CHAPTER THREE - BLOOD COMES KNOCKING

“Manananggal”

“What?” the boy asked.  Confused at the naked fear that was slowly turning is legs to rubber. 

“A mananaggal, a creature of the night that feeds upon the unborn children of pregnant women,” the man answered as he quickly shut the windows closed; using long beams of wood to barricade them shut.

“Had you seen them they would have looked like fair-faced women but only from the waist up.  They have bats wings that allow them to move through the air and land on the roofs of their hapless victims where they send their long-thin tongues to suck out the babies from the mother’s belly.”

A soft shuffle behind Anrhu told him that the woman was stirring; unhurt or not morbidly so from the attack of the escaped creatures.  He was frozen where he was, just beginning to feel most of the fear that was slowly taking over him.  His legs finally giving way and he dropped to the floor to unconsciously hug at his knees and rock himself in horror.

“Are you alright?,” the man asked the woman, concern evident in his voice though he continued to stand wary beside the window.

“Yes, It’s gone,” he heard the woman’s voice.  Knowing by instinct that she was turning the fallen table over and putting it into a semblance of order.

The dog was still guarded, sniffing at the air as if it could still sense and smell the sweet gagging scent of death in the air.  The man was alert, tensed and fingers gripped on the weapon he held ready in his hands.  It took a moment for the tension to pass.  Slowly the boy turned and saw that the thread-like twitching thing was the creature’s tongue and it was still, dead and shriveled.

Anrhu felt the gentle hands of the woman guide him towards the chair.  He let her.  Weak and terror-filled.

He did not have tears left to cry.  But his insides were clenched in silent tremors.

The man dropped the thing he was holding on the table right in front of the boy.  He saw it was not a twig or a branch of some tree but a tail of some kind.  It was covered by a thick skin with tiny bumps that were closely placed, the end of the tail distinct with several barbs that looked like curved thorns several inches in length.  The end, where it was severed from the animal was covered with a strip of black rubber, wound around to look like the handle of a dagger.

“It’s a stingray tail, an ikog pagi” the man said when he noticed the boy’s stare. “It’s one of the few weapons that can kill or hurt a mananaggal.”

When fear ebbed, the boy looked around him and noticed both the man and the woman staring at him, the same question that he found there earlier more evident.

“Where am I? he asked. “Where am I and who are you.”

“My name is Dong and this is Buglas”

“Your name is Buglas?” he looked at the woman who was looking at him, pity in her eyes.

“No, silly.  This place, this place is called Buglas. I am called Zoriah.”

“Then this is not the place where I was,” confusion clouding his eyes anew as he looked from Dong to Zoriah.

“This is how it is called now, ever since the survivors and wakers tried to make sense of everything or what was left of everything after the quake and what followed after,” patiently, the man tried to explain.  The woman, interjected.

“If what you say is true, and that you don’t remember anything then you must have slept for such a long time. How?  I do not know but more than four hundred days passed, or roughly more than a year, a massive quake shook the place that you remember and left it into what you see now.  Buildings, homes and what made civilization then were devastated.  Everything changed.  What you see is what was left of the world as we knew it.  Stores, electronics, the computer and the internet, these things no longer exist.  We have been brought back to the basic of nature and we are not alone.”

“The monsters you saw but a moment ago are not the only ones that were brought back from the stories of your grandmothers, surely they told of things that lurked the darkness and the light.  All these are back, from the very pages of the comics that you must have read as a child.”

“When the destruction happened, somehow, things that were only in the stories meant to frighten children awakened and they now share this existence with us.”

Dong was looking at the young boy in front of him when Zoriah talked, his eyes betraying questions that he did not voice out. Anrhu was silent, looking downcast and confused.  The things that he was hearing not really having any meaning. After a time Dong spoke.

“It’s not only that.  But the ground shifted, much of the ruins that you must have seen when you were following me was brought about when the island that we stand on was jostled by the impact of the quake and hit on another island that was headed towards us.  The plates of earth beneath our feet were forcibly pushed like there were gigantic hands that somehow brought the islands closer, bridging the gap of the deep waters.  Where there once was a sea, there is now land that connects two islands into one.”

“No one understands this.  But a few of us, me, my companion, Zoriah and a few others have discovered that all these, this devastation is unnatural.  There is a prophecy, inked within the caves of Kanlaon.  A prophecy that we must discover before everything is too late.”

A pause.

“Like you, I am a waker, I never knew the place and time that you seem to remember.  I know nothing of the things that made life easier for you.  I  don’t know about the glass buildings that housed items of all the colors.  These things, I knew from Zoriah soon after she found me aimlessly walking this desolation. I too have questions.”

And the dog suddenly stirred from where it was stretched on the floor, its nose high in the air and its fur bristling with sudden alarm, the air suddenly thick with the smell of blood and an acrid smell of smoke.

Without another word, Dong grabbed at the stingray tail and stood while his other hand grabbed at a dagger, kept behind him, something that Anrhu failed to even notice before.  Zoriah tensed, clutching her swollen belly as the boy felt his heart jump towards his throat.

“Dong!” came a female cry came from outside.  “Dong, open the door, we are hurt!”