#santibus celsior (Horace Mahoney)

[canisaureus-santibuscelsior]

Horace Mahoney

While poor in the South, running a family junkyard, the Mahoneys were happy. It was some time in the 1930s the expected a son. The once loving wife and mother abandoned the family shortly after her son’s birth, some strange mix of postpartum depression and shock taking over. She’d been around long enough to name him Horace Edmund Mahoney, but soon after left in the middle of the night, leaving her baby in an abandoned car in the lot. James Mahoney found his wife gone in the morning and eventually tracked down where the child was. It was the first time he’d actually went his son, and part of him understood why his wife left; their child barely looked human, rather like something pretending to be.

It was mostly out of shame he kept the kid away. He’d let Horace go to grade school, but yanked him out sometime before the seventh grade. He feigned that Horace’s intelligence was not enough to keep him in school, even as some teachers noticed he was an average student. However, the boy didn’t complain. He’d grown quickly and freakishly, towering above his classmates. They’d often looked at him as a monster, a lumbering Frankenstein monster or Bigfoot. He didn’t have friends there, so there was no point in school, so it seemed.

James took this as a opportunity, teaching his kid in the family trade of mechanics, as well as using Horace’s strength to crush and chop up totaled cars in their junk lot. Horace had an affinity for cars and learned all he could, even soaking up other books on the matter, even though he struggled with the contents. He’d excelled as a mechanic, even past his father. He had a talent, not that James wanted to admit it. For all those who came in for repairs, he kept them out of back rooms where Horace worked, not wanting them to know his barely grown son was already well past six foot and naturally as strong as any college football player. It was shame, but also knowing fear could lose him business.

It wasn’t as if Horace knew any better. His father was pretty much his only guide in so many things. He barely had contact with the outside world. At times, he was so desperate for companionship that he’d befriended the stray dogs that stayed in the junkyard and claimed them as his own.

Horace was twenty five when his dad died. He continued to run the mechanic’s and junkyard alone, though business became scarce as more people saw the 7 foot giant that ran the place. He no longer had the guidance he had his entire life, and he felt incredibly lost, especially as the discrimination grew worse.

It should have been no surprise an abusive father would bring up a violent son. All he’d wanted to do was be kind, taking two young hitchhikers into town. The girls laughed and pointed, making fun of the man who had taken them in. His anger blinded him, and he strangled the women to death, feeding their remains to his dogs to clear away evidence.

At some point, perhaps Horace began taking these deserted drivers and hitchhikers on purpose. At some point, they didn’t need to verbalize their disgust at him. He assumed it all and took out his anger against the world on them. The papers called this mysterious killer “the Breaker”. On purpose or not, the killer broke so many bones in his victims bodies, it became his MO.

His final kill would have been a young woman asking for a ride... but that young woman had been an undercover cop leasing the rest of the force back to the junkyard. Before he knew it, he was surrounded. He’d broken free from the cuffs in his wrists, and the police reacted in turn. SWAT members emptied their guns into the man’s torso and even his head, five loads of bullets killing him and an extra volley put in once he fell “just to be sure”.

He stayed in his junkyard for years. He didn’t want to leave it behind as it was the only place he knew. As a ghost, he still killed trespassers, especially those trying to take their anger at him out on his beloved dogs. But one night, there were so many voices... he’d killed several of those out there, but still, the men captured him. Ghost hunters. And Horace, who they called the Juggernaut, was the final piece before the grand finale.

All he wanted was to Rest In Peace for once! He hated his captors. And if he could get his hands on them... he and all the other captured ghosts could be free