I was driving at breakneck speed. I knew the truth.

The police was already at the site. 

I had been caught up at the office; there was an important deadline but I excused myself from the tedious task as soon as I heard the news.

I listened to the live updates as I drove.

"In the latest wave of heinous crimes to shock the country, X-Art has claimed the lives of children, one of them a toddler. Innocent young lives sacrificed to the bloodlust..."

I changed the channel.

"In yet another horrifying incident, two children were killed..."

I changed it again. One scene of relentless horror melded into another.

"Three-year-old Lucy was on her way to her grandparents house with her twelve-year-old brother, Henry when..."

I switched it off and bit my lower lip in frustration.

Luis, what did you do now? How could you?

*****

I knew Luis since he was a boy of ten.

My earliest memory of him was from the day we first met.

I was speaking to Mr. Martinez about his latest investment when I first noticed the boy staring at us from behind the door.

Mr. Martinez turned and noticed his son as soon as I did.

"Luis, what did I tell you about eavesdropping?" It was more of a bark than a question.

The boy looked down at the ground, "Sorry, father."

He said it in a singsong voice but it felt very toneless. That was when I realized there was something missing in the child.

I had seen him on several occasions after that. He would always be watching us, never approaching, simply staring at us from the shadows.

I was their family financial advisor. Mr. Martinez was my first full time client. There would be times when I would arrive earlier than expected and have to wait for him.

At times like that, I would often see Luis in the living room sofa or behind some curtain. At first, our interactions were limited. I would call out to him but he would never approach me.

I thought he was shy but as the years passed, we did get to know each other.

He was interested in the arts. He read and painted a lot. Most of his paintings were in the realist vein. 

He had an excellent eye for detail but the works were piece by piece copies of his surroundings. He neither added nor deducted from the scenes. Everything was as it should be down to the colors of dust motes.

He was a quiet boy. His art was his expression. So, when Luis started sharing his works with me, I felt the thrill of discovery. It was as though I had stepped into the small private world of his mind. It was a cold unexplored place packed with potential. I was enamored with the wild energy.

As the years progressed, Luis and his father grew apart.

On the surface, everything was as it always appeared. The father and son limited their interactions to a bare minimum when I was present. If I caught him alone at other times, Luis was still interactive over his art.

That was when I first noticed the shift. His works used more reds, blacks and dark blues. The images were still those from his surroundings. However, the colors and lighting added an ominous filter to them. The subjects of his work too strayed into more morbid themes - a dead bird, a cat with its ear bitten off, bones in the trash.

The work emanated a sense of foreboding.

He spent more time reading books. Fantasies and fiction -  books that he had avoided most of his life were now his exclusive companions.

Then their world fell apart.

Mr. Martinez was in a drunken fight and slipped from the second floor balcony of his house. He died on impact.

While settling financial matters, it was found that the man had another family. He had an illegitimate child with an unknown woman and Mr. Martinez had willed off all his fixed assets and monetary investments to that child.

Luis was suddenly left without any money or family. He was moved to an orphanage. He was sixteen at the time.

I remember the painting he had shown me before he left for his new house. It was a view of their garden from an upper floor. In the picture, the bushes below were crushed by a heavy weight. The paved path beside the bushes was splattered with streaks of red. It was a bird's eye view of the spot his father died right after the evidence was removed.

I had shuddered in my shoes and dismissed my sense of horror.

*****

I reached the abandoned building - Luis' latest hideout.

Over the years we had fallen out of touch but I ran into him at a supermarket one day.

At twenty one, he had retained a surprising amount of his childhood traits. For one, he was still the quiet boy I recalled from the past. He still painted, he told me. We talked over lunch and promised to stay in touch.

I had failed to notice so much. I have regretted every second of it.

I was on the third floor now.

"Luis? Are you there?" I called.

No answer.

As I walked into the room I saw the young man sitting on the window ledge, one foot tucked under him.

The walls of this room were lined up with canvases. Most were filled. The subjects of the paintings were dead animals and very recently, there was one with two children on it. The bloody paper captured the scene of their death in horrific details.

"That's my latest," Luis was following my eyes.

I overlooked it when he painted those animals. I had hoped that it would be enough to contain him.

"You're upset aren't you, Mr. Davis?"

"Luis we can still fix this," I did not wait.

He sneered, "Yeah, I believe you. It's like all those books I read as a child. Where the magician can fix everything with a wave of the wand and the right words."

I ignored the bitterness in his note, "You don't have to do this. Luis, just stop. We can talk about it like we used to."

"You're right, let's talk."

I moved closer to him.

"Let's talk about all those things I didn't understand. Mr. Davis, you were the only person who ever looked at me. Father was always busy or away on business trips. But you spoke to me."

I took another step towards him. He continued talking.

"I didn't know what to say to you. I would watch but never know what to do. Then you noticed my paintings and I found a way to talk. You liked my works, didn't you?"

More steps.

"Yes, I did but that has nothing to do with what you have been doing lately. Killing animals, spraying their guts out on the streets and painting them on canvas," the thought of his methods and the recent incident made me nauseous, "Today you went too far."

"Did I? I really just wanted you to like them. You see, whenever I showed you my paintings, you pretended to admire them but you were distant. The painting of my father's death spot - that was the first one to make you react. I just wanted you to say something," his eyes grew more distant at each word.

"I always liked your work, Luis. You didn't have to go this far." I stepped closer to him.

"Really? You mean it? How did that one make you feel, my last painting before I went off to the orphanage?"

He was just within arms reach. I decided to be honest, "That day, I was truly horrified, I felt disgust."

He sighed in disappointment. I had not realized he was waiting with bated breath for my answer.

"Is that so? Well, I have a solution for that too," Luis suggested.

I decided to humor him, "And what's that?"

"It's a spell I read about in a book. It's a memory erasing spell but it can probably do more for us. It could clean up this mess."

"And what would that be?" I felt a spark in the air.

"Obliviate."

He tilted out of the window just as I reached out but my hands grasped on empty air.

*****

Half an hour later, I stood wondering what I was doing in an empty room of an abandoned building.

I looked at the time, five-thirty. I remembered the deadline I had to meet and rushed back to my car.