Chapter 21 Chapter 19 The Hungry Observer

I did get the kids home before Rita lost her temper, but when she found out they had gone to see the head, she almost went crazy.Luckily, the kids are clearly in good spirits and even happy, and Astor's new ambition is to be my sister Deborah.This distracted Rita from getting angry.After all, deciding on a career choice early on can save you a lot of trouble later on. Rita was clearly in high spirits, and she was talking at length about what she had seen during the day.Normally I would smile, nod, and encourage her to continue, but right now I'm in no mood to pretend.For the past two days I've been longing for a little alone time and a quiet corner to make me wonder where the Nightcrawler went, but I keep being dragged to various places, now Deborah, now Li Tower and the kids, and even my job, etc.The thing my disguise was hiding was gone, and I didn't like it.If I can handle Rita and get out the door, I can buy a little time to myself.

So I told Rita that there was an important case that couldn't wait until Monday and had to be dealt with right away.I slipped out and drove to the office, admiring the serenity and tranquility of Miami’s Saturday night traffic. For the first fifteen minutes on the road, I felt like I was being followed.I know how absurd it is, because I've never driven alone at night, and I feel so weak and helpless.Without the Nightcrawler, I'm a tiger with a blunt sense of smell and bald claws, slow and clumsy in my movements.The skin on my back always feels scratched, as if the rain is about to come and the clouds are overwhelming, which makes me want to turn around to see what is behind me, and always feel that there is something hiding there hungry to spy on me.And that dreamy, wondrous music is still echoing, making all of this even more confusing.My feet twitched involuntarily with the beat, as if they were about to leave my body at any time.

It feels terrible, if I had the ability to empathize, I must have been deeply reflecting on what I have done before, I would have patted my forehead with one hand, and then collapsed in pain, muttering confession in a low voice Ever tailgating has given so many people this nasty feeling.It's a pity that I was not born to suffer, at least not for myself, so I had to concentrate on thinking about this big problem I faced.My night walker is gone, I'm empty and weak, and if someone is really stalking me, there's nothing I can do about it. It must be imagination.Who will follow the conscientious Dexter?He's a perfectly normal-looking, jovial guy with two kids and just hired a celebrity chef.Just to be on the safe side, I glanced in the rearview mirror.

Of course no one, no one lurking in the shadows with an ax and a piece of china with Dexter's name on it.I'm probably getting old. There was a car on fire on the shoulder of the Parmet Freeway, blocking traffic as other vehicles either roared around it on the left side of the road, or honked their horns and yelled.I skirted the accident and drove past the warehouse near the airport.Just past 69th Street, next to a warehouse, the burglar alarm was beeping, and three men were loading boxes onto a truck, quite leisurely.I smiled and waved at them, but they didn't even look at me. It feels like I'm used to it, and poor Hollow Dexter is being ignored by everyone lately, except, of course, for the guy who's either stalking me or not stalking me at all.

Speaking of emptiness, my escape from Rita went so well that I didn't even have dinner, which I couldn't live with.Now I feel as desperate to eat as I do to breathe. I stopped at Polo Roast Chicken and ordered half a chicken to go.The smell of roast chicken immediately filled the carriage.The rest of the two miles I had to fight my way through without pulling over to the side of the road and tearing at the chicken with my teeth. In the parking lot, I finally surrendered.When I walked through the gate, I had to flick out the ID card with my greasy fingers and nearly spilled the peas.By the time I finally settled down in front of the computer, the chicken had turned into a bag of bones and a fond memory, and I was in a much happier mood.

As usual, when I was full and conscious, my brain was able to think at high speed.The fact that the Nightwalker is missing means that it has an identity independent of mine, and that it must have come from somewhere, and that it probably went back there again.My first question, then, is to figure out where it's coming from. I know very well that my nightcrawler is not the only one in the world.Over the course of my long and productive career, I've encountered several Predators who were all shrouded in an invisible cloud, suggesting that they too had hitchhikers like my Nightcrawler.The Night Walkers are supposed to come from somewhere at a certain time, not just to me, and not just at this time.It's a shame I've never thought about it, never asked where that inner voice came from.Now, with all nights of quiet time in the forensic lab, I have to make up for this tragic oversight.

So I put my own personal safety at risk and bravely took to the internet.Of course, I used "Nightwalker" as a keyword to search, but I found nothing. After all, it was just my own name.But just to be on the safe side, I still tried, and only found a few online games and a few blogs.By the way, someone should report these blogs to the authorities that regulate bad language among teens. I tried "inner mate", "spiritual friend", and even "soul guide", and the search results once again made me wonder where this tired old world was going, but other than that, I still got nothing.I know it's just because I haven't found the right search terms yet.

OK, go ahead. "Inner Mentor", "Inner Adviser" and "Hidden Helper".I tried everything I could think of, reversed adjectives, tried synonyms, and marveled at the New Age pseudo-philosophy taking over the Internet.But in the end, apart from the idea of ​​getting rid of the real estate agent a few times, I still got nothing. However, there is a very interesting piece of information about King Solomon that the ancient wise man was involved with some inner gods.I found several anecdotes about King Solomon.Who would think that this part of the Bible has any meaning or use?We're missing out on a lot of good stuff if we just think of him as some quick-witted bearded old man who enjoys cutting babies in half for fun.

Solomon, for example, built a temple to something called Morlock, who was apparently a mischievous god.King Solomon killed his brother because he found something "weird" inside him.I can naturally understand this with the knowledge of the Bible, and the so-called strange thing may be another name for the night walker.But even if the two are related, is it possible for a guy with an "inner king" to kill another guy with a monstrosity? My head is a little dizzy.Should I believe that King Solomon himself had a Night Walker?Or because he was a good man described in the Bible, he found out that his brother had a night walker, so he killed his brother righteously?Also, contrary to what we've previously understood, when he sliced ​​the kid in half, did he really mean it?

Most importantly, does it matter what happened on the other side of the world thousands of years ago?Even if we assume that King Solomon did have an original Nightcrawler, how is that going to help me restore my lovely self?What can I do with this charming old legend?Nothing could tell me where the Nightcrawler came from, what it was, or how to get it back. I lost my way.Well, it seems that I really have to give up, accept the arrangement of fate, and continue to play the role of the good man in Dexter's house. The old avenging angel has become an extinct one.I resigned to my fate, and I will never feel the cold and hard moonlight igniting my nerve endings, and I will never sneak into the night with the wind, like a cold and sharp knife god descending to earth.

I tried to think of something else that would inspire my investigation, but all I could think of was Rudyard Kipling's poem "If you can stand your ground when everyone else has none" , or other words with similar effect.Maybe Ariel Goldman and Jessica Ortega should both recite Kipling's poems.Anyway, my research is still fruitless. Ok.What else would others call the Nightcrawler? "Sneering commentator", "warning system", "inner cheerleader", I checked them all. The "Inner Cheerleader" results were shocking, but it still didn't help me. I tried "observer" "inner observer" "dark observer" "hidden observer". Trying one last time, perhaps thanks to my thoughts being directed to food again, but that's fine, I chose "The Hungry Watcher." The result is again a bunch of new century nonsense.But a blog caught my attention, and I clicked on it.I read the opening paragraph, and although I didn't yell "found it," that's what I thought. "Sneak into the night with the hungry watcher," it wrote, "walk stealthily through the dark and prey-filled streets, and walk slowly through the feast that awaits, and feel the rush of blood soon rise, and with pleasure will We swept through..." Well, the style is a bit fancy, maybe.The description of the blood is also a bit greasy, but aside from these, it wrote my feelings about the night of the adventure.I seem to have found a bosom friend. I read on.That description is all about feelings I know well, stalking in the dark night with hunger, guided by a sizzling whisper inside.But when the narrative got into the point where I'd normally start cutting, there was a mention of "other gods," followed by three letters, which I couldn't recognize. Really don't know? Excitedly, I dug out the folder containing the files of the two headless girls from the desk.I pulled out a bunch of photos and rummaged through it - and found it. The same three misspelled letters "MLK" were written in chalk on the driveway outside Dr. Goldman's house. I looked at the computer screen again, and there was nothing wrong, no doubt about it. This cannot be explained by coincidence.It means a very important fact, and perhaps the key to the whole mystery can be found from here.Yes, very important, just a small footnote: what does it mean? First and foremost, why did this thread bother me specifically?I'm here to sort out my problems and find the missing Nightcrawler.I'm here so late because I won't be bothered by my sister or anything else at work.But now, it seemed obvious that if I wanted to solve my problems, I had to think about Deborah's case first.Is there still justice in the world? Ugh.If complaining works, I don't see it working anyway, despite life's torture and glibness, and complaining abounds.So I'd better accept the arrangement of fate resignedly and see what it can bring me. First, what language is this?I'm pretty sure it's not Chinese or Japanese, but is it some other Asian script that I know nothing about?I searched online, starting from South Korea, Cambodia, and Thailand.nothing.Cyrillic ①?It is also easy to check.I found a whole page of all the letters.I stared at it for a long time, and some letters seemed to be similar, but finally I came to the conclusion that it was not. what is that?What does this mean?If the other party is very smart, like I used to be, or like King Solomon who is unprecedentedly smart, what should I do next? There was a beeping sound in my head, and I listened quietly and intently.Yes that's right, I just said King Solomon.That bible guy with an inner king.What?oh reallyYou mean it has something to do with letters?Do you really think so? It's a long way around, but it's still easy to check, so I checked.The language Solomon spoke was, of course, ancient Hebrew, which was easy to find on the Internet, and it looked very unlike the alphabet I saw.Like these words: ipsofacto, like Latin. But wait, it seems to remember that the original language of the Bible was not Hebrew, but another language.I racked my brains and finally figured it out.Yes, the language I'm looking for is Aramaic, as I see it from the unmistakable, impeccable academic literature—the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. Again, I had no trouble finding a website that taught Aramaic.I looked at it and couldn't wait to learn it, because there was no doubt that those three letters came from this language. I read on.Aramaic, like Hebrew, does not use vowels.In fact, you can fill in the vowels yourself.Weird, indeed, because you have to know what it is before you can read it.Therefore, MLK can be milk, milik, malik, or other combinations, but all of them are meaningless.At least it doesn't make sense to me, which should be important.But I keep trying to get lucky and try to make sense: Milok, MolakMolek— Once again, it seemed that something was thrashing in my mind. I held it tightly, observed it carefully, and turned it over and over again.King Solomon again.Before he slew his inner evil brother, he built a temple to the god Moloch.Of course, the god Moloch is generally also written as Molek, Molek, the hated god of the tribe of Amunite ③. Right now I'm searching for "morlock cult," checking a dozen unrelated sites until I find a few that agree.They all say that Moloch worship is a kind of out-of-body pleasure, and finally ends with taking human life as a sacrifice.Apparently in that case the maddened people were unable to realize that someone had been killed and burned. Still, I don't quite understand what out-of-body pleasure is all about, even though I've been to the Big Orange Bowl for football games.I admit I'm curious to know how they do it.I did some more reading, and it was obvious that they all mentioned music, the power of music to make the joy of carnival irresistible.But how exactly is this done?Not clearly described.The most conclusive account I could find was an Aramaic translation into English, with a long footnote.It says "Moloch gave music to the world," which I think means a procession of priests marching through the street with drums and trumpets. Why drums and trumpets, Dexter? Because that's what I hear in my sleep.