The Mangosteen Grove

My first brush with the uncanny happened when I was nine, during a summer visit to my grandmother’s house in the rural highlands of Java. My mother’s family had a modest compound there, a cluster of wooden buildings with tin roofs, surrounded by a yard that sloped down to a dense grove of mangosteen trees. My cousins and I would spend our days chasing chickens, climbing the low branches, and pretending the grove was a forbidden kingdom. That evening, after a supper of fried rice and pickled vegetables, my cousins had me running through the house in a game of tag. Exhausted, I slipped out the back door, which led to a narrow porch overlooking the yard. My grandmother was napping in her chair, and the kitchen lamp cast a warm, jaundiced glow through the open doorway. I sat on the wooden steps, catching my breath, listening to the cicadas and the distant barking of a village dog.

It was around ten at night when I noticed the mangosteen grove was not as still as it should be. The trees, usually black silhouettes against the starry sky, seemed to have a deeper darkness between them, almost like a gap in the world. I squinted, thinking it was just my eyes adjusting, when I heard my name. Not my full name, but the shortened version my cousins used. ‘Lita’—first a soft whisper from the direction of the grove, then another from the left, then a chorus of murmurs, all overlapping, all speaking my name in a sibilant hiss. My breath caught. I looked back at the house; the kitchen was empty, the lamp flickered, and the door seemed to have swung shut, dimming the light.

The whispers grew louder, more insistent, and I felt a pull, as if invisible strings were tugging at my clothes. I wanted to run inside, but my legs were frozen. Instead, I watched the darkness between the mangosteen trees coalesce into a shape—not human, but like a tall, slender pillar of smoke with many thin appendages waving gently. It did not have a face, but I knew it was looking at me. The whispers became words, broken phrases: ‘Come play,’ ‘We see you,’ ‘Beneath the fruit.’ I felt a cold sweat on my neck. My grandmother’s voice called from inside, ‘Lita, close the door!’ and the spell broke. I scrambled to my feet, stumbled back into the house, and slammed the door behind me. My grandmother was still in her chair, but her eyes were open, and she looked at me with a strange, knowing expression. She asked, ‘You heard them, didn’t you?’ I nodded, unable to speak. She sighed, ‘The mangosteen grove has a memory. Those who died in the war that never left. They call to the lonely.’ She told me to never answer, and to always keep the back door shut after sunset.

I never forgot that night, but I didn’t see the whispering shapes again for many summers. I grew up, visited less, and eventually moved abroad. Two decades later, my grandmother passed away, and I returned to the compound to settle her affairs. The mangosteen grove had grown wild, the trees taller and denser, their dark fruit hanging like swollen beads. On the night of her funeral, after the prayers and the communal meal, I found myself standing at the back door, the same steps I had sat on as a child. The kitchen light was off, but the moon was high, casting a silver sheen on the leaves. And then I heard it again—my name, but this time it was my full name, ‘Ayu Lestari,’ whispered from a hundred directions, each one clearer than the last. The shadow between the trees leaned out, and I saw not a pillar of smoke, but a figure with my grandmother’s face, but with too-wide eyes and a mouth that opened like a wound. It said, ‘You came back. Now we can finish the game.’ A cold hand grasped my ankle, and I realized the grove had been waiting for me all along, that my grandmother had made a bargain to keep them at bay, and now her debt had passed to me. As I was pulled into the darkness, I heard the mangosteen fruit thud to the ground, one by one, like soft footsteps.