Chapter 112 - Ghostbuster 2 (2)
11 min read ·
The eastern United States. Smith's sprawling residence.
The Special Operations Division had covered up the murders the Boogeyman committed at the mansion, but.
Since someone had died in an incident involving Emily, Smith had paid the bereaved families a large sum before.
Crossing over to the States to avoid getting caught up in rumors.
He spent his retirement meeting old friends and watching over his now-healthy granddaughter.
Though there was one small thing that worried him....
Emily stopped mid-stroke while drawing, stared blankly into space for a moment with a sigh, then closed her sketchbook.
"Haah...."
...Emily had been spacing out and sighing like that more and more often lately.
Of course, she said there were no health issues, but it was still cause for concern.
Figuring that if he was going to hire someone anyway, a familiar face would be better for Emily than a stranger, Smith had brought on a housekeeper.
Kim So-ra, who had followed them all the way to America thanks to the generous salary, approached Emily and asked.
"Emily, you okay?"
The two had grown close enough in private to speak casually with each other.
"Oh... So-ra unnie, it's... it's nothing. I'm just a little tired."
Emily flinched for a split second and fumbled her words.
"?"
So-ra found it a little odd, but figured Emily had just been so absorbed in her drawing that being spoken to startled her.
More and more people had been taking an interest in Emily's art lately, after all.
Part of it was surely because she was the granddaughter of the famous painter Smith, but even to So-ra, who knew nothing about art, Emily's paintings were beautiful and had a peculiar charm to them.
Still, with all the attention and the various comments that came with it.
She was probably stressed about her art.
"I'll bring you some warm tea and cookies. Take a break while you work."
"Okay, thank you."
After So-ra left, Emily glanced around her surroundings for a moment.
".........."
She opened the sketchbook again and looked at the drawing she'd been working on.
It was a picture of Yo-han sitting in a chair with a gentle yet cold smile, holding a leash in his hand.
Looking down at Emily, who wore the leash at the other end.
Her face flushed red at the raw desire laid bare in the drawing she herself had made, and she covered her face with both hands.
"Ah... ahhh...!"
She let out a stifled, mortified squeal, but....
Peek-.
Before long, she spread her fingers apart, and through the gap, Emily's pale green eyes studied the drawing.
'Maybe a calm, expressionless look would've been better? No, but Yo-han-ssi's smiling face is nice too....'
Then Emily sighed again under the weight of guilt, self-loathing, and embarrassment all tangled together.
"Haah...."
That was the thing. She wasn't physically unwell.
The fetish that had awakened after the Boogeyman incident had merged with her creative impulses, and that was what tormented her.
She knew perfectly well that having fantasies like this about the person who'd saved her life wasn't right, but.
".........."
The memory of Yo-han's voice, the one that had pulled her awake when she'd been under the Evil Spirit's Possession, surfaced in her mind.
'Cry for me. Beg, if you want.'
'Cry. Cry and prove your innocence.'
...Yeah, admittedly, those weren't exactly normal things to say.
But the image of him mocking the Evil Spirit while rescuing her had seared itself into her mind and refused to fade.
It was oppressive, in a way.
Yet it was like the sensation of being gripped tightly by a strong hand....
Strange as it sounded, it gave her a sense of security.
As Emily's slender fingers carefully turned the pages of the sketchbook,
Fwip~.
a parade of violent illustrations of Yo-han, generously seasoned with Emily's fantasies, unfolded before her.
Her face reddened. Her eyes squeezed shut, then cracked half open.
'...I drew way too many of these!'
"Nnngh...."
Fantasizing like this about someone as kind as Yo-han-ssi couldn't be right.
Regardless of what Yo-han's personality was actually like, in Emily's memory he was a polite, kind, and dashing Exorcist.
Though the fact that someone so kind could become rough, a side he never showed anyone else, was precisely what made it appealing....
".........."
Emily deftly touched up the drawing and added more detail.
'If you ever need help with anything, don't hesitate to contact me.'
Yo-han's low, gentle voice from before they parted at the airport echoed in her mind.
She'd been too embarrassed to say a proper goodbye back then.
'What if he thinks I'm a weirdo?'
In any case, caught between fantasy and self-reproach, Emily was going about her daily life in her own way when.
Her peaceful routine was disrupted.
The disruption came without warning. Like the opening of a horror movie.
"...Grandfather, what is this painting?"
One day, Emily stopped before a painting hanging in the hallway of the house and asked Smith.
It wasn't that Emily didn't know what the painting depicted.
It was one of the most famous paintings in the world, after all.
What hung on the wall was Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.
A reproduction, obviously, not the real thing.
"Ah, a friend gave that to me as a gift at a dinner party the other day."
Smith explained, looking at the painting.
An art dealer had found it while clearing out a deceased painter's studio. Despite being a reproduction, it possessed an inexplicable pull that got it put up for auction.
Smith's friend had purchased it and given it to him as a housewarming gift.
For reference, this was the same friend who had insisted that a mansion simply must have a chandelier and gifted Smith one when he'd bought his house back in Korea.
She was also in the habit of gifting Smith various antiques she picked up on her travels.
Things like a fire basin once used in Zoroastrian rituals.
For the record, she was British, and her catchphrase was 'This belongs in the British Museum!'
Her grandfather's friend giving bizarre gifts was nothing new, so Emily simply nodded.
"...I see."
The hallway already had various other paintings on display, so one more hanging there wasn't strange in itself.
But of course, being a reproduction, it was only natural that it would feel slightly different from the original....
It felt nothing like when she'd seen the real Mona Lisa at the Louvre with her grandfather.
For some reason, she felt a subtle, unsettling prickle of unease.
".........."
Emily tore her eyes away from the painting and left.
The Mona Lisa's eyes followed her, sliding to the side.
The next day.
Emily was passing through the hallway when she stopped abruptly, stared at the Mona Lisa, and said to So-ra.
"...Unnie, was the Mona Lisa in this painting always this large?"
The sense of perspective was subtly different from the day before.
As if she had taken one step closer, the Mona Lisa had grown larger within the frame.
So-ra, standing beside her, tilted her head.
"Really? I can't tell. Isn't it just your imagination?"
"...I suppose so."
Emily felt uneasy, but... she'd thought it was eerie from the start, so maybe that was coloring her perception. She let it go.
And after that.
Emily had a piece to submit for a small exhibition, so she threw herself into painting and the Mona Lisa slipped from her mind.
But then, on a dark night past midnight.
Like the sound of a fragile peace shattering.
"AAAAAAAAHH!"
Smith's scream echoed through the vast house.
"G-Grandfather!?"
Emily and So-ra rushed out into the hallway, and their eyes went wide at the scene before them.
Smith had collapsed, unconscious from shock.
The paintings that had lined the hallway were torn to shreds, scattered across the floor.
So-ra and Emily were horrified, but attending to Smith came first.
They called an ambulance in a hurry.
Wee-oo, wee-oo-!
The ambulance arrived and loaded Smith onto a stretcher.
Thankfully, he'd only fainted from fright. There were no injuries.
...The problem was who had torn up the hallway paintings.
"E-Emily, I'll call you once we get to the hospital."
A flustered So-ra climbed into the ambulance as his guardian and headed for the hospital.
The police officers who had arrived with the ambulance searched the house, but.
The security system hadn't even been triggered, and there was absolutely no sign of forced entry from outside.
Thinking about it rationally.
The police concluded that Smith had torn the paintings himself, likely from stress or some kind of artistic hysteria.
Wasn't it a thing? Famous artists doing bizarre things from time to time?
No intruder, and Smith had just fainted, so they figured they could investigate further once he woke up. The police left.
And just like that, Emily was alone in the enormous house.
Emily only then looked down at her hands and realized.
"Oh...."
She'd been too frantic to notice until now, but she'd picked up Smith's phone from the floor while supporting him and was still clutching it.
'...Why had Grandfather come out to the painting hallway at this hour in the first place?'
If he'd simply come out for a glass of water, the kitchen was accessible from Smith's room without passing through the hallway with the paintings.
".........."
More than anything, she didn't believe her grandfather had torn those paintings.
Emily checked the clock.
It was approaching 3 a.m., well into the dead of night, but.
The creeping unease made her unwilling to stay alone in the house.
Emily hastily packed a bag, intending to head to the hospital herself or spend the night at a hotel, and was on her way back to her room when.
...She felt it.
The hallway where shredded painting fragments lay strewn about for scene preservation.
The one painting in that hallway that hadn't been torn.
'The unsettling Mona Lisa reproduction.'
She hadn't noticed when passing through with the police, but.
"─!?"
She felt eyes tracking her. From left to right.
...It was too late to turn back now.
Emily deliberately fixed her gaze straight ahead and carefully quickened her pace.
Thud- thud- tap-tap.
She rounded the corner and ran to her room.
"Hah... hah...!"
Inside her room, Emily pressed her back against the door, breathing hard.
She understood now why her grandfather had fainted.
...That painting was almost certainly the source.
With trembling hands, Emily opened Smith's phone and checked it.
Maybe there was something, some clue.
Before Smith had fainted, there was a call log with the friend who'd gifted him that painting.
Archaeologist Drake.
Smith had brought the same Galaxy phone he'd used in Korea, which had an automatic call recording feature, and the recorded conversation began to play.
A husky, boisterous woman's voice rang out.
[Goddammit! Those French bastards! They swindled me! They should've let the Nazis have Paris! People who take two bloody hours to eat a single meal!]
[...Drake, calm down. What on earth are you talking about?]
[That fucking painting I gave you! Get rid of it! Burn it! "A renowned painter's final masterpiece, chasing legend," my arse!]
The story that came spilling from Drake's mouth was this.
The grotesque Mona Lisa reproduction had indeed been found in the deceased French painter's studio.
But the painter hadn't died of old age or in an accident. He'd been murdered by someone in his own studio.
And after Drake had done some digging of her own.
The painter's close associates and students all said the same thing: he had never painted anything like that.
[Some lunatic broke into the painter's studio, tore him and every painting in the place to shreds, and left that Mona Lisa reproduction behind!]
After that, the recording cut off with the sound of Smith's panicked voice.
And then, from the hallway, came a sound that should not have been there.
Thoom- thoom- creeeak-.
She didn't want to see it with her own eyes, but....
The fear of not knowing was worse, and Emily cracked the door open just enough to peer outside.
"-hk!?"
She barely stopped herself from screaming.
What she saw was, quite literally, a scene from a surreal nightmare.
A black mass moved across the floor, propping itself up on grotesquely elongated arms.
The mouth of the creature, draped in the peeled-off skin of the Mona Lisa that had crawled out of the painting, split open wide, baring rows of jagged teeth.
Rrrrip-.
It swiveled its head, scanning the area, dragging its nails across the floor as it moved.
Screeech- screeech-.
It entered the kitchen.
...It was searching.
That creature was searching for her.
The one who had killed the French painter and shredded his paintings wasn't some deranged murderer.
It was that monster masquerading as a Mona Lisa painting.
Emily shut the door.
The strength drained from her legs on its own, and she sank to the floor.
"Hah... hah...."
Emily hyperventilated from the tension and terror, but.
She wasn't sure if this counted as a blessing....
Perhaps because she'd been through the Boogeyman incident, knowing that creatures like this existed meant she could at least keep from passing out.
And.
In a situation like this, there was only one person who came to mind.
Emily dug through Smith's phone contacts and found it.
[Ghostbuster]
She pressed the call button immediately.
Riiing... riiing....
A brief, yet to Emily agonizingly long, series of tones rang out, and then.
[Yes, this is Kim Yo-han. Smith....]
At the calm, low voice coming through the phone, the voice she'd wanted to hear most in the world, Emily choked back tears and spoke.
"Y-Yo-han-ssi... please help me."