What the Bean Field Buried
Vrrrrmmm.
The road out to the field felt unfamiliar—probably just the difference between day and night. An ordinary, out-of-the-way farm track had come to feel like the approach to something sinister, and the mountain looming in the distance looked like nothing natural at all.
Face set hard, Kang Hyeong-seok followed the navigation's directions and steered his car toward the bean field.
Kzzt!
From the radio he had switched on to chase off the silence, a news announcer's flat, dry voice came drifting out.
"An unidentified, mutilated body has been discovered in the hills of Gangwon-do Province, and police have launched an investigation."
This was not the news he had wanted. With a churned-up heart, Hyeong-seok shifted his gaze to the radio pouring out the broadcast.
"Police discovered at the scene a single body severed in multiple places. The victim has been identified as a girl of seven to eight years of age..."
Through parted lips, he let out a slow, heavy sigh. Even living an ordinary man's life, Hyeong-seok walked the shaman's path, and so a case like this struck home with terrible force. The terror, the pain, the resentment the victim must have endured—none of it felt the least bit distant. Among the countless spirits of the dead he had laid eyes on, many had been weepers, and he had heard firsthand just how immense their grief could run. So he prayed, earnestly, that the victim's soul might somehow be guided across in peace.
"You will arrive at your destination shortly. Ending route guidance."
Hyeong-seok parked a little way off from the field and got out with his bag in hand.
How can it possibly be this dark?
The field that had looked lonely even in daylight now lay drowned in night, and it exuded a sinister energy besides.
Chirr! Chirrrr!
With insect song ringing out from every direction, Hyeong-seok drew a small lantern from his bag.
Click.
True to something bought at the store that sells everything, the beam left something to be desired. Still, it was enough to keep his feet clear of the jutting rocks and pits lying in wait for them in the dark.
Thud, thud.
Illuminating no more than a narrow circle about as wide as two spread palms, Hyeong-seok walked on slowly. The tree with the distinct nail marks. He would check that one first.
Thud, thud.
As he drew near, training the lantern on the tree's nail scars, he swung his backpack around to his front, reached inside, unzipped the pouch, and drew out the sacred shaman bells, closing his right hand around them.
Jararang! Jararang!
The moment he shook the bells, the air around him grew lighter. No trick of the mind—it truly did. The nameless weight that had been pressing on his chest, the energy that had blocked his way like something sticky, all of it thinned.
"Unclean, the heavens above. Unclean, the earth below. Unclean, the yard and the house. Unclean, every home nearby."
Jararang! Jararararang!
"Unclean, the great gate. Unclean, the inner gate. Unclean, the dogs at the gate. Unclean, the cattle and the horses."
Chanting the Bulseol Bujeong-gyeong—the Sutra on Impurities Spoken by the Buddha—Hyeong-seok pushed back the energies around him and came to a stop before the tree.
"This day, in utmost devotion, this disciple: unclean, all seen by the eyes; unclean, all heard by the ears; unclean, all wrought by the mouth. Unclean, the food. Unclean, the fish. Unclean, the flesh. Unclean, the gate of mourning. Unclean, all that enters. Unclean, the altar of the dead."
There was something in this tree, beyond all doubt. The vicious energy was so strong, so venomous, it felt as though it were shoving his body away.
Jararararang!
Hyeong-seok gave the bells a hard shake, then reached out and ran his fingers over the hollow in the trunk. The hollow wasn't deep. Wood had grown up from inside and filled it.
Ten years? Twenty?
Traces of at least that much time. Who on earth, in a place like this, had carried out a yangbab—the old tree-nail curse—and to what end?
He had been staring at the tree, lips pressed into a hard line, when—
Jararang!
A chill rising suddenly at his back spun Hyeong-seok around hard enough to set the bells swinging. The lantern followed his gaze, its beam cutting into the dark.
"...Who's there?"
There had been no one standing there a moment ago. Now a tall woman in black clothes stood beyond the bean field—a crowbar in one hand, a tightly packed doll in the other.
Jarararang!
The bells rang out of their own accord, yet the woman's figure did not vanish. Then she was no unclean thing. But she didn't seem to belong to reality, either. What person in this world could breathe out an aura like hers?
A hallucination? A phantasm...?
And if it wasn't that either, then his Momjusin was showing him what had happened in this place.
Step, step.
Her long, unkempt hair scattering on the night wind, the woman jerked her head from side to side, sweeping her surroundings as if standing guard.
She was clearly no one who actually existed. If she had been, she would have caught sight of Hyeong-seok long since—fled, or come at him.
Grit, grit.
As if to smother her own feverishness, the woman gnawed at her thumbnail until it splintered, inching closer to Hyeong-seok.
The shrinking distance gave him her face at last. Was that truly a human being? The wild-tossed hair, the head-to-toe black like a grim reaper's—grotesque, all of it, and still nothing next to her eyes. The whites of her upturned gaze were crammed with burst blood vessels.
Step, step. Grit!
Still biting at her nail, the woman brushed right past Hyeong-seok, looked the ground over, and pressed the doll against the tree. Then she took out a nail and set it atop the doll's head—
THWACK!
—and swung the crowbar, driving the nail into the tree straight through the doll.
Thak! Thak! Thak!
Bathing the woman in the lantern's glow as she hammered nails home at a madwoman's pace, Hyeong-seok shifted his eyes to the doll.
Thak!
Every time the crowbar fell, the doll flinched like a living thing—and out of its chest, strands of hair had grown and pushed through.
"Die, die! You fucking bitch! You rotten fucking whore! I could tear you apart and it still wouldn't be enough!"
The woman's voice was so saturated with malice that the mere sound of it crawled over his skin. Why? Over what? Who was she cursing this savagely?
"Yoon Bo-mi, you fucking bitch! Die! Please, just die!"
Her eyeballs rolling wildly, the woman shrieked her curse into the doll.
Crinkle!
At the motel, Namgoong Min-ah was passing a lazy stretch of time. She was munching on potato chips bought from the convenience store, a streaming service played on the TV, and her phone sat wedged between her shoulder and her cheek.
Beep beep, beep beep.
"That girl. Not picking up."
Tutting, Min-ah took the phone in her hand, wearing a well-that's-that look. Perhaps it was because she had finally made it out to Danyang. Looking deflated, she was just about to hang up the call that wouldn't connect when—
"Hello?"
"Hey! Why won't you pick up?!"
"Huh? Who is this?"
Min-ah, who had been shouting a second ago, caught herself and tried again with careful politeness.
"Is this not Seo Jin-ah's phone?"
"It is, Miss Namgoong Min-ah."
"Ugh! Come on!"
"Bwahaha! What's up? Calling out of nowhere."
Min-ah let out a breath of relief and lifted a potato chip to her mouth.
"I'm on a business trip to Danyang, remember? You crossed my mind for the first time in ages, so I called."
"Really? You could've at least told me you were coming. So? Want me to head out your way?"
"No, no. Then I'd feel way too guilty. I just wanted to hear your voice. That's all."
Perched on the edge of the bed, Min-ah swung her legs, a faint smile playing on her lips. A call with an old friend always brought the old days rushing back.
"See, this is why I like it. Gets me feeling so nostalgic. You know—back then. That friend I used to play Bunshinsaba with, the ghost-summoning game. Remember her?"
"Ah..."
Where Min-ah had gone bright, Seo Jin-ah's response had gone quiet.
"Huh? You don't remember?"
"No, of course I do. You two were close."
"Yeah, yeah! You know anyone who still keeps in touch with her? Next time, let's all meet up together."
"...You don't know, do you."
A voice sunk too low to wave off as imagination. Reaching for another chip, Min-ah narrowed her eyes.
"Don't know what?"
"She... wasn't doing well. In a lot of ways."
"...Like what?"
"Wasn't it about six months after you moved away? Her mom died, and her dad remarried almost right after. And then... I guess some stories started going around."
It was all news to her. Min-ah pressed the phone harder against her ear, her brow creasing deeper.
"What are you talking about? Did something bad happen to her?"
"It's just... ah..."
"Tell me. What happened?"
"Here's the thing. Her stepmother—from what I heard, she absolutely hated Yoon Bo-mi."
At the bad news of the friend she had once been closest to, Min-ah's face stiffened by degrees.
"And? What happened to the stepmother?"
"I don't really know that far—but more than that, listen. Bo-mi. Her."
"Yeah."
"You probably won't ever get to see her again."
That was the moment. Min-ah's lips trembled before she knew it, and her eyes went damp at the corners. It was nothing but a gut feeling, and yet she knew. She knew something terrible had happened to Yoon Bo-mi—something grim enough to force Seo Jin-ah's voice this low.
"She went missing. There's been no word of her since."
"She's probably dead by now."
At the words Seo Jin-ah added, Min-ah felt everything before her eyes go black.
THWACK!
The great crack of it, and the last nail sank home. The woman's mouth gulped for air, her eyes rolled up white. Watching her perform the yangbab an arm's length away, Hyeong-seok felt, if anything, as though he had slipped into someone's dream.
VRROOOM!
But the roar and glare of a freight truck sweeping past the distant road forcibly reminded him that this was real—then vanished beyond the darkness.
He raised the lantern toward her. No reaction came back—none at all. As if she could perceive neither Hyeong-seok nor the light. Which, in its way, was a mercy: he could study the woman with a clear head. Nothing about her was out of the ordinary. The tightly packed doll was another matter.
Gyeongmyeon-jusa...?
A yellowed talisman covered in red script—unmistakably drawn in gyeongmyeon-jusa, the mirror-script hand used for curse writing. It did not easily add up. Gyeongmyeon-jusa was beyond what an ordinary person could hope to obtain, and the talisman itself, harder still. A mudang had lent her hand to this yangbab. What kind of shaman, utterly out of her mind, would commit such a deed with the divine reckoning hanging over her head?
Jararang!
As if to answer the question, the bells rang, and the woman's figure dissolved. Then a different vision began filling the bean field. The darkness peeled away, the ground became the yard of a family home, and there stood the woman from before—and a young girl.
Smack! Crack! Crack!
"I told you! Never! To set foot in the shrine room!"
"Waaahh! Waaaaahh!"
She looked about ten—a fourth-grader, maybe. The instant the child under the merciless blows burst out screaming, the woman slapped a hand over her mouth.
"Mmmmmmph!"
Clamping the girl's nose shut so she could not so much as breathe, the woman drove a fist down into the child's stomach, her eyes streaming with venom.
Wham! Thwack!
The small body lurched with every blow.
It was a sight he could hardly bear to keep his eyes open for—and still Hyeong-seok had no choice but to watch. This was a vision his Momjusin granted him, an event that had happened in the past. A mighty mudang is shown the past by her patron deity. By that same principle, his own Momjusin was now laying bare the affair bound up in this bean field.
Thud! Wham! Thwack! Smack!
Striking only the places that clothing would conveniently hide, the woman gulped for breath.
"If only you hadn't been here, I could have lived a perfectly ordinary life..."
Why did a brat like you have to come attached to me? Without you, everything would be fine. Why should I have to raise somebody else's whelp? And why does a thing like you get a divine gift on top of it all?
At the woman's rancor pouring straight into his skull, Hyeong-seok jerked his head around. What showed past the half-open door of a room was a shrine. Like any shrine house, it held shaman paintings and an image carved in a god's likeness—and before them, even a small altar.
So it was you who wrote it.
The talisman fixed to the doll had not been the work of some other mudang. It was the girl's mother.
Hyeong-seok's face twisted as he looked at the woman the way one looks at a thing that had no right to exist. "Why? What could you possibly—"
He broke off, and like a man struck dumb, the corners of his tightly sealed lips trembled.
Even now, in this very moment, the woman's thoughts kept flowing into him. Thoughts no human being should be able to think. Thoughts no mudang should think.
Shhhk.
The woman, who had been raining down blows, suddenly swept the girl's hair back from her face. The hatred had drained from her eyes. In its place, something else vile gleamed, slick and wet.
"You can give it to Mommy, can't you?"
Her life. And her divine gift, both.
The woman—mudang and the girl's stepmother—gazed down at the child with murder plain in her eyes.