The Face Beneath the Red Cloth
"Did you hear it?"
At Kang Hyeong-seok's question, Shin Yo-sep nodded. He had heard it too—the voice that had come from the Buddha statue.
Shin Jeong-ah had taken the statue's power into herself, and so its voice could be heard in two places at once: wherever she stood, and wherever Kang Hyeong-seok was.
The air was growing lighter. With the god's power divided between two vessels, the thick stench and the oppressive aura were dying down, and the blood running from his eyes and nose was finally beginning to stop.
Clang!
The voice of the bells had returned as well. His face far easier than before, Kang Hyeong-seok wiped the blood from around his eyes and stared at the red cloth veiling the statue's face.
"Your tricks won't work anymore."
However wicked this being might be, its arms and legs had been severed in all but name—it could no longer inflict harm directly. But there was not much time. The cultists who worshipped this statue could come pouring in at any moment, and everything had to be finished before Shin Jeong-ah's strength gave out.
"Reveal your true identity!"
It was the very moment Kang Hyeong-seok's cry rang out.
Clatter.
The ornaments on the statue knocked against one another. And then its voice began to sound.
"—I am a savior. A divine immortal."
"That is not your name. Tell me your name!"
"—Pitiful creature. I stand before you—what is there to doubt?"
Gritting his teeth, he turned his gaze to Shin Yo-sep. Yo-sep returned a grave nod and stepped forward.
"Mando in nomine Domini Iesu Christi. Quod est nomen tuum (I command in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ—what is your name!)”
Having demanded its name in Latin, he twisted his lips at the statue's silence.
"Tell me your name. What manner of thing are you!"
He tried Cantonese this time, then Japanese after that, but the statue showed no reaction whatsoever.
Not a demon, then.
And yet the unholy aura wafting off the thing was far too thick for it to be anything else. Just as Yo-sep's eyes wavered, a thin voice flowed from the statue.
"—So you are one steeped in the Lord of Heaven's learning. Catholicism, as you call it these days."
The next instant, a hiss burst from beneath the statue—Shaaah! Jet-black vipers came writhing out from under the altar. The appearance of beasts was the sign of a demon's manifestation. Startled, Yo-sep looked to the statue, but the vipers' incessant hissing kept trying to drag his gaze away.
So he looked, instead, at the figure reflected in the mirror behind the statue. A jet-black face on a blurred frame. A face hooded in a black robe, grinning through bared, yellowed teeth.
"Amon, Botis, Asmodeus!"
He invoked the demons bound to serpents, but no answer came.
"Astaroth, Orias! Speak! What is your name!"
He shouted in desperation, and the vipers answered by baring snow-white fangs. Yo-sep's face twisted, and he breathed out something like a groan.
It is entangled with a demon.
This statue was unquestionably under the influence of something demonic. Whether the demon had latched on simply because its makers were cultists, or had been bound to it from the very start, he could not yet say. But the sinister aura seeping from the thing could be explained no other way.
"—I am the son of God, the one who shall lead the multitudes to the land of the immortals."
Hissssss! The vipers coiled as if to strike, and Kang Hyeong-seok hauled Shin Yo-sep back behind him, shaking the shaman bells.
Clang-clang-clang!
Then, staring the snakes down, he spoke in a low voice. "Pray. I'll protect you."
Yo-sep clenched his jaw hard, then forced his lips apart.
"In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of God, and of Saint Michael the Archangel, and of the Apostle Saint Peter..."
Shaaaah!
Even through the vipers' threatening hiss, Yo-sep carried the prayer on. "...and through the intercession of Saint Paul and of all the saints, we take our stand to battle against the temptations and snares of Satan."
One hand pressed to his breast as he offered the prayer, Yo-sep looked wholly devout. Kang Hyeong-seok watched him in silence, then turned his eyes to the snakes and opened his mouth.
"A thousand kalpas of heaven, a thousand kalpas of earth—by sacred decree, slay the spirit! Great Kings of the Five Directions—by sacred decree, slay the spirit! Generals of the Five Directions—by sacred decree, slay the spirit! Dragon Kings of the Four Seas—by sacred decree, slay the spirit!"
"Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered; let those who hate Him flee from before His face."
Shaaaah!
The vipers hissed as if to choke the words from their mouths, but prayer and sacred chant flowed on without rest. At last the serpents glared at the two men as if in hatred, coiling beneath the altar or vanishing from sight altogether.
"As smoke vanishes away, as wax melts before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God."
"Azure Dragon and White Tiger—by sacred decree, slay the spirit! Vermilion Bird and Black Tortoise—by sacred decree, slay the spirit! Eight Spirits of the Marsh—by sacred decree, slay the spirit! Hidden Dragon rising from the earth—by sacred decree, slay the spirit!"
Little by little. Ever so little by little. Prayer and chant punched through the statue's aura and bore it down.
Suddenly, Yo-sep remembered a voice.
'Yo-sep.'
It was his senior's voice. The warm voice of the senior priest who had lost his life because Yo-sep had fled in the middle of an exorcism.
'Why do you want to become an exorcist?'
'Is there supposed to be a reason?'
'No one becomes an exorcist without a reason. It's hard, it earns you no recognition, and it hurts. You're cursed and hunted by demons for the rest of your life.'
Back then, Yo-sep had not been able to face his senior. He had been afraid his paltry little heart would be seen through.
Born into a fine family. A future settled without his ever choosing it. A priest who had come to hate it all. The exorcist's road he had taken, wanting to be special—if only a little. In the end, he had become an exorcist not for others, but for himself.
He was ashamed of the petty feelings he could not confess even to God—and of the noble cause that had never existed from the start.
'Well—whatever the reason, there will be many people who need you from now on.'
'Yes...'
'Live so that you need not be ashamed before them.'
Yo-sep screwed both eyes shut.
"Forgive me, Father. I will carry this shame until the very moment I die. My own inadequacy killed you, and it has cast me into hell. I doubt I will ever manage to live as you told me to—not for all the rest of my days."
Thump. Shin Yo-sep walked toward the vipers.
"Unclean spirit, whoever you are, we cast you out—you and every power of the devil, every assault of the enemies of hell, every legion of the devil, his leagues and his sects!"
The vipers that remained looked up at Yo-sep, red tongues flickering. Then they turned their heads and, bodies twisting like a rippling wave, slid back into hiding beneath the altar.
Now every last snake was gone.
"I'll take it from here."
Yo-sep nodded and stepped back. And Kang Hyeong-seok closed his eyes, the Sinjangkal and the shaman bells gripped in his hands.
Fixing the statue with his spiritual eye rather than his sight, he slowly parted his lips.
"You wear the form of a Buddha, yet you are not a Buddha."
His voice echoed through the chamber, but the statue could not answer.
"Your shaman wears the form of a pastor, yet you did not answer to prayer."
This time, too, the statue kept its silence.
"You are a coward who hides his face."
Tink-tink-tink-tink.
The statue itself never stirred, yet the metal ornaments strung all over it were trembling.
"Speak! What is your true form, and for what purpose have you appeared in this land!"
Shaking the shaman bells, Kang Hyeong-seok leveled the Sinjangkal at the statue's face. "If you will not speak, I will destroy you!"
The answer came at once.
"—Ha, hahaha. Hahahahaha."
The statue had begun to laugh. The ornaments rattled as if they would shatter on the spot, and the red cloth over its face flapped wildly. Yo-sep swallowed a dry mouthful as he watched it all, and Kang Hyeong-seok opened his eyes to glare the statue down.
"Speak!"
And then—
Crrreak.
A sound like dry wood being wrung came from the statue's joints, and the statue began to lift its body. It was a statue built from a corpse that had died decades ago. It should not have been able to move. And yet, standing atop the altar, it looked down on Kang Hyeong-seok and Shin Yo-sep.
"—I am the heir of the great Donghak, the Eastern Learning, the one who shall fill the world in white. I am the light, the truth, and the salvation."
Yo-sep's face crumpled into a tangle of emotions. And through it all, Kang Hyeong-seok raised his voice even louder.
"Baekbaekgyo is no more! Those who believed in you are gone, and the world has forgotten Baekbaekgyo!"
He gathered his breath for a moment, then set to his lips the name rising in his mind.
"Jeon Yong-hae, cult leader of Baekbaekgyo! Is that your name?!"
The man who had led Baekbaekgyo. The man who had ended his own life the moment his countless crimes were laid bare to the world—and whose head was then severed by the Japanese colonial authorities. That head was said to have been cremated on October 25, 2011. But one could never be certain. The present cult leader might well have recovered it before the flames and fashioned this very statue from it.
"—Hahahaha, hahahahahahaha!"
The statue's laughter rang out until it felt as if his skull would split. Then came a low voice, every last emotion scoured from it.
"—He styled himself the son of God."
Kang Hyeong-seok's face went rigid.
Not Jeon Yong-hae?
Then who was this statue? Who on earth was the being served by the cultist who had carried on Baekbaekgyo?
Just as Kang Hyeong-seok watched the statue with eyes stretched wide in bewilderment—
"—That is why I am a god. Foolish one, look upon me. I am the one who shall grant you rest."
The statue's voice poured straight into his mind, striking like a demon's. But he had no intention of yielding.
Kang Hyeong-seok set the Sinjangkal between his teeth. Then he reached out, slowly—toward the red cloth veiling the statue's face. Yo-sep watched, careful even of his own breathing, until Kang Hyeong-seok's fingertips reached the red cloth.
Whoosh!
He tore the red cloth away in a single motion—and felt his breath catch in his chest. Skin black as pitch, dried and shriveled like a mummy's. Two hollow sockets punched into the face where eyes should have been. And a line of sutures running across the neck.
The head and the body belong to different men.
Drawing air through his mouth, Kang Hyeong-seok stared up at the statue's head. At last, he thought he understood. Who this being was.
"It wasn't Baekbaekgyo."
Yo-sep gave him a baffled look, but Kang Hyeong-seok kept his eyes on the statue's head and murmured, almost like a groan.
"Jeon Jeong-un. Father of Jeon Yong-hae—and leader of Baekdogyo."
The cult that had been the root of Baekbaekgyo. The head of a religion that, like Baekbaekgyo after it, had murdered human beings and plundered the wealth of its followers. Jeon Yong-hae's head was destroyed, gone from the world. Which meant the head set atop that body had to be Jeon Jeong-un's. The father—the cult leader—had taken his son's body. The wicked man, venerated as a god, had become an evil god, perfected in the form of a Buddha statue.
Just as the eyes of Kang Hyeong-seok—who now knew the thing's entire nature—began to tremble—
THOOM!
From somewhere far away, the iron plate sealing this place's entrance boomed like a struck bell.
The shamans were trying to get in.