Chapter 4

CHAPTER 1 A The Searcher An excerpt from a report by Aya Tatsugami, junior reporter for Tokyo Warrior There is a legend in Ikebukuro of a Headless Rider. However, the origin of the actual urban legend of the Headless Rider does not hail from Ikebukuro. There is no particular location that serves as the source of the legend. The rumors began to spread from places all over the country. Originally, the story appeared as the vengeful spirit of a biker who was decapitated by a wire strung across the street, giving it many aspects of other ghost stories. The gruesome image of accidental beheading creating a ghost could certainly have popped up in disparate locations given the right circumstances, thanks to its lurid nature. But the version of the legend found in Ikebukuro has a different nature. If anything, it’s closer to a cryptid, like the famous Loch Ness Monster or yeti. For one thing, the Headless Rider here does not require some ghostly sixth sense (if such a thing can be argued to exist) in order to perceive. Anyone and everyone is capable of sensing its presence. It became known to people all over the country when it was caught clearly on TV news cameras. Ordinarily, this sort of thing would be derided as a cheap TV stunt, but in this case, there were too many witnesses. The Headless Rider has been seen in the Ikebukuro area going back over twenty years, in fact, but photographic evidence of the rider only came about as cell phones with cameras became more widespread. People in the media would buy the images originally out of curiosity, but at this point, there is such a flood of evidence online that they might as well be cat or dog photos for how easy it is to find them. Even then, if you remove people who have actually seen the rider in Ikebukuro, public belief in a being that rides around the city without a head is only about fifty-fifty. The first time I saw it, I thought it was just some camera trick set up by the TV station, too. The footage was shown live during a police segment on the news, so you might consider the entire thing to have been a setup. I shared that opinion, assuming that it was something only slightly fancier than the many fake photographs found all over the Internet. But then I actually encountered it myself in Ikebukuro. A motorcycle that rides without a sound and reflects no light. The being sitting atop it wore a helmet, preventing me from determining if there was truly a head underneath or not. But that did not matter to me. The fact that it raced by at astonishing speed without so much as a hint of engine noise was plenty to convince me of its otherworldly nature. And to add to that, while the police motorcycles gave apparent chase, the Headless Rider extended something black that I can only describe as shadow from its body, creating an obsidian path upon which it could travel. To be quite frank, after the impossible sight of a silent motorcycle traveling up a route that it created out of itself, the question of whether the Headless Rider was truly headless or not seemed like the least pertinent bit of information. Ever since, I have been following the Headless Rider. And my pursuit has put me in possession of a number of fascinating facts. A reporter from Daioh TV attempted to interview the rider on the street, at which point it used an electronic device to communicate. On that footage, the motorcycle without headlights can be seen transforming into a headless horse. For this reason, commenters online speculated that the Headless Rider might actually be a dullahan. A dullahan is a type of fairy stemming from Irish tradition, a being that comes to warn those who are soon to die of their impending demise. It is supposed to carry its own head under its arm, but the Headless Rider has never been seen holding its own head that way. Perhaps it had one at some point, but when I witnessed it, there was no head under its arm, and after a thorough examination of all the Headless Rider videos uploaded online, I’ve never found any footage that falls under that description. There are many pieces of evidence brought up to support the theory that the Headless Rider is a dullahan. One of them is a vague rumor that says the headless horse has the name “Shooter.” This is because a dullahan’s horse-drawn carriage is called a Cóiste Bodhar, pronounced like “coshta bower.” Apparently, we’re to believe that the shta sound at the end of Cóiste was the basis for the name Shooter. But that is honestly too ridiculous to be believed. Why would an otherworldly creature like the Headless Rider come up with a nickname any third-grader could invent? But the point I’m making is that rumors can spread even based on silly ideas like that one. And sometimes, an infinite curtain of rumors can conceal the truth behind it. Perhaps it really is a dullahan, but the presence of so many unbelievable rumors is only making it harder to believe the truth. While the Headless Rider shares many traits with the dullahan of legend, there is no explanation as to why a fairy from Ireland would be riding around Ikebukuro in Japan. I decided to keep that little tidbit in the back of my mind. But what really draws my interest is the rider’s connections to the Awakusu-kai mob group, which has an office in Ikebukuro, and the street gang known as the Dollars. There’s also a man wearing a bartender’s uniform who is often seen active around the Headless Rider, which I find intriguing. On top of that, there was a serial street slashing incident that shook Ikebukuro two years ago, known colloquially as the Night of the Ripper. When I heard rumors that the Headless Rider was involved in that, too, I could no longer contain myself. From what I heard from Miss Niekawa, there was an information broker who knew about this sort of thing, but he had gone silent about a year and a half ago. That timeline coincides with a bizarre incident in the Dollars, when the night sky over Ikebukuro was covered by shadow. Could all these things be connected? I feel as though these incidents, disparate dots on a map, might all actually form lines that lead to the Headless Rider at their center. Over time, these doubts steadily transform further into certainty. I plan to continue gathering information and investigating what I find. The Headless Rider is becoming an undeniable power within Ikebukuro. A few years ago, there was a controversy over land speculators in Ikebukuro. One of them dressed up like a mock Headless Rider and roared all over the city, stirring up the residents. The idea was to turn the Headless Rider into a symbol of fear and danger, thus making the land less desirable and driving the price down—or perhaps they were working with a corrupt local politician who was hoping to get redevelopment rights. The conclusion I am building to is that the Headless Rider is already considered an accepted fact of Ikebukuro by the people who live here. Some of them may look positively upon this being, while others might revile it—but the fact of the matter is that most of the residents have accepted that the rider is simply something that can regularly be found here. It is both an unidentified, mysterious monster and also a fact of regular life. Could identifying this being bring about some change in the world? I entertain an illusion that it could. But perhaps that is not an illusion. Whether it can be made into an article or not is beside the point. I want to discover the true nature of the Headless Rider to satisfy my own curiosity. Notes: Headless Rider is female? Have on statement that she is called “Celty.” Connection to Dollars incident year and a half ago? Connection to severed head thrown into public? Head was stolen from police vehicle during attack, currently missing. * During Dollars incident, Awakusu-kai and police station were shot at. Connection?! Many witnesses on Kawagoe Highway. Was able to make contact with influential intel provider. Will meet tomorrow. Results of meeting to follow. With that unfinished report, the rookie investigative writer Aya Tatsugami disappeared. She had left the notebook computer with her text file on her desk in the office, still open. It was a quick list of information she typed in what must have been a hurry before leaving the building. Text messages and calls to her went unanswered, and her family was equally without recourse to find her. Who was this “influential intel provider” she intended to meet? Her coworkers and editors tried to find out, but they were unsuccessful. They didn’t even know how she was making contact with that provider—by phone, letter, or text message? Naturally, she took her phone with her before disappearing, so there was no way to even peruse her call history without getting the police involved. In the end, she simply vanished, leaving behind no hints for her publication’s office. And in time, the story of the young writer searching for a lead on the Headless Rider created a new rumor. A rumor that said she had learned the identity of the rider. And that was why she had to be erased. Had she been swallowed by the shadow of the Headless Rider or abducted by the Awakusu-kai? So said the rumors, and just half a day after the missing person report had been filed, the information was on the Internet, and she, too, was absorbed into the urban legend surrounding the Headless Rider. A newer, more macabre tail grew on the legend online. To wit: “Anyone who learns the identity of the Headless Rider loses their head and dies.” “The Headless Rider’s been looking for its head for so long, and finally it gets the real thing.” “Snoop around after the Headless Rider for too long, and it will come after you.” “The Headless Rider sends messages to the phones of people who know too much about it.” “And the messages say, ‘If you know that much, are you me? Are you my head?’” “Then you look up, your head gets cut off, and the thing drags you into the shadows.” As the Japanese saying goes, a rumor lasts seventy-five days. How many days do rumors of inhuman beings last? No one can say. But there is one clear number we can point to. Fifteen days have passed since Aya Tatsugami’s disappearance. She has not yet been confirmed alive.