A Lullaby for the Departed
In the underground warehouse, Shin Jeong-ah was trembling.
The fear was too vast, too sharp—she could not bear it. She wanted to bolt right then and there, but her legs refused to obey. She wanted to squeeze her eyes shut, but some instinct warned her that the moment she did, something dreadful would come crashing down on her.
"Hhk! Hk! Hhhk—!"
It was just as the terror she could no longer hold back came pouring out of her as tears—
Krrang!
"Aaagh!"
One of the jars of Mugo liquor on the shelves burst as though it had exploded. The reek of fierce alcohol spread through the air, and the carcass of a beast—its form melted beyond recognition—slid down along the shelf.
"Waaah! Waaahhh!"
And from a liquor jar half-buried in the floor came the cry of an infant.
"Aaack! Aaaaack!"
Palms pressed hard over her ears, Shin Jeong-ah pulled her knees up to her chest and curled herself into a ball.
It was at that very moment that Kang Hyeong-seok's Cheondo-gut—the funerary rite for guiding the dead—began.
Fwoosh!
A flare of light burst into being and lit up the underground warehouse. Shin Jeong-ah jerked her head up in alarm—and there stood a burning ghost.
She was too terrified even to breathe, but the ghost did nothing to harm her. Instead, it raised a hand blackened with burns and brought it to its own lips.
As if to beg her: please, be quiet.
"A-ah? Ahh?"
Her face had gone beyond white into blue. She nodded, hardly knowing she did—and the burning ghost bowed its head to her in return.
Then it crouched before the jar and reached out with its burning hands, scooping the baby up out of the liquor as though drawing it safely from deep water.
Wh-what are you...?
"Hush now... hush now, my baby..."
"Sleep so soundly, my baby..."
A young woman's voice had begun to sing inside her head. A lullaby—a mother's song for her child. A lullaby she had ached to sing, for longer than she could bear.
"Hushaby, hushaby, our baby.
Sleep so soundly, our baby.
Rooster, do not crow—
you'll wake our baby from sleep.
Doggy, do not bark."
Shin Jeong-ah stared at the burning ghost, eyes wide. The baby in the ghost's arms only whimpered and fretted; the frantic wailing had stopped.
Crrash! Pop! Whump!
The jars of liquor steeping the Mugo curse kept bursting, one after another. The smell of alcohol sharpened, and the spilled liquid seeped down into the earth. But Shin Jeong-ah could only stare, dazed, at the burning ghost.
Somehow, it felt as though the ghost's emotions were seeping into her own heart.
"Hushaby, hushaby..."
"Hushaby, hushaby, our baby. Sleep so soundly, our baby."
Clear tears were running down the face of the singing ghost—as if sorry, only now, to finally be singing the lullaby. That was how it looked to Shin Jeong-ah.
...So that's why you came to me.
Not to Kang Hyeong-seok—to her. That was the reason. Because she was someone who might truly understand its han, the grief that had bound it to this world. A mother who had lost her child; a wife murdered by her own husband.
The same sex. A similar age. She and the burning ghost had these things in common.
Without realizing it, Shin Jeong-ah raised both hands as she watched the ghost sing to the baby in its arms. Then she pressed her palms together in prayer, wishing for their han to be untied at last. The wish was great enough—surely—to be called a prayer.
Jalang! Jalalalang!
Ringing the Mudang Bang-ul, his sacred shaman bells, Kang Hyeong-seok spoke with his gaze cast low.
"O departed soul—we chant with one heart, that the karma of ignorance be dissolved and the wisdom of insight revealed; that you escape the sea of birth and death, attain liberation and nirvana, and be reborn in the Land of Bliss."
⟨ CHEONDO-GUT ⟩
Jalang! Jalang!
Held high toward the sky, the shaman bells rang out, and the road for the soul's passage to the beyond opened.
Fwap! In place of a chilsung-go—the funeral pole hung with knotted cloth to guide the dead—he swung wide a great length of cloth tied with seven knots. A wind rose and set the cloth snapping. The knots had not been tied loosely, yet they slipped free in the wind all too easily.
"The four elements and this body of flesh are hollow and fleeting, and in the end they vanish; cling no more to this flesh, but awaken to the truth, and be free of all suffering."
With a silken slide, the second knot came undone.
Seok-woo still slept on, and the moonlight lay clean and bright across the night sky. The Mugo curse was broken, and the calamity rooted in this mountain had faded to a blur. May the bound souls be ferried across, leaving not one thread of regret behind.
Jalalang!
"What gathers by karma scatters again by karma; birth is karma, and so is the return. What is there to mourn?"
It was then—
"AAAAARGH!"
"You goddamn bitch! Birthing a beast of a son! You rotten, fucking bitch!"
The scream of the old man in his younger years shook the whole mountain, as though to bar the soul's passage.
No. This would never do. The souls of the dead must not be left snarled in their own painful memories.
Jalalang!
"When this one mind is pure, the whole world is pure; repent every karmic debt and return to purity. May the road you walk be filled with light. That road runs a thousand miles, ten thousand—yet where along it is not the Pure Land of Bliss? Where affliction and delusion fall away, that very place is Paradise; cast out the three poisons of the heart."
"All attachments are a burden on the road you travel; through the bond of our chanting, release them, every one."
And please—remember that I, and one other, are praying for your passage.
Jalang!
The bells rang out clear, and the old man's curses scattering across the sky fell silent. Then the third knot of the cloth—untouched by any wind—slipped free.
"Baby... our baby..."
"Mommy."
A woman's voice, soft and warm—a mother's voice. And a boy's, clear as spring water: the voice of a little one who should have been loved, and cherished, and doted on.
"Hold fast to your good bonds and cast off the bad, and when you are born again, good bonds shall await you."
The two would meet again. The bond between mother and child, left unfinished in this life, would carry on into the next. And they would be happy.
Slip—the fourth knot and the fifth came undone together. Only two remained. Pouring everything he had into the next verse so that these last two, too, might come loose and be gone, Kang Hyeong-seok recited:
"Water freezes into ice, and ice melts back into water—so too are life and death in this world like water and ice. With karmic consciousness thus made pure, be reborn in the Land of Bliss."
Slip. A single knot remained now. Kang Hyeong-seok raised his eyes to the sky.
It was a night sky with nothing in it but the full moon. And yet, just now, it seemed he could see something else—a young woman, holding a baby in her arms.
"By this mantra, chanted with our whole heart, let the world of hell collapse and the knots of resentment come untied—and grant this soul the highest rebirth in the World of Bliss."
Slip. The last knot, too, came undone.
Head still lifted to the heavens, Kang Hyeong-seok closed his eyes. Then, without a word, he brought his palms together.
The calamity rooted in this mountain was no more. The Mugo curse was broken; the departed soul had gone home.
Chirr... chirr-chirr.
The trill of field insects—silent all this while—drifted back into the night. It was the sound of a mountain returning to what it had been before the Mugo curse had ever existed.
Creeeak.
Out of the warehouse, Shin Jeong-ah turned back for one last look, her face drawn and spent.
It had been a warehouse filled to the brim with liquor. A place where a ghost had walked. Now there was nothing left of either.
Go well.
She had seen it too—the soul's departure. The woman with the baby in her arms, fading away before her very eyes. The image was still so vivid that she felt she could summon it, clear as day, whenever she closed her eyes. She would carry it with her for the rest of her life.
Are you happy now...?
The woman had been smiling. The baby in her arms had been beaming too. And in the instant she departed, she had bowed her head to Shin Jeong-ah, as if in thanks. Be happy. Please, be happy.
Eyes closed, Shin Jeong-ah prayed. It wasn't that she believed in any god—she simply wished, with everything in her, that the two of them might go somewhere quiet and at peace. When the short prayer was done, she started down the mountain.
"The moonlight's really something tonight."
She murmured it, then rubbed the sudden dampness at her eyes with the back of her hand and pulled out her phone. The signal that hadn't reached her underground was back. With a small snort of a laugh, she tapped out a message to Kang Hyeong-seok.
"Hatchoo!"
Sneezing, she made for the foot of the mountain, her steps quickening little by little.
Tick. Tock.
Watching the wall clock, Park Ji-hoon jiggled his leg, restless. He hadn't slept properly in days—hollow shadows under his eyes, his skin dull and dry. Ever since the Mugo liquor incident, sleep simply would not come.
Clatter.
A plate of sliced apple and peeled tangerines was set down in front of him—a small kindness from Park Jeong-im, Hyeong-seok's mother and his own elder sister.
"Just go to bed, you brat."
"'Brat'?! Who are you calling a brat, Sis?"
"Oh-ho, is that so?"
"And another thing—your son, Sis. That boy has no heart at all. It's this late and not so much as a word from him."
"If I could just not worry, I wouldn't be his mother."
Park Jeong-im sat down beside her brother and drove her thumb into the dimpled top of a tangerine. Her face stayed flat and calm as she split it in two and stripped the peel away—but the anxiety she couldn't hide brimmed at her fingertips.
"Trusting him is all I've got. What else can I do?"
"..."
"And don't take this as a mother bragging, but Hyeong-seok's no screw-up."
Ji-hoon noticed the bruised-dark shadows beneath Park Jeong-im's eyes. He said nothing, and let nothing show. But if anyone's insides were rotting through with worry, it would be Hyeong-seok's mother, first and worst of all.
"He's got a great god with him now, they say—so he'll be safe. No phone call means nothing's happened. That's what I'm telling myself while I wait."
"Sis."
"Eat your apple first. It looked a bit off when I was cutting it earlier."
"Ugh! Honestly."
Ji-hoon was just puffing himself up for a proper rant, hips and all—
Riiiiing!
At the sudden ringtone, both of them grabbed for their own phones. The call was for Ji-hoon. But it wasn't Kang Hyeong-seok on the line.
"Uh—w-wait, just a second."
Mr. Kim—the man who had been hospitalized ever since he drank the Mugo liquor and lost consciousness. The call was from him.
With Park Jeong-im watching wide-eyed, Ji-hoon snatched up the call and pressed the phone to his ear.
"Hello? Mr. Kim! Mr. Kim, it's me!"
"Aigoo... hahh..."
"Say something, Mr. Kim!"
"Safety Officer—what on earth happened to me?"
The voice of a man whose memory had cut out mid-drink, the film of that night torn clean away. It brought the tears spinning into Ji-hoon's eyes.
"A-are you all right? Does anything hurt?"
"I'm in a hospital. No—I can't make head or tail of it. Why am I even here?"
"Good grief! You—you nearly had a real disaster. I'm telling you, a really close call."
"Aigoo. What happened, exactly?"
Riiing!
"H-hold on. Another call's coming in—I'll ring you right back."
"Yes... yes!"
Ji-hoon switched over at once to the incoming call.
"Hello? Yes! Yes!"
"Safety Officer."
"Oh, thank goodness! Are you hurt anywhere?"
This call was from a patient in a different hospital. And once again, mid-conversation, yet another line lit up.
Park Jeong-im watched her brother juggle the calls in a flustered daze, bewildered at first. But as his face grew steadily brighter, the corners of her own mouth curled upward in spite of her. She could feel it—the feeling that something, at last, had been set right.
Beep.
Ending the call, Ji-hoon turned to her, flustered and glowing all at once.
"S-Sis!"
"They've all woken up?"
"What—how is this even possible."
Her brother looked like a man who had witnessed a miracle. Which was fair enough—everyone who had been hospitalized on the same day, at the same hour, had opened their eyes at the same moment and called, one after another.
"Haah—mmmmmgh!"
His gaze followed Park Jeong-im as she stretched her arms high toward the ceiling.
"Whew. You go in too. I'm going to get a little shut-eye."
"You're... going to sleep?"
"What, am I not supposed to?"
"No, I mean—sure, of course you should."
Lips still curled, Park Jeong-im glanced at the wall clock. A brief rest now, she figured, and then she'd fix a late-night snack for Kang Hyeong-seok, who would surely be back before long.
"Sis."
"What?"
Park Jeong-im had just turned her head toward her brother, who had spoken up out of nowhere—
"Gods. Do you think they really exist?"
From a man who believed in neither gods nor shamanism, the question made her blink—then laugh, the tension melting clean out of her.
"I just hope they do. That's all."
With that, Park Jeong-im went into the bedroom where her husband lay sleeping.