Expecting a Monster
A serial killer gets an unexpected surprise
Note: Stories at Until Night Falls are works of dark fiction and may contain elements of violent crime, horror, and mature themes/subject matter. Reader discretion is advised.
He pulled the ski mask over his head and exited the pantry, baseball bat in-hand.
The dryer hummed in the hallway alcove and the buttons on Grace Ramsey’s jeans tick-tacked inside. The killer known as Equinox moved silently past, toward her bedroom, the light from the TV casting a wedge-shaped glow on the ceiling through the cracked bedroom door. He peered into the room and watched for any sign of movement but Grace Ramsey appeared to be asleep.
His breathing quickened as he pushed the bedroom door open with a slow, furtive motion. If she woke up right then, his silhouette would be fully visible in the doorway and things would escalate very quickly. His arousal grew and he had an erection. He would smash her skull while she slept then violate her as her life slipped away, as he had done to so many before.
He took one step into the bedroom, then another. He raised his bat over the shape in the bed and was about to bring it down when the light came on. The shape in the bed was not Grace Ramsey.
The killer heard a series of clicks from over his shoulder. He turned around.
Grace Ramsey stood in the corner of the bedroom, eyes intense and blazing. She pointed a .357 Magnum at the killer, the hammer cocked, her hands shaking.
“Don’t mistake my trembling hands for fear,” she said, her voice wavering with emotion. She inhaled a ragged breath and continued.
“I’ve waited my whole life for this moment.”
She hissed the phrase with a venomous hatred he had never experienced from one of his victims.
“Drop the bat,” she said.
He examined her for a moment. She was on a hair-trigger and the killer knew it. He dropped the aluminum bat. At the instant the bat clanged to the floor, he lunged at her and had almost covered the three feet between them when she squeezed the trigger.
The shot went high-right and grazed his shoulder. His momentum carried him into Grace Ramsey and the two of them collapsed in the corner and wrestled for the gun. The masked killer ripped the revolver from her hands and half-stood as he attempted to secure his grip on the weapon, but Grace kicked at his forearm from her position on the floor and the gun skittered across the room and under the bed.
“Fucking bitch!” the killer yelled as he regained his feet and went after the gun. Grace rose and grabbed hold of the bat.
The killer had managed to lift the edge of the bed and slide it against the wall to reveal the gun, but that was as far as he got, because just as he stooped to pick it up, Grace brought the bat down with vicious force. The tip of the bat skipped off the mattress and delivered a deflected blow to the killer’s shoulder, but it was enough. The killer went back down on his face, dazed, and an out-of-breath Grace Ramsey retrieved her revolver.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” she asked, again pointing the .357 at the masked killer. He tried to gather himself and get off the floor, but his head was spinning and he could barely hear her over the ringing in his ears.
She retrieved her phone from the dresser, tapped the screen, then addressed the killer.
“Hey, motherfucker,” she spat, “I asked you a question.”
The killer shook his head once, then again, trying to clear the cobwebs. It was like she was talking in riddles.
Should I know this woman?
“Of course, you wouldn’t remember me,” she said. “I was just a little kid.”
He knew her name was Grace Ramsey because he had researched her, but he couldn’t place it.
“It was almost 30 years ago,” she said. “I was 7 years old. I remember because it was my birthday, and my mom had planned a surprise party for me.”
A look of recognition registered in his eyes.
She wiped the corner of her mouth and continued, “My mom needed me out of the house so she could prepare for the party. Her boyfriend took me for a ride to the store to pick up a few things, then pretended to get lost taking a shortcut on the way home…” Her eyes were far away, like she was reliving the story as she told it.
“Even so,” she said, “I think we were only gone 25 minutes.”
The killer rolled over and drew himself to a seated position against the wall, then gathered his heels against his buttocks, as if he were about to stand.
She stepped forward and pointed the gun at the killer’s masked face.
“Don’t even think about getting up,” she said.
He thought better of it.
“By the time we got back to my house, there was police tape everywhere and the neighbors were outside, watching from a distance,” she said. “Suddenly, I was a stranger. Mrs. Gottart, who used to catch me in her front yard and make me zip up my coat… she just stood there, looking at me from across the street with an expression that said ‘Poor, girl.’”
The killer looked around the room, desperate for an avenue of escape, but saw none. She stood between him and the doorway. The bat was behind her, too.
“Mr. Theisen next door, who used to tip me with popsicles when I helped him with his lawn,” she said, tears welling-up in her eyes, “He just watched through the window. It was like he didn’t know me anymore.”
The killer just looked at her from behind his ski mask. He contemplated saying something, then reconsidered.
“My mom’s boyfriend left after awhile,” she said. “Awkward. He didn’t know what to say to me. They had only been on a couple dates.”
“So, there I was, an 11-year old alone with the cops,” she said. “I didn’t have to ask to know my mom was dead,” she said, her voice rising, “because I watched as they brought her out in a bag!” she screamed. Grace stepped forward, her gun hand shaking with anger and adrenaline.
“A black plastic bag! Like she was garbage.”
“I think you have the wrong…” he began, but Grace stepped forward again, incensed at his denial before he had even completed uttering it. He was sure she was about to kill him.
“Grace is my middle name,” she said. “My mom loved it. After she died, I started going by Grace,” she continued.
He lurched at her and grabbed her forearm as she squeezed off another shot that went into the ceiling. He shuffle-stepped forward, thrust out his hip, pulled on her arm and Grace lost her balance as he hip-tossed her onto the bed.
The killer turned on his heel and bolted for the bedroom doorway. Grace splintered it with a shot from the revolver but found her mark with a second shot to the killer’s neck as he fled. He dashed through the living room and out the side door with one hand pressed to his bleeding neck and Grace hot on his heels. It was a planned escape route. In a moment he was in the portico next to the garage, which led to the driveway gate, and beyond it, escape.
He made it to the gate, flung it open and rushed through to be met with a crushing right hand delivered to his nose by a hulking Latino male. The killer’s feet went out from under him and the back of his head smacked the concrete as he went down.
Grace arrived an instant later, still holding the gun.
“So, let me get this right,” she said.
“You were going to sneak into my house and bludgeon me, like you did to all your other victims, right?”
The killer groaned.
“Then, while I lay dying, you were going to rape me using your little rape kit that you hid under the sofa cushions?”
The killer rolled over, tried to crawl away, bleeding and creeping toward the street on his knees and elbows.
“Oh yeah, I found it,” she said. “Pretty arrogant to leave your tools where they could be so easily found, don’t you think?” she smiled.
“Yes, I found it, but I didn’t call the cops. I called my friends.”
The killer continued his doomed attempt at escape, crawling on the ground from Grace Ramsey’s driveway and into the cul-de-sac, where neighbors were gathering on all sides.
“You already met Ray,” she said, and the hulking Latino male clasped his hands in front of himself.
“This is Ray’s stepsister, Marina,” Grace said, motioning to a stocky woman with dishwater hair. “You know what’s crazy about Marina?” Grace asked the killer. “After you killed my mom, I moved 91 miles away to live with my grandparents, and one of the first people I met was Marina.”
“And six years after we met, you killed her sister over in Elbow Woods,” Grace said. “Remember that?”
The circle of neighbors closed-in. “91 miles seems pretty far away, and yet, I couldn’t get away from you.”
He did remember it.
She was the only victim he killed with a knife. He had been in her kitchen preparing his ropes and gags when she walked in and surprised him. He snatched a butcher knife from the block on the counter and chased her all over the house, slashing and stabbing her while she screamed.
“As you can imagine,” Grace said as she began to pace, “we became extremely close friends after that. Like family, really. I was there for her, and she was there for me. And when it was time for us to buy houses and settle down, we decided to become neighbors. Two years after I moved in here, Marina bought the house across the street.”
“You wouldn’t know anything about being a good neighbor,” she said, crouching down to look the killer in the eyes. “Would you?”
She laughed. “No, you don’t seem like the type.”
“You know, Marina and I went through a lot together,” she said. “As you continued on your killing spree, we watched the news together, followed every story. We wondered if they would ever catch you. But then you went dark. The stalker stopped stalking. People said you were in prison, or dead. But we couldn’t put you out of our mind. We went to support groups for victims of homicidal violence… victims of sick fucks like you,” Grace continued, “and what do you know, we met another survivor of Equinox.”
Grace’s hand came to rest on the shoulder of a thirty-something man in a baseball cap.
“This is Brandon Wilkes. You killed his mom while he was hiding in the closet. I’m sure you remember that, right?”
The killer tried to get up on all fours, his head swimming, blood pouring from his neck wound, but Brandon delivered a hard kick to his ribcage that took the wind out of his lungs and rolled him over onto his back.
“Once we met Brandon, you could say we started a group,” Grace said. “We got together every Tuesday night for coffee. Sometimes we cried, sometimes we laughed. We told stories about the people you’d cruelly taken from us,” she said.
“And even though you had vanished, we kept meeting people who were impacted by you,” Grace said. “Maybe you don’t even know how many people you’ve hurt.”
“You killed 26 people, homie,” Ray said.
“And that’s not to mention the children, the parents, the sisters and brothers,” Grace said. “We gathered at the police station about 7, maybe 8 years ago to urge the police to keep working on our cases. Did you read about that in the papers?” Grace asked, her anger rising.
“Do you know how many of us there were?” she screamed.
“There were 123 of us,” she spat. “123!” Sirens sounded in the distance and Marina put a comforting hand on Grace’s arm.
“I met every one of them. Became friends with as many as possible. Soon, we couldn’t live without each other,” Grace said. “Brandon bought that house right over there. Rick and Janell, the Iverson’s, they bought the big house in the middle,” Grace said, gesturing to the houses that lined the cul-de-sac.
“You remember them, right?” Grace questioned. “You strangled their daughter with her shoelaces after you entered the wrong house by mistake.”
The killer began to groan louder and managed to get to his feet but it was apparent to everyone that he wasn’t going anywhere. He had lost too much blood. He managed two staggering steps and collapsed back to the pavement.
“They all became friends. We all became neighbors. It took a lot of time… one by one, year by year, we all moved into this neighborhood. We had to accept the reality that we would never catch you. We leaned on each other for support.”
Grace returned to the center of the circle and stood over the killer.
“But then, you came back,” she said in a sober tone. “After ten years, you started killing again. And it wasn’t enough to just kill, was it? You had to taunt the police with letters to the TV stations. You had to call surviving family members and strike fear into them that you would come back.”
Grace crouched down and tapped the barrel of her weapon against the killer’s masked face.
“So, once again we watched. We followed every news story. And we were surprised to see you moving on to a new hunting ground.”
Grace stood and continued. “Too much heat in Ashford? Elbow Woods? You couldn’t keep killing there, could you? You had to move on. And as we watched, your hunting ground came closer and closer to Silent Lake.”
“We started to talk,” she said. “We had prayed to God for a chance at justice. If you came to Silent Lake, how would we handle it?”
“And then six weeks ago, you killed the Gibson girl,” Grace said, “in her parents’ basement, just a half mile from here.”
“And we made a plan,” Marina chimed in.
“You went to a public information meeting,” Grace said to the dying killer. “What was it, about 10 or 12 years ago, Brandon?”
She looked up and Brandon Wilkes nodded.
“People were there to talk about you… about how to stay safe with a predator like you on the streets,” Grace chided the killer, “and you showed up for the meeting.”
Grace crouched again to look into his eyes.
“You showed up for the meeting, you son of a bitch,” she said.
“A man in the crowd that night pointed out that you’d only attacked victims who were alone,” she recounted, “and he speculated that you wouldn’t have attacked if a man had been present.”
“You took it as a challenge.” She ducked her head to lock eyes.
“You followed them home, saw where they lived, returned a week later and killed them both. The Giancarlo family. Remember that? That was the first time you killed a couple. To prove a point.”
“I’ll be honest,” Grace said, “I had forgotten all about that terrible event until I started reading over the clippings I’ve been keeping all these years,” she said.
“But when I read it, I knew what to do.”
Grace wore a satisfied smile.
“Your downfall was your ego. If challenged, you might respond.”
“I flooded online message boards about you, and made sure to use my real name, in case you came looking for me. I told everyone who would listen that you were an insecure little man, unsuccessful with women and probably sexually impotent. I got in front of every TV camera I could find and said insulting things about you. I even grew my hair out so I could put it in a ponytail… you had a thing for victims with ponytails.”
She bared her teeth in a curious grimace. “And guess what happened?”
“You,” she emphasized the word and paused for effect, “...found me.”
The killer began to fade away in a whirl of voices and approaching sirens.
“Maybe you saw one of those clips on the news? Didn’t like what I said about you? Was it the one where I said you had a small penis? I’ll be honest, I was a little tipsy when that reporter caught me that night,” she smiled as the killer’s life ebbed away.
“I went to that community watch meeting three weeks ago,” she said, “You know the one. I stood up and talked about you again. Insulted you,” she said.
“The whole time I was talking, I was wondering to myself if you were in the room. And that night after I got home, I noticed a car that didn’t belong on our street,” she said, and smiled. “You found me. You followed me home.”
She stepped back and began to walk slow circles around the killer, careful not to step in the spreading pool of blood flowing from his neck wound..
“I notified everybody in the cul-de-sac to be on the lookout for your car,” she said, her voice rising. “We were all on high-alert.”
The assembled neighbors nodded.
“This morning, I found your baseball bat in the pantry, and I knew you would be coming,” she said. “And tonight, when I heard you pop the latch on the sliding glass door, I knew you had arrived.”
She smiled.
“I texted all my friends,” Grace said.
She bent down and showed him her phone. A text message was on the screen.
It read “He’s here.”
She stretched her arms out toward her neighbors.
“You stumbled right into the only place in the world where everyone on the block has a motive to kill you,” she said softly.
“I would say you lured him to us, Grace,” Marina said.
“Perhaps,” Grace said. “It was almost like divine intervention. You came right to us.”
Ray made a clicking sound with his teeth.
“Doesn’t look like he’s gonna make it,” the big man said.
Ray bent over, patted the killer’s jacket, then stuck his hand inside and withdrew a black bifold credit card wallet. He opened it and found the killer’s collection of ID cards with family names in plain view -- Wilkes, Iverson, Ramsey, a dozen more.
“Look at this,” he said.
Grace examined the wallet and could see just the top of each photo on the cards, but one card stood out… a hairstyle she remembered. She thumbed one of the IDs and slid the card out of the wallet and her mother’s photo stared back at her.
She was smiling.
That’s how I remember her.
Ray dropped to a knee, grabbed the black ski mask, and tore it from the killer’s head. The killer’s face was drawn and ashen.
“He definitely ain’t gonna make it,” Ray said.
As the approaching sirens arrived in the cul-de-sac, Grace pocketed her mother’s ID then bent over and examined the killer’s face, as if she might find answers there.
He looked like an absolutely ordinary human being.
He looks just like everybody else.
“Awww,” she said in a disappointed tone. “I was expecting a monster.”
Troy Larson is a writer, digital content creator, and broadcast veteran with hundreds of podcast and broadcast credits to his name. Reach out on Facebook and on Instagram.
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