The Serpent in the Storm
Pop!
The umbrella Lee Nak-yul flung open rang out with a loud snap.
Behind her stood Kang Hyeong-seok and Kim Jae-sik, each with a bag of shamanic tools slung over a shoulder, and a little further back sat the low dinner table, three emptied rice bowls stacked upon it.
"Professor, I'll walk her home and come right back."
"Yes, yes. Be careful out there."
"I will. And just in case — please keep the door locked!"
"Do I look like a child to you? Well then, Nak-yul — thank you kindly. That was a truly delicious meal."
Lee Nak-yul looked at Kim Jae-sik and smiled without a sound.
Kim Jae-sik then pressed an umbrella into Kang Hyeong-seok's hand with a word of farewell — come back safe.
Thud.
The door closed.
Under an umbrella apiece, Kang Hyeong-seok and Lee Nak-yul walked through the pitch-black village.
Shaaaaa, tat-tat-tat-tat!
The rain still fell in heavy ropes. The umbrella trembled so violently it felt as though countless wandering dead were knocking at it from outside.
"Seeing me home is one thing, but..."
Her voice was small, threaded through the rain and the dark.
"No. Something was weighing on me, that's all."
"What was?"
"The thought of you walking back alone, for one..."
Kang Hyeong-seok swallowed the rest for a breath, then let it out.
"What you told me in the kitchen, too."
Leave this village before the holiday ends. That's the only way you'll live.
That was what Lee Nak-yul had said to him.
"I meant exactly what I said."
"Then — are you, by any chance, a mudang?"
At that, Lee Nak-yul's head turned toward Kang Hyeong-seok with a speed that bordered on unnatural.
"I beg your pardon?"
"You don't appear to have received a god, so I wondered whether you might be a hereditary shaman."
There was nothing ordinary about the presence that hung around Lee Nak-yul, and the things she chose to say were heavy with meaning.
Here in Chungcheongnam-do, with the sea so near, traditional village rites might well still be kept — and the ones who presided over such rites were hereditary shamans.
"Why would you think that?"
"The look in your eyes."
A mudang's fate is a sorrowful one. However far the road you longed to walk, you had to lay it down. Hereditary shamans above all passed the calling down the family line, which meant they could be said to have their dreams stolen from them the moment they were born.
"Hmhm."
Lee Nak-yul laughed low and shook her head.
"They told me you were a remarkable mudang. I see you don't know everything after all."
"So you're not, then?"
"No, I'm not."
Her eyes were still sad at their edges, but they were bent now into a smile.
"People only ever said, when I was little, that I had a touch of Sin-gamul — a sensitivity to the other side."
"So that's why you told me to leave."
"Yes."
She said it with feeling caught every which way, and smiled bitterly.
"It doesn't feel right. It's as if the rain were swallowing this village whole — as if everything is going to be devoured."
"And that will be the end of this holiday."
"Perhaps."
Lee Nak-yul's expression looked pained, somewhere deep down.
"So leave, even a day sooner. While you still have the chance. Tonight would be better still."
"..."
What must it feel like? If her own words held true, Lee Nak-yul could die here too. And yet she told others to flee, while showing not the first sign of leaving herself.
"And you have no thought of leaving with us?"
"And where would I go?"
Lee Nak-yul said it bleakly and turned toward him.
"I'll go in from here."
"Get inside safely."
"Thank you for seeing me back."
Lee Nak-yul bowed deep to Kang Hyeong-seok and moved away, the wet slap of her footsteps fading into the rain. He watched until she had gone inside her house, and only then turned.
She is no ordinary person.
Looked at one way, her case might be a great deal like Shin Jeong-ah's. Not a mudang's fate — but a fate bound to live a life shaped very like a mudang's. That might be what Lee Nak-yul was.
"Hooo—!"
Kang Hyeong-seok breathed out long and hard, and hitched the pack higher on his back. Inside it, the Sinjangkal and the shaman bells knocked together with a sullen clink of steel.
Then he turned his gaze and looked in a certain direction.
Not toward the village hall where Kim Jae-sik was waiting.
The coast.
The line where sea met land. And once night fell and the dark swallowed it, that line crumbled — which was why the coast at midnight was a dangerous place. Never more so than on a night like this one, when a towering rain had hammered down for hours.
Squelch.
Even so, Kang Hyeong-seok set his steps toward the coast.
I have to see it for myself.
What had killed the cattle. What was taking human lives on top of them. What meant to swallow this village whole.
I'll confirm it with these two eyes of mine.
Squelch, squelch.
The closer he came to the sea, the deeper the road sucked at his feet — the sand soaked clean through with rain and seawater both.
Dum-dum-dum-dum-dum!
Under an umbrella that rang without pause in the driving rain, Kang Hyeong-seok moved along the coast, looking out at the sea as he went. No shoreline showed itself. The border between water and sand was no different.
With weather like this, not even a fishing boat was out; the sea had drowned entirely in the night.
"Thus spoke the Most High: O sovereign heaven above, O hallowed earth below, O sun and moon in their courses, O stars in their shining host!"
Muttering the scripture that shielded his body, Kang Hyeong-seok drew his gaze back from the sea. Then, walking the line of the shore, he took out his phone.
"O host of immortals arising, O spirits of the Lord of Lifespan, O Great One descending, O jade spirits arriving, O treasures of the Three Offices!"
The cattle of the village sheds had died like dominoes falling, one after another. Something had flown in among them — and by that thing's hand they had been slaughtered.
"O Five Emperors encountered, O North Star exalted, O Southern Pole encountered, O golden youths attending, O jade maidens bowing low!"
What is it?
"O Six Jia standing fast, O Six Ding arrayed in ranks, O gates of heaven swinging wide, O envoys through the gates of earth, O dragons of mountain and marsh!"
Will I be able to find it?
"Descend and arrive! Send down the wind and rain! Let thunder and lightning follow in order! Let the Eight Trigrams obey, and the Nine Palaces conceal!"
The thing that killed the village's cattle — and its people besides...
"Yin and yang follow after, the five elements bow, the four seasons come to fullness, my word inscribed — the mystery of the Great Clarity made plain!"
Will I be able to face it?
Squelch. The sand gave way softly and closed around his shoes. Kang Hyeong-seok checked the map on his phone one more time, swung the pack around to his front, and drew out the shaman bells.
Wara-rara-rang!
The moment he shook the bells—
A blinding flash!
Lightning struck the sea nearby, briefly lighting everything around him before it died away.
KRRRARARARARUM!
The thunder that chased it shook his body and the air with savage force.
Wara-rang!
Shaking the bells, he swept his eyes across the dark. The storm had burned the terrain he'd glimpsed for a heartbeat into his memory.
Where. Where did it begin.
Hunting the culprit's lair, ringing the bells over the black coast, Kang Hyeong-seok saw yet another bolt come down.
KUUUGUGUGUNG!
The boom arriving late on its heels set his umbrella shivering in his grip.
And his gaze locked on a single point.
A cave.
Not far away stood a natural cavern — one nature had plainly spent a very long age carving with patient care.
Slosh-slosh-slosh!
The cave was up above. Off the sandy beach, he broke into a run up the rocky hill where it sat.
KRRRARUM! KRRRARUM!
What did thunder raging this violently mean? A warning? Or a god's will, bidding him hurry?
"Hah! Hah!"
Run any faster and the rain would pour straight into his throat and make even breathing a struggle. Still Kang Hyeong-seok kept driving toward the cave — until at last he stood before its mouth.
A Geumjul had been strung across the entrance — the sacred taboo rope of hand-twisted straw.
KRRRARARARUM!
It was old far beyond touching. Beach fleas crawled over the rope, blackened to its heart, and the white cloths knotted into it had grayed to rags — several gone altogether.
Kang Hyeong-seok looked past the rope, into the cave.
What is this place...
It was venomous. Venomous was the only word for it. Something was certainly inside — a density and weight to the air that made him hesitate at the threshold.
Gulp.
He swallowed the rain that had run into his mouth, spit and all. He was reaching the shaman bells forward when—
MmmoooOOOO!
From far away, the scream of a cow.
"Damn it all—!"
It had started again. The dying, in the cattle shed.
Kang Hyeong-seok swung his head toward the sound and threw himself into a run — though his heart stayed behind in the cave. From the most suspicious place of all, there had been no reaction.
What? What in God's name is the problem here?
It was enough to drive a man mad. He had no read at all on what was bound up with this village — couldn't even guess what was carving flesh from its people.
"Aaagh!"
A man in a yellow raincoat thrown on in haste jolted backward in alarm.
"I-Isn't that you, Master Shaman? What are you doing all the way out here—"
The man was the Youth President.
"More importantly — I just heard a cow cry. Where?"
"Y-yes, sir! P-please follow me!"
The Youth President ran splashing through the rain in an awkward half-crouch, his rubber boots apparently troubling him, and Kang Hyeong-seok followed on his heels with the shaman bells clutched hard in his fist.
This shed lay in a different direction from the one he'd seen before. He flew up stone steps as if on wings and cleared in a single leap the stretch the rain had melted into mud.
"Aghh! Hhh—hhuk!"
Left behind at some point, the Youth President made a sound of near-suffocation and waved for him to please go on ahead. Kang Hyeong-seok nodded and ran for the shed standing in the distance.
The door flew open!
MMMOOOOOWWW!
If hell existed, would it look like this? The inside of the cattle shed was terrible enough to make him think so.
"Ah, aaaaah..."
The shed's owner, his soul drained clean out of him, could only weep thick tears, while the fallen cattle heaved their bellies and dragged in ragged breaths. Great eyes rolled white, tongues hanging long and dark, like the hanged.
Full-grown beasts, calves barely born — none were spared.
They were dying.
"Ulp!"
Kang Hyeong-seok clapped a hand over his mouth against the gag that came surging up. The stench was dreadful — a raw, fishy reek unlike the corpse-stink of the dead. The same bloody smell he had caught at the other shed.
"Please — anything — please, anything at all..."
The shed owner's voice, murmuring from somewhere far away, was the only thing keeping his mind anchored.
Wara-rara-rara-rang!
Kang Hyeong-seok shook the bells hard, then hastily drew the Sinjangkal as well. The bells alone would not be enough for this.
Ssaaat—!
Bells in one hand, Sinjangkal in the other, he began reciting the scripture at speed.
"Homage to the Azure Empress of the East, Sovereign God of Dalseong! Homage to the Crimson Empress of the South, Sovereign God of Dalseong!"
Wara-rang! Wara-rang! — the shriek of something wicked!
"Homage to the White Empress of the West, Sovereign God of Dalseong! Homage to the Black Empress of the North, Sovereign God of Dalseong!"
With every line of the scripture, the stench clogging the shed thinned a little more.
"Homage to the Yellow Empress of the Center, Sovereign God of Dalseong! Homage to the Azure Emperor God of the East!"
The cattle's breathing eased by degrees, and the Youth President, belatedly catching up, no longer gagged at the smell.
"Homage to the Crimson Emperor God of the South! Homage to the White Emperor God of the West!"
For the cattle already dead, nothing could be done. But the ones who could be saved — he saved.
"Ah — aaah! Ah!"
The calf they'd taken for dead gave a twitch and stirred, and thick tears came pouring from the shed owner's eyes.
"Aghh! Hhhuuuk! Hhk!"
Thank God. Thank God. That was clearly the look on the man's face — and Kang Hyeong-seok was already rushing out of the shed.
"W-where are you going, sir!"
The Youth President hurried out after him and stood at his side.
Warang-warang-warang!
Kang Hyeong-seok went on shaking the bells, combing the darkness around them. Something had flown in here and doused the shed with its vile energy. Where was it now? Right after the attack — now was when it could be found.
Show yourself.
Quickly, quickly, quickly, quickly!
Wara-rara-rang!
It was the instant he brought the bells down in a great sweep—
KRAKAKAKAKAKAK!
With the sound of the sky tearing open, the thunderstorm crashed down over them all at once.
And Kang Hyeong-seok, who bore the Yeongan — the spiritual eye — saw it.
KRAKAK! RRRUM! RRRRRUM! KRAKAK!
Rain pouring. Lightning rampaging. Darkness deep as pitch.
On the mountain rising over the village — a serpent so vast its coils could blanket the entire summit, coiled there in monstrous loops.
KRAKAKAKAKAK! KUUUGUGUGUNG!
Each time the lightning fell, the colossal serpent flashed into view — and it was staring at the cattle shed. At Kang Hyeong-seok.
Soundlessly, like a groan, Kang Hyeong-seok murmured the serpent's true name.
It was an Imoogi.