If anyone asks Hei whether he believes in ghosts, he'll say no. It isn't a matter of belief; he knows they're real. How can they not be, when he creates them nearly every day?
He hadn't grown up with Halloween in China, but his family's culture had their own set of superstitions. Then he met Amber. When she found out just how susceptible he was to ghost stories, she never missed a chance to spook him with tales of witches, graveyards, and banshees from her native Ireland. And who could say that the stories weren't true? Every day in the shadow of Heaven's Gate they saw something that defied all logic and rationality.
Of course ghosts are real. Hei has amassed his own private army of them; they've followed him out of South American. Amber is one of them too, now. He doesn't know if she's alive, if she escaped the void that used to be Brazil, or if her body lies there with the millions of others. But that doesn't stop her from haunting him with all the rest.
Hei is a contractor now. Rational, logical, emotionless. He doesn't believe in ghosts. He knows they exist.
It's October when the Syndicate sends him on a mission to Galway, Ireland. Everything about the town reminds him of Amber: the soft Irish lilt in the voices of the townsfolk, the crispness of the autumn air as cold as her touch, the dead leaves raining down like falling stars. He remembers her ghost stories, told in the moonless dark of a hidden camp while they waited to be sent out on another killing spree, and the shiver that runs down his spine has nothing to do with the chill wind coming off the waterfront.
He spends three weeks on recon: observing the target's daily routines and normal habits, planning every last detail of the hit. The Syndicate wants this one to be clean. No mess, no undue attention. He notices the black and orange and red decorations going up around town, the pumpkins and bats and skeletons appearing in every shop window, and while it seems strange to celebrate the end of the harvest with such a macabre theme, well, every culture has its quirks. Amber would love this, he is sure.
He decides to do the hit on the thirty-first. It's a Monday night, so the target is guaranteed to be at home. As the sky begins to darken, he gears up and lies in wait in an alley across the street, careful to keep his face hidden. He won't put on the mask, not yet - not until he's ready to approach the house. He'll stand out too much if someone should notice him, otherwise.
There are a lot of people out and about tonight, he realizes. Strange, because it's pretty cold. His breath is visible, steaming in the air. So many are children - and they're all in costumes. What the hell? He watches as every single child, alone or in small groups, dances up to his target's door and rings the bell. Every time, the target answers. Completely unsurprised by the disguised children, he slips something into their proffered pails and baskets before closing the door again.
The children won't stop coming. Hei fingers the capped syringe in his pocket. He can't murder a man in front of half a dozen children, even if they are dressed up as corpses. But he's almost out of time - he spent so long on recon that he hasn't left himself much of a window to work with before the Syndicate's deadline is up. It has to be tonight.
As the night deepens, older kids - teenagers - begin appearing, in even more ridiculous and outlandish costumes than their younger siblings. There's a lot of black, he notices. Occasionally they notice him, lurking in the shadows like the criminal that he is, but they pay him no mind. For someone whose job it is to be unseen, Hei has never felt so invisible before.
A trio of gothic vampires distracts him momentarily; when he turns back to the door the porch light has gone out. He tenses, unsure of what that means - every other night, the light has stayed on all night long. Children stop ringing the bell, however, and after a quarter of an hour his target exits the house. The man strikes out down the street, wrapped in a long, dark cloak. Shit, he can't just follow the target out into the avenue, dressed like - Hei looks down at himself - dressed like, well, a gothic vampire? What the hell - maybe he can.
Feeling entirely too conspicuous, Hei slips on his chalk white mask and steps out into the street after the target. To his continuing surprise, he does attract a lot of attention - but in the form of admiring compliments on his "costume", queries about whether he made his mask himself, and for a while two little boys in white bedsheets tag along after him, giggling and shouting "Boo!"
It's too surreal. He remembers Amber's stories, and wonders if he hasn't stepped into one somehow.
His target opens a rusting iron gate and steps into a small graveyard. Hei, feeling his own ghosts brushing against his back, follows. He can imagine hands reaching up through the soil as he walks over their graves. When he dies, he wants to be cremated. He can't bear the thought of sharing eternity with such souls.
An old abbey adjoins the graveyard; his target speaks for a moment with a tall, cloaked man standing at the door, then enters. When Hei tries to follow, the man stops him. He's wearing a purple and black masquerade mask.
"Beest thou a guest of Prince Prospero?" the man intones.
The words, uttered with a heavy Irish accent, barely register as English in Hei's ear. After a confused pause in which he wonders if he'll have to kill this man too, he tilts his head in a slight nod.
It was the right answer. The man waves him in, calling after him with a chuckle, "Love the mask, mate."
Inside, the abbey looks as far from a church as possible. Granted, Hei hasn't been in all that many churches - they make his skin crawl - but in his experience they aren't decorated in black velvet hangings and blood red light. The large room, perhaps the former dining hall, is packed with people in extravagant masks and cloaks, ball gowns and tuxedos. Some kind of baroque remix with an intense beat is playing over the loud speakers as the party-goers dance, mingle, and laugh with one another. Hei doesn't understand how they can; the ghosts in his head are writhing in agony at the cacophony.
Fire-lit braziers line the edges of the room, driving out the chill of the night, and for a moment Hei feels as if he's back in South America. But not even Heaven's Gate anomalies had been this bizarre, he thinks as he pushes his way through the revelers in search of his target. At least half of the men here are wearing the same dark velvet cloak, and with everyone masked it will be nearly impossible to spot his man. It would take all night to check beneath each and every mask.
Instead, he takes up a station in a corner by a bowl of blood red punch, where he can observe the whole room. It's only then that he notices that each of the party-goers is, well, dead. A fake knife standing out between the breasts of that woman, garish false blood running from the eyeless mask of that man, a gown made from tattered grave clothes. These people are here celebrating death, enjoying this poor facsimile, and it sickens him. He wants to leave this strange, ghoulish place, but he can't. Not until the job is done.
His presence goes largely ignored. People see him; he notices them looking in his direction, then quickly turning away, as if they can sense the true death lurking beneath that pale mask. He scans the room, turning his faceless visage from side to side in search of his target.
At last, his weeks of observation pay off, and he spots a familiar slouching stance in a man standing by one of the braziers. He has a bright red splotch over the heart of his white tuxedo shirt, partially hidden by the drape of his cloak, which is clasped with a silver skull. The man is chatting amiably with two women dressed as dead brides. They all hold goblets full of something smoking.
Hei moves cautiously, taking an indirect route towards the brazier lest he rouse suspicion as to his true purpose. The party-goers step out of his way almost unconsciously, as if they know that his touch means death.
As he approaches, he reaches into his pocket for the syringe - then pauses. A rapid, lethal overdose of an untraceable chemical was the perfect method of killing a man alone at home. But here, it somehow doesn't…fit. He lets go of the syringe, and instead grips the hilt of his dagger.
The two women see him as he passes behind his target. They both look quickly away from his mask, one giving a tiny shudder.
The cloak is only a minor nuisance; Hei is able to sweep the edge of it aside as he plunges the blade deep into the target's left kidney with a well-practiced strike.
The man lets out a blood curdling scream as he falls. The people around him clap and cheer, his dead brides laughing in delight at the show. Hei is already passing through the front entrance and into the graveyard when the first woman screams in true terror.
He steps out into the street, joining a throng of ghosts and ghouls and demon children shouting "Trick or treat!" as they run past with baskets of candy. A new ghost trails along at his heels.
Years later, Misaki will ask him why he doesn't enjoy celebrating Halloween. He doesn't really know how to explain it.