But that is in the future. The present volume of Afraid: The Best Philippine Ghost Stories, contains well-written yet accessible work from some of the best writers in the country. Also included here are the stories of young writers out to make their deep impression in the field. Altogether now, the contributors to this landmark book include Carlos Bulosan, Willard Cheng, Jaime Dasca Doble, Jose Ma. Espino, Anna Maria M. Gonzales, Gad Lim, Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo, Joe Quirino, Edilberto K. Tiempo and myself.
As aperitif for our new book, I am reprinting two short excerpts from Afraid: The Best Philippine Ghost Stories. Here goes:
I had been pulling out his white hairs using tweezers. Five white hairs meant five centavos, and business was brisk. Fifteen white hairs meant a bottle of RC Cola. I asked him about the small square thing wrapped in layers of old cotton, hung on a string and dangling from the ceiling just outside my window. "That is your umbilical cord. The doctor, who was my friend, wrapped it in cotton, and then gave it for me to hang from our ceiling, so that you will not wander far from home."
The cool wind rising seemed to move him to tell more stories.
"It was the night you were born. We still did not have a jeep then, so I was taking the bicycle that night, on my way to the hospital. I was in front of the huge balete tree, its roots like knotted arms, when I felt the bicycle becoming heavier. It was not an uphill climb, but why the suddenly heavy load?"
By this time, I had stopped probing my father’s head for my RC Cola.
"Suddenly, I know that somebody was sitting on the back of my bicycle. That she was a woman in white, with long black hair streaming in the night, and that she had no face. In my mind I talked to her to please go away, my first child will be born tonight and my wife has been going through labor pains the last two days –"
"And then what happened, Papa?" I asked.
"She did let go, in the end, and when I reached the hospital, you were just being born, bald and red and sticky all over – and squealing madly at the world."
The moment we entered Escopa, I sensed a familiar feeling wash over me: I was leaving behind the world I know, and entering another. On the narrow streets, the half-naked children were running after each other, screaming, playing tag or hopscotch, pulling ropes tied to the noses of empty sardine cans set on wooden wheels. Fringing the alley were the lean-tos, with their grimy skin of plywood walls, the corrugated-iron roofs held in place by rocks or flat rubber tires; women in faded floral house dresses washing clothes in the rusty artesian well, or gossiping, or sitting in rows of threes, picking each other’s lice; older men fetching water, naked from the waist up, their bloated bellies like the bellies of bullfrogs; some men with multicolored tattoos of birds and snakes on their biceps and chests, some with tattoos of hearts lacerated by an arrow; younger men drinking beer at eight o’ clock in the morning in front of the variety store loud with the morning melodrama from the radio, the men wearing double-knit trousers worn at the knees, several days’ beard and moustache on their faces, their eyes dark and shifty. And in the air, the heavy smells of the place: uncollected garbage, brackish water, a stink strong enough to knock you down. But on and on we walked, into alleys becoming narrower and narrower, coiling and uncoiling before us like intestines.
Finally, we stopped before a lean-to set apart from the rest. "Number 28," Mrs. Santos said, reading the number painted in red on the wooden wall. Its wooden walls were thin but not dirty; its corrugated-iron roofs were nailed properly into place. A small crowd had begun to gather inside, but I knew the four thick wooden posts would hold.
We called out our greetings. A man who must be in his mid-forties, but looked much older, looked out of the window. He nodded in greeting, and was soon rushing down the stairs.
Our teacher tried to smile. "Good morning. I’m Mrs. Santos, the teacher of Felix and this is Danilo, the president of their class."
The man, who introduced himself as the father of Felix, nodded and tried to smile. "Please come in," he said. He had a firm, strong face, and skin like wood that had been soaked in the rain for a long time.
We mumbled our condolences, saying we should have come yesterday when the body of Felix had been retrieved from the bed of the mountain lake, but we heard about it only late at night.
"Thank you for coming," the father said. His eye bags bulged. "Please follow me upstairs."
There were about 20 people inside the cramped living room that also served as the kitchen and dining area. They all stared at us the moment we entered the house. On the wall hung a calendar-poster of God the Father, His long white beard flowing down. He was surrounded by cherubim whose bodies were lopped off from the necks down. All the heavenly figures floated on a dirty, yellow cloud.
After Mrs. Santos had introduced herself, the mother of Felix stood up. She was a large woman with a tired face. Her hair fell on her shoulders like tangled cobwebs. She walked over and gripped the hands of Mrs. Santos.
In a tight voice the mother said: "I did not allow him to go out with his friends, Ma’am. He said they’d swim only in a shallow mountain lake in Boso-boso, five of them, their last excursion together before summer begins. Before they are separated from each other. But I did not allow him –"
"I understand . . . I’m sorry," was all Mrs. Santos could say.
The mother continued: "My son is gone, Ma’am. He has left us, he who is the brightest among my brood of 10, the eldest who promised to send his younger siblings to school, my dearest Felix. I’m only a laundrywoman, and my husband a carpenter, but we would have done everything so he could finish college."
The father turned away and went to the window.
Mrs. Santos and I walked over to the coffin of Felix. Its texture was rough and it was painted dirty white, unlike the old worn pair of black shoes – with its lines like an old person’s face – the shoes Felix had dyed and kept clean every day of the school year.
Sticks of tall yellow candles guttered and glowed around the coffin. I tried to pray, but instead, in my mind ran images of Felix: the Felix who laughed so loud one teacher told the class he was fit enough to be tied, and the Felix who sometimes stared into space, as if waiting for someone to come home. I would have joined them that day on the lake, but remembered I was in my room that day, brooding.
An old woman, who must have been Felix’s aunt, offered us a glass of Coke and a plateful of Fita biscuits. As we ate, various voices floated in the thick, cramped air, merging with the heat-haze that only sharpened all the other smells in the slums.
Yes, the voices. They told of how Felix could not be found by his four young friends who dove and scoured the very bed of the lake again and again. Of how, in growing panic, the young friends ran and ran until they saw a clump of thatched huts and told the people of the accident. Of how the mountain folk told them that a nymph lives in the mountain lake and takes the life of a young man every year, and so far, no bodies have surfaced yet. Of how the mountain folk rented a jeepney that took them to the mayor, who in turn contacted the Navy. Of how a Navy frogman in his webbed limbs dove into the lake of 15 feet, thinking this would be an easy job, scouring the shallow depths of a landlocked body of water. But he surfaced again and again, shaking his head.
Of how he dove again into the darkness of the lake, when he saw through his mask a woman in white. Her head was bowed low, her long, black hair streaming down her face. When the diver sensed she had no face, he wanted to flee. But he stayed when he finally saw Felix, bloated beyond belief, lying near the feet of the woman. Of how the Navy frogman talked to the woman in his thoughts, begging her to please let go of the boy. He was reminded of his own son, who must be as young as this boy lost in the lake. Of how the woman in white finally turned her back and was gone, swallowed by the gloom of the lake.
Of how the Navy frogman cradled the broken body, like father to son, and then swam up, breaking the water’s surface, finally back into the world of air and light. Of how the moment the bloated body of Felix was laid gently on a flat rock, his eardrums exploded. Of how the old women of the mountain shook their heads and clucked their tongues in both pity and fear. Of how the mortician in town had much difficulty putting color back on the face of Felix, which had begun to assume the grayness of a lake on top of a mountain.