Midnight Stories: My brother’s monster

About Midnight Stories: October is the month of spooks and things that go bump in the night, so what better than a series of scary stories to get you in the mood for Halloween? Read on.

It was the summer my youngest brother would develop a fear of the dark.

Not merely nyctophobia, but nyctohylophobia, or the fear of dark wooded areas.

Where we used to live, a thicket of old trees stood across a narrow asphalt road owned by the Malonzos.

A barbed wire fence ran along the property that grew every fruit tree imaginable – mango, guava, macopa, santol, lanzones…home to various species of web weavers used in spider fighting.

Spider fighting was a game that was a favorite summer pastime among boys my brother’s age in the late seventies: it begins by placing two spiders at opposite ends of a stick and encouraging them to fight.

Prized fighters were kept in match boxes by the proud owners.

Whenever my brother and the neighborhood boys entered the canopied clearing with their poles in the afternoons, the caretaker would chase them off the property. So they took to slipping into the area at twilight.

The day he met his monster, my brother had three playmates in tow, their ages ranging from six to eight. Slipping quietly into the area and keeping close to the undergrowth, they went about their business of hooking the web weavers with their poles and securing them in their individual matchboxes.

They worked furiously as the gloaming deepened into dusk.

Minutes later, my brother jumped over our fence and rushed into the house, locking the doors behind him. Panting he pulled a chair near where I sat.

“Dete,” he said almost in a half-whisper, shaking like a leaf, “what does a kapre look like?”

I wouldn’t know, I answered. I’ve never seen one.

Looking sideways at him, I saw him stealing furtive glances at the gap in our roof over the unfinished terrace.

“Can they fly or climb, do you think?” he persisted.

“Why do you want to know?” I had demanded.

Then he told me. And I wish I hadn’t asked.

As they were making their way from tree to tree in the Malonzo property, one of the boys pointed a shaky finger at a spot in a big mango tree where the branches started sprouting from the trunk to form the crown.

There in its bole was a face: with glaring eyes, a nose and a mouth gaping in a kind of rictus of rage – the frightening visage enveloped in a sort of haze.

The four boys, my brother among them, stood transfixed with horror. Not a one moved until the youngest in the batch commenced screaming and galvanized all four into action, falling all over themselves to get to the gap in the barbed wire fence and run as fast as their short legs could carry them, all the way home.

My brother’s shirt got caught in the barbed wire as he scooted through, ripping it and cutting him in the back.

He sat shaking beside me and I hustled him inside the hallway – far from the open-roofed terrace and big picture window fronting the Malonzo lot – and secured the latches on all the doors until the rest of the family came home.

That night the moon rose full and bright over the vast canopy of hoary trees, spilling its lambent light into our sala. But unlike other nights when we would sit in the bar of moonlight talking quietly among ourselves, my brother and I huddled where the lights were bright – suddenly afraid of shadows. Dreading the dark.

Postscript: The day after the sighting, my brother and his friends went back to investigate the tree but found no trace of the face. Some boys who lived in a shack near a ditch that cuts through the property told them what they had seen was the “Apo” – a word that either meant “grandfather” or “master.” Needless to say, that was the last time they would ever set foot in the property. — BM, GMA News