“I finally found the entrance, but did Dad really come here?”
I was still thinking about Dad. A heavyset man like him would definitely have trouble making his way through these bushes.
To make matters worse, the front entrance—the one I was supposed to use—was now blocked by bamboo panels, so I had to circle around along the wall until I reached the back of the building. There, I spotted a damaged back door that could still be opened, allowing me to step inside.
This was the first time I had ever set foot in this building. Since I was little, I hadn't been allowed inside several buildings in Cihalimun Village that were usually used for certain activities. This was one of them.
Mom and Dad had always told me not to stare at this building for too long whenever I passed it on my way to the rice fields. And that rule didn't apply only to me—it applied to all the children in the village. Their parents warned them not to play around the building because…
“Watch out, or the rice-field ghost will eat you!”
My childhood in this remote village had been filled with myths and taboos. Maybe it was because the village still followed the teachings of its ancestors, so those customs had to be passed down from generation to generation even now.
“So this is what it looks like inside?” I said, glancing around the building.
The building looked neglected now, even though it had brick walls and a tiled roof. But once I stepped inside, everything became terrifying.
I entered through the back, where a door opened directly into the bathroom—a decrepit old bathroom with a tub and an ancient, moss-covered well. Several spiderwebs covered the middle of the well.
The room next to it was where I stood: a small, dusty, stuffy room with no air coming in except through the back door, which was always open. The building's windows had all been tightly covered with bamboo panels, keeping out the sunlight.
I hadn't expected the building to be so large once I got inside. It dawned on me that exploring the place would take time.
Yet so far, I hadn't found a single trace of Dad. I even began to doubt what Mom had told me when I asked where Dad had last been seen.
At last, I moved on, passing through several small rooms that were empty, dark, and dusty. But the farther I went into the building, the worse I felt.
Fear welled up each time I took another step inside. The building had been abandoned for so long that it could have become a place for spirits to live and settle.
Before Cihalimun Village transformed into what it was now, the villagers had already been familiar with various ghosts, apparitions, and myths in the area, just like people in other villages.
But those spirits had only shown themselves and frightened the villagers. They had never made anyone disappear or turned the village into what it was now.
There was still so much I couldn't fully understand. The only thing I could do was find out what had happened to this place—and why Dad had been missing for several days.
I abruptly stopped when I reached a large room inside the building. I believed it had once been where the villagers gathered, back when the building was still being used properly.
But something was strange. Numerous worn red batik cloths hung from the room's ceiling.
They were the kind of batik cloths we usually called samping or jarik, the cloths mothers used to carry babies. But all those samping cloths were hanging in every corner of the room.
At the far end of the room, I also saw several tables piled on top of one another. Beneath them were offerings that had been stored in the building for a long time.
The offerings consisted of empty coconut shells filled with incense, piled up beneath the tables. I had no idea what people used to do here.
What I did know was that the people of Cihalimun Village were very accustomed to anything involving offerings and the like. They believed it was a tradition they had to preserve from one generation to the next, so seeing something like this wasn't strange to me.
Rustle.
Rustle.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I faintly heard footsteps—the footsteps of several people entering the building.
I didn't know who they were or what they were doing in this abandoned place.
But at that moment, the thought crossed my mind that I needed to hide. I didn't know why. In the end, I deliberately lowered some of the stacked tables and hid behind them.
“Hey, Mang, did you hear? They say Mrs. Saidah's son has come back to the village,” someone said, talking about me.
“Really? What was his name again? Abdi, right?” another person replied.
The two people chatted as they walked toward the room where I was hiding. I lay beneath the pile and listened carefully to what they were saying. I wasn't actually surprised that the villagers were talking about me.
After all, I was a convict who had just gotten out of prison. So I was sure I had a bad reputation among the people who knew me.
Tap tap tap.
The footsteps drew closer. They seemed to be heading toward the room where I was hiding, but then, suddenly…
“Ari, where are you going? This way! Don't go into that room! It's full of ghosts!” one of them said, trying to stop the other person's footsteps and steer him into an empty room on the left.
I was curious about the two men. They seemed to have entered this building many times before, judging by how casually they talked about the abandoned place.
Suddenly, their voices disappeared, along with the sound of their footsteps.
At last, I lifted my head between the tables to check my surroundings. The room was empty again, just as it had been before.
I slowly crawled out from beneath the pile of tables. But now my feet carried me forward, driven by the need to find out where the two men had gone. Eventually, I walked into the room they had entered.
The room was extremely dark. Scattered all over the floor were chunks of the building's rubble, as if someone had been tearing something apart in there. Finally, I stopped for a moment at the very end of the room.
“Why is there a staircase leading underground in this room?” I said, bewildered.