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Send to Friend“He’s one sick bastard, isn’t he?” Johnson said soberly.
“You can say that again.”
I could handle reading about how he had butchered those women. It was a horrible experience reading about such grisly details, but I could still stomach it (I wouldn’t belong in the homicide division if I couldn’t after all).
What seemed the most unbearable was when Hikaru had shown Alex Gordon how Gordon’s father had raped her by making Alex experience it through her eyes. This hit too close to home for me, reminding me all too clearly of the sexual abuse I had suffered repeatedly at the hands of my own father so long ago. Even now, I could hear my father’s words echoing through my mind, the things he had exclaimed and taunted me with after he had had his way with me. Little slut is exactly what you are, Hillary. Nothing but a whore! I bet I could take you to Mexico and make you into a hell of a child prostitute there. I’d make a fortune! I shuddered now just thinking about it, but thankful that my father hadn’t actually whored me out like he often said he would. Instead, he merely kept me to himself. I wouldn’t put anything above him, though, and just the thought of all of this sickens me to no end even now.
“Hey, you okay, Almeida?” Johnson asked, appearing concerned.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I replied in a quivery voice. I could just imagine how pallid I must’ve appeared just then. “Just tired, that’s all. Been a big day, what with me being promoted to the homicide division and all.”
“I hear you.” He nodded sympathetically. “But don’t sweat it, you’ll do fine.”
“I certainly hope so,” I said, barely managing a smile. I felt exhausted physically, and now emotionally drained as well from reading Gordon’s diatribe. “Think I should call it a night. I’ll see you tomorrow, Johnson.” I said, rising to my feet, about to walk out of the office.
“Sure thing. We can talk more about this Alex Gordon business tomorrow if you want.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” I agreed, and quickly left.
The ride home that night gave me plenty of time to think and reflect upon what I had read. What I thought most of all, ironically enough (and thankfully enough as well) was not about the rapes or murders that had been detailed, but of Hikaru herself.
Somehow, I just wasn’t buying her existence.
I wanted to believe in her, don’t get me wrong. The idea of someone like her patrolling the nights and protecting women from abusive husbands or other sexual predators had its appeal to me, but I don’t believe in anything supernatural and have learned a long time ago that having faith in anything was merely setting yourself up for nothing but pain and anguish in the future when you realize how empty, malignant, and cruel hope really is.
Alex Gordon was obviously completely insane, and such insanity could easily breed delusion. While he claimed that he felt not a shred of guilt or remorse for his crimes, I wondered if perhaps Hikaru was a manifestation of guilt he’d never allow himself to experience, and so projected it into reality. He had been the only one to have seen Hikaru. Ellen had made no mention at the hearings, nor had Hikaru’s image been present on any of the surveillance videos in the motel room. Had she been real, she would have no doubt appeared on footage of the second video when he had killed Rosie Sheffield. Johnson had said that the footage had been distorted due to poor quality of the video cameras, which wouldn’t surprise me given that time period. But I would think that they would have found something on the grainy, snowy video screen that would have corroborated Hikaru’s existence, an outline of a female entity, perhaps.
The more I thought of it, the easier it became to imagine Hikaru as nothing more than a figment of a deranged man’s imagination. If Hikaru had truly wanted to save those women, it would have been reasonable to expect that she would have done more than playing a few mind games and tearing at Alex Gordon’s emotions and anxiety levels the way she had done. It seemed more of a manifestation of guilt than anything else, for throughout the entire two-month period, she only appeared before him, doing nothing but driving him crazy with her image and “evil” presence.
If you wanted to look at it that way, then what saved Ellen Blaise was neither the Grace of God nor the wrath of Hikaru, but instead Alex Gordon’s mind finally snapping from all of the subconscious guilt he had felt for what he had done, like a rubbing band being stretched to its limits. While Alex Gordon hadn’t used many drugs other than having used cocaine that one time before killing Heather Graham and having smoked marijuana as a teenager, what happened to him that night at Ellen Blaise apartment could easily be compared to a drug-induced hallucination, a psychedelic nightmare of his own making. The images he had experienced would not be the origins of a dark entity hell-bent on revenge, but rather fabrications of his own subconscious. Perhaps in 1973 (or somewhere thereabouts) he had ridden with his father, and he had tricked an Asian immigrant somehow into riding with him, until he went and raped her later on in front of his son’s eyes. Perhaps this was a memory that had been long forgotten by Alex Gordon, thus making it the perfect explanation for Hikaru’s anger, as she would be the result of such a horrific rape.
This explanation—although containing a Freudian twist—seemed like a much more rational conclusion, more logical than simply believing in an angry spirit returning from the dead to exact her revenge on the man who had wronged her, as well as his son for not only following in his father’s footsteps, but going beyond lines even his father had never crossed.
However, a part of me still wanted to believe somehow that Hikaru was real.
That part of me wanted to believe so badly, yearning for her to be the real deal, and wished desperately that there had been someone like Hikaru in my life, when I was a child, constantly being beaten and raped at the hands of my father. Even as a child, I could depend on no one but myself. Not my parents—for my mother was powerless to protect me and my father was the monster who threatened my safety. Not God, for if He were real, He did nothing to put a stop to it. Yet I think now how comforting it would have been to know that someone somewhere was watching over me. Someone who had perhaps gone through a similar ordeal, had known the pain I had endured firsthand and would be thus able to empathize with me. Someone who had been tortured the way I had been throughout my childhood and wanted to prevent anyone else from suffering what she had been through.
In my head, I didn’t believe Hikaru truly existed, but in my heart, I wanted to, for in my heart, Hikaru’s existence offered a certain luster, offering a ray of sunshine, warmth, and comfort in my otherwise cold, dark existence where it often seemed even now that everyone was out to hurt me, rape me, and violate me in the worst possible way.
But of course, that was a bit too much of a fairy tale explanation for me to be able to digest, just as the one I had come up with before—about Alex Gordon’s subconscious guilt eating away at him inside and coming alive in the manifestation of Hikaru—was a bit to Freudian.
A much simpler, more rational conclusion would be that Alex Gordon was a paranoid schizophrenic. That might account for a lot of things, I suppose, but most of all, it could easily explain everything about Hikaru, about how she came out and the ways she had gotten into his head, finally shattering his mind in a complete breakdown. Hikaru was nothing more than the paranoid delusion of a schizophrenic mind. While in my heart I wanted to believe otherwise, in my head that seemed like the most likely explanation.
But while I couldn’t be one hundred percent sure of anything regarding Hikaru, I could be sure of one thing: Alex Gordon—despite his claims to the contrary—was an evil man. I didn’t care what kind of stupid mind games he had to argue against those assertions, and I didn’t care what he had been through as a child. What he had done to those two prostitutes, what he fantasized about doing, and what he tried to do to Ellen Blaise made him an evil man in my eyes, and nothing was going to change that.
Bleeding heart liberals might try to make excuses for Alex Gordon’s actions, and might try to blame society and his violent childhood for the things he did, thus trying to make him out to be a victim himself, but I knew that to be complete bullshit. Not only bullshit, but also dangerous bullshit, for it only allowed others to commit crimes as well, because all they had to do was blame society, and everything would be forgiven. I have nothing but the utmost disgust for those who like to make such excuses for criminals.
My childhood was a complete nightmare of abuse, rape, and violation. I was beaten and raped by my father, and harassed by my peers at school. Yet somehow, I managed to rise above it all and make a life for myself without bringing harm to anyone else. If I could do it, then what’s Alexander Gordon’s excuse?
I pulled to a stop at the red light of an intersection, behind a Ford Windstar, and sighed to myself as thoughts of my father rose once more into my mind. I hated my father. Even years after his death, I hate him still for what he did to me. Some might judge me a bad person for feeling this way, because he is my own flesh and blood and I am not supposed to hate those who share my bloodline, but I don’t care. After what he did to me, I can’t help but hate him.
I can remember eight years previously when he had died of his heart attack, how I had cried and screamed upon hearing the news. They were shouts of celebration and tears of joy, as I jumped up into the air in great jubilation, laughing in excitement at what had happened.
I know how this must sound to some people, and how they would think it reprehensible for me to wish death on anyone, but they can afford the luxuries of such morals because most of them have probably never been abused the way I have at the hands of a remorseless monster who, in his weakness, arrogance, and libertinage, knows only how to hurt rather than to help, and to molest one’s children rather than raise them. Why shouldn’t I wish death upon my enemies after they have vexed me so? What rational reason would there be to deem my desires horrible in the eyes of those who have not been through what I have been through? It is not as though I were to kill them myself, but instead hope and pray to a God that most of the time probably doesn’t listen for their demise? How that could be in any way horrible, given the amount of brutality I had suffered at the hands of my father?
When my father died, I hadn’t felt an ounce of guilt for having gotten my wish, nor would I have had any reason to, for two reasons:
- I was in no way responsible for his death because I hadn’t killed him, and people don’t die just because you wish them to. It just doesn’t work that way; otherwise he would have died a long prior to that jubilant night eight years ago.
- He had made me suffer greatly, so I had every reason to wish for his demise and would have surely killed him myself if not for the legal ramifications.
I was disappointed only in the manner for which he had been killed, for it seemed far too merciful, given the crimes he had been guilty of. I would have preferred that he died of cancer, which is a long and agonizing death, in which he would waste away alone and forgotten on a hospital bed in great agony as his body continued to turn against itself. I would have gladly visited him in the hospital had that been the case, not out of sympathy or love for the dying man, but to watch him waste away into nothingness one agonizing, eternal second at a time. But his death was nowhere near what he had deserved, for instead of dying of cancer, my father simply died peacefully in his sleep of a heart attack.
Alex Gordon’s father had died of a heart attack as well.
And that’s when I thought of how Hikaru had—in Gordon’s dream—claimed to have given his father the heart attack. I wondered if perhaps Hikaru might have somehow been watching out for me as well. The thought was reassuring and offered me a feeling of comfort that had seemed alien to me my entire life, but was still a welcome and pleasant emotion. Had Hikaru tormented my father as well for what he had done to my mother and me? Had she raped his mind the way he had raped my body? Perhaps Hikaru had in the end killed my father as well, making him pay for his own crimes. I had no way of knowing if this was true or not, and like the other scenarios I had thought of as they related to Hikaru’s existence, it was nothing more than speculation. But somehow, I liked the idea all the same.
I liked it a lot.
The next morning, I awakened to the ringing of my phone. My eyes fluttered as I looked to the side, disoriented, while the phone rang again. “Hello,” I said, clearing my throat and looking up at the darts of sunlight poking through my Venetian blinds.
“Almeida?”
I yawned and brushed my hair from my eyes. “Yeah, that’s me,” I said, rubbing my eyes, still only half awake. “Johnson, is that you?”
“You’d better come quick, Hillary.”
What is it, Johnson, what’s wrong?”
“It’s Alex Gordon!”
My eyes widened at that sobering revelation. Alex Gordon. What had that son of a bitch done now, and why so soon after he had gotten out of prison? Hillary Almeida, he may very well be your first murder case, Johnson had said the night before, and I believed him, too. There was never any doubt in my mind. I just never thought it would be so soon. “What happened?” I asked frantically, the sleepiness now banished from my voice as I threw the blankets off and sat over the side of my bed, my heart now lurching inside my chest. “Who did he kill this time?”
“It’s not like that,” Johnson said. “I think you just better get here quick.”
It wasn’t the police station that Johnson wanted to meet me at, however. It had been outside the five-story building where Alex Gordon currently resided. His flat was on the second floor of the complex: Room 126. I arrived there as fast as I could, and when I got there, I could see Johnson’s 2001 Puritan Seabring parked across the street from the five-story brick building. He had his window rolled down, and as I approached him, I could hear Sports Radio ESPN playing in the background from his radio while he held a Styrofoam cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in hand.
“You were here all night, weren’t you?” I said as he turned off the radio.
Johnson nodded. “Yeah, all night. I couldn’t just leave it alone. I’ve been staking him out after my shift. I’m not taking any chances with this son of a bitch. I know he’ll kill again, and I want to be there to stop him when he does. I don’t trust angry phantom entities to do that for us. You want something done right, you gotta do it yourself.”
“Does the captain know about this?”
Johnson shook his head. “No, I’ve been doing this off hours every other night since Gordon got released from prison last week. If I saw him leaving his flat, I’d follow him to see where he went, and if I saw him picking up a hooker or any female, I’d definitely keep an eye on him.”
“Not sure your wife would like that.”
Johnson shook his head. “No, she doesn’t like it at all. But the weird hours of our job can be rough on the marriage anyway, and we’ve gotten through it before. Besides, I’m retiring next month anyway, and then she’ll have me all to herself.”
I nodded, understanding what he had meant. Except that I wasn’t married yet, and hadn’t currently even been in a relationship for that matter. Someday that might change, but first I’d probably have to learn how to trust people, which will be very difficult for me. I haven’t had much luck with relationships anyway, I suppose. Some of it has to do with the men being shitheads, while in other relationships the men would be sweet but I would still be unable to get close to them.
“What happened with Gordon?” I asked, still frantic.
“I kept my eye on him every other night, but I haven’t seen any suspicious activities, and on the nights I had off, another officer took my place. Neither one of us had anything suspicious to report. Gordon comes home from work and stays there.”
“Where does he work now, another gas station?”
Johnson nodded. “Yeah, Shell this time, along with another job earlier in the morning at Seven-Eleven.”
“What happened tonight?” I asked. “You wouldn’t have called me if it weren’t anything important.”
“Well, it had been uneventful last night. As always, he parked his leased car, went into his flat, and stayed there for the entire night. Except the guy gets up early for his job at Seven-Eleven. He leaves the house by five in the morning. Except the guy didn’t come out. 6:00 a.m., and he still doesn’t show up.”
“What happened?”
Johnson rolled up the driver’s side window and stepped out of his car, closing and locking the door. “Come on, I’ll show you,” he said, and led me into the apartment complex.
“I’ll report this to the captain soon, but I wanted to show you first,” Johnson told me as he opened Gordon’s flat. “Some weird shit going on, that’s for sure.”
The apartment was fairly small, the type of thing you could maybe get for a couple hundred dollars. Across from the front door were a couple of windows giving you a fair (though not extraordinary) view of the city beyond. One of the windows had been in one piece, while the one to the left had a spider-web crack radiating along the upper right hand corner of the pane. Below the windows had been a gray radiator, and apart from that, the apartment seemed bare. There was no furniture, save for an old couch which some yellow foam sticking out of the cushions, along with some piles of clothing, which would have been his wardrobe (and not an entirely impressive one at that). On the sallow wall lay no posters, pictures, or decorations of any kind; only a few spiral cracks along the surface.
“Guy certainly didn’t get a lot of shopping done,” I commented listlessly.
“Well, he’s only been out for about a week now, and is just starting to get back on his feet.” Johnson paused, sighing almost regretfully. “As much as I hate to say it, I’m almost impressed at how well he was able to adapt to the outside world after such a long stay.”
“I suppose you’re right,” I agreed. “So what did you want to show me?”
“Come on, it’s in the bathroom,” Johnson answered.
Johnson lead me into the bathroom, and that’s when we found Alex Gordon sitting on the toilet, his face down between his knees, his black jeans coiled around his ankles as he sat there motionless, his arms dangling to the side. In one hand, I could see a crumpled newspaper, which had been yesterday’s edition of the New York Times, according to the headline.
“What happened to him?” I asked.
“He’s dead,” Johnson explained. “The flesh is still moist, though, so he couldn’t have been dead very long. Looks like he died of a heart attack judging by the looks of it.”
“Went the same way as Elvis,” I said, laughing humorlessly in spite of the levity of my comment.
Aside from that ironic coincidence, what had stuck out in my mind was that Johnson had said that Gordon had died of heart attack. His father had died of a heart attack as well. Like father, like son. Except according to the text in Alex Gordon’s “manifesto”, it had been Hikaru who had given him the heart attack, just as I had hoped she had given my father a heart attack as well when he had died several years ago. I wasn’t sure if I even believed in Hikaru, but all the same, I could feel a chill creeping along the base of my spine, and couldn’t help but shiver just a little bit all the same.
“Well, he would be fifty by now,” I said, more to myself than to Johnson. “So I guess while that might not be old at all these days, a heart attack still wouldn’t be at all uncommon for a man his age.”
“He’d gotten a clean bill of health just last month, though,” Johnson interjected, scratching his head. “His heart was just fine. His cholesterol was low. Blood pressure was good. It just doesn’t make any goddamn sense he would just keel over like that.”
“I know, but just because he was healthy last month doesn’t make a heart attack impossible now,” I argued, more with myself than with my partner.
I was glad the son of a bitch was dead. If it had been up to me, he would have gotten the death penalty instead of being released after twenty years. But of course, I had been an eight-year-old kid at the time all of that had been happening and knew nothing about it, so of course I’d have no say. All the same, despite my anger at such a horrible man being released once more into society, I was still pleased to find him dead only a week later, and wish only that he could have suffered a bit more before dying.
Such is life, I guess, I thought glumly, with a spark of anger. The innocent people, those who are good, wind up suffering, while the animals like him and my father die quickly and painlessly. It’s not fair!
I sighed, and then thought once more of the most plausible cause of death (though we’d need an autopsy to know for sure): a heart attack. Despite being fifty and putting on a little weight, Alex Gordon was still the picture of health, yet he still wound up dying of a heart attack, just like his old man. The coincidence rang through my mind, exposing a potential correlation that might or might not be real. Despite my skepticism, I could still feel another chill racing up my spine. Thinking about it was creepy yet exhilarating at the same time.
“You don’t think—”
Johnson shook his head. “I honestly don’t know.”
I looked down once more, and noticed something I had somehow missed before on the newspaper Gordon was holding in his dead hand: streaks of red, bleeding through the paper. A message, from the looks of it. I bent forward, already feeling beads of cold perspiration forming around my brow, and gently took the newspaper from Gordon’s cold dead hand. I unfolded the paper to get a better view of what had been written on the newspaper. As I had done that, my eyes widened, my mouth dropped, and my heart lurched forward as I read four words etched in dried blood over the newspaper:
HIKARU CAME FOR ME
The End.
February 10, 2002
April 04, 2004
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