Chapter 9: The Stench Wafting Through
Karto's footsteps dragged along the narrow path at the foot of the Menoreh Mountains. Two months had passed since the bloody night in Sukamerta Village, yet the shadows of the past had never truly left him. Karto now lived as a wandering drifter with no direction, hiding his face beneath the grip of a weathered bamboo cap and a shabby cloth coat that reeked of firewood smoke.
The afternoon sun sank behind clusters of black clouds heavy with rain. Damp wind blew in from the valley, carrying the smell of wet earth and rotting leaves. Yet amid those cold mountain gusts, a strange scent suddenly crawled into Karto's nostrils.
The smell of decay.
It wasn't merely the stench of a dead animal or rotting garbage by the roadside. This smell was horribly distinct: a combination of long-settled blood, burned incense oil, and the rancid stink of decomposing human flesh. It was exactly the same smell that had come from the water jars in his house and Mbah Jambrong's hut before the shaman met his gruesome end.
Karto stopped dead. His body froze. His right hand, wrapped in a shabby strip of cloth—the site of the slash wound used to seal Marni's curse—suddenly throbbed with pain. The black bruise on his neck, which had dried up over the past two months, now felt warm again, as if invisible cold fingers were caressing his throat once more.
"No... that's impossible," Karto whispered, holding his breath.
He turned, scanning his surroundings. The place was a small settlement called Karangsewu Hamlet, a remote village inhabited by woodcutters and clove farmers. Houses with bamboo walls stood scattered among the dense trees. The village was deathly quiet, almost lifeless. No children played in the yards, and the villagers' doors were tightly shut even though dusk had only just begun to fall.
The stench grew stronger as Karto approached a large hut at the end of the hamlet. Several male villagers stood motionless in the dim twilight outside it. Their faces were pale, gripped by suffocating fear, while their eyes remained fixed on a large clay jar sitting in the yard.
Karto slipped behind the trunk of an old jackfruit tree and watched from a distance.
From inside the clay jar, thick blackish-red liquid overflowed. It seeped into the yard's soil, slowly spreading into a foul-smelling pool exactly like the one Karto had seen at his home two months ago.
"It's been three days, Kang..." one of the villagers said, his voice trembling with fear as he spoke to the headbanded man beside him. "The well water throughout Karangsewu Hamlet has turned red and started smelling foul like this. Our livestock have been dying suddenly, their necks covered in blackish bruises..."
The headbanded man clenched his fists. "This has to be because of the new shaman up on the hill. Ever since he came and offered a sales-boosting talisman for our clove harvests, this village hasn't known a moment's peace!"
Karto's chest thundered. His heart pounded as if it were being struck by an iron hammer. A new shaman? A sales-boosting talisman?
"What's the shaman's name?" another villager asked, his voice strangled.
The headbanded man spat on the ground, fury mingling with terror in his eyes. "He calls himself Mbah Seta... But his rituals are exactly like the old stories about black magic from Penjalin Forest! He uses a red shroud-binding cord as his talisman!"
Karto felt the blood stop flowing through his veins. The world around him suddenly spun violently.
Mbah Jambrong was dead—Karto had seen for himself how the old shaman's neck was brutally snapped by strands of red thread. But why had that vile teaching resurfaced in this distant place? Did Mbah Jambrong have disciples? Or worse... had the red magic not been created by Mbah Jambrong at all, but instead been an ancient curse that kept seeking new vessels and new transmitters whenever its former bearer died?
Suddenly, the night wind blew hard, shaking the jackfruit leaves above Karto's head. With the gust, the stench wafting from the clay jar lifted and blew straight into Karto's face.
Amid the suffocating stench, a soft whisper Karto knew all too well echoed behind his eardrums.
You think... you can run from me, Karto...?
Marni's voice.
But this time, the voice did not come alone. Behind Marni's whisper came a hoarse laugh Karto recognized all too well—the laughter of Mbah Jambrong, who should have been rotting inside the burned-out hut in Penjalin Forest.
You may bury the cord... the echoing voice whispered, mingling a woman's shriek with the shaman's heavy cough. But the blood you spilled on Marni's forehead has bound your soul as its heir... Wherever this red magic rises, you are the one who must bear its sins!
Karto stumbled backward several steps, limping until his back struck a tree trunk. The bruise on his neck suddenly throbbed violently, and a drop of fresh blood seeped from his skin, soaking the collar of his dull shirt.
On the hill at the far end of Karangsewu Hamlet, amid the deepening darkness, a tiny flame of burning incense flickered dimly. The stench wafting through the air no longer came only from the jar in the yard—it had already enveloped the entire hamlet.
Karto realized something far more horrifying than his own death: the nameless grave he had dug had never ended the curse. He was not merely a victim who had managed to escape, but had become part of the chain of red magic that had now returned to demand its blood payment.