[HR] The Knight of the Night

My name is Rachel Tor. I live in a small town in New Jersey. I’d like to tell you about a very strange event that took place last night, an event that I have thought about constantly since it happened, an event so weird that there is no chance you would ever see it coming. Let’s start this story at the beginning: It was October 31st, Halloween, when me and my two friends Janice and Pablo went out for a Halloween party. Having just turned eighteen, and the fact that the three of us had been accepted to our dream universities, we were planning to have a very fun night out. We all wore a different costume, I wore a traditional princess costume, with the tiara, the dress, everything. I looked like Cinderella, or even Belle from those animated movies I like watching. Pablo went as King Arthur, it was one of those inflatable costumes where the bottom was a horse and the top was a pretty cool King Arthur, with an inflatable sword and shield at the ready. Janice went as the wizard Merlin, she had an awesome wooden staff that was basically just a well-decorated stick she found on the street, and the most old-fashioned wizard robes straight out of Harry Potter. Interestingly, some friends of Pablo’s decided to dress as Knights from the Knights’ Templar, King Arthur’s infamous group. Anyways, just to keep the joke of all of us being, out of pure coincidence, in King Arthur-like attire, we all decided to sit at a round table. Me, Janice, Pablo and “The Knight’s Templar”. There were about eight knights in the temple, and, apparently, all of them were Pablo’s friends. But they were all in nearly identical costumes, and had a mask covering their faces, so it was impossible to tell who was who. I was a little concerned, until they all took their masks off and Pablo greeted them all. We talked for some time, and then we decided to party like there was no tomorrow. There were many other people at the party, so to make sure we didn’t get lost in the crowd we all stayed together while still having fun. About an hour into the night, something unbelievable happened, in an instant we went from the usual fun party to a panicfest. Out of nowhere, about four people are on the ground screaming in pain because they were stabbed in the chest. We called the police, and when they came they began investigating the issue. Pablo, Janice, and I wanted to help the police in investigating and also made sure that they understood we were innocent. We investigated people, asking them to show what they had brought, and though some people had brought certain things to go with their costumes, like swords, they were not real swords or anything that would hurt anyone. The police then told us that the people who were stabbed were luckily not dead, and that they would be able to heal them to a better state. We kept trying to figure out what had happened, we looked around for any clues, footprints, like in the movies, but we were not very good at figuring these things out. Then we remembered: Pablo’s friends, the “Knights Templar”, had brought actual swords, apparently they had bought them at some convention, but they were capable of hurting people. It was part of why I had been so concerned, but they said they had left their swords at home. So we continued to investigate, the perpetrator could have stabbed these guys with a fork, a spoon, maybe even something plastic. But the police quickly informed us that it must have been a sharp metallic object, like a sword, especially because the stab was pretty deep which could not be said for forks, or even knives for that matter. For those wondering, the stab was through the legs of the victims, not completely through but like I said it was pretty deep. So we confronted the Knights. They told us the same thing: “We left our swords at home, we can show you!”. We made sure to tell the police of this of course, and they came with us (after transporting the victims to an ambulance) to the place where the swords had supposedly been put. For some context: 5 hours before this party, there had been a separate Halloween party at the house of one of Pablo’s eight friends, a man named Julien. Janice and I were out shopping during this time, so we declined to go. According to Pablo, the party was also a costume party, but it was not open like the one I’ve been telling you about, it was only Pablo and his friends. It was actually in this party that Pablo realized that he and his friends had coincidentally gone for a similar theme of halloween costume. Anyways, during this party, Pablo and his friends had a fake sword fight. Unfortunately, as I said before, Pablo has an inflatable sword, meanwhile the other eight guys have real swords. So, it goes without saying that Pablo pointed out this fact before beginning, and so rather than fight with the real swords, the guys fought with small sticks. Anyways, when the party was over, the guys accidentally forgot their swords at Pablo’s house, and when Pablo tried returning them the guys told him that he could keep them there for a while, at least until after the halloween party mentioned before (the one we had just attended). So, needless to say, the swords were still at Pablo’s house. I should also mention that Pablo has a lot of security cameras in his house and always locks every entrance to his house thoroughly. Back to the investigation. Going to Pablo’s house, we opened the door to find, to our horror, the fact that the house had been, very obviously, broken into. In horror, we rushed to check that everyone in the house was fine. The police said that they couldn’t enter because they didn’t have a warrant, so we told them that we would investigate and then let them know. So, I went with Pablo to check on his family while Janice and the eight guys went to see the security cameras. Pablo’s family was fine, and it turns out that nothing had been stolen other than, you guessed it, one of the guys’ swords. I should also mention that they had been locked in their room, and that the wifi had been cut somehow. We rushed to where Janice and the others were and found them terrified. Watching the footage of the cameras (which did not connect to the wifi) that they had pulled up, we saw how a knight, in the same costume as one of the eight guys, broke into the house and stole one of the eight swords. The worst part: each sword looked exactly the same, so how to know who did it? Well, obviously Pablo, Janice and I confronted the eight guys and told them, very sternly, to take off their helmets. We were all a little scared, we had no idea if the knights we saw in front of us were the same as the beginning of the night. What if Pablo’s real friends were in danger? What would we do when the perpetrator, or perpetrators started attacking us? We stood back, each one of us rushing to some sort of protective device. I got a flashlight so that I could flashbang the person/people who were responsible. Pablo got all of the swords on the ground as quickly as possible, and put all of them but one behind him. He then wielded the sword (by this time he had gotten out of the costume, as had I and Janice). Janice was holding the same stick she had when she was wearing the costume, and she wielded it like a javelin. The eight knights, who had been staring in awe at the camera footage all began talking at the same time. I heard one of them say “I know for sure it wasn’t me but it was for sure this guy”, and then I hear “Which one of you did it?” and a lot of other similar sentiments. They all started to back away and began to try to reach for something, seemingly the swords. They then realized that we had all the swords and looked like they were about to fight us for it. Pablo, Janice and I stared at each of the eight guys with more anger and malice than I have ever experienced in my life. We could not tell what the other eight guys were feeling because MASK. Instead of coming for us the eight knights had a fist fight, a really violent one. “Traitor!”, “Pablo deserves better!” were some things I heard. None of us could tell who was who, and since none of them took off their mask, we had no idea who was saying what either. It was also impossible to recognize the voices since the masks, which were designed as authentically as possible, muffled their voices. The fight was so intense that it moved, sort of like in old-timey cartoons. This moving fight eventually sucked each of us into it, and I personally went ham with my flashlight, flashing anything and anyone in my way. I also just slapped anyone who got too close. In the hassle, one of the knights somehow made it out of the fight, got all of the swords (except for Pablo’s), and then pointed one at our little group. How do I know this? He told us. When it physically happened, I heard a voice out of nowhere go “Time to end this”. Everyone stopped fighting, it was then that the knight that was threatening us with a real sword monologued to us. In my own words, I will paraphrase what he said. Basically, this guys’ name is Tim Morter. Tim was, and still is, an aspiring painter. Apparently, for many years he worked on his biggest, most ambitious, work yet. A to-scale painting of the entire world, from the perspective of space, inspired by real-life photos of Earth. When he eventually finished his project, he posted it on social media to see what people would think of it, he also tried to put it up in art galleries and the like. The piece did gain some popularity in the physical space, but it didn’t satisfy Tim. He gained more popularity on the internet, which he definitely was satisfied by. Until, Tim saw an extremely negative review. Yes, there had been other negative reviews, and some reviews that were trash or overly hateful. But this specific review struck a nerve with Tim, it dug deep into his insecurities, bringing out painful memories, etc. I won’t lie to you, I have no idea how a post can be this bad, but he clearly isn’t a very sane person. Anyways, apparently one of the eight friends had written this post. Tim then spent years finding where this guy lived, what he liked, and finally he was able to find him at a convention. The same convention where they got the swords from. Tim, realizing he couldn’t just take his revenge right then and there, decided to follow, secretly, and figure out the best course of action. Tim realized that the group of eight friends are inseparable, and go everywhere together, the guy he was looking for was always protected, or in a public space. One day, Tim finds out all eight friends are going as knights from the Knights Templar. Knowing that the eight all have real swords that look the exact same, knowing that they were all going in the exact same costume, he also found out about our halloween party, a fairly big and crowded party that anyone could go to. So, he decided that he would go to the halloween party, he hid in the background, wore a generic costume, but secretly followed our group. Then, he found his lucky break. One of the eight friends, at some point, had wanted to take a break from his costume. Said friend was now being held at Pablo’s house near his parents’ room. So Tim put the knight costume on and continued in the party. He then excused himself to the bathroom, and went to Pablo’s house. (Apparently he knew that Pablo and his friends had a party, and he saw the swords in the house unattended). So he broke in, made sure no one or nothing could see him except the cameras, stole a sword, and locked Pablo’s parents in their room. He also cut wifi so that they couldn’t call the cops. Tim then made it pretty obvious he had broken in, then went back to the party with his sword hidden in his costume. He then put his ultimate plan in place. The plan? Confuse the public. He never intended to kill anyone, other than his main target. The reason why he stabbed those four people is that he wanted to leave breadcrumbs, he wanted us to suspect that one of the knights had stabbed them and he wanted us to go to Pablo’s house. He knew the police were not able to investigate Pablo’s house due to not having a warrant or any sort of consent to enter the house. Those four victims were, essentially, his bait. He knew that the costumes were designed authentically and so, it was impossible to tell what was really going on behind the costume. He knew that the others, the guys who were Pablo’s real friends, would get into a massive fight over stabbing people and breaking into his house. He also knew that Pablo, Janice and I would not trust anything and would willingly fight whoever. Tim, somehow, directed the fight to take place close to us so that we would get sucked in. So after this overly long monologue about wanting revenge, Tim tells us that he has us right where he wants us and says “It is time for my revenge!”. Just to be clear, we were all very ready to fight this guy, but we didn’t have any swords on us, except for Pablo. However, for some reason Pablo wanted to hear this guy’s story? Ever since then I’ve told Pablo that he should not have done that, he should have fought him right then and there. To be fair, Tim had all the other swords so that may have ended badly. So, Pablo confronts Tim, saying that he apologizes for what his friend said on the internet but that it does not excuse the stabbing, the manipulation, and the intent for murder. I, on the other hand, was scared out of my mind holding only a flashlight. Great! What would that do against this guy! I run out of the room as quickly as I can, open the door and tell the police to come in. I tell them that there is a crazed killer in the house. The police come in, but by that time Pablo and Tim are having a sword fight. Tim starts throwing swords at the police, and I’d rather not describe what happened next. Tim then, in clear frustration, stabbed Pablo as hard as he could, and started rushing after us. I was able to get one of the swords lodged into the policemen and, knowing that backup would not arrive for some time, I began to fight the man. I was joined by Janice who had also picked up a sword. Then the other knights, except for the target, joined the fray. The second fight of the night was a lot less chaotic, but more deadly. Tim kept trying to get past us to get to his target, but we were fighting him with all our might. Finally, I was able to get a good stab in, and Tim immediately fell unconscious. So, after that harrowing fight, the backup finally came and helped Pablo to get to the hospital. The police also got Tim to the hospital, but obviously he was charged with a few crimes. We were able to free the friend that Tim kept captive, and all of us headed out for the night. So there it is, a crazed killer who masterfully manipulated us and almost got what he wanted. I shudder to think what would have happened had he been of a sane mind.