Toha began to get wind of Maimunah’s odd relationship with the graveyard, like her mother before her. His face went white when a few people reported Maimunah’s intimacy with the watchman. That couldn’t be allowed. It was time to act decisively on behalf of his beloved daughter’s future. Toha offered Maimunah in marriage to Suparna, the village head, as his second wife. In his forties, Suparna owned acres of rice paddies and a jeep. Suparna understood Toha’s anxiety and, as befitting a resident of Cibeurit, prepared to come to the aid of a neighbour in need, he opened his arms wide to rescue Maimunah’s honour.

The day before her marriage to Suparna, Maimunah approached Jaja and looked at him with a bitter expression on her face.

‘Take me away,’ she whispered.

Jaja knew he would never be able to make Maimunah happy and so he murmured, ‘I only take away the dead.’

For the sake of the peace of the village, the young girl married. She lived in a house big enough to hold both her and Euis, Suparna’s first wife. Each week, Suparna spent three nights with Maimunah, while the remainder belonged to Euis. Maimunah helped Euis care for her three children in accordance with the traditional co-operation of Cibeurit women.

The killer is still keeping watch, refining her plot, sipping her drink. A killer’s instinct always ferrets out the openings that lead into any shelter. She smiles, well aware that when Maimunah was not with Suparna she met Jaja at the cemetery.

Maimunah went out at night, even when pregnant. The villagers caught whiff of her dark affair with the dwarf watchman. Several people claimed to have seen a tall woman and a dwarf entangled in the bushes. The residents of Cibeurit were not prone to gossip, but acts of abomination needed to be dealt with. When Maimunah gave birth to a baby boy, the uproar was inevitable. Aunt Icih, the healer midwife, offered her praise: ‘Handsome.’

But the baby was not handsome. Its body was small, hairy, almost rat-like. The rumours of Maimunah’s affair must have been true. Damn it to hell! Suparna punched the wall until his knuckles bled. He gave his wife, the sinner, one night to prepare to leave his home. How shameful to have a baby that resembled a rodent. A bastard child, no doubt!

The next day, the whole house was awakened by Euis’s screams. She met with a plague of rats pouring forth from her husband’s room – he had been spending one last night with Maimunah. Hordes of black, slimy animals passed between her legs. Hundreds, maybe even a thousand of them, running amok. Maimunah was nowhere to be found. Only Suparna was dead, in horrific fashion. His flesh had been shredded, as if it had been gnawed throughout the night. Blood and tufts of fur covered the ulcerations that were his eyes. The rats scurried about.