The operating table was lit by a single overhead bulb. The table itself was dark, stained, antique, as were the tools the Killer was laying out on a side table; not quite the wheeled kind actual surgeons get to use, just a wooden folding dinner tray. Many of the implements he had were dull and discoloured, though there were a few sharp knives of varying length and one new, very sturdy pair of garden shears.

The cellar’s other occupant was a young man tied to a wooden chair placed just inside the circle of yellow light, his mouth covered with grey duct tape. He did not struggle. He did not issue muffled cries for help or pleas for mercy. He did not shake or sweat, or drop tears from frightened eyes. He did not move a muscle. He sat perfectly still and stoic while his captor arranged his instruments of torture and adjusted the heavy leather restraints.

The Killer had not soundproofed the cellar of his detached, suburban house, nor would he have bothered, even if he could the money for it, after buying the table and the black market used surgical tools. He felt it was unnecessary. In these cookie-cutter neighbourhoods people tended to ignore what was inconvenient, and in any case, they would all be in their sitting rooms by now, their televisions drowning out any delicious, helpless screams that might escape.

On the wall, outside the reach of the forty-watt bulb, hung clippings from various newspapers, many of them local, from all over the country. They described, in varying degrees of professionalism, killings, murders. Some were decades old, stolen from local libraries. The most recent article described a decapitated body discovered barely a week ago, over four hundred miles away in a nowhere town called Motherwell.

Peppered amongst these clippings were the occasional suggestion that some of the killings were the work of the same man, or group of men (none of the articles hypothesized a female killer). But this theory tended to be dismissed by most law enforcement agencies, including Scotland Yard, as the murders varied so much in time and location. Some of them took place in the victims’ homes. A little more than half of the bodies were discovered outdoors, in overlooked alleys and closes where you might have expected witnesses, or in deserted buildings and carparks, or remote country locations. Some of the murders even took place in someone else’s home: an innocent third party unknown to the victim and subsequently cleared of all wrongdoing.

The only pattern, really, was that all victims were men aged (though they varied widely in age), that there was never any discernible motive or forensic evidence left by the killer, and that the Method of Operation was always the same: decapitation. The most fervent believer in a Single Killer, an excitable journalist working part-time for a local Nottinghamshire paper, had attempted to name the killer Ichabod, after Ichabod Crane, the fictional protagonist of the Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. But his cleverness had gone largely unappreciated.

Every resident of this street near Clifton Down would be shocked to learn that Ichabod was indeed real, and that he was in the cellar right now.

The Killer now turned from his reverie and studied the arrangement of his instruments once again, as if he had forgotten he had done this three times already. He reached a hand to “straighten” the rusty scalpel once again, but stopped himself. Then he considered turning round to look at his Captive, but somehow he couldn’t make himself move. Something was gnawing at him. At first he had assumed it was just nerves. But it kept winding up, tighter and tighter, reaching a crescendo of unease he tried to attribute to the eerie silence from the man in the chair.

Although his victim had screamed and struggled satisfactorily when the Killer had waylaid him, stumbling last out of the student pub to weave his lonely way through the darkness of Royal Fort Gardens in the small hours, he had not made a sound since being drugged. The Killer hadn’t even known his victim was awake until about fifteen minutes ago, when he happened to glance back at the chair and found a pair of calm, unblinking eyes staring back at him.

He now realized it was the memory of those eyes that unnerved him. Most people mistakenly focus on the mouth when judging expressions, but the eyes are the true indicators of emotion: the creases that mark a smile; the widening and the raised eyebrows that indicate shock and horror; and the teary open slanting that signals pleading fear.

All of this had been lacking in his victim’s eyes.

The Killer forced himself to turn round and look at his Captive. They were still there: the same serene, passionless eyes, as if the man were simply waiting for an appointment.

They looked at each other for a long time, the would-be Killer and his intended victim. It was as if their roles were reversed: the bound and gagged man returned only a persistent quiet and calm, refusing to reflect the curiosity of the Killer’s own eyes, a curiosity which descended slowly to confusion, then rose to alarm, then plummeted to fear.

At last the Killer turned back, grabbed the chipped scalpel from the side table, faced his captive, and ripped the duct tape off in one sudden, pitiless motion.

The Captive did not scream. He did not flinch, nor blink, nor make any attempt to evade the Killer’s action. There was no twitch, no indication of pain, and now his mouth was free he made no attempt to speak.

There they remained, staring at each other, as their breathing counted out the minutes: one steady and assured, the other shallow and increasingly panicked.

The Killer, who was beginning to feel less and less worthy of such an appellation, was short for a man, and running to fat. He shaved irregularly and had giving up combing his hair. His clothes were worn and faded, but that was because of the messy work he had planned for tonight. Still, the effect was that he looked (and was beginning to feel) more like a frustrated, middle-aged failure than a fearsome and methodical murderer.

His Captive was young; the Killer had taken him for a student, though now he was not so sure. His hair was black, and much shorter than the current style among his age group, though his captor was not aware of this. He wore only black, from his glossy boots to his nondescript leather jacket in an unfamiliar cut and absent of any chrome studs or buckles. His eyes were piercing, even as his expression remained calm, and the Killer was at a loss to say what colour they were.

But what really unnerved him was the way the sparse light in the cellar bounced of his skin. No, not bounced; it leapt, as if thrown off, as if light were some irritating but easily bested foe, a fly to be constantly swatted away.

Finally, the captive spoke.

"You have quite an opinion of yourself, Mr Hobbes."

Hobbes’ breathing quickened. How did his captive know his name? Unconsciously he clenched his hands into fists and tensed his body into the fight or flight response.

After a small pause, the Captive continued.

"I’ve met so many people like you. People whose pain, however, real, however tragic, birthed only grievance and hatred. People who only want to create more pain. You know what you all have in common? None of you realize your pain does not give you the right to inflict pain on others."

At last the Captive began to show expression, and Hobbes wished he were still looking at stoic blankness, instead of the burgeoning hatred.

"The one in Motherwell was particularly unrepentant. Even at the end. He could only think about himself, and his own pathetic ‘torments’, as if the world owed it to him, to endure his bloodlust."

The Captive let this sink in a moment, then continued.

“But the world will never know what either of you had planned for it.”

And that’s when realization dawned on Hobbes.

"Ichabod," he whispered.

In a moment, he had turned back to the table, to swap the scalpel for his sharpest knife: a hunting knife, new, a joke birthday present from his youngest sister, for he was no outdoorsman.

But even as his fist closed on the hilt, the hand of his Captive slammed down on his wrist, spraining it, pinning it down. Hobbes let out a cry of pain and raised his eyes to meet the hard rage of the man he had planned to kill, somehow already out of his chair, standing beside him.

"My name," he growled, "is Nox."