The Ridge Where the Dead Whisper
Sampson took the lead. As a legend within the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, he was renowned for his ability to recover remains, and he had excavation experience not only in Korea but in North Korea and Germany as well.
“According to the records, the Chinese troops’ wave offensive unfolded down below. They pressed forward in dense ranks, like a tide.”
His explanation made the scene feel all the more vivid, and it was easier to stay focused.
“Usually, that kind of depression is where you find the most remains. During a war, whether they’re enemy soldiers or our own, people are shoved into pits and buried as quickly as possible.”
“......”
“But sometimes the remains turn up in places you’d never expect. Some are found on hiking trails, others are reported while someone’s plowing a field... and every so often, they surface in clusters when land is being dug up for development. The longer time passes, the more likely that becomes.”
“......”
“It’s already been more than seventy years since the Korean War ended. There are still so many bones that were swept away by rivers or buried under landslides and can never be recovered.”
Kang-to thought of the photos of the families the documentary team had provided. Some of them had videos too, each one carrying the pure weight of a family’s longing.
- If nothing else, let the remains come home...
- If that’s impossible, then at least a personal belonging...
Everyone’s hopes had long since been buried by time. It was the kind of time that wore even longing down to nothing.
“But...”
After a brief pause, Sampson went on.
“Don’t shamans begin by offering sacrifices or something? That seems to be the case with Korean shamans, too.”
“My divine opinion differs. Nature doesn’t improve no matter what you offer it. It just becomes a pile of trash.”
Kang-to cut him off. Shamanic deities came in many forms. So did Kang-to’s body deity.
Hoo.
The moment they reached the start of the ridge, he entered a state of possession. It was because of the animal spirits.
With the primordial spirits of 1-Cheon and the animal spirits of 2-Cheon flickering in and out of view, he cleared his vision like wiping fog from glass. He didn’t underestimate animal spirits. Some of them were terrifyingly powerful.
The best example was the dragon; the dragon’s animal spirit belonged to the realm of the heavenly gods.
Once his body deity pushed away the lesser wandering spirits, human spirits began to shimmer into view. Along one ridge and then another, they rose like heat haze. And why wouldn’t they? How many lives had ended here?
“The beopsa’s frequency is dropping.”
“Temporal lobe stimulation is rising.”
The equipment operator’s report was recorded in real time. And the change wasn’t Kang-to’s alone. The sensors on the people close to him also shifted. If Kang-to felt it, they felt it too. Not to the same degree, but enough to matter.
“Huh?”
How long had they gone like that? One of the excavation team, spread out to the side as they walked, spotted something.
“Bones.”
At the word, everyone headed that way.
“Look here.”
He pointed to the slope. Where roots had been exposed, a few bone fragments, shaped almost like roots themselves, stuck out into the open.
“They’re not human.”
Kang-to gave the conclusion at once. The size was comparable to human bone, but the trace of the spirit was different.
“Wait a second.”
Sampson moved in to verify it. He brushed away the soil and pulled the remains out. There was more than one bone. It didn’t take long to confirm that either.
“Looks like wild boar bones.”
Sampson set the bones down. All eyes turned to Kang-to.
Just by looking, he had distinguished human bone from beast bone. His spiritual eye was something else entirely. Especially for the excavation team, it was astonishing, because for them, this was the first time they had witnessed such uncanny precision.
The documentary team moved on again. After circling along a pine forest, they came to a gently sloping incline.
Kang-to stopped.
Tension.
The sensors changed.
When Harris saw that, he gave the signal.
— Stop.
Kang-to, in possession, moved ahead. He stopped in front of a large boulder where sediment had gathered.
That spirit...
He got a response. It was faint, incredibly faint. But it was human.
“Could you check here? I think it may be a child’s remains.”
Kang-to pointed to the sediment.
The excavation team began preliminary work.
“A little to the left there.”
Kang-to indicated the spirit’s position. It felt as if it could vanish at any moment.
“It’s remains.”
Before long, the excavation team uncovered fragments of bone.
“Let’s see.”
Sampson stepped forward. The documentary team held its breath, but not for long. The bones were small. That meant the body had belonged to a child.
“These are the remains of a child under five, approximately 125 centimeters tall.”
That was Sampson’s conclusion. When part of an earthen burial mound, washed down from nearby, was discovered as well, the mystery was settled for the moment. It had been an “accident” caused by summer flooding or a landslide.
The bones were reburied in front of the remaining mound, and the county office official in charge of funerary affairs was notified. Old children’s graves were often left neglected.
They kept ridge-walking.
Koreans believed in third time’s the charm.
In the end, Kang-to found the spirit. It was around the halfway point of the ridge, just as they were passing a large boulder. Between two rocks, the air rippled.
A spirit.
He raised a hand to stop the documentary team.
“The low frequency is dropping.”
“The temporal lobe is changing quickly too.”
The equipment crew hurried about. Kang-to’s indicators had shifted to the ideal range for seeing the dead.
The spirit was hiding between the rocks. Kang-to’s spiritual eye followed it.
“......?”
His gaze stopped. He could see a military uniform on the spirit. Not British. Chinese.
“It’s in here. Not a British soldier.”
He read the name from the uniform of the spirit. The excavation team moved immediately, measuring the gap between the rocks and searching for a way in. There was no access from below. In the end, they chose to send a team member down through the opening above the rocks.
“Pull.”
The team member who had recovered the remains signaled. The rope came up. The remains came up with them, along with personal effects. The bones had oxidized over the long years and were no longer intact. Still, the rifle’s shape remained, a Chinese-made weapon from the Korean War.
“Oh.”
Sampson, having verified the remains, was visibly energized. There would still be detailed examination to come, but he was certain these were remains from the Korean War. The rifle that came with them was proof enough.
“Let’s recover them.”
Harris gave the order. At the time they had been enemies, but now they were soldiers reduced to bones. From a humanitarian standpoint, it was only right to return them to their families.
Once the remains came out, the spirit grew faint. It drifted up to Kang-to, fluttered there for a moment, then scattered with the wind.
He must have fallen into the crack between the rocks while wounded during battle. That was why he had been unable to go anywhere for all those long years. Now that the remains had been found, he could finally move on.
The sparrow in hand was worth two in the bush.
They’d made their first catch with a set of remains from the era. That alone had the documentary team buzzing. If there were bones buried anywhere at all, Kang-to’s spiritual radar would find them.
Even on the second day, they still hadn’t achieved their goal. They found four sets of remains, but those too belonged to either the ROK Army or the Chinese troops.
On the third day, they set out again.
“Beopsa-nim.”
At a makeshift lunch, Sampson came over.
“I checked the verification equipment data last night, and the moment the remains were detected, the numbers on the device changed all at once. It was like a chemical reaction.”
“And how did that make you feel, Doctor?”
“I’d say... unsettled? I suddenly got a chill down my spine.”
“And at other sites? You have a lot of excavation experience...”
“It was unsettling then too. Especially in places like basins or underground tunnels. Once, I was so startled by that chill that I measured the temperature inside a tunnel, and unexpectedly, it was higher than the air outside.”
“So there must have been many spirits there.”
“It was a tunnel where the German army had massacred Jewish people. We recovered fifty-two sets of remains, including infants. One of the babies... died with its mother’s breast still in its mouth.”
“......”
Kang-to’s expression grew heavy. It had gone beyond the tragedy of war; it was slaughter.
“I’ve had that experience many times since then, but the strange thing is that feeling never becomes any less intense. No matter the site, if the conditions are similar, that chill still gets to me.”
“That’s because the vibrations and energy of spirits belong to the negative realm.”
“I’m sorry, but... can you find a specific set of remains the way you’d find a specific missing person?”
“Pardon?”
“Would you look at this?”
Sampson opened a tablet.
“Jane and Tony... a married couple from long ago. This is a recent photo.”
“......?”
“And this is... a letter they sent me years ago.”
A handwritten letter came out of Sampson’s wallet.
“This couple are the children of soldiers from the Duke Regiment.”
“What?”
“Tony is Captain Douglas’s son, and Jane is William Stevenson’s daughter. Douglas died in this Hook Hill battle, and William was wounded in the shoulder but survived and returned home.”
Sampson’s voice grew calmer. Even just that much was enough to suggest a story of profound weight.
“Would you read it?”
The handwritten letter in Sampson’s hand was passed to Kang-to.
To the honorable Dr. Sampson.
That was how the letter began.
During the Korean War, William was eighteen years old. After receiving his draft notice, he boarded a troopship bound for Korea. Seasickness on top of motion sickness, and the exhaustion of long travel. He endured all of it with the pride of being a member of the Duke Regiment, of helping to defend world peace. That was how much the Duke Regiment meant to the British people.
William was deployed to Hook Hill.
There he met his company commander, Captain Douglas. Douglas was said to be of royal blood, a distant relative of the Princess. He ruled the green recruits and their classmates with harsh military discipline.
William and the others were no pushovers either. They were young men with hot blood in their veins, and whenever the noncommissioned officers and officers loosened their watch even a little, they would slack off and even sneak out to fish.
Every time that happened, Douglas came down on them with terrifying punishments.
“Damn it, what a petty bastard.”
William and his classmates didn’t care for the strict Douglas.
They only realized his true worth the day before the Chinese army’s nightmare bombardment. One of their classmates was caught daydreaming during duty. A group punishment followed on the spot, of course.
“One man’s carelessness can lead to the annihilation of an entire unit.”
Douglas didn’t let things slide. William, the unofficial spokesman of the recruits, went to protest.
“Isn’t this going too far?”
That was what he meant to say.
But then.
His thoughts changed in front of the company headquarters trench. Douglas wasn’t there. On the makeshift desk lay letters from their parents, from their sweethearts.
Please take good care of our foolish son.
“......?”
There was even a letter from Douglas’s mother.
Addressed to the company commander, it asked him to turn her immature son into a brave soldier and make sure he came home alive. In that moment, William understood Douglas’s heart. The lives of every single recruit rested on his command, on his shoulders. That was why he had been so uncompromising about everything.
“What’s this?”
Douglas had come back.
“Nothing. I was just wondering if we’d get leave after we hold this offensive.”
William’s quick thinking shone through.
“Of course. If we stop this push, it’ll really be a ceasefire.”
Douglas laughed.
Now he understood why Douglas had been absent. One of the platoons digging trenches had found a snake. A recruit emptied his rifle into it, but couldn’t hit it. Seeing that, Douglas moved like a wildcat and grabbed the snake by the neck. Even with the snake threatening him, he threw himself forward to keep his men safe. That was the kind of man he was.
At last, the nightmare bombardment began. More than twenty thousand shells in a true curtain barrage.
Bang, and
a scream tore through the air.
Boom, and
the trench went flying into the sky.
It felt as if meteor showers were falling from heaven. The sky was so dense with Chinese shells there wasn’t a single gap left in it.
“Duck down, you new bastards. Your skulls are going to get blown off.”
“And here, that skull isn’t yours anymore. It belongs to Great Britain, and to your parents and the people you love, so protect your heads first, no matter what.”
Douglas’s voice rang out over the smoke, urging them on. Once the battle was joined, there had never been anyone so reliable.
And then...
A brief silence followed the mad bombardment. At the end of that uneasy hush, the tide of demons came rolling in. It looked like the incoming sea. The Chinese forces were so vast they were impossible to count.
“Who are we?”
Douglas looked almost sorrowful. The veteran instincts of a long-serving commander began to shine.
“The Duke Regiment.”
“What kind of unit is the Duke Regiment?”
“Britain’s pride and Britain’s heart.”
“What do we fight for?”
“World peace.”
Cheers erupted.
In a matter of moments, Douglas had lifted the morale of the recruits.
“William.”
Douglas stood before him.
“You want to win and go on leave, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“There’s a lake in my town where the big fish are swarming. Come visit, and I’ll give you a free pass.”
“If you don’t mind, could it be a lifetime pass?”
“Fine.”
Douglas’s hand settled on William’s shoulder. It felt like divine protection had descended.
At last, the enemy wave reached the foot of the hill.
“Open fire.”
Douglas gave the order to engage.
The world became a madhouse. Before long, William was deaf and couldn’t even hear his comrades’ screams or the gunfire. He fired like a man possessed. Then, all at once, two Chinese soldiers came hurtling in. He barely subdued them, only to realize all his comrades were already down.
“We’re abandoning the Second Company trench. Fall back to the Third.”
He was turning to follow Douglas’s order when yet another, larger wave of Chinese troops surged over the position. He tried to hold them back with his rifle, but that was hopeless, of course.
“William.”
Douglas came running. William saw it. In Douglas’s hands, the gleam of a bayonet and a rifle butt flashed. Each time they struck, Chinese soldiers were swept away. Who had mocked him for being given a captain’s rank thanks to royal privilege? In an instant, he cut down six enemies and was already closing in on William.
“What are you doing? Move, now.”
Douglas shouted after crushing the face of the last enemy in front of him.
“Company Commander.”
William’s eyes were on Douglas’s abdomen. Blood, bright red, was streaming down it.
“I’m fine. Go.”
While he hesitated, more Chinese troops poured in again.
“I said go.”
Douglas blocked them himself.
“Company Commander.”
“I’m right behind you.”
After taking down two more men, Douglas shoved William in the back. How far had he run, dodging the collapsed trench and the bodies of his comrades? A shell burst right in front of him. William barely threw himself clear, then lifted his head, but he could see nothing. The collapsing position had blocked his view.
Two days.
The battle went on for two full days. The Duke Regiment held back that endless tide. Hook Hill, just northeast of Maehyeon-ri where the 38th parallel crossed the Military Demarcation Line. By holding that ground, they kept the area within the territory of the Republic of Korea.
William, after being moved to another trench, fought on alongside the men there. He was stabbed twice in the shoulder by enemy bayonets, but he kept his life. He collapsed, was transported to a rear hospital, and when he came to, he checked on Douglas’s safety, but...
Killed in action
Douglas never returned, not even as a body. Then, in a later massive offensive, his remains were lost for good.
After returning home, William visited Douglas’s house to thank the widow and her young son. Later, even after William got married, they kept in touch, and then William’s daughter proposed to Douglas’s son. The ties forged at the front had been passed down to the next generation.
“That was Mrs. Douglas’s wish and William’s too—to find Captain Douglas’s remains. But both of them passed away from old age before they could see it...”
Sampson’s voice, having crossed that long recollection, was even more subdued now.
“The couple who carried on that wish wrote to me, asking me to find him no matter what.”
“......”
“We did recover a few British remains at the time, but none of them were Douglas’s. Everyone else cheered like we’d struck gold, but I couldn’t. Maybe...”
Sampson looked up at the overcast sky, then finished his thought.
“Part of why I agreed so readily to join this documentary was because of that couple’s request. I thought maybe we should try once more.”
“......”
“Was that an unnecessary burden?”
“Not at all. If you have a personal item or a photo, it actually helps.”
“Then I’ll leave it to you, beopsa-nim.”
Sampson handed over the photos of Douglas and William.
Holding the photos, Kang-to climbed to the ridge point and looked down below.
In every little valley and stream, the cries of spirits could be heard. But the place was so old that nothing was clear anymore. Just as he was narrowing his focus, he dropped Douglas’s photo. Trying to catch it, he stepped on a fallen leaf and lost his balance.
It was March in the mountains, and beneath the shade, old leaves still held patches of ice and snow.
“Ah—”
Before he could even cry out, he rolled down the slope.
“Beopsa-nim!”
The documentary team shouted when they saw Kang-to.
He rolled for more than twenty meters before finally catching on a large pine tree beside a rock and stopping his fall.
“Beopsa-nim!”
Two excavation team members ran down after him.
“Stop.”
Kang-to quickly held them back.
“Team leader.”
The equipment crew, checking the verification devices, went pale. The sensors attached to Kang-to’s body were moving like crazy.
They seemed to hover for a moment at the fear frequency of 18.9 Hz before a low-noise microphone capable of measuring all the way down to 1 Hz blew out completely.
The temporal lobe stimulation was the same. It seemed to reach its limit, and then the equipment went dead.
“This...”
While Harris stood frozen, Kang-to’s spiritual eye was burning more fiercely than ever before.
No thought, no self.
He had reached the balance of yin and yang, becoming one with the wind, the earth, and the water around the ridge.
Within that state, he focused. The spirits were so faint that if he breathed too hard, he would lose their traces. They were the British soldiers he had been longing for all this time.