A Vessel on Four Legs
"So you came alone?"
The next day, three in the afternoon. Kang Hyeong-seok had come to Shinjin Construction, and there in the smoking area the two of them met alone.
"That's how it worked out," Hyeong-seok replied, thumb sliding down the side of the canned coffee in his hand.
Right up until he left Daejeong Mulsan, Shin Jeong-ah had been at his side. Kwak Young-ho had even seen the two of them off, telling them to travel safe and come back sound. And yet Hyeong-seok had come to meet Shin Yo-sep alone.
Tap, tap. Ash flicked from his cigarette, Shin Yo-sep drew in a breath deep enough to swell his chest before speaking.
"Where is she now?"
"At the shrine hall. A place we can trust."
Shin Jeong-ah had asked to be entrusted to Lee Geum-kyeong's shrine hall. Fortunately, Cheong-geum and Lee Geum-kyeong had granted her request, and so she now found herself, of all things, staying up in the mountains.
"...I see."
"You can set your mind at ease."
Hyeong-seok took another sip of coffee, then shifted his gaze to Shin Yo-sep.
"So there's no need to make that face."
"...What face?"
Shin Yo-sep answered with a flicker of a smile, but the weight in his eyes had not lifted.
Three had become two. Shin Jeong-ah was no shaman, but she knew how to play the part of an ally — should some sudden crisis erupt, she would have been a real help. With her gone, perhaps that was what sat so heavily on him.
"Before I left, the Grand Shaman said something. She told me it doesn't matter where the body is."
Shin Yo-sep looked at him as if to ask what on earth that meant, and Hyeong-seok shook his head. He couldn't claim to grasp Lee Geum-kyeong's words with any precision either. And yet it felt like the right answer. There was the revelation his Momjusin had left with him, and there had been that look in Lee Geum-kyeong's eyes — the look of someone who knew.
"I suppose she means it's the heart that matters."
In the end, it came down to deliverance. Those entranced by the cult. Those already suffering harm. Those yet to suffer it. The whole point was their salvation — and so long as the heart did not waver, nothing else mattered.
Hyeong-seok was ready for that.
"Shall we go?"
He said it with an eye on the cigarette burned down to little more than a stub; Shin Yo-sep dropped his into the ashtray and started walking. That stride, without an ounce of hesitation, seemed to say he, too, was ready.
Vrrroooom.
The journey was made in Shin Yo-sep's car. In the back seat sat Hyeong-seok's bag of ritual implements, with Shin Yo-sep's briefcase beside it.
Oink. Squeal. Oink-oink.
And a black piglet, too. Unfamiliar with the moving car, it squealed and shuffled back and forth across the seat, holding their attention to a frankly ridiculous degree.
"Why did you bring a pig?"
"Because we might need an exorcism," Shin Yo-sep answered from behind the wheel, sunglasses on. "I know it's distracting. But the rite calls for one."
"It's going to draw far too much attention."
Shin Yo-sep clicked his tongue, his face saying he had troubles enough of his own. "Well, what can I do? It doesn't quiet down just because I tell it to."
Apparently, he had already tried.
Hyeong-seok watched the piglet roam the back seat, gave a small shake of his head, and turned his eyes away. If there truly was a demon, he knew exactly what would become of that pig.
It's a life meant to end anyway — no reason to treat it too cruelly.
In the rite of exorcism, the pig becomes the vessel that receives the demon. Its name is called out; it is driven from the Bumaja's body; it is sealed inside the pig. And then the pig is killed. Such was the exorcism — sending the demon back to where it belongs.
"A far cry from your ways, isn't it?"
Shin Yo-sep spoke up in a tone that said he could guess exactly what Hyeong-seok was thinking.
"We deal in different beings, for one. And our side draws blood too, when it has to."
The Daesal Gut was proof of that — the great blade-warding rite in which knives hurtling through the air are caught instead upon a pig's carcass. Rituals employing living animals existed as well, and in those cases a pig, a chicken, or a goat was the usual choice.
Vrrrooom. Grunt, oink-oink.
With the drone of the engine and the pig's fussing in his ears, Hyeong-seok cast his gaze out the window. It really was a remote place. From the road twisting like a serpent onward, he felt severed from the world beyond. Mountains packed dense with trees pressed close, walling out outsiders like a rampart — and the sense that they were headed somewhere truly sinister grew all too real.
"Might be no time later, so I'll say this now."
It was after Shin Yo-sep's words, spoken with his eyes fixed straight ahead, tugged Hyeong-seok's gaze back to him.
"I'll handle all the outside-facing activity."
Hyeong-seok held his eyes and gave a heavy nod, and Shin Yo-sep ran his tongue along the inside of his mouth before continuing. "In the meantime, you go wander around. I brought surveying equipment and some temporary business cards — use them for your cover."
The request was plain enough: while Shin Yo-sep drew the eyes, Hyeong-seok was to be the one moving. It certainly felt like the most efficient arrangement, and Hyeong-seok let out a breath as he answered.
"Understood."
"If anything happens, call the number on that card. Someone who can help will pick up."
A secretary? An aide? Having someone watching his back felt something like a safety belt. Hyeong-seok scrubbed a hand down his face and pushed out a hot breath through his fingers. The farther the car ran, the closer they came to the end of this road, the more an indescribable dread gathered around him.
Is this what it's like, going up against the living?
Not evil spirits. Living people. It was the first time he had set out for a village teeming with them, and Hyeong-seok felt his nerves sharpening finer than usual.
Thunk!
Squeee! Eeeek!
At the pig's hysterical wailing as they crossed the speed bump, out of Hyeong-seok came something like a sigh. "Is that pig really going to be all right?"
Shin Yo-sep, evidently without a clean answer, only dragged his face into a grim grimace.
Oink, squeal, grunt!
In the end, the pig had been stowed in a portable dog crate. Add the leash on top of that, and at a passing glance it might almost pass for a pet.
"Not bad."
To Hyeong-seok holding the crate, Shin Yo-sep tipped his sunglasses down and shot him a brief, apologetic look. Then, with lips alone, he mouthed: keep it down. They had already entered the village.
Vroooooom.
The car gliding past him, the old folk tapping along on their canes, even the parking attendants — all of them seemed to be watching the two men. Even the low-rise buildings seemed to be in on it. Cradling the crated pig, Hyeong-seok followed Shin Yo-sep while sweeping the village with sidelong glances.
It was the very picture of a town on the outer edge of Gyeonggi Province, and the strangely stuffy air told him this was no pure countryside, either.
Step. Shin Yo-sep stopped in front of the district office and extended his hand. "I'll be in touch. Just have the survey ready to go, and we'll regroup later."
"Yes, Executive Director."
Hyeong-seok answered, keenly aware of the people in the smoking area nearby staring openly their way.
Step, step. Shin Yo-sep carried the crated pig into the district office, and Hyeong-seok moved off with the bag of surveying gear hugged to his side — a backpack slung over his shoulders on top of it. As a result, no one who saw him would take him for a mere out-of-towner. He looked like a man with work to do.
First things first... somewhere high.
The maps one could check online were years out of date. Hyeong-seok searched bus routes on his phone and boarded the one bound for the highest mountain in the area.
Beep.
Fare paid by phone, he deliberately took the very last seat. This would not be easy — in any number of ways. The passengers' stares, stares no stretch of it's just your imagination could explain away, clung to him. That alone said enough.
A Bible?
One old woman clutching a Bible watched him with singular intensity; he forced himself to feign indifference and fixed his gaze out the window.
A village where a cult had put down roots. A village that might harbor human offerings — or worse.
Chin propped in his hand, Hyeong-seok watched the scenery drift past. Among the passing buildings stood a shabby commercial block with the faded word CHURCH painted across its third floor. That one wouldn't be it. What he sought would be hidden far more discreetly — or else raised, defiant and garish, for all the world to see.
Tsk.
Clicking his tongue, Hyeong-seok leaned his head against the window. It was the hour when evening begins to close in. The sun-baked glass was warm to the touch, and the rickety village bus jolted along hard enough to stir motion sickness. Was his lack of hunger the work of nerves honed razor-sharp? Or of the feeling that he had been swallowed into someone's stomach?
Hiss—!
Reaching his stop, Hyeong-seok tapped his phone to the fare terminal and stepped down. Just before the doors closed, he glanced at his phone, its screen gone dark. Reflected in that mirror-like surface was the face of someone thrusting their head out, staring straight at him.
His breath caught, hitching in his throat.
Hiss. Grooooan. Even after the bus sealed its doors and pulled away, Hyeong-seok stood rooted to the spot for a long moment before his feet finally moved.
The air hung sticky. The cracked paving stones, weeds sprouting between them, seemed to clutch at his soles. Hyeong-seok opened his bag, drew out a tripod, and tucked it under his arm with deliberate care. Then, radiating an air of just here on business, he started up the path marked as a hiking trail.
Crack! Crunch!
The trail was in miserable shape. Darkness was falling fast around him, and the wooden steps laid into the slope had rotted through in patches — climbing them felt like walking on corpses.
"Hoooh!"
Partway up the mountainside, Hyeong-seok stopped. Only after confirming no one else was around did he unfold the tripod.
Click.
What went on top was a camera, painted gray so that any stranger would take it for a surveyor's level. Hyeong-seok aimed the lens at the village spread out far below and zoomed. Like peering down the length of a telescope, the digital camera stretched his vision, and the whole of the village came into fine detail.
It's down there somewhere. It has to be.
The cult's congregation, its gathering place, some concealed corner — any of them would do. Show yourselves.
As dusk stole over the mountains by slow degrees, Hyeong-seok kept scanning the village through the lens. And that was when it happened.
He caught sight of a group of people getting off a bus, and carefully eased the camera toward wherever they were headed. Before long he found it: a building bearing no sign of any kind.
What is that?
Whish. Whirrr. He swept the lens left and right, but whether the local commerce had died out long ago, nothing else stood out. Which only made it more suspicious — that so many people had alighted all at once, in a backwater like this.
Vrrreee.
Zooming in farther, Hyeong-seok frowned. He had watched the people file into the building. But tinted film laid over the glass kept the interior perfectly hidden.
Whatever it is, that place is the strongest lead.
Click, click, click!
He photographed the building, then pulled his eye from the camera. He was just about to save its location into the map application when he heard a familiar sound.
Creeeak.
Old wooden steps creaking under someone's weight. As the sound drew steadily nearer, Hyeong-seok switched off his phone and turned his eyes toward the stairs.
Creak. Cre-eak.
The footsteps were coming closer.