Even After

Even After

It was a typical afternoon on Lemery Street. The wind was cool, the street was clean, and the place was quiet. And then they came. Paul and his siblings moved in with their aunt in the house left of the one across mine. Everyday after school, the children would go out to play on the street and their friend Rec, along with some other kids from nearby streets, would come and play with them. They were very noisy and most of the time they would hit a window with their ball or send it into a neighbor's yard which made the neighbors angry, especially the old man who lived next to me.

The house beside mine was very old and neglected. Its yellow painted walls had big cracks. What remained of the rusty roof gutter hung on one side of the house acting like a pendulum. Big trees surrounding the house had become a home for weaver ants that sometimes crossed over to my side of the wall. Old man Jack lived there. He lived alone and he didn’t like children, especially noisy ones.

One day, while the children were playing, their ball went inside the old man’s yard. They knocked on his gate asking to have it back. He came out, took the ball, gave them a stern look and told them to go home, then went back inside his house. Next day, they were back playing a game that involved a lot of running and shouting. The old man went outside holding a “bolo”, a large single edged knife, in his hand. He waved it to scare them away, shouting, “If you kids won’t shut up…” He hated them. He's always secretly watching them and shouting every time he sees them near his house.

And so it happened that Old man Jack passed away one day. The kids were still scared to play near his house though, and if ever their toys would hit his fence they would say “tabi-tabi po”, afraid that his ghost would visit them at night to scold them. One Sunday afternoon, Rec, now a young man, helped me with repairs in the house. After that we had dinner and a few beers. It was a little late in the evening when he went home and as he passed by old man Jack's house, cool wind touched the back of his neck. Instinctively, he turned to look at the old house. The front of the house had some light from the nearby post but the side extending to the back was very dark. As he looked at the spot where the light didn't reach, he saw the silhouette of a tall person partly covered by the untrimmed leaves of the scattered plants, darker than the dark, standing at the far back of the yard, motionless. A mixture of fear and alcohol made him stand still in confusion for a moment. Memories of the angry old man came to mind, always giving him, more than anyone else, an angry stare. He noticed the shadow started to come closer. Goosebumps signaled him that it was time to run but he looked behind to see if it was following him… and it was! It was just moving slowly but it seemed to get nearer because although he was running, the distance he traveled was as if he was walking. He tried to run faster but to no avail. As it grew closer, the dark figure started to show its true form, a decaying corpse, jaw almost falling and body full of maggots falling on the ground and turning into cockroaches. The eyes had a black hole on one and a drooping eyeball on the other which suddenly fell and the corpse caught it and put it in its mouth and started to chew. Black blood fell from its mouth like water from an opened faucet, and the mouth began to grin and say, “ Didn’t I tell you not to come here? You naughty kid!” Rec shouted hysterically “Help, Help! There’s a ghost!” He kept looking back at the creature while trying to run and as he saw its maggoty boney arm lifted and about to touch his shoulder, some of the neighbors who heard him went out just in time. But only Rec can see the creature and what the other people saw was just him running in place, sweaty, pale, and in tears. He began to move and he did not stop running, never looking behind this time, shouting “Ghost! Ghost!”

The next day, Rec sent me a message to tell me what happened. Odd, I thought, It was similar to the horror movie I was watching on Netflix before I fell asleep. What a disturbing coincidence. A few months later, the place was sold and the new owner demolished the house and had a new building constructed. Not a trace of the past was left. But to those who knew the old man, either running or walking fast past the place where the old man’s house stood before when it's already late at night is still a preference.