The Winter Meeting

I swear on my grandmother’s grave that what I’m about to tell you is the truth. If I’m lying, may a stray dog chew my bones. It happened in the winter of 2023, when I traveled to the remote village of Hwaseong, South Korea, to visit my estranged father. He lived in a cramped apartment above a rundown convenience store, and I was there for his sixtieth birthday. The whole trip was a favor to my younger sister, who couldn’t make it.

On the evening of January 14th, a Sunday, I was watching a local TV channel, half-asleep on the worn-out couch. My father had gone to bed early, muttering something about a cold. The program was a documentary about rural folklore. A shaman, with a face like cracked earth, spoke in hushed tones about the Jeoseung Saja, the grim reaper’s messengers, and about the nights when the boundary between worlds thinned. Then she said, ‘On the sixteenth day, the gate to the netherworld creaks open. It is a day when the restless ones gather, when the living must beware.’ I scoffed, but a chill ran down my spine. I turned off the TV and tried to sleep, but her words lingered like frost on a windowpane.

Two days passed. I had forgotten about the warning, busy with the mundane tasks of catching up with my father and his old friends. On the night of January 16th, I was in the narrow alley behind the convenience store, kicking a worn-out soccer ball with a few local teens—my father’s neighbor’s son, Min-jun, and his friends. It was freezing, and the only light came from a flickering streetlamp that cast long, dancing shadows. The air was still, too still, as if the world was holding its breath. I stopped the ball with my foot and squinted into the darkness beyond the lamp’s reach. There was a figure standing there, just at the edge of the light, motionless. ‘Hey, who’s that?’ I called out in my clumsy Korean.

The boys froze. Min-jun’s face went pale, and he backed away, shaking his head vigorously. I laughed nervously. ‘What’s wrong? It’s just a person.’ But they didn’t move. I took a step forward, my voice sharper. ‘Who are you? Show yourself!’

The figure took a step into the light. It was a woman, or maybe a girl—I couldn’t tell because her face was obscured by a waterfall of matted black hair. But then she tilted her head, and her hair fell back, and I saw her face. It wasn’t a face. It was a gaping void, a black hole in the shape of a skull, and from it came a sound like dead leaves rustling, or maybe dry bones grinding. I screamed. The boys screamed. We turned and sprinted for the store, our feet pounding on the frozen ground. But as we reached the back door, we saw more of them. They were shambling out of the shadows, from behind the dumpsters, from the narrow gaps between buildings—silent, eyeless, with that same void where their faces should have been.

We crashed through the door and slammed it shut. I pressed my back against the cold metal, panting. ‘We’re so getting out of here!’ I yelled. But when I turned around, the store was dark, and my father was standing at the end of the aisle, his face half-hidden in the gloom. ‘Dad?’ I whispered. He didn’t answer. He just stared at me with eyes that were too white, and then he spoke in a voice that wasn’t his—a whisper that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere: ‘They’ve come for the living.’

I grabbed Min-jun’s arm and shoved him toward the front of the store. ‘We have to get out of here!’ I shouted. We burst through the front door, and the street was worse. The entire village was in motion. Dozens of figures, all with those hollow faces, were walking slowly toward us. I could hear the sound of their steps, like the ticking of a thousand clocks. We ran, not knowing where to go, but we ran all night. When dawn broke, we found ourselves on the outskirts of the village, near a frozen stream. The ghosts were gone. Min-jun was crying, and I was shaking so hard I couldn’t light a cigarette.

We never spoke of it again. The village seemed normal in the daylight, but I knew. The shaman’s words were true. On that night, the meeting had taken place, and I had witnessed it. To this day, I can’t look at a mirror without fearing that my reflection will be the one with the void face. And I never returned to that village. Some doors, once opened, can’t be closed.