The Treasure Map - 6
A shimenawa — a sacred rope.
A ritual cord braided from rice straw with folded paper charms, called gohei, tucked into its twists. The shimenawa was a kind of barrier, strung up to keep impure things from crossing. It also served the purpose of protecting what was sacred. You often saw them hung at shrine entrances, or around holy rocks and trees.
"Ah, you know about shimenawa?"
Ju Mandeok looked genuinely delighted as he walked toward the rope stretched across the entrance. Beneath it sat a large jar; when he lifted the lid, it was packed to the brim with coarse salt.
Pah! Pah-pah!
Ju Mandeok scooped up handfuls and scattered the salt in a circle around his legs. In Japan's Shinto faith, salt wards off misfortune and signifies purification.
He seemed terrified that a ghost might attach itself to him. He hadn't killed anyone — so what reason could he possibly have to fear spirits that badly?
Unless…
Does he know his father slaughtered the villagers?
If he did, he'd want nothing to do with living in Ugok-ri. But then again — suppose you'd been booted from your district mayor's office, dragged through court after court over every corruption scandal imaginable, and watched your fortune drain away in the process.
Wouldn't you want to go where your father had once been a National Assembly member and try to rebuild?
Maybe that was the only reason he'd come down to Ugok-ri. And yet something kept nagging at him — dreams that left him restless, a prickling at the nape of his neck, hair standing on end.
He's got a Japanese shaman's ghost attached to him.
From the way Ju Mandeok was acting, it hadn't been long since the thing latched on.
I narrowed my eyes and watched, and Ju Mandeok broke into an oily grin.
"Did you know? Ugok-ri is a place where a lot of people died."
"Are you talking about the Korean War?"
"Plenty of people died after that, too, they say. Which means plenty of ghosts, no?"
There he was, chattering away with a Japanese ghost perched right on his shoulder.
"That's why I hang a shimenawa at the entrance to my property and sprinkle salt. Go ahead, call me a superstitious fool — that's just what people say because they don't understand."
"Are you saying ghosts might do you harm?"
"Couldn't they? Why do you think Japan — a nation far more advanced and powerful than ours — believes in the power of the occult?"
A flash of something worse than arrogance lit Ju Mandeok's eyes — a flicker of outright madness. The smugness of a man thinking, I know what you don't. Therefore you exist to be used.
"My grandfather always said that understanding the Five Elements of yin and yang makes even the impossible go your way. Coming from a man who rose to a very high position indeed, I've taken those words to heart."
His grandfather would have been a man of the colonial era, then. Three generations of Japan-worshippers, and apparently all three of them dogs.
As for that shaman ghost — it looked like Ju Mandeok's grandfather or his father had worked it like a slave until it died. Or perhaps killed it themselves.
Ju Mandeok went on.
"And whatever you do, don't go telling people Ugok-ri is crawling with ghosts. Though I suppose as goodwill ambassador, that's not something you could say anyway."
Still grinning that greasy grin, he brought over a box of tomatoes and pressed it into my hands.
"Set up a dinner for me with the county governor, and I'll teach you how to make money through the yin-yang arts. Prayer methods included."
"Praying can make you money?"
"Of course. I recouped every last won of my greenhouse investment within two years of moving to the countryside — need I say more? Haha. Making money is easier than feeling your way through the dirt, I tell you."
Ju Mandeok threw back his greasy face and laughed heartily. I laughed along with him — then pointed behind his back.
"Look there!"
"Hm? What is it?"
The moment Ju Mandeok turned his head, I shot out my arm and seized the Japanese shaman by the leg.
[Kyaaaeeeek!]
With its ankle trapped in my grip, the shaman was dragged clean off Ju Mandeok's shoulder.
It actually worked?
Truth be told, I'd expected it to. I'd caught stray evil spirits bare-handed and torn them apart before. I'd even shredded Shin Hye-ra's spirit — the one trying to become a malicious ghost latched onto Seo Jinwoo — into ribbons and burned it to ash.
Still gripping its ankle, I kicked hard, and the Japanese shaman let out a shriek.
[Gwaaek!]
Not going to keep it down, huh?
I beat the shaman ghost without mercy.
Ju Mandeok, distracted for only a moment, turned his head back and rubbed at the back of his neck.
"What are you looking at?"
"Ah, I see you've got a lot of fruit fly traps set up. When you've got a fruit fly problem, doesn't mixing neem oil into the irrigation water work well?"
"Neem…? Neem what?"
"Look it up — it's called neem oil. Aigoo, it seems I've taken up far too much of your time. I'll be on my way, then."
The Japanese shaman ghost was struggling, thrashing to slip free of my grip. I tightened my hold and glared at it.
Just send it straight to the afterlife?
At once, a damp wind stirred at my back. I could feel the Underworld Gate beginning to open.
[No — wait! Don't! I was wrong! Please, spare me!]
Where had all that ferocious bluster gone? The shaman rubbed its hands together, begging for its afterlife.
What kind of attachment could it possibly still have to this world, groveling so pathetically?
Then open your eyes.
[Yes, sir!]
I yanked the shaman ghost up and slung it over my shoulder, then walked toward the greenhouse entrance.
"Um — you're not taking the tomatoes?"
Ju Mandeok followed after me, flustered.
"I can't show up empty-handed and walk off with a gift, can I?"
"This little thing? A gift. Here, shall I give you some money, then?"
"Money?"
I stopped dead in my tracks and stared him down.
"Ah — well, you see, I'd very much like to have a meal with the county governor sometime, but the country bureaucrats around here won't so much as pass the message along. They treat it like some exalted favor, you see."
As if a sitting county governor would ever meet with a former district mayor ousted for bribery.
I gave a careless shrug.
"Well, I imagine I'll have plenty of occasions to meet public officials going forward. Until then, then."
After all, if he got sued for fraud or extortion, wouldn't he end up standing before a judge? And a judge was a public official too — so Ju Mandeok's little wish would come true one way or another.
Engine humming, I headed for the Ugok Tunnel with one hand wrapped around the Japanese shaman's throat.
The double barrier over Ugok 5-ri. I had my suspicions that it and this shaman ghost were no coincidence.
"Talk. You're the one who set the barrier over Ugok 5-ri, aren't you? Of all the errands Joo Chang-nam ran you over from Japan for, one of them was raising a barrier inside the tunnel. That much is certain."
It was just a probe. But—
[I only did what I was ordered to.]
So my hunch had been right all along.
Back in his Assembly days, Joo Chang-nam had dabbled in every manner of dirty business, and he'd put the Japanese shaman to work casting warding charms on his behalf.
"Take the barrier down. Now. If you don't do as I say, I won't bother sending you to the afterlife — I'll snuff you out with my own hands."
When I tightened the grip on its throat, the shaman ghost muttered in terror.
[I-I'll do it. Just drive through the tunnel and pull over, please.]
I passed through the Ugok Tunnel and parked on the shoulder. A right turn here led toward the flooded zone — a dead end sealed off by a chain-link fence, with the Pyeongcheong River flowing beyond it.
And yet Ugok 5-ri, the earthbound spirits' village that No. 1 and I had visited, had never been underwater. There had to be an illusion woven over the whole place.
Nobody ever came looking, so nobody ever suspected a thing. A village erased by the highway, derelict buildings, the traces of the people who had once lived there. If any of it surfaced, word would get out that the civil engineering surveys had gone horribly wrong — so someone had buried it all.
"Come on. Remove the barrier."
At my command, the shaman pressed its palms together on its knees and began to chant. The ghost's voice droned on, low and sunken, an ominous murmur in the air.
Tuk-tuk! Tuk-tuk-tuk!
Somewhere along the road, I heard pebbles come loose and tumble down. A crosswind suddenly kicked up, and a smell drifted past my nose — a rusty, fetid odor from a gate that hadn't opened in years.
After chanting what sounded like a haunting little melody for a long while, the shaman smoothly turned its head toward me.
[It's open.]
Nothing had changed. Not a thing.
"What's open? It looks exactly the same!"
The road hadn't shifted; the scenery was identical.
Wait — no, that's not it.
When I turned my head, a rusted signboard caught my eye through the brush. A sign for a Chinese restaurant.
The very place where Seo Jinwoo had offered himself up as bait for the earthbound spirits.
So that village was there all along — I just couldn't see it.
I'd known a barrier had to be in place, but seeing it with my own eyes sent a chill down my spine. To conceal a village that undeniably existed through nothing but incantations and ritual.
Then, unprompted, the treasure map sketched in Shoichi's letter floated to mind. When the Japanese general had hidden a chest overflowing with gold bars in that cave, wouldn't he have laid a barrier over it?
No — he'd have layered it. Double, triple, fourfold, fivefold.
Japan had even maintained a government bureau — the Bureau of Onmyō — to administer its onmyoji. In other words, shamans had become civil servants, meddling in matters of state.
Hōsoku, the divination arts that judged fortune and calamity. Saishi, the rites that drove out ghosts and evil spirits. Homa, the protective magic that warded off disaster — and on top of all that, astrology and calendar calculations. The onmyoji clans had become power brokers of tremendous influence, generation after generation.
Then came Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the man behind the Imjin War, and the persecution began. Hideyoshi's brother and son fell ill, and the onmyoji — the Japanese shamans — failed to heal them, and they died.
That was the official pretext, anyway. Others said that Hideyoshi, having unified the country, simply wanted to be an absolute monarch and crushed anyone whose power rivaled his. Either way—
During the Imjin War, onmyoji fleeing that persecution could well have slipped across the sea into Joseon. And if one of them had raised a barrier while hiding the gold—
Then no one, no matter how desperately they studied the map, could ever have found the cave.
You'd need an onmyoji capable of opening the barrier. That's the catch.
It was documented that vast quantities of gold and treasure had been looted during the Imjin War — and almost none of it was ever recovered. It wasn't even on display in Japan. So where was it all?
Historians spoke with one voice: it was hidden somewhere, beyond anyone's power to find. That somewhere on the Korean Peninsula, a treasure hidden by the Japanese invaders still waits.
I stared straight at the shaman ghost clutched in my fist.
[Wh-what is it?]
"Haaah…"
I'd have to keep it around until the gold turned up — but I couldn't very well walk around choking it forever. So there was really only one option, was there?
"What's your wish? I mean, why were you clinging to Ju Mandeok instead of going to the afterlife?"
[I want to go home. I can't find the way.]
Great — a方向-challenged ghost, just like No. 1.
"Who did you work for? Joo Chang-nam, or Ju Mandeok?"
[Assemblyman Joo Chang-nam… sir.]
"Your name?"
[Abe.]
Abe? The Abe I knew was dead too. Well, whatever.
"Abe, I'll get you on a flight to Japan. Don't you dare run. If you do, I'll erase you from existence."
[Please just send me home.]
"Fine. In exchange, find me one cave using the map. And keep dispelling barriers, just like you did today."
A short while later, I stood at the top of the stairway leading down into the Chinese restaurant's basement.
Even in broad daylight, it's pitch dark down there.
After rescuing Seo Jinwoo, I'd tried to leave through this place — only for my footsteps to falter against that bleak, ominous air. Back then it had been night, so I'd assumed the darkness was simply the hour. It wasn't. The layout itself cut off every trace of light, leaving the basement steeped in a blackness thick as ink.
Taking the emergency lantern I'd brought from the car, I started down the stairs.
[Um — shall I go in first and tell you what's inside? There's something in there that feels terribly wrong, I think.]
Did promising you that flight to Japan turn you into a fanatical loyalist or something?
All it had to do was wander over to Incheon Airport and latch onto some Japanese tourist. Its excessive devotion was honestly a little embarrassing.
"No, I already know there's something very bad down there. That's exactly why I'm going in."
The deaths of Assemblyman Joo Chang-nam and the construction company CEO weren't the end of it. The villagers' wrongful deaths deserved to be brought to light, and Joo Chang-nam and that CEO deserved to have their names dragged through the mud — even in death. Only then would a creature like Joo Mandeok, son of Joo Chang-nam, stop strutting around like he owned the place.
And then—
Urgh! What is that?