Part 8. O Soul, O Soul, O Soul (1)
VRRRRM.
The road to the field felt unfamiliar.
It would be the difference between day and night.
An ordinary out-of-the-way road felt like a sinister one, and the mountain visible in the distance looked like something abnormal too.
Kang Hyeong-seok kept his face hard and drove toward the bean field by the navigation's directions.
STATIC!
From the radio he had turned on to drive off the silence, a news reader's flat voice came through.
『Police have opened an investigation after a mutilated body of unknown identity was found on a hill in Gangwon Province.』
This was not the sort of news he had wanted.
Kang Hyeong-seok turned troubled eyes toward the radio.
『Police found at the scene a single body separated into several parts. The body has been identified as a girl of seven to eight years of age.......』
Kang Hyeong-seok let out a heavy breath through parted lips.
He lived an ordinary life, and yet he walked the shamanic road.
So a case like this landed on him with terrible cruelty.
The terror, the pain, the grievance the victim must have known did not feel distant.
Among the countless departed spirits he had seen, many of them wailed.
Because the size of their grief had come through to him so vividly, Kang Hyeong-seok prayed that the victim's soul might be sent on.
『Arriving at your destination shortly. Ending guidance.』
Kang Hyeong-seok parked a little way from the field and got out with his bag.
'How can it be this dark?'
The field had been out of the way even in daylight, and now, sunk in darkness, it gave off a sinister energy as well.
CHIRR! CHIRRRR!
With the crying of grass insects coming from every direction, Kang Hyeong-seok took a small lantern from his bag.
FLICK.
For something bought at a shop that sells everything, the light was disappointing.
Still, it was enough to avoid the stones and holes in the dark that were watching for his ankles with a tiger's greedy stare.
TRAMP, TRAMP.
Lighting a span no wider than two spread palms, Kang Hyeong-seok moved slowly forward.
The tree with the nail marks.
He would start with that tree.
TRAMP, TRAMP.
Sweeping the lantern over the nail scars as he approached, Kang Hyeong-seok swung the backpack around to his front.
Then he reached inside, opened the pencil case, and took the shaman's bells into his right hand.
JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE! JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
When he shook them, the air around him lightened.
Not as a trick of the mind, but in fact.
The feeling that had been pressing oddly at his chest, the energy that had blocked his way like something viscous, thinned.
"Impurity of the heavens above, impurity of the earth below, impurity of the far household, impurity of the near household."
JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE! JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
"Impurity of the great gate, impurity of the middle gate, impurity of dogs, impurity of oxen and horses."
Kang Hyeong-seok drove the surrounding energy back with the Buddha-Spoken Scripture of Impurities and stood before the tree.
"The impurity seen by the eyes of the disciples who offer devotion this day, the impurity heard by the ears, the impurity made by the mouth, impurity of food, impurity of fish-stink, impurity of rank flesh, impurity of the death-gate, impurity of childbirth, impurity of the funeral portrait."
There was certainly something in this tree.
The vicious energy was so strong and so bitter that it felt like being pushed bodily away.
JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
Kang Hyeong-seok shook the bells hard, reached out, and ran his fingers over the holes in the trunk.
They were not deep.
The wood had filled in from within.
'Ten years? Twenty?'
Traces that had to be at least that old.
Who had worked a folk hex here, and to what end?
It was as Kang Hyeong-seok stood staring at the tree with his lips pressed shut.
JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
At a chill suddenly felt behind him, Kang Hyeong-seok twisted around hard enough to shake the bells.
The lantern swung with his gaze and lit the dark.
"...Who's there."
There had plainly been no one there.
But now a tall woman in black clothes stood beyond the bean field.
A claw hammer in one hand, a straw doll in the other.
JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
The shaman's bells rang of their own accord, but the woman's figure did not vanish.
Which meant that thing was not a foul thing.
Nor did it seem to be reality.
What person in this world could give off an energy like that?
'An illusion? An apparition......?'
If not that, then it was his guardian god showing him what had happened in this place.
CRUNCH, CRUNCH.
Long, unkempt hair scattering in the night wind, the woman turned her head quickly this way and that as though checking her surroundings.
She was certainly not a person who existed here.
If she had been, she would have spotted Kang Hyeong-seok long ago and either run or lunged.
GNAW, GNAW.
As if to hide her agitation, the woman chewed her thumbnail down to breaking and came slowly toward him.
The distance closed until he could see her face.
Was that really a person?
The wild hair, and the head-to-foot black like a death messenger's, were grotesque, but her eyes were something else.
Her upturned eyes were thick with burst blood.
CRUNCH, CRUNCH. GNAW!
Chewing at her nail, the woman passed Kang Hyeong-seok, looked around, and set the doll against the tree.
Then she took out a nail and placed it over the doll's head,
WHAM!
and swung the hammer, driving it through the doll and into the tree.
WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!
Kang Hyeong-seok lit the woman driving nails at a madwoman's speed, then turned the lantern to the doll.
WHAM!
With each swing of the hammer the doll flinched like a living thing, and from its chest a length of hair protruded.
"Die, die! You f*cking bitch! Goddamn it! You bitch, tearing you apart wouldn't be enough!"
The woman's voice was so full of malice that hearing it alone raised gooseflesh.
Why on earth?
For what?
Whom was she cursing this bitterly?
"Yun Bo-mi, you f*cking bitch! Die! Please!"
Eyes rolling white, the woman screamed at the doll.
***
CRUNCH!
At the motel, Namgung Min-a was passing a quiet hour.
She was working through potato chips bought at the convenience store, a streaming service was on the television, and her phone was wedged between her shoulder and her cheek.
RING-RING, RING-RING.
"The girl isn't picking up."
Grumbling, Namgung Min-a took the phone into her hand with a face that said she had expected as much.
Perhaps it was because she had come to Danyang for the first time in so long.
She had called an elementary school friend she had happened to reconnect with about five years ago, back when social media was the fashion.
Namgung Min-a was about to end the call that would not connect, disappointed.
(Hello?)
"Hey! Why does it take you so long to answer?"
(Huh? Who is this?)
Having spoken in a high voice, Namgung Min-a turned polite.
"Isn't this Seo Jin-a's phone?"
(It is, Miss Namgung Min-a.)
"Oh! What is this?"
(Pff, hahaha. What's going on, out of nowhere?)
Namgung Min-a smoothed her chest and lifted a chip to her mouth.
"I'm in Danyang for work. It's been a while, so you came to mind and I called."
(Really? You should have told me you were coming. What if I came over to you?)
"No. Then I'd feel too bad. I just wanted to hear your voice."
Namgung Min-a perched on the edge of the bed, swinging one leg, and smiled faintly.
A call with an old friend always brings up memories.
"This really brings back the old days. You know the friend who used to do Bunsinsaba with me?"
(Ah.......)
In contrast to Namgung Min-a's high spirits, Seo Jin-a's reaction sank.
"Huh? You don't remember?"
(No, of course I remember. You two were close.)
"Right! Is there anyone still in touch with her? Let's all meet up next time."
(...You don't know, do you.)
A voice too low to write off as her imagination.
Namgung Min-a, reaching for another chip, narrowed the space between her brows and spoke.
"Know what?"
(She had a bad time of it. In a lot of ways.)
"...In what way?"
(Half a year after you moved, I think? Her mother died and her father remarried right away. And there was talk about it, apparently.)
It was something she had known nothing about, so Namgung Min-a pressed the phone tight to her ear and narrowed her brows further.
"What talk? Did something bad happen?"
(It's, ah.......)
"Tell me. What happened?"
(Well, the thing is. The stepmother apparently hated Yun Bo-mi terribly.)
At the bad news about the friend she had been closest to, Namgung Min-a's face hardened by degrees.
"So? What happened with the stepmother?"
(I don't really know that part, but more than that. Bo-mi.)
"Yes."
(You probably can't meet her anymore.)
It was then.
Namgung Min-a's lips trembled without her meaning them to, and her eyes went damp.
It was only intuition, but she knew.
That something bad enough to make Seo Jin-a speak in a voice this low had happened to Yun Bo-mi.
(She went missing. There's been no word since.)
She's probably dead.
At the line Seo Jin-a added, Namgung Min-a felt the world go dark in front of her.
***
WHAAAM!
With a loud sound the last nail went in.
The woman's gasping mouth and her upturned eyes.
Having watched the woman work a folk hex from right beside her, Kang Hyeong-seok felt almost as if he had wandered into someone's dream.
VROOOOM!
But the sound and the light of a freight truck passing on the distant road announced forcefully that this was reality, and then vanished beyond the dark.
SWISH.
He put the lantern on the woman, but no reaction came back.
As though she perceived neither Kang Hyeong-seok nor the light.
Thanks to that he could observe her calmly.
There was nothing especially remarkable about her, but the straw doll was another matter.
'Mirror-grade cinnabar......?'
It was yellowed paper written in red characters, plainly in mirror-grade cinnabar.
It did not sit easily with him.
Mirror-grade cinnabar is hard for an ordinary person to obtain, and a talisman more so.
A shaman had helped with this folk hex.
What sort of deranged shaman would do a thing like this, prepared to take divine chastisement for it?
JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
As though answering his question, the shaman's bells rang and the woman's figure vanished.
And another vision began to fill the bean field.
The darkness went and the place turned into a family home, and the same woman appeared, together with a young girl.
SMACK! SMAAACK! SMAAACK!
"I told you! Never to go into the shrine room!"
"Waaaah! Waaaaaah!"
Perhaps a fourth-grader.
When the child, struck hard, burst into a scream, the woman hurriedly clamped a hand over her mouth.
"Mmmmmph!"
Blocking her nose as well so she could not even breathe, the woman let venom show in her eyes and struck the child's stomach.
CRACK! THWACK!
With each blow the child's body jerked.
It was hard to watch with open eyes, but Kang Hyeong-seok had no choice.
It was a vision his guardian god was showing him, an event that had happened in the past.
For a gifted shaman, the guardian god reveals the past.
By the same principle his guardian god was showing him the thing bound up with this bean field.
THUD! CRACK! THWACK! THUD!
Having struck only places cunningly covered by clothing, the woman gasped for breath.
"If it weren't for you I could have lived a normal life......."
Why did a bitch like you come attached to him?
Everything would be fine if you weren't here.
Why should I raise somebody else's brat?
And why does a bitch like that have the spirit gift on top of it?
At the woman's thoughts flowing into his head, Kang Hyeong-seok whipped his head around.
Through a half-open door he could see a shrine room.
Like any shrine house, it had shaman paintings and statues shaped in the likeness of gods, with a small dais in front of them.
'So it was you who wrote it.'
The talisman fixed to the doll had not been written by some other shaman.
It was the girl's mother.
Kang Hyeong-seok looked at the woman as though at something that must not exist, and his face twisted.
"Why on earth? What for......."
He stopped and trembled at the corners of his firmly shut lips, like a man whose throat had closed.
Even at this moment, the woman's thoughts were entering his head.
Thoughts a person must not have.
Thoughts a shaman must not have.
SWISH.
The woman who had been raining down blows suddenly smoothed back the girl's hair.
The hatred had gone from her eyes.
In its place they glistened with a different, more hideous feeling.
"You can give it to your mother, can't you?"
Her life, and her spirit gift.
The woman, a shaman and the girl's stepmother, looked down at her with plain murder in her eyes.