Chapter 6
As forecast, dark clouds began to roll in from the sea. By four in the afternoon, the day was already gloomy as night.
Yoonhui’s doorbell was dead. It was coated with a film of black slime, and there was lichen growing from under the button.
It looked as though no hand had touched it for a long time.
Yoonhui’s place was a two-story wooden home, peeking up between vegetable fields and greenhouse tunnels, down in the part of the village that had flooded.
The surrounding homes had been left smashed up, and only this home had an embankment built around it, its roof mended, its walls set right.
The exterior walls were damp, and all the paint was blistering off.
A thick mat of ivy clung to everything, even the windows.
The front door, cracked like an old tree, had a rusty sign that must have been put up by the authorities in the early days: “Infected Resident, Keep Out.” Yoonhui’s husband had never broken the isolation orders, and so I had never needed to come here.
When the doorbell made no sound, I banged on the door.
I heard someone coming down the wooden staircase. The footsteps sounded more like dragging than walking. Amid silence, the solitary creaking felt eerie. Each step was long and slow. It made me imagine Yoonhui descending from some impossibly distant place, not just the second floor.
The door opened a tiny crack with the safety latch in place. Yoonhui brought her eyes to the gap in the door and peered out. Did she live with the lights off? Out of the darkness of her home, only Yoonhui’s keen eyes emitted a chilling light.
“Muyoung! What is it?”
“I’m here for work. There’s something I need to ask your husband about.”
I showed her the photograph I kept on my phone of a police badge with the police chief’s seal on it. It was laughable really, but this was agreed-upon practice in the village.
“This is the home of an infected person. The uninfected mustn’t come in. Let’s meet another time at church.”
I shook my head. “It won’t take long.”
“Didn’t you say you’d stay at home today, Muyoung?”
It hit me in a rush of feeling: I was an outsider. I didn’t say I would stay home. It was Yoonhui, and so many others, who told me to stay home. Don’t go roaming outside. Why did everyone want me to stay home today?
“Let’s meet up another time, somewhere else,” Yoonhui said. “I haven’t cleaned, and the place is a mess.”
A fishy odor exuded from within. It was a heinous stench, more than enough to overpower the odor that wafted through the whole village. I had to wonder if they kept boxes of rotting fish in there. As Yoonhui made to close the door, I forced my hand in through the opening.
“Are you crazy?” Yoonhui screamed. “What do you think you’re doing?”
She tried to pry my fingers from the door, but I’d spent too long in daily scuffles with crazed men.
I stood like a rock and looked in at the dim interior.
All the lights were off. I felt as though I was peering inside a tomb.
I put my foot against the wall for leverage and used all my strength to pull the door open.
The rusted latch popped out of the mushy wall and fell with a thud.
I pushed Yoonhui aside and turned on my phone flashlight.
The state of the inside was even worse than the exterior.
It was as though someone had left the house to soak in dirty seawater.
Cockroaches scattered away from the light in all directions.
There were fungi and barnacles growing on everything, and silverfish had burrowed holes in the walls, wriggling below the surface.
Black mold thrived on the damp curtains and there were maggots floating in a rice bowl left in the sink.
Wherever I trod, water squelched out of the linoleum and the floor sunk beneath my weight.
There were tangled waterweeds stuck to the floor, and in a sloping corner some had put down roots and were growing strong.
It’s seawater, I thought, observing the wretched state of the interior. They’re splashing seawater all over the house. On the walls, the floor, everywhere. Maybe every day.
“It’s … because of my husband.” Yoonhui’s words faltered. “He needs humid air. His skin splits if it’s even a little bit dry. He likes the humidity, and the doctor recommended it too. There’s no way of getting a humidifier around here, so…”
A loud creak sounded from above. The noise was far bulkier than the one Yoonhui had made coming down the stairs. I bounded up the stairs to the second floor.
“The house is in such a state,” Yoonhui yelped after me. “I don’t want you to see it…! Please leave! Get out!”
I flung open the bedroom door. The person inside froze in shock and turned to look at me.
No. It wasn’t a person.
For the very first time, I was encountering the form that had been hidden away under layers of fabric.
The bulging eyes of Yoonhui’s husband—no, the thing that may once have been her husband—were fixed on me.
Eyes that swelled to cover half its face.
Jawbone protruding like a frog’s, neck lined with wrinkled folds.
On the hump of its curved back was something which could only be described as a fin, and it was wiggling.
The creature had translucent webbing on its hands and feet, and its body was green like rotting leaves, with black splotches all over its skin.
Where ears should have been, there were gills excreting foam as they flapped open and closed.
There was a huge, shallow basin set in the middle of the room, and it was full of dirty seawater thick with weeds.
The monster was just lifting its body out of it.
It was naked, hurriedly putting on a shirt.
Based on the evidence, there was no doubt as to what the two of them had been doing.
This was Yoonhui’s husband. And a husband who, for some time, she had been living in harmony with.
Khi-nli-rik khi-rik. Khi-rik.
The monster made a threatening gnarl. Its neck swelled up large and it bared its needly teeth.
Having observed the bizarre creature’s muscles hardening, my hand moved like lightning to the holsters on my belt.
It was not my baton that I grabbed instinctively.
I knew today would be the day. The beam from the lighthouse that came in through the window reflected off my knife with a cold gleam.
Yoonhui rushed in and grabbed me from behind, using all her weight to keep me in place.
“Darling, stay calm … Muyoung, please…”
The skin pressing on my back was damp. A body that hadn’t yet dried. Until a moment ago, Yoonhui must have been tumbling around in that basin with whatever this thing was.
“Muyoung, darling, don’t we greet each other at church all the time? Why are you two facing off like strangers?”
“That … is not your husband,” I said, not loosening my grip on the knife. “Your husband is dead. His rotting body washed up at Okgye Port a while back. I just received the paperwork. I don’t know what that is, but it’s not your husband.”
“You’re right. He isn’t.”
Veins bulged on Yoonhui’s fingers. The fact that it was me, not that thing, she was using all her might to restrain, made it clear who she wanted to protect.
“We eat and sleep together, how would I not know that?”
Still showing its hostility, the creature stepped back. It looked as though it felt perfectly well. It wasn’t suffering from skeletal abnormality or deformity, no skin conditions. It wasn’t sick. It was a flawless specimen of whatever it was, a species that looked like this from the beginning.
“It’s not one of the other infected, either. That thing was never human.”
“Right, that’s true. But he’s … a really kind person … he came up out of the sea on the day of the flood.”
I had to keep myself from turning to look at Yoonhui, make myself face my opponent.
“After the tidal wave tore through the house, I ran down from the village in a state. I saw everything all smashed and broken, and my husband was nowhere to be found. There were traces of blood on a shattered window, so I think he must have been swept out through that. Instead of him, this guy was in the yard … He was injured and in pain. Gasping…”
The sound of the creature’s breathing softened, and the tension in its muscles eased. It was my body that was gradually stiffening with horror.
“The people who came down here that day, they saw it all…”
“What did they see?”
An unsettling excitement came to Yoonhui’s eyes.
“From out of that sea … ancient people, who lived on the seafloor, in the deepest depths … they were swept up in the ocean current and brought all the way here. If we hadn’t helped them, they wouldn’t have survived.”
“Help…?” It felt as if my blood was drying up. “Who? Who else helped them? How many people know about this? How many more of these things are in the village?”
“He’s a good person, Muyoung. He’s kind and polite, and he doesn’t hit me,” Yoonhui said. “Please, just leave, pretend you saw nothing. If we stay in this village, I can spend my life with this person. I love him. I’m happier than I’ve been for years.”
I heard another voice from behind. “Oh my god, oh my god…”
As Yoonhui’s grasp loosened, I jumped and turned around. Woojin was standing on the stairs, trembling as he held up his phone, photographing the creature. I looked past him to see that the door was blowing this way and that in the wind. Damn it, he must have followed me from the café.
“No … no one will believe it.” He was muttering, babbling. “Who could have imagined … My god, ho … horrendous … m-monster … monster!”
Instinctively, I moved to block the camera with my body. “Stop! Put the phone down.” This horrible thing was the shame of Haewon Village, and that made it my shame too. Although I wasn’t yet sure about the details of this strange affair, it was a scene I would never, ever want outsiders to see.