CANDRAMAWA: The Black Panther Spirit - CHAPTER 1

 01 The Black Cat

My name is Sukirno. My friends call me Kirno, or simply Kir. I live with the man who has become the stand-in for my late parents—both of whom were taken by the Covid-19 outbreak. He is my mother’s older brother, Pakdhe Harjono. A quiet, withdrawn man, he speaks only when necessary. He has remained a widower ever since his wife demanded a divorce, unable to endure his harsh temper. Pakdhe Harjono had always been quick with his hands—too quick. Rather than continue becoming the target of his roughness, my aunt chose to leave. That decision was sealed by his constant insistence that she bear him a child, something the doctors had long declared impossible due to the uterine cysts she suffered from.

Before moving into my grandmother’s old keprabon house with Pakdhe, I lived with my parents in a small rented home near the shoe factory where both of them worked. When they passed away during the pandemic, I was left with no one in this world. And so, eventually, this became the only place I could go.

My presence here, in a way, gives Pakdhe someone to mumble and chat with—during the lonely hours. I finished school two years ago at SMK Purnama. Since then, I’ve been unemployed, as many factories had shut down or collapsed since the early days of the pandemic. I drift through my days without purpose, without any meaningful activity. Occasionally, I join a neighbor and work as a laborer on small renovation projects, just enough to cover my own needs. It doesn’t happen often—he’s only a small-time contractor—but it’s enough. Enough to keep me afloat. Enough to fund the rare nights when I sit somewhere just to pass the time.

To be honest, I belonged to the troublemaker crowd in my village. I liked stirring things up, picking fights with those hypocritical boys who pretended to be saints—always preaching to us about praying and reciting the Qur’an, when their own mouths smelled as foul as a camel’s backside.

Well… not that I’ve ever actually smelled a camel’s backside.

According to the hajj men and the village elders, I was the rotten seed who never cared about his future.

“Kirno is what happens to a child who grows up without proper parental love,” they would say, warning their children and grandchildren to avoid me at all costs.

But honestly, I never cared what people thought of me. Maybe they truly did pray and read scriptures every day. Yet when it came to faith, I believed I trusted God more than they did. I was certain my future rested in His hands alone, and I held fast to the belief that destiny was His business—not theirs. Every person’s fate is wrapped in secrets we were never meant to know.

So when the elders claimed that boys like us had no future, I considered it arrogance—audacity, really—on a level beyond comprehension. To speak as though they knew God’s will well enough to declare judgment on someone else… That was pride, and a dangerous one. As if the lines of fate had been disclosed to them and them alone.

I wasn’t lazy! I worked hard whenever Mas Diran had renovation jobs to spare. But I needed to surround myself with people who could accept me without pretending to be holier-than-thou. Each time I got paid from a day of labor, I would head straight to Jayeng’s stall for a bottle of ciu (a traditional local liquor) and a pack of cigarettes. There I met up with the boys—my fellow misfits: Midun; Mak Siti’s son, Dadik, who was my closest friend; and Triman, Mbah Sidik’s grandson.

Yes, the four of us were the village delinquents everyone loved to hate. But we didn’t care. All that mattered to us was being happy—every single day.

Working as a laborer was really just to fund the bare essentials required of young men like us: enough money to hang out. And when we were broke and out of work, well… poorly caged chickens owned by careless neighbors became our pollution-free solution.

We liked to think of it as helping the community, really—reducing the risk of avian flu spreading because some owners were too negligent to keep their birds safely penned.

To be honest, we were traumatized by the virus people claimed had been manufactured by some foreign country for the sake of international politics.

That was why we took the initiative to “anticipate” any virus that might spark the next pandemic. But most villagers saw our actions in the worst possible light, as if we were committing some sort of crime—never mind the good intentions behind it. If they had cared enough to think deeper, they might have realized that we were the true defenders of public health, the ones who should have been paid proper wages.

Not those officials who only talked endlessly on television, pretending to understand the suffering of the poor while knowing nothing of the psychological and economic devastation ordinary people endured. What frustrated us most was how those very officials were given full access to enormous funds—funds that were shamelessly siphoned away in a mass orgy of corruption. Meanwhile, the villagers, manipulated into believing whatever narrative they were fed, suffered miserably.

And yet, they looked at us with disgust, as though we were the real virus.

Good grief… it was madness!

That evening, Kang Somat—recently widowed, with one sickly child named Nardi—came to visit Pakdhe Harjono. And he wasn’t alone. No sooner had his bony backside touched the old wooden chair inherited from my late grandmother in the keprabon house, Mak Siti arrived. She was Dadik’s mother.

I was still sitting alone on the terrace, daydreaming indecently about a life where I didn’t have to lift fifty-kilogram sacks of cement over and over again just to survive.

Mak Siti had once been a notoriously flirtatious widow, rumored to be the secret obsession of many men in the village. Now she was the “gemblekan”—the hidden sweetheart—of Kang Somat himself. Her rabbit-like front teeth were indeed charming, though they had always made her the target of my jokes, especially toward her son, Dadik, who unfortunately inherited the same feature: a pair of front teeth too large for lips too small to cover them.

It turned out that the three bored old folks were holding some sort of secret meeting that evening. Mak Siti seemed to be calculating the budget needed for… something. Meanwhile, Kang Somat was tasked with finding an object of a particular color—black.

From the fragments I overheard, I had a pretty good idea what they were talking about. A creature. And not just any creature. A black cat!

After a heated debate about the “specifications” and “exact shade” of the black they were looking for, Pakdhe resumed calculating costs with Mak Siti. That was when Midun and Triman arrived—bursting in like debt collectors who had finally located a debtor that had been hiding for a year.

“There he is, still chilling on the terrace… thought you’d be at Jayeng’s stall by now,” Midun said, pointing his chin in my direction.

I motioned for them to lower their voices. Something important was being discussed inside.

Only then did they notice Pakdhe Harjono and his two associates deep in conversation in the living room. The moment Midun and Triman sat down beside me, Mak Siti and Kang Somat began rising to leave.

The boys panicked and scrambled to get up first, trying not to appear rude by being in the way of the “secret couple.”

“We’ll wait at Jayeng’s, Kir! Don’t take forever!” Triman called out as he hurried off.

At the same moment, Mak Siti and Kang Somat were also heading out, with Pakdhe escorting them all the way to the doorway.

Seeing me still sitting on the terrace, he made small talk.

“Not going out yet, Kir? Thought I saw Midun and Triman stop by,” he said.

“Not yet, Dhe. I’m waiting for Dadik. He’s still doing overtime—pouring cement at the elementary school.”

The topic of their secret meeting drifted back into my mind. So I asked him, casually, as if it were nothing.

“Pakdhe, what do you need a black cat for?”

“For something lah, boy,” he replied shortly. “Something important.”

I actually remembered seeing a black cat at the market once.

But Dadik knew even better—his puppy had once been chased by that very creature.

If we could catch it and sell it to Pakdhe’s team, we might make some money.

“Dadik once saw a wild black cat with red eyes,” I said, testing my luck. “It chased his puppy till it ran off crying. Think that one would work, Dhe?”

“That’s perfect… Tell Dadik to catch it. Pakdhe will give a big reward,” he said calmly.

“A reward?” I echoed, hardly believing it.

Yes… free Ciu without having to lift a single sack of cement, I thought.

“Yes,” he repeated. “That Pitung motorbike—he can have it if he brings me the black cat.”

“The Pitung, Dhe?”

My jaw dropped. His most precious possession, traded for a stray cat from the market?

I felt a spark of excitement ignite in my chest. 

Pakdhe was not the kind of man who talked much. The villagers respected him as an elder—some even called him a “wise man,” always sought for advice or help. And one thing I knew for sure: he kept his word.

“Pitung… Pitung… Pitung…”

The name echoed in my mind like a chant.

I could already see the old red motorbike—well-polished, original parts, taxes paid—coveted by many collectors, shining in my imagination.

Two and a half million rupiah. That was the last price offered by Kang Sastro, the heartbroken drunk from the neighboring village who worked as a blantik—a livestock trader. If I managed to find and catch that cat, I would sell the bike to him. After all, I already had my late father’s motorcycle. I didn’t need the Pitung.

__

Dusk surrendered at last to the call of the night as the isyak prayer faded into the air. Midun, Triman, Dadik, and I ended up lounging at Jayeng’s stall. One bottle of ciu and a plate of warm fritters were the sacred rites of our evening gatherings.

We talked nonsense—loud, unfiltered, pointless—never mind that more and more people were coming in. Jayeng’s place was always packed with the weary: drunks like Kang Sastro, laborers whose bones screeched after a day of hauling stones, and men in need of a herbal remedy for their aching bodies.

To Jayeng, though, we were… special. Customers of the highest prestige. The only ones who received a “special rate” for his homemade ciu.

That was exactly why we never bothered looking for another place to hang out.

“If any of you manage to bring me that black, red-eyed cat, say the word!

It’s valuable. Pakdhe Harjono will trade his motorbike for it. The Pitung!” I announced, after a long, messy trail of conversation.

Their faces were already flushed. Tonight, we were on Dadik’s treat, and it was the third mineral-water bottle filled with ciu he had ordered.

“Are you serious, Kir? Don’t be joking with me!” Dadik gawked, already half-slanted in consciousness.

“I told you, didn’t I? Believe it!” I insisted.

Midun cut in, “Kang Somat’s been looking for that cat too. But no luck. He’s never even seen it.”

That caught Triman’s attention.

“That creature shows up at the market sometimes… Strange thing. One eye is red, the other just normal yellow. But it’s damn hard to catch. I’ve tried a few times myself. Failed again and again… If we worked together, I bet we could get it,” he said.

So the night buzzed with our chatter about the wandering black cat of the market. No one cared about us, and we cared just as little about them.

_

The Hunt Begins 

By the last third of the night, only Dadik and I remained awake. Midun and Triman were already sprawled unconscious on the woven mat that Jayeng always kept for his most dedicated patrons.

“Kir… you sure Pakdhe Harjono will pay a good price for that cat? Tomorrow the project’s off anyway. Let’s hunt it. Borrow a sack from Jayeng—come on!” Dadik slurred, somewhere between drunk and barely sensible. He was clearly determined to catch the cat—and even more determined to win the Pitung motorbike. I knew exactly how much Dadik coveted that machine.

He had once used his mother—Mak Siti, the notorious village widow—to “negotiate” with Pakdhe, who, despite his rough edges, was still a sharp, normal, and straight-minded widower.

But even Mak Siti’s… special lobbying… had failed against Pakdhe’s devotion to the gleaming red beauty with vintage bones and mechanical pride. I was restless and couldn’t join Midun and Triman in dreamland anyway, so I nodded.

Why not? It’s not like my thoughts were drifting anywhere pleasant with all that boredom lingering around. So we wandered off to the market with a used plastic sack generously donated by Jayeng.

The market was quiet and eerie when we arrived. We crept beneath the wooden stalls—cheap mahogany built under a tight village budget. Dadik stopped me in front of a vegetable stall. The sour stench of rotting produce slapped the air around us.

“There it is, Kir… Let’s catch it. Come on, come with me,” Dadik whispered, moving like a seasoned hunter stalking a pitch-black creature.

I nodded.

The cat was stalking something too—its body lowered, eyes locked. A predator hunting a smaller predator. We were hunting the hunter. I opened the sack, holding it ready. Without warning, Dadik lunged.

“Got you!” he shouted as he pounced.

“MEOWWW!”

The cat shrieked in shock, utterly unprepared for the ambush. It swiped at Dadik with lightning speed—three scratches, each as long as a strand of hair, two centimeters wide, half a millimeter deep—blooms of blood rising instantly. But Dadik didn’t let go. He didn’t even flinch. He wanted that Pitung badly enough to bleed for it. And bleed he did.

---

“Damn it—he got me!”

Dadik spat the words through gritted teeth. Pain tightened his face, but he refused to loosen his grip on the black cat thrashing in his arms. The creature twisted like a shadow come alive, its claws flashing in the dim light beneath the market stall.

Still drunk with bravado, Dadik lifted the cat closer to his face—as if the scratches might somehow carve manhood onto his skin.

The cat understood.

Or at least, that’s how it felt.

With a sudden jerk, its claws carved another set of lines across his cheek.

“Kir! Damn it—he got me again!” he shouted, voice cracking.

“Hold it! It’s just a scratch!” I hissed, diving toward him.

The sack Mas Jayeng had given us—our makeshift hunting gear—was already in my hands. I enveloped the writhing animal, tightening the mouth of the bag until its furious cries were swallowed by burlap.

The cat kept twisting, its anger rattling through the fabric like something far larger than its body.

“Worth it,” Dadik muttered. Blood ran down his arm, but he wiped it with the hem of his shirt, grinning like a man who could already taste victory. “We’re getting that Pitung. Easy.”

“Half for me,” I reminded him, catching my breath. “I helped catch the damned thing.”

“Please.” He snorted. “One bottle of ciu and a pack of cigarettes—that settles it.”

“In your dreams,” I snapped. “Fifty–fifty.”

He glared back, but I pressed on.

“I’m the one who can sell this to Pakdhe Harjono. I’m not just your helper. I’m the entire sales and marketing team.”

Dadik paused, squinting as if the idea had to fight its way through the haze of alcohol.

“Fine,” he said at last. “Ask for the money then. The whole value of that Pitung motorcycle of his.”

Surprisingly, it made sense. Even to me.

And judging from the faint shadow crossing his face, Dadik understood he’d just bargained away his dream. He loved that Pitung more than he loved most people.

“Smart thinking,” I said, half mocking, half impressed.

Pakdhe Harjono kept his promise. He always did.

“Well done,” he said simply, handing over a thick stack of cash. “Two and a half million. Don’t spend it on anything stupid.”

“Yes, Pakdhe. Thank you…”

We split the money—just the two of us.

And within moments, the plan for the night unfurled like smoke: more ciu, more laughter, and a feast of biawak meat and spicy rica-rica RW.

That night, our little gang threw ourselves a private celebration near Dadik’s house—a half-rotting guard post beside Kang Sastro’s place. Kang Sastro had already drifted toward Warung Jayeng hours earlier, seeking solace in whatever bottle greeted him first.

Midun strummed his battered guitar, Triman drummed on a ketipung like he was auditioning for a doomed marching band, and Dadik… well, Dadik was screaming Rhoma Irama songs into the night as if his voice alone could tear open the sky. The neighbors were probably clutching their ears and cursing our entire bloodline. It wasn’t the first time.

Our reputation in the village wasn’t exactly stellar. People said everything we touched turned rotten—whether it was “harvesting” cassava in the middle of the night, liberating corn before the owner remembered to lock it up, or performing unsolicited “population control” on the village chickens. According to the elders, we were one bad evening away from a police report. No one bothered scolding us anymore; we had developed immunity to advice.

So there we were, self-proclaimed rulers of a village gone as quiet as a cemetery after evening prayer.

With that much ciu sloshing in my stomach, I had to relieve myself every ten minutes just to keep my kidneys from resigning entirely. I wandered to the banana trees behind Dadik’s place—big leafy things that really needed fertilizer but had to settle for what nature (and drunken idiots) provided.

Mid-stream, something moved.

I narrowed my eyes, though the world was already blurry at the edges thanks to the divine drink all saints would refuse at heaven’s gate. Someone slipped out of the back door of Dadik’s house—someone I recognized, even from a distance made murkier by shadows.

I squinted harder, trying to force my brain to cooperate. That was when I realized I wasn’t alone.

Dadik stood beside me, also relieving himself, appearing out of nowhere like a man who had mastered the art of weightless footsteps. I hadn’t heard a thing. He stared in the same direction I did.

“Kir,” he whispered, voice wobbling between curiosity and drunken awe,

“Where the hell is your pakdhe going in the middle of the night… carrying that black cat?”

BLAIK!

I damn near jumped out of my skin when Dadik spoke, shattering whatever fragile focus I had left.

“Hell, Dik! You trying to kill me?” I snapped, clutching my chest. My heart was still banging around like a church bell struck by a drunk.

“You look like you just saw a ghost,” Dadik snorted, grinning like an idiot. “I only asked where your pakdhe’s going—not when you’re planning to die.”

“He probably came from your house. Maybe he was courting your mother,” I muttered.

Dadik smacked the back of my head on reflex. Curiosity got the better of us, so we left Midun and Triman belting songs in the guard post and slipped away from the banana grove—now carrying a strange, sour smell—and crept between the rubber trees owned by PTP Getas.

Pakdhe Harjono walked fast. Too fast.

His legs, trained by years of village martial arts, moved with a silent precision that left us trailing hopelessly behind. Within moments, he was just a shifting shadow heading toward one of the most notorious places around.

Dadik, drunk beyond logic, kept bumping into the orderly rows of rubber trees like a pinball.

“What’s he doing? This is weird,” he whispered.

“Probably dumping that cursed cat,” I guessed.

“But why dump it? He bought it from us for good money,” Dadik argued, his drunken brain somehow managing one shining moment of reason.

“Who knows,” I muttered.

“There must be some secret business going on. Let’s follow him.”

Dadik’s curiosity flared again, overpowering the fear that had briefly cooled his blood.

We crept deeper, toward the darkness between the trees, toward the thick bamboo grove people avoided after sunset. Too many stories whispered about that place: lights hovering above the leaves, strange shapes moving around the old tree, sounds that didn’t belong to animals or men.

It had a name: Gumuk Cigrek. A place villagers with tofu-sized courage refused to approach.

“Kir… he’s heading to Gumuk Cigrek… let’s go home. This is creepy,” Dadik whispered, freezing in his tracks.

I scoffed. “Don’t chicken out now. We’re already here. Look—pakdhe’s not alone. Seems some of his friends have been waiting.” Then my breath caught.

“What the hell—why is your mother here?” I whispered sharply.

The clearing came into view. Three figures were already gathered at the infamous mound.

“With Kang Somat too,” Dadik murmured, squinting. “What are they doing…? Must be some ritual. And that old hunchback—he has to be the dukun.”

A cold ripple crawled up my spine. Whatever was happening in Gumuk Cigrek tonight wasn’t meant for our eyes.

Dadik kept his eyes on the old stranger who seemed to be leading the group. His name was Mbah Tro Karto—Pakdhe’s enigmatic teacher. He had stopped by our house a few times, and I’d even shaken his hand once.

“Bet he’s here lookin’ for black magic money,” Dadik whispered, letting his mind wander to the worst possibilities.

“Hush! He’s probably just chasing lucky numbers. With a black-cat sacrifice,” I muttered back, equally speculative.

Among poor folks like us, the lottery was the only falling star worth wishing on. And that hope—so fragile, so easy to exploit—had long been milked dry by those who knew how to turn desperation into profit. They ran the numbers game in the shadows, out of sight of the holier-than-thou officials who pretended outrage only when it suited their politics. Many high-ranking officers were rumored to be playing behind the curtain anyway. You know, the circulation of money from online gambling reaches trillions every year—absurd when compared to our country’s so-called declining economy blamed on pandemics, global crises, and whatever excuse they could cough up.

What was truly remarkable was how effortlessly the gambling bosses managed to plug the ears of those self-righteous rulers with a very particular kind of generosity. The flow of money never stopped—funding their campaigns, smoothing their promotions, even greasing the palms of the very people who shaped absurd policies to benefit the “not-poor,” a group dominated by the non-indigenous elite. Even officials meant to protect the public were already knee-deep in the gambling network, now flourishing across online platforms.

I liked playing slots myself. Luck had favored me enough times that I’d been able to skip work for weeks. And because of those fake little victories that I proudly showed off to the guys my age, I accidentally created a profitable role for myself—unofficial partner to a loan shark. Thanks to my services, many had pawned their motorcycles, their wives’ jewelry, even their parents’ precious livestock sold cheap just to feed the slot machines and the illegal lottery.

Good grief. Look at me rambling on about the sickness called gambling. Let’s return to the small group doing something suspicious at Gumuk Cigrek this late at night.

Pakdhe began the ritual and led the proceedings. Sitting cross-legged before a large rock—already known as a hotspot for lottery seekers—he lit incense. Meanwhile, Mbah Tro Karto was slaughtering a cat with Kang Somat assisting him. The blood was collected in two dark, bone-white bathok bowls—likely made from human skulls. After Pakdhe Harjono chanted his mantra, Kang Somat and Mak Siti—Dadik’s mother—drank the warm blood straight from the bowls.

My stomach lurched. A wave of nausea swept through me as I watched them gulp down the poor creature’s blood with a hunger completely devoid of disgust.

And soon after, strange, impossible things began to unfold—things even our alcohol-fogged brains struggled to comprehend.

Suddenly, Mak Siti growled—a low, feral sound rolling from deep in her chest like a starving tiger. A moment later Kang Somat followed, the same vicious rumble vibrating through his body. They both seemed possessed, their movements no longer human as they prowled like ravenous beasts, sniffing at the human-skull bowls still streaked with blood under the beam of Pakdhe’s flashlight.

Mbah Tro Karto reacted at once. With a swift, practiced motion, he swung his ancient machete and split the black cat’s carcass clean in two. Mak Siti and Kang Somat lunged at the halves, tearing into them, devouring the flesh without the slightest trace of revulsion.

Whatever remained of their humanity had vanished entirely.

Dadik suddenly let out a scream—raw, piercing, and filled with agony—as his mother descended into madness, her face twisted with savage hunger while she tore into the blood-soaked flesh of the black cat. He writhed on the ground, clutching himself, rolling in the dirt as if some invisible force were ripping him apart from the inside. I froze, panic flooding my chest, helpless and terrified. His cries echoed through the silent rubber plantation, shattering the night—and that was what gave us away.

Pakdhe and Mbah Tro Karto stiffened. Their eyes gleamed a violent red as they turned toward us, their expressions darkening with a predatory alertness.

Pakdhe moved first. He was impossibly fast—so fast I hardly caught the blur of his silhouette before his hand was already on me. No questions, no words, no hesitation. With a face twisted by fear and urgency, he struck the back of my neck with brutal precision.

My vision exploded into stars. The world bent, twisted, and slipped away from under me.

Just before I blacked out, I saw Dadik—screaming like a man possessed, thrashing wildly in the dirt, his body drenched in blood I didn’t understand. His skin seemed to split open on its own, tearing in jagged lines as if clawed by something unseen. Blood sprayed and pooled as he rolled back and forth, shrieking in unbearable torment.

Then everything vanished into darkness.

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