WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Natty

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◈ How to Rewrite Ghost Stories ◈

Episode 44: Jangsalgot Submerged Site (6)

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“…It’s strange. Not even a whiff of dust.”

That was Lee Gangrim’s first impression upon opening the door. I agreed. The shrine smelled of clean water. It was thick with dampness and the salty scent of the sea.

“I don’t see any visible curses or anything. Looks safe to enter.”

“…Can you actually see curses?”

“Some people can. The ones with spiritual sight, who say they can see ghosts.”

Lee Gangrim did not add something like, “I’m one of them.” Their tone suggested that what they saw was different from the spiritual sight they had mentioned. I was curious, but I did not press the matter.

The moment I followed Lee Gangrim inside, I felt a strange pressure.

Even for an old door, the shrine door was exceptionally small and low. I had to bow my head as far as it would go, while Lee Gangrim, who was taller than me, had to fold at the waist at a full ninety degrees, practically giving a folded-paper greeting, to enter.

‘Maybe they built it low on purpose.’

To make everyone who entered bow respectfully.

Inside was an odd sort of prayer hall, part Buddhist temple and part shamanic shrine. The scent of clean water mingled with stale mold and old wood, faint as incense.

The air was cold as though we were submerged underwater. It had clearly been abandoned for a long time, yet there was not a speck of dust.

There were no cobwebs or insect corpses. The only noticeable thing was the water stains spreading across the walls, like trails of tears.

“No Buddhist altar. Just a dog-legged soban table in place of an offering table.”

Lee Gangrim swept a blue-flame flashlight around the room. A Buddhist hall should have had a Buddha statue, but a massive Buddhist altar painting hung in its place. A dog-legged soban table sat slumped at an angle where incense should have been placed.

“Let’s check everything one at a time.”

“Yes. I’ll start with these paintings.”

“I’ll check out this dog-legged altar.”

I turned around. The walls were covered in paintings. Apart from the front wall with the altar painting, the other three walls were divided like folding-screen panels, each covered in a different image.

They looked painted in ink, but the style was strange, somewhere between Goguryeo murals and crude woodblock prints.

‘Black-and-white folk paintings?’

— No, Partner. Look closely. They feel a little different.

‘Will I get cursed if I go closer…?’

— They’re only paintings!

Trusting Hertz, I approached. The colors on what looked like hanji paper had peeled away with age. They appeared to have originally been painted in the traditional five colors.

I began examining the first painting on the wall to the right of the entrance.

The first painting showed a village in a hollow basin, backed by mountains.

It was unmistakably Jangsalgot in the past. The people seemed to have only just begun settling there. Thatched houses stood scattered about, while people arrived in ox carts to move in.

I moved to the second painting. This time, the village appeared fully established. The houses matched the map.

From this point on, Jangsalgot seemed to have kept the same shape. Cows tilling fields and dogs running around were also depicted.

‘…There’s a sapling.’

People were planting a tiny sapling in the background. Judging by the location, it seemed to be the village guardian tree we were standing beneath now.

— It’s a monstrosity with human heads hanging from it now, but back then it was really tiny and cute.

I agreed. What had it eaten to grow that big? Corpses buried in the backyard?

I turned toward the wall to the left of the door. The mood of the third painting had changed completely.

Countless bodies covered in straw mats lay along the roadside. The survivors had their mouths wide open, wailing in grief.

Famine, perhaps. Or an epidemic? In the meantime, the village guardian tree had grown into a massive tree, and rounded mounds representing graves had been drawn around its roots. I had no idea why people began burying the dead near it.

The fourth painting showed a shaman visiting the village. The villagers knelt before the shaman, desperately rubbing their hands together.

It looked like the Joseon era, but some parts of the clothing seemed to belong to a far more ancient society. I still could not pin down the period.

“Huh.”

The village guardian tree was gone. Had the shaman cut it down? Or filled the place with water and trapped it beneath the surface?

To find the answer, I looked for the final painting. There was one on the wall with the door we had entered through.

It depicted a tree. An enormous ancient tree, wider than a person could wrap their arms around, filled the wall beyond the doorframe, its branches stretching all the way to the ceiling.

‘This isn’t one painting per panel like a folding screen.’

“Mr. Gangrim, I’m going to close the door for a moment.”

“Huh? The door? Well, you must have a reason. Go ahead.”

Actually closing it and getting trapped would be bad. I wedged a small stone between the doors, keeping them from shutting completely.

That was enough. As the door closed, the painting on it fit perfectly into the tree like a missing puzzle piece.

“…The village guardian tree.”

I had thought the door was reinforced with several layers of paper and leather. The trunk of the enormous village guardian tree was painted on it.

The shrine we had entered was painted with its doors wide open, like an entrance in the tree. Even the stone cairns and piles of objects around it were exactly the same.

And the altar painting. Inside the shrine with its doors flung open, the altar painting from the front wall and the dog-legged soban table were depicted exactly as they were.

A painting within a painting. A shrine within a shrine.

The altar painting faced the door, as though it were looking directly at the real shrine and its painted counterpart. It formed a bizarre symmetry.

Then…

“…!”

Swallowing dryly, I turned toward the altar painting on the front wall.

Was it a dragon? An imugi? Or a giant toad?

A massive monster with its jaws wide open had been painted there, its form impossible to define.

The black ink strokes looked vivid and damp, as though they had just been painted despite the passage of time. Tentacles like an octopus writhed across it. They looked like gills one moment and disgusting scales the next.

Splash!

I heard something that was not there. I felt cold seawater rising around my feet. I could not breathe. The water swept me away again. As water struck my knees, the breath I expelled became bubbles that shot upward.

I could not look away. I was looking at the monster. The monster was looking at me. I did not know where its eyes were. I knew I was inside its eyes. I did not know what it was. It was a dragon. An imugi. An earthworm. A deep-sea anglerfish. A lantern. No. It was none of those things. I did not know it. It was trying to tell me its name. IcouldnothearitIdidnotunderstanditIcouldnotknowthesoundofsomethinglikethatbecauseIwasahumanbecausecouldntIjusthearitinasoundahumancouldunderstandyesbecauseIwasahumansoundwavesbecamesoundandvibrationandIcouldhearthatgreatandnoblevoiceandthemomentitcalleditsnameIwouldrunintothatopenmouthandbeswallowedandfinallybewithit—

Beep. Beep-beep! Whoosh!

“…Gasp!”

I could breathe.

Cold air rushed into me, and my mind returned. I was on my knees, just about to bow before the altar painting. Once the cold and water crushing my body vanished, dry coughs burst out of me one after another.

— Are you all right, Partner?

I heard Hertz’s voice. Something warm and heavy rested on top of my head. When I reached up, I felt sharp spines.

“…The hedgehog?”

At some point, the hedgehog from my pocket had climbed back up and wrapped around my head like a mask. Warmth began returning to my cold body.

— …I’m sorry. That thing’s frequency had a much broader wavelength.

‘…No. It’s okay. This little guy saved me.’

Hertz’s soundwave barrier was closer to blocking outside noise around me with old jazz and radio broadcasts.

This proved that it became useless when a frequency louder and more overwhelming than Hertz’s volume came through.

“You saved me. Thank you so much.”

Apparently, the function the Corporation had mentioned, the one that prevented situations where I might go insane, remained in this hedgehog. It seemed to work on the unreasonable principle that volume did not matter if I simply could not hear it.

“Are you okay?”

The hedgehog clung to my head, refusing to let go as it made a vrrr-vrrr motor sound. I carefully lowered it onto my palm.

A hedgehog’s legs could not be that long, but it still stretched out all four limbs and flailed. I felt both sorry and grateful.

When I gently stroked its spines, the motor sound grew stronger, accompanied by a whoosh, whoosh. Wait, had I stroked it the wrong way?

“…Still, it’ll be a little difficult if you have to climb onto my head every time.”

The motor sound doubled. Its spines rose so sharply that I could not tell whether it was a hedgehog, a sea urchin, or a chestnut burr.

“Ah, no, no. You didn’t do anything wrong. Humans are at fault. I’ll find a better way.”

I hurriedly soothed it, stroking it gently. Only then did the hedgehog lower its spines, make a soft purr-purr, and return to my pocket.

So I had acquired a pet I had never asked for. I should give it a name later.

Anyway, thanks to it, I had calmed down enough to properly look around again. I needed to tell the others not to look at that altar painting…

Looking around, I saw that Choi Seongun had not entered the shrine. He had brought the children to a corner by the doorway where he had confirmed the vines could not reach, and was comforting them. It looked like he had struggled for quite some time to persuade them to come beneath the tree with human heads hanging from it.

“U-Um… we really can go home, right? That tree… are those things on it really… heads?”

“Are we going to get hung from there too? Waaah…”

“N-No. Your big brothers and those men over there will get you out. Okay? So don’t go off on your own. Just trust us.”

Choi Seongun was patiently comforting the children and asking for their personal details one by one. The sight of him desperately clinging to me and begging me to save him was gone. Now, he looked dependable as he tried to save someone else. It made me proud.

‘They’re fine over there, and Mr. Gangrim is…’

“…What are you doing?”

“Oh, Junior Number Two. Look at this. There was a book hidden beneath the altar. Want to see it?”

Was it really okay to just tear that open? More importantly, Lee Gangrim had been messing around beneath that altar painting all this time, so why were they fine? Surely they were not some anomaly disguised as a human too?

“Here, look.”

Cutting through my worries, Lee Gangrim suddenly held a book out in front of me.

It was an old book, soaked through and falling apart. The hand holding it trembled with care, afraid even turning a single page might tear the paper. When I turned the page, I saw vertical writing full of circles and triangles mixed with Chinese characters.

“…”

“Oh, it’s an old language. Obviously.”

“It’s not even Early Modern Korean. It looks like Middle Korean… Can you read Middle Korean?”

“What do you take me for? Can’t we get the gist from the pictures?”

Apparently, they could.

“Of course I can’t read it. This is Ansi’s specialty.”

I was the idiot for trusting them. Still, if this followed the usual ghost-story formula, this book should contain the monster’s identity and some method, maybe a sacrificial shamanic rite or a human-sacrifice rite…

“Ah.”

‘Hertz, when you gave me that gift, you included a translation and annotations with the book. Remember?’

— Of course I do. Do you need help?

My uncanny bonsai pet was the best. Right now, I needed a Middle Korean translator far more than the Depth Gauge.

‘Then can you read this for me? Help me.’

— It would be my pleasure, Partner. Let’s try it! I doubt it will be difficult. Just hold the book where I can see it and read it aloud…

After that, things moved quickly.

Lee Gangrim and I briefly argued over whether we should dry the pages. We concluded that there had to be a reason it had remained wet, and tried peeling apart the soaked pages one by one.

— “This place is the sea.”

“This place is the sea.”

— “The sea god, angered, is ruining the farming of this land. Therefore, all that grows in the sea must be made into sustenance for the land.”

Hertz began reading the booklet in a calm voice, as though reciting poetry.

As I repeated the words Hertz translated, I eventually stopped speaking and listened.

“…”

The text in the book and the paintings on the walls began to fit together in my mind as one enormous puzzle.

“…I understand.”

Everyone turned to look at me. I opened my mouth with certainty.

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