The Trace of Last Night

Sagara and Niskala were startled by the sound of a violent pounding on their bedroom door.

“Nyi? Nyi Rukmini?” Sagara called.

Step by step, he approached the closed door.

The pounding continued.

Loud and relentless.

Yet no one on the other side answered.

*Maybe Nyi Rukmini can’t hear me,* Sagara thought.

But Niskala looked increasingly frightened.

“Don’t open it, Bang.”

Niskala’s eyes remained fixed on the closed door.

The door wasn’t even locked.

Then why hadn’t Nyi Rukmini simply opened it?

*Could someone else have entered their grandmother’s house?*

The thought briefly crossed Sagara’s mind.

“Nyi Rukmini?” he called again.

“Ehm!”

Instead of an answer, a deep voice resembling a man’s came from behind the door.

Niskala flinched.

“That’s the voice I heard before, Bang.”

Sagara turned toward him.

“You’re sure?”

Niskala nodded firmly, as though there wasn’t the slightest doubt in his mind about what he had heard.

“Who’s there?”

“Ehm!”

Again, the sound of a throat being cleared, without a single word.

That only made Sagara more curious. Slowly, his hand reached for the door handle.

“Do you need something? Our grandmother is still outside.”

There was no answer.

“Ehm!”

The same deep sound came again.

This time, Sagara couldn’t take it anymore. He gripped the handle and opened the door without hesitation.

“Where are you going? It’s getting late. You two should go to sleep.”

Nyi Rukmini was standing right in front of the bedroom door.

Sagara froze.

There was no mistaking it—the voice they had heard had sounded like a man’s.

Yet standing before him was Nyi Rukmini.

The old woman merely glanced at him before turning and walking back toward her room as though nothing had happened.

Without thinking, Sagara quickly closed the bedroom door again.

He walked back toward his brother, his body suddenly feeling weak. Niskala was still sitting limply on the floor beside the bed.

Sagara let himself slide down until he was sitting beside him. His gaze drifted into the distance.

“Are we ever going to escape that fate?”

His words seemed to hang in the air.

Niskala turned toward him, unable to understand what his brother meant.

“What fate, Bang?”

Sagara fell silent.

Then he quickly shook his head.

“No. It’s nothing.”

He waved his hand dismissively, as though assuring Niskala that everything was fine.

“Then who was that voice, Bang? Why was it Grandma who appeared?”

Sagara merely shrugged when Niskala looked to him for an answer.

“It’s better if we don’t find out. Our lives might end up being the price.”

“Huh? What do you mean, Bang?”

Sagara gently patted his brother’s shoulder.

“Enough. Don’t talk about it anymore. We should get some sleep. Tomorrow we need to help Grandma clean out the storage room and take her for a medical checkup.”

Sagara helped Niskala to his feet. They then lay back down on the bed, each consumed by questions of their own.

*Who was that voice, really? This village is strange. Even my own grandmother is strange.*

Niskala turned his back to his brother, who was still staring at the ceiling.

His mind was too clouded to think clearly that night. Yet something deep inside him kept insisting that something was wrong.

Something was wrong with this village.

There was something they still didn’t know.

The night had been utterly exhausting. His eyelids grew heavier and heavier until he could no longer fight the pull of sleep.

*Ya Allah... will we ever be able to break free from this pact? How can we end it?*

Beside him, Sagara closed his eyes.

Not because he was sleepy.

He simply wanted to gather his thoughts.

The string of strange incidents since their arrival in Dusun Getihan had forced his mind into overdrive. There were too many things that made no sense.

Too many questions without answers.

Not long after, the two young men finally drifted into sleep, each carried away into his own dreams.

But the night was not yet truly still.

The bedroom door, which had been firmly closed, slowly swung open on its own.

A cold draft crept inside, skimming across the floor before spreading through every corner of the room.

Niskala stirred in his sleep.

As the air suddenly turned bitterly cold, he pulled the blanket back over his feet.

Unbeknownst to him, a creature stood in the corner of the room, watching them.

Thick saliva slowly dripped from the corner of its mouth.

Its long fingers, tipped with claw-like nails, hung suspended in the air.

It did nothing.

It simply watched.

And waited.

It was the same creature Niskala had seen beneath the banyan tree—the creature that had been feasting on the sesajen before Nyi Rukmini.

And that night, it had followed them all the way into their bedroom.

—

Sagara jolted awake and realized that Subuh was almost over.

He and his brother had overslept.

Niskala stirred and opened his eyes. For some reason, his entire body felt sore, as though he had spent the night doing strenuous physical labor.

He rubbed his aching shoulder.

Sagara turned toward him.

“What’s wrong, Dek?”

“I don’t know, Bang. Maybe I’m just exhausted.”

Niskala continued rubbing his shoulder.

“It hurts a little here, Bang.”

Sagara shifted closer and began gently massaging his brother’s shoulder.

Then he suddenly stopped.

His eyes had fallen on the back of Niskala’s neck.

There was a large bluish bruise there, almost the size of a palm.

“What’s wrong, Bang? Why did you suddenly look like that?”

“What happened to you last night, Dek?” Sagara pointed toward the back of his brother’s neck. “There’s a huge bruise there.”

Niskala immediately reached for the spot.

They both fell silent.

They tried to remember what had happened the night before.

Had Niskala hit something when he panicked?

But as far as either of them could remember, nothing had happened except for the moment Niskala saw that terrifying figure beneath the banyan tree.

*Maybe I hit something without realizing it when I got scared.*

Niskala tried to think positively. He didn’t want his brother to worry any more than he already did.

“We’ll have it checked later. Maybe there’s a medical explanation for it.”

Sagara’s suggestion finally gave them a way out of their confusion.

They got out of bed and quickly performed wudu before offering the Subuh prayer.

—

“Where’s Grandma, Bang? Why can’t I see her anywhere?”

Niskala peered out the window, searching for Nyi Rukmini while dusting a pile of books with a feather duster made of densely black chicken feathers.

They were now inside the storage room, which was thick with dust.

Every now and then, Niskala held back a sneeze as the drifting dust irritated his nose.

“She’s probably busy out back. Come on, just focus so we can finish this quickly. We still have to take you and Grandma to the puskesmas for a checkup, remember?”

Sagara shifted several bookshelves that stood about half a meter away from the wall, pushing them back until they were flush against it.

The shelves were quite heavy.

He was about to ask Niskala for help, but his eyes fell once again on the bluish bruise on his brother’s neck.

He changed his mind.

Slowly, Sagara pushed the heavy shelves by himself.

“Here, Bang. Let me help.”

Niskala came over.

But Sagara immediately stopped him.

“You just dust the books. And don’t forget your mask.”

No wonder Niskala had been sneezing repeatedly.

He had been wearing the mask around his neck instead of over his face.

Niskala chuckled at his own foolishness and pulled the mask back over his nose and mouth.

But the moment the mask covered his face, his expression suddenly changed.

He held his breath.

His stomach lurched.

There was a pungent smell coming from the mask.

A smell he recognized.

The smell of a corpse.

Foul.

Bloody.

Fishy.

Niskala hurriedly pulled the mask away from h

is face and stared at it, his brow furrowed.

“Bang...”

Sagara turned.

“What?”

Niskala didn’t answer immediately.

He cautiously brought the mask close and smelled it again.

The stench was still there.

And strangely enough, it seemed much stronger than before.

—