Tumour

Later that day, Oklahoma

The two armed officers, dressed in the grey of the Oklahoma State Sheriff Department, stood on either side of the door, pistols in hand. They stared at each other then the one on the left turned and kicked the door down easily. The house was mostly made of wooden panels painted a creamy white. It was an old house, out of town, miles away from the nearest village. No power or electricity: just a house that was falling apart, with an old blue, rusting Cadillac parked outside, surrounded by wheat and corn fields.

"ARMED POLICE! SHOW YOURSELF!" One of them screamed, searching downstairs. It was dark and the floorboards kept creaking. All of the furniture was covered in cobwebs and were rotting, the sofas were covered in mould, the windows were lined with layers of algae and bird crap. There were glasses and jars out on the kitchen table that must have contained something that was now just a haven for flies and mould. The cupboards in the kitchen had doors attached at the wrong angles and the wooden floor panels had cracks and were bowing under pressure. The living room had chairs with broken legs and there was a dusty Bible left closed on the table. There was a note lodged inside that the two armed officers ran past in their desperate searching.

"Clear!" One of them shouted in their Southern accent, before running up the uneven, creaky stairs. The wood on the stairs was weak underfoot as they ran up them. Bathroom: clear. Store room: clear. Bedroom: not clear.

In the bed, there was somebody under the covers.

"GET UP!" The officer shouted. "Now!" But he'd quietened down a little. He was starting to think that this wasn't right. There was a dreadful smell that was even worse than the smell that had been downstairs.

Clutching his nose and his arm holding his gun extended, he made his way over to the single bed which was the only item in the bare room except for a small chest of drawers. There was a window but it was letting barely any light through due to all the layers of dirt that were caked onto both the inside and outside.

Breathing heavily, the officer pulled back the covers.

Robert P. Taylor was long gone. There was a thick layer of dried blood lining the bed and the pillow. What was left of Taylor's hand was clutching a gun. Due to the rate of decay, some of the skin off Taylor's fingers had actually glued itself to the hilt of the gun so when the officer tried to move the gun, the skin ripped off, leaving just bone and flesh in a tangled mess.

Robert P. Taylor's body was just bones with a thin layer of skin clinging on. His face was the same except there was a black hole, amongst the blond strands of matted hair, where the bullet had found its way through his skull.

***

What the Sheriff's department later realised was that they'd killed two birds with one stone. Inside the Bible was somewhat a suicide note/confession. Robert P. Taylor was a man they called the Big Bad Wolf. Otherwise known as Wolfie, nicknamed by kids. He was infamous for picking his victims based on their names. No specific method of killing, just a tag left around their ankle, like you would find in a morgue, that would read:

'Little Lamb I'll tell thee!

He is called by thy name,

For he calls himself a Lamb:

He is meek & he is mild,

He became a little child:

I a child & thou a lamb,

We are called by his name.'

It was later discovered through an autopsy (or what they could do considering his head had a gun shot through it and had been rapidly decaying) and an assumption, based off his suicide note, that Taylor was sick. Not just in the sense that he was a serial killer but because he had a brain tumour that he'd discovered a year before his death and just before the serial killings started. It had caused him to have hallucinations in which he thought that God had told him to kill anyone with the name 'lamb'. To return them back to God. So that's what he'd been doing and once he'd finished he killed himself. They were still trying to decide just exactly what had made him stop the killing.

Of course, the press were on the case quicker than anything. But this also raised questions as to what his blood was doing on the car of Luke Müller.

Taylor had shown up at the house of Lahela Riez to kill her as Lahela is a name of Hawaiian origin meaning 'Lamb'. But Luke had been there and he had run over Taylor in a frantic attempt to get away but ended up crashing his car.

And that's what Lahela had tried to tell Joey.

'All the better to eat you with my dear.'

Those were the words of the Big Bad Wolf.