Blood of Youth Chapter 1: The Shadowed Gate

The man’s face, as if someone had placed imaginative tourniquets on his veins and arteries, seemed to freeze the blood that flowed through them. It was a twisted, disease-eaten mask of humanity, the lips thin and bloodless, drawn back over caries-yellow teeth; the nose two gaping, black nostrils beneath small, rheumy eyes. A lock of sand-gray hair fell over the man’s temple. Otherwise he was bald, the skin of his skull drawn up like that of a prune.

A sound came from the creature’s throat, passed the lips that were powdery blue. Li Wei took it for interrogation. Somehow he found voice to answer.

“My name is Li Wei. I’m looking for my—my—” He caught himself, remembered Li Mei’s lie. “I’m looking for my sister, Li Mei. She was supposed to have—”

“Ain’ nobody here,” the man grunted. His cadaverous hand came up to close the panel.

“She must be here!” Li Wei cried. “She came up two days ago! Let me see Miss Zhang!”

“Ain’t nobody here,” the human corpse repeated doggedly. The panel began to slide shut. Li Wei jammed his fist through the now small opening, slid it back.

“Let me in! I want to see Miss Zhang!” He would have killed to pass that portal. The horror of mental anxiety was making a madman of him. “Let me in!”

The face disappeared. Blackness filled the opening in the door. Li Wei found the knob, twisted it. The door was locked tight. He pounded on the heavy wooden gate of the old house nestled in Seoul’s misty outskirts.

Suddenly he heard the scrape of a bar latch. He took one step back as the door swung open slowly.

“Come in,” a cracked voice said.

Without hesitation, Li Wei stepped across the threshold. He knew, as he raised his foot, that he was spanning some mysterious abyss that separated reality from the mad machinations of God only knew what. And yet, he entered the portal without fear. It was Li Mei he was thinking about, Li Mei who might be breathing her last. His Li Mei, who had been—it seemed ages now!—sweet and young and warm in his arms.

It was pitch black in the carpeted hallway. The door slammed shut and the latch slid home with a metallic click. Li Wei sucked in air, held it imprisoned in his lungs. Where was the hideous old man with the lamp?

He heard a soft rustle behind him, turned. Something swung out of the impenetrable darkness, crashed down on the side of his head. The blow sent a hell of pain shooting through the left side of his body, buckled one leg under him so that he dropped to that knee.

Instinctively he reached out, fingers clawed. His right hand caught in a loose garment, held. He jerked towards him, swung with his free clenched fist.

The knuckles smashed against bone. The next moment a guttural cry cleaved the black. There was the swish of lightning movement, a hideous growl. A whirling tornado of fur-coated beast lunged at Li Wei, knocked him down. Hot slobberings from the beast’s mouth dropped on his face, burned like molten lead. With his left side rapidly numbing from the blow on the head, Li Wei fought valiantly but hopelessly against this snarling, fanged adversary. It had all the shape and form of a dog but something in the tenor of its growling seemed wild and untrained…

Li Wei waited for the horrible moment when the beast’s fangs found his throat. The pain would be short-lived, he knew. He thought of Li Mei on that last night. Li Mei with her young body quivering in the grip of passion. Li Mei with her breasts tight against him in the fever of his embrace. Li Mei with her moist lips—

Crack! Brilliant lights flashed across Li Wei’s horizon. All the colors of the spectrum. Why were they doing this to him? Why? Why? There was a sharp hiss and the lights went out. The uncleavable darkness of unconsciousness engulfed him.