Standing at the edge of the yard and moving his gaze along the road leading down the slope, he saw something whitish moving at the end of the road. Mixed with the wailing, bell sounds could also be heard. Yugeon narrowed his eyes and watched the end of the road.
Soon he could tell what the whitish things were. It was a funeral procession. People dressed in pure white mourning clothes were carrying a pure white bier. It seemed someone on the island had really died. Thinking he should wake his younger brother, Yugeon was about to turn around when he noticed something strange. Why was a funeral procession at this hour?
Aigo, aigo. Suddenly the wailing became too close. It felt like the distance had narrowed in an instant. Yugeon creakily turned his head to look down the road. The funeral procession had stopped right below the uphill road leading to the house.
Startled, Yugeon stepped back two steps, and at the same time, the people who had been looking only forward all raised their heads in unison to look at Yugeon. Without exception, they were all unfamiliar faces. His spine stood on end.
Yugeon swallowed his breath and turned to run. But suddenly his vision went dark and he felt his body toppling over. His body struck the ground roughly. But the ground wasn’t dirt. Yugeon tried to feel and confirm the ground, but his vision was pitch black and he couldn’t see anything. Growing urgent, Yugeon sat up. But something touched his back and he couldn’t even sit up.
“What is this?”
Yugeon, who had been struggling while lying down, barely managed to turn his body to lie on his back, reached out his hands in all directions, and swung his feet around. All sides were completely blocked. He seemed to be trapped in something long and rectangular.
“What’s going on… Where is this…? Geon, Migeon!”
Yugeon pounded wildly on the space he was trapped in and called his younger brother’s name at the top of his lungs, but the sound only echoed around the interior space. As fear gradually surged at the incomprehensible situation, suddenly the surroundings rattled and he felt his body being lifted into the air.
“?”
Then, aigo, aigo. Along with the wailing, bell sounds rang and the place he was in started moving. Only then did Yugeon realize. That he was inside a coffin.
“Cr-crazy, what is this? Sa-save me! Geon! Is anyone there? Please save me!”
Extremely flustered, Yugeon screamed and pounded wildly on the ceiling lid. After pounding, he tried pushing it up with his hands and feet, and even turned his body over in the coffin to push with his back, but the lid wouldn’t budge.
Yugeon tightly closed his eyes and covered his ears.
“It must be a dream… It must be a dream!”
He endlessly repeated that it was a dream and prayed to wake up, but all around kept rattling, only reminding him where he was.
On his first day on the island, nothing happened so he felt relieved. It was only one day, but he had carelessly felt relieved. Even though he came to the island as the shaman said, he couldn’t understand why this was happening again. He was wronged, scared, and frustrated to tears.
Why me? Why only me? We all drank the snake liquor together, so why only me?
“Huu, ugh… Grandmother, Grandmother… Please help me… Grandmother…”
Suddenly, something grabbed his ankle tight! Startled, Yugeon convulsed and screamed. With tear-soaked eyes, he hurriedly looked toward his legs, but buried in pitch-black darkness, he couldn’t see anything. Could it be… could it be that the cold presence had found him again?
There was no room to retreat even an inch here. He couldn’t run away.
“No… I don’t want to…”
Yugeon shook his head wildly with fear-filled eyes. Then the sensation gripping his ankle gradually disappeared and a shout like a low scream rang in his ear.
—You shouldn’t have come, you shouldn’t have come to the island!
It was an elderly woman’s voice full of worry and concern.
“Grandmother?”
Yugeon somehow felt that voice was like Grandmother’s. As he tried to move his head to find the source of the voice, the rattling coffin stopped and was lowered to the ground.
Though the coffin’s movement had stopped, not knowing what was going on only made him more flustered. Yugeon listened to the sounds around him. Faint insect sounds and the sound of leaves rustling in the wind could be heard.
“Is, is anyone outside? Is no one there?”
No answer came back. Growing impatient, Yugeon banged on the coffin lid with his hands. But the lid seemed to lift a little. Yugeon felt around the lid here and there, then tried pushing with force. The lid that wouldn’t budge opened all too easily.
Through the leaves, a star-filled night sky could be seen. Yugeon slowly sat up. He was in the middle of a forest. Whoosh, the wind blew once. Trembling at the somehow desolate atmosphere, Yugeon stroked his arms exposed below his short sleeves and got out of the coffin.
There was no one around. Where had all the people from the funeral procession he’d seen gone… Looking around, Yugeon turned his head and hesitated, stopping his gaze. The coffin he’d been lying in just moments ago had also disappeared without a trace.
“Cough.”
As if replacing his flustered heart, a light cough burst out. Covering his mouth and coughing, Yugeon heard a swish, swoosh sound like something crawling on the ground. Forcibly suppressing his cough and raising his head, the bushes in front of him shook and the crawling sound grew closer.
Soon the bushes parted, and pitch-black darkness was revealed between them. It was dark and smooth. Yugeon slowly raised his gaze following it as it revealed itself through the bushes.
A giant snake with black, huge, slick scales stood before Yugeon’s eyes. Vertical bright yellow pupils looked straight at him. At that moment, Yugeon realized. That the snake hidden in the black fog in his dreams was this very snake.
Yugeon stepped backward muttering.
“Sn-snake…”
The snake’s head that had been high lowered a bit and its eyes narrowed. The snake, which had been looking at Yugeon as if searching, also looked once beyond Yugeon’s shoulder, then slowly closed its eyes and turned around, returning to the darkness in the bushes.
At the same time, Yugeon lost consciousness and collapsed. A moment later, a rustling sound of stepping on grass could be heard from the opposite direction where the snake had disappeared, and Migeon walked out. Migeon stared intently at the bushes where the snake had disappeared, then picked up the collapsed Yugeon. The weight of Yugeon, limp and unconscious, rested entirely in Migeon’s arms. Migeon stared intently at Yugeon’s face, then hugged his limp body tightly once before heading home.
Yugeon, who had been lying down with a pale face, muttered something and opened his eyes. When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was his younger brother’s face.
“Hyung.”
At the voice calling him, Yugeon, who had been blankly looking at his younger brother’s face, opened his parched lips.
“Where is this…?”
“It’s home, Hyung.”
Only then did Yugeon move his pupils to look around, then hurriedly sat up.
“I, I…!”
At Yugeon’s sudden action, Migeon was startled and quickly pulled back. Otherwise they would have bumped heads. Yugeon hurriedly grabbed his younger brother’s arm as he pulled away.
“The sn-snake? The snake?”
“Snake?”
At his younger brother’s question back, Yugeon looked around the room with a deathly pale face as if being chased, then asked.
“H-how did I get home? I was definitely outside?”
“I brought you. I woke up and you weren’t there… Hyung, do you have sleepwalking or something?”
“I don’t have anything like that! More than that, didn’t you see a snake? You said you brought me, wasn’t there a huge snake or something near me?”
“A snake… did you perhaps see an imugi?”
“…Huh?”
“Didn’t you hear from Grandmother? That there’s an imugi on this island?”
“That… the one about how this island was originally the imugi’s island, and we’re just borrowing this land to live, so we must always serve and worship the imugi-nim? Isn’t that just like an island legend?”
“Yeah, it’s an old story. Grandmother used to tell it often.”
“Are you saying that’s real?”
“No, I’m just saying maybe you saw something that wasn’t there. Since it’s an island where we grew up hearing such stories.”
At the plausible story, Yugeon had a blank face for a moment. But, but that snake…
Yugeon shook his head roughly.
“No, I… I’ve seen that snake several times in dreams…”
“Dreams?”
“Actually, I… ended up drinking snake liquor at work, and after that, a huge black snake started appearing in my dreams. And that snake burned my talisman in the dream, but when I woke up, the talisman was actually burned, and after that I started seeing ghosts too…”
Migeon frowned deeply and muttered.
“You… drank snake liquor?”
But Yugeon had no time to care about his younger brother’s expression.
“That’s why I asked Father to send me a talisman. But he kept not sending the talisman, so I went to find a shaman… and she told me to return to a place surrounded by water…”
“A place surrounded by water? You mean here, Imokdo?”
“Yeah, I also thought it meant this island, so I asked Father to let me return to the island, but Father got angry and said I couldn’t. After that, I couldn’t contact him… Then I got a call from you. That Father had passed away, so come back to the island.”
“……”
“It was shocking that Father suddenly passed away, but more than that, I was relieved that I could return to the island. Because all my problems would be solved if I returned to the island.”
“……”
“On the first day I came back to the island, I didn’t dream and wasn’t paralyzed, so I thought it was over. I thought everything was solved because I came back to the island as the shaman said. It was only one day, but pathetically…”
“…Why did you go outside at that hour?”
“I woke up without realizing it while sleeping, and I heard wailing.”
“…Wailing?”
“Yeah, I thought someone among the islanders had died, so I went out…”
“Why didn’t you wake me? No, anyway, wailing at that dawn?”
“I realized something was strange after I went out too, so I tried to go back in to wake you, but when I came to my senses, I was inside a coffin.”
“A coffin? You were inside a coffin? How?”
“I don’t know… Ah! I think I heard Grandmother’s voice inside the coffin too.”
“Grandmother?”
“She said I shouldn’t have come. That I shouldn’t have come to the island.”
“……”
“Then I was carried somewhere, and when I came out, that snake was there. What if, as Grandmother said, I shouldn’t have come back?”
Yugeon covered his face as if in despair and suffered. Migeon hugged Yugeon’s shoulders.
“It’s okay, it’s okay, Hyung… You probably saw something that wasn’t there because of all the things you experienced. Grandmother wouldn’t say such things to you. If you’re really anxious, I’ll try to get a talisman too.”
“What if the imugi of this island is angry because I drank snake liquor?”
“That won’t be it… Where in the world are there imugi?”
“I don’t know what to do… Now there’s nowhere to run.”
“Stay with me. I’ll protect you.”
Migeon smiled gently and slowly stroked the back of Yugeon, who he was hugging.
That night, Yugeon, who once again lay down under one blanket with his younger brother, lay with his back turned from unnecessary embarrassment. Though he had talked about the reason he came to the island, had to come to the island, he couldn’t bring himself to tell one thing—about the ghost rape. How could he tell his younger brother that he was raped by a ghost and seemed to have given birth to something?
Swallowing a sigh and trying to sleep, a presence approached from behind. He felt another person’s breath on the nape of his neck. It seemed his younger brother had a habit of sleeping pressed against people. Still, he didn’t feel unpleasant or averse to it. Rather, he felt reassured. He didn’t know the fact that a trustworthy person was by his side would bring such terrible relief.
Before falling into slumber while blinking drowsily, Yugeon recalled the funeral procession he’d seen last night with his fading consciousness. The people in the procession leading the bier. Thinking back, they were all unfamiliar faces, but they strangely resembled the villagers.
* * *
On a cliff with vigorous wave sounds, a large beast with blue-gray fur and black stripes lay with its chin resting. The beast that had been quietly closing its eyes slowly opened them and looked below the cliff.
—Where, are you…? Whe… re…?
A ghost with dark bluish skin was wandering below the cliff searching for something. It was a ghost never seen before on the island. The beast frowned and looked at the ghost.
A familiar energy was circulating inside the ghost’s body.
