Midnight Stories: Resident Kapre

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.

The subdivision where my husband and I built our first house used to be a rice field. All the contractor did was fill in the paddies with earth plunked right on top of the swamp cabbage (kangkong), snails (suso) and mudfish (dalag) whose habitat it used to be.

 

There were hardly any trees except for a hoary balete here and there, no street lights, and houses were few and far between.

 

In our street, for instance, ours was the first house up; and because Larry and I were on a tight budget—we couldn’t afford to have our windows screened until after several months.

 

So on windless, blackout nights when my husband pulled the overnight shift at work, I sat home alone and watched our white walls gradually fill with all manner of insects attracted by an emergency light.

 

Then the scattering of early residents were given tree seedlings to plant on their property so that they may have shade in a year or two. We were promised a hardwood variety molave, but got balete or banyan instead.

 

Ours grew fast and became home to a flock of noisy birds that acted as our alarm clock at morning, when they woke to a lot of twittering, and at dusk, when they came home to roost.

 

One weekend, as we tidied up the table after dinner, I chanced a glance at the living room window and saw the outline of a man in our yard. I grabbed my husband’s arm and pointed him in the same direction. He said it was just a passerby.

 

I tried to argue that the silhouette was more consistent with someone standing just outside the glass window on our yard rather than farther out on the street but he said I was just scaring myself, so I made no more of it.

 

Until one late afternoon as I sat weeding the plot of garden soil outside our fence, I felt a sharp prick on one of my toes and thought I’d stepped on a makahiya thorn, but there was no such weed where I stood. The skin of my toe was unbroken.

 

But my legs would swell to almost double their size over the next three or four months with dark lumps that looked as if they had styrofoam balls and water in them. I could hardly walk. I could no longer fit in my shoes and saw four doctors who made contrasting diagnoses and put me on everything from tranquilizers to antibiotics—but nothing helped, except for my sister’s hot compresses, when I could not even get up from bed.

 

Then a friend from work referred me to his mother, who promptly pronounced that I was “namatanda,” sending me the wax drippings from her manggagamot ritual to place under my pillow overnight. I looked at all three shapes made by the drippings and there appeared to be a face in them that was grimacing in pain. I was told I had stepped on an enkanto or a creature such as an elf, fairy or pixie.

 

She instructed me to bathe my legs in a basin of hot water with the grounded bits of the candle-drippings the following night. After which I was to offer boiled eggs, cigarettes, and an apology at the place where I felt the pinprick months ago.

 

I spoke to the unseen beings and proposed that we share the space and that—because I could not see them—would warn them every time I crossed their threshold with a “tabi, tabi po” so that they could escape injury. In return, they could help themselves to food on our table. 

 

When I woke up the next day—my legs were back to their normal size with nary a trace of my previous malady.

 

My husband remained unimpressed. 

 

When my son was 6 or 7, he came down with a high fever that would mysteriously commence at twilight and completely disappear at daybreak.

 

His pediatrician could not make heads or tails of it and I was almost at my wits’ end when I remembered my previous ailment.

 

I called my son aside and asked him whether anything unusual happened before the fever began. 

 

I saw the big dog, he said.

 

When he saw my puzzled look, he explained that he, his dad, and my sister—his aunt—had just finished eating lunch when he saw it peering through the same big window in the sala where I saw the shadow.

 

He described it as a giant head with holes for eyes, pointy ears, and a maw for a mouth.

 

My sister apparently had her back to him, doing the dishes; my daughter was watching TV in our bedroom; and my husband was in the labahan cleaning a cooking pot.

 

I brought him to the neighborhood healer Ka Puring  on his godmother’s advice. Seems a kapre came to lunch. His godmother chastised me for extending such an invitation to it as their kind will surely take me up on the offer.

 

My son got well on the spot after Ka Puring’s ministrations and was instructed by the kindly old lady not to look directly at things that are out of the ordinary, lest the fevers return.

 

Still a bit skeptical about Ka Puring’s findings, however, I read up on what my son had seen and which brought on the mysterious fevers.

 

It appears that kapres can transform themselves into various shapes and sizes. These dark-skinned giants (7-9 feet) with fiery eyes live in big trees like acacias, mango trees, bamboo plants, and banyans or baletes and smoke big cigars or pipes whose embers appear as fireflies.

 

They like to play pranks and disorient people who have the misfortune of wandering near their lair when they’re about. 

 

Sometimes they allow themselves to be seen, but at other times they supposedly wear a belt that make them invisible.

 

I remember asking ours to guard our house when weren't home. The neighbors often told of instances when they thought they saw somebody inside while we were out.

 

My sister even saw a pair of legs near our garage (from an open space in our gate) when she knew we had already gone for the day—but of course, no one was there when she let herself in with her key.

 

So if you happen to walk past 2470 Marble Street someday and catch a glimpse of that, or see fireflies or smell tobacco smoke—check if you lost time. Chances are our resident kapre just had his fun. 

 

Postscript: An acquaintance from the old hometown once sent me a private message on Facebook about an experience she had while visiting their farm at around six in the evening.

 

She was driving a jeep when she felt a huge hand with hair like wire force her to step on the brakes.

 

Seems like the kapre was crossing and did not fancy getting run over. — VC, GMA News