The Son in the Liquor
Clouds driven in on the wind swallowed the moon. It was a full moon, yet behind them its light could no longer reach the mountain. Wrapped in perfect black, the mountain lost all boundary with the night sky, until it felt as though it had ceased to exist in the world at all.
Deep within that mountain, Kang Hyeong-seok held the Sacred Shaman Bells out before him.
"There is something I wish to ask. That liquor — what was it?"
The old man answered only with that strange wailing, nothing more.
Ting! The bells rang out, and the weeping stopped. His breath quickened for a moment — then lips cracked dry as a paddy field in drought finally parted.
"My sin. The calamity that is mine to bear."
Ting! The bells rang again, and Kang Hyeong-seok, glancing toward them, began closing the distance to the old man one slow step at a time. The darkness seemed to deepen with every step; the smell of the old man's sweat, the stench of bedsores, and the sour reek of rat and insect droppings all drew closer.
"What is your sin?"
At the low question, the old man's lips trembled, then twisted. But no words would come — only sobbing, a keening charged with violent emotion. And so, unable to press him for an answer, Kang Hyeong-seok simply waited for the old man to speak.
"...My son."
"...Your son?"
"My son. My son. Son."
The old man wrenched the words out one by one — and then, as though his breath had been severed, a scream of pure agony tore loose.
"Hnnnghk! Kheh-heh-heh-hehk!"
That beast-like wailing was so immense it resonated in the body of anyone who heard it. Even so, Kang Hyeong-seok kept inching toward the old man, the bells held out before him.
He had to hear it. He had to. Only by knowing the cause of the calamity could he sever it.
"Tell me, please. What does your son have to do with your sin?"
"Hhh—euuuh! Heuuuuaaah!"
"You have to tell me. Please, tell me."
"Hnk! Hnnnnghk! Krhhhhhk!"
Ting-ting-ting-ting-ting! The closer he drew to the old man, the heavier the ghostly stench grew. Kang Hyeong-seok shook the bells hard and fast, and gradually the beast-sound pouring from the old man sank down, until at last it took on a human voice.
"...I killed him."
"...Your son?"
In a flash, the old man jerked his head up with startling speed. Then he stared at Kang Hyeong-seok with eyes whose whites glistened brightly enough to be seen even in that darkness. It was then.
"I killed my own son."
The old man's voice was so calm it was uncanny. Calm enough to make one wonder whether he had been waiting for this very moment all along.
"At first, you called me Seok-woo. Is that the man you mean?"
"No."
"Then who is this son you killed?"
Strangely, the room seemed to be sinking deeper and deeper into darkness. His eyes had adjusted long ago — he could still make out the old man — and yet the gloom kept thickening, as though soon nothing would remain visible but the whites of those staring eyes.
"The son I made before him."
Kang Hyeong-seok's lips moved soundlessly. His breath was seizing up, and the ghostly stench was thickening — the sensation of drawing near to something he must not know, the feeling that he should not dig any deeper.
Ting-ting! And yet the bells, ringing of their own accord, seemed to say he must not stop. Kang Hyeong-seok took one great breath, fixed his eyes on the whites of the old man's, and spoke.
"This son you killed — where is he now?"
That is the root of this calamity. That is where it all began. He had to know.
Then the old man's head snapped sideways as though his neck had broken. And in a voice still calm, still strange, he asked:
"You didn't drink it?"
Instantly, nausea shot up Kang Hyeong-seok's throat, and he clamped the back of his hand over his mouth.
So it was the liquor. The son was in the liquor — in the liquor steeped with the calamity. The drink the old man had handed out to all those people had been a way of pouring his own karma down their throats.
"Who — who put you up to it? Who taught you how to do it?"
"A mudang."
The corners of the old man's mouth rose slowly, spreading into a radiant smile.
"Hnngh! Hnnnnh—hnnnnnnghk!"
Watching the old man laugh as he wept and weep as he laughed, Kang Hyeong-seok felt vomit climb his throat. His mind was reeling. Backing away, eyes shot through with red and still fixed on the old man, he stumbled out of the building as fast as his legs would take him.
Slam! Haunted by the memory of the old man watching him until the very instant the door shut, Kang Hyeong-seok forced the stale air from his lungs.
"I have to tell her. Have to get this to Section Chief Shin."
Quickly steadying himself, he raised his phone and dialed Shin Jeong-ah.
The call didn't connect. The signal couldn't reach this far underground.
In the subterranean cellar, where a heavy silence had settled, Shin Jeong-ah stood staring blankly at a single point.
Fwaaarrrk.
The ghost that had led her here. It stood close enough to touch if she only reached out, gazing at her with a face burned black. Then it stretched out a hand and pointed down.
— It's here.
It spoke in a young woman's voice, and from its charred mouth, red blood came pouring down.
And the instant Shin Jeong-ah blinked, it was all gone — the crackle of burning flesh that had filled her ears, the red glow that had lit the room, the ghost whose presence had pressed against her so fiercely. Nothing remained.
Zzip.
But Shin Jeong-ah sank down where she stood and opened her bag. Drawing back the zipper, she pulled out the pocket knife she'd bought at the hiking outfitter's and, expressionless, began stabbing at the spot the ghost had pointed to, over and over.
There was no focus in her eyes. The eyes of one bewitched by a ghost.
Thwack! Thock! Thwack! Thwack! Thwooock! She dug, carving the earth away as if shaving it down — and beside her, her phone lay abandoned, its light still glowing, faintly illuminating the dark.
On the shelves, the hundreds of jars of infused liquor were darkening, bit by bit, as the ground was torn open.
Thud-thud-thud-thud! Running through the dark mountain, Kang Hyeong-seok gulped down ragged breaths. The phone in his hand still displayed the screen of a call that refused to connect.
"Goddammit, fuck."
Spitting out the curse, he clenched the phone and tried the call again.
I found the cause. And how the calamity began, too.
It had started with the old man. The old man lying in that building had killed his son, and with him had made a Mugo — all to escape the karma that was his to bear.
(The call still won't connect...)
Beep! He cut the call, and in that gap pushed out a breath. If his hunch was right, Shin Jeong-ah was with the ghost by now.
A father and a child. And a mother. A child cannot be made by one alone. Just as yin cannot exist without yang, a child comes into being only through a father and a mother. Shin Jeong-ah had seen a burning ghost. The souls bound up in this mountain had not been the old man's son alone.
"...He killed his wife, too."
The han and the sins steeped into this mountain were too vast. Kang Hyeong-seok clapped a hand over his mouth against a sudden surge of nausea — and something hot touched his fingers.
Plop. Drip-drip. Plop. Blood was running from his nose, tracing down along his fingers.
Ting-ting-ting-ting! The Sacred Shaman Bells rang out as well, as though to tell him his suspicion was right. Letting out one long breath, he raised the bells high.
"Metal begotten of Heaven's five, soil begotten of Earth's ten — thus were the ten thousand things born of harmony.
Where the four ghosts pierce and dwell, that ground shall surely be emptied;
Where the wicked ghosts trespass, that ground shall surely destroy them."
The son murdered at the old man's hands — and the son's mother. The han of these two had to be untied. Only then would every calamity wound around this mountain dissolve and the Mugo break apart.
"In the second month, the third, the fourth — the bound knot is untied amid blossoms and the spring wind.
In the fifth month, the sixth, the seventh — the bound knot is untied along the long flowing water."
Praying that the han of those two souls might be loosened and they might be guided onward to the afterlife, Kang Hyeong-seok recited the next verse.
"In the eighth month, the ninth, the tenth — the bound knot is untied with the falling leaves."
It was then.
Whoosh! A stone hurled out of the darkness tore past right beside Kang Hyeong-seok. Startled, he spun to look. A man he knew — the man he had glimpsed in the memories of the mudang whose shoes had fallen away. The old man's second son, and the one who had spread the liquor steeped with calamity far and wide.
"What are you?"
He was glaring ferociously at Kang Hyeong-seok, the sack in one hand and a club stained black in the other.
"What the hell is this piece of shit doing here? How much did you see?"
He looked like a toad. His eyes, glossy as a possession patient's, fixed on the shaman bells in Kang Hyeong-seok's grip.
"A meddlesome mudang bastard whose skull deserves to be cracked a thousand times over — why the hell have you come here?"
Shk-shk-shk. Seok-woo was writhing now, dragging the blood-drooling sack behind him as he began to close in. Kang Hyeong-seok looked at the club in his hand, then met Seok-woo's eyes. The man reeked of a vicious beast and of ghosts. And through his open Yeongan, Kang Hyeong-seok could see the animal spirits dangling in clusters from Seok-woo's back.
Thud! Thud! The nightmarish figure bore down on him, hurled the sack aside, and seized the club in both hands.
The monk. The man he'd met at the foot of the mountain had said someone would come to interfere. That there would be something to shake his heart, too. This was Seok-woo.
"Why the hell are you here, you son of a bitch!"
Seok-woo shrieked, spitting venom, and Kang Hyeong-seok glared back at him and answered.
"I came to break the Mugo."
The next instant, Seok-woo's eyes rolled white.
"EEEAAAAAAGH!"
With a monstrous, bestial shriek, Seok-woo swung the club in a tremendous arc.
Whoosh! Kang Hyeong-seok evaded the club driving down at his skull, wrapped an arm around Seok-woo's, and took him straight to the ground. He felt the heavy impact as the man's back slammed into the earth.
Seok-woo should have been fighting even to breathe — but he lunged again at once.
Crack! The club grazing past his head rang against a tree.
Thwack! Clear spit sprayed from Seok-woo's mouth as Kang Hyeong-seok's fist connected. But he still would not release the club — if anything, he swung it all the harder.
Tock! Whaam! Whoomp! Catching the arm and putting Seok-woo back down into the dirt, Kang Hyeong-seok coiled his fist.
No time for this. He had to end the interference and carry on with the rite of guiding the dead.
Thwack! Thock! Pinning Seok-woo beneath him, he hammered his fists down ferociously. These were trained strikes — the kind that leave most men unconscious or broken in will. But Seok-woo's eyes still glistened with killing rage.
Damn it — this is what possessed ones are like!
Then, abruptly, something felt wrong. A person entered by animal spirits moves like a beast. Walking on two legs and wielding tools the way this one did — that was not so easy for them. Seok-woo was certainly possessed. But something else seemed to be dwelling in his body.
WHAM! "Who are you?" Pressing his weight down onto Seok-woo's chest, Kang Hyeong-seok ground out the words in a low voice.
"You! Who the hell are you?! Answer me!"
Then Seok-woo, who had raged like a wild beast, snapped his eyes wide open. And meeting Kang Hyeong-seok's gaze, he spoke in a low voice that belonged to no man.
"Donggwan."
A term of address one mudang used for another. Kang Hyeong-seok felt gooseflesh crawl up his forearms.
"What?"
"My Mugo. The Mugo I ordered done, the Mugo I raised with my own hands. You think a nothing like you gets to wreck it? You meddler — tearing you limb from limb wouldn't even settle the score."
Watching the shaman-ghost spew curses like some demon, Kang Hyeong-seok's face twisted. Everything had begun when the old man made the Mugo. The one who had taught him that rite of dispersal. The thing that had kept the Mugo intact all these years. The demon so obsessed with it that even in death it could not leave the world of the living. That was the shaman-ghost before his eyes.
"You son of a bitch!"
Thwack! The shaman-ghost's face snapped sideways under the blow.
Clang! The instant the pocket knife struck something hard, Shin Jeong-ah came back to herself.
"Huh?"
Blinking, she looked around in confusion. The underground liquor cellar, still lit only by the faint glow of her phone.
"Wh-what? What did I just..."
The memories came rushing back. She had seen the burning ghost, and without realizing it, she had dug her way down into the earth. The moment she understood that she had been bewitched, she jolted upright in shock.
She was stunned. Terrified. And yet some feeling she could not name had clung, stickily, to her heart.
Clutching her startled chest, she looked to where the ghost had been.
"Wh-what? Wha...? Huh?"
The ghost hadn't tried to harm her. If anything, it had seemed desperate to tell her something.
Face trembling with fear, Shin Jeong-ah studied the pit she had dug.
And what the hell is this now. I'm losing my mind. Seriously.
A single jar, its mouth sealed shut, lay embedded in the ground. Gritting her teeth hard, Shin Jeong-ah reached out with a hand that would not stop shaking.
I have to open the jar. She couldn't have said why. Only that it felt as though the burning ghost's han would never come undone otherwise.
"For fuck's sake..."
Grumbling through the fear, she took hold of the jar's lid. Her senses were fixed so entirely on the jar that she failed to notice. The liquors on the shelves were turning red. Whatever had been steeped in them was coming undone now, as though its long work had finally run its course. The Mugo carried out in this place for decades was about to break.
Clunk. Shin Jeong-ah lifted the lid off the jar. And the moment she saw what lay inside, every drop of blood in her body froze.
Something that should never have existed was inside the jar.