I don't remember walking back to the villa.
I must've walked, or maybe I drifted like smoke—my body moving but my thoughts lagging behind. The wooden figure that the priest had given me felt heavier than it should've. I gripped it tightly, wrapped in the edge of my shirt, afraid of smudging something unseen. It didn't have eyes, just an empty oval where a face should be. I kept wondering if I was supposed to give it *my* eyes.
The jungle around me didn't speak the same way it had before.
It wasn't just the cicadas going quiet or the wind dying down. There was a pressure in the air, like the whole forest was holding its breath. My sandals scraped the stones louder than they should have. With every step I took, I imagined roots shifting beneath me, vines coiling tighter, the trees themselves leaning just slightly inward, watching.
My phone was still at five percent, like time had stopped charging it.
The villa came into view, its carved wooden gate half-open like an unfinished sentence. I stepped in and closed it behind me—not because I thought it would keep anything out, but because leaving it open felt disrespectful now. I had seen too much. Or maybe I'd only just started to see.
The shadows in the garden had moved.
Not just in the way light naturally shifts, but as if they had rearranged themselves while I was gone. The guardian statue by the gate was no longer facing the field—it was looking straight at the door. At me.
I stopped breathing.
The air smelled like sandalwood and wet earth, and underneath that, the sweet, ghostly scent of frangipani.
I swallowed hard, walked up to the veranda, and sat down on the edge of the wooden platform. The wooden figure rested on my lap. I didn't know what time it was, but the sky was starting to bruise—orange and gray spilling together like ink dropped in milk.
I waited.
And waited.
The jungle rustled. A gecko chirped. A palm leaf creaked.
But she didn't come.
Not yet.
---
Sometime after the sky turned navy and the first stars blinked into existence, I lit the single candle that had been left beside my bed. It was part of the daily offering—a small yellow candle in a coconut shell, surrounded by marigold petals.
Tonight, it felt necessary.
I placed the candle on the floor near the open door and sat cross-legged in front of it. The wooden figure was in front of me, its faceless head tilted slightly upward like it was waiting to be seen.
And then... I spoke.
"I don't know your name," I said, my voice hoarse from disuse. "I don't know what you want. But I saw you. You know I saw you."
The flame flickered.
"I'm sorry. If I stepped where I shouldn't have, if I looked where I wasn't supposed to, I'm sorry."
The candle flared suddenly, then steadied.
I froze.
Behind me, floorboards creaked.
I didn't turn around. My body refused to move. But I felt it. That electric charge. That cold heat. That *presence*—like static on skin, like a song hummed just out of reach. A pressure pressed against my back, heavy and deliberate.
And then, so quietly I almost missed it, I heard her breath.
Not the wind. Not my imagination.
Her breath.
Close.
Measured.
Like she had been holding it all this time, waiting for me to finish speaking.
I closed my eyes.
And the candle went out.
---
The darkness was absolute.
But I didn't move. Couldn't. My spine felt fused to the floor. My legs tingled from tension. And my heart—God, my heart—thudded so loud I thought it might shake the walls. I heard something brush the floor in front of me. Not a step. A glide. As if silk had dragged across wood.
She was here.
No longer at the edge. No longer in the dream.
Here.
Something cold touched my chest—just for a second. I gasped. My body jerked, but not away. Toward. Toward the weight, the pull, the impossible gravity of her.
And then...
Nothing.
The weight lifted.
The air warmed.
The room exhaled.
When I opened my eyes, the candle had re-lit itself.
And the wooden figure was gone.
---
I don't know how long I sat there.
At some point, I crawled to bed and passed out. My sleep was deep, dreamless, blank. And yet when I woke the next morning, I felt emptier than I had in years. Not peaceful. Just... hollow. Like the part of me that had been so afraid was no longer there—but not because it had healed.
Because something else had taken it.
I didn't speak for hours.
I ate plain rice, drank water, avoided the mirror.
Even Pak Wayan didn't come that day. No offerings. No small talk. Nothing.
The silence stretched.
But in the quiet, I realized something:
I wasn't afraid anymore.
Not in the way I had been. Not the frantic, spiraling panic. That had been replaced by something else. A stillness. A watching.
As if I had become the statue now.
---
Three days passed.
I didn't leave the villa. Not because I couldn't—but because I felt like if I did, I'd leave part of myself behind. Or worse, I'd take something *with* me.
On the third night, I woke up at exactly 2:44 a.m.
No dreams. No sound.
Just the scent of frangipani, faint and distant.
But this time, I didn't panic.
I got out of bed slowly, walked barefoot to the veranda, and sat down. The moon was high, casting silver across the rice fields. Fireflies blinked in the distance like nervous thoughts.
And then, without thinking, I whispered, "I see you."
Nothing replied.
But I knew she heard.
Because in the far corner of the garden, the guardian statue—Barong Ket—had turned again.
Facing the jungle.
Facing her.
---
There's something strange about surviving a haunting.
People think it ends with an exorcism, a ritual, a final scream.
But it doesn't.
What haunts you lingers not in the shadows—but in the quiet that comes after. In the way you hesitate before looking in a mirror. In the way you listen for knocks even when no one's home.
The priest had said, "Some things, once seen, stay seen forever."
He wasn't wrong.
I flew back to Singapore a week later.
The villa was calm when I left. The air was warm. The jungle sang. Pak Wayan smiled at me—but said nothing. Just handed me a small offering tray wrapped in banana leaf.
"For safe return," he said.
Inside was a single white flower and a slip of paper.
No writing.
Just a charcoal circle, drawn in thick strokes.
An eye.
Now, months later, I'm back in my apartment.
The lights work. The water runs clear. The walls are thin but silent.
But I still feel it.
Not every day. Not even every week.
But sometimes, just before sleep takes me, I feel her breath.
Not on my skin.
But inside me.
Like I became the mirror she needed.
And she's still looking.