Demon's Door (26 page)

Kim came forward with a smile on his face. ‘You won't be able to persuade them, Mr Rook. They have seen their future for themselves and they have decided what they want to do. Better to find peace in the land of death than suffer pain and sickness and poverty in the land of life.'

Jim seized the front of Kim's white shirt and twisted it around, pulling Kim right up to him so that their noses were almost touching.

‘Whoever you are, Kim, or
whatever
you are, you are a cruel and sadistic bastard, and I'm going to make sure that you get what you deserve.'

He turned back to the class and announced, ‘Patsy-Jean is dead! She hung herself from a rope in the gym! Kim made her believe that she was going to stay fat for the rest of her life and she couldn't face it. But what Kim told her, it wasn't true!'

‘Of course it was true, Mr Rook,' said Kim, still smiling, although there was no humor in his smile at all. ‘How could I have shown her what her future was going to be like, if it did not happen that way?'

Jim twisted his shirt even tighter. ‘Oh, it
did
happen that way, for sure. She
did
get fatter and fatter. She got so goddamned fat she had to stay in bed for the rest of her life. But what you failed to tell her was that this was only
one
of her futures. She had another future waiting for her, too – and in
that
future she got her weight under control and she was healthy and she was happy. And there was yet another future, in which she got so skinny that she was a model and she appeared on the cover of magazines.'

‘This is not true, Mr Rook. Each of us has only one future and that one future cannot be avoided, except by death.'

Underneath the cling film on her face, Tamara started to squeak for breath. When Jim looked around the classroom, he could see that all of his students were having serious difficulty in breathing – Georgia, Teddy, Ella and Arthur. In the back row, Grant was leaning forward over his desk, coughing, and even through the cling film, Jim could see that his mouth was turning blue. But all of them kept their box-cutters held up to their throats, and Jim didn't dare to try and rush at any of them, in case they cut themselves like Janice, or worse.

A devastating rumble of thunder shook the whole room, and three polystyrene tiles dropped off the ceiling and see-sawed down to the floor.

‘Who the hell are you?' Jim shouted into Kim's face. ‘What gives you the right to take these young people's lives?'

‘Me? I do not take them,' Kim retorted. ‘They take their own lives, themselves, with own hand. It is Kwisin who is taking their souls. That is why Kwisin was so grateful to you, and brought your cat back to life. But what did you do? You showed no gratitude in return, so the cat died for a second time.'

At that moment, Judii collapsed sideways on to the floor, and lay underneath her desk, whining for air, her sneakers kicking spasmodically against her shoulder bag.

‘Do not even think of helping her, Mr Rook,' Kim warned him. ‘One move from you and they will all immediately cut throat.'

‘It seems to me like they're determined to die anyhow. What difference will it make?'

‘Yes, they are all determined to die. But if you try to stop them, then you will have encouraged them to do it.'

Jim pulled Kim even closer. ‘Tell them to throw down those box-cutters, you little bastard. Tell them to take that Saran wrap off of their faces.'

‘I cannot do that, Mr Rook. Kwisin wants their souls, and I do whatever Kwisin asks me to do.'

Jim wrenched Kim's shirt so violently that he tore off the top two buttons. It was then that he saw that Kim was wearing what appeared to be two necklaces. One was made of brown and yellow tiger's eye beads, but the other was a plain metal chain with two rectangular ID tags hanging on it. They looked like the aluminum tags worn by the US military, in the days when they were called ‘dog-tags.'

Jim grabbed at the dog-tags and held them up in his fist, so that the chain cut into Kim's neck. ‘Is this you? Let's take a look, shall we, and see who the hell you are!'

Kim tried to twist away, but the chain broke.

‘
Give me those!
' he screamed, and his face was contorted with rage, like a Korean demon-mask.

Jim dangled the dog-tags up in front of him, but he was at least four inches taller than Kim, and when Kim tried to snatch them back, he lifted them out of his reach.

‘You do not understand! You do not understand! Give me those back!'

Jim pushed Kim hard so that he stumbled backward, and collided with Jim's desk. He threw himself at Jim again, but Jim dodged to one side and tripped him up. He tumbled on to the floor, and when he tried to get up, Jim kicked him hard in the hip and said, ‘Stay down! You got me?'

Kim desperately reached up for his dog-tags, his fingers clenching and unclenching. ‘You do not understand!'

Jim kicked him in the shin, harder this time. ‘I said stay the expletive-deleted down!'

He squinted at the dog-tags. The classroom lights went out for a few seconds, so that he was unable to read them at first. But then the lights jumped on again, even brighter than before, and he could see them clearly. Embossed in both rectangles of aluminum was the name
Rook, Roland G., Blood type O, Episcopalian.

He felt as if another earth-tremor had run through the floor beneath his feet. He said, ‘These are my grandfather's dog-tags, from the Korean War. What the hell are you doing with my grandfather's dog-tags?'

‘You do not understand.'

‘You bet your ass I don't understand! Do you want to explain it to me?'

‘Your grandfather, Mr Rook.' Suddenly, Kim sounded quite humble. ‘Your grandfather.
My
great-grandfather. You and I, we have same blood in veins. Same inheritance.'

‘What? What are you trying to tell me? We're
related
?'

‘Your grandfather, Mr Rook, he marry Korean girl in Pusan.'

‘Are you
kidding
me?'

‘I promise it is true. Your grandfather marry Korean girl in Pusan and together they make boy-child. But at the end of the war, he go back to United States and leave them behind.'

‘And that boy-child, he was
your
grandfather? Is that what you're saying?'

Kim nodded, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘What your grandfather did not know, he married Kwisin. Unmarried dead girl.'

‘So what happened to the baby?'

‘Kwisin's family took the boy-child to the S
ǒ
n masters in the monastery at Songgwang-sa, so that they could raise him to follow the Great Way that has no gate, and see the future as well as the past. Also to learn the language of Hwadu, which cannot be understood by ordinary men and women. And even though the S
ǒ
n masters forbid it, he learned also to speak with demons.'

The lights dimmed again and another detonation of thunder shook the whole college right down to the depths of its foundations. Smoke alarms were
meep-meep-meeping
in every classroom, a high-pitched chorus of hopeless panic, and plaster dust was dredging down from the ceiling. The windows at the back of the classroom cracked from one side to the other like pistol-shots, and two of them fell out completely and shattered on the floor. In the dust and gloom, the students of Special Class Two looked like a gathering of aliens, their film-wrapped heads glistening, their eyes bulging as they slowly suffocated. Four of them had now collapsed on to the floor, shuddering, but all the same they kept their box-cutters held against their throats.

Jim reached down, gripped Kim's arm, and hauled him on to his feet. ‘You can forget about the past! It doesn't matter a damn if you and me are related, even if we really are! You have to tell these kids not to hurt themselves!
Tell
them, Kim, or I'll break your goddamned arm! Do it now!'

‘I cannot,' Kim gasped. ‘I have to give Kwisin what she wants. It is a promise that I cannot break.'

‘What promise? Who promises anything to demons?'

Kim coughed, and coughed again, and then he said, ‘My grandfather, Eui-kon Wook. When he came of age his mother Kwisin visited the monastery and they spoke together. She made him promise that he would take revenge on my great-grandfather for leaving her. She made him promise that he and his sons and his sons' sons would look for the sons and the sons' sons of Roland Rook, and bring her the souls of all the people they cared for the most.

‘My grandfather could never find any of your family, and neither could my father. They were both poor men, and could not travel to America to search for you. But then came internet, and I look for Facebook, and there you were. I found you.'

‘So you came here, and you started to take the souls of the people I care about?'

Kim was sobbing now. ‘I have to keep promise. I cannot defy Kwisin.'

‘For Christ's sake, Kim! How many souls exactly were you planning on taking? Or is there no limit?'

‘One for every year since Roland Rook married her. Sixty-one. Then Kwisin will be satisfied. Then Kwisin will be able to find peace.' He looked at Jim in utter distress. ‘Please, forgive me.'

‘Forgive you? You want to encourage sixty-one young people to kill themselves, and I'm supposed to
forgive
you?'

Jim let go of Kim's arm and Kim sank to his knees on the floor, still coughing, with tears running down his cheeks. Jim turned back to Second Class Two, feeling angry and helpless.

At the top of his voice, he shouted out, ‘If I ask you drop your box-cutters on to the floor, would you do that for me?'

He negotiated his way between the desks, stepping over Tamara, who was still gasping for breath on the floor. He went right up to Billy and said, ‘If I ask you to pull that stuff off of your face, Billy, would you do that for me?'

Billy stared at him through the cling film, his chest rising and falling underneath his cheap washed-out sweatshirt, half-asphyxiated by his own hopelessness.

‘Would you do that for me, Billy?' he asked, as quietly as he could.

Billy turned his head toward the classroom door, and then he shook his head.

‘You don't want to die, Billy, believe me. Dying is no fun at all. Especially if your soul gets taken for all eternity by some vicious Korean demon.'

But Billy wasn't looking at him any more, and neither were any of his other students, and when Jim turned around, he saw why.

Framed in the doorway was the fox-woman, Kwisin, in her hat and her veil and her shiny gray robes. She hesitated for a moment, and then she made her way into the room, with a curiously stilted gait, and even from the back of the room Jim could hear the sound of claws on the floor.

Every member of Special Class Two stood up straighter as she approached. Leon reached down with his free hand and helped Tamara to climb back on to her feet. The cling film around their faces crackled as they sucked as much air into their lungs as they could.

Kwisin swelled larger and larger, as she had in Jim's bedroom. Her hat tumbled back, and the veil that covered her face began to rise, as her jaws grew long and pointed, like the fox-demon she was. Her gray silk robe opened up and slithered to the floor, and within only a few seconds she was standing in front of them as a black hairy beast, with poisonous yellow eyes and curved horns and incisors that were dripping with saliva.

The classroom was filled with the reek of smoke and incense and rotting blood, and Jim felt that he was choking.

‘Get the hell out of here!' he shouted. ‘Get the hell out of here, Kwisin, and leave my kids alone!'

Kwisin stared at him, as if she found it impossible to believe that anybody would dare to defy her. She snarled, and tilted forward, challenging him to come closer. Jim knew that it was madness. She would bite his head off and rip him open, the way that the crows had ripped Tibbles open, and then she would crunch up his soul like Patsy-Jean's. But all the same he pushed his way between Tamara and Arthur and Janice to the front of the class, until he was facing Kwisin from only three or four feet away.

Kim was still on his knees on the floor, behind Jim's desk. He was crying out, ‘No, Mr Rook, you cannot defy her!'

Jim seized Kwisin's front leg. It was viciously prickly, like the thick stem of a thorn bush, and he shouted out, ‘Shit!' Kwisin immediately knocked him away, and he staggered back against the stationery cupboard with a loud metallic bang, jarring his shoulder. He looked down at the palm of his hand and it was bleeding where Kwisin's bristles had torn his skin.

Now Kwisin let out a high, ululating scream. Jim had never heard anything like it in his life. It was the sound of human beings in agony, human beings who know that they have been crushed so badly that they cannot possibly survive. It was the sound of people throwing themselves out of buildings, or trapped in burning automobiles. It was the sound of hopelessness, of utter despair. It was the sound of no future.

Without hesitation, as if they had rehearsed it, Special Class Two simultaneously drew their right hands across the left side of their throats, slicing open their carotid arteries. Blood spurted out everywhere, splattering across the papers on their desks, flooding down the fronts of their T-shirts and their sweaters and their dresses, spraying in hieroglyphic patterns on the walls. In twos and threes, the students collapsed, and lay quivering under their desks while their hearts pumped out the last few liters of their lives.

Kwisin, the fox-demon, let out another screech, harsh and triumphant. She threw back her head and raised both of her forelegs, as if she was preparing to welcome the souls of Special Class Two into her dark, bristling embrace.