Chapter 6 - No Sleeping Allowed
The night air in Rawuna felt different. There were no crickets chirping, no wind rustling through the trees. There was only a thick silence that pressed against the chest. Satria, an investigative journalist who had just arrived that afternoon, sat on the veranda of the village chief's house, watching the deserted village road.
For three generations, the people of Rawuna had never slept. This unique medical condition had captured Satria's interest and inspired him to write an in-depth report. Yet ever since he had set foot in the village, something had felt strange. The villagers walked back and forth with glowing red eyes, vacant stares, and stiff movements like wooden puppets.
The village chief, an old man named Ki Marta, poured warm tea into the porcelain cup in front of Satria. Ki Marta's face was marked with deep lines of exhaustion, but his eyes were wide open, staring straight ahead without ever blinking.
“Never try to close your eyes in this place, Satria,” Ki Marta rasped, his voice almost like a whisper of wind.
“If night falls and your eyelids close, you’ll no longer belong to yourself.”
Satria nodded politely, dismissing it as nothing more than a local myth meant to frighten outsiders. But curiosity led him out of the house when the wall clock struck midnight. He wanted a closer look at what the villagers did in the middle of the night.
He followed the cobblestone road toward the village center. There, in the middle of the main square, stood an old, moss-covered well surrounded by dozens of villagers. They stood in a circle, facing into the well in complete silence. Not one of them spoke.
Satria hid behind the wall of an old house and raised his camera to take a picture. But when his camera lens focused on the villagers’ faces, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. The villagers weren’t merely awake—they were standing in impossible positions. Some of their heads were tilted backward at a ninety-degree angle, while their hands hung limply at their sides.
Suddenly, an overwhelming wave of exhaustion crashed into Satria. His head felt heavy, and his eyelids abruptly felt incredibly sticky. The long journey from the big city and the tension of the night were demanding their due. Satria tried to fight the drowsiness, but it came so quickly, like anesthesia spreading through his veins.
He tried to blink, then closed his eyes for a second to gather his wits.
One second.
When Satria opened his eyes again, everything had changed drastically. He was no longer standing behind the wall of the old house. He was now standing at the bottom of the old well, in the middle of the circle of villagers.
Satria screamed in panic, feeling his own body. But no sound came from his throat. His legs felt stiff, his hands hung limply at his sides, and his head was forced to tilt upward automatically.
He heard footsteps approaching the rim of the well. From above, another figure—his real self—peered down into the well with glowing red eyes and a vacant stare.
That was when Satria realized the true horror. The villagers had never slept not because of a medical curse, but because there was “something” inside the well waiting to steal the body of anyone who dared to close their eyes, even for a second.
Now his physical body above had been taken over by that entity, while Satria’s consciousness was trapped at the bottom of the well, forced to remain awake forever in the darkness, waiting for the next victim to arrive and surrender to drowsiness.