The face in the window

It's back! Midnight Stories will be posted every evening of October to celebrate the month of ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night. Here's our seventh installment. Enjoy!


First I remember the light, from an incandescent bulb back then, suddenly growing faint as if going out, splashing the room with a sickly orange-red color, like the walls were on fire.

I also remember the merry drunks in the sari-sari store across the street, loud and raucus one minute as they banged on their cheap guitar, distant and muffled the next like I was hearing them from inside a bubble.

It was then that I saw the face in the window.

This was the summer of '89, and I was in my lola's house in Bacacay, Albay.

Most of the household had left for the next town to attend a wake. One of my lolo's distant cousins was found facedown in a ditch four days ago. Heat stroke, if I remember correctly, his hand still clutching a half-empty bottle of cheap gin.

The house was empty for the night except for me, a sick aunt who went to bed early, my mother (who was terrified of wakes), and my brother, a toddler already soundly asleep.

I was in was my cousin's room, and I was there on a mission: to raid his stash of
komiks that, for some reason, he refused to lend to others, especially to us bakasyunistas from Manila.

I was also told that there were more stuff there other than komiks—that beneath those stacks of Shocker and Lagim and Kilabot, were Western magazines a child like me shouldn't see.

I was never able to find out. Because as I was gingerly investigating the room, the lights
dimmed, the sounds became faraway, diffused... and I sensed someone looking at me from the window.

It was an old man with a haggard face, weather-beaten skin and hair. Not really uncommon in a town of farmers, laborers and fishermen.

It was the way he leered at me that made the hairs at the back of my neck stand up.

He asked if my lola was at home (lolo was already dead by that time).

I told him the entire household, except for my mother and an aunt, was at a wake next town.

He asked what time did they leave.

I told him they were in a rented jeep that left an hour ago.

He stared at me for several seconds. Then I watched his leer become a smile, or at least something resembling a smile, before he slowly turned and walked away into the moonless night behind him.

The realization that came moments later made my knees grow so weak I slumped on my cousin's bed feeling as if my blood had turned to ice.

My cousin's room was on the second floor of the house. You have to be at least 10 feet tall to be able to peer from the outside.

The last thing I remember was the light and the sounds—the drunks from across the street, the crickets—going back to normal, and me getting the hell out of there fast as I could. — BM, GMA News