The Midnight
crow House (2)

Oh yeah, one more. Nayra told me that Yogi shot him last week. The day we had to move. Nayra accepted it and she apologized to me earnestly because she knew I had liked Yogi since first grade High School. I smiled widely once before congratulating the two of them. I told Nayra that I had lost my feelings for Yogi for a long time and I would continue to pray that my two best friends would last. I spent the night crying in my room.

Tuesday, 22 January 2014

There's something strange about this house. It's been over a month and I don't know, the longer I feel like something's wrong. Actually I've been aware of it for a week now, but I've never paid much attention before. This house is an old house and whatever foreign sounds that may appear most likely come from a weathered or rusted part of the house. In our house before, Nanda once said that every night there was a scratching sound from the bathroom. It turned out that a frog was stuck in our waterways and that scratching sound was nothing more than the sound of the frog's persistence in getting out of the hole. Maybe that's why I don't take all the strangeness in this house seriously.

First I feel the temperature inside the house is always cooler than the air outside. Too cold. Like someone lit a giant refrigerator all over the room. Surprisingly the air temperature was always getting colder the more I walked towards the building behind the house. It was so cold that I saw an ice flower clinging to the door handle to the back corridor when it was eleven o'clock in the afternoon. Besides, there are often smells that I can't explain where they came from. Sometimes it is so fragrant, sometimes so rotten as if someone deliberately left a rat carcass in the corner of the room.

I also often hear people whispering or footsteps when I know Mama and Nanda are in the next room while Papa is out of the house. His voice was clear because the floor of the house was made of wood. The footsteps were sometimes loud and galloping, like the sound of a large-bodied man. But once also his voice was light like the steps of children running around. But every time I went to check the source of the sound, all I found was a cold empty room. But it's nothing compared to what I saw last night.

Nanda had a special name for her favorite doll. There was a Ponpon, a Panda doll my father bought when we went to the night market two years ago. Then there's Endut, the hippo doll from his favorite cartoon show, and I don't know what else. Nanda could remember all the names of her favorite dolls. Ever since we came to this house by accident I heard Nanda mention a new name while playing the doll. Blacky (or bleki, if according to Nanda's words). Yesterday I approached Nanda while she was playing alone in her room.

“Nanda, how exciting to play. Have a new friend huh?” ask me while I tickle her hips. Nanda sniggered loudly. “Iyaaaa! There's Bleki nih Kak now.”

“Bleki? Whereabouts? Did you buy a new doll with Papa?”

“No! Bleki only wants to maen if I'm alone, hihi.”.

“Emang she doll what?” that's when I realized that Nanda might have some sort of ‘fantasy friend’. I feel a little guilty because that might be the little boy's way of dealing with all of our family's problems.

“Monkey Brother. His eyes are items, big, hihi.” said Nanda while making a circular shape of his thumb and index finger and then attached to his eyes while grinning. The two serinya teeth that were just dated yesterday made his face look ridiculous.

Just as I was about to return upstairs, my eyes accidentally caught no movement in the back area of the house. The door to the back corridor seemed to open slightly. I'm not sure what I saw, but my memory is clear. Behind that door is something staring back at me. His eyes are large and round in total black. The two dark circles appear to glitter under the slightly opened door grille. At first glance the creature looks like a monkey, but after I approached it it was clearly a monkey. The size is too big. It's someone crawling.

Thurs. February 2nd, 2014

I don't know what else to do. I spent the last two weeks trying to convince Mama and Papa that something was wrong in this house. That something evil, I don't know what, is terrorizing our family. But free anyway. Mama looked at me with an angry look. He said it was all just my story to make Nanda feel scared and uncomfortable so we had a reason to move. Mama even yelled at me loudly when I said there was something strange about the building behind the house. Something he's never done to me in my entire life. When I passed the bathroom mirror this morning I couldn't find Sarah Lenora there. There was only a 19-year-old girl who looked haggard. His eyes bulging because sleeping for him was another horror. I wanted to punch my face in the mirror but my body was already too tired. Desperate and tired.

My God, what should I do. And Papa. Papa is like being someone else. He was just silent as I told him all the strangeness I saw in the house. Silence a thousand words. Cold view. He never talked to Mom either. Yesterday I saw Mama sobbing in the room before shouting loudly, “Why shut up!? Is this all my fault!?” I held the side of my room door tightly while holding back tears. From the corner of the open door I saw papa just go in silence to the outside of the house. I spent the night sleeping with Nanda. The gentle breath of Nanda hit my nose as if it gave me some maturity. For the first time in two weeks, I slept well.

Sunday, 5 February 2014

For anyone who finds this notebook, please listen to this message. There was something evil in the building behind our house. I woke up about half an hour ago. 12 O'clock more than a minute. I heard a knocking sound coming from downstairs repeatedly. Like the sound of an object being hit on the door repeatedly. I went downstairs and found the door leading to the back building wide open. The tapping sound came from the dark end of the narrow corridor before me. It sounded echoing on the cold walls of the corridor. For God's sake I feel my body paralyzed by fear. There was a pressing feeling from that corridor.

I find it hard to breathe. The air is also so cold. With a glance I took a flashlight from the drawer and I followed the source of the sound to the dark building behind the house. I'm speechless. My body felt stiff to see the scene before me. Papa was standing still facing the red door with a triangular symbol keratan containing three circles. The sound of repeated knocking was none other than the sound of Papa's head being continuously bumped into the door. I haven't called yet, Papa looked at me.

That thing wasn't my father.

I'm in Nanda's room now. I close his body tightly. The door to the room I locked. I faintly heard the sound of someone going upstairs.

This notebook on behalf of Sarah Lenora is one of the objects found in TKP ‘Home Crow’ where one family (Father, Mother, Mother, a teenage daughter and her five-year-old sister) disappeared without a trace. This notebook was found in the middle of an empty room with a red door with a three-circle interlocking symbol in a triangle. Alongside this notebook was also found a lump of cloth containing hair, nails, teeth, and blood that had dried up.