Frank Watkins

Frank Watkins is the main antagonist of Bentley Little's 2017 novel The Handyman. He initially appears to be little more than a shady contractor, but eventually proves to be a prolific serial killer and accomplished necromancer.

History
Frank Watkins was born in the town of Plutarch, Texas, likely in the 1920s or 1930s. As a child, he would place small animals in a "kill box" and beat them to death in order to decorate the inside of the box with blood. He would often show the kill box to other children.

As an adult, Frank joined the U.S. Army and served in the Vietnam War. In 1966, he encountered an exiled holy man, who taught him Vietnamese dark magic and necromancy. The magic exploited restless spirits who were disturbed because their corpses were interred far from where they lived. The holy man also put Frank in contact with a malevolent god-like entity called the Dark Wife. Once Frank had learned all he thought he needed, he murdered the holy man and returned home.

In the United States, Frank began working as an illegitimate handyman. The houses he built were usually very poorly constructed, and incorporated parts stolen from other houses that Frank had worked on. Frank would also kill animals or children in the area and incorporate them into the building to curse them. Usually, Frank would ingratiate himself with the homeowners and then scam them out of so much money that they would be stranded in the haunted house he had built for them. The ultimate purpose of these houses was to kill their residents in ways that could be passed off as accidents. Frank did this for around 40 years until his death. His crimes went mostly unnoticed due to their supernatural nature, but he also moved around the country and routinely changed his last name.

Powers & Abilities
Frank used a type of black magic originating from Vietnam. This magic derived power from the "wandering dead," souls who could not rest because their bodies were too far from their homes. To power his magic, Frank would place human and animal remains inside the houses he built, thereby cursing them. Frank was also able to use his magic to turn the entire town of Plutarch into a single gigantic house miles across, containing hundreds of captured spirits. In this home and at least one other home he lived in, Frank was able to alter the flow of time, enough so that he could make different people experience time at different rates while in separate parts of the same house. He did not age visibly between the 1980s and the 2010s, a feat presumably accomplished using this manipulation of time.