Beyond Rangkasbitung

THE CEMETERY

I walked with a smile on my lips. I could not wait to tell other people about my experience. But, on a second thought, how could I tell other people without them thinking that I had lost my sanity.

When the warm yellow light which radiated from the lamps of the market evanesced and was replaced by a disorienting darkness, I realized the black tabby that walked ahead of me was nowhere to be seen. I stopped, waited for my eyes to adapt to the absence of light. Suddenly, a woman's voice startled me: "We had so much fun!"

I barely see her, but I knew it was Kiona, who had appeared beside me. The pale light of the moon gave away the silhouette.

"The cat was you!" I said wonderstruck.

She gave a puzzled look. "Of course, who else? Oh, sorry. I always forget that you people are not familiar with shape-shifting. Today was Fauna Friday, all of us are required to be an animal when visiting the market."

"Oh—" I tried to digest what she just said. "So, those animals, are actually... not animal?"

She burst out laughing. "Obviously! If they were real animals, they would have been chasing each other instead of doing business. So, yeah, all of us can turn into animals. Though some younger generation preferred to be lazy in practicing it. That's why the elders held the Fauna Friday. The ability to transform into animals is essential to our survival, you know."

Survival? I could feel that my next follow-up question would be: what do you have to survive from? But I knew there was a pressing question I had not asked. For a moment, I was slightly afraid by the possible answer; but my curiosity triumphed over my fear. "What are you?"

Kiona threw a sideways glance. "You'll soon find out."

Her non-answer made the hairs on the back of my neck prickled.

By hurried strides, we finally arrived on our destination: a cemetery. How did I know it was a cemetery? Because I tripped over one of the tombstones. On top of that, I could sense that we were on a cemetery: the appearance of Kamboja trees, the mild scent of incense, and the sheer stillness of the vicinity. Kiona then stopped in front of a grave—no engraving indicated the name of the owner of that particular resting place—and, bizarrely, knocked on the tombstone as if it was a neighbour's front door.

"What are you doing? Why are we here?" I asked while being self-conscious not to sound scared.

Before Kiona gave an answer, I heard a crackling sound. Despite the darkness, I got enough illumination to see what caused the eerie sound. A skeleton hand protruded from the soil of the grave. It was either because of the fact that Kiona stayed on her feet or because my nerves were already shot entirely thus they could not function properly in this situation (I thought the proper response should be: scream and scram) which made me obediently watched until the skeleton successfully crawled out of the grave. Its eyes were only a bottomless pit of blackness, but I knew it was looking at me.

As I became perplexed with the situation, I heard something rolled on the ground and touched my feet. I turned my back and (finally) screamed with horror when I realized the thing that hit my feet was a person's head. It was of an old man, judging by the wrinkles in its face and the grey hair. But what made it bloodcurdlingly scary was the fact that it smiled.

Suddenly, Kiona made a hearty laugh. The head and the skeleton followed suit. I was bewildered. What in the world just happened?

"Soo sorry for all this. We could not help it. It's a habit. These two are my friends: Ramya—" she pointed to the skeleton who was waving in a friendly manner—"and Mr. Gamya," then to the guffawing head.

Friends?

In a split second, in place of the skeleton, a little boy came into view. He said, "you guys were right. My trick is outdated. He didn't even seem frightened!"

"Told ya! The good old-fashioned shocker, like I always did perfectly, is the best way to scare a human. Haha!" An old man, whose head I just saw earlier, appeared out of the blue beside me, without any lack of body parts this time. He then turned to me and shook my hand: "Nice to meet you, sorry for making you startled." His hand was as calloused as a tree branch.

Kiona jumped in. "But that was lazy! Just popping out and surprising people—there is no art in that!"

"Whatever. But that was a good one, isn't it?" Gamya tried to involve me (who was still struggling to recover from the state of shock) into the conversation.

"Uh, yeah. It was. I thought I almost fainted," I said while trying to control the trembling in my voice.

Aware of the time constraint, Kiona said, "come on, we don't have all night."

"Let's go! Bye Grandpa!" Ramya exclaimed, jumping off the grave.

"Remember to go home before dawn! There are a lot of human around there in the early morning!" shouted the old man to (apparently) his grandson who already ran out of the cemetery.

"We will! Bye Mr. Gamya!" replied Kiona.

I awkwardly waved goodbye.