Read Online Ghosts of Infinity: and Nine More Stories of the Supernatural by Lara Saguisag, April Yap - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Lara Saguisag, April Yap
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their presence was as natural as the sun during day. He never saw them in brightly lit places, of course, nor where people swarmed in numbers, but otherwise, they were always there, floating like wan stars that had lost their gravity.
“You’d think people would’ve noticed by now,” he muttered one night while he was in the Riverpark with Sarah, the two of them strolling along the quietly glimmering waters. She said nothing, didn’t even glance behind them.
Another night, the next time he walked her home from the campus because she had had to stay late in the college, he stopped in his tracks along the shadowy tree-lined street and, to Sarah’s amazement, whirled around, dashed and lunged at the fireflies. The lights escaped his hands, dispersing for an instant, and then recollected without missing a beat of their silent, rhythmic flickering. He groaned, utterly exhausted.
That was when Sarah started telling him about what she could see in the guardhouse, what she could see in other places so that the next time she had to pass through them she needed to close her eyes, and what—or who—it was that she could see surrounded by the fireflies that followed Dennis.
“A woman, of incomparable beauty,” she said over coffee in her kitchen. Upstairs, her housemates watched a movie on Sarah’s DVD player. “Her skin is like the moon. Her hair is so long it trails on the ground behind her as she walks, so black and deep and luxurious that you’ll drown in it. And unless you do something, she’ll follow you forever.”
“Sounds like a dream,” he smiled. The back of his neck tingled, and whether it was from fear or excitement, he couldn’t tell.
“This beautiful woman without a canal under her nose—” not lifting her gaze from the whorls of cream in her coffee, she lifted a finger to her upper lip— “She doesn’t like me. If you care about what I think, you’ll agree it’s not a very good dream.”
He laughed at her, unable to admit to himself the possibility that she was right, that the unease he had begun to feel after first seeing the fireflies in Manila translated into something more real than what he could accept. Sarah said nothing else. When he left her apartment the fireflies greeted him outside and followed him out of the projects to the main road, where he boarded a jeepney home. Not once did he look back.
For a couple of months after, things between him and Sarah went on as normally as before: regular dates, phone conversations that lasted through the night, mushy messages that crowded their cellphones’ inbox. He found solace in the light of his phone, because he had started to develop a fear of the dark, of shadows, so that even in his room at night he slept with the light on, afraid even of the darkness that came with closing his eyes. He dreaded the sight of the fireflies, feared the vision of their faint light stark against the black. He sought out Sarah, taking comfort in her company, trying to believe the fireflies did not wait for him at night. He made her explain to him all that she knew about the lore of fireflies, so that not a day went by that they did not talk about it: Dennis, begging to understand what was happening to him, Sarah, eyes downcast, answering as best as she could. One day when he told her about his worsening fear of the dark, she broke into laughter, loudly and prolonged, as if he had just delivered the funniest joke in the world. And as her giggling subsided she began to cry, startling him even more than the laughter did, because all of a sudden she was telling him about the nightmares she was having, of the beautiful woman whose hair was studded with fireflies. Only then did he see how thin she had grown over the past several weeks, how the eyebags wore her face down. But he did not know how to help her.
So he continued to spend time with her, finding easy consolation in how she knew and understood his troubles, until he realized, finally, that he wanted to
“You’d think people would’ve noticed by now,” he muttered one night while he was in the Riverpark with Sarah, the two of them strolling along the quietly glimmering waters. She said nothing, didn’t even glance behind them.
Another night, the next time he walked her home from the campus because she had had to stay late in the college, he stopped in his tracks along the shadowy tree-lined street and, to Sarah’s amazement, whirled around, dashed and lunged at the fireflies. The lights escaped his hands, dispersing for an instant, and then recollected without missing a beat of their silent, rhythmic flickering. He groaned, utterly exhausted.
That was when Sarah started telling him about what she could see in the guardhouse, what she could see in other places so that the next time she had to pass through them she needed to close her eyes, and what—or who—it was that she could see surrounded by the fireflies that followed Dennis.
“A woman, of incomparable beauty,” she said over coffee in her kitchen. Upstairs, her housemates watched a movie on Sarah’s DVD player. “Her skin is like the moon. Her hair is so long it trails on the ground behind her as she walks, so black and deep and luxurious that you’ll drown in it. And unless you do something, she’ll follow you forever.”
“Sounds like a dream,” he smiled. The back of his neck tingled, and whether it was from fear or excitement, he couldn’t tell.
“This beautiful woman without a canal under her nose—” not lifting her gaze from the whorls of cream in her coffee, she lifted a finger to her upper lip— “She doesn’t like me. If you care about what I think, you’ll agree it’s not a very good dream.”
He laughed at her, unable to admit to himself the possibility that she was right, that the unease he had begun to feel after first seeing the fireflies in Manila translated into something more real than what he could accept. Sarah said nothing else. When he left her apartment the fireflies greeted him outside and followed him out of the projects to the main road, where he boarded a jeepney home. Not once did he look back.
For a couple of months after, things between him and Sarah went on as normally as before: regular dates, phone conversations that lasted through the night, mushy messages that crowded their cellphones’ inbox. He found solace in the light of his phone, because he had started to develop a fear of the dark, of shadows, so that even in his room at night he slept with the light on, afraid even of the darkness that came with closing his eyes. He dreaded the sight of the fireflies, feared the vision of their faint light stark against the black. He sought out Sarah, taking comfort in her company, trying to believe the fireflies did not wait for him at night. He made her explain to him all that she knew about the lore of fireflies, so that not a day went by that they did not talk about it: Dennis, begging to understand what was happening to him, Sarah, eyes downcast, answering as best as she could. One day when he told her about his worsening fear of the dark, she broke into laughter, loudly and prolonged, as if he had just delivered the funniest joke in the world. And as her giggling subsided she began to cry, startling him even more than the laughter did, because all of a sudden she was telling him about the nightmares she was having, of the beautiful woman whose hair was studded with fireflies. Only then did he see how thin she had grown over the past several weeks, how the eyebags wore her face down. But he did not know how to help her.
So he continued to spend time with her, finding easy consolation in how she knew and understood his troubles, until he realized, finally, that he wanted to
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