The Ninth Mouth Opens

Kliwon stood at the edge of the threshold, the wind refusing to touch his skin. The path before him pulsed—not with light, but with memory. And memory, he was beginning to understand, had teeth.

Behind him, the guest house had turned silent again, sealed like a tomb with its secrets cradled in cracked wood and faded feathers. Ahead, the rice fields lay bare, stripped of crops, water, and life. Only ash remained—ash and shapes that moved beneath it, too slow for the eye, but too wrong to ignore.

He stepped forward.

With each footfall, the air thickened. No birds sang. No insects chirped. The world had become a held breath, and Kliwon was its exhale.

---

The scarecrow was no longer where he remembered it.

It had moved. Or perhaps it had never stayed in one place.

It now stood at the center of the dead paddy field, tall as a man and wrapped in skin that was no longer straw-stiff. Its arms were stretched wide, pinned with rusted hooks to bamboo poles, and its head had changed—no longer a sack, but something bone-white and crowned with burnt feathers. Its face was carved not by hands but by grief, by fire, by a history that refused to remain buried.

Kliwon approached slowly. The notebook in his hand trembled, not from fear, but from resonance.

Something beneath his skin remembered this.

The scarecrow's head turned.

Not all at once—but in sickening twitches, vertebrae that weren't bones clicking in protest. Its hollow eye sockets locked onto his, and the scent of roasted carrion flooded the air.

"You have returned," it whispered, though its mouth did not move.

Kliwon clenched his fists. "What am I?"

The scarecrow tilted its head. "The one who ate what must not be eaten."

"I never ate—"

"You will."

---

The ground split.

Not with violence, but like paper giving way to water. From it rose a stone altar, ancient and veined with roots that throbbed like veins. Around it, crows circled, wingless, floating on unseen strings. And in the center of the altar was a bowl—black, cracked, and steaming.

Kliwon recognized the scent before he recognized the shape.

Crow meat.

Fresh. Cooked in the way his mother used to whisper warnings about. Saltless. Charred over wood from the cemetery. Prepared only when the mouths of the dead demanded payment.

His stomach turned.

"Eat," the scarecrow said.

"No."

"If you do not feed it, it will feed on you."

"I'm not part of this. I didn't start the ritual."

"You were born during it. That is worse."

---

Suddenly, laughter.

A child's laugh. Soft. Wrong.

Kliwon turned. A girl now stood at the edge of the field, her feet floating just above the soil. She had no shadow. In her hands, she held a mask—half crow, half human. Her eyes glowed red.

"They're waiting, Kak Kliwon," she sang. "You must open the Ninth Mouth."

"What is the Ninth Mouth?" he asked.

Her smile was full of teeth. "The mouth that sings backwards. The one your mother stitched shut."

---

A gust of wind tore through the field.

It wasn't wind—it was wings. Thousands of them. But no birds followed. Only feathers, torn and burning, fell like rain. The scarecrow flinched. The girl vanished.

And in the smoke, a shape moved.

Not human. Not beast. Something old.

The Watcher.

But it had changed.

Its body was cracked, its skin flaking like old bark, revealing blackness beneath. Its wings dragged behind it like torn robes. But its eyes—those twin mirrors—still gleamed.

It saw Kliwon.

And it recoiled.

"You are... no longer prey," it hissed.

Kliwon's breath hitched.

"Then what am I?"

"You are the son of the unfinished curse. You are what happens when memory eats itself."

"I want the truth."

"There is no truth. Only hunger. And yours is finally awake."

---

Kliwon fell to his knees.

The altar before him now glowed, symbols etched in flame. His hands burned. He looked down—his fingers were blackening, claws growing from beneath the skin.

He screamed.

But no sound came.

Only crows answered. Thousands of them, rising from the earth like steam, wingless and wailing.

And then—

Voices.

Chanting.

He turned.

The villagers were standing at the edge of the field, their mouths sewn shut, yet their voices filled the air. Ash drifted from their lips. Their eyes were white. They held bones, feathers, masks. Ritual had begun.

And at the center of them all, the elder stood—his one good eye gone, replaced by a mirror.

"The Ninth Mouth must open," he said, voice echoing in the sky.

Kliwon's vision blurred.

He saw himself.

In every era.

As a priest.

As a killer.

As a child holding a feather soaked in blood.

He had always been here.

He was the ritual.