It was already dark when Fredo arrived. The whizzing elongated omnibus

continued its way to Sagada along the Halsema after he laid his feet on

his home ground.

The twenty year-old guy in a straight and a little bit head down stance,

carrying his smooth Sagada-weaved bag on his back and his 1100 Nokia

cellphone on his right hand used it to light his dark way to home.

Beyond the mountains far from the eyes of Fredo were a series of dry lightning added by cold and chilly gusts of wind passed through his sweaty cheek and dogs howling everywhere made him tremble and nervous. Fredo, who had no choice but to continue going home, had to walk and climb up the steps of the rocky pathway in forty minutes before arriving home.

The man since became afraid of the told appearing and illusioning ghosts along their way home as told to him by his relatives and his mother who said that she had encountered of a ghost of one of their long dead relative when she was going home during a night once. She added that some ghosts make their victim blind and let them see nothing but darkness. The experience was abso-bloody-lutely scary which can make you to urinate in your own pants. It was real that all along the slanted pathways lie numerous graves just like a small town cemetery so that Fredo felt regret of being late on his riding to home from the city. But he could not do anything as the situation stocked him on his feet on the place where he was standing. He crawls into the feet of perpetual inclination where the compartment of possibility—possibility which could make his hair stand high as the pine trees in the beloved terra firma. He then began taking the steps with his shaking feet. After walking a not so far distance, he stopped with unfathomable sense of purposive but never ceased by the heart of dreadfulness. He noticed that the houses on the west by half kilometre away had no lights on.  He turned his head on the east where he was sure there were houses situated but all he could see was darkness. He just presumed that the people were asleep. Then he looked at the time on his cellphone and it says 10:47.

“It could not be that the entire neighborhood are asleep by this hour, some or one must not”… he talked to himself. At the quick of the

moment his nervousness grew rapidly as he remembered his mother’s story.

“Was it taking place?” his lips deliberately whispered. He began to walk as fast as he could pointing the light of his cellphone to everywhere in his way. He even ran occasionally. He kept his head alert to any ghost which might appear. He was very afraid, his breaths were fast but he was nimble.

After a minute of rushing, he found himself on the resting area of passers. He didn’t have any time for resting that was why he sustained walking swift like the jaguar on the hunt. After just three steps, his heart turned as if it will explode of nervousness when he saw a man, but no, he was not sure if that was a man crossing his way. He was in white pants, white t-shirt, and carrying a big white sack. He walked very fast as if he was flying that made him disappear in just a second across Fredo’s eyes. Then all of an abrupt Fredo shouted scarely,

“Waaaaaaah, ghost!” while taking his steps running to his way home. Because of frightness, he forgot to point the light on his way but it seemed that he saw his trail by his speed. Fredo was at least the cat of the night. At a quick moment, he collapsed and laid on the dirty rocky ground. He lost his consciousness in the wide hands of questionable undeparted entity versus smooth realisms.

His eyes began to open after some fifteen minutes. He put his hands on his head for the reason that it was in pain. Following that, he wondered when he did not found his cellphone. But subsequent to a moment, he forgot about it when he heard critical voices approaching to him. He did not even manage to stand up when the voices came clearly to his big ears. It was the voices of maybe three men, a woman, and a loud cry of a little girl. Again, his heart began to power pump; his head bore a couple of sweat—sweat of the night and day.

“Ghost!” Fredo supposed to shriek but no voice came out from his mouth. The angelic voice of the child and the voices around it were already in close proximity to him. Fredo, still lying on the ground, saw a bright little light approaching. He trembled stronger when his eyes caught a child’s very pale face and dreadful eyes pointed right to him and the voices around her whose faces were immersed in the night. In a quick moment they were gone same as the flying white carrying-sack-man he saw lately but quicker was the moment was the second loss of his subconscious consciousness. He did lie on the ground again.

After a number of minutes, Fredo found his awaken identity. He was incredibly scared, trembling, and sweating. He did nippy stand and ran for home. He was shouting strong voices the same to the voice of any frightened man on earth. For this time he could see his way since he had already reached a cemented part of their pathway which was his first time to step on, the fact that the white cement could be easily seen in the night-time. His running was uninterrupted not pending he lost his eyes on the white track and fell down.

At last, Fredo lost his awareness for the third time. Folks say that the ghosts every so often let people mislay their perceptual ways and let them fall; getting their lives and their spirits to be their companion, then they will be ghosts soon too.

One could hardly survive in the case, but Fredo found himself lying in a jeepney with his uncle and brother. They were rushingly sending him to the hospital because of a foot fracture and a bleeding on his head.

Fredo, confined on the hospital, started to start tell his horror story to his brother and his uncle but was very much disappointed when his two bloods laughed at him boisterously. The morning in the white building abscond the breezy wind enter the tiny screen on top of the wide glass window and rushed to Fredo’s black curly hair.
It was just much adequate time for him after seven months in school at the city to know nothing about what were the happenings on his mysterious hometown. He quite finally realized and would sometimes smile and laugh for himself.  But besides it, he was very much despaired on the fact.

The horror would seem fade away but in the quandary. Only to realize that the sack of the flying guy was one of the thousand sacks of rice that the national government programs as relief foods for every people in the barangay after the devastation of the past strong typhoon that crossed their town. He was depressed to know that his family did not receive even just a one cup of rice when in fact every family should have been given one sack or maybe a half. Fredo was just very big-hearted with the intention of giving the ghost a reason;

“Maybe that ghost was too hungry.” He smiled…
“Waaaaaaah! I may be lost in this world if I will see ghost cooking and eating rice!”

Fredo never stopped thinking and talking to himself. He was unstable. When he was running and shouting, some tricky hold-upers suddenly hit his head on the back part which caused him easily to collapse. Then they got his cellphone and his wallet and ran away. The town was really dark every night. Pathway lights were absent so that hold-upers could easily conceal behind the bushes. There were also no policemen in patrol at night as a result those bad guys were free to move. He talked to himself:

“Maybe they were very tired so that they are in need to rest their big lazy feet inside the well lighted police station.”

He turned his head to the window and sighed.

When he recovered his consciousness, he saw the child’s ghost face. She was been carried by his daddy with the company of her mother, brother and his uncle to the hospital because of typhoid fever… Fredo still wondered if he would believe them to be ghost… The place was such lacking of child care and medication program.



“Maybe they lack funds.” He thought.

Consequently, when Fredo ran on the cemented area, he fell down of the pathway side because of the ghost…



“No! I did not see any ghost. The fact is that, the cemented way was cut. They say they’re out of budget. That is why I stumbled at the edge side and fell.”

He maybe believing of the ghost remembering what the folks say, that the ghosts of the town let people lost their way and fall. Fredo was lucky that he was not dead.

The cemented pathway costs 30,000 of peso. “Is that costly? No, it is just a tip of the 250 thousand budgets

which was supposedly the real cost. Maybe the ghost really needed money.”



He added, “I may be lost in this world if I see ghosts putting money on their white pockets. Waaaaah!.”

Fredo almost lost his mind, stopped thinking when his mother brought him his breakfast. A regular sized rice, broccoli as his viand and fresh lettuce from his brother’s vegetable garden.

Fredo, at home, already on his fifth day of recovery, could hardly move his feet. He was sitting in front of the window, his eyes to the far pine trees further than the barb wire fence, and his mind thinking of what a real ghost would look like…