The Sickled Man

THE BUS GOING southbound should have stopped near the exit of the MRT Cubao station. It was the middle of the week and usually MMDA personnels are waiving their neon orange gloves like sending distress signals right under where MRT meets LRT 2. This morning they are nowhere to be seen. Could it be that they were sent as reinforcement to the anti-riot police? I heard there’s going to be a big rally today and a couple of buses from Central Luzon were blocked at the North Luzon Expressway.

Taking advantage of the situation, the bus took in passengers in front of Chowking EDSA-Aurora. I secured my backpack on my shoulder and went down. Passengers swarmed toward the swinging door .

A man of fourty-something wearing a worned out baseball cap wrestled his way through. He caught the cord of my iPod earphone with the tip of his cap and it fell off my right ear. My impulse was to grab the cord but the man was already staring right back at me, his bloodshot eyes floating on his dark brown face that shimmered in what I perceived was grease.

By the looks of it, he must have been waiting for me to apologize for what he thought was my Godforsaken mistake. It was momentary. And really, it was scary weird. I said, “Sorry.” And maybe he took offense at my elite university accent (it was because of my toad-like tongue, my friends would kid around) that I was sure the man’s lips moved sounding something I wasn’t able to read.

Was he cursing me? I don’t know. I shrugged it off. These people probably were yelled at all their life by their superiors that they can only find refuge in whispers. I just hope they don’t take it home to their wives and children. Besides it is a beautiful morning. I hope. I still can see Chinese clouds peaking atop the overlapping bridges of MRT and LRT 2.

I crossed the other side of EDSA. Nickelback’s “Photograph” was playing on my iPod. From here I need to walk to Baliwag Transit where I will ride a bus to our province in San Miguel, the last town of Bulacan before Gapan, Nueva Ecija. By the time I entered the terminal, Nickelback was singing the chorus the last time.

Lucky me, I was able to catch the 8 AM bus. I sat near the right-side window. Coldplay’s “In My Place” wailing on my ears, I hugged my backpack, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath.
Suddenly, I felt something was scratching my arm. When I opened my eyes, I saw trees passing by my window. No signpost. On my left, a child, fair-skinned and wearing a school uniform (white printed shirt and khaki shorts), was holding a plastic of orange softdrink on his left hand and the other stroking me with his nails. He was staring at me. Much like how the man with the cap did. Eerie. Scary weird. I reached for my pocket and gave him a five peso coin. He smiled at me, his mucous forming a checkmark from his nose across his cheek, bubbling. He took something out of his shorts and gave it to me. An old photograph of a man wearing a woven farmer’s hat. He is gripping a sickle on his right hand, an arm of the child beside him on the other.

The kid chuckled. And then a loud bang. Cacophonous screams. Glass breaking. A strong force that pushed me towards the window as if the bus tilted. A stranger’s body on me. Blood dripping from it. And darkness.

And then light.

When I opened my eyes, I was still inside the bus. We just passed by Pulilan. No kid in school uniform. No dead body weighing over me. My iPod was blinking. Lowbatt. I changed the battery.

MY LOLA WAS already waving at me with her arm like a swelling window wiper when I descended from the tricycle for what was, I concur, a half hour ride from the national highway.
While serving me Coke and pancit canton, my aunt was briefing me about the house beside ours. It was almost 12 noon and this could as well be my brunch. Leaves that were being burned with trash caught my sense of smell.

Tita mentioned there is a computer on the other house but nobody’s there. My lolo’s elder brother died last year and his relatives stayed in Manila after his interment.

One morning, Tita recounted, he was found dead. He died in his sleep. Maybe from old age or from his sickness. I don’t know. I didn’t see him. ‘Didn’t see him either the last time I went here like 8 years ago. She said he was like a breathing corpse when he died. His bones surfaced from the treatment he got for tuberculosis. My cousin said they saw fire balls fying around his room when they found him on his bed. My lola said it was his soul leaving his body.

At night, I could not sleep. I opened the window beside my bed and peaked into the darkness. I saw light escaping from the venetian blinds from the room where my lolo’s brother died. The light dissolved into the abandoned pig pen. They turn off all the lights in the house except from that one. They believe the old man pays a visit and moves his things around.

I inserted a bus ticket between the pages where I left off and hid the novel under my pillow. My cousin, who is snoring right now, told me how smart I am to read “The Idiot” when he found me flipping through the pages of the book (he doesn’t even have any idea who Fyodor Dostoevky was). I patted him on his shoulder, called his name, and woke him up.

Lola keeps the keys to the other house so I have to wake her up as well but I think she didn’t mind because I just arrived. I was still namamahay. She just reminded my cousin to take care of me (my cousin, though younger than me, is taller and more toned than my built) and I bade her “Sleep well”.

We have to cross the other side of the house where the pig pen is because the entrance is there. There is still a faint stench of pig feces. I remember there is a stream near us but I didn’t sense any movement of water. Perhaps it was already dead. I stood behind my cousin, who was trying to poke the keyhole, holding a flashlight when my arm itched. It was momentary. I remember how the nails of that kid in the bus scratched my arm. Perhaps its just the mosquitoes. Who knows.

My cousin booted the pc while I waited. Picture frames decked the living room. My cousin gave me the expansion cd for Battle Realms so I could play Winter of the Wolf before he turned off the lights. My cousin told me he needed to take a leak.

The computer screen was gleaming in the dark and over my shirt. The light illuminating from the door of that room where my lolo’s brother had died creeped into my feet. My heart was pounding with the sound from the pc speakers. I was counting the seconds from the time my cousin left.

I was about to exterminate my enemy with my clan heroes when all of a sudden the flourescent lamp from the room behind me blinked. I whistled and waited for my cousin to come back but he didn’t. I exited out of the game and browsed at the icons saved on the desktop. The lights blinked again.

Without an inkling, I turned the swivel chair towards the door and caught a faint image of a man in white long sleeves and white pants. I was screaming in my mind when the computer shut down. I had accidentally kicked the voltage regulator’s power switch. I was already panicking.
The lights from that room stopped blinking and here comes my cousin out of the darkness telling me my aunt asked him to buy something. The computer just restarted.

THAT MORNING WE went back to that house and checked out the picture frames and photo albums. To my surprise, I picked up one faded photo of an old man with a sickle and a kid standing beside him. My cousin said it was my lolo’s elder brother with the child he lost in the mountains one time they picked up camote from their farm.

I disclosed to him the man in full white that I thought I saw in the room last night and he told me my lolo’s brother wore the same kind of clothing when he was buried. I was aghast.
If he killed his son, nobody knew. He also claimed he lost his sickle on his way home.