Chapter 1: Roots in the Red Soil
The earth in the valley did not just hold water; it held grudges.
Laya knelt in the dirt, her knees sinking into the ochre-stained mud that defined the highlands. The soil here was a violent shade of red, a color the elders claimed came from a great battle fought before the mountains had names. To Laya, it just looked like dried blood. She dug her iron trowel into the earth, the metal scraping against a hidden stone with a sound that set her teeth on edge.
Beside her, Aunt Sabel was silent. Sabel was a woman carved from hardwood, aged prematurely by the sun and the weight of a marriage that was less a partnership and more a slow-motion collision. Her hands, calloused and stained by the juice of yams, trembled as she reached for a stray weed.
"The wind is changing," Sabel whispered, not looking up.
"It smells of sulfur and old rain." Laya paused, wiping sweat from her brow with the back of a mud-streaked hand. She looked toward the edge of the clearing. There, perched on stilts like a predatory insect, stood their home. It was a structure of bamboo and thatch, grayed by years of monsoon seasons, but it felt heavy—as if the malice contained within its walls had increased its physical weight.
On the porch sat Uncle Tiyago. He was a large man, but his size wasn’t composed of healthy muscle; it was a bloated, sour thickness. He sat in a chair of heavy narra wood, his eyes hooded, watching them work. Tiyago did not believe in the "softness" of the modern world, nor did he care for the communal grace of their tribe. He believed in the old ways of the fist. His "evil attitude," as the villagers whispered behind closed doors, was a palpable thing—a dark cloud that followed him even into the brightest sunlight.
"Laya!" Tiyago’s voice cut through the humid air. It was a raspy, grating sound, like a blade being sharpened on a whetstone. "The sun is high. Why are the baskets not full?"
Laya felt the familiar cold spike of fear in her gut. She was twenty-two, strong and capable, but in the presence of Tiyago, she felt like a child again, hiding under the floorboards while he broke her aunt's spirit with words that cut deeper than knives.
"The soil is dry, Uncle," she called back, her voice steady despite the tremor in her heart.
"The tubers are deep this season." Tiyago spat a dark stream of betel nut juice over the railing. It splashed onto the red soil, looking indistinguishable from the earth itself.
"Excuses are for the weak. Work faster, or you’ll find your dinner is as empty as your baskets."
He stood up, his joints popping. Even from the distance of the garden, Laya could see the unnatural pallor of his skin. He had been sick for weeks—a lingering, wet cough that sounded like something was trying to claw its way out of his chest—but his cruelty had only sharpened with his illness. It was as if he were trying to spend every last ounce of his malice before his body gave out.
As the sun began to dip behind the jagged peaks of the mountains, casting long, distorted shadows across the valley, the atmosphere shifted. The birds, usually a cacophony of shrieks and whistles, went suddenly, unnervingly silent.
"Laya," Sabel breathed, her eyes wide as she stared at the porch.
Tiyago had stopped moving. He was leaning against the bamboo railing, his head tilted at an impossible angle. A sudden, violent spasm racked his frame. He clutched his chest, his fingers digging into the rot-resistant wood of the house. He didn't cry out. He simply let out a long, wheezing breath that seemed to go on for an eternity—a sound like air escaping a punctured lung.
Then, he collapsed.
The sound of his body hitting the bamboo floorboards was hollow, a dull thud that echoed into the red soil.
Sabel dropped her trowel. She didn't run. She stood there, frozen, a strange mixture of terror and relief washing over her face. Laya stood slowly, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
"Is he…?" Sabel couldn't finish the sentence.
"Stay here, Auntie," Laya said, though her legs felt like lead.
She climbed the ladder to the porch. The air around Tiyago was thick with a sour, metallic smell. He lay face down, his hands still curled into claws. Laya reached out, her fingers hovering near his neck. There was no warmth. There was no pulse. His skin felt like cold, wet leather.
For the first time in her life, the shadow over the house seemed to lift.
"He’s gone," Laya called down, her voice breaking.
But as she looked at the red soil below, she remembered the elders' warnings. In their tribe, death was not an exit; it was a doorway. And for a man as wicked as Tiyago, the doorway would not be easily closed.
She looked back at the corpse. For a split second, she thought she saw his fingers twitch against the floorboards, but she dismissed it as a trick of the fading light. She didn't know yet that the "Roots in the Red Soil" went deeper than the plants they grew. She didn't know that the earth was already rejecting him, and that the nightmare was not ending—it was only beginning.
By the time the moon rose, the village elders were already approaching, their torches flickering like fallen stars in the dark. They carried the burial shrouds and the sacred oils, their faces grim. They knew what Laya did not: that an evil man’s death is a heavy burden for the living to carry.
Laya stood over the body, her shadow stretching long and distorted across the porch as the sun finally surrendered to the horizon. The heat of the day lingered, trapped in the wood and the red earth below, but a sudden, unnatural chill seemed to radiate from Tiyago’s remains.
" Is he truly gone?" Sabel’s voice came from the bottom of the ladder. She sounded small, like a child asking if the storm had passed.
"His heart is silent, Auntie," Laya replied. She looked down at her own hands; they were stained red from the garden soil, making it look as though she were the one who had struck him down.
Sabel climbed the ladder slowly, her movements hesitant. When she reached the porch, she didn't weep. She simply stared at the man who had been her tormentor for thirty years. Tiyago’s face, even in death, carried a sneer. His jaw was locked tight, and his eyes—half-open—glinted like dull yellow glass in the twilight.
"We must call the elders," Sabel whispered.
"Before the night air settles into his bones."
The Arrival of the Old Ones
The village did not need a messenger. In the countryside, the silence that follows a sudden death has a specific weight to it. Soon, the flicker of torches appeared on the narrow mountain path. The elders arrived in a procession of three: Apo Kaido, the eldest of the tribe; Ina Mareng, the keeper of the burial songs; and a young acolyte carrying a bundle of dried herbs and jars of vinegar.
Apo Kaido stepped onto the porch. He was a man who looked as though he were made of the very bark of the ancient trees. He leaned over Tiyago, his blind eyes seeming to see more than Laya’s ever could. He placed a gnarled hand on Tiyago’s forehead and immediately pulled it back as if burned.
"The blood has curdled quickly," Kaido muttered, his voice a low rumble.
"There is a sourness here. A man who dies with a heart full of thorns does not leave the world easily."
"We will prepare him for the ritual," Ina Mareng said, though her voice lacked its usual steady rhythm. She looked at Laya. "Boil the water. Mix it with the vinegar and the crushed ginger. We must wash away the physical filth before the spirit tries to claw its way back in."
For the next several hours, Laya was a ghost in her own home. She hauled heavy pots of steaming water while the elders stripped Tiyago of his sweat-stained clothes. The interior of the house became a fever dream of steam and shadows. The scent of vinegar and ginger fought against the rising odor of decay—an odor that seemed to be progressing much faster than it should have.
As Laya helped turn the heavy body, she noticed something that made her blood run cold. Around Tiyago’s neck, a faint, dark bruising was beginning to form—not from an external force, but as if his own veins were turning black beneath the skin.
"Do not stare at the marks," Ina Mareng hissed, sensing Laya’s hesitation.
"The darkness in him is looking for a place to hide. Keep your head down and scrub."
They wrapped him in a hand-woven shroud, binding his feet and hands with strips of unbleached cloth. According to their tradition, the dead must be bound, so their spirit understands that their time of walking the earth has ended. But as Apo Kaido tied the final knot at Tiyago’s ankles, the old man’s brow furrowed.
"The knots feel loose," Kaido whispered to himself. "No matter how tight I pull, the fiber feels as though it wants to snap.'
By midnight, the house was prepared. Tiyago lay on a raised bamboo platform in the center of the main room. The villagers had gathered outside, sitting in a circle around a low fire. No one entered the house except the immediate family and the elders.
Laya sat in the corner, her back against the bamboo wall. She watched Sabel, who was sitting near Tiyago’s head. Her aunt looked transfixed, staring at the shroud as if she expected it to breathe.
"You should sleep, Laya," Sabel said, her voice hollow.
"I can't," Laya replied.
The air felt thick, pressurized. Outside, the wind picked up, rattling the dry palm fronds of the roof. To Laya, it didn't sound like wind; it sounded like fingers scratching at the thatch, trying to get in—or perhaps, trying to get out.
Suddenly, a low, wet sound broke the silence of the room. Gurgle.
Laya froze. It came from the shroud. It sounded like someone trying to swallow through a throat full of sand.
"Apo?" Laya called out softly toward the porch where the elder was meditating.
"It is only the gases leaving the body," Ina Mareng said, stepping into the room from the kitchen. But she was holding a protective amulet of shark teeth and boar tusks tightly in her hand.
"The body mimics life when it is newly dead. Do not let your mind wander into the dark."
But Laya’s eyes remained fixed in the center of the shroud, where Tiyago’s chest lay. For a flickering second, the white cloth seemed to rise and fall. Just once. A shallow, stolen breath.
She looked at the red soil through the gaps in the floorboards. The earth was waiting. But as the first night of the vigil dragged on, Laya realized that the red soil was not reclaiming her uncle. It was rejecting him. And if the earth did not take him, he would have nowhere else to go but back.
