The Talisman That Opened the Ghost Gate
Ding!
"First floor."
Kang Hyeong-seok stepped into the elevator. By now a police car would be on its way, and the owner of that crushed car was probably crying blood and tears over it. But this was no time to spare either of them a thought.
He looked up at the floor indicator, clenching and unclenching his hand. His palm was clammy with sweat gone cold.
This is bigger than I thought.
Nothing was certain yet. A brick falling out of the sky? He could manage to believe some brat raised with zero discipline had chucked it off the rooftop in the name of a science experiment. But the dread sharpening with every floor the elevator gained was anything but ordinary.
Wooooong. He had only just cleared the eighth floor when—
Jangle-jangle-jangle-jangle-jangle-jangle!
The Mudang Bang-ul — the sacred shaman's bells stowed in his bag — rang like something demented, and Kang Hyeong-seok's heart slammed against his ribs.
Ding! The elevator shuddered to a stop on the ninth floor.
Kang Hyeong-seok stared through the opening doors, eyes stretched wide.
"...Damn it."
Nobody.
Halting for a passenger who did not exist, the elevator waited a few seconds, then slowly closed its doors.
Wooooong. Rising again, the elevator felt for all the world like a cattle truck rolling toward the slaughterhouse.
Kang Hyeong-seok clamped the bag tight against his side and wrenched the zipper open. He didn't know what was happening — only that if he left it alone, it might swell into something genuinely beyond his handling. There was no way he could ride back down now.
Wooooong. Ding! Tenth floor — the elevator stopped once more and the doors slid open. With no one boarding this time either, Kang Hyeong-seok simply shut his eyes, resolved not to look at whatever might be waiting outside.
Wooooong. Ding! Thirteenth floor. He didn't open them. No one boarded, and not the faintest trace of human presence stirred beyond the doors.
"Over capacity. Passengers boarding after this stop, please take the next elevator."
Honestly — the lengths some things would go to.
Kang Hyeong-seok spat a curse and stepped out of the elevator. All that remained was a short climb up the stairwell. Gritting his molars, he pushed through the fire door and took the steps one at a time.
It was nowhere near time for the sun to set. The emergency stairwell even had windows. So why did it feel so utterly black?
It's turning into a haunted house.
A haunted house is a treacherous thing. Ghosts — ghosts that can harm people, that pose a threat to them. Which is why even a brand-new apartment, only a few years old, can become a haunt easily enough.
Thud. Thud. By the bend in the stairs, he drew the sacred bells from his bag.
Unit 1501. Section Chief Shin's place.
Kang Hyeong-seok squeezed his eyes shut, snapped them open, and bounded up the remaining flights in a single burst. Then he punched the passcode Shin Jeong-ah had texted him into the keypad.
Beep-beep-beep! Clunk!
And in that same instant, he understood why Shin Jeong-ah had been afraid to set foot inside her own home. A darkness inside the apartment so complete it felt wrong. The briny reek of ghosts. Money bugs and cockroaches swarming over the walls and ceiling. Shin Jeong-ah's home was a haunted house no human being could live in.
Too fast. It's curdling into a haunt at an abnormal speed.
Kang Hyeong-seok pushed the breath out between thinly parted lips and steadied his grip on the bells.
Protect me, I beg of you. Light the road I walk. Help me do what is right.
Ring-a-ling, ring-a-ling. As the bells poured forth their clear energy, the insects began to shrink back like things in flight.
Shoes still on, Kang Hyeong-seok crossed into Shin Jeong-ah's home.
Ring-a-ling! Ring-a-ling!
Vicious. However potent the bells' protection, he could not shake the thought: this was vicious. He even felt like a man in a diving suit wading into a swamp without end.
Ring-a-ling! Shaking the bells hard, Kang Hyeong-seok opened his mouth.
"Grown old, grown old — ten thousand years of life.
Never to be young again."
Chanting the sacred script, he swept his gaze around the apartment. No evil spirits to be seen. And yet something made itself felt.
"Though heaven is far, the dew still falls at dawn;
though Beijing is far, white hair comes with the passing years."
The things were hiding. Behind the curtains, behind the window glass, beneath the swarming bugs. In the TV unit, under the bed, in the dark between the cabinet doors of the sink. Burrowed with spiteful stubbornness into every place the light couldn't reach and every narrow seam, they glared out at Kang Hyeong-seok.
"Though the road to the dead is far, the moment you breathe your last,
the world beyond your gate becomes the underworld itself."
Yet even to such evil spirits, Kang Hyeong-seok murmured the scripture meant for them.
Ring-a-ling! Ring-a-ling! He rang the bells and bent his mind to the chant for a long while — until he could feel the murky, leaden presence that had seemed impossible to erase draining away, little by little.
But this alone would not settle it. The root of it all was the talisman. He had to find it and destroy it.
"O soul, come forth. Whose soul does this call summon?
The pitiful soul of House Kim's departed.
The soul has come — so we set it in the spirit bowl, and send it on its way."
Kang Hyeong-seok shifted his gaze to the bathroom door. There. The foulest, most crooked energy of all was seeping out from behind it.
Ring-a-ling! Ring-a-ling! Ring-a-ling!
He advanced on the bathroom and flung the door open without a second's hesitation. The insects had entrenched themselves in there as well.
Ring-a-ling!
One forceful shake of the bells and the bugs twisted away in flight — and the mirror they had shrouded emerged into view, along with the talisman on its glass. Kang Hyeong-seok peeled it off then and there, money bugs still writhing across its face.
His face hadn't contorted because of the bugs. It was because he now knew exactly what kind of talisman this was.
That lunatic of a mudang — where did she even get a thing like this?!
A talisman for opening the Ghost Gate. The bathroom, where yin energy ran strongest — and stuck to the mirror, of all places. Shin Jeong-ah's home had been all but destined to become a den of ghosts.
Kang Hyeong-seok flung off the bugs crawling up the back of his hand and sprinted for the kitchen.
Click-click-click-click, fwhoosh! Twisting the gas range alight, he fed the talisman straight into the flame. The thin paper barely waited for the fire before it crumbled into gray ash and oily black smoke.
Click. He shut off the burner and turned his head, one hand braced against the sink.
The Ghost Gate was closed, and he had carried a gut through to its end, abbreviated as it was. The malignant air that had packed the apartment was draining away fast, and the bugs, too, were fleeing the unit.
Ring-a-ling, ring-ring! Shaking the bells like a mudang drawing a ritual ground to its close, Kang Hyeong-seok stepped out of Shin Jeong-ah's apartment for the time being.
Clack! Beep-beep-beep. With the door locked fast behind him, he leaned his back against the wall beside the elevator and glared at her front door.
He had doused the immediate fire, yes. But it was far from over.
That mudang. That deranged bastard. Unless he dealt with that quack first, a great many people were going to end up holding funerals.
"It's over? Already?"
The moment he got into the car, Shin Jeong-ah greeted him with a startled look. Kang Hyeong-seok, settling into the driver's seat with an exhausted face, answered with nothing but a nod.
"H-how did it go? Was the talisman the problem?"
"Let me just rest a moment."
He hadn't meant to let it show, but the fatigue bled through his voice. He had just come back from a house turned haunt; the virulent energy that had needled at him from head to toe left a dull weariness in its wake.
Rustle. Shin Jeong-ah fished a drink out of the convenience store bag resting between the driver's and passenger seats — then twisted the cap open before handing it over.
"Here, drink this first. Your lips are all cracked."
Kang Hyeong-seok sent her a grateful look and accepted it. But he didn't drink right away; he only stared at the bottle for a moment.
She went to the convenience store... dressed like that?
It was hard to picture it of Shin Jeong-ah, who only ever showed herself immaculate. And this drink in his hand ran nearly five thousand won a bottle — steep for convenience-store fare, the kind his hand had never reached for on its own. Who could have guessed it would end up there like this?
"...What, can't drink it? You okay?"
At the worry in her voice, Kang Hyeong-seok shook his head and gulped the drink down. Its gentle sweetness chased the fatigue away, and it felt wonderful.
"Whew. Thank you."
Reading the look in Shin Jeong-ah's eyes, Kang Hyeong-seok went on with the corner of his mouth lifted. "You don't have to worry about the apartment anymore."
"R-really? The ghosts won't come back?"
The ghosts weren't the only problem, though.
Kang Hyeong-seok thought of the apartment crawling with bugs — and of Shin Jeong-ah, so singularly terrified of them — and shook his head. "They won't be coming back."
He saw no need to bring up the bugs.
"Haaah, you really, really went through the wringer today, Assistant Manager Kang."
Shin Jeong-ah, who had endured her own ordeal of worry, began to pour it out. "I mean, honestly, I did think about asking you, but after last time it felt too unfair to you, so I just went to the shrine house I always visit. I never dreamed it would turn into this."
Pressing a clenched fist against her forehead, she looked utterly mortified. "I even came home with a talisman. So how did it come to this...?"
Kang Hyeong-seok's lips flickered. Would it be better to tell her the truth? Or to simply bury it? After a moment's struggle, he let out a sigh and put his decision into words.
"The talisman was the problem."
Only the truth would keep Shin Jeong-ah from ever setting foot in that shrine house again. And only then would Kang Hyeong-seok be spared a day like today twice.
"Huh?"
"That talisman. It was made to call ghosts in. That's why you saw what you saw in your own home."
Shin Jeong-ah's face went rigid, her pupils trembling. She could hardly believe that a talisman she had paid good money for had done all this to her.
"You're sure? It was really the talisman?"
"It stopped once I burned the talisman."
Her face hardened all at once, sparks flying from her eyes. If burning the talisman had truly ended it, then even to her — with her scant knowledge of the shaman's trade — the culprit couldn't have been more obvious.
Kang Hyeong-seok took a swallow of the drink he'd set in the cup holder and started the engine. In that instant, Shin Jeong-ah's eyes demanded to know where he thought he was going.
"Where is that shrine house? I need to see that mudang's face for myself."
He said it wearing a look that promised to plant a fist square in someone's jaw.
"..."
"Tell me honestly. That's the only way there won't be any more victims."
"Assistant Manager Kang."
Her low voice pulled his gaze to her.
"Yes?"
"Wait a bit. I'll change and come back — we're going together."
It was not a face seeking agreement. When Kang Hyeong-seok simply watched her in silence, Shin Jeong-ah climbed out of the car, fury set hard across her face.
"Wait here. I'll be quick."
Kang Hyeong-seok said he would, watching her go. Then he opened his phone and studied the list of shrine houses he'd received from Cheong-geum — the register of fake mudangs Lee Geum-kyeong had compiled. He didn't know whether this place was already on it, or whether a new line was about to be added beneath it. Either way, one thing was certain: this was a mudang who had brought people not aid but harm.
Clunk! When Shin Jeong-ah returned a few minutes later, she was ready for an outing in only the barest sense — a face with just the base layer of makeup, light-wash jeans, a shirt in a pale tone.
Kang Hyeong-seok punched the address she gave him into the navigation.
"Why are you smiling...?" Shin Jeong-ah asked, her voice gone cold. He shook his head as if it were nothing. Damn it. The shrine house Shin Jeong-ah had visited was on Lee Geum-kyeong's list.
The engine rumbled as they pulled out of the apartment complex, and Kang Hyeong-seok spoke.
"Section Chief, one favor to ask."
"Name it."
Thoroughly angry still, by the feel of it — her words came out clipped, shorter than usual.
"From now on, please stay away from shrine houses unless you absolutely have no choice. And if you do go, ask me first."
"Why?"
"Because I'd rather not live through today a second time."
Running errands for a superior on a holiday was no small favor. Whether she'd caught his meaning or not, Shin Jeong-ah held his gaze for a long moment — then drew in a great breath and let it out.
"Got it. I will."
The engine droned on. Through the heavy silence filling the car, Kang Hyeong-seok drove toward the shrine house — and beside him, Shin Jeong-ah kept her lips pressed into a hard line, a time bomb holding in its blast.