The Unholy

Art by Jannielyn Ann Bigtas/GMA News

She fled to the sleepy barrio in the region of Northern Mindanao to escape her past. Here where the houses are few and far between and are only lit by hurricane lamps when the darkness sets in.

She thought she could finally find some peace in the quiet of the farming and fishing community where neighbors minded their own business.

The only time she met any of them was when she fetched water from the communal pump every other day. The rest of the time, she just drew water from a nearby stream to tend the plants, wash her clothes and bathe her three dogs.

But a neighbor she never saw – who she would learn later had been confined to his bed by a stroke – would make his presence felt another way.

First she would experience a head rush then a quick increase in blood flow as her heart compensated for the lack of blood and oxygen in her brain.

This feeling of lightheadedness and weakness and the sensation of spinning came upon her on her first day in her new house.

She knew this feeling. She and five of her sisters had always had the gift of clairsentience, of a higher level of perception, and those psychic abilities were now telling her that an elemental spirit did not want him in his lair.

This went on for a couple of days until she was forced to seek the help of one of her sisters whose powers were stronger than hers, if she hoped to get any rest.

Her sister told her she was neighbors with a wakwak  - a vampiric bird-like creature not unlike the mananaggal  who fed on humans.

She sensed that he lived in a kubo across from hers and once – while she was puttering around her kitchen in the batalan – he swooped by in the shape of a huge bird, grey in color.

The batalan -  which was an extension of the house – was a bamboo back porch where she also kept  her water jars, fuel, and other cooking implements.

She reached for a flashlight and waved its beam across the nearby stand of banana plants to see where the bird had gone but she could no longer see it. She hurriedly brought her pots of rice and ulam inside the house and secured the door behind her.

She could no longer see the entity but she felt its eyes watching her from the darkness outside her huge windows. 

Her house was elevated from the ground by at least ten feet and her dogs patrolled its surroundings but she wondered why they were strangely quiet.

Still she felt confident that no elemental could enter her threshold because she had buried handfuls of  black salt in the four corners of her fenced off lot and she always wore an amulet around her neck to ward off its kind.

But another unholy visitor had apparently gained a foothold on her property: a young kapre or tree giant who was black, hairy, had red eyes, was at least 7 feet tall and stank to high heaven .

This one was a juvenile and had followed her to her new home from the city where it used to dwell in a tree behind the house she used to rent.

It used to stand guard outside her front door but had since moved to the foot of the stairs.

While the presence of the kapre did not bother her all that much, she was wary of the wakwak.

Because when she had asked her nearest neighbors whether they had heard stories of a wakwak taking up residence in their community, a pregnant neighbor told her they were in fact currently being terrorized by a couple who could shape shift.

As soon as darkness falls, she said a pair of huge dogs would start prowling the grounds around their house or huge birds would circle it that she had to ask a brother and a nephew to come live with her to keep her safe (wakwaks are said to favor human flesh and blood particularly that of a pregnant woman and her fetus).

The brother fell asleep in a papag or bamboo bench on their front porch one night and felt something scrape his stomach. He slept without a shirt on because it was a muggy night but when he woke up in the morning – he found wounds on his stomach like someone had raked it with long fingernails.

The nephew – who was not quite eighteen -  supposedly cut down a tree near the edge of her property along the route the wakwak or wakwaks usually take when he or they do a flyby, and became paralyzed soon after and, after a few days, died.

She didn’t exactly know how a paralytic stroke victim could transform itself into a monstrous bird but the night somehow gave it power, the very same darkness that birthed it and its ilk. — LA, GMA News