The Guest of Honor
Ka-thunk! Ka-thunk! Ka-thunk! Ka-thunk! Ka-thunk! Ka-thunk!
The door heaved and buckled as though its hinges were about to shatter. Each time, the Geumjul — the sacred taboo rope — stopped it cold.
Fear was raking through Park Sang-cheol's skull until all he wanted was to sink to the ground. If the rope hadn't been wrapped tight in his fist, he would surely have crumpled where he stood.
"Hurk! Hah! Hurk!"
Breathing far beyond his own control, Park Sang-cheol stared at the red eye inside the door handle. It was not a human eye. The thing he had prayed was a trick of the light went on staring him down.
It's fake. Fake. All of this is fake.
He dragged his eyes to the little glass window set into the storeroom door. What showed there was only his daughter's eye — the red tint was nothing but an illusion.
That was what he told himself. But the glass, too, held the shape of a human head. Two heads. His daughter was not alone in the storeroom.
"Lad."
A voice rough as something being dragged across the dirt floor addressed him.
"Open the door, won't you."
Like a devil's whisper, its manner was gentle, even considerate. But Park Sang-cheol wound the rope one more turn around his hand and clenched it that much tighter.
He could not let go. If the Dokkaebi burst free, his daughter's soul would never come back.
"Aaaaargh!"
Gripping the Geumjul as though it were his lifeline, Park Sang-cheol heaved back with every last fiber of his body.
Crrk... crrrk-crrk!
The door didn't budge an inch, yet he found himself being drawn toward it, little by little. The rope stretched across the door swelled taut as a pregnant woman's belly — as though the Dokkaebi might wrench it open and come charging out at any second.
"Uuurgh! Uuaaaaargh! Aaaaargh!"
Which was all the more reason he could not stop pulling. The burst vessels in his eyes flushed crimson, and blood beaded up from the rope-burned skin of his palm and dripped away.
Then it happened.
Fwoosh — the sound of fire catching.
A red glow began to lap at the frosted glass of the storeroom window. The storeroom was burning.
For an instant Park Sang-cheol nearly lost his grip, but he screwed his eyes shut and seized hold of his mind.
The exorcist told me not to trust my eyes!
"What you see. What you hear. None of it is truth — be not deceived."
Chewing over the teaching Kang Hyeong-seok had passed on to him, Park Sang-cheol threw his weight against the rope and dragged it back.
Fwoorrsh! Fwoorrrrrsh!
The roar of the burning was so vivid. The heat prickling his fingertips felt real, and the glow flickering against his shut eyelids was almost impossible to believe false.
"Dad! Daaaad!"
His daughter's tearing scream rang out from inside the storeroom.
"Dad, you've been deceived! Dad! Don't trust that man! Please, save me! I don't want to die! Please! Dad, Dad, save me!"
That voice, so heartbreakingly vivid, left Park Sang-cheol gasping. Was this fake too? Or was the storeroom truly ablaze, his daughter come to her senses and begging for her life? Was he, even now, doing something he would regret for the rest of his days?
The moment the thought took shape, his eyes flew open.
"Ah..."
The fire that had blazed so vividly a breath ago was gone. Beyond the firmly shut door, only a cold and lightless dark remained.
All around him there was nothing but heavy silence, broken at odd moments by the cry of a bird or an insect.
"Ah— aaaaah! Ah!"
Understanding now that he had been deceived by the Dokkaebi, Park Sang-cheol was seized by the urge to bolt then and there. But a sliver of cold reason — he had to save his daughter — still lived in his hand and would not let the rope go.
"Lad. Why is it you cannot see?"
The Dokkaebi's voice drifted out again, laced with laughter, mocking a man already half-bewitched.
"Hurk, hurk, hurk."
At the sight of him heaving for breath, its chuckle only deepened, thick and fishy.
"Your daughter is in here, with me — why is it you cannot grasp that?"
Park Sang-cheol's heart seemed to stop. His mind snapped sharp and clear.
The Dokkaebi was inside the storeroom, with his daughter. And the one holding it down, keeping it from getting out — that was him.
The realization that it could hurt her whenever it pleased turned everything in his head to chaos. Was holding this rope the right thing to do after all? His resolve wavered.
And then—
"Open the door, lad!"
Walang-walang-walang-walang!
Shaking the sacred shaman bells with fierce energy, Kang Hyeong-seok felt the air around him change.
Something is coming. Something that could only be called a god.
The Yeonggam-nori, the Elder Dokkaebi Feasting Rite, with Kang Hyeong-seok at its head. Drawn by it, something of immense power was prowling the darkness around them.
Walara-rang!
A great Dokkaebi had come. But it only circled the perimeter, refusing to approach the offering table where the food was laid out.
Kang Hyeong-seok shifted his gaze to Shin Jeong-ah and Yoon-sang. From here on, everything depended on those two.
"Ah, uhh."
Reading the look in Hyeong-seok's eyes, Yoon-sang was the first to part his trembling lips.
"Wh-what is this? Hyung-nim, come and look at this right away."
Acting as awkward as a schoolboy reading aloud from a textbook.
"Wow, that really does look delicious."
Shin Jeong-ah added, terror having stiffened her tongue until even the words came out slurred.
Feeling the presence begin to drift away, Kang Hyeong-seok stilled the sacred shaman bells and raised his voice.
"Elder! Come in, come in! Kim Seobang has gone and laid out a pretty spread of tasty things for you!"
When that thunderous voice swept over everything around them, Yoon-sang and Shin Jeong-ah jumped and stared at him.
"There's even the liquor you're so fond of, Elder! How about the sorghum rice cakes? And the sorghum porridge — what of that?"
Watching him throw himself into the performance so completely gave the two of them real strength. Yoon-sang swallowed dry, bobbed his head in a small nod, and put out a voice with more force in it than before.
"Why, the rice cakes were made fresh just today!"
"Kim Seobang knows what an occasion calls for. And the pig innards — how are those?"
Both Kang Hyeong-seok's eyes and Yoon-sang's settled on Shin Jeong-ah. On the verge of tears, she shook her head once, briefly, but under that pitiless stare she had no choice but to open her mouth.
"It's from a pig we slaughtered just today, too."
Section Chief Shin — well done! Clever girl!
Walang-walang-walang! Still shaking the bells, Kang Hyeong-seok swept his arm across the ring of candles glowing softly around them.
"Come in, come in! Step closer and see! Kim Seobang has heaped the table with food he's aching to serve you — come and have yourself a taste!"
"The Elder has to eat first before any of us can, after all!"
Everything is hardest the first time — and sure enough, Yoon-sang had slipped into the swing of it, drunk on the atmosphere without realizing.
"Come on, hurry up! C'mooon!"
It came right on the heels of Shin Jeong-ah's cry, shouted with her eyes squeezed shut.
Fwoosh! Another of the candles that had been glowing faint red in the distance went out.
Puff! Phwut! Phlut! In a blink, flames numbering ten went dark, and a colossal presence — one only Kang Hyeong-seok could feel — drew near.
Yoon-sang and Shin Jeong-ah felt the wrongness in their own ways. Shin Jeong-ah's eyes went wide, her jaw hanging slack, like someone witnessing the supernatural.
"That's impossible."
A single candle flame had lifted off its wick and was rising into the air. Like a dokkaebi fire, a drifting will-o'-the-wisp.
A sense of helplessness was creeping over Park Sang-cheol. The Geumjul still held, and the Dokkaebi was still sealed inside the storeroom. But all of it was only a matter of time.
"Aaaaah! Uuaaaaah!"
His strength had run dry long ago, and his mind was close behind it.
Krk-krk-krk—
And yet he could still haul on the rope for dear life, for the sake of a single thought alone: he wanted to save his daughter from the Dokkaebi.
The thing was this terrifying after one fleeting glimpse of its true form. Then what must the past three years have been like for my daughter?
"Euaaaaah! Aaah!"
With his voice scorched to a ruin, Park Sang-cheol bellowed — anything not to hear the Dokkaebi's voice.
I don't believe a thing anymore! Not one single thing!
He had just hardened his heart and was pulling on the rope with bloodshot, brimming eyes—
Krk-krk-KRACK!
The snap of a bone breaking echoed from inside the storeroom.
"Kyaaaaah!"
His daughter's scream cracked the fortress of his will. For one instant his strength faltered, and the rope slackened — just a little. That was when the disaster began.
Skreeee!
A black finger slid out through the narrow gap in the door — bristled with coarse hair, thick as a cauldron lid, nothing about it human.
"Uuuuh! Nnnnngh!"
Park Sang-cheol screamed through clenched teeth. Even so, his eyes wheeled around, hunting for help.
A racket this loud should have brought someone from the village out of their homes by now. But this had to be the Dokkaebi's trickery — not one person appeared, and not a single house showed a light.
"Somebody help! Damn it, over here—!"
His shout cut off. Eyes blown wide, Park Sang-cheol stared at the door.
Black hands had begun pushing out through the widening gap.
Shff, shff, shff.
Dozens of hands. Hundreds of fingers.
Fingers rotted pitch-black writhed like spider's legs, crawling their way out past the door.
"H-Hyung-nim?"
At the uncanny sight, Yoon-sang whipped his head toward Kang Hyeong-seok. The only person he could lean on right now, the only one who could explain what was happening, was Kang Hyeong-seok. And as ever, unlike the two of them, he watched the flames without the faintest tremor.
"The little dokkaebi are clearing a path."
To Kang Hyeong-seok's eyes, small Dokkaebi were carrying the candle flames about like toys.
Walang-walang-walang! Having pulled every scrap of their attention to himself, he pointed the sacred shaman bells at the offering table.
"Come along! Escort the Grand Elder in — bring him here at once!"
It came the instant his words ended.
Pffwock! Ten candle flames died in the same breath, each squashed into a neat round shape, as if some vast invisible foot had stepped on the candles.
The light shrank as the darkness swelled, and Kang Hyeong-seok never stopped shaking the bells, paving the Great Dokkaebi's road with sacred power.
Puff! Pffwock! Fwo— fsssh!
With the dying flames creeping closer and closer to the offering table, Shin Jeong-ah felt a sensation unlike anything in her life. A violent dizziness, like standing on the very edge of unconsciousness — and with it, the grotesque certainty that something was coming for her.
The moment her eyes rolled back and she began to crumple—
Fwaaash! A sudden gust of wind snuffed out every candle at once.
Darkness took everything in an instant — a blackness so deep that nothing a hand's breadth away could be made out. The moon, too, was buried behind clouds, and though her eyes were open, they might as well have been shut.
Schlup, chack, schlug, shluuurp. Out of that darkness drifted grotesque sounds.
The strange air pressing in around them, the atmosphere the darkness itself conjured — it broke Yoon-sang, and his legs folded under him.
Kang Hyeong-seok drew his phone from his pocket.
"...Have you arrived?"
Chkk, chup, squelch-squelch, gulp! In place of an answer, only grotesque sounds came back.
"I'm going to turn on a light. Please do not be alarmed."
Kang Hyeong-seok exhaled through thinly parted lips. The moment his frost-white breath dissolved into the dark, he switched on the phone's light. Like a flashlight, it lit only a narrow circle.
Chk! Chuduk-chuduk, shluuurp! Smack-smack.
Slowly, Kang Hyeong-seok turned the phone toward the source of the sounds.
And the light fell on Shin Jeong-ah, crouched before the offering table.
Chk, chuk! Shluuurp! Squelch-squelch.
With both hands she was ravenously tearing into the pig's raw offal.
Shluuurp! Schlup, smack-smack.
Snatching up the liquor and the rice cakes as well, as though some ravenous hungry ghost had taken hold of her — this Shin Jeong-ah was utterly unrecognizable. She was so far removed from her usual immaculate self that the two women seemed impossible to reconcile.
Whump. Yoon-sang fainted dead away and sprawled where he fell. Kang Hyeong-seok, face drawn tight, kept his gaze fixed on Shin Jeong-ah as he spoke.
"Is the food to your liking?"
That was the moment. Shin Jeong-ah's hands stopped.
Then, still holding the pig's raw liver, she turned her head toward him.
"...Seobang."
The pronunciation was thick and clumsy — this was not her own flesh she wore. But the voice that carried on was deep and resonant, unmistakably declaring its presence.
"The food you prepared for me — I've received it well, Kim Seobang."
Shin Jeong-ah smiled. No — the Dokkaebi smiled.