My name is Benjamin Hale. Ever since I was a child, I had been obsessed with mysteries and detective stories, dreaming of one day becoming a police officer. In 1999, at the age of 21, I finally took the long-awaited police academy entrance exam. The moment I finished the test was the closest I had ever been to achieving my dream. But fate had other plans. That was when my father told me, "Son, I have to die."

The day after the exam, I found my father.

We lived in a rural area at the foot of rolling mountains. Since childhood, he had taken me through leaf-covered trails, teaching me about the plants that grew on the slopes, catching lizards and frogs for me. My love for reptiles could be traced back to those days. Together, we had carved out our own secret path up the mountain — a trail that was thrilling, challenging, and filled with adventure.

For two days, I searched for my father in vain. Just as I was about to despair, I suddenly remembered our secret path. I hurried up the mountain, and sure enough, I found Father standing at the edge of a cliff, bathed in the red glow of the setting sun.

After dropping me off at the test center, Father had come straight here. He had been sitting there alone for an entire day, neither eating nor drinking. He wanted to die, yet he was afraid.

Through tears, I asked him, "Why, Dad?"

My father also broke down sobbing. Then, he confessed the terrible secret he had buried for years.

When I was just a baby, my father started working as a long-haul truck driver, only coming home once a month for a short visit. One freezing night in 1985, as he was making his way back home, his truck broke down, forcing him to trek across a desolate country road. Along the way, he took shelter at a stranger's house.

As he was carrying a significant amount of cash, he remained on high alert while he slept. Sure enough, in the middle of the night, he heard someone sneaking into his room — the man of the house.

Anger surged through him and they started to fight. The man pulled out a knife, intent on robbing him. Panic overtook my father. The more he panicked, the harder he fought — until he managed to wrestle the knife away and stab the man to death.

With blood on his hands, the sheer horror of what he had done pushed him further into madness. His mind went blank, his vision scarlet. When he came back to his senses in gasps, he was standing amid a massacre. The entire family — five people — had been slaughtered, even the two teenage boys weren't spared.

Knowing there was no way to cover up the crime, my father fled. Under the cover of night, he crossed two mountain ranges into the next state, then boarded a passing bus that carried him away from that bloodstained home. He slipped back into our small town and never left again. Father settled for work as a mechanic, trying to bury the unspeakable past beneath grease and metal.

My mother was meek and unquestioning. never prying into my father's affairs. "Murder" was a word too distant to be real. None of us ever suspected a thing.

To us, he was a good man — a loving husband and father, devoted to his family. But guilt and fear had slowly eaten away at him, making each passing day a quiet torment.

I turned out to be a gifted child, excelling in both academics and sports. Father was always proud of me. But as I grew older, he became more and more afraid that he would one day ruin my future. I was determined to become a police officer, and he was a murderer.

In 1999, a serial killer terrorized a nearby city. The police launched a massive fingerprint screening, collecting samples from tens of thousands of men. If they found nothing, they would expand the search. Sooner or later, they would reach our town. And when they did, they might stumble upon another unsolved case from fourteen years ago.

My father knew that his past was bound to catch up with him. If he didn't end things before the hammer fell, I would forever bear the shame of being branded as "the son of a murderer." And so, in the same year that I took my police academy entrance exam, ready to step into a promising future, my father saw his road come to an end.

I stood there in silence, listening to his confession. I was not sure if his version of events were true. I didn't know if he had romanticized his own motives. All I knew was that he had killed. Whether in self-defense or out of pure impulse, the fact remained.

I remained silent for a long time, my mind gradually settling. "Dad, step away from the edge. Come to me."

He stood at the cliffside, covering his face, shaking his head with force. But at that moment, the ground beneath him suddenly gave away. His body tilted backward. His pupils dilated in terror as he flailed his arms wildly. My heart skipped a beat. Without a second thought, I lunged forward and yanked him away from the brink. Rocks and dirt crumbled beneath our feet, tumbling soundlessly into the abyss below, carried away by the howling wind.

Father gasped for breath, dazed with a pale face. I knew he feared death. He had convinced himself it was the right thing to do, but when the moment came, he couldn't go through with it.

I held his hand tightly. "Dad, it's too high up here. Let's walk down — you need to see how high it really is."

He let me lead him away from the cliff. We made our way down a treacherous, overgrown path, a forgotten trail buried under time, moving through loose stones and tangled vines. After nearly two hours of stumbling descent, we finally reached the valley floor. I looked up at that towering rock face above us. From here, it was a monstrous, unscalable peak — nothing more than a jagged tip piercing the sky.

I gazed at it and murmured, "If you jumped from there, it would hurt. A lot."

My father let out a bitter laugh. "I have no other choice."

Dusk had fallen, drenching the sky in crimson light. A sharp wind howled through the canyon, carrying a bone-deep chill.

That's when I felt it — a still, dreadful gaze.

I turned my head and froze.

A goat stood in the barren wilderness, silently watching us. Motionless, expressionless, like an impartial witness to our sins.

A chill ran down my spine.

I was terrified of goats because of their eyes. It's a childhood nightmare that had haunted me for as long as I could remember. Most animals have round pupils or vertical slits — eyes that reveal emotion, something to decipher.  But the goat has horizontal pupils — an enigma, utterly unreadable. They are neither endearing nor menacing, devoid of emotion, unnervingly strange. A goat stands nearby, quietly watching. It stares at you, and you have no idea what it's thinking. If you stare back into its eyes for too long, it remains the same, silent and still. But you — the human — begin to unravel. Though meek and fragile, a goat seems to possess some insidious power, a force that seeps into your mind, guiding you toward something. Toward an act. Toward the urge to kill it.

It was fate. I knew it then.

I slowly withdrew my gaze and turned to embrace my father, my voice steady and cold. "Dad, you've killed before. But I'm not afraid, nor do I hate you. You will never be a burden to me. Others may see you as a monster, but to me, you are just my father — the best father.

"I want to be a cop, but not because I have any lofty sense of justice. I simply enjoy mystery and crime stories. This interest could lead one toward righteousness — or into darkness. Even if I don't become a cop, I won't be lost. If the father I love turns out to be a criminal, then I'd abandon my original path without hesitation, to stand firmly by his side."

I knew I was in the wrong. I knew about the five lives lost in bloodshed. But I could never bring myself to betray my own father. I was selfish — unworthy of being a cop.

Without waiting for Father's response, I bent down, picked up a rock, and walked toward the goat. Its eerie, horizontal pupils remained fixed on me, watching in silence as I approached, as I raised the stone. It never moved. I swung down once. Then again. And again.

Birds scattered from the trees, their wings flapping wildly. Blood spattered in the fading sunset, blending into the river's crimson reflection.

My father watched in stunned silence, unable to comprehend what I was doing. But it was as if something unseen pulled him forward. He joined me. One of us grabbed the goat's front legs, the other took its hind legs, and together we carried its lifeless body to a hidden thicket near the mountain wall.

When the deed was done, I met Father's gaze and spoke each word deliberately:
"In religion, sacrifices are made — the goat takes the place of the sinner. They call it the 'scapegoat'. Dad, for your sins, it has paid the price. You are already dead. Now, we can go home."

It was a delusion, a lie to deceive ourselves. But it worked. My father, though still uneasy, seemed comforted. He stood there for a while, lost in thought.
"Eventually, someday..." he murmured.

"Someday can wait," I said with certainty. "Dad, trust me. We'll all be fine."

As darkness fell, I took Father's hand and led him up the mountain, retracing our path. Growing up, he had always held my hand, walking ahead to clear the way. This time, I wanted to walk in front.

Mother had already learned the truth about Father before I did. She loved him just as deeply, but there was nothing she could do about his choice. For two days, she had watched me search for him in a panic, holding back her grief and saying nothing. That night, when she saw him again, she broke down in tears. After this near brush with loss, the three of us collapsed into each other's arms, sobbing.

From that day on, my father became a ghost in our home—never to be seen in the light again. His crimes had not yet been discovered, but we had to erase his presence in advance, just in case. It wasn't the best plan, but it was the only one we had. We would take it one step at a time.

Over the next month, my mother and I meticulously removed all traces of my father. We let slip hints and whispers, constructing the illusion that he had left home, taking all his belongings with him.

I had read enough detective stories to understand forensic techniques. So, I wiped every surface in the house where his fingerprints might remain. When no one visited, he could move around inside — but only while wearing gloves. If someone came, he had to hide in the cellar. For a man who once loved the outdoors, this was torture. But Father endured it.

What we never expected was how quickly justice would come knocking.

A well-meaning neighbor called the police, concerned about my father's disappearance. The officers, already suspicious of our strange behavior, conducted a closer inspection. Despite my careful efforts to erase all traces, one careless fingerprint remained — high up on the doorframe.

And just like that, the other shoe dropped.

The police returned, this time collecting my DNA. From that moment on, we were under watch, waiting for my father to make a mistake and resurface. Detective Evans, in particular, was relentless. Years ago, he had been in charge of the massacre case. Now, by some cruel twist of fate, he had been transferred to our quiet small town.

With mountains enclosing us and few ways in or out, the police couldn't stake us out indefinitely. Instead, they came by for routine visits. Mother and I played our parts flawlessly. When they first informed us of the truth, we reacted with shock and devastation. Each time they returned, we skillfully displayed our pain — our resentment toward my father, our grief, and our ignorance of his whereabouts — all performed to perfection.

We also planted the idea that, before disappearing, my father had been acting strangely, making ominous remarks. Things we had brushed off at the time but now realized were his way of severing ties to protect us.

Outside of police visits, we remained cautious. News of my father's crimes had spread, and neighbors kept their distance. They never noticed anything unusual, so when questioned, they could only confirm the official story — that my father had packed his bags and left, never to return.

Eventually, the police grew convinced that he was gone. Their visits became less frequent.

But they had no idea.

The man they were searching for — the ghost haunting our home — had never truly left this silent town.

In 2003, I graduated from college. That same year, my mother fell ill and passed away. I returned to my hometown to arrange her funeral.

Without my mother's protection, my father could no longer hide in the old house. He had been in hiding for four years—it was enough. After the funeral, I secretly brought him into the city and arranged for him to undergo plastic surgery at a small clinic. The operation was a success, and he recovered quickly. His new face still bore traces of his old features, but it was enough for him to walk in the sunlight without fear.

At the clinic entrance, I wrote down a phone number and an address on a slip of paper and handed it to him. "Just in case," I said, "we can't live together."

And so, in the morning mist, we parted ways.