SPECTER

He liked taking a tour of the town every morning since he had returned. Scrutinize nearly every road path, nearly every alley, spy on his next victims. He enjoyed this as much as he did the buildup and excitement that pumped and filled his heart with adrenaline every time, he was getting closer to killing a new person. The spying was the getting ready, preparation, and the preface before the actual job to be done. He’d follow his victims everywhere like a lion trailing an unsuspecting prey from the distance, being observant before the actual strike.

That method always paid off. If a lion had stirred the bush while targeting prey, the weaker animal would be alert and be able to run off as fast as it could, therefore leaving back a hungry and angry predator. He didn’t like to rattle the bushes and alert his prey. There was no need to rush things. An actual predator in the wild wouldn’t. He considered himself one as well. A predator seeking out the weak preys and devouring them, not just for his pleasure but for a purpose greater than that. The pleasure he derived from watching the life slowly and gradually fade off his victim's face was a bonus to the job he had at hand.

The morning was cold, fog appeared out of his nostrils and mouth with each breath he took. His fingers were cramping up and starting to feel numb even though he had on a black woolen glove, but that wasn’t a problem. It was a little past eight in the morning but the sun hadn’t risen yet. The sky was a faded grey, and cumulus cloud-like fogs hovered atop the mountains surrounding the town, momentarily hiding them away. This was the time in the morning when tourists from the hotel liked to have their morning jogs.

At that moment he could spot about four tourists already, seemingly college students. They were all dressed for the cold, cameras in their hands. Two young men and ladies as well. The men were up ahead on the road, running and whooping, cracking jokes and laughing at their silliness. Their voices echoed into the mountains overhead and through the silence of the morning. The girls behind giggled in response. Soon, they all disappeared into the fog overhead, probably headed to the waterfall a few miles ahead.

He looked away from the direction they had gone, focusing back on the camera in his hand. He began to scroll through the pictures he had shot of his newest victim, a grey-headed woman. He had shot some of the pictures of her in her house through her windows, some at her workplace, and some with her co-workers, there were even some pictures with her and Father Jerome, one of the people he had taken down most recently and murdered.

Today he wasn’t on his feet and jogging, he had decided to come with his car and pretended to sit in there and click pictures of the mountain ahead. He was parked in front of a breakfast diner, awaiting his subject of muse to be done eating, and back outside. He knew most of her routine now. Early in the morning, she got prepared for work and headed to the diner first for breakfast. Afterward, she’d walk home a stone’s throw from the diner. Got into her Toyota and made a quick stop by nine at the home for the orphanage she was in charge of in town to check on the kids.

Then after she’d resumed her work at the Catholic hospital and retired to the house she shared with her husband and teenage son by five in the evening. That was how her weekdays went. Her Sundays however, were dedicated to the orphanage to serve a good cause. After having breakfast at the diner, she’d spend the rest of her day among the children. He was extremely patient in gathering information and details about his victims. And he knew she was going to be out of the restaurant in approximately five seconds from then.

He glanced at the watch on his wrist: 8:30. And then began a countdown in his head. Five... four... three... two... one. Then he waited, his camera in his right hand while the left tapped his steering wheel rhythmically in what almost seemed like anxiety. His breathing quickened when a second extra passed and he hadn’t seen her, and then another. He wasn’t quite pleased and he gritted his teeth.

And then, she appeared out the entrance of the diner, and she wasn’t alone. But was in the company of three others and he could only identify one as her teenage son who went to the high school at the town center. The other two were a woman and a teenage girl who had her head slouched and her hands holding onto her backpack straps while the boy conversed with her. The women were upfront, while the teenagers walked at a slower pace behind them, apparently having their conversation.

He raised his camera to begin capturing pictures and then froze when the girl looked up and directly in his direction. She had looked bored, and uninterested, and probably taken him as one of the tourists because she instantly looked away.

“Belle?!” He whispered, a little rattled, a lot shocked. His heart thudded in his chest in instant recognition, and his fingers froze for a second or two before he began clicking away as fast as he could. Multiple pictures of the girl.

When they disappeared around the corner, he scurried to get his nose mask and face cap in place and got out of his car. The cold was much more biting than it had been inside, and the wind sang in a low howling tone that had been blocked out by the car’s window. He began trudging in the direction they’d gone, his disguise intact — an all-black fit. His camera dangled in his left hand while the other was shoved into the pocket of his leather jacket.

He couldn’t be wrong. His eyes couldn’t be deceiving him. Was that Belle? The blonde-haired girl had quickly become his subject of muse. The last time he had seen the Belle, she was more grown than the girl was now and she had been brunette, not blonde. She had been 24, seventeen years back. She ought to have looked older, and more mature, not gone back in time to look like she did when they were both high school kids.

And when he rounded the corner and watched them from the distance, his heart gave a sudden lurch when he realized the younger woman talking to the grey-headed next-in-line victim was Belle.

His Belle Moore.

His heart banged and thudded in his chest, at a smothering rate. Beneath the nose mask, he was breathless, letting out short gasps of breaths that moistened the piece of clothing over his nose and mouth. Time seemed to slow down, the seconds ticking lengthened to minutes as he continued to watch the group of four get farther away from him. When he lifted the camera in an attempt to click more pictures before they got too far ahead, his fingers trembled and he couldn’t take control of the item in his hand.

Pathetically, he returned to his car and sunk into the seat in surrender to the shock that overwhelmed him. He was slammed into a well of memory, back to the last time he had seen her, and he drowned in those memories. Seventeen long years had gone by. The realization dawned on him, quite harshly that Belle had kept the baby.