<H1>Chapter 12</H1> <br/><p>When Awang finally calmed down completely, he retold his dream before he forgot it entirely.</p> <p>Still trembling, he gripped his fingers and stammered as though whispering into empty space.</p> <p>"I was in bed ... Not our bed upstairs, but one of the places I'd visited before. You weren't there with me. I was alone, and that alone scared me half to death. The room was pitch-black, but I could see everything inside, as if my eyes had been adjusting to the darkness for a long time. Suddenly, the hair all over my body stood on end, and I curled up on the bed, trying to examine the room."</p> <p>"My attention was drawn to the grandfather clock in one corner of the room. It seemed very important to me for some reason I didn't know. As I stared at the clock, I began to feel another creature's presence on the other side of the room. I fought the urge to turn around for as long as I could, but time seemed to stop, and I could still feel its presence. It grew stronger, and I started smelling something that made me nauseous. I suddenly turned around and screamed. There was a dark figure in the corner, half-hidden in the darkness, but unmistakably there."</p> <p>"My instincts told me to look away, but I forced myself to look toward another corner of the room, and screamed even louder. The figure was in every corner! It grinned maliciously, its red eyes glaring at me. Terrified, I turned around to jump out of bed and run from it. The figure blocked my way!"</p> <p>At this point, Awang was completely curled up in Kuntum's arms, trembling and crying.</p> <p>Kuntum could feel the overwhelming aura of fear. If she had been the one experiencing the same dream, she might have crapped her pants. Awang was tougher than she was; all he did was tremble in fear.</p> <p>After several minutes of terrifying silence, she managed to ask the only question that had occurred to her.</p> <p>"That place—do you know where it is?"</p> <p>"I don't know..." Awang whispered, thinking hard as he tried to make sense of his dream. Several minutes later, he suddenly shouted, startling Kuntum.</p> <p>"Wait! I know! That bed looked so familiar. When I was little, I practically lived at a funeral home during school breaks. I slept in a room on the second floor. That bed was in the funeral home...."</p> <p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p></p> <p>On the outskirts of Taluk Kuantan, in an area that had become a garbage dump, Bagas Buwana walked out the front door of his shack and down the rickety wooden steps.</p> <p><i>This is going to be a great day,</i> he thought.</p> <p>He could tell simply because there was no foul smell in the air. Usually, the reek of garbage from the yard in front of his shack greeted him, but not today. That made it a good day in his eyes. If the wind god was kind enough to blow the stench away from his home, who knew what might happen that day.</p> <p>Pulling his old bicycle out of the bushes that served as its stand, Bagas took a short run and leaped onto the saddle as if mounting a galloping horse. A moment later, weaving down the road, he was on his way to the newspaper office to pick up his daily deliveries. Today was payday, which meant money in his pocket.</p> <p>Usually, payday was a miserable day because the people he collected from weren't home or hadn't left the money they owed as they should have. At the same time, it was his only source of income, and it felt good to have a few dinars in his pocket.</p> <p>As he followed his route, the wind blowing against the eleven-year-old boy's face woke him up more than anything else could. School was going much better every day. His grades were proof of that.</p> <p>Ever since he started school, his parents had pushed him to do the best he could. But his father had died in a car accident two years ago, and now he lived with his mother. His father's death had hit him hard, and he hoped things wouldn't get any worse.</p> <p>Seeing his father's body in the coffin had kept him from sleeping well for a year. He lived like a walking corpse, and for even longer than that. He didn't remember when he finally returned to normal, but he knew one thing for certain: the dead terrified him, and he never wanted to see a dead person that close again.</p>