There are other reasons. I wouldn’t want you to think I murdered her just for fun. I did it because I wish to prove a point: the world is changing. It’s something indefinable in the air and water. History is a cycle of the rise and fall of civilizations and individuals. There comes a certain point where the apex has been reached and everything begins slipping into darkness.

That point has now come. When it turned, I can’t exactly say, but I feel it under my skin. Underneath the perfume of the roses, you can begin to scent the rot and decay setting in.

I don’t mean this just at a national level. You can feel it here too. Maybe you already do. You are a perceptive man.

Loudoun County has stayed much the same as it has for 200 years. But that is beginning to slide. FairfaxCounty is growing and expanding. Pretty soon, the future will be at the door. There will be immigrants, developers and yuppies flooding through our gates. And that will bring with it the enemy of all humankind: change.

Change is inevitable, but there are times in life when we must make a stand. I intend to do so. My medium is the one best understood by every being on this planet, from the lowly maggot to us-fear.

Don’t worry, I won’t single out immigrants or minorities. I’m not prejudiced and-in all honesty-that would be trite and predictable. For terror to be most effective, it has to be indiscriminate. You can’t ever believe you are safe. You have to always be looking behind you, wondering who is there in the shadow beyond the streetlight. So, starting today, everyone is up for grabs.

I will be the thing people fear. And for all time, my name will send a shiver down everyone’s spine. It will become synonymous with the creeping darkness.

Today is the first day of October. By the end of it, five women, five men and five children will be rotting in the ground. You cannot stop me, just as you cannot stop change. I am night. I am cold. I am flesh rendered and torn. I am steel. I am the harbinger of fall: I am death.