The Artist

It was all over the news; a serial killer in my home state of Washington! The killer travelled around the western side of Washington, towns like Renton, Seattle, North Bend, and so on. I was watching the news in my apartment; they called him the Evergreen Killer. The police would not divulge the details of the killings; all they could say is that he had an artistic mind. Great I thought; there are tons of artists in Washington. In addition the police revealed that the reason for these killings may have been a period of depression he recently went through; maybe his art being resented by someone he cared for, or not being seen. I noticed that as the police continued on they mentioned artist a lot. This got me curious; I searched for body artists in Washington. Assuming that the killer did some sort of artwork on their body. Then I cross referenced any with medical experience. There was a list of about 180 people. Maybe my list was wrong but I decided to email the list to my friend at the police department. Since the killer had crossed multiple county lines the FBI had come to work with each of the lead departments.

My friend replied back saying that the FBI’s lead investigator loved the idea, and greatly narrowed the search. I had been training to be a detective but during my studies in criminology I got interested in other things. I knew I liked solving things but I got interested in solving problems for computers; they seemed so much easier to use than the real world. My father had been a psychiatry teacher at the University of Washington. In fact that’s why my family had moved to America when I was 3 years old. We came from Ireland and I would always visit my cousins there every year or two. My mother had found a job as a waitress for a restaurant. My parents were very kind, and always pushed me to exceed in the things I do; but back to the point. My friend at the police department told the police about my theory and they recruited me to help consult on the case. At first I was hesitant, but after I had a few hours to talk it over with my friend at the bar he finally convinced me to join the search.

When I had gotten over my hangover the next day I packed up my stuff; computer, notebook, sticky notes, etc. I went over to the police department to talk with the lead investigator from the FBI; his name was Mark Finley, he solved the country’s most recent serial killer.

The Mad Dog they called him. He would use the head of a dog that the teeth were coated in saliva with rabies. After he killed his victims he would bite into the neck of each victim. Mark had figured out that he was mad that his sister when she was two, died from getting bit in the neck by a mad dog. He had been looking over newspapers about dog attacks and found the story about a group of people who were killed by a rabid dog. One of the relatives; an older brother, had witnessed his sister get bitten by the dog. The evidence of this wouldn’t have been strong enough to support his claim, but he found an article about him getting put into a mental institution for anti-social personality disorder which he was later assumed cured of and released. This evidence held up for the judge and a search warrant was issued. No one in the neighborhood had any dogs. This was their final clue so they found the guy and he had heard them coming. When the FBI invaded the house he jammed his head into a bear trap and it ripped a large portion of his neck out and he bled out minutes later.

When I was told my idea had possibly narrowed the search they gave me all the details about the case and my own little cubical to set up what I was working on. They told me all the cities that the killer had attacked in. I mapped each one down, looking for a pattern and saw nothing. My friend the detective came and we talked over possible things about the killer. Just then Mark came back into the building and said “detective Stevens I need to talk to you.” And with that my friend left the room. His name was Jacob Stevens, I had known him since high school, we went to college together to study criminology and then we each went our separate ways. We still stayed in contact; and would often talk about the projects we were doing. After Jacob had gotten back, he gave me the photographs of the crime scenes. Each body was found in a random place, and a picture was found at a separate location. The pictures were painted with their blood and their skin as his canvas; this was one truly sick mind.

The first picture was the picture of a skull; the blood seemed to smear upward; that’s when I got it. The painting was done upside down. The guy must have a high I.Q. to be able to draw things such as that. The skull seemed very detailed; I am able to count the teeth on the skull, and can see the part where the cartilage that connects the nose to the skull had been really detailed. This guy was so artistic; it’s a shame he had to waste this talent on murdering people. I look at the other pictures, I see an angel, and the angel seems to be holding something; it looked like a decapitated head. I can see the layers of feathers on her wings that are so boldly drafted. On her face you can see how he parted the blood to make it seem as though a tear formed from her eye that breezed down her face to the side of her cheek; it was so unique. The third picture I saw seemed different. It seemed like he was painting a death instead of something that was dead. He painted a being reaching out to the sky, used the dripping technique to make it seem like his body was exploding upward, his face was detailed enough to see a crying expression.

There were more paintings, despite how intriguing they were to look at; I just could not stand to describe them any further. They were beautiful yet full of some sadistic evil. I didn’t want to think about them anymore. Jacob told me I should take a break; I go across the street to the Starbucks. In Washington it seems like there’s a coffee shop on every corner. I got a normal cup of black coffee with sugar, paid and left. When I was walking up the stairs I realized something; what if he was expressing something he witnessed in his life? I ran up the stairs almost spilling my coffee as the plastic lid wasn’t put on properly. I made it up stairs and told them my idea. Look for events that involve those pictures. After about a day of searching with two teams, we couldn’t find anything. I was dismayed at this. I felt strongly that my idea had been correct. I collect news articles for the past 30 years from around the country. I set up a computer search algorithm on the documents for certain text tags; still nothing. Then it happened. An angel statue was destroyed, and a man was burned to death on the same day. No news article about the skull… or any of the other paintings. I felt I was getting closer. These events happened in Florida, it’s as if the killer – assuming these events involved him – was trying to get away from it all.

I bring up my find to Mark and he puts it on a board for a possible idea to look into. He assigns two agents to search for any similarities between the two; other than that they were in the town. “Look for similarities to the other paintings in nearby towns.” He told them. I said we can probably narrow it down with people who were on the list that moved to Washington in the past 20 years. The events in the newspapers took place about twenty years ago. We shortened the list to about 25 people, strange I thought it would be shorter by this time. We crossed off 2 of them because they were dead now. One of them was documented at the site of the angel statue. None of the remaining ones seemed to be related to the paintings, or stories.

The next day another victim was found. This victim’s body was found half an hour later. The painting was of what appeared to be an island, surrounded by an ocean filled with dead bodies. He must’ve used a really small brush for such detail. The canvas was larger than his normal canvas’s he made from the human skin. Instead of the fishing wire he usually uses to stitch the skin together into a sheet; this time he used the victim’s hair. The stitching in the middle formed words that made this sentence: “and with death comes new life, the lost will be set free tonight.” We documented this and were worried.

Sunset had begun to fall, and we had no idea what to do. There had been a multitude of missing person’s cases in the past year and we did not know how many would be victims. We could tell from the circumstances that this attack was going to be an escalation of the previous single murders. During the next Seahawks game at the Seahawks Stadium right before the players stepped into the field, an array of wiring pulls the dirt off the ground. An entire canvas of skin with a painting of blood shows. Every single viewer of this game is screaming. This image was being broadcasted live. I noticed the game on television; that canvas must have been made from hundreds of bodies, most importantly how did he place the painting there in such little time. The painting was of two groups about to go to war with each other. Above that in the horizon were the entity of death and rays of blood lightly splattered over heading towards the being of death. The skin had made a natural sunset appearance from the way the different skin colors formed. The FBI had made it to the field in less than 10 minutes but at that point the entire nation was in panic.

They had to bring helicopters to remove the painting without damaging it. They had taken a team to look over every single detail on this painting, there had to be some sort of evidence. After a day of searching all that was found was parts of the painting that were written in human hair saying random phrases such as “Be the one who brings the night, for you must do what you know is right” None of the FBI psychologists and text analysts could depict anything about the picture. It was as if he wasn’t human; at least in the psychological sense of the word.

The idea popped into my mind when I was getting ready for the night in the bathroom. I jumped to my phone and called Mark. I told him “the killer would respond if we insulted his art on television. He had to admire his work on the news, or the internet. We should convince an art critic to explain the flaws in his drawings to lure them out.” Mark was impressed with my plan and begun prepping for it right away. The next day at noon I turn on the news to view the news post explaining the killer’s art works are just amateur work.

I was hoping this was to pay off and not become a serious mistake. I drove around Seattle, I couldn’t sleep. I’m going through my thoughts when I realized, the killer always put his paintings around trash dumpsters, or coffee shops. The only thought that could go through my head was bad dreams. Then I realized the killer must be afraid to sleep. He must see nightmares with these images in his head; that he is afraid of and they drove him into madness. He wanted everyone to see, but he wanted to throw them away. I called Jacob and he told the station my discovery. We look for anything depicting an artist that wants to get rid of some of his works. We find only three; one of them was from the two guys that we crossed out due to them dying. I noticed this and pointed it out to the rest of the group. He must have been alive this whole time. “How do we find someone who’s dead?” Jacob asked. Everyone looked around not knowing what to say. Mark asks “how long has he been dead?” I say “let me check” and go to my files. He died, three weeks before the killings started. He was in a fire that burned him so much that his body was no longer recognizable. We got to the point where it was obvious that the body was someone else. But now we were stuck with a dead man killing people. What could we do? I left for another cup of coffee; Jacob came out and followed me and told me not to get another cup. I asked why; he responded with. “Because you seem to drink coffee when you’re nervous and you’re not putting as much input as you could if you weren’t under the effects of caffeine.” I had decided he was right and went back up.

When I was walking up the stairs with Jacob I felt a slight perforate on my neck and then everything went dark. After what seemed like seconds I awoke in a cold room. I look around and see a tray of surgical knives and an array of strange looking tools. One I recognized from one of my criminology lectures where the professor was explaining tools used to deal with criminals in medieval times. I think the name of the tool was “The Pear of Anguish” or something similar. It was stuck in one of the body’s larger holes and then slowly expanded, sometimes over periods of days or weeks. Until the body gives out from stress, and such symptoms as the jaw being removed if it was placed orally; or other such injuries such as the legs are dislocated if the Pear was placed lower. I could not see or hear Jacob; had he been the killer the whole time? No I thought Jacob wouldn’t do something like this.

Moments later a man walks in; holding a paintbrush with red drops dripping from the tip of it. The brush had dried blood along the shaft of it. I look back up at him and see he has a white shirt with a rubber apron over it. He has long black gloves, and he has black rain boots which were surprisingly clean. I notice a mask over his face made of a black plastic or rubbery substance. I look around the room again, just for any possible ways to escape. I see nothing but plastic, hanging lights, rusty metal walls and a bare concrete floor. There was no way for me to escape. I struggle but nothing happens.

I was stuck, suspended in that position. I tried shaking hoping it would loosen something. Nothing happened. The man takes his knife and begins cutting around my left thigh, I scream as loud as I can. He steps back and gags me and I’m shaking as violently as I can. He knocks loose one of the levers on the cuff holding my hand in place and he doesn’t notice it. I bite his neck and he goes into the next room to patch it up I assumed. I unlock the cuffs that are holding me down and grab one of the tools on the tray. He comes out and I stab him in the stomach and head to the next room in a limping manner. I look and I see a door and go through it. I see the skin of Jacobs face lying on the floor and I collapse with sadness and fear. I scramble to get up just as the killer lunges at me and we scuffle.

I kick him off with my good leg and get up and start trying to move; I slip in a pool of Jacobs’s blood which causes the killer to miss his swing at me. I crawl into the next room and find a drawer. I notice a lock on one of them; I take a screw driver and jam it into the lock breaking it. I open the drawer and find a gun; a .44 magnum revolver. I check to see that it only has one bullet. I must make my shot count or he’ll kill me. He comes running towards me and I shoot. I missed! He lunges at me but I pull the desk down on top of me; he pulls it off of me as I took the knife I grabbed earlier and stab him in the chest. The crimson fluid flows from his body. I find my way outside of the building and call the police; they arrive minutes later as I pass out from blood loss. A week later I awake in a hospital bed. “I had survived” I whisper faintly under my breath. 

By: Kylan Walker