The House That Waited
The 15th.
Vrrrooom.
Kang Hyeong-seok was behind the wheel, driving toward Professor Kim Jae-sik's house. It was the hour when the newly risen sun would light the ridgelines of the eastern mountains, and though the air carried the scent of early dawn, there was no bite of cold in it.
Rattle, clunk. They were passing the American military base in Pyeongtaek. Beyond a diner famous for its handmade burgers he steered deeper inland, slowing as the residential streets began. Professor Kim Jae-sik's house stood here.
Kang Hyeong-seok pushed the car door open, and a gray-haired man waiting in front of one of the houses greeted him with a laugh.
"Aigoo, you rascal! It's been far too long."
"Have you been in good health, Professor?"
"You rascal—still talking like a soldier, I see."
Kang Hyeong-seok shook Kim Jae-sik's hand, then climbed back into the car.
Click. Both men fastened their seatbelts, and Kang Hyeong-seok keyed a new destination into his phone. Yeongdong, in North Chungcheong Province—the countryside where Professor Jang Jun had retired to farm.
The engine hummed back to life.
"You still take your coffee?"
"I do. Tastes don't seem to change all that easily, it turns out."
"Then I'll buy you a cup at the rest stop on the way."
"No, Professor. I earn my own money now—it should be me buying yours."
Perhaps it was because they were meeting after so long. They hadn't even had their coffee yet, but a warm glow was already hanging in the car.
"I take it you hear from Professor Jang often?"
"Just a few days ago, in fact. And don't get me started. Every time I forget about it, another KakaoTalk message arrives with photos—his fishing, his crops. One time he was even bragging about digging up wild bellflower roots."
"I'm glad to hear he's living so well."
"Maybe when I hit retirement age, I'll tag along with Professor Jang and take up fishing myself."
It seemed a rather fine idea, and Kang Hyeong-seok smiled.
"By the way, what's all that in the back?"
"Ah—I packed a few personal things, just in case."
"It's not as if we'll be gone for days on end."
"All the same. I brought a portable charger and my laptop."
The bag held the tools of his trade. And naturally, other things had gone in as well—the Sinjangkal and the sacred shaman bells among them.
"That CEO of yours isn't giving you a hard time, is he?"
"The CEO? I hardly ever have occasion to see him."
"Well, you are in sales, after all. Then I'd wager you spend more time out in the field than at your desk."
"It isn't quite that simple."
Trading this and that in easy conversation, Kang Hyeong-seok drove on toward North Chungcheong Province. At the rest stop they pulled into along the way, Kim Jae-sik bought the coffee and Kang Hyeong-seok bought the food.
"You didn't have to do that. It's not as if you're made of money."
"Do you know how many meals I mooched off you as your student? It's really nothing."
"Aigoo, you rascal."
Back in the car, the two of them ran the highway straight through. It was half past two in the afternoon when they reached North Chungcheong Province. But they did not head straight for Professor Jang Jun's house.
"You're not going to call ahead?"
"He'll understand. We're that kind of friends. We'll head over around dinnertime—that'll be just right."
Kim Jae-sik seized on the awkward hour of their arrival as an opportunity.
"Say, could you pull over for me up there, just before the bridge?"
"Ah—yes, of course."
Kang Hyeong-seok eased off the speed without asking why. He had a fair idea of the reason already.
Before the concrete bridge stood two stone statues. One was still a perfectly sound elephant. The other was not.
Click, click-click! While Kim Jae-sik photographed the ruined statue from angle after angle, Kang Hyeong-seok stood beside him with his hands buried in his pockets, his gaze settling on the other one. Of all the animals in the world—an elephant.
"Interesting, isn't it, Hyeong-seok?" Kim Jae-sik said, still snapping photos.
"Which part do you mean?"
"That the villagers pooled their money to raise an elephant statue. An elephant, of all creatures. Not any other animal."
"I looked into it, actually. Word is they chose the elephant because it was a beast stronger than the tiger."
Kim Jae-sik lifted his eyes from his phone and beamed at him.
"Well, well. Looks like you've done your homework."
"It caught my interest, that's all."
"What a waste. A student like you truly should have come to graduate school."
Joke or not, the thought was frightening enough that Kang Hyeong-seok shuddered—while smiling.
"And things like this get handed down by word of mouth as the years go by, don't they? Then they're written into the record."
"Exactly."
Kim Jae-sik stroked the broken statue with a suddenly grave expression. It was cast concrete, poured into a mold—neither refined in shape nor dignified in bearing—but the intention behind it, the desperation, was unmistakably enormous.
"People have always been that way. Whatever the era, when something happens that they cannot understand, they lean on the supernatural."
Knowing what had happened here, Kang Hyeong-seok nodded. He had heard that livestock and people had died in great numbers. Judged by today's standards, it might have been a sickness passing from animals to humans—or something one could write off as mere coincidence.
"They say tiger attacks were frequent in this region long ago. But then, where in Korea is there a place where they weren't?"
"You'd be hard-pressed to find a region without a Hosikchong."
"It happened all over the country."
To be attacked by a tiger was called a hohwan—a tiger's calamity. And a hohwan was never regarded as a mere accident. It was a fate ordained by the spirits. And so people did not so much pity the victims of a tiger's mauling as they feared and shunned them—so far as to refuse marriage into any household that had suffered one. So far as to deny them even a proper grave. The only burial permitted to a victim of the tiger was a mound of stones called a Hosikchong.
"Looking at it now, you wonder how people could ever have been that way."
"In a way, it does seem rather like the vampire."
"You mean the chang-gwi?"
"Yes."
Kim Jae-sik nodded, his face a tangle of feelings, and let out a long sigh.
"In that the victim becomes the perpetrator, I suppose you could see it that way. The chang-gwi, after all, are those who became entangled with the tiger."
With one more sigh, Kim Jae-sik went carefully back over the photographs he had saved.
"We've let this eat up too much time. Let's get moving."
"Nothing else you'd like to look at around here?"
"Professor Jang lives somewhere out of the way. If we have time to spare, we can walk the neighborhood a bit then."
With that, Kim Jae-sik started toward the car first. Trailing after him, Kang Hyeong-seok turned his head for one more look at the elephant statues. His face was full of thought.
If the villagers' minds went straight to tiger attacks when something strange occurred, then just how often must the tigers have struck here.
Plenty of things could be paired with a strange phenomenon. A fox. A crow. A dokkaebi or an imugi, or some manner of monster. Yet the villagers who had raised those statues had thought of the tiger. That was how often the attacks came, here of all places. And if so—how many chang-gwi, one had to wonder, dwelled in this land?
Shaking his head to shake the thoughts loose, Kang Hyeong-seok walked on after Kim Jae-sik.
The engine wound down to a low grumble as Kang Hyeong-seok killed the ignition in a quiet country village.
"Aigoo, would you look at this. Utterly peaceful."
Professor Jang Jun's home sat in a snug country village—snug enough to draw that remark from Kim Jae-sik. The man had spent his whole life at a university, guiding young students and pursuing his research. Once retired, of course he would want to live somewhere so thinly peopled as this.
"I envy him. I truly do. When would I ever get to live somewhere like this?" Kim Jae-sik murmured, sincerity soaked into his voice, while Kang Hyeong-seok studied the surroundings. It was a neighborhood where every house had its low courtyard wall and its own yard. A farm must have stood nearby, for the smell of animals drifted on the air—not overpoweringly, though.
"Well now, there's even a well over there. A real well!"
Kim Jae-sik made for Professor Jang's house, giddy as a child on an amusement-park outing. So this really was the home of a newly retired man—the impression struck firmly from the very facade, which stood neater than any of the neighboring houses. He must have bought the land alone and had the house built new.
Ding-dong. Kim Jae-sik pressed the doorbell and waited, smiling. But when no answer came, the smile drained from his face.
"It seems he's stepped out for a moment."
"This man—if he were going anywhere, he'd have said something..."
Ding-dong. Kim Jae-sik rang the bell again and took out his phone. He called Professor Jang, but even after pressing the call button three times, the line refused to connect.
"Honestly, this man..."
It was just as worry drew Kim Jae-sik's brows together.
Ting. A faint chime of bells rose from the backpack Kang Hyeong-seok carried. The divine spirit within—sensing something wicked, stirring to shield its master. Kang Hyeong-seok's awareness slid to the backpack, while Kim Jae-sik, in that same breath, pushed out a sigh and pressed the call button once more.
"He's not the type to go quiet like this. Something's happened."
"Hold on. Let's be a little more careful first."
Face taut with mounting unease, Kim Jae-sik took hold of the door handle and turned. A door that surely ought to have been locked.
But as though it had been waiting all this while for them to arrive, the handle turned without the slightest resistance.
"What—?"
Kim Jae-sik's and Kang Hyeong-seok's eyes met.
Kim Jae-sik flung the door wide and plunged inside. Crash! In the entryway, a shovel or an umbrella—left standing there, it seemed, by Professor Jang—toppled over with a clatter.
"Professor Jang! Professor Jang!"
It was the home of an old man who lived alone. The phone unanswered. The door left unlocked. The dread that some calamity had struck turned Kim Jae-sik's face pale and desperate.
"Professor Jang!"
Shouting, Kim Jae-sik flung the doors open one after another. The door to what looked like the master bedroom swung wide—and Kim Jae-sik, who had been moving with such urgency, stopped dead. Then he sank down where he stood, as though collapsing.
"Professor Jang..."
Kang Hyeong-seok, following right on his heels, at once covered Kim Jae-sik's eyes.
"Professor—don't look."
"But... Jang..."
Kang Hyeong-seok gripped Kim Jae-sik's shoulder hard, his own face grim with sorrow as he looked into the room. Professor Jang Jun had been a friend to him as well. There had been times he had mooched coffee in the man's office alongside Kim Jae-sik. A good-tempered man, warm and generous. Which was precisely why this was so hard to bear.
Bzzzzzzz. Flies swarming the corpse drifted through the air. Maggots seethed and writhed. Blood spattered as high as the ceiling had dried black, and a foul reek of gore stabbed mercilessly at his nose. The stench of blood. And beneath it, the reek of the dead.
"Huurgh! Hk—hhh, uuuurgh."
Wrapping an arm around Kim Jae-sik's heaving shoulders, Kang Hyeong-seok looked upon Professor Jang Jun's savaged remains.
Ting. Ting. Ting. The sacred shaman bells went on ringing, soft and unceasing.