Ford drifted back into the main room. His electrified shivering had diminished to a barely perceptible hum. Just enough current to animate a zombie. Stunned, his brain blanked, he gaped into the flickering blue cathode rays.
He didn’t watch the movie straight through – he kept gliding weightless as a ghost into the bathroom to look out at the brick building, but he still saw no one in the factory room; if the girl had been discovered by a coworker, and if the police had arrived, then no one ever entered into his range of vision. From what he did see of the movie, he realized it was supposed to be a comedy, but he found it loathsome, appalling. This disgusting, disheveled guy was going around like a crazed satyr drunk with lust, losing control and jumping women, raping them (without the action becoming more than R-rated), his activities being monitored by a group of researchers or such led by a smirking beauty. This group even lured some hookers as victims for him. Each victim would be taken to a hospital and observed in their writhing pain by these researchers. Ford gathered that the slobbering sex maniac’s penis was so large it had injured his victims internally. A real laugh riot, this flick.
Finally, after the movie had ended and Ford had changed channels, he checked on the factory window and saw that it had gone dark. He peeped out at it numerous times after that, barely sitting as the hours dragged by, but the factory room was not lit again. He heard no screams of discovery, no sirens, saw no police vehicles or officers in the street below, even as the sky slowly lightened.
Maybe if he had acted, he thought – still restlessly pacing with TV remote in hand, his body manufacturing an endless supply of adrenalin – the attacker might have been caught. He assumed the man hadn’t been. Now, if another woman or a number of women were murdered, he would be partly to blame, right?
No...no...he reasoned that the attacker wouldn’t have lingered long enough to become captured. If he was crafty enough to enter the factory and sneak up on the girl, he was crafty enough to escape. He might even be a worker in the plant, and after hiding or disposing of the mask he would have blended back into seeming innocence.
Finally, finishing off the last of the drinks he had taken from his mini-fridge during the night, but craving a coffee, he decided to shower and change his clothing before heading downstairs. He needed to try to get more money from an ATM today, in case he couldn’t use his debit card to pay for his new plane tickets, and because he knew he was going to run over the budget he had tried to enforce upon himself so as to have funds remaining in his bank account when he returned home.
But he must still try to find out, in a way that didn’t attract attention to himself, what he had seen last night. He might broach a conversation with the inn keeper, who spoke fair English, or see if he could find a local English-language newspaper, if such existed. Maybe, he fantasized, it had only been a play put on for his entertainment, something arranged by the guest house for tourists, a bit of Horrorwood come to him.
6: Bedlam and Breakfast
The very moment it turned 6 AM, Ford descended to the kitchen, there firing up one of the computers. Though he had been invited to make himself toast in the mornings, he was relieved that there was no one to watch him as he hastily built a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. While doing so, he noticed a swarm of tiny brownish-translucent insects scurrying in all directions across the black formica of the table, and didn’t know if they were roaches or ants; he swept them away with a paper towel too quickly to observe them. Had they emerged from the opened bread bag, or had they already been there? He decided to be brave and eat the sandwich anyway, brought it and a black coffee to the computer. He wanted to check his bank’s available balance online, but the first thing he did was begin looking for an online Korean news source in English...though surely it was too soon for the attack to have been written up, only hours after the crime had occurred?
And what if the body still hadn’t been discovered? What if that young woman had been the last one in the building, charged with closing up for the night? What if she still lay there on the floor even now, nude or partially disrobed, her eyelids – with their exotic “epicanthic fold” – half-closed over eyes dark as chocolates, blood matted in thick crusts and clots in her blue-black hair, her body cool but terrible triangular marks imprinted hotly into her soft golden flesh...here...and here...and here?
Ford shook off the mental picture with a shudder, concentrated on the screen...though it wasn’t so much the image that stabbed at him, but the recurring guilt that he had not put his hand on that phone...
He typed in some phrases as keywords – “English language Korean news” and things of that nature. He found a number of satisfactory results, such as at the web site JooAng Daily. Here, he typed “crime reports” into the search feature, but found nothing dated from the previous night. The closest he came to a related story was that a man named Yoo Yeong-cheol had been arrested back in July and was said to have murdered 26 people, 11 of them female masseuses. He had been planning to murder another masseuse when apprehended.
Before he gave up the idea of learning anything online about what he’d witnessed, Ford read that between September of 1986 and April of 1991, someone had raped and murdered 10 women in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi province. That killer had never been identified. Hmm...but how likely was it that this killer would still be free on the streets after 13 years, instead of dead or captured for some rape or murder the police had not linked to the other 10 victims?
Despite the city seeming so safe to him, it had known its predators and monsters over the years, after all. But Ford supposed that violence inspired by issues of distorted self-esteem, disjointed sexuality, and insanity were both universal and timeless.
He was oddly relieved to be able to call up his bank account, as if he’d been afraid that such a prosaic sight would not be accessible in this strange place. The day before leaving for his vacation he had deposited a large check (he was paid biweekly) and he wanted to make sure the money had cleared, and to see how much it may have been reduced by several automatic deductions. He was satisfied with the amount available to him – it would cover the replacement plane tickets he required.
Why the mask? he asked himself, with his bank account information still projecting a pale light on his face. Why that mask, that he had just happened to see earlier in the day, only a matter of hours before? Was it so common, then? It couldn’t possibly be the very same one...
He blinked, distractedly decided he should check to see if An had left him a new message, but then a young man who worked at the inn and whom he had seen before came into the kitchen area and Ford smiled up at him. Either the man was suffering conjunctivitis, or someone had punched him – one of his eyes was pink and swollen into a drooping slit that made Ford’s own eyes want to water in sympathy. Ford decided it had been a punch; again, so much for Seoul being free of crime and violence.
“Is there someplace you want me to take you today?” the man offered, having poured himself a coffee. He was pretty adept with English. “I’ll be taking some other people in the van...”
“Ah, no thanks...I think I’m just going to walk around again today.” As the man nodded and started to head around the corner to attend the front desk, Ford said, “Um, but tomorrow my new visa is supposed to be ready for me; the Vietnam Embassy is preparing it. Could you take me there tomorrow?”
“Okay. Yes. Do you remember the name of the street it’s on?”
“Mm, no, I don’t.”
“Ahh, that’s okay – I’ll look on the computer.” And the man went up front with his coffee, presumably to find the information on the embassy right there and then.
A message from An did indeed await him. Once more, he reassured her of his determination to reach her. As if to give himself fresh inspiration in his efforts, he called to mind the first photo of her he had seen, posted at the online, Asian-oriented dating service. It had been professionally taken, looked like a wannabe actress’s glamour shot. She had been crouching close to the ground, as if to
squeeze her entire body into the frame, wearing tight blue jeans embroidered with flowers and a skimpy top that bared her back, the black hair sliding down that back looking silken to the touch, staring sulkily into the camera as if in imitation of a pouting model. He had been a little intimidated by the picture at first. Was she too young, too sexy to be interested in an older American man like himself? And if she claimed to be, could he really trust her to be sincere? Still, her solemn, mask-like face in that photo had seized him...had ever since floated before his eyes to lure him onward...
Having sent his return message on its way (at least his words could enter her country freely), he decided to get up, stretch, and see if the man at the desk was in fact checking into the embassy’s location at this moment. Just on the other side of the kitchen wall was the doorway into the tiny reception office; Ford hung back in the threshold as he watched the man with the swollen eye tap at his own computer. The writing on screen was all in Korean.
“Have you found it?” he asked.
“Mm, yes,” the man muttered, and he scribbled some words onto a scrap of paper for his own reference. He turned in his chair. “So I can bring you there tomorrow.”
“Thanks so much. I just pray the thing is really ready then.”
“I have their number; we can call them first, before we go.”
“Yeah, good idea...thanks again.”
With something like a jolt of recognition, Ford saw two faces peering at him through the open reception desk area that the man sat in. From this spot Ford could see into the modest space that passed for a lobby, and in a recess in the wall were framed two brown masks of the type in the other two frames downstairs, except that this pair was full-sized. He asked himself why he had jumped; he hadn’t thought it was the man from last night, peeking through the opening at him, this time with a woman beside him – had he? One mask looked male, and rather like the rubber mask he had seen in the store. The other mask was of a woman with a circle of red on either cheek, and one on her forehead like an Indian bindi, or a bloody bullet wound.
Irrationally, Ford found himself asking, “Was that here before?”
A little puzzled, the man with the swollen eye looked through the counter’s opening at the masks, then up at Ford. “The masks?”
Of course they had been there before; he just hadn’t had cause to notice them. Before, they had merely been another exotic detail his eyes had skated across. They had not held any significance to him until last night...
Ford’s gaze shifted to the man at the desk. He wondered if one of those masks might fit on this man’s face. Could the mask he had seen on the figure last night have been wooden, not rubber after all? And wasn’t it just possible that when the attacker had lowered out of view with the iron in his hand, his victim – still alive – might have torn the mask off his face? Struck him in one of his eyes?
“Sir?”
Ford smiled tightly. “Nothing. Oh...ah, last night I thought I heard someone scream outside.” He watched the man’s face closely. “Did someone get hurt, do you know?”
The man did indeed look fidgety all of a sudden; evasive. But he responded, “Well, yes sir, a woman was murdered across the street last night...”
The words turned to full volume a white noise in Ford’s head. Somehow, he had not expected to hear confirmation of what he had witnessed, despite his work to locate some reference on the web. Somehow he had expected, or hoped, that it had only been a dream that he had experienced while he merely thought he was awake. But now...
The man went on, “...but you shouldn’t worry. Seoul is a very safe city – none of our guests have ever been robbed or attacked. It may have been the woman’s lover, or someone she knew...”
“How was she...killed?”
“They say she was beaten. And...burned...with a...” At a loss for the correct word, the man made a forward and back motion with his fist above the desk top. Ironing.
“God,” Ford whispered. It had been real. Why hadn’t he picked up that phone receiver...why?
“You mustn’t be concerned, sir.” The man looked worried that Ford might go upstairs, fetch his belongings, and check out right then.
Ford’s suspicions about the man wilted, to hear him relate this news. His tone didn’t hint at hidden boasting. Somehow, the figure Ford had watched didn’t seem like it could be some simple inn worker, some everyday person – though of course, serial killers were invariably just that, outwardly. Ford had the strange thought that what he had seen had not been a man wearing a mask, but some kind of demon or apparition made corporeal. The mask not really a mask, at all – but the figure’s own flesh.
7: Asset 69
Ford let his conversation with the inn worker dribble away, and turned toward the hallway opposite the kitchen area. He glided almost without willing it to the larger of the two displays of miniature masks mounted on the downstairs walls.
The faces were not frightening, in themselves (though if these diminutive faces, with monkey-small bodies to match, had been ringing his bed in the night he would find them terrifying enough). On the square-shaped plaque, eight masks formed a circle around a central, important-looking character with a tall hat. A label printed on the background, in both Korean and English writing, identified him as “Yangban Tal”. At the top, a woman named “Gaksi Tal”. Clockwise, the next was a man, “Choraengi Tal”. Another man, “Seonbi Tal”, followed by another, younger woman. Ford recognized her as the same woman represented in the display of two life-sized masks hanging near the front office. She was “Bune Tal”. Following her, at the bottom, was the only half-mask, missing a bottom jaw: “Imae Tal”. Finally, ascending, three male masks: “Paekjong Tal”, “Halmi Tal”, “Jung Tal”. The word Tal, Ford decided, must mean mask.
He shifted to the long, vertical display of even smaller masks on the kitchen partition, and saw there were nine of them as well, the same characters but with their English names spelled a bit differently here and there. After studying them a minute or so, he returned to the larger frame.
Both the older and young women had those red dots painted on cheeks and forehead...but more importantly to Ford, two of the male characters seemed to have a knobby growth on their foreheads, reminding him of the rubber mask he had seen in the store. These characters were “Paekjong” and “Jung”. He tried to conjure that rubber mask in his mind, to compare it to these two faces, but because of the basic resemblance the masks all shared with each other he couldn’t be sure which of the two it might have been.
In the upper right corner of the background were the words, “Korean Traditional Mask” (in the singular). In the upper left: “The Mask Play of Hahoe Byeolsin Exorcism”. The exhibit was furthered described as, “Important Intangible Cultural Asset No. 69”.
“Hahoe”...that was surely what the man in the store had said, when Ford had expressed interest in the rubber mask.
“Exorcism,” he muttered to himself. Then, the idea to look into the history of the masks on the internet rose in his mind, and he stepped up into the kitchen to seat himself before one of the twin computers again.
Ford found plenty of references to “Korean Mask Dance Drama”, and even a little legend behind the making of these masks. The legend was that a man named Huh (“Huh?” Ford thought) had rigidly isolated himself and begun making masks after a deity appeared to him in a dream. A young woman who loved this Bachelor Huh spied upon him in his pious isolation, and this triggered a terrible curse, causing Huh to spit up blood and perish. As a result, he was unable to complete his final mask, that of “Imae”, and that was why this mask possessed no lower jaw. Pandora, Eve, this girl – in their curiosity, the women of myth always seemed to unleash misery upon the world of hapless men.
One site offered a background on the mask play. It had been performed at periods of “bad luck” or during certain festivals every ten years, and was intended as a shamanistic rite to banish evil spirits. Hence the “exorcism”. From their grotesque aspect, he had thoug
ht some of the masks themselves might have depicted demons to be exorcized, but as he read on that didn’t appear to be the case.
Ford learned that when not in use, these sacred masks were carefully stored away, and prior to their removal an actor would offer a sacrifice before the chest containing them. If one treated a mask disrespectfully, he would be struck by an arrow (fired by whom or what, Ford couldn’t determine). No wonder the man at the gift shop had appeared reluctant to sell him even a rubber version, he thought.
The masks’ lower jaws could be moved by the actors to change the expression from mirthful to angry. Because of their spiritual power, a mask was believed to laugh after the actor laughed...and to become angry after the actor wearing it portrayed anger.
Ford located a site that gave a detailed summary of this play. The set-up concerned a young bride who unexpectedly died before her wedding. A wedding ceremony still had to be performed so that her restless spirit might be appeased. This story reminded Ford of something he had read about the crash of a Korean Air jet in 1997 in which 228 people were killed. Shamans had been summoned to marry off the spirits of some of those victims who had been unmarried at the time of their death.
In Act 3 of the play, the butcher Paekjong dances onto the stage and is soon joined by an ox, who dances with him. But then the butcher slays the ox and repeatedly hacks at it, cutting off its testicles and tearing out its organs. He holds aloft the heart and then the liver in order to attract a buyer. About the liver, he says, “Surely you know what this is good for? For a man, what is more important than strength? Even Confucius married and had children.”
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