Chapter 4: Sheep Eyes and Blood on My Hands

At this point, I asked Natalie, “How’s this story?”

She couldn’t hide her shock. “Is it true?” she asked.

“Don’t worry about whether it’s true or not.”

But Natalie pressed on: “I don’t know much about your past. I only know you grew up in a single-parent family, lived with your mother, your father disappeared early, and your mother passed away later. I know these are painful memories, so I never ask.

But you’ve never just sat me down and told me something like this before.” She twisted her wedding ring, eyes flickering with unease.

“That’s just to make it immersive, to enhance your reading experience,” I explained. “Don’t mind whether it’s true—just focus on the story and tell me your thoughts.”

Natalie looked at me suspiciously, but in the end chose to believe me.

She thought for a while and said, “You said you were afraid of sheep, then told this story, but there’s nothing about sheep in it.

And there’s a detail issue: after the father disappeared, the mother and son searched for a month without calling the police, and in the end, it was the neighbor who reported it. That seems odd. Four or five days would make sense, but a month—were they really not worried?”

“The story is twisty, but the plot is too straightforward. The father was a murderer, disappeared, then his body was found, and the case was closed.”

“You’re right,” I said after a pause. “That was just the surface plot. Now comes the hidden story.”

“Actually, the father didn’t die.”

—Hidden Plot—

Ever since I was a kid, I loved suspense and detective stories, and dreamed of becoming a police officer.

In 1997, I was seventeen and took the SATs. The moment I put down my pen was the closest I came to my dream.

But then an accident happened.

Because my father had committed a serious crime, I couldn’t become a policeman. So my father said to me, “Son, I have to die.”

Actually, the day after the exam, I found my father.

My home is in the mountains, surrounded by endless peaks. Since I was small, my father took me hiking, teaching me about plants, catching lizards and frogs. That’s where my love for reptiles began.

We even carved out a secret mountain path just for us, dangerous but fun.

After searching anxiously for two days with no results, I suddenly thought of that path.

I hurried up the mountain, and sure enough, found my father at the edge of a cliff.

After sending me into the exam room, he’d come here alone and sat all day without food or water. He wanted to die, but was afraid.

I didn’t understand, and cried as I asked, “Why, Dad?”

My father also cried. He told me the secret he’d hidden for years.

Shortly after I was born, my father went out to work, only coming home for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

In 1985, on his way home, his car broke down and he had to walk a stretch by himself. At night, he stayed at a family’s home.

He was carrying a lot of money, so he was extra cautious. Sure enough, in the middle of the night, the man of the house tried to rob him.

My father fought him. The man pulled a knife. In panic, my father grabbed the knife and killed him.

With someone dead, my father panicked even more, afraid the rest would report him. Blood rushed to his head, his mind went blank, and his eyes turned red.

When he came to, breathing hard, he had killed the whole family—five people, women and children included.

Knowing he was guilty, my father fled that night. The crime was in a neighboring state, some distance from home. He crossed two mountains, calmed down, hitched a ride, and finally got home.

After that, my father never went out to work again, staying home to farm.

My mother was easygoing, never questioning her husband’s business, always trusting him.

“Murder”—such a terrible word—seemed impossibly far from us. We never imagined it was right beside us, nor did we notice any clues.

To us, my father was a good man, devoted to his family.

But the psychological burden grew heavier and heavier.

I was a smart kid and did well in school; my father was proud. As I grew, he worried more and more that he would become a burden to me.

Because I wanted to be a police officer, and he had a murder on his conscience.

Time flew. In 1997, a serial murder case in a nearby city caused a sensation. The police launched a massive investigation, collecting fingerprints from more than 100,000 local men.

If they finished there and found nothing, they might come to our area, and possibly catch the suspect from the twelve-year-old case.

You can dodge the first day, but not the fifteenth. My father knew he’d be found out sooner or later. If he didn’t end it himself before the hammer fell, I would be branded as the murderer’s son.

So, that year, as I took the SATs and started a new journey, my father’s road came to an end.

My father told me everything.

I didn’t know if he’d embellished his motives, or if the details were true. After hearing it, I could no longer trust him completely.

But either way, whether he was defending himself or not, he had killed people.

I was silent for a long time, then quickly calmed down. “Dad, come with me.”

He stood at the cliff’s edge, covering his face and crying, shaking his head. Suddenly, the ground beneath his feet gave way—he lost his balance and nearly fell.

His pupils shrank, his arms flailed, and my heart jumped.

I rushed forward and grabbed him, pulling him back from the edge.

Rocks tumbled off the cliff, vanishing into silence, the wind howling through the mountains. My father gasped, dazed.

It was a narrow escape.

I knew he was afraid of death. Rationally, he wanted to end it, but when it came to the moment, he couldn’t.

I held his hand. “Dad, it’s too high here. Let’s go down and take a look.”

He let me lead him. We made our way down to the valley, stumbling for two hours.

Above us was the cliff, sharp and hidden among the trees.

I looked up. “It’s so high. If you jumped, it would really hurt.”

My father said, “I have no other way.”

Dusk was falling, the sky full of rosy clouds. The wind whistled through the valley, cold and restless.

At that moment, I felt a calm but terrifying gaze.

I looked around and saw a sheep not far away, quietly watching us. It stood there, as if detached from everything.

A chill ran down my spine.

I am afraid of sheep because of their eyes.

It’s a childhood shadow. Since I was young, I’ve been haunted by the horror of being watched by a sheep’s gaze.

Most animals have round or vertical pupils, and you can read some emotion in them.

But sheep have horizontal pupils—eyes that are mysterious, unreadable. Not cute, not fierce, just deeply strange.

Sheep’s eyes are these flat, glassy things—horizontal slits that don’t blink much. You look at them too long, and it feels like they’re looking through you.

A sheep stands nearby, watching you quietly. You don’t know what it’s thinking. Stare long enough, and it stays calm while you lose your composure.

Such a gentle, fragile animal, yet it seems to have the power to control people’s hearts—to make you want to kill it.

It feels like fate.

I looked away, hugged my father, and said firmly, “Dad, you killed people, but I’m not afraid, nor do I hate you.

You will never be a burden to me. Maybe others see you as a demon, but to me, you are just my father—the best father.

Wanting to be a policeman doesn’t mean I have a strong sense of justice. I just like suspense and detective stories. This hobby can go either way—toward good or evil. Even if I don’t become a policeman, I’ll still find my own path.

If the father I love is a criminal, I’ll give up my original dream and stand by your side.”

I know it’s wrong, and I know those were five innocent lives, but I can’t bring myself to turn my father in. I am selfish, and truly unfit to be a police officer.

My hands started to shake, sweat slicking my palms. The horror of what I was about to do twisted my stomach, but a desperate, wild logic took hold: if I did this, maybe I could save my father. I tried to justify it, telling myself it was just an animal, that it would be a kind of offering. But as I stepped closer, I felt every muscle rebel.

Without waiting for his answer, I picked up a stone and walked toward the sheep.

The sheep, with its strange horizontal pupils, watched me approach, watched me raise the stone. It didn’t move at all.

I beat the sheep to death, blow after blow.

Birds startled from the forest, flapping away; blood splattered, mixing with the crimson glow of sunset, merging into the stream.

My father watched in shock, not understanding, but as if possessed, he came to help me.

One of us grabbed the front legs, the other the back, and together we carried the sheep’s body and hid it in the bushes by the cliff.

Afterward, we sat in silence, hands stained and trembling. The weight of what we’d done pressed down on us, thick and suffocating. I couldn’t meet my father’s eyes; I just stared at the ground, feeling the world tilt.

Finally, I looked up and said, word by word, “In religion, a sheep is offered as a substitute sacrifice—a scapegoat.

Dad, let this sheep bear your sin. From now on, you are already dead. We can go home.”

It was a self-deceiving psychological trick, but it worked.

My father was comforted, dazed for a while, but still uneasy. “But in the future, won’t…”

“We’ll deal with things as they come. When the boat gets to the dock, we’ll cross that bridge,” I said firmly. “Trust me, Dad. We’ll be all right.”

As it grew dark, I led my father up the mountain, retracing our steps.

Since I was small, my father had always led me up the mountains, holding my hand.

This time, I wanted to walk in front.

My mother learned the truth earlier than I did. She loved my father deeply, but there was nothing she could do about his choice.

For two days, she hid her grief from me, watched me searching anxiously, but couldn’t say a word. That night, when she saw my father again, she broke down in tears.

After that brush with life and death, our family of three cried together.

From the next day, my father became a ghost in our home, never to see the light again. Even though his crime hadn’t yet been discovered, we had to erase his existence, just in case.

It wasn’t the best solution, but it was the only one we had. We could only take one step at a time.

My mother and I spent nearly a month gradually removing my father’s things, and intentionally or unintentionally spreading rumors that he had left home with his luggage.

I’d read many crime stories and knew something about fingerprint technology. So I carefully wiped down every place in the house my father might have touched.

At home, I scrubbed away fingerprints, but nothing could erase the truth that now lived between us.