Did You Call for Me?
"Get out!!! Get out of here right now!!! Get lost!!!"
"E-Eeek!!!"
I was screaming at a goat. And in front of me, Mrs. Kim cowered, frozen with terror.
"Hahh... hahh..."
One shake of my head, and the goat standing there was gone. Wiping the drool that had run down my chin with my sleeve, I picked myself up and bolted for the shrine.
"Oh dear, Lord Doryeong..."
I shook my head hard all over again and ran for the bathroom. I twisted the tap, plunged my head under the water, then lifted it and looked up.
In the front yard there was nothing but the startled woman. In the mirror, only me.
A god? A ghost? What in the world was that just now?
Still scared out of my wits, I made my way back to the shrine's front yard. There, Mrs. Kim waited for me still, her head bowed deep.
"...Ma'am, did you see what just happened?"
I asked, but she only shook her head, wearing the expression of someone who truly knew nothing.
No. This woman had nothing.
My head throbbed. A flickering tongue, rows of densely packed teeth—the horrific image was eating its way into my mind. Was it connected to that construction company's project?
Or was it truly some thing that had come because I had, without even knowing it, asked for help? Damn it. The words my godmother had once given me began to surface again.
'Do not dare to stand against It. Do not defy It. And whatever you do, do not call for It in haste.'
Then the thought I'd had only moments ago floated up out of nowhere.
Satan, whoever—I just wanted someone, anyone, to help me.
Don't tell me I was the one who called It?
Damn it all. The scenes I'd witnessed kept circling through my head. I shook it violently.
"Ah, Lord Doryeong, what I wanted to ask—"
"Don't go through with the project. That's all I can tell you. Go on, now. I'm closed for the day."
"Lord Doryeong!! You have to tell me more!! There's still so much I want to know—"
"No. No. Not for all the money in the world—not right now."
I shook my head with finality and rose from my seat. Something in my gut said I could not stay in this shrine a moment longer today.
"I'll come back in a few days, all right? You'll remember? Please, help my husband, Lord Doryeong."
"Out. Out. A few days, whatever. That's not what matters right now."
Clunk.
The gate shut behind her, and I let out a long breath. I pinched my thigh hard enough to bruise—it didn't feel like a dream.
Bzzzt.
I jumped at the buzzing in my pocket and fumbled for my phone.
"Damn it..."
An advance payment? Seriously? Pressing a hand to my forehead, I shoved the phone back into my pocket. I'd deal with that later.
What I needed right now was to find out whether something had gone wrong with the shrine itself. I swept and scrubbed every corner of the place, checking for anything amiss.
The divine statue was untouched. The candle flames hadn't so much as gone out. Last of all, shaking, I opened the rice jar.
"Phew."
The rice jar was fine too. Then I turned my head toward the desk—and froze solid.
Krrrack—!
With the sound of wood splitting apart, the divine statue shattered into pieces.
And inside it was a small stone figure.
"..."
It looked less like a finished carving than like the remains of something abandoned midway. My brow furrowed hard.
Damn it. With something this ominous sealed inside the divine statue, no wonder I'd been seeing things. Without a second's hesitation, I dropped the statue into a trash bag.
Common sense said you got rid of this kind of thing fast. I was not a horror-movie protagonist who insists on holding on to a possessed doll.
"...Time to clock out."
I murmured it to myself like a hypnotic suggestion, changed my clothes, and saw to the shrine's locks.
Lifting my head, I looked down a street that was eerie to an unnatural degree, and frowned.
I couldn't see the evil spirits now, but the thought of them swarming a roadside like this one made my skin crawl.
Rubbing my arms without quite knowing why, I set off toward the bus stop down the road. Once I reached the main street and people began to appear one by one, the tension slowly bled out of me.
'...It'll be fine.'
Even after the bizarre things I'd been through today, the world was turning along just as it always had. Only then did I remember the two million won bonus sitting in my account.
'Clients... I'd better rework my whole appointment schedule.'
Fear was fear, and money was money. I couldn't let the opportunity in front of me slip away.
So resolving, I joined the long queue at the bus stop.
Even as the people ahead of me thinned out one by one and the line behind me piled up, my bus never came.
'It's late.'
The bus tracker app showed it drawing near. Three minutes out, it said—so why was it taking this long? Did it blow a tire or something?
Bus 9071 will arrive at this stop shortly.
Then a welcome voice rang out. Watching the bus come lumbering slowly up the hill in the distance, I got ready to board.
'...Hm?'
But something was wrong.
A bizarre wrongness had closed around my ankles.
Flicker.
The bus's interior lights blinked. On its own, that meant nothing at all, but...
Flicker, flicker, flicker.
Having no way to tell whether I was simply raw and on edge today or whether something genuinely wrong was unfolding—that alone was enough to drive a man mad.
Hssssk.
With a sound like some enormous creature exhaling, the bus shuddered to a halt at the stop.
Ka-chunk.
The front doors opened. And I found myself meeting the eyes of the driver in his seat.
A massive shadow was undulating behind him.
"...No."
I breathed it like a scream, stumbling back a step—and grabbed the shoulder of a man on his way to board.
"Ah, shit. What now?"
"Don't get on. That bus is dangerous right now."
Damn it. My body had moved before my mind could catch up, driven by pure animal fear. And I regretted it instantly.
What if it was nothing at all?
What if I'd only imagined it, because I happened to be extra tired today?
"...The hell's wrong with you, out of nowhere?"
Apparently a young punk talking down to him out of the blue was too much for him; the man shook off my hand and climbed aboard.
Hssssk.
The bus doors began to swing shut,
and the driver, visible through the narrowing gap, suddenly clenched the wheel with all his strength.
HOOOOONK—!!!
"Oh, fucking hell!!"
CRRAAASH!!!!
The next instant, the bus rammed straight through the stop.
Debris flew everywhere. The streetlight beside the shelter toppled and came down across the sidewalk. Brakes shrieked from every direction, and in a heartbeat the whole street was pandemonium.
"KYAAAAAH!!!"
"Wh-what the hell!!!! 119!!! Call 119!!!"
Blood, screaming, the sound of people running for their lives.
A high-pitched ringing filled my ears, and the world slowed to a crawl, as if someone had dropped it into slow motion. By some miracle, I was alive.
No—had it ever been trying to kill me in the first place?
Fzzt! Fzzt!!
Currents spat and snapped, and the lights inside the bus began strobing like something demented. Not just the bus—the display screen at the stop, the streetlamps, the lights in every building flickered in time with it.
Then the flickering lights guttered out, as if swallowed by the dark, sinking down into a shadow deeper and vaster than night.
And then,
whisperwhisperwhisperwhisperwhisperwhisper.
Wicked, unspeakable whispers began to rise. My body, locked up with shock and terror, would not answer me.
Squelch, crunch.
A grotesque noise like bone grinding against muscle drifted from the wrecked bus.
The bus's hull writhed like a colossal egg, swelling and shrinking, swelling and shrinking.
Then, as if pouring out water, the windows burst one after another, and pitch-black shadows came boiling out of the bus.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
From the shadows' mouths poured sticky strands of other shadow, thick as drool. I could hear it—feel it—that horrific, nauseating breathing.
The memory of when my spiritual sight had opened came flooding back. Looking at those shadows, I shook.
...Evil spirits. Very old ones, at that. Why they were clumped together in a shape like that, I couldn't say.
"HUAAAAH!!!! UAAAAAH!!!! AAAAH!!!!"
A scream tore out beside me. With tremendous effort I dragged my eyes sideways—someone who, like me, had seen the shadows was screaming their throat raw, eyes rolled back white.
Move. Please. Move, damn you...!!!
Straining with everything I had, I forced every scrap of feeling in my body into a single index finger. The same knack that had torn me free of the scissors.
Come on...!!
Twitch!
The finger jerked and moved—and the paralysis that had seemed to bind my whole body snapped loose at once. I was on my feet and running before I knew it. And then,
A monstrous wail split the air, tearing at my ears.
Insane. Insane. Insane!!
Fzzt! Pop! Squelch!!
Everywhere I ran, the lights were being devoured by the shadows. The whispers weren't sounding at my ears anymore—they were ringing out from inside my skull itself.
'God damn it. What the hell am I even supposed to do at a time like this!!'
A bell, a mirror—my bag held nothing but a few books on fortune-telling.
And even with the right tools in hand, I couldn't begin to guess how a man was supposed to stand against a thing like that.
hungryhungryhungryhungryhungry.
At some point I was tearing through the back alleys. They coiled like a maze, folding in on me, herding me away from the main road.
"Ah..."
And when I came face to face with a dead end, my legs gave out and I went down.
hungryhungryhungryhungryhungry.
Was this really where it ended? I squeezed my eyes shut.
Tak.
A sound reached me—leather shoes, maybe, or the click of hooves.
And the merciful, all-embracing 'Mother' asked, in a soundless voice that reached me alone:
Yes. I called for you.
Like one seeking the light, I knelt and called for you.
Ah—that came out of my mouth, but they were not words my mouth had chosen.
And yet, docile as a lamb, I could do nothing but follow along and say that I had called for Mother.
I was terrified. And at the same time, a strange relief was spreading through me. The peculiar warmth flooding my body stirred a memory somewhere deep—a longing for something primal, something I couldn't name.
It was like the memory of being in the womb.
At her command, I stretched out my left hand.
-Vulgtmnah.
Ssssss—!!
Then a pain like fire tore across the back of my hand, and pitch-black smoke began to rise. Clutching my hand, I crumpled where I stood.
"-!!"
And what remained on the back of my hand was a mark darker than that pitch black itself. The mark had become something like a tether—binding me to that being.
Mother's voice was calling me.
Come back? Back where?
But whatever the answer, I was already up and running. It was Mother's command, after all.
Retracing the way I'd come, I dove into the alleys and pounded up the slope.
The shadow hounded me on thousands of limbs. Somewhere in my mad sprint, I realized I had entered a familiar lane.
The shrine.
Instinct took over. I kicked through the gate and hurled myself inside.
BANG!
Though no wind stirred, the door to the shrine had flown open.
And there on the altar sat the bizarre stone statue—the very one I should have thrown away.
Then the mark on the back of my hand began to throb, sudden and hot.
"Ughk—!!"
My left hand reached out toward the shadows closing in behind me, as if it had a will of its own,
and pitch-black smoke came pouring from the mark.
The black mist rolled out thick as the sea fog over a dawn wharf, billowing until it filled the whole space,
and into that fog the evil spirits began to be dragged.
And the whispers raking through my mind turned into screams straight out of hell. Clamping my hands over my ears, I writhed in agony.
Gulp. Gulp.
Like a snake's throat muscles constricting to draw its prey down the gullet, the shadows knotted themselves into one and began sliding into my mark, ever so slowly.
Their screams faded, little by little, into a clamor that seemed to come from far away.
"..."
A revolting sight. It was like watching sewer rats being sucked down a drainpipe. And they were pouring into my own body, which only made the disgust worse.
And yet, at the same time, something in the deepest part of me was being sated. As if I were sitting down to a meal.
Gulp.
When the last of the spirits had been taken in, the shrine's statue began to call to me. No moon was out, and yet the statue glowed with an eerie light.
I stepped up to it and raised my hand.
Shuuuk—!
"-Ugh!"
A sharp pain lanced through the back of my hand. Then pitch-black smoke flowed out of me and began to be drawn down into the statue.
The statue was devouring the evil spirits with gluttonous hunger. Faintly, from somewhere inside my skull, I could hear them screaming.
"Hahh... hahh."
With every last spirit offered up, I staggered and fell on my back.
And then I saw it: the shadow the statue threw against the wall bore an uncanny resemblance to a goat.
And Mother's voice praised me.
It had been a satisfying meal, she said.
The wind blew.
I stared at the statue... no, at the divine statue, trembling with an emotion I had no name for.