The Offering

 

The old Betawi man stood at Abdul’s doorway, his weathered face cracked into a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. In his gnarled hands, he balanced a rantang—one of those stacked metal food containers that reminded Abdul of his childhood in Jakarta, before the city swallowed his neighborhood whole.

“Nyorog,” the old man said simply, extending the container.

Abdul hesitated. He knew what nyorog was, of course. Every Betawi kid grew up with the tradition—delivering food to elders before Ramadan, seeking forgiveness, maintaining connections. His mother had dragged him along on nyorog visits until he was old enough to protest. But this wasn’t Jakarta. This was Condet, a place where the old ways were supposed to be dying out, smothered by high-rises and shopping malls.

And Abdul didn’t know this man.

“Take it,” the man insisted, his voice surprisingly strong. The rantang trembled slightly in his outstretched hands. “It’s almost Sha’ban. Time for nyorog.”

Something cold slithered down Abdul’s spine. Sha’ban had ended yesterday. Today was the first day of Ramadan.

(Christ on a bike, I can feel it now, that moment when something’s wrong, just wrong, but your damn social programming keeps you nodding and smiling anyway. I’ve seen it a thousand times in a thousand small towns, from the rustbelt to the heartland, from old mill villages to backroad crossroads. It’s the same in Jakarta, I guess. The same everywhere.)

“Thank you, Pak,” Abdul said, taking the offering. The metal was warm against his palms. Too warm. “May I know your name?”

The old man’s smile widened, revealing teeth stained dark with betel juice. “You know me,” he said softly. “From before.”

A memory flickered in Abdul’s mind—a story his grandmother had told him when he was small, about how nyorog began. Not the sanitized Islamic version they taught in schools, but the older one, about offerings to Dewi Sri and spirits that hungered for more than rice and dodol.

“I think you might have the wrong house,” Abdul said, trying to hand back the rantang.

The old man’s hands had disappeared into the folds of his baju koko. “No mistake. I know every home in Betawi Kota and Betawi Pinggiran. I’ve been making my nyorog since before your grandfather’s grandfather drew breath.”

The old man turned to leave, his movements suddenly fluid for someone who appeared so ancient. He paused at the bottom step of Abdul’s small porch and looked back over his shoulder.

“Aren’t you going to open it?” he asked. His eyes seemed darker now, pupils expanded to swallow the irises whole. “It’s rude to leave an offering untouched.”

Abdul’s fingers moved to the latch of the rantang without his permission. The metal had grown hotter, nearly scalding his fingertips. He knew he shouldn’t open it. Every instinct screamed against it. Yet his thumb flicked the clasp.

The lid swung open.

(You never forget the smell of death, not really. You think you have, and then one day it finds you again, and your brain says, “Oh yeah, that.” Like remembering an old classmate’s face.)

Inside wasn’t food. Inside was earth—dark, moist soil that writhed with pale things that weren’t quite worms. And atop this miniature graveyard sat a folded piece of yellowed paper.

Abdul couldn’t stop himself from plucking it free and unfolding it with trembling fingers. The handwriting was in an archaic Jawi script, the kind nobody had used for a century or more.

“Baritan becomes barokah,” it read. “The old gods become the new. What was sacrifice remains sacrifice.”

When Abdul looked up, the old man was gone. Down the narrow street, he could see figures moving from house to house, each carrying identical rantang containers. In the gathering dusk, their traditional Betawi clothes seemed to shimmer and change, revealing older garments beneath, predating even the arrival of Islam.

The dirt in the container began to rise, forming a small mound that pulsed like a heart.

Abdul understood then. Nyorog hadn’t evolved from baritan at all. It had merely disguised it. The offerings hadn’t stopped; they’d just changed form. And now, with the tradition fading, forgetting, the oldest version was resurfacing.

He slammed the lid shut, but it was too late. The latch wouldn’t catch. Something inside was pushing, testing, seeking egress.

(You want to know the real horror? It’s not monsters or ghosts or whatever crawled out of that container. It’s the realization that everything you thought you knew is just a thin layer of paint over something older and hungrier. The names change. The appetites don’t.)

In the distance, the call to prayer began, announcing the first evening of Ramadan. Abdul stood frozen on his porch, holding an offering that wasn’t meant for him, but would take from him nonetheless.

And all across Jakarta, in neighborhoods where Betawi culture still clung to life—in Kalibata and Pancoran, in pockets of resistance against modernity—other containers were opening. Other offerings were being accepted.

The nyorog had come home, and it was hungry.