I collect folk ghost stories, traveling through the countryside to record strange tales forgotten by time.
The elders say some stories must not be written down lightly, because they carry something unclean within them. I didn't believe them, until that time in an abandoned village when a dying old man gripped my hand and left a whisper on my old tape recorder, one that should never have existed.
After that, strange things kept happening:
· A breathing sound belonging to no one would always appear on my recordings.
· The people I interviewed began dying one after another, in the same ways as the characters in the stories.
· Whenever I worked on my manuscripts late at night, I felt someone behind me scrutinizing every word. Sometimes, I even heard a cold, quiet laugh…
Then, while replaying a blank interview, I clearly heard my grandmother's familiar, distorted voice: “Good boy… You record the stories, but the stories are recording you too… Now, would you like to turn around and look at the ‘listener’ crouched behind you?”
I turned around stiffly. Beneath the beam of my flashlight, there was only my own shadow. But that icy breath, carrying the smell of grave soil, was unmistakably blowing against the back of my neck.
I thought I was only a carrier of stories. Now I know I'm the “door” I opened for them. The story you're reading now might… be the last one I ever record.
