by Lei Mi
Table of Contents
PREFACE Freak
CHAPTER 1 Raping the City
CHAPTER 2 Marked Man
CHAPTER 3 The Meaning of Fear
CHAPTER 4 Bloodsucker
CHAPTER 5 Therapy
CHAPTER 6 Bloodlust
CHAPTER 7 Sympathy for the Devil
CHAPTER 8 Happiness
CHAPTER 9 Exposed
CHAPTER 10 The Five-Pointed Star
CHAPTER 11 Memory City
CHAPTER 12 Deadly Hospital
CHAPTER 13 Instinct
CHAPTER 14 The Grayson Perry Vase
CHAPTER 15 Wrong Way
CHAPTER 16 The Number Killer
CHAPTER 17 Pigs
CHAPTER 18 The Yorkshire Ripper
CHAPTER 19 The Meaning of Love
CHAPTER 20 Cat and Mouse (I)
CHAPTER 21 3+1+3
CHAPTER 22 Cat and Mouse (II)
CHAPTER 23 Christmas Eve
CHAPTER 24 The Sixth Lane
CHAPTER 25 Room 304
CHAPTER 26 Shixiong
CHAPTER 27 The Great Knight of Hulan
CHAPTER 28 Hell
EPILOGUE
Fang Mu
——Eastern Crime series
PROFILER
Author: Lei Mi
Translator: Gabriel Ascher
Editor: Kim Fout, Verbena C.W., Judy Ye
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2012 by Lei Mi.
The English edition copyright © 2013 by Beijing Guomi Digital Technology Co., Ltd.
All rights reserved.
Beijing Guomi Digital Technology Co., Ltd. is a young and vigorous publisher based in China, whose goal is to bring the best Chinese books to global readers.
Website: www.hotinchina.net
Contact: [email protected]
He who fights with monsters should be careful, lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee. –—Friedrich Nietzsche
PREFACE
Freak
They came for me again last night.
As before, they quietly surrounded my bed, not saying a word. As before, I lay frozen in place, staring wide-eyed at their scorched and headless bodies. And as before, he leaned in close and whispered into my ear: "Actually, you and I are the same."
By then I was used to meeting them in the night. And yet, I was still dripping with sweat.
At last they left without a word, and I could once more hear the sound of Du Yu breathing peacefully on the bed across the room.
A cold shaft of moonlight streamed through the window. The flames had disappeared. The air was a little cool.
I heaved myself onto my stomach and reached for the military dagger hidden beneath my pillow. As I grasped its scarred handle, my breathing grew calm.
Soon I was once more fast asleep.
Occasionally I still visit the old teacher's college. I sit amid the flowerbeds on a bench that faces the door to Men's Dormitory 2. An ancient scholar tree once stood there, but now there are flowers of all colors and sizes, their names unknown to me. They wave coquettishly in the faint breeze without a care in the world. Often I will stare at the building before me, a modern, seven-story student apartment block, and do my best to remember how it used to look: faded red brick, tottering wooden window frames, paint peeling from the iron outer door.
And I will see the faces of the young students who once lived here.
Without warning, my heart will seize with pain, as if struck by a sudden sadness. And in this moment of distraction, the floodgates to my memory will quietly slide open, unleashing an endless torrent.
If you knew me, you'd probably think I was a loner. Most of the time, I make an effort to keep to myself. I eat alone, I walk alone. Even when I'm in class, I avoid sitting with anyone else.
Stay away. That's what the look in my eyes says to anyone who tries to understand me. But while people keep their distance, I still know all about them; their behavior, their temperaments, their daily habits. So if you're in class, in the cafeteria, or walking around campus, and you see a pale, carelessly-dressed young man who's sizing-up everyone around him, that's me.
I live in Room 313, Building B of Dormitory 5 at Jiangbin City University. My roommate is named Du Yu, a post-grad studying for his Master's in Jurisprudence. Seeing as we live together and are both at the law school, he's one of the few people I talk to on a regular basis. He's a sweet-natured guy, and is always trying to get me to hang out so I won't "seem so lonely all the time"—not that I care, of course. Still, I don't mind chatting with him from time to time, nor with Zhang Yao, his slightly over-the-top-delicate girlfriend.
"Hey, let's eat together."
I was eating a bowl of hand-cut noodles slathered in chili paste and focusing intently on my computer screen, which was displaying several photographs and their accompanying descriptions. I hadn't noticed Du Yu and his girlfriend came in.
They were barbecued lamb skewers that seemed to have just gotten out of the fire. The meat was sprinkled with chili and cumin powder and dripped with yellow grease. Du Yu held one out for me. A scorched odor flooded my nostrils.
In an instant my face must have turned whiter than the wall behind me. I stared blankly at the outstretched kabob. Then my stomach burbled, I retched, and vomited a mouthful of half-chewed noodles back into my bowl.
Covering my mouth, I grabbed the bowl—now filled to the brim with the still-steaming contents of my stomach—and rushed out of the room. Behind me I could hear Zhang Yao cry out in surprise, "What's wrong with him?"
Drained, I leaned over the bathroom sink and scrubbed my face with water. When I looked up, the dirty mirror on the wall reflected a pale face, dripping with water and cold sweat. A dull look was in its eyes and traces of vomit stuck to the corners of its mouth.
Again I bent over and retched, but I could feel my stomach was empty. There was nothing left to expel. So I climbed shakily to my feet, put my face under the tap, and gulped several mouthfuls of cold water. I swished it around in my mouth and then spat it back out.
Tossing the bowl in the trash, I stumbled back to my room.
The place was a mess. Zhang Yao was sitting on Du Yu's bed, her head between her knees. A big pool of vomit covered the floor before her and an acidic odor filled the room. Holding his nose, Du Yu tossed a washbasin in front of his girlfriend.
Seeing me enter, Zhang Yao looked up. Her face was soaked with tears and sweat. Pointing at me, she tried to say something, but was racked by another fierce bout of vomiting.
Du Yu gave me an awkward look. "Yaoyao was curious what was up with you just now, so she went to look at your computer screen. She only glanced at it for a second before..."
I ignored him and walked straight to my computer. The monitor still showed the web page I had been browsing. On it were several photographs. One was of a rotted skull, the skin of its face and neck already peeled away. The other three were of the victim's limbless torso and of her left and right hands. These pictures were from the scene of a murder committed in Wisconsin in the year 2000. After downloading them to my hard drive, I saved them in a folder titled: "Excessive Damage".
When I was done, I stood up and walked over to Zhang Yao. I bent down beside her. "You all right?" I asked.
Zhang Yao was so weak from throwing up that she was practically limp. When she saw me, she looked terrified and tried to back away. "Don't come near me!" she cried.
Trembling, she raised one arm, pointed at the computer, and then pointed at me. For a moment, her lips quivered. At last, through clenched teeth, she spat out a single word: "Freak!"
I grinned at him to show I didn't mind.
After all, I really didn't. I am a freak. I know.
My name is Fang Mu. Two years ago, something terrible happened, and I was the only survivor.
CHAPTER
1
Raping the City
Jiangbin City had been having an unusually muggy spring. The trees were still bare, without a single green bud in sight, but the temperature was already over 65 degrees. It was on one such hot day that Tai Wei came flying down the road in his jeep, impatiently buttoning his shirt as he drove.
He was on edge, but it wasn't just because of the weather. In his ten years on the police force, Tai Wei had never faced a case as thorny as this one.
On March 14, 2002, in Building 32 of the Brilliant Pearl Residential Area at 83 Taipei Street in the Hongyuan District of Jiangbin City, Ms Chen – female, Han Chinese, 31-year-old – was murdered in her home, Apartment 402. According to the autopsy, the victim died sometime between the hours of two and three in the afternoon, due to mechanical asphyxiation. There were deep bruises on the victim's neck, making strangulation the clear cause of death. An investigation of the crime scene did not find any sign that the apartment had been ransacked, nor that any valuables were taken. As a result, it was deemed unlikely that the murder had happened during the course of a robbery. The victim was discovered naked from the waist up, however from the waist down she was clothed normally, and there was no sign of sexual assault. All in all, it did not have the makings of an ordinary burglary, rape and murder case. But the strangest part was that after the victim was dead, the killer had disemboweled her with a knife, which was then left at the crime scene. The victim's husband later identified this as one of their kitchen knives. The scene itself was horrifying, covered in the victim's blood and viscera. In the kitchen, police located a cup containing trace amounts of an unknown liquid. Tests later determined this to be a mixture of milk and the victim's blood.
This couldn't help but cause those involved to think of a certain mythical monster—the vampire.
Over the following month and a half, two more victims were murdered in their homes. Both were women, between the ages of 25 and 35, and both were found disemboweled. A container, holding remnants of a mixture of blood and other matter, was also found at each scene.
In this mid-sized city of two million residents, homicides were common enough to be almost trivial; however these murders were so savage and strange that they raised a storm of suspicion. All across Jiangbin City, rumors were soon flying back and forth. Had an ancient vampire been revived from its thousand-year slumber? Had the biological weapons left behind by the Japanese invaders during World War II caused some terrible genetic mutation? And these were just the beginning. City Hall started paying attention, too, and they ordered the Public Security Bureau to crack the case as soon as possible.
A special investigation team was quickly established, but one week had passed since then with no progress whatsoever. Just as things were beginning to look bad, Ding Shucheng, a Changhong City Criminal Police officer visiting Jiangbin City on police business, made a startling suggestion: they should talk to a certain Criminology post-grad studying at Jiangbin City University.
Tai Wei was one of the leaders of the special team, and at first he thought Ding Shucheng was joking. But the visiting officer swore he was not, and told Tai Wei the following story.
In the summer of 2001, four successive acts of rape and murder were committed in Changhong City. The four victims were all female, white-collar workers between the ages of 25 and 30, and after being raped, all four were strangled to death with a rope. The murders took place on the top floor balcony of four different high-rises that were then still under construction. At the time, Xing Zhisen, Ding Shucheng's direct superior and the leader of Changhong City's Criminal Police Unit, had just been promoted to Deputy Director of the entire Public Security Bureau, and he wasted no time in making his presence felt. After revealing the case to the local media, he appeared on television and promised that it would be cracked within two weeks. Two days later, a letter appeared on the desk of the special investigation team. Its writer had watched Deputy Director Xing's recent TV appearance, and in the letter he asserted that the killer was a sexual psychopath unable to have normal relationships with women, which caused him to exercise his desires through rape and murder. The writer even went so far as to conclude that the killer was less than 30-year-old.
At first, the policemen who read the letter assumed it was no more than the amateur effort of some detective fiction fanatic, and they ignored it. But when Deputy Director Xing heard about it, he was intrigued, and he assigned someone to investigate the letter writer's background. Once it was determined that the writer was one Fang Mu, a senior at Changhong City Teacher's College, Deputy Director Xing became very excited, and had Fang Mu brought to the station at once. After the two of them spoke privately in Xing's office for half an hour, the Deputy Director personally drove Fang Mu to each of the four crime scenes. When they returned, all the data from all four murders was brought to Deputy Director Xing's office, where Fang Mu pored over it in detail. Later that night (as according to the autopsies, the murders had each taken place between 10 and 11 pm), Fang Mu was driven back to the crime scenes. This time, Ding Shucheng came along as well. While on the exposed top floor of one of the buildings (which, at the time, happened to be the tallest of the four), the kid stood in silence for a very long time.
Finally, he said something that Ding Shucheng would never forget.
"He's not raping those women, he's raping the city!"
When they returned to the station, Fang Mu made the following suggestions to the special investigation team: First, search every seedy video playhouse in the city, especially those located near construction sites, for a right-handed, short-haired, fairly thin man between 20- and 25-years-old, standing 5'3" to 5'5", wearing glasses, a watch on his left hand and with a scratch on his left wrist, and possessing no more than a high school education. Second, conduct a citywide search of every construction team with projects underway for a man with the above-mentioned characteristics. Third, investigate the towns and villages near Changhong City for evidence of a former resident with said characteristics who failed the College Entrance Exam and then moved to the city to work—with an emphasis on only children with no female elders, or boys with older brothers but no sisters. He even went so far as to say that at the time of the killer's arrest, he would likely be wearing a white-collared dress shirt.
Hearing this seemingly wild-eyed speculation, the members of the special investigation team remained somewhat unconvinced; however Deputy Director Xing ordered that they begin searching for a suspect according to Fang Mu's advice. Two days later, the boss of a small video playhouse by the train station said that she knew a man who fit those characteristics; he worked at a nearby construction site. The workers from that site would often arrive in groups to watch movies, however this man always came alone, and only in the hours after midnight when pornographic films were shown. One time, while he was at the theater watching such a film, another worker from his site arrived, and at once the man blushed red from embarrassment and sneaked out. This event left a deep impression on the theater boss, and as a result she remembered the man well.
The police then traveled to the construction site in question, and with the theater boss in tow, they located the man in one of the on-site work sheds. His name was Huang Yongxiao, and he was the project's surveyor. As soon as the police produced identification and asked to see Huang Yongxiao's left wrist, the man leaped to his feet and attempted to flee, however he was quickly apprehended. After being brought back to the station for interrogation, Huang Yongxiao admitted that he had raped and killed the four women, and confessed to everything.
Huang Yongxiao was 21-year-old, a high school graduate, and a former resident of the town of Batai, near Changhong City. After flunking the Colle
ge Entrance Exam in 2000, he decided to redo his final year of high school and retake the test; however, he failed again. Afterwards, he followed his paternal uncle and moved to Changhong City. There he worked on numerous construction projects, but never on any for long. Later, with the help of his uncle, he was recommended to this most recent project, and because he had a high school education, was made a surveyor. Huang Yongxiao had always impressed people as a nice, quiet young man, so it was shocking to learn that he had committed these horrifying crimes.
It also did not pass unnoticed that at the time of his arrest, Huang Yongxiao was wearing a white-collared dress shirt—which, although very old, had been washed exceedingly clean.
Fang Mu's description of the killer's appearance, family background, work environment, and lifestyle were startling close to those of Huang Yongxiao. The only discrepancies were that Huang's parents had divorced several years ago and he had no brothers, only an older sister who had gone to live with their mother and her new husband, and with whom he had long-since lost contact. But despite these errors, the officers of the special investigation team had already begun treating Fang Mu, this unremarkable-looking young man, with newfound respect. They even went so far as to wonder whether he'd actually been present during Huang Yongxiao's crimes—for how else could his judgments have been so accurate?
Fang Mu explained himself as follows: Based on his analysis of the crime scenes and the data, he had learned that all four victims had had their pants pulled down just below their knees, and their knees themselves scratched up. Also, traces of skin had been discovered on the balcony railings of each building and that skin perfectly matched the respective scrapes found on the breasts of the four women. This suggested that the killer had chosen to rape his victims from behind.