“…as one of the most widely debated cold cases, it still remains a question of how the police closed the case without a single suspect,” the blonde anchor says, her nasally voice grating in Alex’s head as the video plays in the background. The old photographic plates from his grandfather’s antique store are spread haphazardly on his coverlet, and he fiddles with the little cover that is lodged into the space that one would use to load the film into a 1940s camera.

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“Crime enthusiasts have attempted to trace down hints of the elusive Killer of a Thousand Faces, but decades on, little remains that can clue us in to the origins and the story of the murderer of over seventy people in the late 40s. Here on The Mysterious and the Hidden, we’re your hosts, Diana Forester and Brett Casey, leading you through this strange case of serial murder that many like to claim has supernatural origins for its baffling strangeness.”

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Alex tugs gently at a corner of the casing and it clicks, sliding open. The film inside pops out, rolling over his table with a soft tinkle, and Alex adjusts the holder before sliding it shut. When he lifts it up to his eye, squinting through the viewfinder, he can see the room in front of him as clear as day.

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“Diana, can you lead us through what information we’ve found so far? It must have been a fascinating case, don’t you think?”

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“You’re absolutely right, Brett. It appears that the Killer of a Thousand Faces was one of the most sensational cases of the time, with the victims largely being women in their twenties, left with a mask tucked carefully in their fists.”

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The first picture that Alex coaxes out from the roll is a flamboyant mask, faded and dark, but clear enough that he can see the beading along the eye holes and the feathers that droop from the top. It seems to be for some carnival, a woman’s slender fingers just visible at the edge, melting into the darkness of the shadow that the mask creates. Alex squints, and notes the gentle droop of a long sleeve, exposing dark bruises along the white arm. In the background, barely hidden among the shadows, there is a face; the eyes are filled with a bright intensity that makes them stand out from the fall of lank, straight hair.

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“Why a mask, though? Has it ever been understood?”

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“No one really knows, Diana. I mean, it’s a strange thing to find with a woman in her own home, wouldn’t you think?”

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The second photo that Alex can identify seems to be a portrait. The man stands behind a woman, his head bent over hers in a protective gesture, the curve of his hand on her shoulder carefully captured in the darkness and shadow of the plate. His hair covers his face, but Alex sees his eyes fixed on the marked swoop of the woman’s pale curls, tumbling over her exposed collarbones and resting over the elaborate embroidery that has lost its details over the age. Her own hand seems to clutch her skirts tightly, the folds of cloth over her knee distorted and crumpled.

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There is something strange about the man’s almost hidden features. There is a sense that he is almost incorporeal, as if a person who looked away from him would completely lose sight of him in barely a moment. Alex suppresses the shudder that runs down his spine at the sight of the hand that rests on the back of the chair in a grip that seems just a hint too tight.

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“Well, it’s even more intriguing if you think about the old Keyman murders of the 1880s, where a family of three sisters was brutally murdered, with old scarves and a strange bouquet found arranged beside them.”

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“Wasn’t the suspect back then a photographer?”

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“Yes, their maid claimed that a photographer had come to make portraits of them, but nothing could really be proved.”

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Alex stares at the old plate that he had just cleaned. It seems to be the post-mortem photo of three women who lie with faded flowers between them. Their hair is arranged in careful curls, and the way their hands lie interlocked on the coverlet touches some deep part of his heart. But the coincidence is a little too strange to consider.

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“Isn’t it just a coincidence, though?”

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“You have a point, Diana. Although that was an isolated case, or at least the only one reported at that time, the case of the Killer of a Thousand Faces falls under a clear modus operandi - the murder is strangely clinical, and there's barely a nick in the throat to perfectly get at the artery.”

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“Maybe there’s some truth in the theories of the supernatural underworld?” They laugh, but Alex does not join in. He doesn’t think he would completely disagree.

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There is another plate which is a closer look at another post-mortem arrangement, and if Alex squints, he thinks he can see the shadow of a cut along the side of the woman’s slender throat, her hands artfully arranged to drape along her collarbone in a coquettish fashion. There is something off-putting about it; Alex dismisses it as best he can, because really, it must just be the podcast getting into his head about it.

He lays the plates aside, noting the carved date into the bottom in the process. April 1890.

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“What do you think was the process of finding the right victim? There must have been something that connected them, right?”

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“Well, Brett, I can tell you that there was rampant suspicion that the murderer had an accomplice who tracked the victims and the areas. How else could he have found both victim and escape route so easily?”

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With shaking hands, Alex lifts up another picture on the roll of film that he pulled out from the camera, and holds it up to the light. He can see the negatives highlighting two figures who stand beside each other. He can recognize the silhouette of one of them – it looks an awful lot like his grandfather. He scrambles for his drawer, and pulls out an old picture that his mother had given him when his grandfather had died. It looks just like him in the film, the same hat, the same fuzzy hair that sticks out from under it, the same walking stick balanced on his elbow.

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The other man, though, looks vaguely familiar. Alex holds his phone over the picture, turning on the negative filter to make the picture clearer, and freezes. It looks like the same man from the picture he saw before.

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“What do you think his goal must have been, Brett? I mean, after all, it seems like a very carefully orchestrated crime, and he must have planned carefully if he was to get into the houses.”

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“Beats me, Diana. It doesn’t feel too strange to think of it as a crime of passion, don’t you think?”

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“But what passion drove him to the ultimate act?”

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“Jealousy,” Alex says out loud, staring at the next photo on the roll of film.

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A woman dressed in delicate fabrics, her skirt made of gauzy layers that make her look like she is floating on a cloud, lies on a couch, her right hand falling to the ground in an elegant curve. Her fingers brush the carpet and curl around the stalk of a mask, its feathers crumpled under her hand. Her left hand is clutched possessively by the same man who stood with his grandfather, and he leans over to cradle the side of her jaw, exposing her neck to the camera. Alex can see the angry looking cut that slices through it, and the blood that stains the neck of her dress. Her hair has carefully been pulled to the other side, falling over the edge of the couch.

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The man looks like he is looking at a piece of art, cradling her almost reverently. His own dark hair falls over his face like the previous portrait, hiding his features, but Alex knows, deep in his bones, that he must be the same person. He knows that there is something wrong in the way he holds her.

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“The Killer of a Thousand Faces, so named due to the masks left at the scenes of the crime, caused an entire generation of women to live a life of terror, until his disappearance in 1963 marked an end to the killings.”

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“Say, Brett, do you think it’s possible the Killer was not…human?”

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“Why do you say that, Diana?”

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“I dunno, I mean, doesn’t it seem strange that it was such a protracted, consistent happening tracked across such vast geographical areas?”

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Alex can barely follow the photos as they flash before his eyes – each of the women in the moment after death, their bodies carefully arranged with strange, grotesque care that spoke of an obsession that ran deeper than what could be captured on the film, and the man is in every single one. But occasionally, there are more pictures of him and Alex’s grandfather, in unremarkable streets, in nondescript buildings, in places that cannot be tracked.

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He makes it to the end of the film, staring at a photo of an array of fancy masks strewn over a table, a hand reaching out to caress a single thread that hangs from one of them. He recognizes it as the mask the woman in the carnival wears in the first photo he cleared, and knows, in some deep, unexplainable way, that that woman must have died with it on her face.

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“Well, it does remain an unsolved mystery for a reason!” The hosts laugh, and Alex blinks, looking away from the pictures to the laptop screen. 

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“The culprit remains unknown, but the Killer of a Thousand Faces boasts of an intriguing history and a strange obsession with the beautiful and the macabre. And here on The Mysterious and the Hidden, there is really no better topic to discuss!”

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Alex reaches out and taps the spacebar on his laptop screen, pausing the video. There’s an unexplainable twist in his stomach, something that feels like it is both unsettling and also settling deep in his bones, an understanding that he wants to run from.

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“Okay,” he says out loud, puffing out his breath and sitting back on his chair. “Surely - surely no one would be foolish enough to take photos with their victims.”

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But even as he says it out loud, he knows he is lying to himself. Jealousy and possession are strange emotions, and often drive people to dangerous extremes. It would not be too far-fetched to imagine this as some misguided revenge plot, some attempt to exert dominance for some perceived transgression.

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“Grandpa - he was a photographer. He knew this man.”

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That much is clear enough; they look friendly enough in the photos, leaning into each other's space and laughing, looking for all the world like two friends on a casual walk. But there is also the matter of the photographs of the man with the dead women, his hands arranging them into place, his fingers laying the masks on their faces.

 

If his doubts are correct - if that man was truly the murderer, then his grandfather knew. There was a reason the old photographic plates ended up with him. It must have been some twisted record of a past conquest.

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But that led him to his third question - how? In all the photos he sees, the man has never aged.

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Alex has heard stories of supernatural beings who defy the natural law; beings who don’t age, who prey on humans, who ensnare them for their own purposes. But he always dismissed them - in this day and age, who truly believed in a werewolf or a vampire, when you had the science to argue against the supernatural?

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But faced with these pictures, his hands shake, and he feels his stomach churn. There is proof in his hands, of a dangerous past that is linked to his own, but - he finds it hard to believe it completely, 

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“It’s probably just a coincidence,” he says out loud, hoping to comfort himself. “The podcast is really getting into my head.”

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The doorbell rings downstairs, and he jumps, fingers tightening on the cord of the old camera.

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“Alex!” his mother calls, and he startles. “Come on down, we have a guest!”

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He walks, almost in a daze, and trips on the edge of a stair, nearly sending himself sliding down the hardwood in his socks. A hand enters his view, held palm upwards to catch him and steady him.

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“Ah, thank y-”

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The words die in his throat. The man who stands in front of him is as familiar as his own face. He has, after all, spent the entire afternoon staring at that face through the images on photographic negatives, unravelling what looks like an impossibly long time spent committing gruesome crimes.

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“You like photography?” the man asks, gesturing to the camera that Alex had not even realized he was still holding.

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“Uh, it’s.. It was my grandfather’s,” he says, holding it closer to his chest.

 

The man smiles, a benign, warm expression that seems absolutely guileless.

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“That’s nice to hear,” he says. “I was rather into the old photography art myself, back in the day.”

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“What did you like to focus on, Sir?” Alex asks, heart thudding in his chest.

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The smile seems to take on a sudden, sharper edge, and Alex inches away slightly, his back against the wall.

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“Me? I really liked to focus on little, pretty things,” he replies, reaching out to unhook the camera from Alex’s hands. “May I?”

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Alex manages a mute nod, and the man lifts the camera up to his face, squinting through the viewfinder. “Say cheese, young man.”

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The click of the shutter sounds almost like the hammering of a coffin lid.

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