The Beheader
by Damhuri Muhammad
If you don't want to be in danger, do not cross the Sinamar Bridge at a quiet hour, specifically right between Asr and Maghrib time. Hasn't it been decades ago, the ancestors have reminded us about a bridge that never get old and worn? Nevertheless, in the same way footbridges are prone to collapse, restrictions are often violated, there is always a group of village children who secretly want to uncover the secret behind the taboos and prohibitions which were constantly reminded? And so, with handfuls of invisible giddiness in them, those skinny boys crept at the forbidden time. At first, they heard the faint screams and groans of kids their age, as if those children were in some unbearable pain. As the dusk progressed, the sounds grew louder until they believed that those hair-raising, otherworldly noises came from Sinamar Bridge’s floor. Considering the ever-increasing noise, it seemed those screams didn’t come from one person, but maybe two or three. Then, the back of their minds envisaged images of children’s bodies trapped in the networks of reinforced concrete. The boys rushed back, sprinting like they were really being chased by an evening ghost.
Two days after that evening, Tongkin intervened. Alimba, one of the taboo-breaking boys, was possessed. He trampled and smashed things at home until they broke. Shards of broken plate glass on the floor were chewed one by one, as if cassava chips, until they crunched at his throat. Because Alimba’s behavior became more erratic, two sand miners at Sinamar River grabbed him, triggering some stomping and an ear-piercing scream. Tongkin, the best shaman around, mustered up all his powers, to exorcise the evil spirit from Alimba's body.
"My home is here, in this village, not on the Sinamar Bridge!" Alimba threatened, staring cruelly.
Tongkin didn’t care for that bluff. His mouth kept muttering, enunciating spells.
“You won’t be able to exorcise me,” he snapped again.
Tongkin stepped back for a moment, he strengthened his sitting position. Apparently he was dealing with a formidable opponent.
“Who are you really?” asked Tongkin breathlessly
“Stop pretending you don’t know me! I was one of the three children whose heads were planted into the floor of Sinamar Bridge.”
Everyone was flabbergasted. Tongkin took a deep breath. It was unusual, an evil spirit possessing someone’s body revealing its origins. In a few moments, Alimba fell and fainted.
☾
Whenever someone was possessed, Tongkin used to always retort that the offending spirit was only an inhabitant of Sinamar River that had been disturbed since the bridge’s construction. Yet, after Alimba’s possession, Sinamar Bridge’s secret was beginning to unravel. Tongkin confirmed the old story about the beheader wasn’t a lie.
The beheader’s cruelty that had become scary news in Subarang Village turned out to be not just a story to scare lazy children who played more with gundu than helping their parents on the fields. Starting from Alimba’s parents, close neighbors and until the news got out to every corner of the village, Tongkin explained that if Sinamar Bridge was only kept up by reinforced concrete, its old age would’ve brought it down by now. But the three heads that were planted with the concrete mixture made it invincible to the passing of time. When a massive earthquake flattened the houses of Subarang Village’s residents, Sinamar Bridge didn’t even shake, let alone fall. Its pillars still stabbed into the ground solidly. This was even more true of the floor, despite trucks loaded with sand always passing over it. And this had been going on for years.
In the past, Subarang Village was once shaken by the loss of three boys on the way home from watching a cattle race not far from the banks of Sinamar River. They were said to have drowned while crossing. This was the vision of the shamans that tracked their location. Sinamar River was dived into for days, downstream and upstream, but their bodies weren’t found. After all that effort, the three families of the missing children believed they had been kidnapped by bunian people. Not dead as expected, but impossible to bring back because they were already sucked into another realm. The Subarang people gave those children up to the past, never to be spoken of again.
In truth, they were tempted by the devices of two strange but kind-looking men. They were persuaded with an invitation to watch a circus troupe touring the district’s city. The men were driving a pickup truck, and the boys would definitely be allowed to hang around in the back of it. A priceless experience for Subarang kids at that time. Nevertheless, before they reached the city, the truck suddenly stopped at a quiet spot. One of the two strange men stepped out, approaching the three boys who were having fun hanging about.
“Before going inside the circus, you have to wear this,” he said, handing out a green hat.
The hats looked like ushankas. In cold weather, the two flaps could be buttoned at the chin. At their rears, which brushed over the nape, poked out two slight ends of a wire four inches long. The wire was hidden in some fabric that would wind around the neck.
“The circus is going to be crowded with visitors. These hats will make it easier for us to find you when the show’s over.”
“Without them, you’d be lost in the crowd.”
They rushed to put the hats on their heads, fastening the strap under their chins. Something clicked at their napes, like a sealed lock, until they almost choked. The trapped boys were asked to step down. They didn’t fight back because their throats were stuck; meanwhile, the hats couldn’t be taken off anymore. In a crossed position, the two men stabbed the steel wires into the back of the boys’ necks. Their heads instantly fell from their bodies. Nearly no squirming. Cold slaughter. Faster than slitting the throat of a cow. The three head-filled hats rolled into the pickup truck, soon to be handed over to the project leader of Sinamar Bridge’s construction.
☽
After graduating cum laude with an engineering degree from a prestigious university in Java many decades ago, Alimba never visited home. But he was like a kite with a taut tail. Far away, but appearing close. Close, but appearing far. There was always news that in Java, Alimba the engineer had become a big contractor, particularly in the building of overpasses.
The construction quality of Alimba’s company had been tried and tested. Three out of five tenders for overpass projects were always won by Sinamar Jaya Karya Ltd. It was unimaginable that Alimba, the scrawny boy from Subarang Village born into a poor family, was now a contractor with an unbeatable reputation; even the works of engineers graduating from overseas universities couldn’t compare.
Even if Alimba had a weakness at all, it was only the otherworldly voices that emanated from every bridge he’d ever built. Exactly during the transition from Asr to Maghrib, you could hear the screams and groans of children as if they were trapped in the networks of reinforced concrete. Whoever crossed during that forbidden hour would get into an accident. If it wasn’t a pileup, the vehicle would at least roll over from uncontrollable speed. So far, the number of victims was uncountable.
“There must be something wrong! It has to be exposed. If we don’t want to keep losing tenders, that is,” one of Alimba’s competitors said cynically.
“How can we prove those bridge demons exist?” asked his man.
“Alimba’s too strong. As strong as his bridges.”
“Ah, what’s the point of quality if it demands a blood sacrifice every month?”
☾
If in the past Subarang was rocked by losing three boys that’d been relegated into children of the past, it was now shocked again after the TV and newspapers flashed with news about an overpass project contractor deduced as the mastermind behind some discovered corpse bits, which had recently been raising concerns. According to reports, the fugitive named Alimba had planted hundreds of street children’s heads into networks of reinforced concrete as sacrifices for the sturdiness of every bridge he built. Alimba’s underlings betrayed him and spread headless bodies throughout the city, to a point where Sinamar Jaya Karya Ltd’s reputation was unsalvageable.
From afar, the people of Subarang prayed so Alimba the beheader could find a hiding place nobody could trace. As cruel as Alimba was, he has supported many youths who were previously unemployed in Subarang village, but are now lucky men outside their village. Alimba housed and employed them.
“It’s Tongkin’s fault,” spat one of Subarang’s elders.
“Tongkin’s dead. Don’t bring him up!”
“Wasn’t he the one who told the story about beheaders, and Alimba learnt from that?”
Daruih, a young shaman who was heir to Tongkin’s powers, refuted everything. For him, this news that disgraced Subarang Village wasn’t Tongkin’s or Alimba’s fault, but the doings of one of the children of the past, Sinamar Bridge’s sacrificial offering. The evil spirit that possessed Alimba as a boy never truly left; presently, it still nested in the body of the famous engineer. It carried out its revenge through Alimba’s hands.
Damhuri Muhammad (he/him) is a Jakarta-based writer and was nominated for The 2023 Pushcart Prize. His recent works have appeared in The Unconventional Courier, The Pine Cone Review, Active Muse, Trash to Treasure Lit, Switch Microfiction Journal, Kitaab, and elsewhere. He is currently lecturing on philosophy at Darma Persada University, Jakarta (Indonesia). Twitter handle; @damhurimuhammad.