Ghosts of Infinity: and Nine More Stories of the Supernatural (9 page)

He then looked to his left and immediately, a thin, tubular, silver garbage can caught his eye. It seemed vaguely out of place, as if it had just been placed there a minute ago, just before he arrived. He stared at it for a moment, right thumb still holding the button, and entertained the suspicion that it was not there at all when he and his wife went to work that morning.

The silver garbage bin was about three feet tall, covered by a receptacle for cigarette butts, and had a circular opening just beneath. He was sure he had never seen it before, because if he had, he would have remembered to have put out his morning cigarette on the receptacle, and not into the potted plant, just before he marched into the elevator.

He peered to his right again, saw the plant, and noticed the brightness of the hallway lights. Somehow, he felt a sense of relief, thinking that well-lit areas were a bane to criminals everywhere. With this small satisfaction, he ignored his wish to go down to reception to ask Jimmy about the stupid trash can.

His right thumb released the button.

Quickly, noiselessly, looking to his right and left and right and left again, you can never be too sure, he said to himself, Dante slid out of the elevator, still unconvinced that he was all alone on the seventh floor. He walked briskly, every step a difficult effort to conceal the sound of his feet pounding on the hard concrete floor. If there was somebody here, he thought, that person better not know about me.

As he approached their unit, almost running on tiptoe as he did so, all the lights in the hallway went out.

A strange and powerful feeling almost swept him away; his heart was pounding as he thought of being alone on the seventh floor with the lights out. There was nothing to be afraid of, he said to himself, more of a consolation than a confirmation of his faith, it was not logical to be afraid during this time. He hoped that it was just a temporary power problem, one that the building’s generators would be able to solve.

He wanted to call Jimmy. He wanted to tell him that it was not necessary to have told him that he was all alone on the floor because he didn’t need to know that. He wanted to tell Jimmy that it was perfectly natural for someone to stay on a whole floor, a whole damn floor, alone. Next time, he said, just one more time, and he would tell Jimmy off. He would give him a piece of his mind.

Dante stood there calmly in the darkness while berating Jimmy in his mind. From afar, through a window down the hall, he could see the flickering lights of the metropolis but these were not bright enough to guide himself by.

He dug his hands through his pockets to get to his lighter. There were car and apartment keys, a parking ticket, some coins, but no lighter. “Fuck,” he said, almost out loud, suddenly remembering that he left the disposable Bic lighter on top of his desk, “fuck,” he said, blaming himself for such stupidity. There was nothing else to do but to wait. He didn’t want to go around the hall, a bit afraid of his reaction should he happen to run into somebody.

Slowly, he went towards his right and grappled for the wall.

Not long after, when he heard the whirr of generators, the lights went back on and he allowed himself a nervous smile. He got off from the wall and arranged his composure. He smoothened the wrinkles of his barong.

This was enough excitement for one night, Dante was telling himself, as he urgently doubled over to their apartment, like a man trying to run away from an avid pursuer. The very moment he got to their door, he thrust his key into the doorknob and forcefully pushed it open. He turned on the lights, made a cursory examination of the place, and let out a sigh of relief.

He was home.

He found their apartment just the way they left it, newspapers on the couch, remote control on the sidetable, makeup kit by the mirror. The utter familiarity of it gave him some solace; a restful, soothing sensation that everything, after all, would turn out to be all right; it was a world removed from the chaos he had experienced just outside their door, along the halls of the seventh floor.

Dante unbuttoned his polo barong as he walked to the TV and turned it on.

He sat on the couch and saw that André Agassi was pummeling Pete Sampras, who obviously was having one of his worst games ever. The tennis match bored him and he wanted to change the channel.

And so, when Dante reached for the remote control by the table on his left, quickly, casually, naturally, with almost no effort at all, just as any man watching a boring game of tennis on cable would, he felt a gust of cold wind blast through the wide-open living room window. It got so cold that he, who had been waiting for his wife to arrive for the past half-hour, had felt it in his bones and begun to shiver.

In fact, for no reason at all, he experienced a cold chill creep up his back when he saw the thin blue curtains sway vigorously in the wind. He felt that there was something mysterious about that wind, coming in like that on a hot night like this one, catching him by surprise. Since he liked to believe that he was a logical man, he quickly dismissed the thought, although he could not ignore the chill he felt when the wind rushed in. Perhaps, he said to himself, the wind could have meant something after all, a sign perhaps, or an omen of the things that he had just gone through that night.

The cold wind, almost the same one that greeted him at the elevator, came bursting in through the wide-open windows with such force that he thought they were going to be torn off from the metal bars to which these were attached. And because the metal bars might cause damage, especially to the red-colored antique vinegar jugs they used to give their living room some character, Dante, like the dutiful husband he was, tried to get up to close the windows.

But he never got to do that.

Before Dante could even get up, somebody tapped him twice on the shoulder.

Tap, tap, it was a light tap, four fingers nimbly touching his shoulder, an act of greeting, much like what friends did to each other to call attention to something; it was a gesture of well-meaning concern.

With his left hand, Dante squeezed the area where he felt that weird sensation, of somebody tapping him lightly on the shoulder, as if he wanted to confirm whether he felt it or not, when he knew, deep inside, that there was nobody in the apartment, in fact, nobody on the whole floor, nobody except himself; that was what Jimmy had told him, he was the first one on the floor.

With much resolve, he finally looked over his shoulder.

Carljoe Javier

S
HE DIED WHEN
she was fourteen. And she never got over it.

The red taxi, the headlights that were blind but flashed blindingly, the STOP sign flung from its pole, the pole left doubled over like a skinny man who’d just taken a punch to the gut: all these images flashed, slowed, spun, gone then back then meshed all together until they overlapped and then taken apart so that they could form a scene that placed me at the street corner staring out and lost in it and around it.

It was years since. But I always thought of it.

I’d grown up, was finishing school, doing everything that a normal kid was supposed to do. Except that I joined Katy’s vigil. She waited for him, and I went to meet her and waited with her.

On those nights I finished my dinner quickly and told my mom that I’d be staying out. I still lived in the neighborhood where we grew up together, where it happened. My mother worried about me at first, but she got used to the ritual, although she nagged me about meeting girls.

But every time I got started with a girl, she came back to me. She asked me to remember her, to stay with her until she found him. It’s the least I could do for her, she said, and I knew it. So I stayed, and I waited.

The first time she came to me I was asleep. She called me to the street corner, to the STOP sign that had been put back up. I didn’t know why, but I went. She was waiting for me there.

I came nearer to see that she was like mist, floating gently above the spot where her mother had cradled her. I couldn’t really see her as a shape or form, but I could feel that she was there, could imagine her fingers wrapping gently around the STOP sign’s straightened pole. “I … I’m s-sorry, Katy.”

Although I really was sorry I think I apologized more because I was afraid that she’d come to get back at me. She nodded, motioned for me to come closer. In my mind I heard her whisper, “Wait with me.”

I moved toward her, but stopped frozen by the cold that ran through my body, sharp, a shiver that drove itself like a corkscrew into the base of my skull straight down my spine. Then the cold numbed, stayed at the back of my neck, but relaxed the rest of my body.

I sat beside her, silent. I knew that her eyes were on the street, waiting.

There was a flash of light from down the street and I felt an energy coursing through me, pushing and moving and I was on the other side of the street, staring at the STOP sign and the mist that was gone.

Then there were the screech of tires and the sick grinding of metal, thousands of fingernails clawing blackboards, the teeth grinding in response, the twisting like the sound of rusted pipes rubbed with the coarsest sandpaper. A red taxi flashed across to slam against a car, both vehicles blocking the intersection.

The drivers got out and looked at their vehicles. Then they started screaming at each other. “It wasn’t him,” I heard her say, “but I’ll find him.” And the mist was gone but I knew she was still there at the street corner.

The accidents occurred on the same date that Katy was killed, the twenty-first. Each month brought a new driver with a red taxi, but never him. And I prayed each time that it was him, so that it would be over. But at the same time I wanted it to go on, because an end to the vigil would mean an end to Katy and me.

This was my way of paying her back. And it was my only chance to be with her. The warmth of her body that I used to feel was replaced by the paralyzing shiver that she greeted me with every time. But I could still feel her, know that she was with me.

It was especially cold that night. I could remember the gnawing at the base of my spine. It wasn’t a tingle; tingles feel like fingernails. It was a gnawing cold, like jagged teeth, biting into me, sinking deep into the flesh.

I walked out onto the empty street, happy to see that even the dogs had left it to Katy and me. And I knew that there was something about that night.

People had noticed the monthly accidents at first, and there’d been much talk about them. But as the months went by the accidents lost their novelty and I could visit Katy without being bothered by people standing around the corner hoping to see an apparition.

As I walked to the corner I could feel an energy, heavy, taking my legs, coursing through them, clutching at the muscles, breaking through the flesh. And I knew this was the night that he’d come.

It hurt to remember, but that night it seemed that walking to the street corner Katy was forcing the memories into my mind, calling them out of the deep crevices where I’d buried them. And I had no choice but to relive it all.

Our maid ran up to me. “Jojo, Jojo, where have you been? Didn’t you hear what happened?” Her voice was shrill, taking on the exaggerated tone that it always had when she had some new
chismis
to share. But her face lacked the enthusiasm of discovering a revelation like Mang Tano’s driver taking Aling Linda’s maid out for a movie.

“What happened?” I looked across the street to see the signpost bent down onto the concrete. It was mangled, the STOP sign creased cleanly between the T and the O, its faded red paint falling bluntly on the gray sidewalk. A few steps away a crowd had formed, encircling her body.

“
Si
,
si
Katy …”

“
Tsk, tsk, tsk
,” I heard the sound of tongues clucking and whispers like shimmers flashing across the silence only to highlight the quiet with their leaving.

“
Grabe
.”

“
Sayang
.”

“’
Yan kasi e
—”

I heard the people around there saying these things as I came, silence giving way to speculation, then spectacle. Her mother was already there crying, holding the crumpled body in her arms, rocking back and forth on the concrete.

There was nothing for me to say or do. The idea would not come into my mind. I would not allow myself to realize what had happened.

Instead I trained my mind on my bike that had been bent beyond repair. She had loved that bike, she’d take it out for rides around the neighborhood if we were supposed to meet and I wasn’t there yet.

So she’d been biking to kill time waiting for me. It was only right that the bike was crunched beyond repair, because I’d never use it again even if I could.

I don’t remember how they took away her body or cleared the scene. I’m sure that someone pulled me away and brought me home. All I can see when I try to think of it is the bike’s bent frame and the handlebars that were still intact.