I awoke to a cry from downstairs. Half-naked, I jumped out of bed, nearly tripping on the throw rug laid out on the floor. On my nightstand, a huge bong, about four-feet-tall, stood next to a Bowie knife. I always kept the knife next to my bed, especially after reading too many true crime books about Richard Ramirez and the Original Night Stalker, people who would come into your house and slit your throat for no reason.
“Mom?” I screamed. “Are you alright? What’s going on?” No answer. I pushed the bong aside and grabbed the knife. It felt perfectly weighted in my hand, the carbon steel shining in the sunlight coming in from the window. “Mom? I’m coming down!” I called, realizing how stupid it seemed to give away my position and intentions immediately after I did it.
“But wait, if there is an intruder down there, perhaps I could fake him out,” I thought to myself. I paused, my heart racing, thinking hard.
I used to sneak out the window all the time as a teenager, to meet with pretty girls by the lake or drink cheap beer and smoke weed around bonfires in the middle of the night with my friends. The fall to the bottom, I knew, wasn’t too bad, being only the second-story. If I hung down from the window ledge from my arms and dropped into the soft earth below, like I had done a hundred times before, I should be fine. And I might gain an advantage on a potential intruder.
These thoughts all passed through my mind in a fraction of a second. I heard footsteps coming up the stairs now. I opened the window, threw the knife down on the light brown soil below, and began to slowly push my legs and lower body out the window. I had to put all the pressure on my stomach and chest as I shimmied, a thin bar of wood and metal biting into my skin and bones. It was certainly uncomfortable, but…
“Not nearly as uncomfortable as getting stabbed to death,” I whispered to myself. My head was still in the room when the door flew open. I saw a man in a plague doctor mask standing there, covered in blood from head to foot. The mask’s surface imitated the flesh of a bird, wrinkled and plucked, an off-white with furrowed skin. It had a sharp beak, just like a bird, a beak where plague doctors used to stuff herbs and medicines to “keep the bad air away” when the Black Death had swept across Europe, killing over 50% of people in some areas. The medical professionals of the time had believed, quite wrongly, that the bubonic plague was spread through poisonous air and bad smells, rather than the fleas carried to other continents on rats from ships in Asia.
Besides the mask, the man wore a black hoodie with black pants and black, steel-toe work shoes. He had the hood pulled up, and with the black leather gloves on his hands, the only visible part of his body was his eyes- reptilian and cold, never-blinking.
He didn’t say a word or make a sound. The man’s dark eyes stared through the holes, and I felt a surge like electricity run through my body as we examined each other for a moment. The world seemed to stop spinning, and everything went away except for me- and him.
I don’t know what a mystical experience feels like, or a psychotic breakdown for that matter, but in that moment, something happened. As if looking down from above, like God examining the endless stars and planets, I saw my whole life leading up to this moment, every good and bad decision I had ever made. I saw the people around me, happy or depressed or angry as my choices emanated outwards, like ripples in a pond. And I saw myself, dead at 24, my body mutilated and torn, and then I saw a closed-casket funeral, awkward and hot in a stuffy church, before everyone I knew and loved followed it out to put me in the ground. And then, who would remember me? Perhaps my friends and family, on long drunken nights, might nostalgically say, “Remember when James did this,” or, “It’s so sad about what happened to James,” but mostly, they would go on with their lives, and it would be like I never existed.
Then, in a flash, it was over. I was back, just another man terrified for his life, hanging desperately from a window, his face still above the ledge. And the other person here, he, too, seemed just a man again, not the monster I had created in my mind.
But as he pulled the bloody ax from behind his back, held in one hand, he finally spoke.
“They will be my slaves in Heaven,” he said in a whisper, his eyes widening behind the mask and showing off the yellowed whites. “The dead, they serve me, forever and ever, and I will be God. There are many rooms in the mansion, and I will fill every one with the corpses of my slaves.” He ran forward, breathing hard now, and raised the ax above his head.
I let go as quickly as I could, but his sudden change from silence and stillness to maniacal energy had surprised me. My left hand still held the window sill when the ax came down, and within a moment, I felt my pinky and index fingers chopped off at a 45 degree angle.
I dropped, blood dripping down from the window sill. The pain didn’t come right away. As I fell, I wondered over and over, “Where’s the pain? Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he missed. Maybe…”
And then suddenly, like a wave of fire, it came over me. I hit the ground, rolling around and grabbing at my spurting hand. Trying not to cry, to keep my vision clear, trying to focus on survival, I took one deep breath after another, just like I did when I was hiking up a steep mountain and my heart felt like it might burst. I slowly raised myself to a sitting position, and realized I had to move- now, right now.
With shaking legs, I got up, trembling and nearly retching on the way. I grabbed the knife off the ground quickly, tucking it under my right arm. Then I held my left hand cradled in my right, the blood seeping out between my fingers and staining my pants and shoes. I felt light-headed, and as more and more of my body’s fluids seeped out through my amputated fingers, I knew the risk of collapse was real.
“My servants in Hell!” the madman cried from within the house, shrieking at the top of his lungs. It sounded like he was coming down the stairs, or maybe already even in the kitchen. “They will be with me under the burning sun, on the sands which scorch and scar the disbelievers. When the demons and the angels look at me, at what I will become with more and more people transformed, in death, into my slaves, they will see not an equal- but a God.”
I had nearly reached the woods now. It quickly descended into thick brush, prickers and ferns surrounded by evergreens, oaks and maples. As the front door slammed, I leapt forward as fast as I could, ducking and rolling under the thickest pile of ferns I could find. Then I lifted one leaf up, peering out towards the house. I felt spiders crawling on me and mosquitoes biting me, as well as incessant gnats that flew in my eyes and mouth. I saw the man exiting the kitchen door and looking around.
I needed a plan. I had left my phone up in the bedroom, charging against the far wall. If I had grabbed it as soon as I heard the scream, instead of the knife, I could be calling 911 right now. For all I knew, my mother was dying on the floor at this very moment.
“No, she’s already dead,” my mind whispered to me, and I brushed it aside. I had to have hope, but that seemed a commodity in short supply.
A spider fell right next to my head, still holding onto a strand of silk that connected it to the fern. A fat, brown spider with ugly hairs on its legs. I jumped and nearly made a sound, brushing it away as fast as I could. Even in a life-or-death situation, instinct still kicked in.
By the time I looked back, the man had disappeared. I don’t know where he went. And that got my anxiety going. I looked back over my shoulder, expecting to see an ax or a knife coming down. Yet nothing there that way too. Odd.
At this point, I had no idea what to do. Part of me wanted to run as fast as I could deep into the woods. I knew these woods better than anyone, having loved hiking since I was a boy, and I weighed almost nothing, being six feet tall and only 160 pounds. I could outhike or outrun any of my friends, and any time we went up mountains, I would be far off in the front, not even tired while the rest of them cried for a break. I considered these points, and thought of the man, trying to make a mental image of his body through all the coverings. He looked slightly overweight, if I had to guess, and I doubted he would be as fast or agile as myself.
The other part of me argued that I should stay there, hiding. He almost certainly hadn’t seen me, and if I ran out, he could be anywhere. He might also have a gun, and then no matter how fast I ran, it might not matter. My mind kept considering the points over and over, until I realized that indecision was a decision in itself. If I stayed here thinking about it, then I would be, in essence, just choosing to hide.
I guess I had a third option, to fight with the knife. I didn’t consider this an option at all, and in reality, only brought the knife as a last resort. A madman with an ax, and maybe a gun, and maybe even accomplices for all I knew, would easily take out a skinny kid with a knife in a one-to-one fight. I knew nothing about knife-fighting, or killing people, or even self-defense, for that matter.
“Choose now,” I whispered to myself. “Choose now. Choose now…” I got up and ran deeper into the forest, not giving myself time to second-guess my decision. I heard indecipherable yelling behind me as I broke twigs and ran through the brush, making noise. A gunshot went off, and the branch of the tree to my left exploded in a shower of splinters and leaves. Running as fast as I could and zigzagging, still holding my bleeding hand against my chest, feeling light-headed but also strangely energetic and alive, I left the maniac far behind in minutes. He tried shooting a couple more times, but his shots hit trees far away from me, and I felt I had escaped.
After a while, I stopped for a rest. I had sprinted at least a mile by this point, gone off the trail and scrabbled up rocks and changed direction multiple times. I still had a general sense of where I stood in the forest. I knew if I continued north, I’d find a six-lane highway cutting across the rural town. And so I headed north, hoping to find someone who might help a guy who just had his fingers cut off by a madman.
***
After what felt like days to my exhausted and frightened mind, I heard the roar of traffic echoing through the trees. The deceleration and acceleration of trucks and large vehicles as they passed on the highway gave the roaring echoes a cyclical sound, and it calmed my heart immensely as I imagined the help that waited not far away.
But I hadn’t hiked as quickly as I had thought, apparently. For as I reached the treeline, the man in the plague doctor mask came running from behind me, his gun raised, the bloody ax apparently left behind in his maniacal pursuit.
“You will never escape from me!” he shouted, pulling the trigger and hitting me in the back of the thigh. I screamed, coming out from the trees and limping slowly into the road. A car in the slow lane swerved crazily around me, and the next one put on its hazards and pulled slowly forward. I ran as fast as I could to the passenger’s side door, which was locked. I knocked on it over and over, and the woman inside reluctantly unlocked it and opened the door. I jumped in, bleeding all over her seat and crying. I looked over at her quickly, realizing she was attractive and in her 30s with green eyes and light hair. I wondered how I looked to her in that moment.
“Drive, drive! For God’s sake, get me out of here! He’s going to kill us!” I screamed. Her eyes went wide, and her mouth went slack. I thought, for a moment, I was dealing with a dullard, and I cursed my luck. Then she shut her mouth. As the man in the plague doctor mask ran out of the forest, as my leg spurted blood and my heart beat ever faster from the blood loss I had suffered, she hit the accelerator.
The car that had swerved to avoid me had put on its hazards and started to pull over. The driver looked like he was trying to call someone, hopefully the police. Then I looked at the woman.
“Call the police!” I said quickly. “Call 911! Do you have a phone? Is it charged? We need help immediately, and I need medical attention.”
“Why?” she asked. “What is this about?”
“The Temple-Body Killer, I think that’s what he calls himself when he writes those crazy letters to the newspapers,” I said. “I don’t really watch the news, but I heard people talking about him at work. Anyway… He came into my house, chopped off my fingers-” I raised my left hand for emphasis, “and shot me, and he has a gun, and he’s looking for me right now. So you better get the hell out of here as fast as you can, unless you want to meet him yourself.” As if on cue, I saw the madman run to the car with its hazards on in the breakdown lane. The woman driving in my car pulled out her phone and frowned.
“No service, sorry,” she said. “This is a dead zone. Usually in another five or six miles I get service, but down here where the states meet and there’s no real towns for miles, they never built any cell towers.” I sighed. I felt like my luck today was abysmal.
The Temple-Body Killer pulled out his gun and tapped the window of the stopped car. As soon as the man on his phone looked up, the madman shot the driver of the car in the face, a man who was likely trying to get service, to report that I had run in the highway and he had nearly hit me with his car. Another good samaritan, taken out by a lunatic under the bright light of a sunny and beautiful day. I saw the masked man drag the body out of the car and hop in the driver’s seat, reloading his spent casings as he sat there and looked around.
Then he saw me, turned around in the passenger seat and looking back, and our eyes met for a second.
“Dammit,” I said. “I think he just saw me. He has a car. This is not good…” The next second, he peeled out, running over the man’s body as he pulled away. Cars coming down the highway honked and swerved as the madman and killer pushed his car’s accelerator to the max. I heard the screaming of its engine as he began to gain.
“We need to go faster,” I said. “Can this thing go faster? He’s gaining on us and he has a gun. He might shoot out your tires or something. He might shoot you, or me. I don’t know. He’s insane. Totally insane.” I rambled. “We need to get away. I only have a knife. I don’t know what we can possibly do… against a madman with a gun.” The woman smiled over at me, cryptically. It seemed out of character.
“I have a gun,” she said, reaching under her seat and pulling out a huge pistol. She passed it to me. “Do you know how to shoot?”
“This end faces forwards, I think,” I said sarcastically, laughing. “Is this a 45?” She nodded. “Big damned gun. ACP, I think. This could do some real damage.”
“Well,” she said, “if you’re going to buy a gun for self-protection, you might as well get something worth the money. Good stopping power in a 45. I’ve only ever used it on the range. I don’t believe in hunting or anything.” At that moment, a gunshot ripped through the car, shattering the back windshield and the back passenger’s side window. I looked behind us, and realized he had gained. The woman drove smoothly and quickly, but her car did not have the same acceleration or horsepower as the one the killer had stolen. I saw he had a souped up, newer Ford Taurus, while the woman drove an older Buick Encore. I instantly knew I was screwed.
Except for the gun. That was my ace in the hole, my deus ex machina. Now, at least, we had a more level playing field. He had a gun, and I had a gun. He was insane, and I was not. I don’t know who had the advantage, actually. Perhaps insanity might be an advantage in a one-to-one fight, as an insane person would feel no pain and fight like a rabid beast. But their logical thinking abilities may be compromised. So far, I had seen no way to exploit this in my adversary. He had shown no weakness, and even if I had to do it all over again, the only thing I felt I could have done differently was grab my phone instead of the knife.
The Temple-Body Killer pulled up beside our car, swerving in the middle lane as he raised the gun towards us.
“Stay down!” I yelled as a shot blew apart the driver and passenger side windows. We both kept ducking as he shot over and over again, destroying this poor woman’s car. But then he stopped, and I took my chance.
Raising my head quickly, taking a deep breath in and steadying myself, I shot the .45 ACP through the smashed and broken window of the woman. She made a small cry and jumped as I fired at the madman. I saw a spray of blood as a bullet hit his shoulder, and his car swerved madly to the left, smashing into another car in the fast lane that had tried to go past us.
With a tearing of metal and a screech of tires, the cars flipped and rolled over towards the breakdown lane, eventually landing on the grass in a tangled mess of broken glass and twisted frames.
But by the time the woman driving the car had stopped, and I had gotten out, the Ford Taurus stood empty and broken on the ground. Blood stained the seat, and a hole from a gunshot went through the shoulder area, but the madman had gone. I looked towards the thick forest that lined the sides of the highway, seeing no one.
We quickly drove on and found service, summoning the police and the SWAT team and ambulances and everyone else we could call. But they found no trace of the madman in the plague doctor mask, though they had samples of his blood to match to any suspect that may be apprehended. I didn’t consider that much of a win.
My mother didn’t end up surviving the attack by the man who called himself the “Temple-Body Killer”. She had died within seconds of him invading the house, when he chopped her head off in the kitchen and staged it in the oven. Then he turned the heat up to 500 degrees Fahrenheit and let it cook while he walked upstairs to deal with me.
By the time the police got to my house, they found the head cooked to a blackened crisp. We buried my mother, God rest her soul, and had a closed-casket funeral. She was one of the sweetest women I had ever met, and she didn’t deserve to die in such a way, or have her body desecrated. But this world is a sick place, with sick people on the loose, and I know she is in a better place now.
I moved far away and tried to forget. Every time the Temple-Body Killer struck again, the newspapers would explode with headlines, and the media always wanted to interview me, the first known survivor of this mass murdering fiend. At first, the police gave me an escort and a patrol car would pass by my house every fifteen to thirty minutes, but as time passed, they forgot about me, and I felt relatively safe. I didn’t think the madman would come all the way down to Florida from New England, where he usually hunted, just to find me, after all. Until today.
I walked out into palm trees and the smell of the ocean, and found a note in my mailbox, written in blood. It wasn’t in any envelope, but it looked like it had been personally dropped off by someone. I unfolded it, looking at the half-sheet of torn computer paper in stunned silence. On it, I saw only a few lines, written in blood. Elegant, curving copperplate cursive formed the letters. I dropped the letter and ran inside to call 911, the words ringing over and over in my head.
“We will be together in Hell- very soon.
Always yours,
The Temple-Body Killer”