A Place Not Permitted
Clunk!
Creeeeeak...
The door had to be opened. There was no telling what waited inside—a demon, or a devil. But whatever it was, it had to be faced.
Creeeeeak...
The iron plate groaned open with a long, heavy scrape, and Shin Yo-sep darted over to help lift the far side.
CLANG! The instant the plate swung wide, air thick with damp and mold rushed up at them.
Darkness without a single thread of light. Cockroaches and centipedes came pouring out in a scuttling flood, and beneath that iron hatch, it felt less like a cellar and more like the road down into hell itself.
"...This is the place, isn't it."
At Shin Yo-sep's groaning question—he could feel it too, something deeply wrong—Kang Hyeong-seok tightened his grip on the sacred shaman's bells and answered.
"Let's go in."
Whatever had to be done, it could only be done inside.
Kang Hyeong-seok set his foot on the stairs leading down, and Shin Yo-sep followed. THUNK. The moment Yo-sep, coming after him, let the iron plate fall shut, the thin wash of moonlight and starlight was cut off, and perfect darkness closed in around them.
The stillness that rose up was so absolute it seemed he might hear not only their breathing but the very blood moving through their veins.
Trusting to the small glow of a phone screen, the two men began to pick their way slowly along the passage. Something—centipede or beetle, impossible to say—rushed past their ankles with a dry, skittering hiss, and the shaman's bells rang on and on, every note thrown back at them by the narrowness of the corridor.
Damp air, walls furred with mold, moss. Somehow, the place felt as though it had never been meant for the living. This was where the faith of those who had once driven South Korea into chaos was kept—a threshold to mugo, the shaman's curse, and godok, the bred venom of the gu—a place that had no right to exist on this earth.
Thud. Thud.
Shin Yo-sep, following close behind, felt much the same. It's cold. His breath left his mouth white and froze in the air.
He knew this sign. Wherever a demon rode an exorcist, the air was always colder than anywhere else—and now, just as it had been back then, that rank stench was needling its way into his nose. Thud. Thud. Which was why this felt exactly like walking the corridor of a building where such a thing lived.
What waited at the end of it? Was the demon they had been chasing down there? And if it was—would this, at long last, be the time he could stand against it?
There was no knowing yet.
"Hold on."
JANGLE!
Kang Hyeong-seok, out in front, shook the shaman's bells hard. In the same instant Shin Yo-sep's feet stopped, and Kang Hyeong-seok aimed his phone light down the far end of the passage.
Where jet-black mold had made its home, something caught the light and threw it back—a mirror, hung at the corridor's end. Because of it, backlight swallowed everything, and they could not tell what stood beyond. But a faint human silhouette was visible.
"...Steel yourself."
Kang Hyeong-seok said, and Shin Yo-sep answered.
"Already done."
The two of them started forward, slowly, toward the end of the passage.
Dum-dum-dum-dum-dum!
The front courtyard of Lee Geum-kyeong's shrine hall. It was the drummer's beat that announced the beginning of the gut, the great shamanic rite.
The hour had come when the bone-white moon, tilting east, poured its light across the yard, and the embers in the fire pit leapt into the air as though dancing.
The piri's reedy cry rose and the cymbals crashed—clang, clang, clang!—as the musicians played their traditional instruments and chanted the sacred verses. And at the very center of it all sat Shin Jeong-ah, hands resting on her knees, wearing the eyes of someone who had swallowed fear by the bucketful.
Yeah. I'm pretty sure I'm screwed.
This gut was on a far, far bigger scale than she had imagined. She'd caught sight of the pig carcass lying barely a few meters away and shuddered, face bloodless—yet she couldn't so much as let her breathing make a sound. Because Lee Geum-kyeong, sweeping the five-colored obanggi banners through the air, was standing right beside her.
Layer the traditional instruments and chanted liturgy on top of all that, and Shin Jeong-ah felt genuinely close to bursting into tears. That was when—
Squeeze.
Cheong-geum, who had come over without a word, took hold of her hand. Then she sent her a look that said I understand, and murmured in a low voice,
"You've nothing to fear."
"Th-that's—"
Cheong-geum tilted her head gently: no need to force any words. And she continued in a small voice.
"You want to help the Young Master, don't you?"
Terrified as she was, Shin Jeong-ah nodded. And Cheong-geum's face folded into a faint, soft smile. With the moon floating behind her and the hearth-fire laying its quiet glow across her features, it was—truth be told—a rather lovely smile.
"Then hold to that thought, and nothing else. And if it grows too heavy, you may give up at any time."
"O-okay."
Shin Jeong-ah answered in a small voice, sneaking glances at Lee Geum-kyeong, who was sinking deeper and deeper into self-oblivion. And then it came.
"Soon, you will take a corrupt power into yourself."
Gulp.
Shin Jeong-ah swallowed hard, and Cheong-geum went on in her calm, level tone.
"There is no need to think of it as a burden. You are not becoming a mudang, and the Master herself said you are well able to endure it."
Strangely, Cheong-geum's voice landed soft and warm, easing something in her chest. Shin Jeong-ah found herself watching her the way one might watch a younger sister from back home—no mudang at all—and Cheong-geum, reading what was in her heart, gave her a small answer.
"You are drawing off a power that could otherwise bring the Young Master harm."
The sharing of pain—something only Shin Jeong-ah, born with the vessel she had, could ever do.
"One last question. Can you do it?"
She had already resolved herself.
"Yes."
It was after Shin Jeong-ah answered, her voice gone heavy, that—
"Eoheoya! Heo-o-o-o!"
FLAP!
Lee Geum-kyeong, her possession now complete, thrust the obanggi banners high, greeting the moon. And the direction she pointed them was toward the place where Kang Hyeong-seok and Shin Yo-sep were.
They had reached the end of the passage.
Kang Hyeong-seok raised his phone and threw its light on the thing before them. A mirror hung on the wall mimicked his motion, flinging the light upward from below, and the wide spill of it glowed faintly, as though embracing everything around.
At the center of the light sat a statue of the Buddha. No—to be exact, something that sat in full lotus like a Buddha.
Drip. Drip.
Shin Yo-sep's nose let loose a stream of blood, and Kang Hyeong-seok, too, caught the copper smell of it rising from deep inside his own.
What kind of venom is this...
An aura beyond words, and it was lethally, viciously strong. Like looking upon some abomination distilled from pure malice.
Breathing through his mouth alone, Kang Hyeong-seok stared at the statue. Arms, legs, and torso thin as a mummy's. The skin had blackened and decayed, yet the thing was adorned in ornate gilded trappings. Crimson silk masked its head—its face could not be seen.
I saw it in the revelation.
He couldn't swear whether the thing was a sokushinbutsu—a monk mummified alive into a Buddha—or a man deified in death. But this was the grotesque statue his Momjusin had shown him in his dreams, and now it stood unveiled before his eyes, in the real world.
This thing was a god. An evil one—a baleful one. A monster.
Kang Hyeong-seok swept his phone light across the black soot smeared around the statue, then turned his gaze back to it.
JANGLE!
"Who is it that dwells there?"
A god was in this place. So an answer would come, by whatever means it chose.
"Speak! What is your name!"
As Kang Hyeong-seok's roar tore out of him, Shin Yo-sep's lips pressed tightly shut. Blood had spread along them, and salt coated his tongue; his head swam dizzily.
And then—
"Heok!"
Shin Yo-sep sucked in a breath and, shuddering, stared at the soot ringing the statue. The soot was moving—writhing like a swarm of insects. Then it gathered itself into Chinese characters and flooded the walls, and Kang Hyeong-seok could read at least part of the passage.
The Donggyeong Daejeon...?
It was the great scripture of Donghak, the Eastern Learning. The characters were far too vivid to be a hallucination, and Kang Hyeong-seok had only just turned his eyes back to the statue when—
the foul stench that had been thrumming through the passage since they entered surged into something unbearable.
"Urk! U-urgh!"
Shin Yo-sep broke into violent retching, clutching his chest, his face wrung with agony.
"Kgh!"
Kang Hyeong-seok's body, too, was turning against him. Blood seeped from his bloodshot eyes like tears, and a fierce pain raked through his face as though a white-hot awl were being dragged along its inside.
The evil god was manifesting itself here.
Kang Hyeong-seok hurriedly shook the shaman's bells to shield his body.
Rattle-rattle-rattle.
But crushed under that ominous power, the sacred bells gave off only a dead, muffled clatter of metal. They would not ring.
Flap! Flap!
Sweat beaded fine on Lee Geum-kyeong's forehead as she waved the banners.
Dum-dum-dum-dum! Clang-clang-clang!
The musicians drove their instruments faster and harder, winding the air tighter and tighter. Something was about to begin.
Shin Jeong-ah swallowed drily, and Cheong-geum clasped her hand with all her strength. Nor was she the only one strung taut, it seemed—the hand wrapped over her own was trembling, just barely.
Flap!
Lee Geum-kyeong swept the banners wide through the air as though catching something out of it, then turned her body toward Shin Jeong-ah. And she began to approach with slow, deliberate steps.
Their eyes met; Cheong-geum squeezed her hand once, hard, and nodded—and Shin Jeong-ah, wearing the same grave expression, nodded back.
And as Cheong-geum withdrew, Lee Geum-kyeong shook the obanggi banners out over Shin Jeong-ah's head. It was a washing of the body—and a bidding, that the power should enter her.
Shin Jeong-ah squeezed her eyes shut.
Ah.
The feeling arrived all at once, uncannily familiar. Close to what she had felt receiving the Great Dokkaebi: the sense of herself shrinking while something else filled her up from the inside. The only difference was that this felt vastly more savage—and vastly more ill-omened.
"Ugh! Aaaagh!"
Shin Jeong-ah clutched her chest and went down. In the same breath, Lee Geum-kyeong drove her palm down onto her forehead, pinning her fast so she could not thrash. The strength corded in that hand seemed to say everything. Endure it. Just a little longer—endure.
"AAAAAAGH!"
Shin Jeong-ah arched and twisted beneath her, screaming, and a few of the musicians groaned, their hands slowing. At once Cheong-geum strode over to them, gesturing sharply: keep playing—now. Shrieeek! Dum-dum-dum-dum-dum! The faltering music surged back up to speed.
"AAAAAAAAGH!"
Shin Jeong-ah writhed, pouring out animal screams, and Lee Geum-kyeong's hand bore down on her harder still.
And then—
Thump.
The strength drained out of Shin Jeong-ah's raging body all at once. A musician flinched and looked at her; Cheong-geum ran her tongue over a mouth gone dry; Lee Geum-kyeong's lips pressed into a hard, sealed line.
The gut had not failed.
A great power had most certainly crossed over to this side. And Shin Jeong-ah was holding it fast in her grip.
"Ssssssss."
A breath laced with the reek of fish-blood gushed from between Shin Jeong-ah's thinly parted lips. And then, out of her mouth, a murky, low voice began to pour.
"So the ones who ply their exorcisms have arrived at a place they were never permitted."
Shin Jeong-ah, who had taken the god's power into herself, let tears of blood fall as a baleful smile curled across her face.