Ghosts of Infinity: and Nine More Stories of the Supernatural (16 page)

“Paco,” he whispered, unbelieving.

Stella looked up from her feast, cat-eyes glowing blue and green in the darkness, cat-eyes Dorian knew very well despite the horrible, shriveled body that hosted it now.

“Papa,” she said.

“Oh, baby,” Dorian said softly, rocking back and forth on his heels. “Oh, baby.” Tears were streaming down his cheeks. He was only dimly aware of his throat letting out a soft, strangled sound that was a cross between a sob and a moan, interspersed every so often by Paco’s name.

Dorian walked to the kitchen. His mind tried to deny everything, tried to arrange the events so that he didn’t have to face them. Coffee. That should calm him. Yet while his mind debated on whether he should add anything to his coffee or not, his body moved mechanically to the stove. His left hand reached for the gas valve, unplugging it, while his right turned the thing on. Still debating on how he should make his coffee, he absently swiped a box of matches from the kitchen counter and walked back to the study.

Stella was still there. She had abandoned Paco’s insides and was happily gnawing on his head. Paco’s eye sockets were empty. Dorian knew that Stella liked to suck out the eyes of her prey, rolling them around her mouth first before popping them with her teeth and swallowing them whole.

The sight moved him. Father and daughter, together in the most intimate, most literal sense. Was this one of his hopelessly tragic romances? He sat down beside the body and placed Paco’s head on his lap. Stella didn’t complain, continued to dine on Paco’s skull while Dorian stroked what remained of his lover’s face. He was still crying, sobs caught in his throat even as hot tears streamed down his already make-up streaked cheeks. He didn’t say anything, afraid that he would explode and that it would be a bad example for his daughter.

He picked Stella up, cradling her against his breast. She was a bit miffed at being interrupted in the middle of her meal, something she made clear by biting and scratching at him half-heartedly. When he wouldn’t let go, she gave up and snuggled against him, her features losing their feral edge, slowly returning to those of a baby girl’s. How he loved her. How she trusted him.

Slowly, the distinct smell of gas filled the house. Black. He would have black coffee. But he had to heat the water first. Heat it so that the water would be scalding hot, just the way Paco liked it. Him and Paco and Stella. The perfect family. Him and Paco and—

Dorian bent low, planting a kiss on Paco’s bloody lips, which had been eaten away to expose teeth and bone, tasting meat and blood, tasting Paco as he really was, tasting Paco for the very last time. Holding Stella near, he produced the matchbox and took out a matchstick.

“Love you both,” he whispered. Match head hit sandpaper, and sparks flew.

The firemen searched everywhere, but they didn’t search hard enough, for if they had looked inside the burned-out husk of the old acacia that used to stand in the yard, they would have found the body of a two year-old child, its features charred beyond recognition except for the two cat-eyes, one green and one blue, that stared straight up at the stars that dotted the cold, dark night.

I
N HER DREAMS
of November Isabel was always free. Consider: November in the district of Novaliches is the perfect medias res. The anticipation of the holidays makes the children eager for play. Earlier, and the floods found them mired indoors. Later, and they were off to the relatives and to tedious reunions.

At age four, November for Isabel was a time to raise her eyes to the sky, to beseech rain and go running from the house after school to catch the pre-dusk clouds turn orange.

That day, Isabel ran out of the house and was promptly hit by a speeding
jeepney
. The impact was terrific. The jeep was doing 80kph on a late Friday afternoon, along a narrow, newly cemented street.

Isabel was thrown into the air, the ribbons in her hair coming undone, and flipped twice before landing beside a leaking fire hydrant. She came down, head first. Half her skull was shattered, her left arm twisted from the collision.

The jeepney screeched to a halt. The driver got out. He inspected the blood on the bumper, walked over to Isabel and squatted down beside her gory mess. He ran an exhausted hand over his face.

Isabel looked up and said, “I’m sorry.”

The driver smirked, nodded and admonished her for running right out the street just like that when she knew there were cars zipping about. She should be inside. It was getting dark. It was a school day and she should be doing homework. Where the heck was she going anyway? He asked as he helped her up.

Isabel pointed to the tall water tower that served as the community’s back-up supply. “To look at the clouds,” she added then asked the driver to pull her twisted arm. She screamed as it was set back. She flexed her fingers, knocked her jaw back into place and pushed back her right eye, which had popped out when she hit the pavement.

The driver shrugged, got one of her slippers from under the jeep and gathered up the fractured parts of her skull. Tsk, her parents would be mad at him. Where were they, anyway?

Isabel shrugged, pointed at her open, bleeding head. “I can’t see it. You’ll have to put it back, please.”

It took the driver an hour to put Isabel back together again. He then told Isabel to get into the jeep and stay put. When she was peacefully distracted and fiddling with the radio, he got out a small, empty Coleman. With it he then went back and forth, alternately fetching water from the leaking hydrant and washing Isabel’s blood off the street. When only a brownish stain remained it was already too dark to see. He told Isabel to postpone her trip to the water tower for tomorrow and just stay home.

Isabel nodded.

The driver scratched his head, pursed his lips and remembered something. He took a piece of paper, a receipt, from his wallet and scribbled on its blank side. “Look, give this to your parents, okay. Tell them that if they need anything, to just call me,” he handed her the receipt.

Isabel nodded.

The driver got in and Isabel watched him speed off. She watched him rush to the intersection down the street and get smashed by a truck that had been speeding from the blind alley on the left. The impact was terrific. The truck hit the jeep exactly at the driver’s side. Isabel saw the jeepney driver thrown from his seat, the momentum carrying him right out the opposite door. He hung supine on the street, arms stretched out above him, while his feet were caught on the right seat’s edge. His body made a 45-degree angle with the totaled jeep. His left side was a bloody pulp.

Isabel turned over the receipt and read the driver’s phone number and his address. He lived just three streets down. Below these, in a strong and heavy hand he had written: “I accidentally hit your daughter today. I’m sorry.”

She looked over at the smoking wreckage down the street. Her driver was trying feebly to raise a fist and to curse the truck driver with a toothless mouth. It would take them more than an hour to reassemble him, she surmised. She looked at the note again before she tore it up and threw it to the gutter.

She then made her way to the water tower.

Adel Gabot

Adel Gabot harbors a secret love for all things weird and wonderful, which he keeps under wraps most of the time for the sake of his credibility among his geek friends, but truth be told he’d much rather be Stephen King than himself. Adel studied Journalism in UP, but worked in brodcasting for two decades before finding his way back to full-time writing and editing. He’s edited several magazines and contributes to others, but cherishes doing the occasional fiction piece. He’s won a few awards for his fiction, including a Palanca, and some of his radio work have earned him a CMMA. Currently he’s an editorial consultant for
m/PH Magazine
, and the editor-in-chief of
Manual
. Despite his proclivity for things that go bump in the night, Adel says he really has the heart of a small child; it’s in a jar on his desk.

Angelo R. Lacuesta

Angelo R. Lacuesta has participated in several local and international writing workshops and has received several Palanca and Graphic awards for his fiction.
Life Before X and Other Stories
, his first collection of fiction, won the Madrigal-Gonzalez Best First Book Award and the National Book Award. He was a fellow in both the UP and the Dumaguete writers’ workshops.

Emil M. Flores

Emil M. Flores is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English and Comparative Literature in the University of the Philippines in Diliman where he teaches College English, American Literature, Anglo-American Science Fiction and Fantasy, and Creative Writing (Fiction and Comics). He received his MA in English from Virginia Tech and is currently pursuing a doctorate degree in Creative Writing in UP Diliman. He was a writing fellow at the UP Writers’ Workshop in 1995 and has written essays, short stories, and poems for journals and anthologies such as
Sleepless in Manila
published by Milflores,
Dream Noises
published by Anvil, and
With Flute, and Drum, and Pen
published by the National Library of Poetry in the United States. He has also adapted Philippine short stories into comics form for the UP Press.

Anna Felicia C. Sanchez

Anna Felicia C. Sanchez won the Supernatural Story Writing Contest sponsored by the UP Institute of Creative Writing in 2003. She graduated the same year with a degree in BA Creative Writing from the University of the Philippines Diliman, where she has also won awards for her fiction in the Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio Literary Contest. She was a fellow in the UP and Dumaguete National Writers’ Workshops, and has placed second in the full-length play category of the 54th Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature.

Anna is currently pursuing her master’s degree in UP. She lives in Marikina where she shares her room with her hairy half-Japanese husband.

Carl Javier

Carl Javier graduated from UP with a degree in English Studies Major in Creative Writing. He is currently taking his MA in Creative Writing in the same university. He was a fellow of the 2003 Dumaguete National Writers’ Workshop. He spends most days attached to a video game system.

Vlad Gonzales

Si Vlad Gonzales ay guro ng Filipino at Panitikan sa Ateneo de Manila University at kasalukuyang kumukuha ng MA sa Filipino sa Unibersidad ng Pilipinas. Naging kasapi siya ng UP Ugnayan ng Manunulat at UP Writers’ Club, mahilig magsulat ng mga kuwento, paminsan-minsan ay tumutula’t kumukuha ng litrato. Noong bata pa siya’y nakaengkuwentro siya ng mga itim na espiritu, multong-sanggol na tumatakbo, white lady na kabuhok ng nanay niya, at isang malignong kamukhang-kamukha niya, nakasuot ng pula’t nagdodrowing sa pader, ngumiti pa sa kanya.

Virginia Mercado Villanueva

Dr. Virginia Mercado Villanueva was born on September 2, 1939 in Jolo, Sulu of Hermenigildo Mercado, a Christian schoolteacher from Tanjay, Negros Oriental and Dayangdayang Nora Maulana, a Muslim Tausug princess of the Sultanate of Sulu and Tawi-tawi. She went to the University of the Philippines, graduating in 1961 with the degree of Doctor of Medicine. She married a doctor from Masbate, Dr. Oscar Villanueva, and both practiced their profession in Jolo, Sulu for over thirty years. She retired from active practice in 2001 and went back to school, in the Graduate Studies of the University of the Philippines, to pursue a master’s degree in Creative Writing.

In February 2004, she was awarded the National Commission on Culture and the Arts’ (NCCA) Writers’ Prize 2003 for her children’s stories compiled under the title
Stories from the South
. In March 2004, she won third prize for her entry in the Creative Nonfiction category and first honorable mention in the Children’s Story category in UP’s Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio Literary Contest.

Roel Hoang Manipon

Roel Hoang Manipon is a journalist, poet, award-winning fictionist, essayist, cultural researcher, traveler and travel writer, sometime painter, actor, amateur photographer, translator, strip dancer, editorial and PR consultant, cultural researcher, masseur, part-time model, and a natural cook.

Born in Da Nang, Vietnam of a Vietnamese mother and an Ilocano father, he is a graduate of Journalism and Literature from the University of Santo Tomas.

In 1995, he was a fellow for poetry of the University of the Philippines National Writers’ Workshop in Baguio City and the Second Iligan National Writers’ Workshop in Iligan City. He was awarded the Gantimpalang Ani first prize for his short story in Filipino, “Bagyo at Balang,” in 1991.

His journalism, reviews and creative writing have been published in various newspapers, books, and magazines including
The Business Daily
, the
Philippine Post, Philippine Panorama, Philippines Free Press, Intsik: An Anthology of Chinese-Filipino Writings
, and
The Likhaan Book of Drama
.