CANDRAMAWA: The Black Panther Spirit - CHAPTER 2

 

02 The Angel of Death

I was already tied up when I came to. My hands and feet were bound so tightly that parts of them had gone numb, throbbing with a dull, needling pain. I felt like a goat being dragged to the slaughterhouse on the morning of Eid. Only my ears and eyes were left free—free to witness the hopelessness of my situation. I was in danger, real danger, the kind that almost certainly ends in death.

A deep rumble echoed overhead, as if a heavy truck were passing right above my skull. I blinked hard, forcing my eyes wide open, trying to make sense of the hushed voices around me.

I recognized them immediately—Pakdhe, Kang Somat, and Mak Siti. They were hauling me toward the Tuntang River, a place I knew like the back of my hand. I used to fish here whenever work was slow, whenever boredom pressed too hard on my chest. I’d come here with Kang Somat countless times—under the twin bridges, around the marshes of Lake Rawa Pening.

But tonight, Kang Somat had become something else entirely. In the moonlight he looked like an angel of death—merciless, unrecognizable. From time to time his eyes flicked toward me, lying helpless on the wet riverbank beneath a thin crescent moon that seemed just as uneasy as I was.

I couldn’t scream. My mouth was stuffed with Kang Somat’s undershirt—its sour stench making me gag. Meanwhile, Pakdhe was finishing the knot around my leg, fastening a heavy stone to my ankles.

Tears streamed down my face, my eyes pleading—begging—for mercy. But Pakdhe didn’t care. Not at all. His eyes glowed a faint, eerie red, like the eyes of a nocturnal beast caught in the dim streetlamp flickering on the bridge above us.

“There’s someone frog-hunting with a torch. Hurry, Mat!” Pakdhe muttered, cold as iron.

They lifted me together—one at the arms, one at the legs, the weight of the stone pulling me downward. For a split second I felt weightless, suspended in the air.

And then they threw me. I plunged into the Tuntang River, its water colder than I had ever felt in my life. Panic exploded in my chest as the current pulled me downward. I held my breath with everything I had, but the river was merciless. Slowly, relentlessly, it dragged me into its depths—deeper, darker, colder.

My lungs burned. My chest tightened. Then, with a violent sting, water forced itself into my nostrils. I convulsed, choking as icy river water flooded into me. With my mouth gagged, I had no way to breathe, no way to fight back.

It burned—God, it burned—inside my nose, inside my throat.

My strength drained all at once. My limbs went slack. My vision dimmed.

The last thing I felt was darkness swallowing me whole.

Then—nothing.

I passed out… or maybe I had already died.

It felt like drifting in a dream when I finally forced my eyes open. My vision was murky, blurred by something cold and slick clinging to my skin—something that smelled faintly of blood and rot.

I hovered in that strange place between waking and sleep, wrestling with the weight of my own drifting consciousness. Then a violent spasm seized me and I retched—spewing out everything inside me, every last trace of breath and bile.

I realized I was lying on what felt like a boat—a strange, unnatural vessel. A ferryman’s skiff for the dead? Surely I was already on my way to the end of my earthly existence.

Ahead of me sat a figure—an envoy of death, perhaps—its head glowing with a blinding radiance as it rowed. I could only make out the silhouette of its back: broad, powerful, its long wet hair dripping with some uncanny substance, as though it carried with it the damp of another world. Tangles of mud clung to it, and between the clumps I could have sworn small plants were sprouting—living things rooted in decay.

Was this what comes to fetch a soul once it leaves the body? The sight was terrifying.

Was he Israfil?

A true reaper of souls?

Someone meant to deliver me straight into the hands of the real angel of death waiting in the fires below?

Panic clamped around my chest like a fist. My ribs ached with it.

I don’t want to go to hell—

God…

I don’t want to go to hell!

Yes, I’d sinned—more than enough for one lifetime. Drinking, gambling, running slots, helping out as a dice banker whenever night entertainment rolled into town. I couldn’t recall a single good deed worth boasting about. Back in school, Dadik and I stole Kang Sastro’s chickens. Later, we helped the health office “control the spread of dangerous viruses”—which was just our polite excuse for doing things no decent human should. We once pried open the donation box at the village mushola and used the money to gamble and top up our slot accounts.

Well—that was only because Sonto, the mosque caretaker who kept the key, used the funds himself to install fancy cables at Syuhai Café. We just thought it was “community money,” and we were part of the community too. Our ID cards said the same religion as his—didn’t that make it fair? Right?

Was I really condemned to hell for things like that?

No… no, those were big sins too, weren’t they?

I was certain this ferryman would drag my soul straight into the lowest pit reserved for the most wretched of the wretched.

Regret swallowed me whole.

Why didn’t I ever do anything good with my life? Why didn’t my parents—who died years ago during the Covid outbreak—ever teach me anything about faith, or prayer, or decency? Maybe I wouldn’t be like this. Maybe I wouldn’t end up drowning like stray livestock and now being ferried to hell by a creature dripping mud and shadows.

The agony of drowning had been unbearable—

Unbearable!

And yet this slow, cold journey felt infinitely worse.

More suffocating.

More cruel.

More punishing than my descent to the bottom of the Tuntang River itself.

The boat scraped against something solid—another hull, then another. We’d drifted into a cluster of vessels, all of them half-submerged in the dark like carcasses rotting on a shore. A foul, metallic stench flooded my nose.

So this was the way to hell. The gate itself wasn’t even in sight, yet the stink was already enough to curdle breath and bone.

“You’re awake? Thank God.”

A rasping voice vibrated through my chest, so deep it stirred the ache still lodged in my ribs. Pain flared again—sharper this time—as full awareness clawed its way back into me. My senses flickered alive, one by one, like lanterns rekindled after a storm.

My eyes adjusted. And then I saw it.

A beam of light.

A headlamp.

Fastened to the forehead of the so-called angel who had ferried me across the dark.

Him…?!

At last, I exhaled—long, shaking, and utterly relieved.

He was human. Not the Angel of Death.

And the lamp strapped to his forehead cut straight into my eyes, sharp enough to burn.

The old man—still surprisingly solid and muscular—helped haul me to my feet and off the boat. The stench I’d taken for hell’s breath turned out to be nothing more than fish scales and refuse left behind by the lake fishermen.

This place… I knew it.

A mooring spot for the Rawa Pening boats.

Which meant—I had survived.

God… thank You for delaying my death.

The words escaped my mouth without thought, carried on breath sour with cheap liquor. Nothing could describe the relief flooding my chest. I was alive. I had been brushed by something like a miracle—one that only I could ever fully comprehend.

“If I’d come a moment later, you’d have drowned with your lungs full of river water,” my rescuer said, his voice taut with worry. “Lucky for you, you were drunk as a buffalo. You threw up half the water you swallowed.”

“I know one of them,” the man added, lowering his voice. “Somat. The fellow who fishes over at Sibebek. What happened between you two that he’d try to kill you like that?”

“Not just Somat, sir,” I answered, tears spilling freely. “My own uncle—Harjono—was there. And Mak Siti, Somat’s woman… she even turned on her own son. I saw them perform some blood ritual—using a black cat as an offering.”

I swallowed hard. “Because I witnessed it… they wanted me dead.”

I told him everything—from the beginning to the moment I blacked out beneath the river. The old man grew still, his face sinking into a brooding expression I couldn’t decipher.

“Candramawa,” he muttered at last. “Still there are fools who’ll trade their souls for wealth… committing such vile things.”

Only then did memory catch up with me: this man was Min Kebo, the frog hunter, known along the banks of the Tuntang for prowling the water at night with nothing but a lantern and a net.

I followed him in weary silence along the old railway line built by the Dutch, until a small food stall emerged out of the foggy glow of the night. A wooden sign painted bright blue and pale yellow read: Warung Mas Beni.

Pak Min Kebo told me to wash myself clean in the cramped bathroom behind the shop.

While scrubbing the river muck from my skin, I heard muffled voices—Mas Beni firing question after question, and Pak Min Kebo answering with the calm brevity of someone long accustomed to trouble.

“Ben, call Jarwo,” I heard him say at last. “Report an attempted murder. Tell him the victim is alive—and safe here.”

I could almost feel Mas Beni’s shock from behind the door. Attempted murder? Was the matter truly this grave? Apparently… yes.

That night became the heaviest night of my life—so heavy that sleep refused to come until dawn began smearing the horizon. Pak Min Kebo stayed with me, escorting me to the Salatiga Police Headquarters, where Pak Jarwo was on duty. And thanks to Pak Jarwo’s swift response, Kang Somat and Mak Siti were arrested before the night was over and dragged into custody. Only Pakdhe Harjono and old Mbah Tro Karto vanished without a trace.

I gave my statement alongside Pak Min Kebo—every detail I could remember, without adding or omitting a single thing. The officers questioned me endlessly: my name, occupation, address, and even commented with a grimace on the stench of alcohol on my breath.

From their investigation at the crime scene, they found that Dadik was missing. But what shook the village even more was the horror that unfolded at the same time as my own ordeal. Kang Somat’s youngest child—the frail, sickly boy who had suffered from malnutrition ever since his mother died—was found dead in his bedroom, torn apart by what could only be the claws of a wild beast. Parts of his organs were missing, taken by whatever creature had attacked him.

The whole village was thrown into an uproar, connecting the child’s gruesome death and the arrest of Mak Siti and Kang Somat with an old, whispered rumor—one that spoke of a forbidden ritual and unspeakable sacrifices.

Days later, a villager from Ujung Ujung stumbled upon Dadik’s body—rotting, half-buried in a shallow grave, marked by the same wounds suffered by Kang Somat’s son. The police concluded he too had been mauled by a beast.

Fear still clung to me like a damp shadow, for Pakdhe Harjono was still missing. The police tried to reassure me, insisting he would not dare return to finish what he had started. Both he and Mbah Tro Karto were now fugitives—on the most dangerous list the police had ever issued.

Eventually, I sought out Pak Min Kebo again at Mas Beni’s little food stall—not just to ask him a few things, but to thank him for saving my life at precisely the right moment. A few minutes later and I might have been reunited with Dadik in the afterlife.

“That is the way of it, Candramawa,” Pak Min Kebo said quietly. “They tried to awaken the ancient black tiger spirit—siluman macan. They offered their own bodies as vessels for the demon-cat’s soul, and fed it the ones they loved. Their children, their wives, even their own parents.”

A shudder ran through me at his words. Sitting there in Mas Beni’s humble stall, watching the steam rise from a pot of boiling water, I realized how rare a soul like Pak Min Kebo was—how rare it was to find someone genuinely good in times like these.

___

Days passed, and time slipped further away. It had been more than a hundred days since the deaths of Dadik and Kang Somat’s youngest child. The memory of that horror had never once loosened its grip on me—it had become the zero point, the place where my life was split between “before” and “after.” Pakdhe Harjono and old Mbah Tro Karto were still fugitives, ranked high on the police’s most-wanted list.

That night, Midun and Triman sat with me on the front porch of my late grandmother’s house. We drank coffee and strummed a guitar, letting old songs carry us back to the days when life was simple and Dadik was still with us. I had vowed to abandon all my old vices—taubat nasuha, a repentance as deep as the scar of that night. The ordeal had wrenched my eyes open: I had been wasting my life, drifting too far from God. I began learning how to pray and read the Qur’an, and that change slowly pulled Midun and Triman along with me. They often followed me to the mosque.

A soft breeze brushed the kemuning blossoms in the yard, their fragrance drifting toward us—like standing before Babah Maksum’s perfume shop.

Triman, cradling the guitar, hummed our favorite songs—old Soneta numbers we knew by heart. Meanwhile, Midun squinted toward the langsat tree across the fence, blinking repeatedly as though trying to focus on something hidden among the restless leaves.

“A black cat, Kir,” Midun muttered. “Its eyes… red.”

“Where?” asked Triman, leaning forward.

“There! Are your eyes just for decoration or what?” Midun snapped, irritated.

I followed their gaze.

And then it revealed itself.

The cat leapt down from the branch and padded toward us. With every step it took, it grew—larger, and larger still—until, by the time it stepped into the light, it had fully transformed into a black panther the size of a young calf. Its eyes blazed crimson, fixed sharply on the three of us who now stood frozen, caught somewhere between disbelief and terror.

In a blur of movement, the creature lunged at Midun. Its jaws clamped around his neck, and a sickening crack echoed in the night—the sound of bone snapping under the force of an inhuman bite.

Before we could even comprehend what had happened, the panther whirled and sprang at Triman, who stood rooted to the spot, knees trembling as he watched Midun convulse in his final breaths.

I wanted to scream—my soul screamed—but my throat wouldn’t obey. Silence smothered me. My tongue felt heavy as stone.

Triman’s scream finally tore through the night—shattering the village’s peace, ringing sharp enough to wake anyone still awake behind shuttered windows. Panic rippled through the neighborhood. Doors opened. Voices rose. Footsteps hurried toward the direction of the cry—toward my grandmother’s old house.

But I remained paralyzed.

Terror slithered cold and merciless through every nerve, freezing me in place. I couldn’t shout. I couldn’t run. My mind felt swallowed whole by fear.

The panther turned toward me at last.

Blood dripped from its fangs—Midun’s and Triman’s mingled.

It growled, baring its teeth, and its glowing red eyes locked onto mine with a hypnotic force so powerful I felt my will draining away, as if my very soul were being pulled into its gaze.

It stood poised now—ready, it seemed, to finish what it had begun.

In an instant, it sprang toward me. The movement was so swift, so feral, that all I could do was watch as the panther hurled itself forward, striking me with a demonic force that knocked me flat onto my back. Its claws pinned me in place. Then its fangs—those long, cold, merciless fangs—drove deep into my throat. A sharp, burning pain tore through my neck as it shook its head violently, ripping at my flesh.

I could not fight back.

My weakness, my fear—my lifelong cowardice—had surrendered me entirely to the beast’s hunger. Agony surged through me, bright and overwhelming, as its claws tore open my skin. Blood streamed from the shredded flesh of my neck, from my mouth, from my nose. Then came a sudden warm gush—something I expelled without thought, without control.

It all happened so quickly.

The great black cat ravaged my body with terrifying ease, and I lay helpless, my mind dissolving beneath waves of pain that felt too immense to belong to the living. Thought abandoned me. Fear, strangely, quieted. Only the pain remained—until even that began to dim.

I surrendered myself to God—the God I had only recently tried to return to.

Surrendered completely.

Soon I felt nothing at all.

My wounds, the tearing, the claws, the fangs—everything seemed to fade beyond sensation. I dimly watched as the creature stepped away from me, leaving my body broken behind it. My eyes remained open, though my sight had begun to fail. My breath shuddered in slow, ragged fragments. I no longer knew which part of me hurt; my entire body was sliding into numbness, into cold.

Still, my gaze clung to the great cat as it sauntered away. Mist swirled around it—or perhaps the mist was only in my failing vision. The world dimmed into a blur, then deeper still, like a narrow cave without a single glimmer of light. A chill wrapped itself around my fading senses.

And then, through that darkness, I saw it—the silhouette of the black panther shifting, reshaping, becoming something else.

A man.

My uncle.

Pakdhe.

___

My name is Sukirno.

Most people simply call me Kirno—Kir, for short.

I am the nephew of Pakdhe Harjono, a man devoted to the dark art of Candramawa—a forbidden craft whispered to grant its wielder nine lives, making him a creature who could not die.

Or so the stories claim.

But I believe the Divine holds far greater power than any shadow conjured by His creations. Whatever force my uncle clings to, whatever curse he has bound himself with—every cause will meet its consequence. Nothing escapes that law.

As for me, I walked away from the horror with something he never found.

A lesson.

A mercy.

A calling.

I found the light.

And within that light, there is only peace…

endless, unwavering peace.

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