Chapter 20
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 still alive 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.
The snowfall reminded me of the time when I lived in Mercy’s Light with Lincoln. My mind went back to those days of misery…
The long, boring days that bled into each other in that dreadful place, black and cold.
I spent most of my time staring at the scratched-up wall, the one that looked like someone had been clawing at it—like a ferocious animal.
Not because I was curious about it, but because I didn’t want to get into any trouble.
Mildred, the head caretaker, didn’t like noise. She didn’t like coughing, crying, laughing, or talking—especially not from Lincoln and me.
Her brutal hand was always quick to redden my cheek.
Our only solace was in the far corner of our living quarters—a dollhouse, dusty and broken. It had a few tiny beds inside with tiny dolls. We pretended to live there, pretended like it was our alternate reality—where we hadn’t left our home, and our parents were still alive.
I remembered the way Lincoln and I used to sit on the dust-filled floor together. We’d huddle by the cracked window to try and catch a glimpse of the outside world—to see if we could attain any shred of joy from anything we might’ve seen.
The only thing we ever saw was the scorching hot sun, or the snowfall blanketing the town.
Lincoln’s favorite dolls were the damaged ones—ripped-up things with missing buttons and made-up stories on what they had gone through.
Lincoln’s stories were always the most violent.
It mirrored the horrors of what we had seen while living in downtrodden places, bouncing from one broken home to the next, while our parents fled the criminals they had stolen from.
That was about as much as I cared to remember.
He held his doll up, examining it. “Do you ever think we’ll get adopted?” he asked, his voice carried that tone of careful hope. We knew we had to temper our expectations, when it came to the kind of lives we wanted to live.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s quieter when it’s just us, anyway. I don’t miss all the screaming and the fighting. It scares me.”
He smiled at that, a sad smile. “I know. I don’t miss it either.”
Then a shadow loomed over us. A taller kid—older, broad-shouldered, mean-mugged, molded by the cruelty of Mercy’s Light.
I tried to remember his name. Colton? I thought it might’ve been Colton. To me, it fit his face somehow.
He sneered down at us. “Stop playing with dolls like girls,” he commanded. “Hand ’em over. I want them for myself. I’m gonna burn them.”
Lincoln stood up before I could pull him back. “No,” he shot back, chin raised up, not afraid of the older bully. “Go away. You leave us alone. We’re not doing anything to you. Got it?”
The bully’s face flashed with rage as he shoved him back, hard. Lincoln pushed back, harder. Suddenly, they were on each other, fists swinging, feet kicking across the dirty wooden floor. I wanted to step in, but it all happened too fast for me to react.
“Enough!”
Mildred’s voice cracked through the room like a thunder bolt. She marched in angrily—long, gray, checkered dress, scornful eyes, that permanent scowl carved deep into her wrinkled, old face. She grabbed them both by the arms and yanked them apart.
“Insolent boys. You will learn to behave! You two in separate corners. Eight hours. No food, no water, no talking, no sleeping,” she hissed. “Break my rules and you’ll be broken instead.”
Lincoln glared at the floor, breathing hard. Even then, I knew something had shifted in him. That was the day he started fighting everyone and everything, the day he stopped trying to stay quiet—his resolve had been broken.
He lashed out at the world after that. I was the polar opposite, but he was my brother. I loved him and I missed him more than anything.
When he was murdered…I never healed from that. I didn’t know how. I still didn’t.
I snapped back to the present and walked over to my couch, heat rushing to my face. My heart hammered in my ears.
Colton must’ve been there in Mercy’s Light. The older bully might’ve been him. That’s how he knew who I was, and where I was.
Colton Kilhouser had to be the Dollhouse Killer, but something didn’t make sense.
Why change his name? Why go by the Xmas Day Butcher? Why abduct Angela?
What the hell did I have to do with any of it?
My phone vibrated, and I quickly slid it out. I received an email, and the subject line was: POST OFFICE—item available for pickup. An anonymous sender, of course, something that didn’t seem traceable. I waited until the next day after I received it because they were closed.
What did the Xmas Day Butcher have in store for me now?