Beneath The Offering Stone

I didn't want to go back to the temple.

Not after what happened to my phone, my mirror, and my mind. But the woman—whatever she was—kept showing up in my dreams with growing clarity. Her mouth no longer stitched. Her voice no longer muffled. And now, she was speaking names.

Not mine.

But someone else's.

I woke up one night with one of them still echoing in my ears.

"Ketut Sari…"

The name meant nothing to me, at first. But I wrote it down and asked Pak Wayan about it the next morning. He went quiet. His hands froze mid-sweep of the veranda floor.

"You must never speak her name in the dark," he said, without looking at me.

"Why?"

"Because she died for what she saw. And spirits who die like that… they don't stay dead."

---

I tried to let it go.

But the dreams kept returning. More vivid. More… **anchored**. They weren't dreams anymore. They were visits.

One morning, I found dirt under my fingernails.

And cuts on my feet.

I had locked my doors and windows. I had gone to bed fully clothed. And yet, my sandals were missing from the front step, and small wet footprints stained the floor leading back into my room.

They weren't mine.

---

It was time to return to the temple where it all started.

I brought offerings this time.

Not just canang sari. But things that felt personal: a photo of my mother, a poem I had written in college, and a USB drive containing the first audio recording of the whisper I had captured weeks ago. It had been buried in my phone's backup logs. I didn't remember ever recording it.

I took all of them, wrapped in a black cloth, and carried them up the same forest path where the air always felt heavier. The jungle seemed to inhale with me. Every leaf turning its face to watch me pass.

By the time I reached the outer gate, the wind had stopped.

No insects. No birds.

Just the temple. And that sound.

Like breath through hollow stone.

---

I stepped into the main courtyard, where the guardian statues stood with moss growing across their mouths. They were smiling now. All of them. Their teeth had not been carved that way before.

I placed the cloth down in front of the inner sanctum.

I whispered her name.

"Ketut Sari…"

And the doors opened.

Not violently. Not slowly.

Just open.

---

Inside, the room was colder than outside, even though sunlight still streamed in through the ceiling slats. The air smelled like burnt jasmine and old clay. I walked forward until I reached the central shrine.

There, beneath the main offering stone, something pulsed.

I crouched. Moved the stone aside with both hands.

It was lighter than it should have been.

Underneath, I found an old, rotted cloth bundle—tied shut with string made of human hair. I didn't want to open it.

But I did.

Inside: a hand mirror. Cracked down the center.

And scratched onto the back of it, in rusted nail marks, was one word:

**"AKU."**

I wasn't sure if it meant "I" as in me. Or "I" as in her.

Then a gust of wind blew through the temple—not from outside, but from below. And with it came the scent of something old, wet, and buried.

I dropped the mirror.

It didn't hit the ground.

It hovered for a moment, then fell straight **down**—through the floor, as if the earth had swallowed it.

And that's when I heard it.

Not just breath.

But **chanting**.

Dozens of voices, layered in a tongue I didn't know but felt deep in my bones.

And then—

**Hands.**

Not real ones. Shadows shaped like hands, reaching out from the cracks in the stone. Grabbing. Searching. Not for me.

For the offerings.

They took everything.

The photo.

The poem.

The USB.

Gone.

Only the black cloth remained.

And in the silence that followed, a voice whispered from beneath the stone:

**"You gave. Now see."**

---

I stumbled back out of the temple and collapsed on the stone steps. I couldn't breathe. My ears rang. My skin itched from the inside out.

And then it started raining.

Not outside.

Just around me.

A soft drizzle from nowhere. Falling only on me.

I looked up. The sky above was clear.

But every inch of me was soaked.

---

Back at the villa, I showered for over an hour, trying to wash off the feeling. But it wasn't dirt on my skin. It was something else.

That night, the dreams changed again.

This time I wasn't just seeing **her**.

I was seeing **through her**.

As if my eyes had become hers. And I was witnessing what she saw in her last days.

The vision was disjointed. Flashing scenes.

Villagers dragging her through the forest. Accusing her of false visions. A child's body covered in cloth. A priest shaking his head. Her being tied to a stone at the temple's center. Her own mouth being sewn shut with thread soaked in oil.

And fire.

So much fire.

But she didn't scream.

She looked **through me**.

And whispered:

**"Now you know why I wait."**

---

I woke up with a torn bedsheet wrapped tightly around my wrists.

My throat burned like I had swallowed smoke.

And in the corner of the room, a statue I had never seen before.

It was small.

Rough.

Carved from ash.

But it was her.

The same face.

The same hair.

Eyes missing.

I didn't touch it.

---

The next few days blurred. Time stopped meaning anything. I would wake up with bruises I couldn't explain. Smells that came and went—frangipani, blood, wet soil. Sometimes I would speak out loud without realizing it. Balinese words. I had no idea what they meant.

Then came the scratches on my walls.

They appeared overnight. Jagged. Not letters. Not symbols.

But *fingernails*.

As if someone had clawed from the **inside out**.

Pak Wayan finally confronted me.

"I know what you did," he said. "You shouldn't have opened that stone."

I didn't deny it.

"She wanted to be remembered," I said. "I gave her offerings."

He shook his head.

"You gave her **yourself**."

---

I wanted to leave Bali.

But the website I made… it wouldn't let me.

Every time I tried to delete it, the page re-uploaded itself.

Stronger.

Each article rewritten with new details—things I hadn't typed.

Things I hadn't known.

And the visitor count kept rising.

People were reading.

From everywhere.

But I hadn't shared the link with anyone.

---

One night, an email landed in my inbox.

No sender.

No subject.

Just a message:

**"The mirror is not broken. It's open."**

Attached: a photo of me sleeping.

Taken from above.

There was no one else in the room.

Except her.

Standing over me.

---

I can't tell you how this ends.

Because I don't think it does.

Not really.

She's not following me anymore.

She's **within** me.

Sometimes when I speak, I hear her voice beneath mine.

When I write, my hands move faster than my thoughts.

And the worst part?

I'm no longer afraid.

I'm beginning to understand her.

To agree with her.

The world erased her.

But I made her **real** again.

And maybe that's what she always wanted.

Not revenge.

Not fear.

Just… remembrance.

But at what cost?

I don't know.

Yet.

---

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**She's still watching. And maybe… you are too.**