The dull yellow school bus we were riding in slowly came to a stop along the edge of a narrow residential street. My footsteps halted the moment my feet touched the asphalt. Not far ahead of us, a green stucco house stood behind bright yellow police tape. Several officers in brown uniforms hurried in and out through the front door, while a cluster of neighbors stood across the street, their faces tense.
“Lana, why is Sella’s house surrounded by police tape?” Rika whispered as she pressed close to my side. Her fingers clutched the edge of my uniform tightly.
I shook my head slowly, unable to answer. My gaze remained locked on Sella’s yard, bustling with officers. Behind me, Grandma with the dragon-headed staff and the betel-chewing woman walked side by side, silently escorting us.
“Come on, kids, this way,” Ms. Retno called, gesturing with one hand. “The family moved the body to the mourning house, at Sella’s uncle’s place three houses down. The main house is still being examined by the officers.”
We followed behind Ms. Retno and Mr. Imran, walking through the narrow passage between rows of neighborhood houses. Sella’s uncle’s house was crowded beneath a blue tarp stretched across the front yard. Red plastic chairs stood in neat rows, all occupied by mourners dressed in dark clothing and Muslim attire. Faint recitations from the Quran echoed through the air, mingling with muffled sobs.
As soon as we entered the area beneath the tarp, we were directed to sit in a side row of chairs. Inside the mourning house’s living room, whose doors stood wide open, Sella’s body lay covered with brown batik on a wooden bier. Beside it, her mother wailed hysterically, held tightly by two female relatives.
Amid the grief, the whispers of the people around us began to reach my ears.
“I feel so sorry for Mrs. Asnah,” a middle-aged woman in a black headscarf whispered to the woman sitting beside her directly in front of me. “Apparently, Sella was brought home by her teachers this afternoon, asleep and limp in the car. Mrs. Asnah herself guided her inside and covered her with a blanket in her room.”
“Yeah, I heard that too,” the woman beside her replied, adjusting her shawl. “Mrs. Asnah only left Sella for a moment to use the bathroom in the back. It wasn’t even fifteen minutes. But when she came back to the room…” The woman paused, swallowing hard as she shuddered. “Sella had already been found hanging from the bedroom roof rafter. With a clothesline.”
The blood in my body seemed to stop flowing. My heart pounded so hard that my chest felt tight.
Suicide by hanging.
The words from the golden coin on the wooden Ouija board that afternoon suddenly echoed loudly in my head.
S-U-I-C-I-D-E B-Y H-A-N-G-I-N-G.
How could the board have already named the way Sella would die when Sella herself had only just arrived home, still breathing and asleep?
Ria and Nina, sitting beside Rika, turned deathly pale. Nina’s face was as white as a burial shroud, her eyes staring blankly at the cold cement floor. They must have heard the neighbors’ whispers too.
“Lana…” Rika squeaked, her voice trembling so badly it was almost inaudible. “The board earlier… it wasn’t lying, but how is that possible?”
I didn’t answer. Every joint in my body suddenly went stiff—not only because I had heard the bizarre account of Sella’s death, but because of what my naked eyes had just caught inside the mourning room.
The brown batik covering the upper half of Sella’s body lifted slightly in an icy draft. Beside the wooden bier where her body lay, a figure with deathly pale skin slowly rose to its feet.
It was Sella.
The figure wore the exact same school uniform we were wearing, complete with dried sweat stains across her chest. Around her long neck was a terrifying dark bruise encircling it. Her weary, reddened eyes stared straight at me.
Sella’s figure rose slowly, her feet never touching the tiled floor. She drifted forward at a crawl, moving through the crowd of mourners, none of whom noticed her presence. Her face expressed utter terror. She stretched her pale hand toward me.
Lana… help me…
The whisper didn’t reach my ears. Instead, it rang directly inside my chest. Sella’s figure continued floating closer, intending to approach my seat.
I was scared half to death. My breath came in harsh, rapid gasps, and my fingers dug into my knees. Before Sella’s figure could come within six feet of me, Grandma with the dragon-headed staff and the betel-chewing woman suddenly sprang forward. The two supernatural grandmothers stood tall, forming a barrier in front of me.
“Don’t come any closer, Spirit!” the betel-chewing woman snarled in a deep, resonant voice. Grandma with the dragon-headed staff drove her wooden staff into the floor, creating a wave of cold air that stopped Sella’s floating advance.
Sella’s blue lips trembled violently. She seemed determined to force her way past my two protectors. Her swollen eyes stared at me in utter despair.
“It wasn’t… I didn’t… Mr. Im—”
Before Sella’s figure could finish her sentence or say the name in full, the tall, massive faceless black shadow I had seen at school suddenly appeared from the darkness in the corner of the mourning house’s ceiling.
The dark giant stretched out its long, thin arms, sharp claws digging into the air. In one horrifying, lightning-fast motion, the black figure’s clawed fingers seized Sella’s neck from behind. Sella’s figure let out a silent scream as her pale body was forcibly dragged backward, pulled into the dense darkness of the wall’s shadow in the corner of the room until she vanished completely.
“Sella!” I screamed hysterically without realizing it, flinging myself up from the plastic chair.
The powerful urge to chase after her and hear the rest of her message seized my mind. I took one step forward, about to push through the rows of mourners.
But Grandma with the dragon-headed staff quickly turned and blocked me, raising her heavily wrinkled hand. “Don’t, Lana! Stop! She doesn’t belong in this world anymore!” she admonished, her expression extremely serious.
At the same time, an incredibly strong hand clamped down on my left shoulder, wrenching my consciousness back into the real world.
“Lana! What the heck is wrong with you?!” Rika whispered, half-hissing the words as she forcibly pulled me back down into my chair.
Several female mourners around us turned to stare at me, their brows furrowed and their eyes suspicious. Mr. Imran, standing not far away near the front door, also glanced briefly in my direction with his sharp, cold black eyes before looking away again.
Rika leaned her face close to my ear, her grip on my shoulder still tight. Her eyes widened in warning.
“Don’t act weird in a mourning house, Lana,” she whispered sharply, panic barely contained in her voice. “Everyone’s watching us! Why did you stand up and yell Sella’s name?”