The Hypnotized Scapegoat
The building. Fifth floor, counting up.
Behind that window was Dr. Ashmore.
Detective Vance and I stood at the base of the building.
I said to her, "Let's go."
Her phone rang.
She answered, then gestured for me to wait. She paced back and forth, the voice on the other end muffled and indistinct. All I could make out was her side: "Can you give me a little more time?… Impossible!… What did they say?… Have you figured it out?"
The male voice on the other end suddenly grew louder. I caught two words: opportunity.
Opportunity?
After a long pause, Detective Vance hung up.
She said, "A woman turned herself in."
I said, "What for?"
She said, "She claims she's the perpetrator in the serial falling cases."
The nighttime wind swept down from the high-rises, keening toward distant cloud layers.
Detective Vance's eyes darted around, not daring to look at me.
She said, "I'm sorry. The brass wants me back at the station right away."
I tilted my head. On the fifth floor of the building, beside that window, there was a faint silhouette.
Dr. Ashmore.
Strange—at this distance, I shouldn't have been able to see anything.
Yet I could even make out his expression: docile, placid.
And beneath that ordinary mask, a mocking sneer.
I said, "You know full well that woman is just a scapegoat."
She said, "Don't—listen to me…"
I cut her off. "The person who called you—it was your uncles, wasn't it?"
She paused, then said, "Yes."
I said, "Don't waste this chance to turn things around."
Detective Vance said nothing. She spun around and strode away.
I watched her go.
Then she suddenly whirled back and came running toward me, jaw clenched with every step.
She stopped in front of me, glared, and fired off words like a machine gun: "You think I don't want to catch the real killer? You think I don't know that woman is taking the fall?"
She said, "I filed the Six Degrees Murder case ages ago—I just couldn't get it opened. Now she's confessed to the psychological suggestion method. You call this a 'chance to turn things around'? This is a chance to finally open the Six Degrees Murder case!"
I said blankly, "But the killer isn't her."
She grabbed my ear again, frantic. "Do you even understand? All our evidence points to Dr. Ashmore. If I don't get back there, the real killer could become her. Have you thought about that? She's likely been hypnotized—she genuinely believes she's the murderer."
Her grip wasn't tight. She pinched my earlobe gently.
She lowered her voice. "I don't want to let you down. And I don't want anyone wrongly accused."
She let go.
I rubbed my earlobe.
Everything Detective Vance said made sense. I wasn't truly angry.
Just unresigned.
She said, "Ian, I know you're not ready to give up."
She said, "This move of his caught us off guard. But don't forget—the more he arranges someone to take the fall, the greater his own suspicion of involvement in the serial cases becomes. Once we investigate the connection between the scapegoat and him, the next step is opening a formal investigation against him."
She said, "Give me a little time."
I looked into her eyes and said, "Detective Vance, can you promise me that?"
She said, "I can."
She turned her head away and murmured, "You have to wait for me."
I didn't understand.
She sighed. "I mean—without my permission, you can't go see him alone."
Before I could respond, she pointed at my nose. "Watch it—I'll have you charged with obstruction of justice."
I nodded. "Right. By the book."
---
I don't know why, but after I got home, a headache set in. My left eye throbbed too, as if countless ants were gnawing at the optic nerve.
Detective Vance had rushed back to the station. She asked me to wait at least two days. Interrogation, background checks—those took time. Two days was already pushing it.
I couldn't turn off my phone, either. As a key witness, Detective Vance might summon me at any time.
Occasional text messages came through from Detective Vance—just brief lines, but packed with information:
The woman who turned herself in was a vegetable vendor, Aunt Mae. She insisted she had killed people through psychological suggestion. Yet under interrogation, she couldn't articulate a coherent reason for her confession.
In the apartment, I opened the freezer, took out some ice cubes, wrapped them in a towel, and pressed the compress to my eye socket. The cold hit me. I hissed involuntarily and shuddered.
The cat padded over to the floor-to-ceiling window and sat down, letting out an ambiguous meow. I walked over and sat beside it, stroking its head. It leaned against my arm.
I ran through the current progress in my head:
Aunt Mae adamantly insisted she had killed people. It seemed like a dead end, but actually, hypnosis doesn't last forever. Getting her to reveal Dr. Ashmore's involvement was only a matter of time. Plus, with police interrogation techniques guiding her, it would be even faster.
After that—opening a formal case.
The police would start from Dr. Ashmore's motive for sending a scapegoat. His act of sending someone to take the fall virtually confirmed his own involvement.
The Six Degrees Murder case had already been filed. As for supporting evidence—Fats and the others' witness statements formed one link, his employees' corroborating testimony would form another.
Even if Dr. Ashmore refused to confess.
The charge waiting for him would still be premeditated murder.
A breeze drifted through the apartment, carrying damp air.
It was going to rain.
I heard the wind brush past the wind chimes, sending up a light tinkling sound.
The cat stood up, glanced around, wiggled its haunches, and padded away silently. I watched it, puzzled.
A moment later, it came back carrying a photograph in its mouth. It dropped the photo at my feet and mewed at me.
As if asking where the person in the photo was.
It was a photograph of Serena.
I had nearly forgotten—it had been a month since Serena's death.
My eyes itched. I couldn't tell if it was from the melting ice or something else.
I knew it wasn't grief. It was the sting of finally being able to avenge her.
Later, my mood gradually steadied. My head still throbbed, and my eyeball felt ready to burst.
I went to the bathroom and dumped the ice into the sink, hastily wiping my eye socket with the towel.
A sharp pain shot through my left eye. Some shards of ice were still caught in the towel, and without noticing, I had ground them right into my eye.
I cursed my luck. Without thinking, I looked up and caught sight of myself in the mirror.
The dual shock of ice shards and cold had activated the other side of my left eye without my realizing it. My black pupil was slowly dilating.
I stopped moving.
In the mirror, behind me, there were six shadow figures.
---
I wiped the mirror.
Six shadow figures.
Dr. Ashmore's secretary, the two receptionists, Old Ben the security guard, Aunt Mae the vegetable vendor.
And—Detective Vance.
But I couldn't understand it. Right now, I wasn't in despair.
My pupil dilated halfway, then stopped. I saw the shadow figures making faint movements.
I lit a cigarette and blew smoke into my left eye. The familiar sting came—but when I looked at the mirror, the shadow figures' movements halted abruptly, returning to their motionless state. The white lines still connected to me.
This time, the smoke didn't work.
What was going on?
I called Detective Vance. Her end was noisy with voices. She told me nothing unusual was happening on her end, and the interrogation was going smoothly.
She asked, "What's wrong?"
I hesitated, then decided not to mention that her shadow figure was among them. I only told her I was seeing shadow figures.
The background noise was overwhelming. She told me to hold on, and I heard a door open.
She stepped outside and said, "I didn't catch that—what did you say you saw?"
I said, "Shadow figures. On my body."
She said, "Don't do anything rash. I'm coming over right now!"
I stopped her. My mental state was fine—I had zero suicidal thoughts.
Detective Vance asked for details. I described the ice shard scratch and the cold stimulus. On the other end, pages rustled as she flipped through the notebook she always carried.
She said, "I've previously compiled what I'd call—though I'm not sure this is the right term—the 'usage rules' of your left eye."
I said, "Didn't you say you didn't believe in it before?"
She said, "Are you ever going to let that go?"
I shook my head.
She said, "Remember? At first, you could only see shadow figures in photographs. After you cut yourself with a knife, you could see them on living people in front of you. So here's one way to understand it: every time your left eye suffers hard damage, your field of vision expands, no longer limited to photographs."
I said, "Hard damage meaning?"
She said, "My made-up term. Knife cuts, glass shards in the eye, and now ice shard scrapes—those count. Correspondingly, smoke, cold compresses—those are soft damage."
I said, "So soft damage's function is…"
She said, "Increasing clarity. Letting you see how despair is generated."
I said, "But I'm not in despair…"
She said, "Think about it. Before, every time your left eye took hard damage, you always gave yourself soft damage after a delay. The only exception is this time—when the ice shard scraped your eye, hard damage and soft damage occurred simultaneously."
I was starting to grasp it. It was like two switches—pressing them one after the other versus pressing them at the same time activated different functions.
She said, "So I have a hypothesis… you need to let the ice scrape your left eye one more time."
I made a sound of acknowledgment, then realized what she'd said. "What kind of hypothesis is that?"
She said, "If you can't see clearly what those shadow figures are doing, any further deductions are just blind guesses."
Voices came through on her end. Detective Vance acknowledged them, told me to contact her with any new discoveries, and hung up in a rush.
I smiled wryly and looked back at the mirror.
The pain in my left eye had faded considerably. The shadow figures were beginning to blur.
Detective Vance's figure, too.
She stood behind the others, lips slightly parted, as if wanting to say something to me, her form already fading to transparency.
A sense of unease settled over me, impossible to shake.
In the sink, the ice cubes had melted into shards. I turned on the tap and the shards bobbed in the water. I took a deep breath, opened my eyes wide, and plunged my face into the water. Ice shards hit my eye—the sting and cold piercing through to the back of my skull.
With a splash, I jerked my head up.
My left pupil dilated like ink spreading through water.
The shadow figures began to move.