long.”
I pointed at the two deputies. “Follow them and stand watch outside the house.”
“No,” Mark said. “You want to be useful? Watch her.” He motioned to me violently. I flinched at the way his hand shout out. “Make sure she stays in bed, takes her painkillers, does whatever the doctor says. She’s not thinking clearly because of the concussion.”
The deputies looked at each other again, and stayed in the room.
One of them led me back to my bed and helped me onto it.
“Send a patrol car,” I said. “To the house.”
“We will, Sheriff” the deputy said. “You should get some rest.”
I slipped out of consciousness again.
I don’t know for how long.
But when I woke up, my phone was ringing.
I dragged myself out of bed, reached the chair on the other side of the room, slid my finger across the screen, and put the phone to my ear.
A deep voice was on the other end.
The first time the killer had used a voice changer, it sounded like the killer in Scream. This time, he sounded like Jigsaw.
“If you want your son to live,” the voice said. “Follow my directions.”
Part 7 FINAL: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/17ggksa/a_serial_killer_is_copying_horror_movies_part_7/