I came face to face with an honest to god serial killer today, I'm absolutely convinced.

So I was on the bus today from my hometown to a city called White Plains, which is pretty close by. I got on and sat in the back, perpendicular to a big guy in a white shirt and tan hat with an umbrella. I put my iPod in and started listening Kyuss's excellent "Welcome to Sky Valley" album.

A few stops later, a girl in a striped dress got on the bus and was talking to a friend on her cellphone. She sat on the other side of the back seat of the bus, next to the man in the white. I'm gonna call her "Sam". The man in the white - who I'm going to call "Bill" from here on out - starts laughing at things she's saying on the phone. Not just laughing though, hysterical laughing that goes on for way too long. I was trying to mind my own business and listen to my music, and so I tried to ignore what was going on. A few minutes later, a hispanic guy got on the bus and sat across from me. I'm gonna call him "Jose".

At some point soon after Jose gets on, Sam hangs up her phone and sits quietly. Bill leans over and starts talking to her. I still wasn't paying attention, but Jose started looking at the two kind of inquisitively. I took one of my headphones out and muted my music and started listening to what they were saying.

Bill asked Sam if she was Catholic, and she replied "Yeah". He started telling her "Hey, you should become a nun!" and she said "Well, I'm not that religious". He started talking about him studying the bible and being a priest of his own sect of Catholicism. She told him that that was interesting, but you could tell she was really dodgy and trying to end the conversation.

So then, Bill asks Sam where she's going. She tells him she's going to White Plains to visit some friends. He asks her if she's going to The Galleria, a mall in White Plains that a lot of teenagers go and hang around at. She says "I'm not sure, it depends on what my friends want to do". He says "You shouldn't go to the Galleria. You're a pretty girl, you can't go to the Galleria because there are bad men out there who will put you in handcuffs and cut you up" and shit like that. At that point I started looking over at Jose and he was looking at me like "We have to do something about this". Neither of us intervened at that point, though, because we both knew that we didn't want to get Bill angry.

So Bill keeps telling Sam, over and over, not to go to the Galleria. "Call your friends", he says, "Tell them to get a car and drive home. Don't spend any time in White Plains, I just know something is going to happen to you and I couldn't stand to see you get hurt." Me, Jose, and a guy who apparently was sitting next to me the whole time who I later found out was named Charles, all started looking at eachother and at Bill and Sam. All of us looked really concerned and freaked out, but none of us said a word to eachother.

Bill moved over, closer to Sam. He started to talk about how he'd "Been shot by bullets before", and how "The cops can't be trusted" because "they keep trying to put me in handcuffs" and shit like that. He started trying to convince her, over and over, not to go to the Galleria. She told him that her boyfriend was going to pick her up, and she'd be fine. She kept reassuring him that she could defend herself and that she'd be fine. For the first time, Bill says "Stay with me" to Sam. He says "I'm big, I can protect you from the others. I can protect you from the bad men" and shit like that.

Sam calls up her boyfriend and talks on the phone to him for a good amount of time. I can tell she was trying to keep the conversation going without telling him that Bill was sitting a foot away from her and freaking her out. At this point, I figured Bill was going to find out that Sam was lying and then get angry and attack her. Jose, Charles and I all knew that the second he touched her, we were going to get up and intervene.

At that point I missed my stop by about 5 stops. I intended to get out and get a sandwich, but instead I stayed because I knew I had to. Jose gets up to leave along with a lot of other people sitting by us. Before getting out, Jose asks Sam "Hey, are you sure you don't want to sit here?" and she sort of helplessly looks at him and Bill goes "Hey, don't listen to that guy. That guy is a bad man. I'll protect you, just make sure you'll call your friends".

One thing I noticed is that he kept insisting that she get in a car. When she said her boyfriend didn't have a car, he said "Oh god damn it" in a kind of...ominous sigh. He moved even close to her at this point so that he was touching her leg with his. Charles and I kind of helplessly looked at her, and I kept trying to silently tell her to move to the front of the bus. As soon as she got the message, she got up and said "Oh here's the bus transfer" and really hastily walked to the front of the bus.

At this point, Bill and I were the only ones sitting in the back. He was just staring forward, looking at her and just kind of sighing repeatedly. Charles was looking up front and I was looking at Bill.

Then, the bus pulls into the transit center. Sam gets out of the bus from the front, and I stood blocking the back entrance while over half of the people in the bus exited through the door we were next to. I could tell Bill didn't even notice I was holding him off because he was so focused on Sam. We both got off the bus after that, and he started immediately walking toward her.

Charles and I, for the first time, talked to eachother. He talked about how much of a fucking creep/lunatic Bill was, and both of us started walking toward both of them. Bill walked up to Sam, who walked pretty fucking quickly to the other side of the transit center. Charles and I both got two bus drivers and signaled Sam to come over. As soon as she did, Bill immediately walked away. We told her she was okay, and the drivers reassured her that she'd be okay. Charles stayed with them, and I decided I'd follow Bill and see where he was going.

So after a few blocks of me silently tailing him, he walked into - get this - The Galleria. This was one of the most eerie feelings I've ever felt - and I have Night Terrors regularly. I walked into the Galleria, still following him from pretty far away, and he walked into the bathrooms in the food court. I waited until he came out, and then he walked in circles around the food court like, 4 times. I went up to a Security guard and told him that Bill was really suspicious and that he was going to try and talk to some teenage girls. I quickly explained what happened, and the security guard told me he'd keep an eye on the guy.

I left the Galleria and went to the sandwich shop and got some lunch. I went back to the Galleria about an hour and a half later, and I saw Bill sitting at a table and some really uncomfortable looking girl talking. Immediately, I got a security guard and told him to pay really close attention to the table. I went to the table and sat down pretty abruptly and pretended that I knew the girl. She looked relieved when I did, and went along with it. Bill looked really confused and annoyed, and kept trying to re-initiate the conversation with her. Bill then, for the first time, talked to me. He asked me where I was coming from, and what I was doing in White Plains. I went out on a limb and hoped that the girl hadn't told Bill her name yet, and then I said "I'm here to visit my friend Kate" and put my arm around the girl. Luckily, she didn't, because she said "Yup, he's my boyfriend".

I don't think Bill even remembered that I was sitting on the bus or that he'd seen me in the food court an hour earlier, because he looked like he'd never seen me before. He started getting closer to the girl, and it looked like he was trying to get me out of the picture. He said "Why don't you go get your girlfriend some lunch?" and I replied "She's okay, we're going to dinner later". He was like an animal at this point. He moved over and put his hand on her leg and said "You know, I don't think your boyfriend is the right person for you". Immediately I got up and pulled his arm off of her. I told him not to put his hand on my "girlfriend", and that he was making both her and me incredibly uncomfortable. The security guard I talked to came over and told Bill that he had to leave. Bill screamed "You're gonna put me in handcuffs too, aren't ya? Without me, you're in serious trouble!" and then a few other guards came and escorted him out.

I told the girl, who told me her name was Vanessa, that Bill had tried to do what he was doing to her to another girl earlier on. She told me that he was trying to convince her to leave the Galleria with him so that he could protect her. She told me she was incredibly uncomfortable and that she was supposed to be meeting her friends, who told her they couldn't come a few minutes into her conversation with Bill. I told the security guard, who told me his name was Curtis, that Vanessa and I were going to the police station to file a report. Curtis told us he'd come over in 20 minutes when his shift was over.

So we went to file the report, and apparently Sam and Charles had been there an hour before filing a report because the cop at the front sighed when we came up to the counter. I told him that I was with Sam and Charles on the bus, and I followed Bill to the Galleria and then came back an hour and a half later to see him talking to Vanessa. He sat me down with a nice guy who's name was Det. Saunders and we told them everything. He told me that that guy's name was Arthur, and he'd gotten complaints before.

Then Vanessa and I parted ways and I went to go and sit in the other mall across town and read a book. I couldn't stop thinking about the situation, though. I honestly and truthfully think that that man has killed someone before. I seriously think he was a schizophrenic who was trying to warn Sam - trying to save her from his other personality. In keeping her from going to the Galleria, he was protecting her from the demon inside of him. However - in keeping her with him, he was giving himself another chance to "capture" her. It was like watching a man fighting for control and trying to pass it off as "normal". The only problem was, he was very clearly not normal and everyone knew it but him.

I think that had Charles, Jose and I not been on that bus, he'd have somehow gotten Sam alone and kidnapped, raped, and murdered her. Sitting there next to him and even talking to him at the end, I got the vibe that he was a primal, feral being that's sole purpose was hunting girls and keeping them "pure". He wanted Sam to become a nun so that she could further his view of an "ideal world", and if she lied or crossed him, he'd just murder/rape her. The fact that Sam wasn't caught lying by him once the entire time is really, REALLY lucky because if he'd gotten angry at her lying to him, I'm sure he'd have gotten a lot worse a lot quicker. When I intervened with him and Vanessa, I could tell he was angry and I could tell he was going to execute his plan a lot faster. When he grabbed her leg, that proved to me that Sam's method of appeasing him without being too forward, was the best way of handling the situation.

I stayed in White Plains for hours, periodically going back to the Galleria and around that area trying to find him. I didn't see him for the rest of the day, and I had a long and thought-provoking walk trying to wrap my head around what happened. I went home, and now here I am.

Fuck, man. What a fucking day. I'm going to be watching the news for missing girls and shit for at least a week. He wanted to find a girl, and he was going to do it. Even worse - I got in his way, and I walk around a lot in the same clothes. I've gotta watch my back now, and that sucks. Price you pay, I guess.