The Tiger Calamity
There is a word for it: hohwan — the tiger calamity.
The deadliest, most feared scourge the Korean Peninsula ever knew, the tiger calamity spared neither time nor place nor person. So terrible was it that people came to regard it not as an incident but as a disaster in its own right — a visitation, like flood or famine.
They believed, in fact, that a tiger's victim was marked from the moment of birth, and that the calamity spread to those nearest and dearest like a contagion. Which is why our ancestors refused even to arrange a marriage into the family of anyone a tiger had taken.
Kang Hyeong-seok drove on with a face of perfect calm, but his head was packed solid with thought. It was late afternoon, yet the foul weather had swallowed the daylight whole; beyond the glass, the world was black as ink.
Shhhhaaaaaa!
"Um, Hyung-nim? The weather's awful — does it really have to be today?"
Perhaps it was the rain, which showed no sign of letting up. Yoon-sang's plea had come out small and tentative, but Hyeong-seok couldn't bring himself to nod along. The beomgwi that had claimed Professor Jang Jun had set its sights on Kim Jae-sik.
"It gets handled today. No way around it."
He could not let it slip away. If he did, every manner of calamity would descend upon this region once more — exactly as it had before the stone elephant was raised. The victims confirmed on the news alone numbered more than a dozen; add the livestock, and the dead climbed into the hundreds.
"...Yes, Hyung-nim."
Reading the weight in the air, Yoon-sang swallowed drily and answered. Hyeong-seok checked the time remaining on the navigation. They would arrive soon.
But he had never intended to park at Banya Temple.
Grrrrrrr. He brought the car to a stop a good distance from the temple's entrance, and Yoon-sang's questioning stare flew at him. Hyeong-seok unclicked his seatbelt, and in the dim interior — where the dome light between the two front seats spilled a dull orange — he spoke.
"You search the temple grounds. I'm going up the mountain."
Yoon-sang's face froze, his own seatbelt half undone. "What? You're going up the mountain, Hyung-nim?"
"The temple will be safer."
"Wha— no, hold on a second, Hyung-nim!"
Bang! The door swung open, and Hyeong-seok moved to the trunk, umbrella held high overhead. There he began cramming the green plums they'd hauled along deep into his bag — and all the while, Yoon-sang's eyes hung on his back.
"Hyung-nim! You were planning to climb the mountain at this hour? It's pouring out there!"
"I've got something to count on."
The Sinjangkal. The Mudang Bang-ul. Two sacred implements on his person. And if Yoon-sang got lured off or tangled up in something ugly on that mountain for no good reason, it would only deepen the headache.
Thump! Trunk closed, Hyeong-seok came around to the passenger window. "Call me the second anything happens. Start by looking for the Sansingak — the mountain-god shrine."
"H-Hyung-nim..."
Bag slung over his shoulder, Hyeong-seok set out for the mountain. From the car pulling away, Yoon-sang leaned out and sent a worried look after him. He didn't need eyes in the back of his head; the prickling at the back of his neck said it all.
Shhhhaaaaaa!
The rain fell with a vicious persistence. Striding toward the mountain in long, hard steps, Hyeong-seok gripped his umbrella tight. Perhaps because he had left the temple behind, no light of any kind remained nearby, and soon the darkness folded around him like a shroud. Fully clear of Yoon-sang now, he began to climb the mountain as it sank into night.
Squelch! The soil, gorged with rain, was slick underfoot, and the smells of wet earth and mud needled into his nose. A hiking trail did wind up here — but that path was not meant for Kang Hyeong-seok.
Shff. He stepped over the rope line and struck out across ground no road had ever touched, climbing with his umbrella held up against the downpour.
The mountain behind Banya Temple. The mountain where a scree of stones rose in the shape of a tiger, tail held high. The mountain said to harbor the tiger's aura. And walking deep into its heart, he could not say it felt good.
A mountain at midnight...
A mountain by day and a mountain by night are two entirely different beings. Saturated with yin energy, the night mountain gave off an air that made even the least spiritually attuned person want to turn back.
Skreek, skreek.
The alien sound yanked his full attention. He turned his gaze that way — and there was a ghost, its body scorched jet-black, its lower jaw simply gone, staring at him as it crammed fistfuls of earth down its ruined throat. Judging by its clothing, a wandering soul from the Joseon dynasty, or older.
Saw it saw it saw it saw it saw it saw it saw it saw it saw it saw it.
The spirit's thoughts seeped into his skull, and it began crawling toward him, fast.
Chime!
But the ghost froze the instant the Mudang Bang-ul rang out inside his bag. The sacred shaman bells — a divine implement that bars evil. Halted where it stood, the spirit kept its rolled-back eyes fixed on him, and Hyeong-seok resumed walking. Even then, its stare clung to him without letup. He saw spirits like that for the whole of the climb.
Deeper and deeper in, Hyeong-seok finally discarded the umbrella. He slipped the Sinjangkal into his jacket and went on carrying only the Mudang Bang-ul and his lantern — toward the heart of a mountain where the rain fell black, cruelly so.
Shhhhaaaaa!
Rain poncho pulled over his head, Yoon-sang moved in a hunched half-crouch, warily eyeing the lit halls of Banya Temple. He'd come within a hair of being caught twice already. But this was hardly Yoon-sang's first rodeo. He'd shaken off residents and security guards many a time to slip into haunted houses, and that experience was paying off handsomely now.
Ah. So that's why Hyung-nim sent me to the temple.
He was moving with enough skill to indulge the misconception freely, threading from cover to cover. What Hyeong-seok had asked of him was the search for — and discovery of — the Sansingak. Lighting his way with the camera filming his video, Yoon-sang swept the surroundings, hunting for the shrine.
"Haaah... haaah..."
His breathing was ragged from the rain, and the footage shook — which, again, was a good thing. All that raw, on-the-spot atmosphere would make for killer content when he streamed it later. In any case, having covered most of the temple's interior, he boldly pushed out to the periphery.
The Sansingak was a structure built under Buddhist influence. But it belonged not to the Buddha — it belonged to the mountain god. Which meant he couldn't rule out the possibility that it stood outside the temple proper.
Shhhhaaaaa! Splat, splat.
Drainage here was clearly poor; the path soaked his pant hems through as he walked, and Yoon-sang pressed on toward ever lonelier ground. Sansingak, Sansingak. Even tucked away in the middle of nowhere, it might yet sit somewhere conspicuous. With that hope, eyes bugged wide so as not to miss it, he walked the gradually darkening path.
After a long while of walking — of walking dead straight — Yoon-sang felt something wrong.
Shhhhaaaaaa.
Only the rain. The temple wasn't all that far off, yet no other sound reached him at all, and not an insect, not a bird, showed itself anywhere.
This was dangerous. Never set foot in a house where even the bugs won't show... Years of haunting-hunting had taught him a thing or two. A place without insects is a dangerous place: the poison-qi and yin energy run so virulent that even vermin cannot survive there. In truth, among all the haunted houses he'd visited, the ones truly worthy of the name had conspicuously few bugs.
A place that should not exist. And the spot where Yoon-sang stood was exactly that kind of place.
Gulp. He swallowed drily and moved forward, steps far slower and more careful than before. Hyeong-seok's request drove him on — and so did the craving not to let broadcast gold slip through his fingers.
Another long stretch of walking. Click. Well clear of the temple now, Yoon-sang fished his lantern out of his bag and aimed its beam at a faint, looming mass in the distance.
Rain-heavy branches and leaves, sagging low. Raindrops falling like spilled tears. And a structure that looked as if it had been standing there since time out of mind. The Sansingak — roughly two meters tall and a meter across.
"F-found it. I found it."
Making sure the words went into his phone, he walked toward the shrine, trembling. And then he saw it. The Sansingak's door, standing open. And through that gap, jutting out crooked — a hand, black and skeletal. The mummified thing, robbed of every last trace of life and vigor, gleamed in the lantern light.
"Uh..."
The sound fell out of him without permission, and his lips began to rattle. It wasn't because of the hand in the shrine. A chill came slicing through the air like a thrown stiletto and grazed his cheek.
Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack. Upper teeth hammering against lower, Yoon-sang turned his head — slowly, slowly. And there in the brush he saw a face, staring back at him.
"...Huh?"
Unmistakably a human head — and yet it sat far, far too low. The head hung where knees should have been, and the thing he could least make sense of was that face's expression. A mouth beaming in pure, childlike delight. Eyes crinkled into crescents. And eyeballs glazed with a greasy, unwholesome sheen.
Rustle. Pushing through the brush, the face began to close the distance. Rain beaded and dripped off a long, sinuous body furred in mottled black and yellow. Slosh, slosh. At the sight of the beast's paws slapping through the puddled ground as it came, Yoon-sang felt his mind blanch white.
A chang-gwi. A ghost wearing the body of a tiger was coming straight at him, eyes locked on.
The lantern light swayed with every step, and each sway revealed nothing but shafts of reflected light and trees drenched to the bone. Pressing deeper, Kang Hyeong-seok felt a strong sense of wrongness settle over him. Is this place really still the real world? The energy around him was unnatural enough to earn the doubt.
Nothing living could be felt. Even the spirits that had crowded the mountainside earlier were nowhere to be seen. They said this mountain held the tiger's aura — and the deeper he went, the thicker and heavier that presence grew, until nothing, not even air, dared approach.
Thump. And so Hyeong-seok walked toward it.
Come out. Come here. You must come. The fierce, dangerous aura barring all approach was saying exactly that to him. Plop, drop, plop. Walking on, he held the Mudang Bang-ul out ahead, raindrops dripping from the brass one by one. Then, ringing the bells, he brought his other hand to the jacket where the Sinjangkal waited.
The beomgwi is a Mountain Lord.Ring-a-lang! Ring-a-lang!
A Mountain Lord is a king — and a king keeps nothing at his side that is not his.Ring-a-la-lang! Ring-a-la-lang!
And such a one has called to me.Ring-a-la-lang! Ring-a-la-la-la-lang!
What the Mountain Lord wants is me.
It means to take me. To swing that silkworm head, shatter my spine with forelegs like thunder, and sever my throat with claws like iron sickles. Because it called to me, I can read its intent just as surely.
Ring-a-la-la-lang! Ring-a-la-lang!
Shaking the Mudang Bang-ul until fine spray scattered in every direction, Hyeong-seok let out a voice dry and hollow.
"Come out."
You are not the only one who can call. I can call you, too.
"I've come all this way. So show yourself."
Ring-a-la-la-lang!
"COME OUT!"
The instant Hyeong-seok's shout broke over the silent forest — the wind died. The rain went on sheeting down, yet the movement of the air stopped altogether, as though they had slipped into a sealed chamber. Ssssuuuh. His breath turned white the moment it left him, and his skin prickled as if jabbed with needles.
And then, out of the darkness, faces bone-white began to appear. Chang-gwi — by the look of them, a good dozen or more.
Thock, thock, thock, thock, thock. They came on with soft footfalls, then halted before Hyeong-seok — and parted to the left and right, opening a path. As if to say: this way.
Looking upon the chang-gwi standing utterly still, Hyeong-seok began to walk, the Mudang Bang-ul held out before him. To meet the beomgwi waiting at the end of that path.