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Chapter 001. Unnamed
Fear is an axe.
An axe that strikes down the mask of humanity, shatters the hypocrisy of society, and reveals its bare face.
A ceremony selecting the most destructive work among the axes published over the past year was being broadcast on television.
The highlight of StokerCon, hosted by the Horror Writers Association.
The Bram Stoker Awards ceremony.
“······In the year 2000, the winner of the first Bram Stoker Award of the 21st century is······ Moonlight by Sean McKenzie!”
As the host announced the winner, thunderous applause erupted, and the sentences that had brought the work its brilliance were wrapped in dazzling effects and displayed across the backdrop of the stage.
“······Ha.”
They were sentences I knew far too well.
Every single word, even the rhythm of the commas.
It was all exactly as I had written it.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. First of all, I would like to thank my proud alma mater, Columbia······”
But the person receiving applause and basking in the spotlight because of those sentences was not me.
Joy and emptiness crossed paths within me at the same time.
The words I had written had become an axe.
But I was not the one holding its handle.
I could do nothing but silently watch the scene on television.
Isaac Moon.
The writer who should have been standing there in the first place.
But reality was different.
I was an Unnamed, a ghostwriter who had never been able to publish even a single book under his own name, merely moving his pen in place of a famous writer who had fallen into a slump.
The broadcast of the awards ceremony, which had been unusually heated compared to previous years, finally ended.
As I stared blankly at meaningless advertisements,
BZZZ··· BZZZZ······
My phone rang.
It was Harper Goldman, the head of the publishing agency I had a contract with.
“It’s been a while, Moon.”
His voice was always relaxed.
But today, there was an unusually excited note in it.
Through the receiver, I could hear the noisy chatter of a party.
“You watched the ceremony, right? This is something to celebrate. Your writing won the award.”
“······My name isn’t there.”
“There’s nothing we can do about that. That’s how the contract was written.”
“You have to keep your promise now. You said you would publish a book under my name—”
“We’ll talk about that later. The timing isn’t right now.”
Timing.
Harper was always like that.
“The world is waiting for Sean McKenzie’s new work. We need to release it before this fire goes out. So, Isaac.”
One excuse after another.
He kept postponing his promise again and again.
“Let’s do it one more time.”
I felt suffocated.
It was as if a huge stone had been placed on my chest.
“Then when will I be able to write under my own name?”
“Someday.”
Harper answered calmly.
“I told you. Readers look at ‘name value.’ You have talent, but you have no academic credentials, no background, no connections, no recognition, nothing. So write. Under McKenzie’s name.”
“You said the same thing last time. You said that would be the last time.”
“The real last time. O.K.? You even won the Bram Stoker Award. We can’t stop here, can we?”
One more time.
How many times had I heard those words repeated?
By now, I could barely remember.
Before ending the call, Harper said one final thing.
“Isaac, don’t get emotional for no reason. This is reality.”
Click······
Harper demanded that I release one more work as a ghostwriter.
But.
The world did not even allow me that ‘one more time.’
Thud—
Rustle······
Where I had weakly tossed my phone, there lay the medical certificate I had received from the hospital that very day.
Irreversible Dilated Cardiomyopathy
Disease Classification Code: I42.0
⋮
To a writer in his late twenties with no medical knowledge, it was nothing more than an incomprehensible collection of letters.
But the doctor’s translation had been painfully simple.
“Honestly, I have to tell you. It’s too late. Even if we begin treatment immediately, I don’t think you have much time.”
In other words, I was going to die soon.
A disease in which irreversible changes occur in the heart, causing its function to deteriorate.
I was a condemned prisoner waiting for that disease to carry out my death sentence.
“Life······.”
God had never allowed me the chance to publish a book under my own name.
* * *
I began putting my affairs in order.
There was no one in particular I could ask to take care of things after I was gone, so I had to handle everything myself, one thing at a time.
I arranged for all the money I possessed, including the deposit from my rental apartment that would be returned after my death, to be donated to a civic organization supporting Korean adopted children.
“Is everything taken care of with this?”
“Yes. After the donor’s passing, the relevant procedures will be carried out according to this agreement.”
“I see. Then.”
“Um, Mr. Moon?”
When I turned around, the employee bowed their head.
“Thank you.”
“······Yes.”
On my way out after signing the donation agreement,
the sky was clear and the clouds were beautiful.
And yet, even though I had done something good, I did not feel particularly good.
Wouldn’t you?
I was about to die.
“It’s perfect weather for dying.”
How could the sky be so bright and cheerful?
“Gasp······.”
After walking for a while, I collapsed onto a bench.
Even walking for a short while had become difficult.
As I tried to calm my heart, which was beating wildly without restraint, I heard laughter from somewhere, as if those voices had never known a moment of darkness in life.
When I raised my head, there was a university across the street.
Under the clear sunlight, fresh-faced college students hurried across the campus, or sat in groups of three or five on the grass, sharing their textbooks.
“······Must be nice.”
I genuinely envied them.
Because it was an afternoon I had never once been able to have.
I was born in Korea and abandoned.
Fortunately, I was adopted in Boston and grew up as an American.
But my school years had not been easy.
Well, it was a predictable story.
A small, quiet Asian kid was the perfect toy for bullies.
Squinting their eyes and calling me a monkey or Ching Chong was an everyday occurrence.
I lost count of how many times my schoolbag or textbooks had been thrown into trash cans.
Up to that point, I could still endure it.
I persevered like a stubborn bastard and applied to a top-tier university.
But by the time I received my acceptance letter······
Everything collapsed after I lost my adoptive parents in an accident.
The shock of being thrown into the world alone for the second time caused me to miss enrollment.
College life was the furthest thing from my mind.
I lost my way and wandered aimlessly.
I drifted through the slums, turning to alcohol, drugs, and crime.
Truly,
I lived however I pleased.
The doctor said the cause of my illness was unclear.
It could have been the result of a viral infection or a genetic disorder, or perhaps severe stress, alcohol, and my history of drug use had played a role.
But the moment I heard those words, I realized.
I had killed myself.
A life of self-destruction had simply reached its predetermined ending.
After coming to my senses and beginning to write,
I used to comfort myself by saying that it was not too late.
But the truth was that everything had already become far too late.
My body had already been thoroughly ruined.
And a lonely drifter of a writer with no family, no prestigious education, and no acquaintances was the perfect prey for a predatory agency.
“······It’s all right there in front of me.”
Sitting on the bench, I raised my arm and stretched out my hand.
Beneath an old building covered in vines spilling down its walls, the peaceful afternoon scene of students passing by was not far away.
But even when I clenched my fist, there was nothing to grasp.
“I can’t catch it.”
Everything that would have been an ordinary life to other people seemed like a mirage to me.
All the world had allowed me was merely—
BZZZZ······
From: Providence Swan Point Cemetery
Mr. Isaac Moon, the documents regarding your columbarium interment procedures have been prepared.
Please let us know your visiting schedule, and we will assist you.
A place no bigger than the palm of my hand where my body would lie after death.
* * *
With the little money I had left,
I headed toward Providence, an old city in Rhode Island in the northeastern United States.
It was where I would rest after death.
There were several reasons I had chosen a columbarium in Providence.
One was that I had lived there with my parents, and it was not far from Boston, where my parents were buried.
If you ask why I did not choose to be with the two of them······ well.
Unlike me, a black-haired Asian, they had been typical blondes with blue eyes, and I had never truly been able to regard them as my parents.
Coming in now and inserting myself into their family somehow felt a little shameless.
Anyway······
There was another reason Providence held special meaning for a horror writer.
It had deep connections to the pioneers of horror literature.
Edgar Allan Poe, who pioneered fantasy, mystery, and horror literature, frequently visited the Providence Athenaeum.
And H. P. Lovecraft, known as the father of modern horror fiction and the Tolkien of darkness, was born and died on this land.
Perhaps, having never managed to leave behind even one proper novel under my own name while alive, I wanted to leave at least a plaque bearing my name in this city.
After finishing the paperwork at the office of Swan Point Cemetery, I asked the employee,
“Excuse me, but where is Lovecraft’s grave?”
“Would you like me to show you?”
“No. I’ll look around quietly and leave.”
Following the path as the employee had instructed,
I arrived before the gravestone of Lovecraft, the man who had forever rewritten modern horror fiction.
The inscription was grand and magnificent.
“I am Providence.”
It was said that the words had been taken from a phrase he had written in a letter to a friend and engraved there. The gravestone itself had only been erected by fans who collected money forty years after his death.
“I heard you were unhappy during your lifetime, too.”
Lovecraft had suffered from poverty his entire life, received little recognition, been ignored by people······ and eventually died alone.
“Just like me.”
I muttered to myself alone before letting out a bitter laugh.
“No, I’m worse. At least you wrote under your own name. People remember the name ‘Lovecraft’ and even erected a gravestone like this for you. ······But what about me?”
Abandoned, beaten, and then, when I finally found adoptive parents, they left me too.
“I struggled alone my entire life. In a reality that was like hell.”
I had not written horror novels.
Every piece I wrote simply became a horror novel.
Because the world I experienced was like a nightmare.
“Why? Why was I abandoned and made to suffer alone? Why, of all things?”
The emotions I had been desperately suppressing burst forth.
What had I done so wrong?
What sin had I committed to deserve such a miserable fate?
Whether it was God, the devil, or the Great Old Ones from Lovecraft’s novels.
“If you’re listening to anything at all, then answer me.”
What brought my violent emotions back down
was, ironically, the very heart that had thrown me into the fate of death.
The heavy, sharp pain in my chest made my head grow cold.
Isaac, what are you doing, clinging to a dead man?
“······Rest in peace.”
It was the moment I left those brief words and turned around.
“?!”
A strange sight unfolded before my eyes.
Colors I had never seen before spread across the entire sky like an aurora, and at their center was an indescribably deep darkness, bored through the sky like a hole.
It looked as though I had been transported into another dimension without even realizing it.
“What is this—”
The moment I tried to understand the situation, my brain began burning as though it had been engulfed in intense heat.
Whooosh—!
“Ahh······!”
And then, a faint realization came to me.
Something was watching this place from beyond the darkness and colors.
A being older than the world we knew,
a being humans should never know.
A terror far beyond the limits of reason came rushing toward me.
Crackle, crackle—
All my senses began exploding at once,
and instinct barely managed to scream.
Take your eyes off it immediately.
Hold on to your broken mind and get out of here.
Run.
But my frozen body would not move.
Madness and blood, murderous intent and mystery, despair and loss, profane life and mutation, a horrifying gaze and oblivion—
From everything humans could imagine,
to things humans dared not imagine.
All of that terror was condensed and engraved into my mind.
It felt as though words were being written inside me, using my soul as manuscript paper.
Strangely, the fear gradually disappeared.
Instead, countless regrets came flooding in.
They merged into a single mass and became a wish.
I want to return to a time when I can change everything.
That was when it happened.
Whooosh—!
An unknown force hurled me away.
“!!”
Beyond Swan Point Cemetery in Providence,
beyond the present in which I had lived as an Unnamed ghostwriter.