The Ceramic Cradle

My step-brother Raka had always been a collector of strange things, but the workshop he had built in the hills outside Yogyakarta was a shrine to the unnatural. I had come to visit him in the dry season, when the heat cracked the earth and the air hummed with insects. He was busy with something in a back room, so his apprentice, a wiry young man named Bayu, offered to show me around.

Bayu explained that Raka was crafting a kumanthong, a spirit doll, but not the kind you could buy in a Bangkok market. This one was special, he said, a ‘child of the earth’, made from clay mixed with ash from a cremation ground and a single drop of blood from the intended owner. The spirit would be bound to the clay, and the clay would be its body, its cradle. My skin prickled as I stared at the rows of small glass cases on the shelves, each containing a tiny, hand-painted figure. Some were smiling, others had eyes that seemed to follow you.

I had heard of kumanthong from my travels in Thailand—charms that could bring luck and fortune, but also demand their due. Bayu told me that Raka’s method was older, harsher. He did not just invite a spirit to reside; he summoned one, trapped it in the clay, and then starved it until it was desperate enough to obey. He used the lost souls of the forest, the ones that never found their way to the afterlife. My stomach turned, but I was fascinated.

That night, I heard a sound from the workshop—a faint, rhythmic tapping, like a child knocking on a door. I told myself it was just a lizard, but the sound followed me even into my room, growing softer, more plaintive. I could not sleep. I crept to the workshop window and saw Raka, his face lit by a single candle, chanting in a low, guttural tongue. He was holding a small clay figure, no larger than my palm, and he was feeding it—not with food, but with his own breath, pressing his lips to its tiny mouth. I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the night air.

The next morning, Raka was gone. Bayu said he had gone to the forest to ‘find the right spirit’, and I was left alone with the dolls. I tried to distract myself, but I kept thinking about the tapping. In the afternoon, I decided to leave, to get away from the oppressive silence. But as I packed my bag, I heard a different sound—a soft, muffled cry, like a baby muffled under a pillow. It came from the workshop. My heart hammered. I pushed open the door, and there, on the workbench, was a new doll, still wet with clay. Its face was not painted yet, but it had the unmistakable features of a newborn—and its eyes, though closed, seemed to be weeping. I reached out to touch it, and I felt a wrenching inside me, as if something was trying to claw its way out of my chest.

I ran. I fled into the forest, not caring where I was going, just wanting to escape that place. But the forest was labyrinthine, and soon I was lost. The sun dipped low, and the shadows grew long. I stumbled upon an old shrine, half-crumbled, covered in moss. There was a stone basin in front of it, filled with rain water, and floating in the water was a small wooden boat, the kind you would set adrift with a candle. But the boat was empty, and the water was dark and stagnant. I knelt there, trying to catch my breath, and I heard the tapping again—close, so close. It was coming from the hollow of a nearby tree. I looked inside, and I saw a cluster of clay dolls, all identical to the one in the workshop, all with their eyes sealed shut. And they were all tapping, in unison, against the wood.

I backing away, and I tripped over a root, landing hard. When I looked up, Raka was standing before me, his face impassive. He held a doll in his hands, the one from the workshop, now painted with a serene smile. He offered it to me. ‘It’s for you,’ he said. ‘I made it from you.’ My blood turned to ice. He meant the clay was mixed with something of mine—a strand of hair, a drop of blood I had spilt earlier. I felt my own soul being pulled, as if the doll were a magnet and I were iron.

I shook my head, but my mouth wouldn’t form words. Raka’s eyes were empty, like the dolls’. He placed the doll in my hands. It was warm, almost hot, as if it were alive. I looked down, and its eyes were open—a milky white, with no pupils. And I knew, with a terrible certainty, that my reflection had been trapped in that tiny face. I dropped it, and it shattered on the stones, but the pieces began to move, crawling together like insects, reforming. Raka just smiled. ‘It’s too late,’ he said. ‘You are the cradle now.’

I do not remember how I got back to the house. I only remember that the tapping followed me, and that Raka’s laughter echoed in my mind. I locked myself in my room for three days, not eating, not sleeping. When I finally came out, the workshop was empty. The dolls were gone. Bayu was gone. And there was a new mirror on the wall, its glass dark and cloudy. When I looked into it, I saw not my face, but the face of a child, weeping silently. I moved out the next week, but I could not escape the sound. It is with me now, as I write this—a soft, steady tapping, somewhere beneath the floorboards, waiting for me to acknowledge it. And I know, one day, I will have to answer.