STRGS 04

Chapter 4

Odaesan Blood Valley (2)

Arriving at the valley with my heart pounding at the thought of taking spirit photos, I was met with fresh air, a cool breeze, and the scent of grass. The lush trees served as natural parasols…

‘It looks like a famous hot spot.’

It was a magnificent view. The valley continued along a gently sloped rock slab waterfall perfect for water sliding, and clear valley water sloshed warmly in a wide pool that looked just right for swimming.

‘I wondered if that would be the case, and sure enough…’

When I brought the action cam close to the surface, the dark bottom was captured on camera. It was just the black bottom and the water. Forget fish; not even a small insect was floating around.

There was no moss or aquatic weeds, either. Even though there was a waterfall, the water flowed down as if frozen like a still frame, without so much as a ripple.

‘How will this look in a photo?’

Click.

Come here! You jump first! You jump first! No, we’ll jump first! Watch closely! Watch us jump down from up close!

Along with the shutter sound of my cell phone, noisy laughter echoed right above my head. It was the laughter I had heard earlier—the tone kids use when teasing a cowardly friend.

Splash!

Soon after, water splashed in all directions, creating ripples. A dull, heavy sound far larger than a rock. Strictly speaking, the weight of a young human.

Something rose out of the water. A cackling kid.

No… it wasn’t a person.

It looked like a person. Hair clinging to its face. A short-sleeved shirt worn instead of a swimsuit. To anyone looking, it was a regular vacationer who had come to the valley for a summer retreat. However, it was neither a person nor a child.

Pieces of flesh endlessly dripped from its stark white, bloated body.

Oddly, remaining body parts were stitched together onto its clothes. Where an arm should be, five long strands of bone were attached and twitching. They curled up as if those bones were fingers and then splashed in the water.

The place assumed to be its mouth was torn half-open downward, and a sticky substance—unknowable whether it was blood or mud—dripped down its chin.

‘I’m f*cked.’

It couldn’t even be compared to movie CG. Beyond the feeling of disgust, a terror that engulfed my brain surged up. If I meet its eyes, I die. If I get caught, I die. If I hear its voice, I’ll go mad. All kinds of bad endings flashed before my eyes like a kaleidoscope.

The ‘real thing’ makes a person go crazy just by looking at it. Driven by an unreasoning fear that left me completely helpless, I had no choice but to throw my body into the water—

Crunch.

I bit down hard on my tongue. A fishy taste filled my mouth, and unswallowed blood trickled down. The irrational thoughts taking over my head retreated far away.

‘It’s dangerous to get close. Let’s stay as far away as possible.’

I forced myself to keep thinking different thoughts. Otherwise, I would be bewitched again. Blinking my eyes, I stared at the water. Since I had seen the ghost for now, if the water turned into blood, I would be able to escape.

‘Shortly after the splash sound, the valley water turned into blood.’

Because that’s how it was written!

However, the water showed no sign of changing. From the path I had crossed, the rustling sound of crawling hands could still be heard.

‘Why? It splashed. Why isn’t it changing? Is there one more trigger?’

The ghost was still looking around in the water, making bone-clacking sounds. What needs to be done for the trigger to occur?

Go up there like in the ghost story? A direct dive? No, that’s an instant-death route. There must be a curveball…

Clack.

Cla-clack.

Cla-cla-clack-clack-cla. Cla-cla. Cli-clack. Clack-clack-cla.

‘Ah…!’

The moment I turned my head, our eyes met head-on. A pale blue face, a melting face. Swaying flesh. The clatter of bones colliding. Swaying gums clacking together. Cla. Clack. Clack. Cla-cla-clack-clack-cla.

It saw me. It recognized me. That thing had recognized me from the very beginning. It was waiting for me!

The ghost split its mouth wide open and grinned slyly.

You come in too. You jump here with us too. The view up there is great. The water isn’t cold at all! Really, if you just jump upside-down from up there just once, it gets warm right away. The water color changes a bit, but it’s okay, we’ll catch you. Come on, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, go-go-go-go up-up-up-up there, go, go, go, go, go, go!

Splash.

Splash.

Splash.

Splash.

The sounds of endlessly plunging into the water echoed. In a place without bubbles or water splashes, things that failed to finish taking human shape rose up one by one.

Some had no faces, some had no arms, and some were missing half their bodies. Mismatched limbs poked up abruptly through their hair.

And they laughed. Torn holes gaped up and down as they laughed. Borrowed arms and legs locked fingers, playfully fooling around in the water as if showing off. Laughing, chatting, and mimicking water play.

‘It’s cold.’

My panting breath puffed out in white puffs of mist.

The sensation in my hands and feet began to dull. My body shook uncontrollably, and the stench of rotten meat lingered at the tip of my nose.

Go, go, go, clack, go, go, jump, let’s jump, let’s jump, jump! Let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s!

As if turning a camera, my gaze was forcefully pulled upward. At top of the waterfall, there was a person faltering. That person fumbled a few times to regain balance, then looked down below the waterfall. A familiar face…

…It was my face.

I was looking at myself. I was waving at myself and smiling. I was talking to myself. My own voice beat against my ears.

“Now, I’m jumping down, okay? You’re joining me, right?”

Splash.

‘I’ bounded one step forward. In that instant of falling upside-down, it smiled at me and vanished into the water in a flash. Suddenly, the emotion of fear settled down coldly. And slowly…

‘It’s cold.’

Instead of breath, water bubbles burst forth. Every time I breathed, water filled my lungs. A chill that felt as if it were freezing my skin penetrated deep into my bones.

Ah. I fell into the water.

Sinking down to die like this. Deep, quiet, and cold. Without a single thought, the feeling of being swallowed by something. Is dying… like this? If it’s this comfortable, maybe dying isn’t so bad. Just like this, together with everyone under this bottom…

“…… Don’t kid yourself!!”

A shout shattered my eardrums, and in an instant, the coldness retreated. It was a shout I had let out myself. Scraping together my senses as I managed to twist my stiffened body along with ringing in my ears, my ears felt muffled like I had been submerged in water, and my vision was blurry.

No, in fact, I was half-submerged in water. In that brief moment, my clothes were soaked, and my fingertips were frozen cold and stiff. I was submerged in the valley water up to around my knees, and signs of my struggling were left here and there.

“…What was that?”

The last moment in my memory was a complete mess. I was looking up at myself from below while simultaneously looking down at myself looking up, jumping off the waterfall. Which side was me?

I pressed the play button on the action cam and rewatched the recorded video. In the video, after looking up above the valley, I began walking into the water on my own two feet. Even until half of the action cam was submerged under water, my gaze remained fixed above the valley.

Once the action cam was completely submerged, I began shouting and struggling. Before long, the screen shook violently, splashing water, then the water gradually grew shallow, dizzily reflecting the ground and sky. And with the sound of surfacing out of the water, it ended.

‘I was bewitched the moment I saw the ghost.’

A sense of alarm struck me anew. Neither the elevator nor the ghosts over the past week had physically harmed or bewitched me.

I was too complacent. A ‘real ghost story’ means it forces a person to act irrationally. I had to come up with a countermeasure.

‘More importantly, this… The bottom wasn’t black.’

‘He was found sitting straight upright in the water with his head cracked open.’

It wasn’t aquatic weeds or stones. It was human—or more accurately, ghost—hair, pitch-black and densely tangled, swaying under the surface. It was a bed of hair so black that it was impossible to tell how many people had sunk down there.

‘If I were just a little bit later, I would have been water ghost +1.’

The water ghost from earlier was still floating in the valley. Standing out any more would do no good. To wring out my wet clothes and buy time, I moved as far away from the water as possible and began analyzing.

The valley water was still clear and transparent, and ghosts occasionally surfaced and sank. I checked the path I had come from, but that side was also having a cozy reunion of crawling fingers.

‘So soaking a bit in the water isn’t enough to let me out.’

Let’s organize this again.

Those water ghosts drag people in.

Once the conditions for water ghosts to appear in the valley are met, the path collapses into a blood path, making it impossible to go back. Probably.

After hearing the sounds of ghosts playing, one can be bewitched. Once bewitched, you end up acting to climb up the waterfall or enter the water.

People like me who didn’t go up right away seem to see a hallucination of themselves falling.

When the ‘splash’ sound occurs, the water turns red, and once the color changes, you can go down. The people who escaped went down the mountain without issue and met adults.

‘Ah.’

A hypothesis flashed through my mind.

The common premise for when the water turned to blood was that a ‘splash’ sound occurred when a ‘person’ fell in. In that case, must it strictly be a person for the ghost story to trigger?

Would something ‘like a person’ count as a person?

Do ghosts distinguish humans? If they do, do they react by looking at the ‘shape’, or do they feel the ‘presence’?

Even though I am a person, no sound was made when I went into the water. It didn’t turn to blood, either.

‘However, their reaction changed when I made a sound with my voice.’

Water ghost. Water. Sound. Person. Presence. Shape.

‘This is worth a shot.’

To test the hypothesis that came to mind, I picked up a small rock. Then I cleared my throat.

“Wow, what great water!”

It was a voice worse than terrible acting, but the moment the sound was heard, the water ghosts stopped moving.

‘Now!’

Splash!

The rock made a loud sound, creating ripples in the water. The water ghosts gathered near the ripples. As the ghosts swarmed, a red hue briefly swept over the water, then as the ghosts dispersed, it turned transparent again.

‘I was right!’

First: Water ghosts cannot come out of the water. As long as you don’t get close to the water, they don’t even recognize what is outside the water.

Second: They recognize human voices. Objects without a human voice cannot make the sound on their own, and the ghosts don’t recognize them either. However, whatever falls when a human voice is heard seems to be mistaken for a ‘person’ as they approach.

Third: After something falls in, the water dyes red only when the ghosts recognize it as a person, and the moment that recognition breaks, the water reverts back.

‘Then all I have to do is throw the right bait.’

I unzipped my bag and took off my outer jacket. Careful not to touch the water, I looked around the valley once more and gathered necessary items.

An old trash bag, discarded tree branches, tangled weeds, and wet fallen leaves. A hat. My pajamas and coat that I brought just in case, and shoelaces. Spare cables.

Then I crouched on the spot and began crafting what I needed.

I made the head using wet dirt and pajamas, and stuffed tree branches, plastic bottles, and the like to give bulk to the arms and legs. I wrapped and tied the outer jacket crammed full of trash and leftover snack wrappers around it.

I stuck plenty of weeds and fallen leaves onto the head part. To increase the weight, I filled the part where pants should be with rocks and tied the bottom tightly.

I can make it.

I can trick them.

I was making a giant straw doll—a je-woong. Picturing the structural layout of a straw doll in my head, I repeatedly tied, bundled, and pulled tightly.

After working like a dog for nearly 30 minutes, I created something shaped like a person roughly half the size of an adult. From a distance, it would definitely look like a young human.

I stuffed my remaining belongings into a small bag, without forgetting to take photos for my blog post. The valley, the water, the mock-human creation…

Only after taking enough photos did I wrap my arms around the mock-human mass and return near the waterfall.

‘It feels like touching the valley water one more time means game over… I need to set the limit as close to the descending path as possible and be careful in one go.’

As I approached the upper part of the waterfall, unpleasant laughter behind my back accompanied by sloshing water sounds and the creeping feeling that something was following me slowly slithered up. My legs wobbled, and my fingertips felt numb.

What if they notice it’s not a person too quickly? Will I be able to run away in the meantime?

I had to stop whining. It was hit or miss anyway. Holding my breath, I stood on a slightly jutting rock.

Inhale, exhale. Once, twice.

“The water is really clear! You guys called me, right? I’m jumping down too!”

Shouting at the top of my lungs as loudly as possible regardless of acting skills, I threw that ‘person-shaped’ mass into the valley.

“You guys, catch it well!!”

Splash!!

The water made a loud sound, kicking up a spray. And then, it turned bright red.