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"Mature Content Warning!" |
Warning: This proposal contains some graphic descriptions of murder, suicide and mutilation. I don't suggest to read this if you are really sensible to that type of stuff.
Here's another proposal for today. Now we are going for a rather obscure candidate from a short story that I remember hearing about a few years ago and that I personally enjoy even to this day. No image though. Let's go straight to it:
What is the work?
The Cold Man is a pretty short creepypasta (it can be read here, if you are interested. It's a 5 minutes read around) that talks about a rather disturbing urban legend from the British city of Wickford, narrated by an unnamed person, that talks about a series of gruesome murders with a little story behind it. As you can guess, the culprit behind this horror is our candidate:
Who is the candidate?
Jack Kayden, also known as The Cold Man, is the titular main antagonist. In 1979, he used to be a rather sadistic bully at an unnamed secondary school at Wickford, right before a group formed by his bullying victims (6 boys and 2 girls) conspired together against him and disposed of him, leaving him for dead with his body never being found. But that's just the beginning of this whole deal.
First we hear about 1986, when a girl was found dead in the same spot Kayden was attacked back then, with her neck snapped and her entrails splattered all over the place. She was also naked and had a note on her forehead, the only thing written there was the word "Cold". Unresolved case, and yes, she was one of the conspirators that went after Kayden.
Six months later, a young sewage maintenance worker was attacked and drowned in water. Like before, the case was left unresolved and the man attacked Kayden as well, like the previous victim.
Our unnamed narrator then found some news paper articles that gave some other news about these crimes: In 1999 it was reported the kidnapping of a 12 years old girl, the daughter of the woman who was killed in 1986. Four other men were reported to be brutally killed in the late 80's. One was beheaded and left on a road, with his head being left under a sewer grate, another was stabbed to death, with the word "Cold" carved into his forehead, and the last two were sewn together and then left to starve to death. There is also the report of a girl that killed herself by jumping in front of a car. She was kidnapped back in 1991, only to be refound three months later. It's unknown what happened to her that led her to commit something of that level, but it's definitely nothing pretty.
And finally, we have yet another victim of this madness, a man who was brutally killed and skinned by Kayden in 1994. Said victim was eventually revealed to be none others than the narrator's father. The reveal that Kayden seems to go after not only after the people that attacked him back in 1979, but also after their children is something that left him very afraid for his life. At the point that after their mother's death, they were left highly paranoic when they heard something in their house. It got bad at the point that they eventually left the city of Wickford and then went to leave to London. This paranoia turned out to be correct: one day, it was reported that their old house in Wickford was vandalized. Nothing was stolen but the house was littered everywhere with a single word: "Cold".
Does he count?
Being the only villain present in the story, I am pretty sure that heinousness is not an issue at all here. His act of serial murder, in top of being incredibly brutal, also helps here. Maybe one could argue that Kayden is tragic due to what happened to him in the beginning, but that's not the case IMO. In top of being openly described as a sadistic individual even prior to being attacked, the narrative doesn't play him for sympathy at all, focusing only on his crimes. I'm also sure that going after people that are simply related to his attackers makes him go too far anyway. And while many details about him are left a bit ambiguous, it's made clear that Kayden is the one carrying out all this madness, as a revenge of what happened a long ago. However...
What prevents him from being Pure Evil?
Considering the short nature of the story and the fact that Kayden has little to no spoken lines, his characterization is a bit too barebones to make him count as PE. There's the mysterious encounter made by the narrator with a "ugly, bald man" (heavily implied to be Kayden himself) that once having heard that the narrator's father died, he replied "I know" while making a creepy smirk, but that's not enough imo. However, I do think that he has just enough personality to be at least NPE. He is clearly described as a sadistic man (again, the brutality of his kills speaks for itself), and was also described as a womanizer early on.
Verdict?
I personally go with a Yes.