Chapter 12
“Well, shit. They really did kill them off nice and clean.”
A man in slacks and just a shirt poked a finger into the thick blood smeared on the window and muttered.
The inside of the subway where Monkey Dream had appeared. More specifically, the first car directly connected to the driver’s cab.
Unlike the other cars, where at least one survivor had appeared, there was not a single survivor here. All that was here was blood and more blood, even more blood, plus flesh and scattered organs. At first glance, it looked like some elementary school kid had dumped out a bucket of red paint.
In other words, it was that unreal.
Park Heemin, the section chief of the Bureau’s Busan Branch Response Division, shook his head and crouched in front of the corpse, prodding the red flesh.
Naturally, it was a real corpse. The cause of death, unlike ordinary Monkey Dream victims, was blood loss. Or shock. There were no signs of cardiac arrest.
The victims had probably died while suffering the pain of having their skin sliced open and carved away. Slowly, without being able to resist at all.
That wasn’t strange. Monkey Dream was a notorious urban legend famous for inflicting excruciating pain on its victims.
The problem was that it had happened the same way in reality.
These things don’t normally crawl out of the dream world. Trapped forever in the other side, they slowly grow by devouring humans one by one. For one of them to show up in reality and create this much damage was a first anywhere in the world.
And of all places, why did the first incident have to happen in Korea?
Heemin let out a long sigh and stepped out of the subway.
“All right, everyone, you didn’t see anything here. What did you say?”
“I didn’t see anything…….”
“Very good! Good children! Now go on home!”
“Yes…….”
“Next?”
A blonde-haired woman sitting on a bench at the station addressed the line of witnesses. The witness who’d been called didn’t walk toward her right away, and instead shouted at the Bureau employee standing right beside him.
“W-what is this! Who are you people! I work as a manager at a big company, a manager! I’m not someone you can treat like this—!”
Bang!
Before the man’s words could even continue, a Bureau employee pulled the trigger. The bullet, which had narrowly missed the man, buried itself in the wall.
“…….”
The employee said nothing and lowered the muzzle. The man who had been yelling rolled his eyes back and pissed himself on the spot.
“Ack! Gross!”
The woman looked down at him and waved her hand. The employee bowed apologetically and dragged the fainted man to the very back of the line before dumping him there.
After that, everything went smoothly. No one else objected to the strange procedure.
Heemin had been smoking a cigarette a little farther away when he walked over to her.
“Hari.”
“Ah, Manager Park Heemin.”
Hari, the woman called, turned her head toward Heemin. After wiping the old man’s memory, he tapped the seat beside him.
“Sit down. Your legs must hurt from standing all this time.”
“Should I?”
Heemin grinned and plopped down in the empty seat. Once his massive frame sat down beside the small-bodied Hari, their sizes looked even more exaggerated. The Bureau employees handling the scene even turned to look at them absentmindedly.
But Heemin didn’t bother scolding them and instead asked Hari.
“Found anything?”
“Hmm... not really. The people here weren’t even on the subway to begin with! Nothing of substance to hear!”
“Where are the survivors?”
“At the very back of the line. I thought they might need a little more time to calm down, so I put them off for now. Should we start with them first?”
“That would be appreciated.”
“Understood!”
Hari smiled brightly and signaled the employee with her eyes. The employee brought over the least shaken-looking man among those at the very back of the line and stood him in front of Hari.
“Ugh, ugh…….”
The man’s pupils were unfocused. His whole body was trembling, and cold sweat covered his face. Maybe he’d bitten his nails out of anxiety, because blood was dripping from his index and middle fingers.
It wasn’t hard to understand. Monkey Dream only looked as if it put its victims into unconsciousness, but the truth was different. Everyone caught in it remained vividly awake in mind. Because of that, they had no choice but to watch a person being dismembered in real time right before their eyes.
It was only natural their minds collapsed.
Even seasoned Bureau agents sometimes can’t eat meat for days after dealing with something uncanny, so what about ordinary people?
To be honest, the fact that the man was standing there in one piece was a miracle. If they gave him a sedative and waited a bit longer, he might even be able to give a proper statement.
But Hari didn’t do that. After glancing at Heemin, she stared straight into the man’s eyes and clapped.
With a sharp clap, the anxious man’s face went blank.
He was hypnotized.
It was a power she gained after exposure to the supernatural. Her own ability—the one that put Hari in a high position and kept her as an indispensable asset to the Bureau.
It wasn’t as powerful as magic, but there was no doubt it was formidable. Ordinary people couldn’t resist her power at all; once hypnotized, their minds were completely taken over.
That was the case now. The man, caught in Hari’s hypnosis, stared at her with a vacant expression.
Hari forcibly moved his body this way and that, then burst into a giggle before starting her proper questioning.
“Please tell me everything you saw and felt! No lies!”
“It was the weekend, and I was taking it easy. But around lunchtime my section chief suddenly called me. He said there was urgent work this afternoon, so I had to come in. I kept saying I couldn’t, but the section chief got so angry andㅡ”
“Beep! The stuff that happened on the subway! So only talk about things tied to the anomaly!”
Once she entered the proper command, the man fell silent and started telling a different story.
“The subway had been running for ten minutes and still hadn’t reached a station. When I found that odd, some unknown force suddenly forced me down into my seat. I tried to stand up from that sudden situation. But even though my mind was awake, my body wouldn’t move.”
“Mm-hm.”
“All kinds of thoughts started running through my head. Had I been kidnapped? Had something suddenly gone wrong with the subway? Was someone about to set it on fireㅡ”
“Skip!”
A little later, small monkeys armed with blades started coming into the car I was sitting in. They chatted among themselves, then suddenly butchered a woman. The bastards who had killed her while she was still alive then butchered the man seated right beside her the same way.
“That’s Monkey Dream, Section Chief Park Heemin.”
“Then those guys even reached for the man beside me. But just before the blade could touch him, the man pulled a knife and a book from the bag in his arms and killed the monkeys in return.”
“Huh?”
Hari’s eyes widened at the completely unexpected story. Section Chief Park Heemin sprang to his feet and said to the man.
“Keep talking.”
“That man killed the monkeys, drew something somewhere, then shouted the name of God and moved into another car. And after a few minutes, he came back and left when the subway stopped. That’s when I came to, too.”
The man said no more after that.
Heemin muttered the word God and asked again.
“Explain what was drawn.”
“I don’t know exactly. My head wasn’t turned, so I couldn’t see.”
Fuck.
Heemin spat out a curse and turned to Hari.
“He’s a mage. The book he was carrying was definitely a grimoire.”
“Really...?”
“For sure. Given that he was shouting the name of God, he was probably some guy who picked up a grimoire written by Christians long ago and became a mage. He wasn’t the culprit behind this incident, but the very fact that a new mage has appeared in Korea is a problem. I’m sure a whole heap of strange incidents will start erupting around him.”
Mages have the power to draw in the supernatural. Maybe this incident happened because the mage boarded the subway.
Heemin turned his head after spotting the CCTV hanging all alone from the station ceiling.
“Hari, has the video analysis team arrived?”
“Yep! They went in a little while ago, so they’re probably checking the footage right now.”
“Yeah, I’ll head over there for a bit, so wrap things up and administer the amnestic.”
“Yep.”
Hari answered, and Heemin moved off. He stormed into the subway security room that monitored the CCTV and looked over the forensic team already there.
“……Ha, fuck.”
The forensic team members were all sprawled on the floor, blood streaming from their ears, noses, and eyes. Heemin grimaced and shifted his gaze to the monitors.
[……Young man, why do you wander so? Come here and wash away our resentment.]
What showed on the monitor wasn’t CCTV footage, but a blood-soaked woman wearing a pristine white funeral shroud. Heemin let out a long sigh, lined the wide monitors up in a row, and put on his golden knuckles.
And then.
Crack!!
He threw a punch and smashed everything to pieces.
It was a knuckle weapon that destroyed spirit and body alike. The evil spirit’s face was smashed to pieces and it died before it could even do anything. A trivial end, but it faithfully carried out its role.
“…….”
A video, or footage, possessed by an evil spirit isn’t purified just because you kill the spirit behind it. Instead, all the data gets used up and it turns blank.
The same went for CCTV footage. Heemin searched for the video just in case, but there was nothing left in storage. Only a cursed recording remained—one that could bring the evil spirit back to life.
“……This doesn’t seem like a coincidence.”
An evil spirit just happened to show up where the Bureau had come looking? In the security room of the subway station where the mage’s footage had been recorded?
There was no way it was a coincidence. Someone was definitely hiding his identity.
Heemin let out a long sigh and tapped the cheeks of the forensic team members collapsed on the floor. But they didn’t wake up. They only shuddered intermittently and muttered gibberish.
They’d been properly cursed. It was proof they had dealt with a high-grade evil spirit. It was impressive they’d managed to tune it so it stopped just short of killing them.
“These guys are going to need purification…….”
Heemin muttered a curse under his breath, sat down in a security room chair, and pulled out his phone. Then he made a call somewhere.
A short ring later, the other side picked up. Heemin got straight to the point without any preamble.
“Branch Chief, a new mage has appeared in Busan. See whether any Christian grimoire has gone missing recently in Israel or the surrounding area.”
*
“Uh, the ghost died.”
“What?”
“No, it’s nothing. Keep going.”