Chapter Twenty Five - Devil In A Midnight Mass
Project 86Chapter Twenty Five - Devil In A Midnight Mass
The sound of the grinding stone woke her up and she flinched as the afternoon sun hit her eyes. Lying on the front porch of their house she had fallen asleep after having washed all the clothes in the stream and then dragged them back to the house to dry. She looked over across the courtyard where her mother, ever working, was grinding the wheat.
Her sisters and father must have been out of the house, and for once in a long time the household was still and quiet. The mountainside and its trees slowly flitted in the wind and she lay back down to rest, but not for long as her ears immediately picked up shouting and commotion.
The grinding stopped as her mother had picked up on the sound as well staring off into the distance as she tried to distinguish the sounds coming from the town, before spotting her all awake from her afternoon slumber.
“Hyoyeon, since you’re awake go see what this is about.”
Whining and only half moving Hyoyeon turned around on the porch to face her mother. “Do I have tooooo?”
“Go, now! What if it’s a royal decree, we need someone to go listen to it firsthand. Can’t trust the hearsay that our neighbours would report us!”
With the swiftness and accuracy that only a mother of many children had, she picked up her slipper and in a smooth motion threw it square into Hyoyeon’s shoulder as she barely managed to flinch sideways to not get the brunt of the slipper.
“Okay okay, I’m going,” she got up and started her way to the front gate.
“Bring me my slipper back.”
Begrudgingly she turned around and retrieved her mother’s slipper for her before heading out. She’s the one who gets hit by it but still has to return it to her. It always felt so unfair.
“And don’t dilly-dally!” She heard her mother shout just as she stepped out of their courtyard into the village street.
Hyoyeon’s house was situated rather far from the village centre, their farm patch planted in one corner of the village, flanked by the mountain forest on one side and their neighbours in the other. The back of their house and farm stretched out into the open valley demarcating the border of their village and the households under this village’s taxation jurisdiction.
Winding down the mud paths of their village she could see further out in all across the village people making their way towards the sound, many of them young. They must have been sent out by their parents as well to see what the commotion was about.
A crowd had gathered at the centre of the village and what had merely sounded like loud rumbling from afar could be distinguished as angry screams and shouts, as brows furred in fury hurled insults at something that was in the centre. Hyoyeon arrived at the edge of the crowd, trying to see what was in the centre when she felt a tug on her skirt; it was her younger sister Hayeon.
“Hayeon, what’s this?”
“It’s...”, Hayeon’s eyes faltered for a second before she looked back up at her sister. “It’s Minyoung, they’re accusing her of witchcraft and sorcery on Madam He-”
Before Hayeon could finish her sentence Hyoyeon was forcing her way through the crowd while her little sister attempted to follow her and grab her.
This had happened before. The poor young neighbour girl Minyoung was accused of sorcery and evil magic by some villagers. At first nobody heeded these rumours, but Minyoung was always a little shy and quiet and had a speech impediment that prevented her from properly talking until she was six. It still plagued her. This gave fuel to the fire of these malicious neighbours who sowed seeds of horrible rumours into everyone's hearts, and lately the abuse to her had gotten worse.
The villagers would tell her parents to just kill her for the evil being she was. The poor parents. They did their best to protect her, but they couldn’t always be around to help and keep an eye on her. They were poor and had to both work from dawn to dusk to provide for their family.
Adding to the rumours was the fact that their house resided just a little ways up the sacred mountainside. Some said them living on this mountain was the reason their child was born a demon. How quickly they had forgotten that it was the villagers themselves that forced the family to settle there, only allowing them to build a homestead in the mountainside itself.
Finally breaking through the crowd to the centre Hyoyeon saw the poor girl, now muddy and huddled cold in the centre with a nose bleed, and she rushed forward in between Minyoung and Madam Hemeul.
Eyes fierce with determination Hyoyeon stared her down. The screams and shouts around her and the crowd died down as Madam Hemeul stared wide eyed back at her. How dare someone, especially a petulant child interrupt her rightful punishment of this devil child?
“Hyoyeon, what do you think you’re doing? Move!”
Hyoyeon kept staring furiously at her but didn’t say a word. She knew that if she said anything all that would fly out from her was a slap and a string of expletives so vile that Hyoyeon would receive a berating from her parents and a punishment for months to come for saying such indecent things.
“She bewitched my cows and crops! My poor calf died this morning. She was walking around my farm so it must have been her doing!”
Hyoyeon kept silent, her sister Hayeon now reaching the edge of the crowd but too afraid to make a move to be closer to her. Minyoung was still huddled on the ground behind Hyoyeon and shifted herself slightly closer to her back.
“Wait till your parents hear about this! They would be fur-”
“My parents do not accept a lynching by a mob and would be proud, Madam Hemeul.”
Madam Hemeul took a step back shocked at Hyoyeon’s furious reply. As influential as she was in town she couldn’t go hitting anybody she wished, especially not Hyoyeon as her family had lived in the village for centuries and her parents were well respected and known to be just and fair people, always giving to the community and helping anyone in need.
The crowd was now completely silent. Still staring furiously at Madam Hemeul, Hyoyeon picked the bruised Minyoung up from the ground and began making her way back towards her house the girl in tow. The ring of people broke in an instant as she reached the edge and the crowd parted giving her way to walk unharassed. Hayeon tagged along and helped carry Minyoung towards their home.
“Are you okay? Where does it hurt?” Hyoyeon asked gently assisting Minyoung with walking. Her face was bruised and nose was bleeding. She could see the red on her cheeks; Madam Hemeul had slapped her hard. “Did she hit you with anything?”
Minyoung shook her head and whispered with a barely audible voice, “No… just slapping and kicking. It’s okay…”
“It’s not okay!” The fury that had been dying from earlier resurfaced in a flash and she had half a mind to stop herself from running back to give Madam Hemeul what was coming to her.
They walked the rest of the way in silence which was broken the moment they entered their courtyard and Hyoyeon’s mother saw the results of the commotion. She didn’t even have to hear what had happened, she knew instinctively and one could immediately tell where Hyoyeon’s temperament was inherited from.
“That ! That vile, selfish, piece of…” She stopped herself, calming down before dishing out orders to her children. “Hyoyeon, go fetch water to the bath and heat it up. Hayeon, go get blankets and clean clothes and make sure your little sister stays inside.”
She walked over as Hyoyeon released Minyoung into her mother’s grasp, the latter gently helping her over inside to wash up and clean the wounds. “Come here darling, we’ll get you all washed and cared alright?”
“Thank you Auntie…”
“My child, of course. You can always come to me you hear?”
Minyoung nodded and allowed Hyoyeon’s mother to clean her and help with the wounds she had sustained, as Hyoyeon and her sister Hayeon helped their mother in the process and got her cleaned up to be as good as new. The bruises were going to stay for a while but she was now clean and patched as good as one could.
They ate dinner together as Hyoyeon’s father arrived home from the fields and eventually by evening her father escorted Minyoung back to her home with the unfortunate news of the day’s events but ensuring that they had their families support in whatever they needed. The day now over both families pulled in for a night of rest.
It was sometime in the middle of the night in the wee small hours of the morning that Hyoyeon shuddered awake. There was loud noise outside their house which for a moment got louder. It was the sound of people shouting. Hyoyeon got up from her bed making sure not to wake her siblings up and moved out, sliding their porch door open. There was more noise and she could see torch light in the streets and across the village.
A sturdy hardened hand landed on her shoulder and she almost let out scream before seeing it was her father.
“The noise woke you up too, Hyoraengi?” Her father said as he stepped next to her, “What is it?”
“I don’t know...”
“I’ll go check,” her father said as he slipped on his thatch shoes and walked off the porch to the front gate.
Hyoyeon’s mother soon joined her having woken up to her father’s movement and disappearance from their bed sheets and she told her as much as they knew so far. They waited at the porch for a moment before seeing her father run in with a hurry and as his face hit their lantern light it was filled with worry and horror.
“Quick we must go stop them! A mob is threatening to burn Minyoung!”
“Those bastards of goats testi- Hyoyeon look after your sisters!” Hyoyeon’s mother shouted to her as she in an instant sprung into action and dashed with the lantern, their parents quickly speeding their way towards Minyoung’s residence.
Hyoyeon’s sisters had woken up to the shout of their mother and shuffled their way sleepily to the porch where Hyoyeon was preparing another lantern.
“What’s going on?” Hayeon said as their youngest sister Hyemin scrambled behind and walked directly to Hyoyeon.
“There are angry people going to Minyoung’s house. We need to go and stop it!” She said as she lit her lantern and picked Hyemin in her arms. “Come!”
Hyoyeon waited just long enough for Hayeon to slip on sandals before the kids raced along the village roads towards the mountainside and outskirts of the village where Minyoung’s house was. As they passed houses they could see other people peering in from their windows and doorways, seeing the mob and the shouts but unmoving. They didn’t want to get involved.
They soon arrived at the outskirts of the Minyoung residence, with the mob of approximately a hundred bunched up together, torches lit, standing while shouting in agreement with the proclamations being made from the front of the pack. Hyoyeon recognized Madam Hemeul’s voice.
Skirting the edges of the crowd and the property they made their way to the front and spotted their parents close to the front being blocked by some of the mob as they knew Hyoyeon’s family would resist and be against all of this. Minyoung’s father was being held by five different men, clamped hard to prevent from moving as Minyoung’s mother sat on the ground weeping and pleading the figurehead of Madam Hemeul at the front.
“No please don’t! Don’t hurt my girl! Let go of me you insane people!” Minyoung’s father whipped around trying to elbow his captors but none of them released him. Instead they pushed him down face first onto the muddy soil, pinning him so he couldn’t move.
“Minyoung!! MINYOUNG!!” He cried out, tears streaming as he saw her wife inconsolable weeping on the ground, her body having given out.
“Light it up.”
Madam Hemeul said this but nobody moved with their lit torches. Nobody wanted to be the first to take action regardless of how much they feared the girl.
“Oh for heaven’s sake, burn the witch!”
Madam Hemeul grabbed the torch from one of the men standing by and flinged it onto the thatch roof of Minyoung’s home. For a moment it looked like it wouldn’t catch fire, then smoke started to gather, thick gray smoke from the wet thatch slowly kindling and eventually flames began to flicker.
She turned around to face the crowd pointing at the house and screaming with frenzy, “BURN THE WITCH!”
Hyoyeon’s whole family watched in horror as one by one instilled with fervour the torches flew onto the roof and porch of the house, each person shouting and chanting in unison - burn, burn, burn.
Her mother burst through the crowd and pushed aside the people around Minyoung’s mother, cradling her and hushing her. She consoled her the best way that she could, though nothing could truly remove the absolute of horror of watching your child burn in a house.
It took a while, but soon you could hear quiet coughing, which eventually got louder as Minyoung had woken up from her sleep.
“Mommy? Mommy?!”
The muffled cries almost swallowed by the raging fire could be heard spurring both her parents to shout and scream even louder.
“MINYOUNG! MINGYOUNG!!”
Her father wrenched himself free with new vigour and dashed to the burning house’s front porch that was already fully in flames. He tried to reach the door jamb that was blocking the entrance but couldn’t get close enough without his entire body torch in the heat.
Hyoyeon’s father dashed after him pulling him away from the raging fire, from the burning he was willing to take for his child, and then conversely cradled him just outside the front porch out of the range of the fire but close enough to still feel the heat. With a broken man in his arms, he stared into the fire as the coughing and the screaming of Minyoung slowly but surely died down, until it was a weak trickle. And then the roof collapsed.
Minyoung screamed as she was crushed by the collapsing roof. Everyone present, the lynching mob included took a step back in horror of what they had done, as the final bleeding and burning bloodied gurgling screams of Minyoung died in the flames.
The crowd stood in silence, watching the flames eat whole the house, the only sound heard was the quiet weeping of Minyoung’s parents and the raging flame. Maybe it was the weight of what they had done, the entrancing nature of fire, or in Madam Hemeul’s case to make sure that Minyoung was truly dead - everyone stood in silence watching the house burn, waiting for it to die down.
Half an hour went by and about half of the crowd had disappeared and the fire was finally letting up, no longer a furious torrent. This seemed to mark the end of the vigil at the house and Madam Hemeul turned around to begin her trek away.
“It’s over,” she said as she walked away. “We did you two a favour getting rid of your demon child,” she said as she passed Minyoung’s mother.
Hyoyeon’s mother’s blood began to boil. “How dare you, vile piece of…”
Everyone was caught still as a wretched ear-piercing scream rang from within the house freezing everyone in place. It echoed through the village, up and down the mountain throughout the valley across to the village over yonder. All eyes turned to look at the burning embers of the house and as the screaming stopped something stirred in the fire.
Suddenly embers and burnt logs flew out of the house being flung like an explosion. It felt similar to a barrel of gunpowder exploding, a substance the villagers had only known to exist and be used to fire cannons by the kings army, but had never seen in real life. The blazes of the fire reignited with ferocity and the heat almost scorched the on looking villagers, the intensity beyond what the fire had been at its peak.
“Look! In the house!”
Everyone’s gaze was focused on the dark figure within the once again burning building. It slowly appeared into view - it was Minyoung. However she wasn’t walking as her bare feet dragged along the floorboards gliding just a few inches in the air. Her eyes were closed and nobody dared move or say a thing as Minyoung drifted out of the fire onto the porch. Unharmed, clothes intact and nothing burnt, all the bruises and scars from the beating earlier that day were healed.
“Mi- Minyoung?” Her father gasped as he saw her precious daughter alive and well although in the pit of his stomach he had an unsettling feeling. Something was wrong.
Minyoung’s eyes shot open and spread into a grin as she stared directly at the horrified eyes of Madam Hemeul. The next thing anybody saw was Minyoung standing amongst them in the blink of an eye with Madam Hemeul’s detached head in her hand as the body slumped onto the ground. She lifted the head in her hands to look at the open shocked eyes and mouth of Madam Hemeul, her face now forever stuck in the same terrified expression of horror. Fear was the last emotion she had felt. “I’m sorry Madam Hemeul, did you say something?”
She dropped the head onto the ground and turned to face the crowd in front of her; the mob that had so recently exacted their own form of justice. With her white nightgown and her hands matted in blood and a persistent smile plastered on her face, the pristine and flawless skin she had walked out of the fire with began to crack. Her eyes turned black and from the cracks of her skin black smoke steamed out as her eyes like the void cried blood. “Don’t worry papa and mama, everything will be okay. Justice… will prevail.”
It was time for her to exact her own justice in return.
Then chaos.
Everything was a blur and Hyoyeon’s family along with Minyoung’s parents could only see flashes and blood flying, as limbs and wounds opened and flung around in the air while a tornado of fury ravaged among the mob. People attempted to run away as fast as they could, some getting down the hill and into the village screaming horror as one by one the mob was being picked off by this creature that once had been Minyoung.
People who had opted to not participate in this lynching and had stayed in the village proper were coming out of their houses to see what the screaming and commotion was about. They had heard and seen the mob go up but said nothing. They had seen the fires set ablaze and heard the chants yet did nothing. Now they could hear and see the tidal wave of people with pure terror in their eyes while in the distance, torch lights dropped to the ground as voices of people were one by one being extinguished.
All Minyoung’s parents and Hyoyeon’s family could do was huddle in front of the burnt out house and watch in horror as the blood hurricane made its way from person to person, chasing them down the hill into the village. It seemed as if for a moment the shouts and cries were dying down, but a whole new wave of screams started moments later. She had reached the village.
Soon they could see lantern lights turn on everywhere down the valley. And then the fires started. One by one houses were catching fire setting the whole village ablaze. Minyoung was going to burn everyone just like they had burned her. They would all burn.
The two families left alone by Minyoung’s house huddled in further under the huge trees in the mountain and took solace with each other, and waited.
Through the night the village burned, the shouts and screams eventually dying down. By morning light rain arrived and slowly the last embers of fire died and all that was left were charred houses, bodies, ruins and smoke. They couldn’t see Minyoung anywhere.
They made their way silently along the edge of the village to try and see if Hyoyeon’s house was still intact since it was at the edge of the village, and since Minyoung had spared them maybe the house had been spared too.
Arriving there they saw that it was half burnt; the gates and walls of the compound and the second house were gone but the main house had managed to survive the fire. They could get food, clothing and supplies.
Rapidly gathering what they could find and carry; clothes, food and other survival essentials, they slinked out of the side of the village around the edges skirting the centre trying to stay out of sight and finding their way out of the immediate vicinity of the village. Walking further away over the fields, they eventually felt safe enough to get onto the main road that would lead them to the next village once over.
Exhausted from a sleepless night and drenched in the persistent drizzle they limped on along the road for a few hours, before they sighted people walking towards them. Hyoyeon immediately perked up and was ready to warn them of what had happened and dissuade them from going in.
As the group came closer she noticed that it was a woman in a white haori and red pleated skirt; a priestess. She was beautiful and elegant and a sight to the sore eyes of the thoroughly expended travellers. Behind her travelled two other people, a girl and a man each carrying sacks with them. Seeing that these people were in dire straits the priestess rushed over to the group.
“Are you alright?” She asked as she reached Hyoyeon who was in the front of pack.
“Please, we just escaped a slaughter from our village up ahead.”
“What happened?”
“I… you wouldn’t believe it if I said it.”
“Try me, I’m a priestess after all,” she touched Hyoyeon’s head gently as the rest of the family reached the two.
“There… a close friend of ours and their daughter,” Hyoyeon pointed behind her at Minyoung’s parents,”she turned into some sort of… evil spirit.”
The smile on the priestess’ face sank and look of sorrow replaced it. “Then I am too late…” She looked up at the sky behind Hyoyeon seeing the glimpses of black and dark grey smoke. “So the fires were by her.”
“You are…” Hyoyeon said, finally collapsing to sit on the ground.
“But maybe I can still help her.”
Hyoyeon looked up at the priestess, the beautiful angelic like features once again graced with a smile full of warmth and comfort, with determination. There was something about the face that felt so familiar to her, almost familial. She felt like she knew her.
“Who are you? Do I know you?”
“I’m the priestess from the capital city royal temples, my name is Jessica and I’m here to help you,” Jessica, the priestess, looked at Hyoyeon’s dirty and tired face with her hair matted against her skin from the rain, sweat and dirt. There really was something familiar to her about Hyoyeon too. “I… don’t think we’ve ever met.”
She looked up at the family behind Hyoyeon and then at the dark skies with gray smoke looming over far away, the smoke from the burning village. Returning her gaze to the family she turned around to speak to the two that had accompanied her.
“Sojin and Jung-wan, please take care of the families and lead them safely back to Heotteok Village,” she turned back around to look at the family, “Please follow my associates to the temple. They will take care of you.”
Offering her hand to Hyoyeon she smiled, “Please show me the way to your village. Please take me to her.”
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