“So a US Army unit was here,” Ernie said. “So what? It proves nothing.”
No, it didn’t. But I was still convinced the man with the iron sickle wanted to bring us here for a reason. What it was, I still couldn’t be sure.
“It’s too dark to go back now,” Ernie said. The sun was almost down.
“So we spend the night here,” I said.
“But tomorrow,” Ernie said, glaring at me, “we return to the jeep and get the hell back to civilization.”
He was tired of being cold and hungry, and I knew Captain Prevault was, too. So far, we had nothing to show for our little excursion, which would be hard to explain back at 8th Army headquarters.
With Captain Prevault’s help, we gathered firewood and Ernie dug a pit beneath the rock overhang. Using my old Boy Scout skills. I managed to start a fire, and soon it was a roaring affair. Ernie stacked up enough firewood to keep it burning all night. Captain Prevault cut some vegetation and, using one of the duffel bags as a cover, made herself a tidy little bed. Ernie and I did the same but our constructs were somewhat less neat. Then we sat down around the fire and Captain Prevault handed out the last few rolls of kimpap. It tasted delicious. I washed it down with plenty of fresh spring water from my canteen because with all this hiking and all this work, I’d become more dehydrated than I knew.
We told a few listless stories, avoiding ghost stories, and this time, I believe I was the first one asleep.
The moon was high when I awoke, my bladder full. I arose from my lumpy duffel bag bed and tossed a couple of thick branches on the fire, which crackled with appreciation. I made my way to the far edge of the cliff, stepped behind a quivering poplar tree, and started to do my business. I was trying not to splash too loudly into the mud when I noticed movement off to my left. The edge of the cliff there didn’t end in a rock wall but continued through low vegetation back to the forest that stretched away up the mountain. I didn’t have my.45. The shoulder holster was cumbersome and difficult to sleep with so I’d taken it off and placed it on the ground next to me, but when I’d risen to take a leak, still half asleep, I’d forgotten to bring it with me.
Whatever was moving out there in the bush, I told myself, couldn’t have been a Siberian tiger, or it would’ve been much more stealthy. Then I saw a flash of white moving away from me, from tree to tree, and when it stepped into a moonbeam, I saw it clearly.
Miss Sim Ok-sa, wearing her white hospital gown, glanced back at me fearfully, stumbling through the brush. No time to go back and alert Ernie or Captain Prevault. Within seconds she’d have disappeared into the immensity of the forest. I also didn’t want to yell for help because that would only frighten her more. All these calculations were made with the speed of thought and before I knew it, I had tucked myself back into my pants and was shoving my way through the forest, moving quickly in the wake of the little mental patient.
She was surprisingly fast. But the rustling she made and the branches whipping behind her kept me on her trail. I became more reckless, running at almost full tilt, trying to make sure I didn’t stumble over any gnarled old roots or stub my toe on low-lying rocks. Luckily, I’d been sleeping in my full fatigue uniform along with field jacket and my laced-up combat boots, but already I wished I’d brought my winter cap and my hooded parka to fight the mountain chill.
I followed her through the thick forest until suddenly I found myself in a moonlit meadow. Grass stretched before me, ankle high, forming an oval about the size of two roller skating rinks. I stood at the edge, scanning the glowing night, expecting to see Miss Sim running through the field with her white gown billowing behind her. Instead, I saw nothing. She was gone.
I couldn’t believe it. I knew she had emerged right where I was standing. I searched the brush around me, finding nothing, until finally I retraced my steps about ten yards back into the forest. No sign of her.
Maybe I’d just imagined it. Maybe it hadn’t been Miss Sim at all. Maybe I’d been so overwrought at the idea of bringing Ernie and Captain Prevault all the way out here for no good reason that I’d started to imagine reasons. I shook my head and put that aside. I’d seen her. I knew I’d seen her.
I walked out into the meadow and turned around. Nothing but a calm, cold evening in the middle of the Taebaek Mountains.
I sighed and started back. I stepped into the forest just where I’d left it. For the first few yards I walked forward confidently. And then I reached a large elm tree and tried to remember if I’d passed it to the right or to the left. No matter, such a minor deviation shouldn’t throw me off much. I stepped to the left. I didn’t recognize any of the trees farther in, but I wouldn’t have been looking at them from this angle, since I’d been coming from the opposite direction. I turned around to see if that would help me orientate myself. It didn’t.
I returned to the large old elm tree. I touched its bark, enjoying the reassuring reality of its rough edges, and told myself that I should sit down for a moment and think this through.
That’s when it dropped on me; from up above, something dark and heavy and as large as a man. Before I could look up to see what it was, I felt a jarring in my skull, as if my head had been suddenly crunched between the prongs of a giant nutcracker, and the world and everything in it went black.
I was cold.
So cold that I thought I’d never been cold before. Cold had supplanted every inch of my flesh from the top of my head through my face, down my neck, along my chest and my back, through my shriveled testicles and on down my legs to my feet. But that was just the start. Then it seeped inside. My bones were nothing more than carvings of ice, and my heart and my lungs and my liver were snow puffs clinging to glassy ribs.
Something slapped the side of my face. It felt good. Warmth. Again, something slapped the opposite side and my eyes popped open.
A woman. An upside down woman. Mentally, I tried to focus, turning her right side up, trying to think through the caverns of my frozen misery, noting the long black curly hair and the thick lips and the disappointed eyelids. Madame Hoh, the fancy woman from Mia-ri, the woman who’d owned the Inn of the Crying Rose, the woman who’d sicced a pack of local punks on me; the woman who, I believed, had been responsible for Mr. Ming’s losing his head.
I also realized something else. She wasn’t upside down, I was.
I realized this because of the screaming pain in my ankles. At least one part of my body had feeling in it; an excruciatingly painful feeling, but a feeling nevertheless. A rope, or maybe a thick wire, was biting into my ankles, keeping me from falling to the floor.
Madame Hoh leaned toward me until our noses almost touched. Her breath reeked of stale tobacco. “Hello, baby,” she said. “How’s it hanging?”
I couldn’t reply. I wasn’t sure if my throat would work. There seemed to be phlegm bulging through it, following the downward course of gravity. And when I tried to open my mouth I wasn’t sure if my jaw or my lips were moving. Everything was too cold for feeling.
With her long red nails, Madame Hoh caressed the side of my face. I was grateful for the tenderness-and for the warmth.
“Can’t talk? I understand. You just relax, baby.” She leaned back. “That’s it. Spit it up. Get it out. That’s a good boy.”
I coughed and choked and spit out as much phlegm as possible. As I did so my stomach muscles knotted so I could raise my head just a little. I was in a cave. There was light coming from an oil lantern behind Madame Hoh, and I was suspended against something boxy and metal. When I stopped coughing I looked up along the length of my body. I was naked, I could see that, and I was right about my ankles. They were bound in what appeared to be a thick hemp rope. Beyond that was some sort of wire, metal rods, and an antenna-like contraption. I relaxed my stomach muscles and gazed at Madame Hoh. She was smiling. Then she said in Korean, “Arraso?”