A Voice from Hell
A bleak wind came sweeping down, ringing in their ears.
Kang Hyeong-seok watched the dark mountain it had blown in from, then shifted his gaze to the deaconess.
"May I ask one more thing? The exorcism back then—it really did succeed, didn't it?"
"Yes. It did, at the time."
"'At the time'...?"
Kang Hyeong-seok pressed, his brow knit, and the small-framed deaconess went on, even her lips trembling.
"I-I don't know the details myself. But Father Leo—he clearly said it was over, that it had ended well. Only... only he said it had been too late."
......
Something about that felt wrong.
A demon that had harmed a person. That even Leo, Shin Yo-sep's senior, had arrived a single step too late pressed down on Kang Hyeong-seok's heart like a stone. And a thought occurred to him: this demon might be the very one Shin Yo-sep was facing at this very moment.
"To carry an exorcism through properly, there is one thing we absolutely need."
The deaconess and the young man both turned their eyes to him. Their looks were so desperate he could tell they would stay with him for a long, long time.
Please—please, help Oh Ju-yeong. Don't let her suffer the same fate her cousin did.
Their eyes seemed to say exactly that. Kang Hyeong-seok clenched his jaw hard, then spoke.
"The demon is holding a soul in its grasp—holding it the way one holds a hostage, the way it has draped itself in a shell of flesh. From what I could see, that soul is her older cousin."
"Ah... aah..."
He knew little of Christian doctrine. But when the young man's eyes clouded over with confusion, he wondered whether he had just said something that ran contrary to their faith.
Yet if that was a soul who had died unsaved, a soul in need of help, then surely their God had sent him and Shin Yo-sep to this place for that very reason. So that, beyond doctrine and denomination, one person might save another.
"Where did she pass away?"
"H-here."
The deaconess pointed at the retreat building. She had been the one to tell the pastor they had to bring Ju-yeong inside; knowing an exorcism had once been carried out there, she must have believed the same had to be done this time.
"Then where did the demon first enter her body?"
Perhaps she knew the place but couldn't put it into words; with awkward fingers, the deaconess opened a map application. She zoomed in and panned the screen, and at last she tapped a single point.
"H-here! It's here!"
"I'll take you there."
The young man recognized the spot at a glance and answered immediately. Then, taking the phone from her almost as if snatching it, he sent the location to his own.
"That's where I went earlier. I'll guide you—so come with me."
It wasn't as if that was truly necessary. But the young man's eyes were desperate. They showed the will of a man determined to do something, anything at all.
"Is there a reason you need to come along?"
"...She's my girlfriend, actually."
Kang Hyeong-seok let out a small sigh and looked at the deaconess. Then, giving her a look that said I'm counting on you, he turned his head to the young man.
"Lead the way."
Thud-thud-thud-thud!
Kang Hyeong-seok broke into a run beside him. If there was a God, then every single one of these things was a thread of fate. Holding that thought, he chased at the young man's heels, the Mudang Bang-ul jangling shrilly in his hand.
'Hold on just a little longer, Shin Yo-sep. The soul that demon is holding—I will carry it to its rest. The demon is yours to drive out.'
Running down the path the young man led him along, Kang Hyeong-seok glanced back once at the building falling away behind them.
'Mentor.'
Shin Yo-sep thought of Father Leo without meaning to.
'If you were here right now—what would you have done?'
Was it because his heart had gone weak that the question—never to be answered—rose in his mind? Or because he had laid eyes, before his very eyes, on what the demon truly was?
"AAAAAAGH!"
The scream tearing out of Oh Ju-yeong's mouth was not the demon's. It was hers, drowning in agony—and that was why Shin Yo-sep moved toward her on pure reflex.
"It's all right—"
The words jammed in his throat, as though a hand had closed around it. Because the backs of Oh Ju-yeong's hands, bound fast in cable ties, had entered his field of vision.
'Damn it all.'
It was impossible. For fur—fur like a beast's—to sprout from the back of a human hand.
Shrrk!
Shin Yo-sep ground his teeth, his face contorting as the demon's presence swelled vaster by the moment. Then he began calling out the names of demons tied to transformation.
"Marbas! Bael! Camio! I adjure you—tell me your name!"
He knew it was meaningless. He had not grasped its true form, and a demon's name invoked without that knowledge was nothing more than an empty threat.
"Ose! Paimon! Crocell! By the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, I command you: leave her at once!"
Raising the bottle of holy water, Shin Yo-sep splashed it across Oh Ju-yeong's face and chest.
"KYAAAAAGH!"
For an instant, it sounded as though two people were screaming at once, their cries layered over each other. His face going rigid, he remembered the lingering spirit Kang Hyeong-seok had spoken of. Oh Ju-yeong was not the only hostage the demon held.
"Hahahahaha."
A murky voice came drifting out. And in the same instant, Oh Ju-yeong's pupils rolled up until only the whites remained. With eyes gone wholly scarlet where the capillaries had burst, she smiled and jeered at him.
"Ignatius. Ignatius."
The demon that refused to reveal its own name had taken Shin Yo-sep's baptismal one into its mouth. It turned its head, fixing him with those bloodshot whites, the corners of its mouth wrenching upward as though being torn into a grin.
"Yo-sep."
The demon's voice had changed. Still the thick voice of a man—but far softer now, with something almost like warmth melted into it.
"...You."
He knew exactly whose voice it was imitating, and the knowing made his face harden all the more.
"Why are you still wandering?"
It was Father Leo's voice. The very words the old priest had once said to him.
"It is all God's will. Whom we help—and the outcomes we never wanted. Even the times we come to resent Him for it."
"...No."
These were words no demon had any right to spew. Shin Yo-sep's lips twisted out of shape, and just then, blood began to drip from the fist he had clenched without realizing—
"We were never getting into heaven anyway. It's full to bursting with the people we failed to save, full of those spitting at our backs—how would the likes of us ever get in?"
"Shut your mouth, you son of a bitch!"
It was the moment Shin Yo-sep gave voice to the urge to strangle the demon dead where it sat.
Shin Yo-sep's movements stopped dead. And the demon, speaking through Oh Ju-yeong's borrowed mouth, grinned hideously.
Then—
Grrrk.
The crucifix he had set in place began to rotate clockwise, grinding against the wall. Shin Yo-sep watched it turn, little by little, into an inverted cross. And at that same moment, the cable ties binding Oh Ju-yeong's wrists and ankles began to creak and strain.
The bindings were coming undone.
"Yo-sep, I—I'm burning. The fires of hell, they're— they've got me."
He turned his gaze back to the demon prattling in Father Leo's voice, and tears of blood poured from Oh Ju-yeong's eyes, streaming down along her temples.
"I went to hell because of you! Because of you! You abandoned me—abandoned the Lord!"
Click.
The door, locking itself of its own accord, dragged his eyes toward it. A soundless cry burst out of him. The demon had sealed him inside.
With that thought, Shin Yo-sep slowly lifted his ashen face toward Oh Ju-yeong. The woman who had been bound sat upright on the bed now, watching him. With eyes brimming over with hatred.
Thud-thud-thud!
Eyes flicking down to his phone, Kang Hyeong-seok ran after the young man out in front. It certainly helped having a guide. Even with a map, every slope and tree looked alike, and the trails were drowned in darkness. The moon draped across the northeastern sky had turned a glaring yellow, shedding its light down on them, and the air on every side was thick with the scent of the deep mountains.
"Hah! Hah! Hah!"
Gulping air until it felt like his chest would tear open, the young man's legs gave way. He ran as though wilting with every stride, the hand clutching his phone sinking down toward his hip.
Whap!
Kang Hyeong-seok braced the man's back and drove his palm into it, shoving him forward with real force.
"You said you'd guide me, didn't you? Run!"
The way his seniors in the army had once done for him, Kang Hyeong-seok drove the young man onward.
"Hah! Haah!"
The young man threw a startled glance back at him, clamped his jaw shut, and started running again—and Kang Hyeong-seok ran with his hand pressed to the man's back the whole way.
"Haah! Haah!"
Gasping for air himself, Kang Hyeong-seok watched the young man push on through the ragged breaths, still hunting out the path.
And then it happened.
"Hah! Haaah!"
With a sound like breath failing in his throat, the young man came to a stop. Not because he could run no farther. Without a word, he held out his phone; on its screen, their current position and the point they had been chasing had merged into one.
"Good work."
Gripping the young man's shoulder with genuine thanks, Kang Hyeong-seok looked up at the night sky. Then, sweeping his eyes over the ground around them, he shook the Mudang Bang-ul. They had reached this place at last—now he had to do what could be done.
Wararararang!
"Blessed be the age of great peace, the one auspicious way, enshrined in reverent worship—when Heaven and Earth first parted, and all creation was opened."
Chanting the invocation that called upon the gods, Kang Hyeong-seok shook the sacred bells with still greater force.
"Gods of Heaven and Earth, moved by our plea, descend in response; in deepest sincerity, twice we bow and beg to be heard."
'We beg of You. That soul is held fast in the demon's clutches even now—look upon her with pity.'
"O gods of Heaven and Earth, when was the birth of Heaven, when the birth of Earth? Yet to those who call upon You, You answer still. In the age before, even Heaven did not defy; in the age after, deign to receive our prayer."
His senses sharpened by the moment. The world seemed to draw in close around him; he felt things no human body was made to feel, and saw what should have stayed invisible.
Among those things was the young man's gaze, fixed on him.
He was afraid.
Warararang!
For a man whose cradle faith was Christianity, this was the first time he had ever stood this close to Korean shamanism. It was an unfamiliar presence, and the unfamiliar energy pouring off it stirred revulsion and fear in equal measure.
And yet the young man did not leave.
"Even Heaven does not defy it—how then could man, how then could ghost or god? Withhold nothing—answer us, we pray."
'I am no different. There is something here I must do, and so I cannot leave either.'
"By the Azure Yang, the One Lord, in reverent sincerity we beg Your audience: Taihao Fuxi, Emperor Shennong, Yao and Shun, Yu and Tang, King Wen and King Wu, the Duke of Zhou, Zhuge Kongming, Master Wolong."
Wararararang!
As the last of the scripture left his lips, Kang Hyeong-seok gave the bells one enormous shake and lowered his arms.
And his eyes began to see: the figure of Father Leo, Shin Yo-sep's senior, and of Oh Gyeong-ju, the soul the demon had once held captive.
"What's all this sweat about?"
The vision began with Father Leo wiping the sweat from Oh Gyeong-ju's brow—and Kang Hyeong-seok watched it unfold.