Sunday Short: Killer Convention - The First Body
The irony was not lost on Adrian Vale.
Thousands of people had gathered inside the convention centre to celebrate murder.
They wore the faces of fictional killers, carried plastic knives stained with fake blood, and queued for photographs with actors who had spent their careers pretending to be monsters. Some had travelled hundreds of kilometres to attend Nightmare Fest, the biggest horror convention in the country. Others had spent months preparing elaborate costumes, complete with prosthetic wounds and latex skin.
Everywhere Adrian looked, people were discussing the art of killing.
Their favourite methods. Their favourite villains. Their favourite scenes.
They spoke with such enthusiasm that Adrian almost felt insulted.
They knew nothing about murder.
He adjusted the collar of his black jacket and smiled as a woman dressed as a bloodied bride passed him. She was carrying a plastic axe and laughing with her friends.
For a moment, Adrian imagined how easily that laughter could stop.
Then he noticed the man standing at the collectibles booth.
Perfect.
The man appeared to be in his early thirties, with a friendly face and the comfortable confidence of someone who had never seriously considered that a stranger might wish him harm. He was examining an old horror-film poster, turning it carefully between his fingers.
Adrian approached him.
“Original print?” Adrian asked.
The man looked up. “Apparently. The seller says it came from a cinema that closed in the nineties.”
“That's what they all say.”
The man laughed. “You collect?”
“Among other things.”
They spoke for several minutes about old horror films, rare posters, and the decline of practical effects. Adrian listened attentively, asking questions and offering opinions. He had a gift for making strangers feel as though they had known him for years.
By the time they parted, the man had told Adrian his name, where he was staying, and that he had come to the convention alone.
Adrian watched him disappear into the crowd.
There was no hurry. The convention lasted until midnight, and the city outside was full of places where people could vanish without attracting much attention.
He had waited longer for less promising opportunities.
His phone vibrated.
A message from an unknown number appeared on the screen.
You always did enjoy taking your time.
Adrian frowned.
He read it again, then looked around the hall.
Hundreds of people moved between the booths. A towering creature in a rubber mask posed for photographs. A group of teenagers argued over which slasher villain would win in a fight. Somewhere on the main stage, a host announced the next celebrity panel.
Nobody seemed interested in him.
He typed a reply.
*Who is this?*
The message failed to send.
Adrian slipped the phone into his pocket. It was probably a wrong number, or some convention prank. Horror fans loved pretending to be characters from their favourite films.
Still, he didn't like the timing.
He decided to keep his eyes open.
Across the hall, another man was having a much worse afternoon.
Darren Pike hated crowds.
He hated the noise, the constant movement, the way people brushed against him without apologising. He hated the fact that a convention celebrating horror could be so relentlessly cheerful.
He had come because crowds were useful. People behaved strangely at events like this. Someone wearing a bloodied costume could walk past a hundred people without anyone looking twice.
Darren had spent the last twenty minutes watching a young attendee standing alone beside a row of vending machines. The person kept checking their phone, apparently waiting for someone who hadn't arrived.
Darren considered approaching.
Then a security guard walked between them, and the moment passed.
He swore under his breath.
He could wait. He had always been good at waiting when there was something worth waiting for.
A cheer erupted from the main hall as a horror actor appeared on stage. Darren turned toward the noise, irritated by the sudden surge of people.
A man dressed as a masked killer bumped into him.
“Sorry, mate!”
Darren grabbed the man's arm.
“Watch where you're going.”
The cosplayer's smile disappeared behind his mask. “I said sorry.”
Darren held on for another second before releasing him.
The man hurried away.
Darren watched him go, his jaw tight.
He had come here to hunt, not to spend the day being jostled by idiots. He needed to calm down.
He headed toward a quieter corridor marked STAFF ONLY, where the noise of the convention faded behind a set of heavy doors.
He didn't notice the man standing at the far end of the corridor.
The man was looking directly at him.
When Darren turned, the stranger was already walking away.
Darren stared after him.
Something about the encounter bothered him, though he couldn't have said why.
He returned to the main hall.
At the other end of the building, Vivian Shaw was laughing.
She was sitting at a small café table with two women she'd met less than an hour earlier. One wore a vampire costume; the other had painted half her face to resemble a rotting corpse. They were discussing the convention's upcoming costume competition.
“You should enter,” the vampire girl told Vivian. “You look like you could be in a horror movie without even trying.”
Vivian smiled.
“That's very kind of you.”
She had chosen her outfit carefully: black trousers, a simple dark jacket, and a silver pendant. Nothing memorable. Nothing that would attract attention once she disappeared into a crowd.
The two women were friendly, but Vivian had already decided she wouldn't be spending the rest of the afternoon with them.
She rarely stayed in one place for long.
“Are you here with anyone?” the woman with the painted face asked.
“Not today.”
“Me neither. My friends cancelled at the last minute.”
Vivian tilted her head sympathetically. “Their loss.”
She noticed the woman relax. People liked being understood. It was one of the easiest ways to make them lower their guard.
Then the convention announcement system crackled.
“Attention, attendees. The next panel, *The Anatomy of a Slasher*, will begin in Auditorium Two in fifteen minutes. Please have your tickets ready.”
The vampire girl stood.
“That's my favourite panel every year. Come with us?”
“Maybe later,” Vivian said.
The women left.
Vivian watched them merge into the crowd. She took a sip of her coffee and glanced toward the auditorium.
The evening was still young.
Then she noticed a man watching her from beside a merchandise booth.
He was ordinary-looking, perhaps in his early forties, wearing a charcoal jacket and carrying a folded convention programme. He wasn't dressed as a horror character. He wasn't carrying merchandise. He simply stood there, looking in her direction.
When their eyes met, he smiled politely.
Vivian returned the smile.
The man lowered his gaze to his programme.
She looked away first, but she made a mental note of him.
She had learned a long time ago that the people who attracted the least attention were often the ones worth watching.
At 4:17 p.m., the convention stopped celebrating murder.
It began with a scream.
Not the theatrical kind that echoed from the haunted attraction near the western entrance. This one was sharp, panicked, and abruptly cut short.
People turned toward the sound.
A woman stumbled out of a narrow corridor beside the exhibition halls. She was a convention staff member, wearing a red lanyard and a black polo shirt. Her face had drained of colour.
“Someone help me,” she gasped.
A few attendees rushed toward her.
“What's wrong?”
“There's a man—”
She swallowed, unable to finish.
“There’s a dead man in there.”
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Then everyone began talking at once.
Some people laughed nervously, assuming it was an elaborate prank. A few raised their phones to record. Someone asked whether the convention had hired actors for a surprise attraction.
The staff member shook her head violently.
“No. No, you don't understand. He's dead.”
A security officer pushed through the crowd and ordered everyone to stand back. Two more guards arrived, followed by a convention manager who kept asking where the body had been found.
The corridor was sealed off.
The laughter died.
Within minutes, the announcement system called for all attendees to remain in the main exhibition areas while security investigated a serious incident. The announcement was repeated twice, each time sounding less reassuring.
Adrian heard the news while browsing a table of vintage horror memorabilia.
A body.
He stood very still.
For one irrational second, he wondered whether his intended victim had somehow died before Adrian had even begun.
Then he dismissed the thought. The man was alive when they parted. Adrian had seen him walk away.
Someone else had made the first move.
He slowly looked across the hall.
Darren was standing beside a drinks stall, staring toward the corridor. Vivian had left the café and was watching the gathering crowd from near the auditorium entrance.
Adrian didn't know either of them personally.
But he had seen men like Darren before. He had met women like Vivian, too. People who carried themselves as though the world were something to be studied rather than lived in.
Could one of them have done it?
He felt a flicker of irritation.
If another killer was operating here, that changed everything.
Darren was thinking the same thing.
He had not killed anyone. He hadn't even approached the person he'd been watching. Yet a body had appeared, and the exits were about to become a problem.
He glanced at the main entrance.
Two security guards were standing in front of the doors. One spoke into a radio while the other directed attendees away from the lobby.
Darren walked toward them.
“What's going on?”
“Please remain inside while we investigate.”
“Investigate what?”
“We've had an incident.”
“What kind of incident?”
The guard's expression hardened. “Sir, please return to the exhibition hall.”
Darren looked past him. Through the glass doors, he could see people gathering outside. A police vehicle had pulled up near the entrance.
He turned away.
Someone was already killing, and Darren was trapped in a building full of witnesses.
His original plan suddenly seemed reckless.
He would have to be careful.
Across the hall, Vivian was watching the security guards with growing suspicion.
She had seen enough frightened people to recognize the difference between fear and performance. The staff member who had discovered the body had looked genuinely horrified. The security response, however, had been strangely swift.
Someone had found a body in a restricted corridor. The police had been called. The exits were being controlled.
That was understandable.
What bothered Vivian was the location.
The corridor was nowhere near the public toilets, the food stalls, or the main exhibition areas. It was an obscure service passage that most attendees would never have reason to enter.
Whoever had died there had either been taken into the corridor or had a reason to be there.
She glanced toward the man in the charcoal jacket.
He was still nearby, standing beside a pillar and reading his convention programme.
When she looked again, he had disappeared.
Vivian felt the first real stir of unease.
At 4:42 p.m., police officers entered the building.
The convention manager took the microphone on the main stage and asked everyone to remain calm. He explained that a serious incident had occurred and that the police needed to speak with some attendees. Nobody would be permitted to leave until the initial investigation was complete.
The announcement triggered an uproar.
People complained about missing trains, hotel check-ins, and evening plans. Parents gathered their children. Cosplayers removed masks and props. Several attendees insisted that they had paid for an event, not a crime scene.
The police were unmoved.
The building was now effectively sealed.
Adrian found himself standing beside a display of plastic severed heads, listening to a man dressed as a vampire argue with an officer.
He should have left hours ago.
Instead, he had spent the afternoon choosing a victim.
Now someone else had introduced a real corpse into the proceedings, and Adrian couldn't tell whether it was coincidence or a message.
He looked at his phone again.
The earlier message remained on the screen.
You always did enjoy taking your time.
This time, he felt a chill.
He hadn't told anyone what he planned to do that afternoon.
He locked his phone and put it away.
Near the western entrance, Darren had found a place where he could watch both the police and the crowd. His hands were clenched inside his jacket pockets. He was beginning to regret coming.
If the killer was someone else at the convention, Darren needed to identify him before the police did. If the killer had come specifically to target him, he needed to know that even more urgently.
He scanned the crowd.
For a moment, he thought he saw the same ordinary-looking man who had watched him in the corridor. The man was standing near the merchandise booths, looking at a row of horror masks.
Darren pushed through the crowd.
By the time he reached the booth, the man was gone.
Darren swore.
He had the unpleasant sensation that someone was moving around the convention just beyond his field of vision, always one step ahead of him.
Vivian had begun to reach a similar conclusion.
She had moved to a quieter area near the auditorium, where police were checking identification and asking people to describe their movements before the discovery of the body.
She answered their questions calmly. She had been at the café. She had spoken to two attendees. She had not entered any restricted area.
Everything she said was true.
When the officer finished, she asked, “Do you know who the victim was?”
“We're still confirming details.”
“Was he an attendee?”
“I can't discuss that.”
Vivian nodded as though she understood.
But as the officer walked away, she noticed something on the table beside him: a clear evidence bag containing a folded convention programme.
She recognized the design.
It was the same programme the man in the charcoal jacket had been carrying.
She couldn't see the name printed on it.
Before she could look more closely, another officer moved the evidence bag out of sight.
Vivian stepped back.
For the first time that afternoon, she considered the possibility that the dead man wasn't the only person who had been brought here for a reason.
At 5:26 p.m., the police made another announcement.
The victim had been identified as Martin Kells, a former police investigator who had worked on several unsolved murder cases.
His death was being treated as suspicious.
The announcement did not explain why Martin had been at Nightmare Fest, or why he had been found in a restricted corridor.
Adrian felt his stomach tighten.
He knew the name.
Not personally. But he had encountered it years ago while reading about an investigation that had briefly attracted media attention before disappearing from the news.
Martin Kells had been involved in a case that Adrian had once followed with unusual interest.
He looked across the exhibition hall.
Darren was staring at the stage. Vivian was standing near the auditorium entrance.
Neither appeared to have heard the name before.
Adrian couldn't be sure.
The police continued interviewing attendees. Security staff escorted people between designated areas. Rumours spread faster than facts.
Some claimed that Martin had been murdered by a disgruntled fan. Others said he had been investigating someone at the convention. One attendee insisted that the body was part of a promotional stunt that had gone horribly wrong.
Nobody knew anything.
And that, Adrian realized, was the most dangerous part.
He had come to Nightmare Fest expecting to be the only person in the room who understood what real murder looked like.
Now he was trapped inside with thousands of strangers, at least two of whom he suspected might be as dangerous as he was.
He didn't know their names.
He didn't know their motives.
And he had no idea whether either of them had killed Martin Kells.
Across the hall, the man in the charcoal jacket stood behind a row of display shelves, watching Adrian.
He had watched Darren, too.
And Vivian.
He knew all three of their faces.
He had spent years learning them.
For a moment, his expression softened as he looked at a small photograph in his hand. It showed a young woman with dark hair and a bright, unguarded smile.
He slipped the photograph into his pocket.
Then he looked toward the restricted corridor.
The first part of his plan had worked.
But the convention was already becoming more unpredictable than he had anticipated.
At 6:03 p.m., a scream came from the upper level.
This time, it was followed by the unmistakable sound of running feet.
A police officer shouted for everyone to stay where they were. Another rushed toward the staircase. Attendees turned, craning their necks to see over one another.
Then a voice rang out from above.
“There's another one!”
The exhibition hall erupted.
People pushed toward the exits, only to find them guarded. Someone knocked over a display of collectible masks. A child began crying. The convention manager tried to regain control of the crowd, but his voice disappeared beneath the noise.
Adrian stood motionless.
Darren's face had gone pale.
Vivian slowly turned toward the upper staircase.
None of them had done it.
They knew that much.
The first body had been found before any of them had made a move. Now a second victim had appeared, and the police were still inside trying to understand the first murder.
For the first time, the three serial killers shared the same thought.
Someone else was here.
Someone who had already started killing.
And whoever it was had no intention of stopping.
To be continued in Part Two: The Hunting Ground.
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