I spin in a circle on my boot heels. The shadows shift by the automatic parking garage. Someone screams from the dark window in the hotel above. Or was that a laugh? The wooden telephone poles lining the street groan in the wind.
Voices seem to whisper in my ears. “Princess. Princessss.”
Terror streaks through me. I fumble for my phone. It falls into the snow and with it a familiar piece of paper. I crouch down and pick it up. It’s the note from Grandfather with Master Kim’s phone number and address.
Forget politeness. I’m going to find this guy.
I punch the address into the GPS on my phone. The system recognizes it, indicating it’s only a block away. I take off at a sprint down the street, hoping Master Kim will be working late.
When I turn into the next intersection, the streetlights flicker. Behind me I hear something breathing. I whip around. Nothing. Puffs of cold air cloud up in front of my face as I stare into the emptiness. Or is it emptiness? I squint at what appears to be a breathy cloud under the awning of an abandoned store.
“Eye of the Tiger” slices the silence. My phone. I press it to my ear, backing away from the cloud.
“Hello.” My voice shakes.
“Annyeong haseyo,” a woman’s voice says. I realize the voice in the phone is also coming from behind me.
I whip around to see a woman, a phone against her ear, standing at the gate of a walled house across the street. She’s wearing a pair of black pants and a thick gray shawl.
“Jae Hwa,” she says. She knows my name? “I see you found your way. Your grandfather said you would come.”
How does she know these things?
“Come. Come quickly!” she says, waving her arms toward the warm light of her home. “The night is full of evil spirits.”
I don’t need to hear anything else. I race through the iron gate, and the lady practically shoves me up the stone stairs, slamming the wooden door behind me.
Only after I step inside do I wonder if I can even trust this woman.
CHAPTER 10
I face the stocky lady, now removing her shawl, and clutch my phone tighter. She’s about my height, dressed in polyester pants and a thick blue sweater. Everything is simple about her except the shimmer of gold from the ring hanging on a chain around her neck.
She seems harmless enough. Then she turns, and I see the scar etched across the left side of her face, as if some beast had ripped its claws through her skin, and I shudder, remembering Haechi’s claws. Her black hair is braided and pulled harshly into place, giving her face a tight, hard expression that matches the steel in her eyes.
“I am Master Kim. I will train you in what I know.”
She’s Master Kim? I study the crumpled paper in my hand. Behind her is a painting of the Tiger of Shinshi, just like the one on Grandfather’s note. In fact, it looks a lot like the mural in Grandfather’s house. This has to be the right place.
The room has an odd scent, so strong I want to plug my nose.
“How do you know my grandfather?”
She mumbles something in Korean and then: “He did not tell you who I am, did he?”
I swallow hard, my feet rooted to the floor.
A shadow slithers across the geometric-styled window screen. I lean forward. What was that? Its shape is snakelike but much, much bigger. I blink at the impossible. My body goes as stiff as a breaking board with the thought of what could be outside.
Master Kim crosses the room, grabs a cloak and two flashlights. She tosses the cloak over my shoulders and jams the flashlight in my free hand. My other still holds my cell phone.
“Should keep you warm,” she says, and yanks back a Chinese carpet to reveal a trapdoor beneath it. She lifts it by the attached bronze ring.
I stare down at the blackness below me. She shines a flashlight into its depths, and even though I spot a wooden ladder, I back away, unwrapping my scarf from around my neck. The room suddenly feels hot and too small.
She jerks her head toward the black hole and lifts her eyebrows as if to say “Any day now!”
Yeah right, crazy lady. Like I’m going to leap into a dark hole of my own free will. Not after everything that has already happened today.
Which reminds me, I should call Dad.
Problem. I’m supposed to be in bed.
“Now, Jae Hwa!” Master Kim yells. “He has sent his dragons!”
She knows my name. Part of something scaly from outside slides under the door. I rub my eyes.
Whatever is outside wants in.
“The ginseng is not working.” Master Kim yanks on my arm, nearly ripping it out of the joint. “Stubborn child! I am taking you belowground. His powers are useless there without the light.”
Claws, golden and sharp, tear apart the screen.
I dive for the hole.
The wooden ladder feels smooth and cold under my palms. Crazed Ginseng Lady ducks in right after me, her flashlight clenched between her teeth. The trapdoor slams closed, enveloping us in darkness except for the bobbing beam from her flashlight. I hear the clink of metal. I hope it’s a strong lock.
Would that keep us safe?
Soon my boots hit the ground, which is slimy and gooey. I click on my flashlight and pan it around me. We’re in a narrow passageway hewed out of concrete. Sure enough, the goo my boots cling to is mud combined with stuff reeking of dead fish and urine. Disgusting.
Above, claws rake across the trapdoor, and the dragon shrieks. My heart catches in my throat, and suddenly the goo isn’t so bad.
Master Kim brushes past me and takes off down the passageway. The cold is bone-chilling, and I’m suddenly glad for the cloak she gave me.
I hurry after her. “What is this place?”
“An old North Korean tunnel discovered by the government six years ago. President Lee Myung-bak had it blocked off and restricted. Since the president did not want his people to know how close they had come to invasion, it was kept quiet.”
Her flashlight casts creepy shadows that skitter off the rounded walls. I shiver despite the cloak, but she continues on unfazed. “My cousin’s husband is the subway overseer. She mentioned it to me. I knew an underground escape from Haemosu was exactly what I needed, so I bought a house just above one of the vents. The perfect hideout. Most do not know this tunnel exists, and those who do have pretended it into nonexistence.”
We reach an iron gate. I shine my flashlight through the bars and over the pebbled ground, but my beam doesn’t reach far enough into the gaping blackness.
“Where does that go?” I ask.
“North Korea. You do not want to go there. Trust me.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Ginseng Lady focuses on a tiny square door set into the rock wall to our right. She spins the combination lock, its click echoing through the hallway. Then she leans into the door and shoves it open, the bottom scraping in aged resistance. I shine my light back the way we came, peering through the gloom and hoping my light won’t catch a glint of those shiny scales I saw above.
“The dragons will not follow us here,” she says, and steps inside. “They need the power of light to sustain them, and their golden claws can only keep the power for so long. Other creatures perhaps, but tonight we do not matter to them.”
I gulp at the thought of other creatures and duck inside. My boots trail sludge across the concrete floor.
Master Kim sits down on a wooden bench and slips off her shoes and enters another room. I mimic her actions, sidestepping the mud with socked feet.
The next room is the exact opposite of that dreary tunnel. The walls are lined with murals of the Korean countryside and native animals like the bear, tiger, and crane. The floor is wooden rather than concrete, and electricity lights up rice-papered lanterns attached to the walls. At one end stands a rack of weapons and Tae Kwon Do doboks, while the other holds scrolls and books lined up kind of like in Grandfather’s cave. It’s quite large, too, about half the size of my Tae Kwon Do gym.