The Man in the Blue Trimmed Cloak

Things have been quiet for a while now. The fear that lasted over a year ended four months ago today. Some people think that he decided to stop after he was nearly captured. Thought better of it, that it was too risky to continue. Others say that he has moved abroad to some foreign country where the air is sweet and the blood sweeter. A few even believe that he hung himself, unable to go on with his insatiable hunger. But no, I don't believe any of the stories printed by the press. I think he's still around, only he got smarter with his moves.

I think that he's biding his time; I think that he is going to strike back with a vengeance.

They say he would watch the crowds carefully, picking out his prey. Only on the last day of every month would he make his move. Most of the time he would pick just the one victim. But occasionally he liked to take more. Once he abducted six people - none of them survived of course.

The police could never find a pattern with his killings. It was always completely random. None of the people knew each other. Most weren't even from the same town. He preyed on every type of person. Old, young, sick, healthy, male, female, black, white.

It was pure luck that they managed to get a good lead in their investigation.

The one that got away lives in a care home now. Her face, once so beautiful, is now maimed by a long, thick scar running along the left side of her face. Her eyes were once like molten pools of golden caramel. The one eye that remains now has a hollow, haunted look. Her left eye was sliced in half as he traced his knife down her face, towards her ruby lips.

These days her skin is a murky grey colour. Her face is sunken and all her bones show through because she refuses to eat most meals. She spends her time sitting in her room on her rocking chair, swinging slowly back and forth whilst staring off into the distance. Either that or she crams herself as far into a corner as possible, screaming at unseen things, telling them to leave her alone.

When they found her in the abandoned house she was barely alive. The other two that were with her were long dead. The police had a tip off from a man who witnessed a figure in a hooded black cloak with blue trim carrying a young girl into the building and glancing around him suspiciously as he closed the door behind them. The man, I forget his name, who was walking his dog at the time reported that the person was wearing a full black attire apart from the trimming on his cloak and the brilliant, shimmering blue silk that lined the inside. He said that the figure was wearing the hood up to disguise his main facial features. The only reason he knew it was a man was the sprinkling of hair that covered the lower part of his face which wasn't shrouded in shadow.

The police rushed to the scene, knowing full well this was the night that the serial killer would strike. They hoped that this time they were on to something; they were sick of getting false leads and blundering into dead ends. But the killer had already fled by the time the police arrived. Nobody knows how he knew to flee, but evidence shows he did so just in time. The blood standing in a wine glass on the low table was still warm, and was still trailing back down the side of the glass after the killer had taken his last sip.

At the hospital, doctors and police tried to get the woman to talk about her ordeal. They never got anything coherent from her.

The man with the blue trimmed cloak has been lying low ever since that night. But something tells me that he's going to strike again soon. I think that he's been waiting for Halloween night to take his next prey. There are many people dressing up as him this year. That will make him harder to spot. Maybe he has been lurking in your town. Maybe he's been hunting near you for the past month, looking out for his newest victim. Maybe one of them is you.