Chapter 53

Baek Saheon opened his eye.

Actually, it would be more accurate to say he hadn't slept a wink.

'Goddammit.'

Ever since entering Horizon Lodge, he'd been on edge, trying to find some way to get out alive with all his limbs intact.

Half that effort had probably gone into watching Kim Soleum's mood and trying to keep him happy.

'Son of a bitch.'

He felt no shame about it. He'd done it to survive.

... He was considering going to Kim Soleum's room now for much the same reason.

'I need to get whatever information I can.'

That lunatic clearly knew something. Saheon intended to pry it out of him and secure a trump card for his own survival.

But...

"..."

Was Kim Soleum really insane?

More precisely, why had he... saved him?

The truth was, Saheon knew. At the exhibition, Kim Soleum had had several opportunities to kill him or use him as a sacrifice, yet hadn't.

He'd screwed him over a few times, but when you considered the end result...

'No!'

He must have done it for fun. Keeping Saheon alive meant more variables, more entertainment!

Baek Saheon swiftly reached his conclusion. He'd never met a nutcase like that in his life...

'... Still, I don't think he'd lie about the information.'

With that peculiar faith, he opened his bedroom door—

Something was standing outside.

"...!!"

The sun had already set, plunging the lodge into darkness, so it took him a moment to make out the silhouette right in front of him.

A man about his own height.

... Kim Soleum.

'Fuck!'

He was startled, but honestly, a little relieved too.

Better than some stranger, wasn't it?

At least he wouldn't try to kill him.

"Hey..."

Then his eyes adjusted to the dark, and he saw it.

Kim Soleum, his eyes perfectly calm, was holding an axe.

"..."

'What?'

An axe?

For a moment, he nearly rubbed his one remaining eye, but then a plausible explanation occurred to him.

"Did you bring that to protect yourself from the killer—"

Suddenly, another possibility flashed through Baek Saheon's mind.

The text Kim Soleum had kept sending him.

[Watch out for the serial killer]

Could that have been...

An announcement?

"Goodbye."

The axe fell toward his head.

* * *

The next morning.

As the married couple left their room to the sound of heavy rain, they noticed a strangely familiar melody mingling with it.

HMM, HM-HMM, HMMM, HM-HM-HMM.

Humming.

"Isn't that the song that played when my GPS broke?"

"Oh, I think you're right... Do they play it on the local radio?"

Breathing in the lingering stillness of dawn, they made their way down the hall to the kitchen, clutching their cassette tapes like treasure. And then...

"Aaaaaaagh!!"

They saw something crammed into the kitchen hearth.

The hearth, scorched all around as though someone had set off fireworks and toys inside it, was bizarrely full.

A thoroughly charred lump.

Two bent, sticklike lengths jutted out to either side of that black-red mass.

At their ends were...

Sneakers.

Half-burned human feet.

"Aaaaagh!!"

"Oh my God! Is that a person?!"

"Oh no, oh no, what happened here? Oh no!!"

Their horrified cries and screams echoed through the lodge, bringing the others downstairs one by one.

They joined in the screaming.

"What's going— Aaaaagh!!"

"Gaaasp!!"

Everyone panicked, from the college students to the middle-aged designated driver.

One person even sank to the floor, his face deathly pale.

It was the young man who'd introduced himself as an office worker and communicated in writing because his throat hurt.

But... hadn't there been two office workers?

'No!'

The couple pointed at the feet in the hearth.

"That young man who came with you... Is that him? Huh? The eye patch! The one wearing an eye patch..."

The young office worker seemed to examine the burned sneakers, then covered his mouth and managed a nod.

"Aagh!!"

Someone was dead.

Someone they'd been talking to just yesterday!

As that sank in, shouts and groans erupted all around them again.

"Call 119 right now!"

"What the fuuuck is this!!"

"This is why you can't just go messing around in an old kitchen! One wrong move and you start a fire and end up like that!"

But a small voice must have whispered in their minds too.

'Was it really an accident?'

Could a fire burn only a person to a crisp like that without spreading anywhere else...?

Leaving them in such a horrific state?

'Could it be...'

Panicking, they rushed to the phone.

And a moment later, a chill ran down their spines.

"Th-the phone isn't working. It won't even ring!"

"The caretaker! Where's the caretaker?! Someone's dead in here!"

But the lodge keeper who'd promised to take good care of them was nowhere to be seen, as though he'd never existed.

In the dark mountains, beneath the pouring rain.

Inside the lodge, there was only them and the humming...

"..."

"..."

HMM, HM-HMM, HMMM, HM-HM-HMM.

A terrifying amount of rain poured down outside the windows, and a landslide had apparently struck during the night, burying the bus stop in earth.

"The road... It's completely buried."

"My car!!"

That was how they came to realize.

HMM, HM-HMM, HMMM, HM-HM-HMM.

Something was wrong.

"Th-this... It was playing over there."

"..."

Beside the body wedged into the hearth, a small, old analog cassette player was humming.

HMM, HM-HMM, HMMM, HM...

CLICK.

One of the college students switched off the cassette player and took out what was inside.

An old ivory-colored tape.

"...!"

The deathly pale office worker took out his notebook and scrawled with a trembling hand.

[I think that's the cassette Employee Baek had...]

"Oh my G-God."

That was when the nightmare began.

* * *

Lunchtime.

There was a neatly prepared meal of soup and rice, perhaps left by the lodge keeper in advance, but as though by unspoken agreement, no one touched it.

Instead, they ate energy bars and snacks they'd brought themselves, roaming the lodge in search of a spot where their phones could get reception.

Naturally, they found none.

Isolated in the downpour, without any connection to the outside world, the gloomy lodge was bleak and sinister...

'This is seriously driving me insane!'

One of the college students, who'd likewise been tapping at a social media app that wouldn't load, sat in the living room and anxiously switched off his phone screen.

"Fuck!"

"Man, this fucker's scared shitless."

Beside him, his hiking-club friends shoved one another toward the body in the hearth, with only its legs remaining, squealing and snickering.

They were treating it like a joke, even sneaking a few photos, but apparently they'd lost their appetites: they hadn't even unwrapped their energy bars or chocolates.

Still, they were more relaxed than the other terrified visitors.

They trusted in their numbers.

'There are three of us, after all.'

Even if some bastard was out to kill people, they wouldn't be stupid enough to target the biggest group first.

'They'll start with the people who came alone, or whoever's left on their own.'

That thought did ease his anxiety a little.

"Hey..."

He was about to make small talk with a friend when a peanut chocolate bar slid into his field of vision.

He turned to see the office worker holding up a notebook, his face pale.

[Would you like this? I don't think I can eat it...]

"Huh? No."

As he answered curtly, a friend beside him snickered.

"That fucker can't eat peanuts."

[Oh... I'm sorry.]

The office worker quietly sat back down on the sofa, looking dejected.

Had he said he was a supervisor? He'd looked fairly formidable at first, but ever since seeing his coworker dead, he'd seemed terribly feeble.

'He's scared.'

He looked like a few punches would have him cowering and whimpering.

"Hey, smoke?"

"Yeah. Fucking dying here."

Meanwhile, his two friends disappeared for a quick cigarette.

The office worker picked up his phone, which still had no reception, cast a gloomy glance at the hearth, and went upstairs.

Silence settled in.

"..."

He'd somehow been left alone.

A chill crept over him.

'In movies, this is exactly when people get attacked.'

Bouncing his leg, he glanced warily around.

Remembering the jackknife in his pocket reassured him, but only briefly.

'Fuck, why'd they go off without me?'

Eventually, he went to find his friends in the backyard himself.

Clutching his jackknife, he quickened his pace without meaning to, a chill running down his back.

He opened the kitchen's back door onto the rain-soaked yard.

CLICK.

The damp smell of water greeted him.

'They'll be somewhere under a roof.'

Surely they wouldn't stand in the rain just to smoke. He intended to follow the roof around to the attached shedlike building and find them there.

But the farther he walked, the stranger he felt.

A metallic tang stung his nose.

'Iron?'

It smelled like rusty iron.

There had been a lot of old stuff in the shed. Maybe rain was leaking in and making it rust.

With that explanation in mind, he rounded the corner.

"Hey, Park Gyeongsu..."

A smell of iron so strong it numbed his nose hit him.

"Uh, uhhh...?"

There was an old industrial shredder in the backyard shed.

And apparently, it worked just fine when fed something other than wood.

PATTER.

Minced flesh had spilled from the chute that should have been spewing sawdust.

Shredded clothing, blood, pulverized meat and bone lay scattered in a filthy mess all across the floor.

"..."

What was this?

What... was this?

For an instant, his brain refused to process the incomprehensible scene. Then, a beat too late, it understood.

He had found his companions.

Ground into meat.

"Bleeaargh...!"

As his panicking brain began spilling out vomit and screams, another sound joined them.

Through an old stereo.

HMM, HM-HMM, HMMM, HM-HM-HMM.

The sound of a cassette tape.

"Eeeek!"

The student spun around and ran like mad back into the lodge.

Terror and goosebumps chased him all the way to his scalp.

"Hey, young man, why are you running—"

"Aaaagh!!"

Convulsing with fright, he swatted away the hand on his shoulder.

"Stay the fuck away from me!"

"Wh-what?!"

He raised his head.

He saw the puzzled faces of the lodge's other guests.

And the thing they all had in common!

'The tapes!!'

Yes!

What if the killer behind this insanity had done it for the tapes?!

He immediately rummaged through his pocket and held up his own tape.

"Look! Look at this!"

His eyes rolled wildly, spit flying from his mouth.

"I'm throwing this away! Take it if you want! I-I'm fucking giving it up, okay?! I give up!!"

CLACK!

He flung the tape to the floor and ran like mad again, rushing into his upstairs room and shutting the door.

Only after locking it could he breathe.

"Haaaah..."

His eyes darted anxiously.

Mangled flesh and shattered bones flickered and pounded inside his head.

THUD.

THUD.

Should he barricade the door with furniture?

THUD.

No, that would block his escape route.

THUD.

He stared indecisively at the old mother-of-pearl wardrobe, then simply pressed himself against the wall beside it and raised his jackknife.

He fixed his eyes on the bedroom door.

THUD...

With his back against the wall, his breathing steadied.

'J-just try forcing it open...!'

Then he'd just scream his fucking lungs out and swing his knife. What could the killer do to him once everyone came running?

He just couldn't let his guard down.

"You can't get me. You can't get me..."

Beside the student as he muttered frantically...

CLICK.

Softly, the wardrobe opened.

The next morning, he greeted the others through his wide-open door.

As a corpse covered in bulges, swollen like a sausage.

Death by anaphylactic shock.

And so every member of the hiking club was gone.

"Aaaaaagh!!"

With one previously healthy office worker and three college students found dead within a single day, everyone went utterly mad with terror.

"The inheritance! Someone here is killing the others to get a bigger share! I'm sure of it! They're going to kill us all, silence us, and take the tapes without a fight!"

"Honey, that lodge caretaker was suspicious! I told you that bastard seemed like a psycho! This place..."

"It's a ghost! We've all been bewitched by a ghost!! Hahaha!!"

Shouting as though he'd lost his mind, the middle-aged man pushed past the others and ran outside.

"Aagh!"

RUMBLE.

Thunder sounded right on cue.

No, there seemed to be another sound overlapping it.

CRASH!

"...!"

"Wh-what was that?!"

Startled by the roar, they looked out the window.

The government employee muttered grimly.

"... A landslide."

Another one had come down, with 'perfect timing.'

Caught in the cascading earth, the middle-aged man who'd run out in a frenzy vanished down the mountainside.

"Aaaaaaagh..."

His scream receded beneath the earth below, fading away.

He had unquestionably been crushed to death.

RUMBLE... CRASH!

Thunder filled the air outside the lodge in place of humming, and lightning flashed.

"..."

"..."

Suffocating silence passed among the frozen guests...

Four people remained.

* * *

The second night.

After searching every inch of the lodge for a way to contact the outside world, the couple were returning to their room, panting.

They'd found no way to call for help, but they had noticed something else.

"Hiii, hih..."

"Breathe quieter, you fucking bitch!"

"Aagh!"

The husband shoved the head of the companion he'd introduced as his wife, then fled the living room alone and raced up to the second-floor hallway, his eyes twitching.

Someone cautiously emerging from his room met the husband's bloodshot eyes and jumped.

"You!!"

It was the office worker who'd been communicating in writing because his throat hurt.

Startled, he pulled his notebook from inside his clothes and tried to write something, but the man shook what he was holding first.

"This! This gold frame...!"

He'd taken the gold frame off the living-room wall.

His eyes rolling wildly, he jabbed a finger at its contents.

Roast the rabbit in the kitchen

Slaughter the deer in the backyard

Fatten the pigeon in the bedroom

Slice a piece of sheep in the living room

"People are dying just like this says!"

"...!"

Someone roasted in the kitchen, people ground up in the backyard, someone swollen in a bedroom!

"The lodge keeper, or whoever it is, is playing games with us! This... They could be broadcasting this! No! Whatever, they're definitely toying with us!"

The office worker's eyes widened as though in surprise.

His reaction only strengthened the man's conviction, and he shouted.

"The living room's next! Someone's going to be sliced to death in the living room! I'm sure of it! We have to find a way out before—"

"Oh."

...

Huh?

Had he just... spoken?

"He's more perceptive than I expected. Braun."

"Braun?"

Those were the man's last words that day.

* * *

"You're awake?"

The man came to with a headache and lifted his head.

"Mmph! Mmmph!"

He couldn't speak. Something was gagging him.

Even so, he screamed at the top of his lungs.

"Mmmmmph!!"

The main reason he was screaming wasn't that he was in a cellar reeking of musty mold, or that it was too dark to see even a foot ahead.

There was another head beside his own!!

As in, just a head!

"Mmph, mmph!"

The pale face of a dead person lay on a tray right beside his nose.

He felt like he was going insane.

Tears, snot, and cold sweat streamed down his face, leaving it a complete mess as he screamed for his life.

But the gag swallowed everything.

"Hmmmph, hff, mmmph!"

"Are you scared? Try to bear with it. I'm bearing with it too."

The voice that answered was composed and calm.

The man's eyes rolled upward as he struggled to move away from the head.

And he realized.

'That office worker...!'

The young man in a black tracksuit was looking down at him with narrowed eyes.

He gave the bloodstained work gloves in his hand a contemptuous look, then sighed and put them back on.

Then he picked up an axe.

"Hmmmmmph-mmph!!!"

"Why do people always scream first, even when they know perfectly well it won't change anything? It only tires both of us out."

"Mmph!! Mmmph!!"

"Let's not waste our energy."

He was insane.

This bastard, this bastard was the killer...!!

The man wanted to do anything he could—negotiate, plead, even fight back—but his tightly bound body and gagged mouth wouldn't allow it.

Tears poured from his eyes.

"Ah, it reduces physical and mental suffering a little...? Well, I think it did say something like that."

Speaking in a dry voice, the office worker checked the blade.

The axe's edge slid across the rough surface of his glove.

"That's fairly reasonable, but I still don't much care for it."

Then it was used for its intended purpose.

A gleaming swing sliced through the air.

THUMP.

CLATTER...

"..."

"..."

In the now-silent workshop, Kim Soleum lowered his axe.

Then he spoke in a slightly brighter voice.

"Almost done."

Three people remained.