Another Kind of Vampire
In the pouring rain, two men traded words in languid voices. Languid voices, listless hours—yet the lines they spoke were shocking, far past any ordinary bound.
"Then I'll grant you a beautiful death. Not a bad way to pass the time, wouldn't you say?"
"If we can't prove he's the real Jack O'Lantern, wouldn't that just be a pointless murder?"
Silvester warned him. If Jack O'Lantern was not properly caught, these chain suicides would never end. It was like the ripples drawn by a stone thrown by one person using the nickname Jack O'Lantern. Even after the stone had already sunk beneath the surface and vanished, the ripples would linger for a long time, setting the whole lake trembling.
"The real Jack O'Lantern no longer exists."
But Se-geon shook his head at Silvester's warning. The real Jack O'Lantern was already gone. Countless Jack O'Lanterns had sprung up in his place, and innumerable people were praising suicide, weren't they? Of course not all of them wanted to become evangelists of death. Some merely out of admiration for a celebrity, some merely to wield influence over others… There were certainly those who sought to become Jack O'Lantern for such childish reasons.
But then why encourage suicide of all things? Because it looked cool? Because it somehow sounded persuasive? That wasn't it. Of course there would be people who willingly donned Jack O'Lantern's mask for reasons like that—but that was a problem that came later. The death-wish was already so strongly latent in people that suicide could be romanticized at all.
That gloomy, decadent ideology lay under people's feet, in the shadows, remaining under the name of depression.
"So you'll kill every Jack O'Lantern?"
Silvester put the question to Se-geon with a faint smile, as if looking at a disciple who had grown admirably. Se-geon shook his head, denying it.
"No. Silvester, don't obsess so much over the word kill. Killing is the result. The result of him throwing a stone into this society. We can ignore the ripples, right? Ripples calling forth ripples won't become waves… Ah!"
Still mid-explanation, Se-geon hit the switch on the car stereo.
"Because he's a disgusting bastard, I'll kill him!"
"…Among all the reasons I've heard so far, that seems the most reasonable."
The jet-black Corvette Coupe tore through the rain that rode with the darkness and raced away.
Se-geon stepped out of the Corvette and looked at the building before him. It was a fairly large officetel at the entrance of the circular road leading into Ilsan New Town, and Silvester had dragged him here.
"But a spirit? That's funny."
"What's so funny about it?"
"Vampires feel like a variant of humans, but spirits are a story of a different dimension, aren't they?"
Se-geon stood in front of the elevator and pressed the button. Silvester took off his coat, folded it, and came to stand beside him. If a man had gotten soaked in the rain, there ought to have been at least a faint fishy smell—but Silvester gave off no body odor at all. He only carried a mineral scent, like a well-honed blade.
"If spirits arise from the reasons people commonly speak of, then that too is one of the changes of humans. Is it particularly strange?"
"I mean it in the sense that they can't be felt physically."
"Are you trying to say that air can be felt physically?"
Silvester still needled him at every turn, as if teasing. Just then the elevator doors opened and their conversation broke off. This elevator, which had rarely carried many passengers, still reeked of silicone, as if the interior finishing had only just been completed. Silvester stepped inside and pressed the button for the eighth floor.
"Well. But vampires are certainly believable, and spirits aren't, right?"
"Then don't think of this as necromancy. Think of it as a kind of fortune-telling. Koreans generally show quite deep trust in fortune-telling."
"…That's true, but."
"Do you know the origin of vampires?"
As he stepped off on the eighth floor, Silvester asked out of nowhere about the origin of vampires. Se-geon was inwardly surprised looking at the hallway of the officetel, finished in clean interior materials. The building hadn't even finished selling all its units yet; there were hardly any residents.
That this entire place belonged to Father Silvester—only then could Se-geon somewhat understand why the man never turned his eyes toward something like vampire blood. Anyway, having been asked, he recited again the story he had learned from Deok-yeon.
"When the vessel of human life breaks, the vampire factor is generated, and that transforms the human into a vampire."
And they attacked other humans to seize life force in order to replenish what flowed out through the cracks in the vessel of life. That was the origin of vampires, and these vampires established clans by propagating each other's factors. In other words, they were variants of humans, and vampires could be called a kind of contagious disease.
"If the vessel of life exists, and even when that vessel is cracked vampires still maintain the form of humans, then the vessel of life is clearly something that cannot be confirmed with the naked eye. Anyway, vampires are ultimately one of the possibilities inherent in humanity. No matter how much they claim themselves to be superior beings, that is nothing more than sophistry for self-satisfaction."
Se-geon made a face that said he had no idea why he was being told this. Silvester opened the front door of the unit, went inside, set a table, and spoke as he worked.
"Jack O'Lantern is the same as vampires in that regard. Humans harbor the possibility of becoming vampires, but they don't become vampires. Likewise they harbor the possibility of suicide, but ordinarily they don't commit it. But Jack O'Lantern spreads suicide."
"So the one in whom that death-wish protrudes, spreading suicide—that's the contagion."
Se-geon finally grasped what Silvester was saying. Jack O'Lantern too was ultimately a variant of humans, and it was a kind of disease. If it differed from vampires, it was only that this was a disease of the mind rather than the body. But living among so many humans, whether a man was physically ill or mentally ill hardly mattered. What mattered was only the difference of whether it was contagious or not.
"Similar to vampires. Shall we say remarkably identical? So it is another vampire. Perhaps that's why the information was sent to me."
"What?"
"No. That's a matter on this side."
Silvester, recalling the pigeon from earlier that day, arranged candles on the table. Se-geon looked at them and asked.
"Do candles have anything to do with necromancy?"
"Minimal interior decoration. Does a Korean ancestral rite table have occult meaning? Hmm?"
Silvester picked up a kitchen lighter, lit it, and in the same motion swung it horizontally. With a whoosh of flame, every candle caught fire at once. It was a spectacular performance, enough to startle anyone watching.
"H-how—!"
Se-geon seemed so surprised he couldn't even get the words out properly. But the long silver-haired priest raised a finger in the orange firelight. As the glow touched his pale skin, he was dyed orange.
"Hmm. Won't you be quiet? Necromancy requires silence, after all."
"…"
When Se-geon shut his mouth, Silvester picked up a Bible. Whether white magic or black, an incantation was an important element of any working. But Silvester, without any particular chant, scooped up a handful of flour and flung it across the floor.
Pak!
As if someone had drawn it by hand, a perfect circle took shape. Outside the circle the names of angels were written in Hebrew—a protective ring to shield the practitioner from the power of demons.
"I don't want unnecessary interference, so stand inside that circle."
"What?"
"You'd better. It's not often that I give advice to others out of goodwill."
"…"
Overwhelmed by Silvester's words, which bordered on threat, Se-geon stepped into the circle. Then Silvester began the necromancy.
"Mm."
"…"
Se-geon held his breath and watched him. Even now he was half-doubting—but if spirits truly existed, he wondered whether something unusual might happen. He strongly denied their existence, yet he couldn't help feeling curious. Even the most rational person couldn't help taking an interest in irrational phenomena, could they? But the ritual was far more trivial than Se-geon had expected.
"Hoo. You can come out now."
"Huh?!"
"It's over."
"…"
What kind of necromancy ended as quickly as roasting beans over a lightning bolt? Dumbfounded, Se-geon walked out of the circle. But at that moment a chilling cold assailed his body.
"Uh!"
"There's still some chill remaining. It's fine. It won't harm your body."
Father Silvester muttered that and swung his sleeve horizontally. The candles lined up on the table all went out at once. Certainly the chill was frightening—but Silvester seemed even more so. Anyway, a more important question still remained for Se-geon.
"So who is Jack O'Lantern?"
Se-geon asked the question every citizen of the Republic of Korea would have wanted answered. Silvester shook his head.
"Even the victims didn't know much about Jack O'Lantern until they died."
"What?"
"But…"
The moment Se-geon let out a sound of disappointment, Silvester turned his head.
"I know where, and who. Well… shall we go?"
"Hmm."
Finding a culprit through spirit-channeling was somehow hard to believe—but for now he had no choice but to follow the man's lead. Se-geon glanced once more at the candles standing in a row, then ran out again toward the elevator landing. The spring rain, unsuited to the season, was only now gradually thinning its streams.
Hyun-woo turned off the computer and sprawled on the bed. Having finished countless tutoring sessions, his whole body was languid. People said young children had constitutions that didn't tire easily—but that didn't seem to be the case.
"…"
The boy gazed at the ceiling thickly covered in darkness with expressionless eyes. Father still hadn't come home, and Mother had already fallen asleep early. Was that why? Only the quiet sound of rain could be heard.
"Hoo…"
He let out a sigh. As his eyes gradually grew accustomed to the dark, he took off his glasses, set them by his pillow, and wrapped the blanket around his body.
Tomorrow, tomorrow's day awaited. A day no different at all from today. An unbroken chain of apathetic fetters…
But once his stamina recovered, he would go on the internet whenever he had a chance, and meet Jack O'Lantern. Jack O'Lantern…