Ghosts

BY the time you read this, I might be inside a mental asylum. If not, I must be dead. I must have taken my life with my own hands, have finally realized that plunging to death is easier than facing this predicament. Or maybe I’m still alive, but hiding in the dark, running away from ghosts.

I’m not sure. I don’t know. I don’t know where this life could still go.

All I know is that I must tell you this right now—while there’s still enough sanity left in me, while I have not yet succumbed to the claws of doom…

***

THE Wednesday night is colder than usual. I had draped my blanket around my shoulders, but the November wind still seeps through my skin. I snuggle to a pillow for warmth, for something to soothe my weary muscles and soul.

Yes, only two months to go before this struggle ends. Mamang can stop selling insurance. I don’t have to work part time anymore. After graduation and the board, I’d be an engineer.

I remember the transcript of records I claimed from the records section just before I went home. I have to check it with the prospectus to make sure I had taken and passed all the required subjects.

I get up, turn the bedside lamp on, and search my bag.

I’m confident that my grades are good because I study hard. I’ve learned to work for everything since I was a toddler—since my father left us for another woman.

I’m pleased with what I’m looking at. I turn to the last page of the transcript, and I get completely surprised. Opposite the subject “SocSci 145” are three letters: DRP.

Dropped? I was dropped from one of my subjects?!

This means I can’t graduate!

Every sleepy inch of my mind is awakened. “Impossible,” I utter in disbelief.

SocSci 145 is Art Appreciation. I didn’t drop or couldn’t have dropped that subject. I love that subject. I can very well remember that class: the compassionate Mr. Maravilla, the enhancement activity in Lake Sebu with my friendly classmates, Impressionism…

I took it just last semester and I even had a perfect attendance!

This must be a joke!

No. The registrar must have committed an error—a very serious error.

I am terrified. I have to go to the registrar tomorrow! The records will show that an error was made. Or those computers only went pfft.

I utter a prayer and lie down back on the bed.

Art Appreciation. How could I forget that class?

I love learning about arts because I’m an artist at heart. Art is the world where I feel I truly belong, where my mother prohibits me to enter into.

And Art Appreciation was the class where I met Laura.

Laura was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. She had skin and hair—both exquisite. And she had the sweetest smile. When her eyes would meet mine—which were always on her—she would smile. I feel like her smile was for me alone, though she seemed to have a ready smile for everyone.

I miss her smile. I miss everything about her. After the final exam last semester, I've never seen her again. The only thing Laura left to me was her portrait that I painted in Lake Sebu.

***

“I’M Sorry. You were really dropped from that subject.”

It takes a few seconds before the words of the registrar sink in. You’re mistaken!

“Ma’am, can you check it again? My teacher was Mr. Maravilla.”

“Maravilla? I don’t know anyone named Maravilla teaching here. And let me see…” She turns again to the computer and punches some keys. “You were under Mr. Guzman, 7:00-8:30, TTH Rm. 227.”

F*ck you! That grading system has a bug.

I sigh. “Ma’am, I was under Mr. Maravilla, same schedule, at Rm. 329.”

The registrar is losing her patience. She throws me a “Boy-I’m-busy” look. And then she seems to remember something. “Who’s your teacher again?”

My heart leaps with hope. “Mr. Jovito Maravilla, ma’am.”

But much to my consternation, her bulging eyes is only bulging more. “Are you playing a joke on me? Boy, Mr. Maravilla is not teaching here anymore. You could not be under his class last sem. Nor could you be under him last year or five years ago! You see, he was dead since 1993.”

I gawk at the flustered woman for what seems like an eternity. Before I can open my mouth to protest, she says, “He died with his students in a trip to Lake Sebu. The jeep that they were riding fell in a ravine and no one survived.”

***

I DON’T know how I arrived home. I open the door and find my mother slumped on the worn-out couch.

“Mang, I’m home,” I call out, but she doesn’t budge, not even a bit.

She’s not breathing! I rush to her side and feel relief upon seeing a bottle of Tanduay rolling on the floor. She had only fallen asleep from drunkenness.

The incident in the registrar’s office has left me confused—and paranoid.

I sigh at the sight of the gaunt figure in front me. She has taken refuge in alcohol again, which she seldom does. Her problem today must really be serious.

I remember that the last time I saw her drunk was when her marriage with my father was finally annulled. It was last June, the first day of classes.

I, too, was shattered with the news. I had been hoping all those years that my father (though I couldn’t even remember his face) would still one day come back to us and we would become one happy family.

Starting that day everything has been gloomier, life more miserable.

And in my deranged state, I lost the copy of my study load somewhere. All I can remember is that my class was SocSci 145 at SLR. It could have been in the second floor indeed but I climbed the stairs up to the last step, saw Rm. 329—the only lighted room—and went inside it.

Everything and everyone in the class, however, seemed normal. Or were they? I had a class before that so I was always the last one to arrive. I was also the first to go out because Mamang would wait for me at home every supper.

And since I wait tables at the cafeteria for four hours a day, I was too tired to notice anything unusual.

The only weird thing in the class was that no one was ever late or absent—God, I shiver. So that was it! No one could be absent...

The people in the Art Appreciation class I was with last semester already died more than ten years ago. My classmates were dead—ghosts! For some reason, they would still go back to their old classroom at their old schedule to attend class—as if nothing happened, as if everything was still the same.

***

“NOW, who’s going to believe me? I can’t tell the world that I can’t go up on stage this March because of this weird incident.”

I’m sitting on my bed and on my hands is the portrait of Laura, her smile immortalized in strokes of pigment mixed with water. It’s six o’clock of Thursday. The wind’s hot but my body’s cold. “Who’s going to believe me?”

“Of course, no one’s going to believe you, Anton,” I suddenly hear a deep, coarse voice say.

I look around, but see no one. I look up and the whirling Shangshang fan in the ceiling greets me. The cheap, plastic fan is possessed by a demonic entity and it knows my name and it’s talking to me!

Then the voice laughs—a laugh that seems to say, “I know who you are, Anton.”

“When the registrar told you that Mr. Maravilla is dead, you weren’t surprised at all, Anton. You know that he’s dead. You have read about the accident in a local paper.”

No.

“And he and his students did not come back to life. You resurrected them—in your imagination! You made up that story and you made yourself believe in it—to escape from reality, to escape from your life!”

No.

“That class was your world, wasn’t it? Your perfect world.”

No!

“You created classmates who are friendly, who like you because in real life, you’re an outcast.”

“You created a teacher like Mr. Maravilla and you dreamed to be his son. The father you always dreamed to come home one day was like him, right?”

“Of course not!”

“And you created Laura! You created a beautiful girl who will show interest in you.”

Noo!

“You’ve mixed up reality and imagination, Anton.”

“That’s not true.”

“Look at the picture. You think your portrait of Laura is a Mona Lisa? Poor thing. Your mother discourages you to put your hand on a brush not because you can’t afford those painting materials. Neither is it because she only wants you to concentrate on your studies so that you can prove to your father that you, too, can be an engineer without his help. The real reason is that she knows you don’t have the talent. She doesn’t want you to become a laughingstock!”

“Nooooooooo!”

“And you cannot graduate not just because you failed in SocSci 145. You also failed in three EC subjects.”

***

“TWENTY. Twenty more steps and I will be vindicated,” I whisper to myself while standing on the second floor of SLR. “I will prove to everyone that I’m telling the truth, that I’m not making up stories. The ghosts are real! At this very moment—7:45, Thursday, Rm. 329—they are having their classes.”

Suddenly, almost involuntarily, my lips form the name of the saint whom the building was named after. Pray for me!

I start climbing the left stairs to the last floor, my feet dragging invisible bags of cement.
Eighteen…nineteen…twenty. I’m surprised that there are indeed twenty steps. But I am more surprised when I look at the old, familiar hallway. Everything’s just like what I expect. The whole floor’s deserted and dark—except for a room about forty feet from where I’m standing. No doubt, it’s Rm. 329.

Fear’s killing me. I muster all the courage left in me, inhale deeply and rush to the open door of the room.

I stop. I look inside. And then my eyes widen in horror.


(Note: Published in Tendrils, the literary folio of OMNIANA, the official student publication of Notre Dame of Marbel University)