VII. Last Great Work

By July of 1989, most of Wilmington had forgotten Henry Galloway. He certainly wasn't on the minds of the nine film students who’d booked Cape Fear Church & Studio as a location for their thesis project. Unfortunately for them, what you don’t know can still be right behind you.

Those years of frustration and screaming walls led the reclusive Galloway to an epiphany, and he was about to make his magnum opus. All he needed was the right material.

Galloway sealed the exits and assaulted the crew, striking fast on a few and leaving the rest the be hunted down. When it was finished, he carved up the dead students and displayed them in gruesome tableaus. Mixed media: acrylic and flesh.

The sight of the student bodies led a few responding cops to quit the force that same day. It was a nightmare that no one could explain. But the most baffling horror was saved for those who found the killer's body.

His work complete, Henry Galloway strung himself up in the rafters of his infernal studio, suspended in a pose that beckoned “look upon my works.”

His bulging eyes and twisted neck were consistent with that dramatic final act, but a self-hanging didn’t explain the rest of his face. It was warped, as if an invisible claw had grabbed the back of his head and yanked hard until the skin started splitting. Those who saw his face would see it again, behind their eyelids, for the rest of their lives.

At the end of that same year, a Christmas Blizzard plowed through Wilmington, and Cape Fear sat covered in 15 inches of snow. It should have been magical, but it just felt cold and dead. At least the building was quiet again.

No one touched the place for years. If only it had stayed that way...