Before I could think further on the situation, the front windowexploded.Glass flew in our direction like razors. I ducked on instinct, covering my head and face. Castillo and her mother screamed at the top of their lungs.
An axe wrapped in Christmas lights had buried itself in the wall beside Castillo’s desk.
I just stared at it, breath frozen in my chest. Then I saw it—taped to the axe’s handle, a piece of folded paper, fluttering slightly from the wind that had come in.
I crawled towards it slowly and pulled it loose, heart beating in my ears.
“Don’t you pout; it’s all coming out. Lenny, may I ask, have you figured out what this is all about?”
I didn’t have time to process it as a surge of anger erupted in me. I shoved the note into my pocket and bolted out the front door; Castillo ran out alongside me. We were met with nothing but snow and an empty neighborhood. I jogged ahead, trying to see if anyone was around—nothing. There was absolutely no one.
“Do you see anything?” she asked.
“No,” I whispered. “You? ” I asked, glancing back at her.
She shook her head furiously. “We’re chasing a fucking ghost!” Her eyes swept across the darkened neighborhood, wild and unfocused. “This evil fuck is always one step ahead. I don’t know how. They’re always watching. They know too much. How? How do they know so much?” she mumbled to herself.
She was beginning to lose it too; her resolve was cracking.
I stared into the darkness and saw nothing.
“When will this end?” I whispered.
CHAPTER 20
DECEMBER 20TH
Detective Castillo was irate after what happened in her home. She rushed me home and told me to stay put—that it wasn’t safe to go outside. I could tell that she had no idea what to do—I didn’t either, even though I had been ordered to kill Mayor Hamonte.
Another night of restlessness. I woke up after only a few hours of sleep, thinking and mulling over how it was all going to end. I thought about Detective Castillo and what she might’ve been hiding. Was she interwoven in the web of corruption that included Mayor Hamonte and Doctor Tuttle? That was yet to be seen.
My phone buzzed and I checked it. It was a text message from Castillo: “Someone broke into Mayor Hamonte’s car last night, we’re still assessing the damage. Extra patrols are being posted at his home. Stay safe and out of sight.”
I sat on the edge of my bed, the lights off, only flashes of the red-and-green strands of light on the axe still glowing faintly in my mind. Things were getting crazy out there. If the Xmas Day Butcher was bold enough to break into the mayor’s car—there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to get what he wanted.
I thought about the first time I had learned of the man who had killed my family: Colton Kilhouser.
It was Corita who told me. She was the old Spanish woman who took me in after that horrible tragedy. She used to feed me sweet bread dipped in hot milk; her wrinkled hands were strong despite her old age, and she was a woman with a big heart.
She lived in a small, cottage-style home with one bedroom. I slept in the living room, on an inflatable mattress, and kept my clothes in a closet adjacent to the bathroom. It wasn’t ideal, but I wasn’t complaining. All I thought about was trying to live my life in peace.
One night, after I woke up screaming—same nightmare, same screams she’d heard for weeks—she sat beside me on the mattress and whispered the truth.
“El hombre malo, Colton Kilhouser,”she said.“Él lastimó a tu familia, mi amor. Él los mató. Dios no lo perdonará.”
“That bad man, Colton Kilhouser,” she echoed. “He hurt your family, my love. He killed them. God will not forgive him.”
The evil man in the nightmares I experienced looked like a reflection of myself, killing my family. When the bullies in school would echo that same idea, I began to think that I really was the one who had killed them, and that Colton Kilhouser was just a boogeyman, a myth, a fall guy.
That name haunted me for so many years. Even when Corita delivered the news that he had died, I still felt his dark presence, casting a shadow on my life. It turned out I was right, that he was stillalive somehow. Doctor Tuttle had been using him in the Gibraltar Institute, and it seemed like Colton had finally escaped.
That sweet old lady, Corita, had passed away years earlier, but I never forgot the way she told me that Colton Kilhouser had killed my family. She told me like it was a lie—something to shut me up and to never bring it up again. That idea lingered in my head ever so often.
I snapped back to reality and got up to stretch my legs. The house felt so quiet and frozen. I thought I heard whispers of someone coming, but I knew I was being paranoid.
I walked to the window in my room and stared out at the snowfall—it never seemed to end. I wondered how the Xmas Day Butcher was able to drop off gifts, severed heads, axes, and notes, all while remaining undetected and unseen. He was like a force of nature, not to be trifled with.
I imagined him out there—in the forest near my house, likely locked up somewhere with Angela, biding his time while he carried out his long game of vengeance.
