The Phantom

"Killing is a dead man's game." Said the reporter on TV, "After years of investigating homicides and murders all over the state, the Phantom Killer was finally gunned down by detectives who met him at the scene of his last crime. The masked assailant, Cain Husher, died after being shot several times in the chest by detectives Heather Reed and Steve Kennedy. The crime scene left them baffled and confused, for the body 'had vanished soon after bullets fired'. A baby was found at the scene of the crime shortly after more police arrived where the body once laid, and was taken by Child Protective Services. 'We were sure he had died, what ended up happening was truly mind boggling.'"

Stacy always loved watching the news, and hearing about how they finally put an end to the serial killer who haunted the east coast brought a sigh of relief from the teenage girl. She recognized one of the detectives as her mom's best friend, and about a month went by before the family heard from her directly.

To think, she thought, how someone she knew back in high school could manage to turn into one of the most notorious killers of this generation. She remembered him as the big quiet kid that was usually friendly when you approached him, yet always struggled in social situations. He never took the initiative to talk to anyone, but when someone came to him, there was always enthusiasm and a sense of gentleness. He didn't seem to come off as violent, just intimidating by his size and demeanor. She, as one of the more popular girls, had only spoken to him a handful of times, and from what she gathered from those few times, he was awkward yet kind. How things came to play out the way they did, well, it must have been something out of his control.

It has been a few years since they graduated, with the first of his killings taking place just about 9 months after high school ended. It was vicious, from what she heard from the news, the victim being someone in their junior year at their school at the time.

No motive. No evidence. No mercy.

One night, Stacy overheard a conversation that Heather and her mom were having over wine. Heather came over for drinks and gossip, and discussion regarding the baby soon came up. "After what you've been through," stated Heather, "you deserve to give yourself a blessing like this one." They would talk about the miscarriage Stacy's mom, Brenda, had to endure last year. It was traumatizing and depressing for her, to the point where she would seem easily swayed into considering adoption, after talking with her husband Richard the following day.

Stacy never had a little brother, it was always her and her younger sister Abby who lived with their parents in a quaint, urban town. Introducing a boy to this family, albeit one who is still developing, was an exciting ordeal for her. Two years passed before the adoption was official and Owen was now part of their family.

Baby Owen was the definition of purity and innocence. Something about him, be it his calm, quiet nature or his ability to laugh at any form of human interaction, made the family feel whole and healthy. Never before has a baby been so easy to handle and care for. It almost made her moms miscarriage seem like a blessing in disguise, for they were blessed with a child that would never seem to cry or scream, and gave a sense of mutual unconditional love to the entire family.

Owen, according to Heather, was truly an enigma, a mysterious one at that. She knew that his arrival on the crime scene was borderline unnatural, and explaining the true story was a privilege only Stacy's family was told about. The official report was the only lie she's ever mustered to fabricate in her life.

"It was crazy. Cain's body vanished as we called in backup, and by the time they arrived, there was a baby laying there. All we heard was some churning, gross noise and the smell of static electricity and copper in the air. Witnessing the body vanish.. it was disgustingly morbid. All that black and red, his body, it was like he was just sucked up into thin air and replaced by a baby. My partner and I couldn't make this up if we tried."

Brenda and Stacy would be forced to believe her, because of how specific and serious she was. Truly, there was never a lie that ever came out of her mouth since she and Brenda were little kids.

One night, Stacy was babysitting her siblings while their parents went out on a date. She went into Owen's room to check on him, and with no surprise, he was sound asleep. He looked so peaceful after being tucked in firmly yet gently not an hour prior.

"How are you so perfect?"

Stacy stared at his squishy, sleeping face for a good minute before she caught something in her peripheral vision. There appeared to be something odd sticking out from underneath a large, fluffy teddy bear that sat adjacent to the crib on a chair. It happened to catch her eye by chance, and thus when she lifted the bear and saw what it was, it left her feeling perplexed and confused.

She found an old, worn hockey mask that seemed from a different Era. It was scratched and battered, and since Halloween was right around the corner, she assumed it to be part of someone's costume. She took it and went to the living room to approach her sister Abby about it.

"Hey Abby, is this thing yours?"

Abby turned around and laid her chin on her forearms as she leaned over the couch to look at the mask.

"No. Looks creepy though, you should wear it. It'll make you look more appealing."

Stacy scoffed and turned the front of it to face her, looking into the eye holes. She felt a subtle sense of dread but disregarded it as her anxiety spiking. She was diagnosed with general anxiety disorder when she was little, and this happened more often than she cared to admit. She had a tendency to feel anxious and panicked at seemingly random times, so she was used to this sort of thing happening out of nowhere. Still...

"Maybe it's dad's or something. It's weird though. I found it in Owens' room."

Abby shrugged and turned back to face the TV.

"He must've forgotten it there when he was rearranging the room earlier today."

That appeared justifiable enough for Stacy, since she didn't want to overthink things like she normally did. She took the mask to her parents room and just threw it on their bed.

A couple weeks passed before Stacy was left to babysit again. This time, Abby was out with friends for a sleepover so it was just her and Owen. She was holding him gently on the couch while the news was playing, which was the only source of noise throughout the dimly lit house. He was smiling silently as he was cradled in her arms, and this comforted her. He was really good at keeping her calm.

A few minutes passed before she heard shuffling coming from the kitchen behind her. This got her feeling paranoid, but then a loud clanging sound of dishes made her jump in her seat and squeal in shock. Something must've fallen, because when she turned around to look, she saw a pan on the floor. She gently got up with Owen in her arms and went to investigate. The noise of the TV filled the house so she didn't feel completely anxious, but there was no notable way that could be left to assume how the pan fell from the stove. That's when she saw the mask again, propped up against a cabinet.

She felt that unease she felt before, the sense of dread that sunk into her like poison. Recalling how her father said that it wasn't his, she took the mask and went outside to throw it in the garbage can. When she went back inside, Owen was actually sobbing, absolutely against his normal personality. She picked him up and tried to comfort him, but it took about an hour before he eventually calmed down.

She was left pondering and fell back into an old routine of overthinking fueled by her anxiety. She was left to wonder how the mask managed to appear out of nowhere, and seemed to draw the conclusion that something ridiculously supernatural was behind it. Her family's uncertainty regarding it only solidified this notion, and it left her shaken and scared.

She did not sleep well that night after her parents came home. She had another sleep paralysis episode, which first happened the night Owen came into the family. She was unable to move and couldn't tell if she was dreaming or not. It was a horrible feeling, and as she opened her eyes she saw something in the corner of her room. It was a large black figure, giant and menacing. She wanted to cry out but she couldn't. The figure was like a dark, flaming presence that offered hatred and a promise of death should she resist. When she finally woke up, she shot upwards and shrieked as the figure vanished from sight. Her father came in, and sat down on bed to comfort her.

"Another episode?"

She was lost for words and hugged her quiet yet understanding father tightly, tears rolling down her cheeks. In her mind, she could only think to correlate these episodes with Cain, but that left her with more questions than answers. When she took a deep breath and calmed down, she assured her father that she was fine.

"If you ever need to talk," he said, "you know you can always come to me, anytime."

She slept soundly for the rest of the night, but would plan to act on her presumptions. The following day she invited her friends over and requested one bring her Ouija board to try and confront what has been haunting her.

"You sure this is what you want to do?"

"Yes."

She responded, as the three of them got situated in her room around the board,

"I found the mask in my closet this morning and there is no doubt it's trying to communicate."

They each gently placed two fingers on the  planchette and began to ask questions.

"Hello? What is your name?"

The planchette was still for a good five minutes before the lens began to move.

C. A. I. N.

They said it in unison, nervous and tempted as the planchette slid with their fingers gently against it. Stacy's heart sank, dread summoning a cold sweat.

"Do you remember us? From school?"

Y. E. S.

The mask, which was sitting across from Stacy on the floor, shifted slightly by itself. Owen could be heard crying in the other room as the three girls began to say "oh my God" and "holy shit". When they gradually settled down, albeit still uneasy, one of her friends gathered the courage to ask him another question.

"Why are you haunting Stacy?"

O. W. E. N.

"Are you tied to Owen somehow?"

Y. E. S.

Stacy was almost sobbing, and with the last of her courage she demanded one final question from him.

"Do you want to harm us?"

Y. E. S.

Without saying goodbye like you're supposed to, the girls screamed and the board flipped backwards, before the mask began to levitate. The two friends got up and took pictures of it before the mask fell, baffled and terrified. The discussion afterward was basically stuttering, hugging, and crying.

The following days were grueling and terrifying for poor Stacy. Her nightmares were darker and dreadful, constantly on the run from Cain and always being gashed or slashed open before she awoke in a cold sweat. The haunting was more and more apparent. Whispers could be heard around every corner, noises leading to the mask in a new room every time it was discarded or destroyed. No matter how she tried to get rid of the mask, it always came back, and in Owens room, no less. Owen, however, would only ever cry if the mask was missing from the home. The night of Halloween was when things finally tipped her over the edge.

Cain was always there, waiting and pestering all the while. The phantom drove her to the brink of insanity, to which the sessions she had with the Ouija board were the only means to understand what it wanted from her. After a while, she bought a spirit box to see if she could capture more paranormal evidence.

The next few days lead up to Halloween. Too curious and demanding answers, Stacy went and bought a spirit box to try and hear more concise answers to more intelligent questions. Her friends were too scared to take part in this, and thus she was on her own with the mask in the room, and Owen in her lap. She didn't want to do this, but it didn't seem like she had many more options. She only begged the question, 'why did they have to adopt a baby tied to a murderer?' She understood her mothers grief from the miscarriage, but still, it just didn't seem right now more than ever before. Too many unknown factors to consider, for who would've known ghosts actually existed?

When she turned it on, the loud buzzing of static shook and echoed her bedroom before she tuned it to 150 channels per second. This didn't seem to bother Owen, who was resting comfortably in her lap.

"I'm reaching out to Cain. I assume you know my name, so if you can hear me, please say it back to me."

As the channels flickered noisily she got a garbled, unintelligible sound that didn't make too much sense to her. It was hardly a voice, and could be anything rational in nature.

"My name is Stacy; can you say Stacy back to me?"

Seconds passed. Suddenly, "Stacy" was heard, louder and clearer than she anticipated. She gathered her resolve and swallowed her beating heart before she asked the next question.

"What do you want with Owen?"

The static revealed a noise which made her heart sink.

"He- *unintelligible* -part of me."

She looked down at the calm, smiling baby and held him tightly in her arms, too lost in her mind to restrict her questions. She wanted answers more than anything else.

"Part of you? What do you mean by that?"

"-*static* -remains of *unintelligible* soul."

The voice was deep, dark and foreboding, yet sounded intelligent.

"Is this your mask? Why won't it go away when I try to get rid of it?"

Damning silence for a moment, before it responded once again.

"It is- *unintelligible* -even I don't know."

"How did you die?"

"*static* -gunned down before I- *unintelligible*"

She was beginning to wonder about something regarding this response. As she pondered her next question, the air got thin and cold, the lights flickered out and the door slammed behind her. She jumped and remained seated, too terrified to move.

"What do you want from me?!"

"Put it on."

The mask suddenly seemed more alluring, and the voice only seemed to repeat this over and over again. When she turned off the spirit box, there was a horrid, unyielding deafness that only rendered his echoing words to do so in her head. She fought and fought the urge, but it only seemed to make her stomach sting and her head to pound harder and harder. When the physical reactions began making her sick, she reluctantly picked up the mask and put it over her face.

The straps abruptly squeezed tight and a sharp, seething pain coursed through her entire body. She was screaming as loud as she could, but nothing came out from the mouth holes except blood, same as for the eye holes. Her eyes filled in like black dye to water as she tried defiantly to remove this prison from her face, but it was no good. She was losing control over herself, and before she knew it, she felt like she was nailed to boards down in her subconscious. She was powerless to stop this phantom from standing up and placing the baby on the ground.

Fire began to engulf her room, and was unnaturally spreading throughout the entire house. Up in flames like hell was leaking out from the mask, the damned girl stood in its center as her body boiled and melted away into a crude sludge.

The rest of the family escaped thankfully, but by the time the fire department arrived, their worldly possessions were nothing but ashes. Upon investigation, the starting point of this blaze was in her room, with an unrecognizable charred mass at its center, with Stacy and Owen nowhere to be found. In the sizzling aftermath, only questions and baffling uncertainty remained.

Death is a strange thing. For most, it entails the end of an experience often reflected on with a sense of bittersweet accomplishment, usually with a dash of regret. For Cain, who was once in control of his intrusive thoughts and actions, found himself back after his mortal years were cut short by his own lack of control. Perpetual torment engulfed what remained of Stacy, and as she fell into the dark depths of a serial killer reborn, she could only wonder why Cain was driven to be the Phantom Killer that he was, now more than ever.  Her final question was answered before she dissolved and decayed into obscurity.

"It amplifies the intrusive thoughts of humanity, to which all of us have within us."

Owen was intended to die in the house fire, and his fate, unfortunately, would be left to interpretation. Evidence is ambiguous. The remnant of Cain's goodness was left behind to die, but no one seemed to have the answers so desperately desired. Abby and her parents were grief stricken and homeless, unsure how they would ever cope with the losses that strike them as horrific and damning. Brenda felt an immortal guilt, for giving into her desire for a child despite the odd circumstances surrounding him. She would pester and fight with Richard about it for months, leaving Abby to go out in search for her missing siblings, running away from a broken family caused by The Phantom.