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stefanie_beanChapter 4: Armies of Ghosts
Pairing: Hurley/Sun
Characters: Hugo Reyes, Sun Kwon, Carmen Reyes, David Reyes, Kate Austen
Rating: M
Length: 2951 words
Notes: Complete
A sensual, bittersweet tale of what happened when Hurley went to visit Sun in Seoul.
Chapter 4: Armies of Ghosts
The next morning, Hugo walked to a small park in the middle of the city, where a red and blue pagoda soared above well-kept lawns already covered with thick autumn leaves. He wore his suit, because downtown Seoul definitely wasn't Los Angeles or Honolulu. The busy people hurrying through the crowded streets looked neat and put-together, not laid-back at all.
Afterwards, he visited a bustling department store where he bought a few silk scarves for his mother and an embroidered leather belt for his dad. By nightfall he had convinced himself that Sun wasn't going to call, and he almost rang her himself, to tell her he was going back to Los Angeles after all. He wasn't angry, but simply couldn't take the uncertainty and despair.
Also, he had no idea what they were supposed to say to Jin's father. Lying to reporters and Oceanic Airlines lawyers was one thing. Lying to his parents or Jin's was another altogether. He knew his own mother didn't believe a word of that Oceanic Six cock-and-bull story, as she had put it, although she kept her peace when it became clear that he didn't want to talk about his time on the Island, or the rescue. Still, his mother was always side-eyeing him, waiting for a slip-up.
For all he knew, it would be the same with Jin's dad. No, with Jin's dad it would be worse, because unlike Jin, Hugo had come home alive and in one piece. Jin had not. Lying about how somebody had died just made it worse.
Hugo had turned off the television and was getting ready for bed when that same soft knock came on his door. No point in getting dressed again, as she'd seen everything and more. The hotel terrycloth robe wouldn't have covered half of him anyway, so he wrapped a bath sheet around his wide hips and opened the door a crack. Sun slipped in as if trying not to be seen, and with a smile said, “It would be impolite of me to remain dressed.” She stripped down to her underthings, so beautiful that he felt it as pain through the center of his body.
With the lights turned low, they sat on the sofa wrapped in each other's arms. “I didn't think Ji Yeon would ever get to sleep,” she remarked.
“Hmm." Hugo rested his face in the hollow of her neck, then remembered times on the Island when Aaron had been fussy or sick. “Is she all right?”
“Just a tooth. But it makes her cry.”
“Oh, sorry." How had this happened, Hugo wondered, that she came to be here in his arms. Just his luck.
A crowd of women marched through his memory, in a line. First the old Australian woman with her false leg who told him, “You make your own luck, Mr. Reyes.” There was his mother, who slapped him hard when he said that he was cursed. There was that poor soul Danielle Rousseau, who in the dark and remote jungle had held him up against her thin wiry body and told him that yes, he was indeed cursed and so was she. Finally he saw the college girls laughing, “Budai, Budai,” as they rubbed his belly.
He pulled Sun closer to him, breathing in her fresh garden scent. That's what it had to be, pure dumb luck.
Sun sighed. “Did I ever tell you that this hotel was where I first met Jin-Soo?”
“No." He wanted to keep nuzzling her and wished she wouldn't talk. Where she was going with this?
“He worked here as a doorman. It didn't go over well with my father.”
“A doorman, huh.”
“Not for long. My father's business, well, it's mine now. And it had certain unsavory aspects. Jin-Soo got drawn into them.”
She crouched down beside him on the couch, resting her head on his stomach so that her voice was muffled. “I was so angry at Jin-Soo. There were times I wanted him dead. And now he is.” Even though she wasn't wearing her wedding ring, the fingers of her right hand still sought it. “Oh, Hurley,” she sighed. “It wasn't Jin-Soo's fault. I got him into it."
He knew without asking what Jin must have gotten into. "No wonder Jin always seemed kinda mad."
She moved out of his embrace, still close enough that he could feel the rhythm of her breath. “There were reasons. Since he's gone, I can tell you now. When things were at their worst between us, I had a lover.” She waited a second for that to settle in. “His father owned this hotel. When I found out this was where you were staying, I almost couldn't come here.”
He didn't say it, but thought that had he known, he probably wouldn't have come here either. No wonder she had walked through these rooms as if she knew them. His head swam with the thought that they might have even met right here, slept in that very bed. "What happened... Where is he now?"
"He met with an... accident."
Hugo went white. “Dude,” was all he could say. Accident, sure. “This was, like, right before you went to Sydney?"
Sun nodded. “Jin couldn't have children, or so we thought. On the Island, when I found out I was pregnant, at first I didn't know what to do. I was miserable. Then that doctor, Juliet Burke, did a scan on me in the Dharma medical station. She told me that the baby was Jin's.”
“They can tell that from a scan?”
“Not exactly. But they can tell how old the baby is by its size. By the dates, Ji Yeon was Jin's.”
Hugo got it. “Which meant that if the baby was that other dude's, the baby would have been born on the Island all fine, like Aaron. So that stuff was all true."
"Stuff?"
"You know, what Juliet said. A lot of people didn't believe her."
"I know," Sun answered. "However, I couldn't take that chance."
"But if Ji Yeon was Jin's—”
“Yes. You understand. If the baby had been Jae Lee's, we wouldn't have had to leave. We could have stayed there, like Rose and Bernard wanted to. Jin-Soo wouldn't have died.” It came out of Sun in a tumble, as if she'd been thinking about it for many months, but had never been able to say it to anyone. She reached for her wedding ring again, her fingers lost and aimless. “Oh, Hurley,” she sighed. “It all seems so stupid. Pointless.”
Even within the darkened room, Hugo felt naked and exposed. He struggled to say something, anything comforting, while ice trickled through him. “You have an awesome little girl. Although your dad, man..." The guys on the block used to joke about their girlfriend's dad cleaning the shotgun when they came to visit. Sun's father was levels about that.
She must have sensed his mood, because her words came out sharp as teeth. “I'm not afraid of him anymore, and you don't have to be, either. He's never going to hurt me or anyone else close to me again.” Her body stiffened as she pulled her shoulders up, her face full of fierce challenge. Would he stay, or would he go?
Who wants to live forever? He leaned in to kiss her, and her teeth pressed sharp against his lips.
In bed she rode him hard, her wild and anguished face almost unrecognizable in the dim night. Later, softened and calmed by pleasure, she lay stroking his mound of belly. “Budai,” he said. She gave him one of her small laughs.
Too soon, Sun slipped out of his embrace and dressed. Once again she asked him to call for a taxi, but this time when she bid him good-bye, she hugged him hard, so that he could feel the steel resolve underneath the soft cashmere of her pale, beautifully-cut suit. “I am sure we'll hear from Mr. Kwon tomorrow,” she said right before she left.
Hugo said nothing, just gave her a light kiss. Afterwards, he lay awake for several hours, staring at the ceiling while a looming, ominous feeling hovered above him.
He slept in very late, only waking when early-afternoon sun shone bright through the western window. In the shower, he tried to see the rolling hills and avalanche of his body as she had: as spur of desire and source of pleasure. He toweled off, refreshed and even a little happy.
In mid-afternoon, the call came.
“I talked to Mr. Kwon,” Sun said. He tried to read her tone, but she sounded even colder and more distant than she normally did on the telephone. “Hurley, I have to see you.”
“You know where to find me.”
“Not at the hotel. There's a coffee shop down the street from the Sejong Center, just a few blocks from you. Can you meet me there in an hour?” Anguish rang in her voice, loud and clear.
“Sure, but Sun—”
“I have to go. I'll see you there at 3:00.” Then she hung up.
*:*:*:*:*
He climbed back into the prison of his suit. Arriving early, he found Sun perched at a table on the sunniest part of the patio. When he moved forward to hug her, she stood up very straight. A slight hand motion and a tiny, discreet turn of the head signaled to him that he shouldn't, not here. “I ordered you a vanilla latte,” she said.
“Awesome,” Hugo replied. That she'd already ordered told him she was in a hurry, and wouldn't stay long. His heart sank with a little jolt.
“I talked to Mr. Kwon.” When Hugo didn't answer, Sun went on. “He said that we didn't have to come to see him. That he didn't need comforting.” Her sad eyes were black hollows in her impassive public face.
“Jin was a pretty tough guy. Maybe like father, like son, huh?”
“I don't know what to think, Hurley. It was a very strange conversation, crazy. Mr. Kwon doesn't believe that Jin is dead.”
A powerful sense of unreality seized Hugo, and the warm September day suddenly turned cold. What was he doing in this strange city with this woman, with this unwelcome knowledge that showed up like the drunk cousin at a family picnic? “Uh, what?” he finally blurted out.
He knew the answer even before it came.
“Mr. Kwon said that late one evening, he was working on the dock where he tethers his boat. Suddenly he saw Jin-Soo standing there. He was sure he wasn't dreaming. Jin-Soo told him to keep the boat ready for him, because when he came back, he was going to work with his father. Just like he was supposed to do all along." Sun trembled as if the words were being torn out of her. "Jin-Soo said that he was going to bring me back, to be a fisherman's wife." Now she was really shaking, as if chilled by the same cold wind as Hugo. “I'm afraid I argued with him, that such a thing couldn't be. Why did I do that, Hurley? After all we've seen?”
“We've seen a lot,” Hugo echoed.
“Is it possible?”
“That Jin is alive?” If that were true, the enormity of what he had done, what they had done, washed over him like an acid bath. Sun's dad would be the least of his worries, compared to his mother finding out. “Sun, when that freighter blew, it really blew. I dunno how anyone could have survived it.”
“Mr. Kwon was so calm, Hurley. Don't you think if Jin-Soo was alive, I would feel it?”
“I don't think it works like that.”
“So how does it work, then?”
“I don't know.” Hugo didn't want to tell her the things he had seen. His dead grandmother standing on the neighbor's deck during the loud, busy house party, right before he walked out to get a closer look and the deck collapsed. How his imaginary friend Dave from the psych hospital showed up on the Island, then flung himself off a cliff after trying to talk Hugo into doing the same. Worst of all was the unshakable feeling that he was being watched, and no matter how quickly he turned his head to catch them, he never could.
Sun didn't know that he'd been a mental patient. There was so much she didn't know about him, and at this point, there didn't seem to be any way to remedy that.
She finished her drink and picked up her clutch bag. “I can't live in a world where these things happen. Thank you, Hurley, for coming all this way. And for being willing to go with me to Incheon, even if it wasn't necessary.”
Whatever they had done, whatever those two nights had meant, it was over. “Hey, sure, no prob. Say hi to Ji Yeon for me.”
She didn't answer, just glided like a graceful dancer into a nearby parked car, sinking behind the powerfully-built driver hulked behind the wheel, his eyes invisible behind mirrored sunglasses.
*:*:*:*:*
Back in Los Angeles, Hugo checked his phone every ten, fifteen minutes for a missed call. For all he knew, he could have been in the bathroom, or making another trip to the refrigerator. Or pumping gas, because God knows he burned it up driving up and down the Santa Monica freeway. He roamed the LA area like one of those birds whose navigation sense had been destroyed by atomic bombs, who randomly circled over thousands of miles of ocean and never found land.
He might have missed a call during his therapy sessions. He'd started up again, three times a week, but the counselor wouldn't let him keep his phone on. Rangy and middle-aged, she reminded him of that old psychic his dad had dug up. The one Hugo always suspected of being one of his dad's old girlfriends, before he came back to Hugo's mom.
Just like that horse-faced psychic, Hugo suspected his current shrink was a fraud too.
At least she didn't want to talk about the Island, or the network of lies which Hugo navigated like a shaky rope bridge stretched over an abyss. Each fifty-minute hour felt like three, as he gripped the silent phone buried in his cargo pocket. About halfway through the session his heart would start to pound, then race, as he counted the minutes till he could get out of there and turn his phone back on.
It was the day after Thanksgiving, when his mother put up a ten-foot aluminum Christmas tree covered with red glass Sacred Hearts and topped with a foot-tall gilt angel, that Hugo realized Sun-Hwa Paik wasn't going to call him. He would have to figure out something else to do with the rest of his life.
His father tried to help, was even sympathetic. “So you went to Seoul, had a little fun. What are you moping about? There are more fish in the sea. Go out and catch one.”
Instead of answering, Hugo got into the Camaro, drove to the nearest Mr. Cluck's and ordered a family-sized bucket of hot wings. He drove around Griffith Park a few times, then parked on a hilltop overlooking athletic fields empty in the December sun, because the children were still in school. With grim, methodical determination and no pleasure, he began to eat.
A month later, Hugo saw a ghost of his own, and in panic led the LAPD on a careening chase down the freeway. After that day, the dead would no longer be denied, and for him, nothing would ever be the same again.
(the end)
Pairing: Hurley/Sun
Characters: Hugo Reyes, Sun Kwon, Carmen Reyes, David Reyes, Kate Austen
Rating: M
Length: 2951 words
Notes: Complete
A sensual, bittersweet tale of what happened when Hurley went to visit Sun in Seoul.
Chapter 4: Armies of Ghosts
The next morning, Hugo walked to a small park in the middle of the city, where a red and blue pagoda soared above well-kept lawns already covered with thick autumn leaves. He wore his suit, because downtown Seoul definitely wasn't Los Angeles or Honolulu. The busy people hurrying through the crowded streets looked neat and put-together, not laid-back at all.
Afterwards, he visited a bustling department store where he bought a few silk scarves for his mother and an embroidered leather belt for his dad. By nightfall he had convinced himself that Sun wasn't going to call, and he almost rang her himself, to tell her he was going back to Los Angeles after all. He wasn't angry, but simply couldn't take the uncertainty and despair.
Also, he had no idea what they were supposed to say to Jin's father. Lying to reporters and Oceanic Airlines lawyers was one thing. Lying to his parents or Jin's was another altogether. He knew his own mother didn't believe a word of that Oceanic Six cock-and-bull story, as she had put it, although she kept her peace when it became clear that he didn't want to talk about his time on the Island, or the rescue. Still, his mother was always side-eyeing him, waiting for a slip-up.
For all he knew, it would be the same with Jin's dad. No, with Jin's dad it would be worse, because unlike Jin, Hugo had come home alive and in one piece. Jin had not. Lying about how somebody had died just made it worse.
Hugo had turned off the television and was getting ready for bed when that same soft knock came on his door. No point in getting dressed again, as she'd seen everything and more. The hotel terrycloth robe wouldn't have covered half of him anyway, so he wrapped a bath sheet around his wide hips and opened the door a crack. Sun slipped in as if trying not to be seen, and with a smile said, “It would be impolite of me to remain dressed.” She stripped down to her underthings, so beautiful that he felt it as pain through the center of his body.
With the lights turned low, they sat on the sofa wrapped in each other's arms. “I didn't think Ji Yeon would ever get to sleep,” she remarked.
“Hmm." Hugo rested his face in the hollow of her neck, then remembered times on the Island when Aaron had been fussy or sick. “Is she all right?”
“Just a tooth. But it makes her cry.”
“Oh, sorry." How had this happened, Hugo wondered, that she came to be here in his arms. Just his luck.
A crowd of women marched through his memory, in a line. First the old Australian woman with her false leg who told him, “You make your own luck, Mr. Reyes.” There was his mother, who slapped him hard when he said that he was cursed. There was that poor soul Danielle Rousseau, who in the dark and remote jungle had held him up against her thin wiry body and told him that yes, he was indeed cursed and so was she. Finally he saw the college girls laughing, “Budai, Budai,” as they rubbed his belly.
He pulled Sun closer to him, breathing in her fresh garden scent. That's what it had to be, pure dumb luck.
Sun sighed. “Did I ever tell you that this hotel was where I first met Jin-Soo?”
“No." He wanted to keep nuzzling her and wished she wouldn't talk. Where she was going with this?
“He worked here as a doorman. It didn't go over well with my father.”
“A doorman, huh.”
“Not for long. My father's business, well, it's mine now. And it had certain unsavory aspects. Jin-Soo got drawn into them.”
She crouched down beside him on the couch, resting her head on his stomach so that her voice was muffled. “I was so angry at Jin-Soo. There were times I wanted him dead. And now he is.” Even though she wasn't wearing her wedding ring, the fingers of her right hand still sought it. “Oh, Hurley,” she sighed. “It wasn't Jin-Soo's fault. I got him into it."
He knew without asking what Jin must have gotten into. "No wonder Jin always seemed kinda mad."
She moved out of his embrace, still close enough that he could feel the rhythm of her breath. “There were reasons. Since he's gone, I can tell you now. When things were at their worst between us, I had a lover.” She waited a second for that to settle in. “His father owned this hotel. When I found out this was where you were staying, I almost couldn't come here.”
He didn't say it, but thought that had he known, he probably wouldn't have come here either. No wonder she had walked through these rooms as if she knew them. His head swam with the thought that they might have even met right here, slept in that very bed. "What happened... Where is he now?"
"He met with an... accident."
Hugo went white. “Dude,” was all he could say. Accident, sure. “This was, like, right before you went to Sydney?"
Sun nodded. “Jin couldn't have children, or so we thought. On the Island, when I found out I was pregnant, at first I didn't know what to do. I was miserable. Then that doctor, Juliet Burke, did a scan on me in the Dharma medical station. She told me that the baby was Jin's.”
“They can tell that from a scan?”
“Not exactly. But they can tell how old the baby is by its size. By the dates, Ji Yeon was Jin's.”
Hugo got it. “Which meant that if the baby was that other dude's, the baby would have been born on the Island all fine, like Aaron. So that stuff was all true."
"Stuff?"
"You know, what Juliet said. A lot of people didn't believe her."
"I know," Sun answered. "However, I couldn't take that chance."
"But if Ji Yeon was Jin's—”
“Yes. You understand. If the baby had been Jae Lee's, we wouldn't have had to leave. We could have stayed there, like Rose and Bernard wanted to. Jin-Soo wouldn't have died.” It came out of Sun in a tumble, as if she'd been thinking about it for many months, but had never been able to say it to anyone. She reached for her wedding ring again, her fingers lost and aimless. “Oh, Hurley,” she sighed. “It all seems so stupid. Pointless.”
Even within the darkened room, Hugo felt naked and exposed. He struggled to say something, anything comforting, while ice trickled through him. “You have an awesome little girl. Although your dad, man..." The guys on the block used to joke about their girlfriend's dad cleaning the shotgun when they came to visit. Sun's father was levels about that.
She must have sensed his mood, because her words came out sharp as teeth. “I'm not afraid of him anymore, and you don't have to be, either. He's never going to hurt me or anyone else close to me again.” Her body stiffened as she pulled her shoulders up, her face full of fierce challenge. Would he stay, or would he go?
Who wants to live forever? He leaned in to kiss her, and her teeth pressed sharp against his lips.
In bed she rode him hard, her wild and anguished face almost unrecognizable in the dim night. Later, softened and calmed by pleasure, she lay stroking his mound of belly. “Budai,” he said. She gave him one of her small laughs.
Too soon, Sun slipped out of his embrace and dressed. Once again she asked him to call for a taxi, but this time when she bid him good-bye, she hugged him hard, so that he could feel the steel resolve underneath the soft cashmere of her pale, beautifully-cut suit. “I am sure we'll hear from Mr. Kwon tomorrow,” she said right before she left.
Hugo said nothing, just gave her a light kiss. Afterwards, he lay awake for several hours, staring at the ceiling while a looming, ominous feeling hovered above him.
He slept in very late, only waking when early-afternoon sun shone bright through the western window. In the shower, he tried to see the rolling hills and avalanche of his body as she had: as spur of desire and source of pleasure. He toweled off, refreshed and even a little happy.
In mid-afternoon, the call came.
“I talked to Mr. Kwon,” Sun said. He tried to read her tone, but she sounded even colder and more distant than she normally did on the telephone. “Hurley, I have to see you.”
“You know where to find me.”
“Not at the hotel. There's a coffee shop down the street from the Sejong Center, just a few blocks from you. Can you meet me there in an hour?” Anguish rang in her voice, loud and clear.
“Sure, but Sun—”
“I have to go. I'll see you there at 3:00.” Then she hung up.
He climbed back into the prison of his suit. Arriving early, he found Sun perched at a table on the sunniest part of the patio. When he moved forward to hug her, she stood up very straight. A slight hand motion and a tiny, discreet turn of the head signaled to him that he shouldn't, not here. “I ordered you a vanilla latte,” she said.
“Awesome,” Hugo replied. That she'd already ordered told him she was in a hurry, and wouldn't stay long. His heart sank with a little jolt.
“I talked to Mr. Kwon.” When Hugo didn't answer, Sun went on. “He said that we didn't have to come to see him. That he didn't need comforting.” Her sad eyes were black hollows in her impassive public face.
“Jin was a pretty tough guy. Maybe like father, like son, huh?”
“I don't know what to think, Hurley. It was a very strange conversation, crazy. Mr. Kwon doesn't believe that Jin is dead.”
A powerful sense of unreality seized Hugo, and the warm September day suddenly turned cold. What was he doing in this strange city with this woman, with this unwelcome knowledge that showed up like the drunk cousin at a family picnic? “Uh, what?” he finally blurted out.
He knew the answer even before it came.
“Mr. Kwon said that late one evening, he was working on the dock where he tethers his boat. Suddenly he saw Jin-Soo standing there. He was sure he wasn't dreaming. Jin-Soo told him to keep the boat ready for him, because when he came back, he was going to work with his father. Just like he was supposed to do all along." Sun trembled as if the words were being torn out of her. "Jin-Soo said that he was going to bring me back, to be a fisherman's wife." Now she was really shaking, as if chilled by the same cold wind as Hugo. “I'm afraid I argued with him, that such a thing couldn't be. Why did I do that, Hurley? After all we've seen?”
“We've seen a lot,” Hugo echoed.
“Is it possible?”
“That Jin is alive?” If that were true, the enormity of what he had done, what they had done, washed over him like an acid bath. Sun's dad would be the least of his worries, compared to his mother finding out. “Sun, when that freighter blew, it really blew. I dunno how anyone could have survived it.”
“Mr. Kwon was so calm, Hurley. Don't you think if Jin-Soo was alive, I would feel it?”
“I don't think it works like that.”
“So how does it work, then?”
“I don't know.” Hugo didn't want to tell her the things he had seen. His dead grandmother standing on the neighbor's deck during the loud, busy house party, right before he walked out to get a closer look and the deck collapsed. How his imaginary friend Dave from the psych hospital showed up on the Island, then flung himself off a cliff after trying to talk Hugo into doing the same. Worst of all was the unshakable feeling that he was being watched, and no matter how quickly he turned his head to catch them, he never could.
Sun didn't know that he'd been a mental patient. There was so much she didn't know about him, and at this point, there didn't seem to be any way to remedy that.
She finished her drink and picked up her clutch bag. “I can't live in a world where these things happen. Thank you, Hurley, for coming all this way. And for being willing to go with me to Incheon, even if it wasn't necessary.”
Whatever they had done, whatever those two nights had meant, it was over. “Hey, sure, no prob. Say hi to Ji Yeon for me.”
She didn't answer, just glided like a graceful dancer into a nearby parked car, sinking behind the powerfully-built driver hulked behind the wheel, his eyes invisible behind mirrored sunglasses.
Back in Los Angeles, Hugo checked his phone every ten, fifteen minutes for a missed call. For all he knew, he could have been in the bathroom, or making another trip to the refrigerator. Or pumping gas, because God knows he burned it up driving up and down the Santa Monica freeway. He roamed the LA area like one of those birds whose navigation sense had been destroyed by atomic bombs, who randomly circled over thousands of miles of ocean and never found land.
He might have missed a call during his therapy sessions. He'd started up again, three times a week, but the counselor wouldn't let him keep his phone on. Rangy and middle-aged, she reminded him of that old psychic his dad had dug up. The one Hugo always suspected of being one of his dad's old girlfriends, before he came back to Hugo's mom.
Just like that horse-faced psychic, Hugo suspected his current shrink was a fraud too.
At least she didn't want to talk about the Island, or the network of lies which Hugo navigated like a shaky rope bridge stretched over an abyss. Each fifty-minute hour felt like three, as he gripped the silent phone buried in his cargo pocket. About halfway through the session his heart would start to pound, then race, as he counted the minutes till he could get out of there and turn his phone back on.
It was the day after Thanksgiving, when his mother put up a ten-foot aluminum Christmas tree covered with red glass Sacred Hearts and topped with a foot-tall gilt angel, that Hugo realized Sun-Hwa Paik wasn't going to call him. He would have to figure out something else to do with the rest of his life.
His father tried to help, was even sympathetic. “So you went to Seoul, had a little fun. What are you moping about? There are more fish in the sea. Go out and catch one.”
Instead of answering, Hugo got into the Camaro, drove to the nearest Mr. Cluck's and ordered a family-sized bucket of hot wings. He drove around Griffith Park a few times, then parked on a hilltop overlooking athletic fields empty in the December sun, because the children were still in school. With grim, methodical determination and no pleasure, he began to eat.
A month later, Hugo saw a ghost of his own, and in panic led the LAPD on a careening chase down the freeway. After that day, the dead would no longer be denied, and for him, nothing would ever be the same again.
(the end)