This is a story I heard over New Year's from my cousin Wataru, whom I hadn't seen in a while.

Wataru, a rookie police officer, was out on night patrol with his senior partner. A call came in over the radio reporting an accident on the XX Mountain Pass. Being the closest unit, Wataru and his partner headed straight to the scene.

After driving up the mountain pass for about fifteen minutes, they spotted a sports car pulled over with its hazard lights flashing. Noticing the patrol car’s red lights, two men stepped out from the driver and passenger sides. Wataru parked behind the sports car and walked over to them.

Agitated, the men immediately began explaining what happened. They said they were driving along the pass when a motorcycle suddenly passed them from behind. The bike charged straight into the curve ahead without slowing down. Just as the men thought to themselves that taking the corner at that speed was bound to cause an accident, the motorcycle wiped out right in front of them. The rider and the bike slid under the guardrail together and plunged down the cliff—they had called it in after witnessing the whole thing.

To conduct the scene inspection safely, Wataru and his partner set out road flares and brought the two men along to inspect the area. It was late December, and the already freezing winter air felt exponentially colder up on the mountain pass. Though the men were dressed far too lightly for the season and shivered uncontrollably, they remained fully cooperative with the investigation.

The wipeout had occurred at a sharp right-hand curve. There were skid marks just before the bend, supporting their story that excessive speed caused the crash. Friction marks stretched in a straight line from the skid marks toward the guardrail, making it clear that the fallen motorcycle had dragged its rider along the pavement for dozens of feet.

Just as the men had described, the dirt beneath the guardrail was deeply gouged where the bike slid under it, and a section of the steel guardrail was severely warped, likely from the impact of the bike. Debris like shattered mirrors and pieces of the fairing were scattered nearby, testifying to the violent nature of the wreck.

The initial investigation yielded no contradictions to the men's account, pointing cleanly to a single-vehicle accident. Wataru's partner agreed with the assessment and headed back to the patrol car to radio headquarters. The two men expressed concern for the rider, but looking past the guardrail revealed nothing but an abyss of pitch-black darkness. Wataru knew that surviving a fall down a cliff that deep—easily dozens of yards—was nearly impossible, but he refrained from mentioning it. Instead, he informed them that a search operation would begin at first light, and advised them to drive carefully on their way home.

At that moment, one of the witnesses walked a short distance away from the guardrail. He seemed to have spotted something where the headlights faintly reached—a spherical object lying on the ground. Taking a closer look, it was a full-face helmet. As Wataru walked over to inspect it, the two men followed behind him.

Shining his flashlight on it, the badly scratched back of the helmet reflected a dull glare. Wataru reached down to pick it up, but it felt unexpectedly heavy. Perplexed by how heavy it was, he pulled it up with some force, but the unexpected weight caused his hands to slip, dropping the helmet onto the ground. When they looked down at the fallen helmet, all three men froze in terror.

Inside the helmet was a man's severed head.

A strangled scream escaped Wataru's throat.

Had his neck caught on the guardrail, tearing his head clean off? Through the cracked visor, a pair of hollow eyes stared straight back at Wataru.

Silently chanting prayers in his head, Wataru reached toward the helmet again—and that was when those dead-fish eyes suddenly darted side to side.

Gurgling up thick sprays of blood, the mouth spat out two loud, agonizing shrieks: "It hurts! It hurts!"

Completely forgetting he was a police officer, Wataru screamed alongside the two men and bolted from the scene.

Hearing the commotion, his senior partner rushed out of the patrol car. After Wataru hurriedly explained what happened, his partner said he'd check it out himself and walked over alone. Wataru watched from a distance as his partner searched for the helmet, but the senior officer soon returned, tilting his head in confusion.

He told them there was no helmet anywhere. Wataru took the two men back to the spot where they had seen it. But sure enough, just as his partner said, there was nothing there. The senior officer did his best to calm the three of them down, sending Wataru back to the patrol car and telling the witnesses to return to their vehicle.

Taking the driver’s seat in Wataru's place, the senior officer gave a polite nod to the witnesses and pulled away. He drove in complete silence. Unnerved by his partner’s quiet demeanor, Wataru stared at his trembling hands and tried to explain that the helmet hadn't been an illusion or a lie. His partner merely muttered a single word: "I know."

Back at the station, as Wataru sat writing his incident report, his partner came over to speak to him.

"There's always been a lot of accidents on that pass," his partner said. "Urban legend or not, people talk about a headless biker haunting the place. Course, tales like that aren't rare, but I had an experience similar to yours back in the day. Do a plate check on those witnesses' car tomorrow. You'll understand everything then."

The next day, Wataru ran a license plate check on the witnesses' car as instructed. The vehicle turned out to have been junked over a decade ago. When he looked up the witness's driver's license, he discovered that the man had died in a car crash on that very same pass more than ten years prior. When Wataru reported this, his partner just patted him on the shoulder with a chuckle. "Told you I had a similar experience, didn't I? That pass... that's just the kind of place it is. Consider it a good learning experience." Taking the report from Wataru, he tucked it away in his desk.