28 Feb The Executioner’s Hood

Part I

The arrival of the artifacts at the Pinehurst Historical Museum was met with the usual blend of anticipation and exhaustion. It was past nine when Dr. Lydia Caldwell, curator and director of the museum’s medieval collections, oversaw the careful uncrating of each item. The exhibition, “Instruments of Justice: Law and Punishment in the Middle Ages,” had taken months to arrange, a collaboration between Pinehurst and the Bavarian Museum of Antiquities. Yet, despite the late hour and the lingering ache behind her eyes, Lydia felt a familiar satisfaction as each piece was revealed—rusted manacles, weighted shackles, a branding iron blackened by centuries of use.

And then, at the heart of it all, the hood.

It was folded neatly inside a wooden case lined with faded velvet, its black fabric stark against the deep red interior. The moment the lid was removed, the temperature in the storage room dropped. Lydia hesitated before reaching in, a momentary instinct she quickly dismissed.

Beside her, Henry Halverson, the museum’s lead historian, leaned in for a closer look. Unlike Lydia, who focused on logistics and preservation, Henry appreciated the artistic craftsmanship of historical objects. His excitement was evident in the way his fingers hovered just over the material before finally touching it.

“It’s… remarkably intact,” he murmured. He lifted the hood carefully, examining the fine, close stitching along the edges. “This was done by hand. Early seventeenth century, if I had to guess. And look here—”

He turned it over, revealing the inner lining. The fabric should have been brittle with age, yet it had remained unnaturally supple, as though it had been preserved through unnatural means. More unsettling was the dark discoloration along the lower edges. Henry frowned, rubbing a thumb over the stain before bringing his hand to his nose.

“Blood,” he said softly. “It’s old, but—” He hesitated. “It shouldn’t still smell like this.”

Lydia, who had dealt with enough historical textiles to know that even the best-preserved ones lost their scent centuries ago, said nothing. Instead, she gestured for the conservationist to take it for further examination.

“Let’s move it to the exhibit hall. We’ll display it at the center, next to the executioner’s axe.”

Henry nodded, though his gaze lingered on the hood before he finally stepped back.

* * * * * *

The following morning, the exhibit hall was a flurry of movement. Museum workers positioned the last display cases, mounted informational plaques, and adjusted lighting to highlight key artifacts. The executioner’s hood had been placed in a temperature-controlled glass case, the crimson backdrop making the black fabric appear even darker.

From the entrance, Richard Maynard, the museum’s chief of security, surveyed the exhibit with the weary patience of a man accustomed to high-profile installations. He was a former police officer, now responsible for the museum’s surveillance and general security operations.

His gaze settled on the hood.

“You ever get a bad feeling about something?” he asked, directing the question to Lydia as she approached.

Lydia followed his stare to the display case. “Bad feeling?”

“It’s the way people act around it,” Richard said, his voice low. “The guys setting up the case kept looking over their shoulders. One of them—Derek—flat-out refused to move it. Said it made him queasy just being near it.”

Lydia folded her arms. “Some artifacts come with their own mythology. Executioners weren’t exactly well-loved figures. Items tied to them tend to carry an aura.”

Richard grunted. “I’d chalk it up to superstition, except—” He gestured toward the security camera positioned in the corner of the exhibit hall. “That camera’s been glitching ever since we put the hood in. No feed drops, no power failures. Just… weird distortion. The IT guy says there’s nothing wrong with the hardware.”

Lydia frowned but kept her voice neutral. “Probably just an interference issue. Try replacing the camera.”

Richard gave her a look, clearly unconvinced, but said nothing more.

* * * * * *

As the final touches were being placed, a visitor entered the hall ahead of schedule. She was a middle-aged woman, one of the museum’s donors, eager for an early preview of the new exhibit. Lydia offered a polite smile, though her attention remained on the staff adjusting the lighting.

The woman made a slow circuit around the room, stopping before the executioner’s hood. She leaned in slightly, studying the fabric beneath the glass.

Then, suddenly, she gasped.

Her body jerked forward, as though struck by an invisible force. A strangled cry escaped her lips, and she collapsed, clutching at her throat.

Lydia and Richard rushed to her side.

“Are you alright?” Lydia asked, kneeling beside her.

“Something—someone—” the woman said, swallowing hard. “Someone touched me.”

Richard scanned the room, his posture tense. The hall was empty, aside from the workers and himself.

“Who?” Lydia asked.

The woman’s eyes darted toward the display case. Her face was pale, her expression unfocused.

“A man,” she whispered. “A man in a black hood. He—” She shook her head. “No, it must have been my imagination.”

A museum medic was called, and after a few minutes of reassurance, the woman regained her composure. She left without further incident, but Lydia caught the way she kept rubbing her throat as she exited the hall.

Richard turned to Lydia. “Still calling it interference?”

Lydia didn’t answer.

* * * * * *

That evening, the exhibit was officially opened. Visitors filed in, their voices hushed, their footsteps echoing against the marble floors. The hood, now the exhibit’s centerpiece, stood beneath the warm glow of the museum’s overhead lights.

There was no further incident.

Yet, as Richard made his final rounds before closing, he lingered by the hood’s display. The glass case was airtight, secured with a locking mechanism that only two people had access to.

Even so, the faintest imprint of a hand had appeared on the inside of the glass.

Richard checked the case’s seal, running his fingers along its edges, searching for some rational explanation. There was none.

He stepped back, unsettled, and left the hall in silence.

Part II

The opening days of the new exhibition brought a steady influx of visitors, their interest drawn by the macabre fascination that always surrounded historical instruments of punishment. The executioner’s hood, positioned at the center of the medieval justice display, quickly became the most talked-about piece—not for its historical significance alone, but for the unsettling reactions it provoked.

At first, the concerns were minor, the sort of remarks that Lydia had heard before with other artifacts tied to violence or death. Guests spoke of an unnatural chill surrounding the display, a suffocating tension that settled over the room. These impressions, while curious, were not unusual. What unsettled her more were the complaints that arose among the museum staff.

The cleaning crew, whose work required them to enter the hall after hours, had become increasingly reluctant to do so. Some refused outright, citing an overwhelming sense of unease that worsened the longer they remained near the exhibit. A few complained of headaches that began only when they stepped into the room. One worker described feeling a presence beside him as he moved past the hood’s case—an awareness so strong that he instinctively turned, expecting to see someone standing there.

He found nothing.

The discomfort among the staff grew worse with each passing night. Several employees reported that the medieval wing, which had never been subject to temperature fluctuations before, now felt inexplicably colder than the rest of the museum. Though Lydia initially attributed the drop to a miscalibrated thermostat, inspections revealed no mechanical faults.

When one janitor abandoned his shift mid-cleaning, visibly shaken, Richard decided to press him for an explanation. The man refused to answer at first, shaking his head as if the words themselves were dangerous to speak aloud. When Richard finally convinced him to elaborate, his response was unnerving in its simplicity.

“I heard breathing,” he admitted. “It was right behind me.”

By the end of the second week, visitors had begun to voice their own concerns. The most frequent reports involved whispering near the executioner’s hood. Guests walking through the hall described the low murmur of voices—sometimes indistinct, sometimes spoken just loudly enough that the syllables could be recognized but not understood. The phenomenon was consistent enough that multiple visitors, unaware of the others’ experiences, reported nearly identical encounters.

Lydia, unwilling to jump to conclusions, suspected that sound distortion in the museum might have been responsible. Audio tended to behave strangely in enclosed spaces, bouncing from surface to surface in ways that could create the illusion of speech.

But when one guest, an older man with a background in European linguistics, claimed he could make out individual words, Lydia found herself at a loss for explanation.

“It was German,” the man insisted. “I didn’t catch much, but I know what I heard. Schuld.”

Lydia glanced toward Henry, who had been listening to the conversation with growing concern. The historian’s expression darkened.

“It means guilt,” he said.

* * * * * *

Later that evening, Henry returned to Lydia’s office, carrying a stack of papers thick with notes and translations. He had spent the past few days compiling every historical record he could find on the hood, drawing from sources far beyond the brief dossier provided by the Bavarian Museum of Antiquities. His findings painted a far grimmer picture than Lydia had expected.

“The man who wore this hood,” he began, setting the documents in front of her, “was known as Der Richter. The Judge.”

Lydia leaned forward, scanning the first few pages. The details were sparse—mentions of a Bavarian executioner operating in the early 1600s, a man whose reputation had made him feared even by those who had employed him. Unlike most executioners, whose duties were dictated by the courts, Der Richter had reportedly taken it upon himself to seek out and punish the guilty even beyond official trials. He was spoken of with equal parts reverence and terror, his authority unchecked, his verdicts unquestioned.

Some records suggested that, even after stepping down from his official post, he had continued delivering judgment in secret. There were accounts of men and women disappearing under mysterious circumstances, their bodies later found with deep, clean wounds that could only have been made by an executioner’s blade.

Lydia frowned, flipping to a later entry. “And what happened to him?”

Henry sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “They executed him.”

She looked up. “The same people who once protected him?”

“Eventually, even they decided he had gone too far. By that point, he was putting people to death with little more than a whispered accusation as justification. He was tried, sentenced, and executed for abuse of power.” Henry hesitated before adding, “Before they beheaded him, he swore that justice did not end with him.”

Lydia sat back in her chair. “And the hood?”

Henry remained troubled. “It was buried with him,” he said. “At least, it was supposed to be.”

The museum’s tour guides, typically composed and well-trained in delivering historical presentations with an air of detached professionalism, had begun showing signs of unease as well. Several of them avoided looking directly at the hood while leading visitors through the hall, an instinct they could not rationally explain.

Then, without warning, one of them quit.

Andrea, a young woman who had worked at Pinehurst for two years, left her post mid-tour and refused to return to the medieval exhibit. When Richard confronted her about it, she refused to discuss the reason at first. Eventually, she gave him a single, unsettling explanation.

“I saw him,” she said.

Richard’s patience wore thin. “Saw who?”

Andrea swallowed hard. “The executioner.”

She left before finishing her shift.

* * * * * *

Determined to prove that paranoia had begun spreading unchecked among the staff, Richard decided to review the overnight surveillance footage himself.

The security system, though newly installed, had been experiencing frequent disruptions ever since the exhibit opened. Richard had dismissed the malfunctions as technical errors, but now, curiosity—and a growing sense of responsibility—drove him to check the recordings for any signs of interference.

At first, nothing appeared out of the ordinary. The museum’s empty halls stretched before him in grainy black and white, dimly illuminated by security lights. Hours passed in silence.

Then, at 3:07 a.m., something new appeared in the footage.

The medieval wing, which had been entirely empty a moment before, was suddenly occupied.

A figure stood in the center of the room.

Richard leaned in, eyes narrowing. He rewound the footage, watching the previous seconds again. The hall had been vacant. There were no signs of movement, and no indication of entry. And yet, in the next frame, the figure was simply there—dressed in black, hooded, with its face concealed.

Richard felt a slow, steady unease settle over him as he continued watching. The figure never moved, never turned, never reacted to anything around it.

Yet, as the hours passed, the camera feed showed it appearing in different parts of the museum, without ever catching it in the act.

In one frame, it was standing near the medieval stocks.

In the next, it was positioned beside the iron shackles.

And then, at 3:21 a.m., it was gone.

Richard rewound again, searching for the moment it left. But there was no sign of its departure.

He sat back in his chair, hands clenched. He had never put much stock in the fears surrounding the hood, dismissing the staff’s reactions as paranoia. But as he sat alone in the security office, watching the screen long after the figure had disappeared, he could no longer deny the thought creeping into his mind.

Something was wrong. Something had been in the museum that night.

And if the footage was to be believed, it was still there.

Part III

The museum was unusually crowded that afternoon, a mix of school groups, tourists, and local visitors who had come to see the much-publicized exhibit. The medieval justice display had drawn particular interest, with the executioner’s hood quickly becoming the centerpiece of conversation. Some regarded it with fascination, while others—perhaps influenced by the unease surrounding the artifact—kept their distance, lingering instead by the iron shackles or rusted branding irons.

The atmosphere, while steeped in quiet reverence, remained lively. Children moved between the exhibits, their voices hushed under the careful watch of chaperones. A small group of elderly visitors discussed the historical significance of public executions. A museum guide was in the middle of detailing the legal procedures of sixteenth-century Bavaria when the first scream rang out.

It was sharp and piercing, breaking the silence instantly.

Heads turned toward the far end of the hall, where the medieval weapon display stood behind thick glass panels. For a moment, there was only silence—a terrible, waiting stillness. Then came a second scream, this one more frantic, followed by the chaotic shuffle of footsteps as visitors stumbled back from whatever horror had unfolded.

Lydia, who had been speaking with a museum board member near the entrance, felt an immediate tightening in her chest. Without a word, she moved toward the disturbance, her heels clicking against the polished floor as she crossed the distance at a near-run.

By the time she reached the scene, the crowd had parted, revealing what lay at its center.

* * * * * *

A man, dressed in casual clothing, was slumped against the base of a display pedestal. His body remained unnaturally still, his hands resting limply at his sides. For a moment, it seemed as though he had merely collapsed.

Then Lydia saw his head. It lay on the floor several feet away, perfectly separated from his body. The cut was impossibly clean, a single stroke that had severed flesh and bone with effortless precision. Blood pooled in a dark, undisturbed arc, as though placed with exacting intent rather than the expected mess of a violent injury.

A woman sobbed nearby, pressing a shaking hand over her mouth. A few of the braver visitors inched forward, peering over shoulders, their faces twisted in horrified disbelief.

Richard arrived within seconds, his former law enforcement instincts taking over as he stepped between the crowd and the body. “Get them out of here,” he ordered one of the security guards. “Now.”

The guard hesitated before nodding, his face pale.

Lydia remained frozen, her gaze locked on the victim. She should have been in motion, responding, doing something to assist in clearing the scene, but her thoughts had snagged on a single, terrible realization.

There was no weapon.

No swords had been removed from the display. No glass had been broken, and there were no signs of forced entry or of an attacker fleeing the scene.

And yet, the decapitation had been precise and surgical, something no human hand could have achieved without an incredibly sharp blade and the strength to wield it in a single, perfect motion.

A disturbance at the victim’s feet caught Lydia’s eye.

A piece of aged parchment, folded carefully, rested beneath the corpse’s lower back.

She crouched, ignoring the wave of nausea that threatened to rise as she reached for the note. The paper felt old beneath her fingertips, its texture rough and uneven. Carefully, she unfolded it, revealing handwritten script in faded ink.

The letters were unfamiliar, not in their shape but in their structure. The script was precise yet foreign, a dialect that was undoubtedly archaic German.

She turned to Henry, who had appeared at her side, looking as shaken as she felt.

“Can you read this?” she asked.

Henry took the parchment, his expression tightening as he scanned the lines. He read in silence, his lips moving slightly as he worked through the script, adjusting for the old phrasing.

When he finally spoke, he was quieter than usual. “It’s a sentence of execution,” he said.

Lydia felt her stomach drop. “What does it say?”

Henry swallowed before continuing.

“The condemned is named Matthew Corbin. He is guilty of the unlawful murder of a business partner in the year nineteen eighty-seven. The sentence is death.”

Lydia blinked, unable to fully process what she was hearing.

“This—this has to be some kind of joke,” she said, but the words felt hollow even as she spoke them.

Henry shook his head. “No. It’s written in perfect seventeenth-century German, Lydia. This isn’t something someone printed last night and slipped under the body. It’s—” He hesitated, looking down at the parchment. “It’s authentic.”

* * * * * *

The police arrived within minutes, the museum now officially a crime scene. The medieval hall was locked down, its exhibits blocked from view as officers assessed the situation. Visitors were escorted out of the building, their accounts taken one by one.

Detective Carla Munroe, a woman in her early forties with a reputation for cutting through nonsense with methodical efficiency, took charge of the investigation.

She stood over the body, taking in the scene. “Cause of death is obvious,” she muttered, then glanced toward the surrounding area. “But where the hell is the murder weapon?”

“That’s what we’d all like to know,” Richard said.

Munroe turned her gaze to Lydia. “You found the note?”

Lydia nodded. “It was beneath him when we arrived. Henry translated it.”

Munroe extended a hand, and Lydia passed her the parchment. The detective read over it twice, her brow furrowing.

“This guy, the victim,” she said, nodding toward the corpse, “Matthew Corbin. You know anything about him?”

Lydia shook her head. “No. I don’t think he was on our donor list, and he wasn’t one of our researchers. As far as I know, he was just another visitor.”

“Well, we’ll find out soon enough,” Munroe said. “But if this is real—if he really did kill someone back in 1987—” She gave Lydia a sharp look. “Then we have a bigger problem.”

Lydia didn’t need to ask what she meant.

If the execution had been based on a true crime—one committed decades ago—then this wasn’t an indiscriminate act of violence. It was a deliberate judgment.

And something, or someone, had carried it out.

Lydia stepped away from the detective, glancing toward the sealed-off medieval hall. Beyond the police barriers, the executioner’s hood remained untouched behind its glass case, bathed in the soft glow of the exhibit lighting.

For the first time since the display opened, she found herself wondering whether it had been a mistake to bring it here.

Part IV

The museum remained closed to the public that evening, its doors locked under official police order while forensic teams swept through the medieval wing. The weight of the afternoon’s events still pressed heavily upon Lydia as she stood outside the security office, arms crossed, her mind racing through the same unanswered questions that had been circling for hours.

Inside the room, Richard sat before a bank of monitors, reviewing the surveillance footage from the moments leading up to Corbin’s death. Detective Munroe stood beside him, her gaze fixed on the screen as the video played. The forensic technicians had already confirmed what the police had suspected: no weapons had been removed from any of the locked display cases, and no personnel or visitors had been within arm’s reach of the victim when he was killed.

Lydia stepped forward. “Anything?”

Richard didn’t look away from the screen. “We’ve run through it three times already. Watch this.”

On the monitor, Corbin stood alone in the medieval weapons exhibit, his back turned slightly as he examined a display. Other visitors moved through the hall at a leisurely pace, unaware of him or the fact that anything was about to happen.

In one frame, he was alone. In the next, a hooded figure stood directly behind him.

Lydia hadn’t seen the figure enter the frame. There had been no movement or transition. It had not stepped forward from the shadows or emerged from behind a corner. It had simply appeared.

The recording continued. Corbin had not reacted. Whether he had been aware of something behind him or not, there was no sign of recognition, no sudden tension in his posture.

Then, in the next frame, he was falling.

His body crumpled as his head tumbled to the floor, rolling slightly before settling at an angle against the polished tile. The blood that spread outward did not splatter wildly, nor did it appear to have been released in a frenzied attack. Instead, it formed a near-perfect arc, as though drawn with precise intent.

Munroe stiffened, her mouth pressing into a thin line. “Rewind that,” she said.

Richard obliged, rolling the footage back to the moment before Corbin’s execution. The screen flickered slightly as the frame cycled back. The hooded figure had returned to not being there.

Richard let it play again, his fingers tense against the keyboard as they watched the same moment unfold once more—Corbin standing alone, followed by the sudden presence of the hooded figure, then his body collapsing forward as his severed head struck the ground.

Munroe rubbed a hand across her jaw. “No weapon, no attacker, no movement.” She shook her head. “This is impossible.”

Lydia wasn’t sure whether she meant the mechanics of the killing or the footage itself.

Richard shifted in his seat, leaning closer to the monitor. “That’s not the only thing. Look at the background.”

Lydia and Munroe both turned their attention to the details surrounding the crime scene within the video. At first glance, the museum hall looked the same as it had during normal hours—glass display cases, dim museum lighting, visitors walking in and out of frame. But the longer Lydia stared, the more she noticed the subtle distortions creeping in at the edges of the recording.

The walls, usually straight and rigid, seemed slightly warped, bending inward at unnatural angles. The visitors in the background, though going about their business, appeared subtly off—some were stretched unnaturally tall, others compressed as though they had been filmed through a distorted lens.

And then, there was the most unsettling detail of all.

“Pause it,” Lydia said suddenly.

Richard complied, freezing the frame just before Corbin’s death.

“Look at the reflections,” she murmured.

Munroe narrowed her eyes. At first, the glass display cases appeared normal, reflecting the visitors and their movements. But when examined closely, the reflections in the glass were wrong.

Some figures did not appear at all. Others were doubled, standing in places where no one had been. And at the farthest end of the hall, in the reflection of the case containing the executioner’s hood, the hooded figure was visible—standing there, even though it was not present in the main frame.

Munroe straightened. “What the hell is this?”

Richard shook his head. “No clue. But whatever it is, it was here before Corbin even died.”

Before anyone had a chance to process what they were seeing, a shout echoed from down the hall.

Lydia turned sharply toward the sound, her stomach twisting as she recognized the voice of one of the officers stationed near the museum’s exit.

She barely had time to react before Richard was out of his chair, Munroe already moving ahead of him. They strode quickly down the hall, following the distant murmur of voices until they reached the main lobby.

Near the glass entrance doors, another uniformed officer stood frozen in place, his face pale. At his feet, a second body lay motionless, its head separated cleanly from its shoulders.

Blood had spread in the same pristine, curved arc. Lydia shuddered when she saw the parchment tucked beneath the body’s torso.

Munroe, already pulling on a pair of gloves, bent to retrieve it. She unfolded the paper carefully, her brow furrowing as she read over the words.

“It’s another execution order,” she said. “Different name, different crime.”

She handed the paper to Henry, who had caught up with them in the lobby, his expression grim as he read the text. “This one,” he said, “was sentenced for assault resulting in death. An incident from twenty years ago.”

Munroe stood, shaking her head. “Two murders, no weapons, no suspects. If this weren’t happening in front of my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe it.”

Lydia turned toward the museum’s main entrance. Beyond the glass, the last remnants of daylight had begun to fade. She knew what Munroe would say next before the words even left her mouth.

“The museum is officially closed until further notice,” the detective declared. “Nobody goes in, nobody goes out. Whatever is happening here, we’re going to get to the bottom of it.”

As the museum was locked down for investigation, Richard lingered in the security office, reviewing the footage again and again. Each time, the same horror unfolded—the hooded figure appearing in a single frame, Corbin’s headless body falling forward, the quiet distortion of reality creeping at the edges of the screen.

Yet, for all his searching, for all his careful scrutiny of the recordings, there was one thing he never found.

Not once, in all the hours of footage, did the hooded figure ever leave.

Part V

The museum remained closed, its halls sealed behind police barricades, its security tightened in response to the deaths that had now claimed two victims in less than twenty-four hours. Despite the lockdown, despite the forensic teams that moved methodically through the exhibits in search of answers, there was no rational explanation for what had occurred.

The bodies had been found without any sign of an intruder or any indication of a physical weapon. Both executions had been precise, absent of the frenzied chaos typically associated with violent killings. Their deaths had not been spontaneous or opportunistic. They had been sentenced, each carried out with the chilling efficiency of an unseen judge and executioner.

Detective Munroe had spoken to Lydia only briefly before returning to her team, frustration evident in her every movement. There was no evidence to pursue and no suspects to question. The only thing they had were the notes, written in ink that had inexplicably dried centuries ago.

On the first night after the lockdown, Richard remained in the security office, monitoring the museum’s interior through the surveillance system. He had spent the past six hours cycling through footage, searching for even the slightest anomaly—some indication of movement, some detail that had been overlooked.

The medieval wing, where the first death occurred, was empty. The executioner’s hood remained within its glass case, its presence unchanged. The museum’s dim emergency lighting cast long shadows along the tiled floors, illuminating nothing out of the ordinary.

Then, at 3:14 a.m., an alert appeared on his monitor. A motion sensor had been triggered in the east corridor.

Richard straightened, fingers tightening against the edge of his desk. He switched to the corresponding camera feed. The hallway appeared silent and undisturbed, as usual. Yet, as he stared at the screen, a creeping dread settled into his chest. He could not explain why at first. There was no visible disturbance, no shift in the environment that should have unsettled him. But something felt wrong. It was not until he leaned closer that he noticed the change.

The museum’s layout had shifted. The proportions of the hallway seemed subtly off, the walls appearing narrower than they should have been, the distance between the display cases slightly elongated. It was as though the architecture itself had begun to warp, twisting at the edges of perception.

A second motion alert flickered across the screen. This time, it came from the main atrium.

Richard switched feeds. At first, the footage showed nothing. The grand entrance stood empty, the museum’s main doors locked and secured. Then, a shape appeared. It did not emerge from the shadows, nor did it enter the frame from beyond the camera’s range. Instead, much like the figure from the previous night, it was simply there—a dark, hooded form, standing in absolute stillness.

As Richard watched the feed, he noticed that the figure did not move. It made no effort to turn or step forward. Yet, in the next instant, the camera flickered—and another body lay sprawled across the floor.

By the time Lydia arrived, summoned by Richard’s panicked phone call, the police were already on-site.

The third victim lay near the museum’s entrance, his head separated from his body in the same precise manner as the others. The blood that pooled beneath him had formed the same meticulous arc. And as before, a parchment note had been placed beneath the corpse.

Henry, pale but steady, knelt beside Munroe as he read the text aloud. “This one,” he said quietly, “was guilty of aggravated assault resulting in death. Nineteen ninety-four.”

“So this thing is keeping records now?”

Lydia, standing over the body, shook her head. “It’s not keeping records,” she said. “It’s following them.”

* * * * * *

The museum board convened the next morning, their discussion tense and divided. The deaths could no longer be framed as coincidence, nor could they be ignored.

Some demanded that the exhibit be dismantled entirely, that the executioner’s hood be removed from display and taken from the premises. Others, fearing that such an action might provoke further violence, insisted that the museum remain under investigation before any decisions were made.

Richard, who had seen the footage firsthand, made his stance clear. “We need to get rid of that thing,” he said, his voice firm. “I don’t care if you put it in storage or burn it. We can’t keep it here.”

Lydia, for the first time, did not argue.

Henry nodded in agreement. “It needs to be locked away. As soon as possible.”

That afternoon, the executioner’s hood was removed from its display case and sealed within the museum’s basement vault. The process was handled carefully, with minimal contact. Two conservators placed the hood inside a reinforced container, securing it within the temperature-controlled storage chamber that housed other fragile artifacts. The vault’s door was locked, with access restricted to Lydia, Henry, and Richard.

For the first time in days, the museum’s halls felt quieter. The hood had been removed. The source of the disturbances had been contained. Yet, as Richard returned to his security station that night, he could not shake his lingering unease. He told himself that locking the artifact away would be enough—that the deaths would stop now that the hood was no longer on display.

But when he sat before his monitors, cycling through the live feeds, the certainty he had tried to hold onto faltered. Because, despite the vault’s reinforced doors, the sealed security measures, and the fact that the executioner’s hood was no longer present in the medieval exhibit, the camera still showed something standing in the room.

The glass display case remained empty. But in the reflection of the surrounding exhibits, the hooded figure remained.

At 3:27 a.m., another motion alert sounded.

A fourth body was found the next morning.

The killings had not stopped.

Part VI

The museum’s closure had done little to quell the growing speculation surrounding the deaths. News had spread beyond Pinehurst, drawing both public and media interest, and while the police remained tight-lipped about the details, rumors flourished. Some believed the killings were the work of an elusive, ritualistic serial killer. Others, fueled by the unsettling nature of the crime scenes, whispered of something supernatural, something beyond explanation.

It was this uncertainty that led museum officials—desperate for answers—to bring in an outside team.

Jonathan Kessler arrived with his crew three days after the most recent death, his reputation preceding him. A veteran investigator, known for his level-headed approach to paranormal cases, he had built a career out of debunking hauntings as often as he had confirmed them. His team consisted of four others, each well-versed in handling advanced spectrometry, electromagnetic field readings, and thermal imaging.

Lydia met them at the entrance, flanked by Richard and Henry. The tension in the air was evident, though Kessler seemed unimpressed by the weight of the situation.

He strode forward, offering a polite but casual handshake. “So,” he said, glancing toward the sealed-off medieval wing, “we’re dealing with a homicidal poltergeist?”

“We’re dealing with something,” Lydia answered. “No one’s been able to explain how the deaths occurred. We need to determine if there’s a legitimate phenomenon happening here.”

Kessler nodded, gesturing for his team to begin setting up. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

The investigation began just after midnight. The team established their base in the main atrium, setting up a network of high-sensitivity cameras, electromagnetic field detectors, and thermal scanners. Motion sensors were placed at key locations throughout the museum, with particular focus on the medieval exhibit.

Kessler, accompanied by one of his technicians, carried an infrared camera as he moved through the halls, narrating his observations into a recorder.

“So far,” he said, his voice calm, “there are no immediate fluctuations in temperature or electromagnetic interference. No anomalous readings detected in proximity to the executioner’s hood.”

Lydia and Richard, observing from the atrium, watched the feed in real-time. The monitors displayed various angles of the museum, each one quiet and undisturbed.

For the first two hours, nothing happened.

Then, at 3:17 a.m., an abrupt spike in electromagnetic activity sent one of the monitors into a sudden burst of static.

The team froze.

Kessler raised a hand to his earpiece. “We’re getting something.”

His technician adjusted the frequency on their recording device. A low, guttural sound filtered through the speakers, distorted by static. It was deep and rhythmic, its syllables forming a distinct pattern. The German dialect was unmistakable.

“Gerechtigkeit wird vollstreckt.”

The voice was unnaturally clear, unaffected by the usual interference that accompanied radio anomalies. It was as though the words had been spoken directly into the microphone.

Henry inhaled sharply. “It said, ‘justice is carried out.’”

Richard glanced toward the monitors. “Tell me that was one of you,” he said into the radio.

Kessler’s response came quickly. “Negative. We’re in the exhibit hall. There’s no one else here.”

The static intensified for a moment, then cut out entirely.

The thermal cameras, which had thus far remained clear, flashed suddenly with movement. A heat signature appeared in the medieval wing.

Kessler and his team turned sharply toward the display cases. Their instruments registered an unidentified presence, but to the naked eye, the hall remained empty.

The infrared scanner pulsed again. A figure registered on the screen—tall, hooded, and standing in perfect stillness.

Kessler’s technician swore under his breath. “It’s right in front of us.”

Kessler, still skeptical, stepped forward. “If there’s someone here, now’s your chance to make an impression.”

The scanner blinked—once, twice—and then flatlined.

The figure was gone.

* * * * * *

At 4:12 a.m., Jonathan Kessler was found dead.

His body lay in the center of the museum’s main hall, decapitated, the same clean arc of blood forming a near-perfect curve.

The room had been monitored the entire night. No one had seen or heard anything.

His team was the first to find him. One of the technicians stumbled back in shock, pressed against the wall, eyes locked on the body as though trying to will it out of existence. Another, a woman who had been reviewing equipment logs at the time of Kessler’s death, broke into a string of curses before turning toward Lydia.

“We need to get the hell out of here,” she said, her voice barely controlled. “Right now.”

Richard had already turned away, his hand pressing against his forehead as he struggled to process the scene. Henry, his face drawn and colorless, moved in slow, careful steps toward the body.

A parchment note had been placed beneath Kessler’s corpse. Henry retrieved it with trembling fingers, unfolding the brittle paper as his eyes moved over the faded ink.

Kessler had been sentenced to death. His crime—undisclosed abuse of children within his local church.

Henry closed his eyes. His fingers clenched around the note.

Lydia’s voice broke the silence. “He was guilty.”

Richard turned toward her, his expression a mixture of disbelief and frustration. “For God’s sake, Lydia. A man just died!”

Lydia shook her head, rubbing her hand over her mouth before speaking again. “That’s not what I mean. Every person this thing has killed… they all had skeletons in their closets. Something that no one ever punished them for.”

Richard’s features tightened. “You’re saying this thing—whatever the hell it is—knows who deserves to die?”

Lydia hesitated. “I’m saying it believes it does.”

* * * * * *

Detective Munroe arrived within the hour, her frustration barely masked as she surveyed the scene. She had seen two other bodies with the same wound, the same calculated precision. But this was different. This time, a man had died while surrounded by trained professionals actively monitoring the museum. There was no rational way to explain it, no theory that made sense.

Munroe turned toward Lydia, her voice low. “I need you to be honest with me. Are we dealing with something supernatural here?”

Lydia met her gaze, the weight of everything settling in. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I don’t think this is over.”

Munroe nodded. “Alright,” she said. “Then we stop waiting around for another body to show up. Whatever is doing this, we need to find a way to stop it before it strikes again.”

Richard, who had remained silent since Kessler’s death, let out an exasperated sigh. “If it’s not finished,” he said, “then what’s next?”

No one had an answer.

Lydia turned toward the security monitors. The medieval wing remained still, undisturbed. The glass case where the executioner’s hood had once been displayed remained empty.

But something told her the executioner had already chosen its next victim.

And it was only a matter of time.

Part VII

The morning after Jonathan Kessler’s death, the museum was gripped by tension so thick it seemed to cling to every surface, filling the air with an oppressive weight that no one dared to acknowledge aloud.

The news had spread quickly. By noon, the staff had gathered in the administrative wing, their voices hushed, their movements careful, as if the wrong step might somehow draw the entity’s attention. Lydia sat at the head of the conference table, her fingers laced together, eyes scanning the room. Richard stood near the door, arms crossed, his usual composure strained. Henry had remained uncharacteristically silent as he turned the same sheet of translated parchment over in his hands.

The discussion, when it finally began, fractured the room.

“There’s no other explanation,” one of the museum’s senior researchers said, his voice tight with conviction. “This thing—it’s targeting people. It knows who they are and what they’ve done. Every single person it’s killed was guilty of something.”

“That doesn’t mean we ought to sit here and let it keep going!” Richard snapped. “We don’t even know what the hell we’re dealing with! We can’t assume it’s following some kind of… moral code.”

A junior archivist, her face pale, hesitated before speaking. “But… what if it is?”

Richard turned to her sharply. “Huh?”

She swallowed. “What if… what if it really is only executing people who deserve it?”

Richard shook his head. “You don’t get to decide who deserves to die. And neither does this thing.”

The argument escalated from there. Some believed they were dealing with an entity that operated within a framework of justice, enforcing laws long abandoned by the mortal world. Others saw it as a rogue, supernatural serial killer, using the illusion of judgment as justification for its indiscriminate slaughter.

Lydia, unwilling to entertain either extreme, raised a hand for silence. “It doesn’t matter what it is,” she said, her voice firm. “We have to stop it.” She turned toward Henry. “You said the hood was supposed to be buried with the executioner, that it was never meant to be separated from him.”

Henry nodded. “That’s what the records suggest. But even if that’s true, we have no way of knowing whether returning it to its original resting place would actually stop this.”

“Then we destroy it.”

The words came from Detective Munroe, who had remained quiet until now, watching the debate unfold with a level of detachment that suggested she had already made her decision. “We’ve spent the last week trying to contain this thing, and people are still dying. Whatever power it has, it’s tied to the hood. So we destroy it.”

The room fell silent.

Richard nodded grimly. “Fine. Let’s end this.”

* * * * * *

That afternoon, in a secured underground chamber of the museum, the executioner’s hood was subjected to destruction.

The first attempt was fire. The fabric, aged by centuries, should have ignited instantly. Instead, it remained untouched, the flames curling around it as if repelled by something unseen. The temperature climbed, the air in the chamber growing thick with heat, but the hood did not burn.

The second attempt involved industrial-grade acid. The conservation team, working with chemical compounds meant to dissolve organic material, coated the hood in a concentrated solution and left it to sit. When they returned an hour later, the acid had eaten through the metal of the containment tray beneath it—but the fabric itself was entirely intact.

By the third attempt, desperation had begun to set in. A hydraulic press, normally used for compressing dense objects, was brought in as a last resort. The machine groaned as it descended, its full weight focusing on the small, unassuming piece of fabric.

When the press was lifted, the hood remained unscathed.

The museum staff, gathered in tense silence, exchanged uneasy glances.

“It won’t be destroyed,” Henry murmured. “It won’t even be touched.”

It was only a matter of hours before the museum’s fate was sealed. The board members, museum officials, and local authorities convened for an emergency meeting. The conclusion was unanimous: The hood could not be left in public view.

If it could not be destroyed, it had to be buried and sealed in a place where it would never be found.

As the meeting adjourned, an eerie stillness settled over the museum. The decision had been made.

And then, one final execution took place.

* * * * * *

The last victim was a man in his late fifties, who had entered the museum without permission. His headless body was discovered in the medieval wing, positioned mere feet from where the hood had once been displayed.

The last parchment note was translated in silence.

“Convicted of child abduction. Nineteen eighty-three.”

No one spoke.

Richard looked toward Lydia. “We have to get it out of here. Now.”

She nodded. “Tonight.”

The hood would be transported under heavy security, sealed in an undisclosed location where no one would ever be able to retrieve it.

The executions were over.

For now.

Part VIII

The removal of the hood was handled with a precision normally reserved for high-value artifacts and biohazardous materials. The museum’s basement vault, where it had been stored for days, was placed under strict lockdown. A team of handlers arrived with a simple but vital task: to take the executioner’s hood far from Pinehurst, to a location deliberately omitted from all official records.

It was just past midnight when the hood was placed inside a reinforced lead-lined crate, the container secured with industrial-grade locks and chains. Two guards accompanied the handlers as they loaded the crate into a transport truck, its destination known only to a select few.

The plan was to sever its connection to history.

Every record of its acquisition had already been erased. Digital archives were scrubbed, and paper documentation was incinerated. Even its listing in the Bavarian Museum of Antiquities had been quietly removed, ensuring that, as far as the world was concerned, the hood had never existed.

The truck carrying the hood departed Pinehurst at 1:23 a.m. The roads were empty at that hour, the town resting in uneasy silence. The driver, a contracted transporter who had handled similar high-security shipments in the past, followed the designated route, his eyes fixed on the highway stretching ahead.

For the first hour, the trip was uneventful. The truck’s cabin remained quiet, the steady hum of the engine the only sound in the stillness. The two guards, seated in the back compartment, maintained their silence, their only duty to ensure the crate remained sealed.

Then, at 2:47 a.m., the first whisper came.

The driver stiffened, glancing at the passenger seat beside him. The cab was empty.

The voice had been low and guttural, carrying a weight out of proportion with its quiet delivery.

He shook his head, gripping the steering wheel more tightly. He had been on the road too long, he rationalized. He was imagining things.

But then it came again—closer this time. A phrase spoken in a language he did not understand.

He reached for the radio, his fingers hovering over the transmitter, preparing to check in with the guards. Before he could press the button, something shifted in the rearview mirror.

A figure sat in the back seat—a dark, hooded form.

His body seized with instinctive panic. His foot nearly slammed the brake before he forced himself to focus, forcing his gaze forward.

It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.

He swallowed hard, lifting the radio with a shaking hand. “Do you hear that?” he asked, his voice quivering.

A moment of static. Then, one of the guards responded. “Hear what?”

The murmur came again, sliding through the air just behind him.

The driver clenched his jaw. “Nothing,” he muttered.

The truck continued down the road, disappearing into the night.

* * * * * *

Back at the museum, the medieval wing remained closed off, its exhibits still under forensic review. In the wake of the hood’s removal, an eerie emptiness had settled over the building, as though something vital had been displaced.

Richard Maynard, seated in the security office, cycled through the camera feeds out of habit. The museum’s halls were vacant, their displays illuminated by dim overnight lighting. He had expected a sense of relief after the hood’s departure, a finality to the unease that had gripped the building for weeks.

But as he moved between the camera feeds, something felt wrong. He switched to the live feed from the basement vault. The crate that had once held the hood was gone, leaving behind only an empty space in the center of the storage chamber.

Then, the screen flickered. A ripple of static distorted the image, warping the edges of the vault for a fraction of a second and causing the lights to flicker.

When the interference cleared, something was there.

Richard stiffened. At first, it was only a vague impression—a smudge of darkness pooling in the corner of the room, its form undefined. But as he watched, the shape began to change, its edges shifting and stretching, slowly coalescing into something tangible.

 It was faint, barely visible in the dim light, but unmistakable—Der Richter.

It was not cloaked as it had been before. The outline of a man stood where nothing should have been, his form bare, his face bathed in shadow, his head unadorned.

Richard swallowed hard. The hood was gone, but whatever had worn it remained, the blood-stained blade of its axe glinting in defiance.

The figure didn’t bother to turn toward the camera. It simply stood there, its presence unshaken by the absence of the artifact that had once defined it.

Then, as if sensing Richard’s realization, the lights in the vault dimmed. The screen flickered again—once, then twice—before cutting to black entirely.

The museum’s overhead lights failed, and for several long seconds, the building lay in darkness.

When power was restored, the vault was empty.

Richard let out the breath he’d be holding, his fingers still frozen on the keyboard. He stared at the blank screen, willing himself to believe that what he had seen was nothing more than a glitch. But deep down, he already knew the truth.

The executioner no longer needed the hood. It had once been bound to the blood-soaked garment, but no longer.

In a desperate attempt to stop the killings, the well-intentioned but overzealous museum staff had severed those bonds.

And in doing so, rather than imprison it—

They had set it free.