Chapter One: The Uninvited Guests

The mountain did not announce its presence with thunder, landslides, or any obvious sign
of hostility that morning. There were no storms gathering in the distance, no animals
fleeing the forest, no sudden changes in weather that would normally trigger caution
among experienced climbers.

Instead, Mount Gede welcomed them with something far more unsettling: silence.

Not the peaceful silence Pule had imagined when he agreed to the trip, but a dense,
unnatural stillness—one that pressed against the ears and lingered in the chest.
It was the kind of silence that made every footstep feel intrusive, every breath
sound too loud, as if the forest itself was listening.

Pule felt it immediately.

The moment his boots touched the soil at the base of the mountain trail, something
shifted inside him. The air was colder than it should have been for a clear morning,
and the light filtering through the trees felt dim, as though the forest canopy
deliberately swallowed the sun.

Tall trees stood tightly packed on both sides of the trail, their trunks thick and old,
marked by moss, scars, and deep grooves carved by time. Their branches intertwined high
above, forming a ceiling that blocked most of the sky. The forest floor was damp,
littered with decaying leaves that released a faint, earthy stench with every step.

For Pule, this hike was supposed to be nothing more than a pause from his life in the city.
Weeks of loud music, glaring stage lights, and restless crowds had drained him.
His body moved from show to show, but his mind felt increasingly hollow.

The mountain, he thought, would give him silence.

What he did not understand was that the mountain already had its own opinion about him.

Behind Pule, laughter broke the stillness like shattered glass.

“This is Mount Gede?” Dito said loudly, his voice echoing far too freely.
“Seriously? I’ve seen tougher jogging tracks.”

Dito walked with exaggerated confidence, swinging his arms, occasionally kicking stones
off the trail. His backpack was half-unzipped, his movements careless, as if he were
strolling through a city park rather than entering one of the most spiritually sensitive
mountain areas in the region.

Pule glanced at him, unease tightening his chest.

“Hey,” Pule said quietly, lowering his voice instinctively,
“maybe don’t talk like that.”

Dito stopped walking and laughed.

“Relax. It’s just a mountain,” he replied. “Trees, rocks, dirt.
People make this stuff creepy for no reason.”

He spat onto the ground and pulled a cigarette from his pocket.
Without hesitation, he lit it, inhaled deeply, and flicked the still-burning butt
into the dry bushes lining the trail.

The forest responded.

Not with sound.

But with sensation.

Pule felt it as a sudden wave of cold crawling up his spine,
as if unseen eyes had turned toward them all at once.
His stomach tightened, and for a brief moment, he had the overwhelming urge
to apologize—to someone, or something, he could not see.

The trail narrowed as they walked deeper.

The deeper they went, the quieter the forest became.
Birds that had chirped faintly near the entrance were now completely silent.
Insects vanished. Even the wind seemed reluctant to move.

Pule noticed that their voices no longer echoed as they spoke.
Words felt absorbed by the trees, swallowed before they could travel far.

After nearly an hour, they reached a small river crossing the trail.
The water flowed calmly, unnaturally clear, revealing smooth stones beneath its surface.
The reflection of the trees made it look like a dark mirror slicing the forest in two.

“Let’s take a break,” one of them said.

As the others loosened their packs and laughed, Pule stood still.

Something was wrong.

At first, he thought his eyes were adjusting to the contrast between light and shadow.
Then he realized the problem wasn’t his vision.

Across the river, just beyond the tree line, stood something that did not belong.

A wild boar.

But not like any wild boar Pule had ever seen.

It was enormous—far larger than any animal should naturally be.
Its body was thick and muscular, yet unnaturally still.
Its fur was not brown or black, but pure white.
Not pale. Not dirty.

Pure.

As if it had never touched soil.

Its eyes were red.

Not reflecting sunlight.
Not glowing because of fear.
But burning, deep red, alive with awareness.

The boar stared directly at Pule.

It did not blink.
It did not snort.
It did not move.

“Ngik…”

The sound was low, resonant, vibrating through the ground and into Pule’s chest.
His heartbeat stuttered, and his legs felt weak.

In that moment, Pule understood something without being told:
the animal was not blocking their path.

It was judging them.

Suddenly, a scream tore through the forest.

“GORILLA!”

Pule spun around.

Dito stood frozen, his face drained of color, eyes wide with pure terror.

“It’s huge!” Dito screamed. “It’s right there! It’s coming for me!”

Pule followed Dito’s gaze.

There was nothing.

Only trees.

Then the trees began to shake.

Branches snapped violently. Leaves fell in showers.
Heavy footsteps—far too heavy for any known animal—pounded through the undergrowth.
The ground trembled beneath their feet.

Pule turned back toward the river.

The white boar was gone.

Panic erupted.

Someone shouted.

“RUN!”

They didn’t argue.

They ran downhill, abandoning the trail, crashing through bushes and roots,
slipping on wet soil, screaming without knowing what they were running from.

No one dared to look back.

The mountain had issued its warning.

And they had ignored every sign before it.

Chapter Two: The Fog That Devours Souls

They did not stop running until their lungs burned and their legs no longer
responded to commands. The trail had long disappeared beneath their feet,
replaced by slippery soil, tangled roots, and sharp undergrowth that tore
at their clothes and skin.

When they finally collapsed, it was already afternoon.

None of them could clearly remember how they had made it back down.
The forest seemed to rearrange itself as they fled—paths that did not exist
before suddenly opening, while familiar routes vanished behind walls of
foliage.

By the time they reached a small wooden coffee stall near the mountain’s base,
exhaustion had overtaken fear. Their bodies shook, not only from cold but from
a lingering sensation that something had followed them part of the way down.

The stall was old, built from darkened planks held together by rusted nails.
Smoke from burning firewood drifted lazily through the air, mixing with the
smell of damp earth and bitter coffee.

They sat in silence.

No one dared to joke. Even Dito, usually loud and dismissive, stared at the
ground, his hands trembling as he struggled to light a cigarette. The flame
died again and again, as if the air itself rejected fire.

“You went up without permission.”

The voice was calm, but it cut through the silence with surgical precision.

Pule looked up.

A man sat near the fire pit, slightly apart from the others. He was lean,
his posture rigid despite his age. His jacket was faded, marked with old
stains and tears that told stories of countless expeditions.

His eyes, however, were what unsettled Pule the most.

They were sharp, alert—and deeply haunted.

“Permission?” Pule asked cautiously.

The man did not look at him. He stared into the fire.

“Not the kind you get from rangers or online forms,” the man replied.
“The other kind.”

He introduced himself as Tole.

A veteran hiker. A guide once. Someone who had survived what others did not.

When Pule told him about the white boar, the shaking trees, and the invisible
presence that chased them, Tole’s face slowly lost color.

“You’re lucky,” Tole said quietly.

“Lucky that the mountain still bothered to warn you.”

He poked the fire with a stick, sending sparks into the air.

“Sometimes,” he continued, “the mountain doesn’t send signs you can see.
Sometimes it sends fog.”

The word lingered heavily between them.

Fog.

Tole took a deep breath.

“In 2016, I ignored it.”

He had been hiking Mount Salak with three close friends—experienced climbers,
confident in their skills, arrogant in their assumptions. Time was short,
and they chose an illegal trail to save several hours.

“The forest felt wrong that day,” Tole said. “But we told ourselves it was
just nerves.”

The fog descended without warning.

Not white.

Black.

Thick and absolute, as if someone had poured darkness directly into the forest.
Visibility dropped to nothing. The world shrank to the sound of breathing
and the pounding of hearts.

“Don’t move,” Tole had ordered.

He stood still, listening.

When the fog thinned slightly, the forest reappeared.

His friends were gone.

Panic set in.

Then he saw it.

A figure in the distance—wearing a red jacket.

One of his friends.

Relief overpowered caution.

“Wait!” Tole shouted.

The figure walked deeper into the forest, never turning around.

Tole followed.

With every step, the air grew heavier. The smell came gradually—first faint,
then unbearable.

Rotting flesh.

Fresh blood.

Old death.

When Tole finally reached the figure, he grabbed its shoulder.

It turned.

The movement was wrong—stiff, broken, unnatural.

It was not his friend.

What stood before him was a corpse wrapped in a burial shroud.
The cloth was soaked in dark red stains, clinging tightly to a body that
should not have been moving.

The eyes bulged grotesquely, staring straight through him.

The Red Pocong.

“It wasn’t chasing me,” Tole whispered. “It was guiding me.”

He collapsed shortly after.

When he woke up, he was alone.

His friends were never found.

Silence returned to the coffee stall.

Outside, the wind picked up, rattling the wooden walls.

Pule felt the same pressure he had felt on the mountain trail.

The realization settled heavily in his chest:

Whatever they had encountered was not limited to one mountain.

Some things move freely through forests, fog, and memory.

And once they notice you,
they do not easily forget.

Chapter Three: Vengeance Bound in Red

The wind grew stronger as night crept in.

Outside the coffee stall, the forest swayed restlessly, branches colliding
with one another like bones striking in the dark. The fire in the pit flickered
violently, its flames bending sideways as if something unseen passed through them.

Pule remained silent long after Tole finished his story.

His thoughts were no longer on Mount Gede or Mount Salak alone.
What unsettled him was the familiarity of the name Tole had spoken.

The Red Pocong.

He had heard it before.

Not from hikers.
Not from villagers.

But from a film script.

“That thing you saw,” Pule finally said, his voice barely above a whisper,
“it’s not just a forest spirit.”

Tole looked at him sharply.

“I know,” Tole replied. “It’s older than the trails. Older than the rules.”

Pule swallowed.

He had never planned to talk about it outside the studio.
Never planned to connect fiction with something this real.

But after what he had seen on the mountain, denial felt impossible.

“I’m working on a horror film,” Pule said. “Or… I was.”

The others looked at him in surprise.

“It’s about a woman,” Pule continued, “a traditional healer.
A dukun.”

According to the script, she lived on the edge of a village decades ago.
People came to her for help—illness, childbirth, protection rituals.
But fear spreads faster than gratitude.

When unexplained deaths occurred in the village, suspicion fell on her.

Rumors turned into accusations.
Accusations turned into violence.

“They dragged her out at night,” Pule said.
“Beat her. Tied her. Killed her.”

Tole closed his eyes.

“They wrapped her body in a burial shroud before she was even dead,”
Pule added. “And because of blood—because of how she died—the cloth
turned red.”

Silence swallowed the stall.

“Her child survived,” Pule went on. “A boy.
He watched everything.”

The boy grew up carrying nothing but hatred.
Years later, he performed a forbidden ritual—one that demanded a price.

He wanted his mother back.

He got something else.

“She returned,” Pule said, “but not as a human.
Not even as a spirit seeking peace.”

She returned bound.

Bound to rage.
Bound to blood.
Bound to the land that betrayed her.

Wrapped in a red shroud.

The Red Pocong.

Tole exhaled slowly.

“That’s not just a legend,” he said.
“That’s a warning.”

Pule nodded.

“During filming,” Pule said, “things started going wrong.
Not accidents. Rejections.”

Cameras refused to focus whenever the ghost actress entered the frame.
Autofocus hunted endlessly, as if the subject didn’t exist.

Batteries overheated and exploded—new ones, fully charged.

Audio recordings captured voices no one remembered speaking.

“One crew member quit after he heard someone whisper his name
from inside the forest set,” Pule said.

No one was standing there.

Tole stared into the fire.

“You turned memory into entertainment,” he said quietly.

Pule didn’t argue.

“We thought it was just superstition,” Pule admitted.
“Until the location.”

The filming site was deep in a forest bordering a restricted mountain zone.
Locals refused to guide them beyond a certain point.

They said the area was “tanah larangan.”

Forbidden land.

“The first night,” Pule continued,
“the fog rolled in.”

Red fog.

Not thick.
Not heavy.

Just enough to stain the air.

Crew members reported seeing figures moving just beyond visibility.
Always wrapped.
Always silent.

“That’s when we shut down production,” Pule said.

Outside, the wind suddenly stopped.

The forest fell silent again.

Tole opened his eyes.

“It followed you,” he said.

Pule felt cold.

“The mountain didn’t just warn you today,” Tole continued.
“It recognized you.”

Pule remembered the white boar.
The red eyes.
The judgment.

“The fog,” Tole said,
“isn’t meant to hide them.
It’s meant to separate you.”

Separate the respectful from the careless.
The living from the claimed.

Somewhere far above them, clouds gathered.

Pule understood now.

This was never about a single mountain.

It was about memory.

And memory, once disturbed,
does not stay buried.