Chapter 3. A House Without a Lamp
When Karto finally reached the yard of his house, the village felt utterly strange. His steps were unsteady, dragging across the dry earth swarmed by thousands of green flies. No one greeted him. The neighbors who usually sat on the bamboo porches glanced at him with anxious, disgusted looks, as though Karto carried the bad-luck aura of Penjalin Forest.
Karto pushed open the door and stepped inside. He immediately realized that something unnatural had changed.
His house was dark. Inside, the gloom felt far deeper than outside, as though the midday sunlight were being refused entry by the darkness settled in the gaps between the woven-bamboo walls. The smell of wet earth and rotting flesh—the distinctive stench from Marni's grave—would not leave Karto's bedroom. If anything, it grew thicker, clinging to the rotting wooden furniture.
With violently trembling hands, Karto pulled a black cloth pouch from beneath his shirt. Mbah Jambrong's words echoed in his mind: “Keep this inside your house, in the highest place.”
Above the wooden daybed stood an old wooden shelf fastened to the house's main post. It was high enough to nearly touch the dusty thatched roof. Karto climbed onto a small stool and placed the black cloth pouch containing the Red Pocong Cord there. The moment the pouch landed on the shelf, a faint vibration seemed to travel through the house's post. The little light remaining in the room suddenly dimmed another shade, leaving behind a suffocating gloom.
“It’s done... I put it there...” Karto whispered to himself, as though pleading with the darkness surrounding him.
He climbed down from the stool and headed toward the small kitchen at the back of the house. His throat felt terribly dry and burned, an aftereffect of the bruised ligature mark around his neck, which still throbbed painfully. Karto approached the earthenware water jar standing in the corner of the kitchen. He grabbed a coconut-shell dipper, plunged it into the water, and lifted it to his lips.
But before he could drink, Karto’s eyes flew wide.
The water in the coconut shell was not clear. It was murky red, thick, and giving off faint steam that smelled of stale blood. Startled, Karto let go of the dipper. Crack! The coconut shell hit the dirt floor and broke, splashing thick red liquid over his bare feet.
Karto crawled backward, away from the water jar. His eyes fixed on the old jar in utter terror. From inside came the sound of air bubbles popping one after another, followed by red water slowly spilling over the rim and soaking into the kitchen floor.
“Gusti... forgive me...” Karto wept softly, clutching his constricted chest.
He could not stay in that kitchen a moment longer. Karto ran back to the front room, groping around for the kerosene lamp and wooden matches. His violently shaking fingers dropped several matches before finally managing to light one. The sulfur scraped and sparked into a tiny flame. Karto touched it to the kerosene lamp’s wick.
But the flame refused to grow.
Instead of casting the warm yellow light it usually did, the flame on the wick burned stiffly with a very faint bluish glow. It could not drive away the darkness in the room. The shadows of the wooden beams and furniture only stretched and bent rigidly across the bamboo walls, resembling thin hands reaching for Karto’s neck.
The house had changed. The place that had once been his simple shelter from rain and heat now felt like a waiting room for the grave. A house without a lamp, where neither physical light nor the light of the soul held any power anymore.
Karto sat down on the dirt floor in the middle of the room and hugged his knees. He stared toward the tall wooden shelf in the corner. The black cloth pouch sat there in silence. But Karto knew the Red Pocong Cord inside had never truly slept. It was breathing, absorbing the last remnants of his courage, and calling its owner's restless spirit to complete its unfinished revenge.