Mount Arjuno, East Java
At the mouth of Onto Boego Cave, the morning sun felt soft against the skin.
"You all should have headed down yesterday."
The voice came from an old man sitting motionless near the cave entrance, the very spot where we had just hopped off our motorcycle taxis. His clothes were dull and crumpled, his face a map of wrinkles, but his gaze was piercing. When asked for his identity or the meaning behind his words, he only muttered about the heavens not favoring one of them. He closed his sentence with a chilling warning: "Go home, if you still value your lives."
"Nonsense," Haidar muttered after they had walked a fair distance from the cave.
Haidar, raised to rely strictly on logic, wasn't the least bit deterred. To him, superstition wasn't about the what, but the why. People wove terrifying tales because it was the easiest way to manipulate belief.
"Sounds exactly like the dialogue of the character who dies first in a horror movie," Jay quipped in a calm, dry tone.
Jojo was not nearly as composed. Since that warning, he had been grumbling incessantly, his anxiety overflowing. Their slow pace began to irritate Haidar; he wasn't used to dealing with people so easily swayed by myth.
"Are you guys seriously going to turn back after paying 150,000 for the ride up here?" Haidar asked, eyeing his two friends closely.
"I love my life more than my money, Dar," Jojo replied firmly.
"Fine. So we pay for another ride, waste gas to go home, then come back a few days later and book the same drivers? That old man could easily be in cahoots with the drivers to scare hikers. Use your logic!"
Put that way, the idea sounded ridiculous. Jay looked away and picked his nose, feigning indifference, though he had initially agreed with Jojo.
"We could just walk back to the basecamp," Jojo countered with a wince, anticipating Haidar's temper. He still wasn't used to Haidar's booming Palembang accent.
"Fine. If you're not brave enough, I'll summit alone," Haidar declared.
Reluctantly, Jay and Jojo gave in. The journey afterward was far from pleasant. Paranoid thoughts gnawed at Jojo's mind. He complained about a haunting scent of jasmine, though it was merely the aroma of coffee plantations in bloom. He whined that the trail was too silent and kept feeling like something was watching them. This is Arjuno, not a marketplace. Silence is a requirement, not an anomaly, Haidar thought, biting his tongue to keep from snapping.
[A/N] In local lore, a sudden, heavy scent of jasmine without a visible source is a classic omen of a nearby ghostly presence.
They passed Post 2 (Tampuono) and the Dewi Kunthi spring in a stiff silence. The scorching sun made them want to conserve their breath to keep their mouths from drying out. Despite the tension, they were still the same friends who spent every waking hour together at university. By the time they reached Post 4 (Alas Tengah) a few hours later, the incident at Onto Boego was forgotten, and they enjoyed the rest of the trek until arriving at Post 5 (Makutoromo) to camp for the night.
Haidar noticed another group near the Makutoromo Temple. Six pilgrims were cleaning the courtyard before sitting in a circle amidst a pungent cloud of incense. "They are the lelaku," Jay whispered. "Locals seeking blessings on specific days. Maybe tonight is one of them."
Haidar and Jay watched the activity as something exotic after dinner. Jojo, trying to distract himself from his resurfacing fears, stayed inside the tent fiddling with his phone.
"Is it just me, or is that guy staring at us?" Haidar asked, referring to one of the pilgrims who looked to be about their age.
"Even if he is, so what? We've been staring at them too," Jay replied casually while picking a leftover bit of mutton from his teeth.
A little after 9:00 PM, they were all tucked away in the tent, ready for sleep. That was the last thing Haidar and his friends remembered before everything turned strange.
***
Haidar jolted awake as he felt his body being violently shaken. Finding Jay and Jojo in the dark, his sleepiness vanished instantly.
"What's happening?" he asked, dazed. He immediately realized something was very wrong: they were no longer inside the tent.
They were sitting on open ground shrouded in thick fog under the pale glow of the moon. Surrounding them were massive boulders and three stone temples resembling gateways that seemed to be watching them.
"That's what we want to know!" Jojo replied, his voice trembling.
"We're at Sepilar Temple," Jay explained, his breath hitching. "That's about a ten-minute hike above Post 5. How could we have moved here while sleeping?" The composure finally drained from his handsome face.
Without waiting for an answer, they decided to head back down to Post 5. Passing a row of Dwarapala statues that seemed to track their movement, it took them more than ten minutes to descend because none of them had a flashlight or phone on them. Relief washed over them when they saw their tent still standing in the same spot. However, a second anomaly appeared: everyone was gone.
No pilgrims. No other hikers. Only them and the thickening fog. When they checked their phones, there was no signal. When they saw the time was 5:46 AM, their blood froze. The sky above Arjuno was still pitch black, as if it were midnight.
"Maybe the sun rises later here?" Haidar whispered, clinging to the remnants of his logic. Three different devices showed the exact same time, so most probably it's not the device trouble.
"Dawn should have been at four-something. We're on the east side of Arjuno," Jay replied, his voice slowing with doubt. He was terrified of his own conclusion. "The light should have broken long ago!"
A heavy silence followed, finally broken by Jojo. "See! I told you we shouldn't have come up!" He looked utterly distressed, clutching at his hair.
"Jo! Can you shut the fuck up and stay calm!" Haidar barked.
"Calm?! How dare you said that. We're in this because of you!" Jojo refused to be silent. For a few moments, they continued to argue until a sound echoed from the distance, silencing them all. A sound that was impossible in the middle of a forest: the rhythmic, haunting chime of a gamelan. Karawitan.
[A/N] Karawitan is Traditional Javanese Gamelan music. composed of many traditional instrument. usually performed in ceremony or as music accompanying Wayang Wong
"Get inside." Jay's voice was dead serious. Haidar and Jojo didn't argue.
The music continued to play after they locked themselves inside the tent. Jojo began chanting incoherent prayers and mentioning different names across different religions. Haidar and Jay sat frozen. Haidar's logic whispered it might be a speaker from a pilgrim, but the scent around them changed. A foul stench of rot mixed with heavy jasmine suddenly wafted in, making their bodies shake violently.
"Dedep Idep Prabawane sang Sri... Arjuno sepi dadi kratone..."
The song began, shattering what was left of their courage. The voice was hoarse and heavy, like the throat of a beast forced to mimic human language.
"Noto agung bantarange... Nalendra dendam ing laline..."
The song came like hammers to their souls. Each of them began reciting whatever verses they remembered from childhood, though they stumbled over the words in their suffocating fear. Had they memorized more than just the first lines, perhaps their hearts would have been a bit more at ease.
When the music stopped abruptly, they didn't feel relief. Sure enough, a few minutes later, heavy footsteps were heard approaching the tent. Their hearts hammered against their ribs, betraying their efforts to remain silent. The tent swayed gently. They hoped it was the other missing hikers, but he and Jay could only watch in helpless terror as the zipper of the tent was slowly pulled open from the outside. Jojo squeezed his eyes shut.
Haidar felt as if his soul was being ripped out through his feet as a face appeared in the gap. A face the color of blood with bulging blood shot eyes, staring into the tent with an overflowing, ancient rage.