WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Natty
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ How to Rewrite Ghost Stories ◈
Episode 54: Radio Mountain Lodge Murder Case (5)
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‘This is going to kill me.’
I came here expecting an easy ghost story experience. Why was I suffering through this?
The leather mask reeked horribly of piss. Every time I exhaled, my breath caught again and again, making my face feel like it would swell up. And the chainsaw was absurdly heavy. It was nothing like the one I had used while helping with farm work at home.
‘Just one more time...!’
I gritted my teeth, let out a roar, then hauled up the chainsaw and swung it again. Couldn’t they run somewhere better? They really had a talent for standing in exactly the wrong spot.
It would be great if Moses caught on and guided everyone away, but Moses didn’t look like they intended to lift a finger!
“Yaaah!”
I lost my balance, and the saw spun wide through empty air before finally smashing into what I had been aiming for.
The chandelier that had served as the largest spotlight above the radio shattered with a tremendous crash. Broken bulb filaments met the oil and sent up sparks.
The ruined radio, which had spat out oil and blood, caught fire. Flames spread from the radio, now stripped of its power as the ghost story’s core, and crawled across the floor.
The fire that had been unable to leave the kitchen climbed the doorframe. The walls, floor, ceiling, and wallpaper all melted and burned white.
Vroooom!!
The stronger the flames grew, the greater the chainsaw’s power became.
The ghost story’s central motif had shifted.
Its unbreakable core had changed from the Radio Mountain Lodge Murder Case to a slasher film featuring a crazed serial killer!
It was the classic storyline of a serial killer slasher movie.
A group gathers in an enclosed location and encounters an outsider.
One person disappears. Usually, they become the first victim... Or they fake their death and prepare to rampage as the crazed killer.
‘It was a stroke of luck that the attic appeared because of what Moses said.’
The moment I took up the poorly made leather mask and chainsaw that had been so conspicuously hidden away, I, a legitimately invited guest, took on the serial killer cliché.
Then the tension and fear reached their peak with a communications blackout. Horror movies didn’t work if people could contact someone, after all. Every radio and phone had to be destroyed or cut off.
With the final chase and bloody fight against the survivors as the climax, classic films ended with the survivors escaping after the killer’s “death.”
‘And fire is the best way to die.’
It left the corpse ambiguous, made for the grotesque sight of a killer chasing people while on fire, and brightly lit the screen. It was perfect for every kind of special effect and action scene.
Moses’s lighter fell from my hand. The instant it hit the floor, white flames that had been wandering through the kitchen and living room surged in like a storm.
Fwoooosh!!
A massive blaze erupted. The anomaly and the place that formed it began burning at once.
Behind the wallpaper, an old wooden wall appeared, covered in bloodstains and fingernail marks that looked decades old.
The leather sofa changed into a grotesque mass of tangled human bones and hair. Flames devoured the floor, where blood had baked on until it turned black.
Among the burning furniture, the dead began playing backward as though someone had rewound them.
A man sat at the dining table with his neck snapped. A woman crawled with her stomach split open. People fighting, people stabbed with knives, someone dead with their face shoved into a pot. The dead writhed.
Moaning in pain amid the flames, they struggled to crawl toward us.
Aaaagh!
Screeeech!
It was time for the killer to make their exit.
Click.
When I lit the Blue-and-Red Lantern, the killer’s form melted away into the air.
The killer died, and the survivors ran through the door and fled into the forest. The story announced its end with the credits.
“Hah, haha. This... This is actually possible?”
The collapsing ghost story began dropping every element it had used, without distinction, into the darkness below.
Moses gave a hollow laugh as he shoved aside a lodge beam that had fallen onto him.
The instant the killer, or rather, Seon Jaehyeon disguised as a killer, vanished, the ghost story completely lost its strength and began to disappear in the literal sense.
It was a phenomenon that had never been observed before.
Anomalous phenomena were observed, contained, released, and sacrificed. Unless imagination and deprivation disappeared from this world, a story could not have an end. But this story was now declaring its “end.”
“...What is that...?”
A vortex appeared in the cracks of the space breaking apart into black-and-white data and frequencies. Seon Jaehyeon stood among the mask and debris scattered across the floor, holding the radio.
“...!”
Something rippled behind Seon Jaehyeon. Noise, like a shadow or spiraling musical notes, was swallowing the radio. The ghost story’s core shattered into fine particles and was drawn into the noise.
‘What is that? What kind of structure is it?’
The noise began to take on a distinct shape. It rippled as it absorbed the radio, the lodge, and the chainsaw, growing larger.
‘An anomalous phenomenon... that eats anomalies...’
Shock and greed flashed through Moses’s eyes at once. This was a phenomenon Moses had never seen before. Something that absorbed phenomena, ended them, and used them as nourishment.
Moses was pushed backward. Emergency extraction began in response to the lodge’s withdrawal.
‘Seon Jaehyeon, was it...’
Neither the Information Management Bureau, Wondertainment, D Corporation, nor the Spiral Cult had him in their databases. He was a variable in himself. Moses had to get hold of that man. No, at the very least, Moses had to learn the nature of his “power.”
“Let’s meet again, Expert.”
Moses exited the ghost story, while the civilians were expelled as though flung back to where they had originally been. In their memories, the lodge would remain as a terrible nightmare or an unexplainable hallucination.
‘I had this strange dream...’
But it would remain a dream forever, so it could not become a story or a new ghost story.
The last embers scattered, and all darkness went out.
The sensation that my body had been floating settled. After confirming that my feet were firmly on the ground, I looked around.
“I’m back.”
The living room and the television in power-saving mode were exactly as they had been. So were the curtains drawn tightly enough to block every trace of light and the torn wrappers scattered around.
It felt unfamiliar. So this was what it was like to leave because a ghost story had broken apart, rather than escaping or slipping through a gap.
“...Hm? No. Something’s...”
Different. I quickly realized what the strange sense of wrongness was. I looked over the radio occupying one corner of the living room from every angle. Hertz’s radio, which I had received as a pop-up bonus from The Mirror of the Otherworld...
“It got bigger?”
It had always been a fairly imposing radio covered in various attachments, but now it was definitely taller.
“Did it get some kind of update?”
A light flickered on the radio.
Do you like it? I made a few changes without ruining the look of your place. And your Partner functions have been updated as well.
Sure enough, the radio app was glowing.
〈New feature update! The radio can now broadcast externally!〉
The interface on the radio app’s screen had changed completely. Its former appearance, like a simple transistor radio, had become more like a booth. Something like a white flame flickered on the microphone in the center amid static.
“It looks more like a station now. Are you trying to gather subscribers or something?”
Yes, Partner. Every broadcast needs innovation! Of course, we still have a long way to go.
Hertz’s voice had risen with excitement. It was full of life, and it felt less like listening to a radio than hearing Hertz right beside me.
It will be a while before we have a proper DJ booth, but for now, we can at least function as a broadcasting station.
The radio flickered several times, producing a more varied tone.
“I think I liked the old jazz with all the static too.”
We can return to that anytime. Don’t worry. More importantly, you should check as well.
“Oh. Right.”
There was a new update in the Depth Gauge.
008. Radio Mountain Lodge
009. Chainsaw Murder Chase
010. ■■■■■■■
“Three at once... This one doesn’t display a name at all?”
When I tapped the tenth registered ghost story, the screen glitched horribly.
Oh, no. That shouldn’t be possible.
“...Is it a ghost story from Moses’s side? None of the SOSA universe has been registered at all.”
And as Mok Inha had said, the ghost stories I finished were processed for Closure. Conversely, that meant I was likely to encounter the ones I failed to finish again.
Twilight Market, the Helical Cult, the subway, and now the SOSA universe...
‘None of them are easy, and those bastards keep updating with insane settings. It would be smarter to plan on dealing with them under the assumption that I can’t finish them.’
I could look for material for the next broadcast. What do you think?
Ah, like the ghost experiences Hertz had asked me about. Now that I knew what they were, they felt less off-putting. Still, I wanted to avoid bleeding ghosts and crazed killers...
“...Anything is fine, but I want to reduce the chances of running into those people from earlier as much as possible.”
Especially Moses. Even if the people inside ghost stories were fictional fakes, if someone I had met remembered me, the calculations became three times more complicated. And if that person was a big-name figure in their universe, I could already see a future where I would have to consult the Ghost Story Records Corporation.
So, I met an overpowered big-name character from an internet fiction universe in a ghost story. They remembered me. Could our world actually be inside someone’s novel in a parallel universe?
I would probably have to drink bowls of gorosoe sap and get dragged through another ordeal in that interrogation room. Still, I had received a lot, and I had plenty of paid leave and days of getting paid to slack off left.
“Maybe I’ll sleep on it.”
That sounds good. By the time you wake up, I will bring you good news. I hope you have a comfortable night free of nightmares and dreams today.
“Good night, Hertz.”
Rather than answer, Hertz played low-volume sleep ASMR music. Gratefully, I tidied up my things, read the original forms of the various ghost stories archived in the Depth Gauge and on my blog, along with all kinds of other stories, and eventually fell asleep.
It really was a good night without a single dream.
❖ ❖ ❖
“Seon Jaehyeon is dangerous.”
The silence broke. Once someone spoke, another took up the conversation.
“That is needless worry. There have been people with unusual constitutions many times before.”
“If we recruit him into the Corporation soon enough, that should resolve the matter.”
“I do not think it is that simple. Is he not someone of concern, considering that he approaches Distortions out of mere curiosity?”
Bewilderment, disappointment, and worry colored the voices. They were likely thinking similar thoughts.
How could they benefit the most?
If he could bring down the enormous dam they had built up in an instant, what would be the rational way to handle him?
“May I speak for a moment?”
An odd-looking man wearing a plain white rubber mask raised his hand.
“The report says every Distortion Seon Jaehyeon entered was processed for Closure. Could you explain that in more detail?”
“Cheonrok investigated every anomalous phenomenon he testified to entering and found one shared result. The heat rate of those Distortions had become ‘0.’”
“It became 0?”
“That is not a possible value, is it?”
“As you know, the heat rate quantifies how twisted a Distortion is. Normally, a Distortion is registered as closed when its heat rate has remained at 1 for at least a year, but...”
After several pages were turned, graphs with flat lines appeared.
“As you can see, the horizontal coordinate system has completely lost its coordinates, and the space has closed. Cheonrok therefore judges that those Distortions have completely vanished.”
The murmuring around the room grew louder. Some asked whether this was possible. Others doubted each other’s data, accused one another, criticized, and made excuses.
The mask slowly turned its head, as though looking at each person in turn.
“If it is acceptable, my department will work with Mr. Seon Jaehyeon.”
It sounded as though he was asking for their opinion, but it was effectively a notification.
“But he is an outsider, and there are too many uncontrollable factors...”
“Or will you bury him? Detain him here?”
“What I mean is that it would be better to tie him firmly to our side, whether through an outside contract or a great deal of money. Your department is a little...”
“Since when have we been so fixated on maintaining the status quo? I believe it is time to operate a different kind of project.”
The rubber mask tapped the table as though ending the meeting.
Tap. Tap.
“Do not worry. We will proceed slowly, so that he has no choice but to accept. Let us end here, and meet again at our next meeting with good results.”
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