(continued) So there I was, trying not to be hysterical, trying to sound logical and trying to convince my family that there WAS a camachile tree outside my window. But of course, seeing the dead stump on the ground told us otherwise. But I didn't look like a complete idiot. I said it in a joking way, even, like how it was funny how I saw a big ass tree outside my window. So yeah, it wasn't a funny joke but at least no one called the mental institute.
As I pondered what had happened, my tito suggested that maybe I would love to redecorate the garden, put some plants, cover that terrible stump. I just nodded not really wanting that but wanting to show them that I was ready to put that whole fiasco behind. Of course it didn't lessen my thinking about the fact how my face ended up in a ghost bride dream.
(FUN FACT: These nightmares and dreams I'm recording include a bunch of people I've never met. Actually, the majority of the 'cast' of this dream are unknowns with the exception of my sister Jillian.)
I kindly informed my tito (who I've never met in real life) that it would be great to have a change of view but that I didn't know where to get the plants.
The guy-who-stares immediately answered that his brothers will take care of it.
Later that day, a truck with the plants arrived and we didn't have to pay for it. The brothers (the three silly ones) said a rich guy paid for them when he heard about our dilemma. The brother-who-stares however, remained quiet. He went back to looking at me but something was different, like he knew me. In fact he gave me a sincere smile, like he was just so happy to see me. It was odd but I couldn't dwell too much on it since they've started unloading the plants.
They were... interesting, to put it mildly. They must be some hybrids between a bush and a cactus. They were bent in odd angles and shapes, I can almost imagine human arms and legs posing for us. I was a bio-major in this dream so I asked what these plants were called. And like in most of my dreams, the details I'm most curious about are erased. I can remember how their lips moved to mention the name, but I can't remember the sound it made once I woke up. Anyway, back in the dream, I merely nodded after I heard the name of the plants. Though it did give me chills.
"Who are they from?" I asked but the silly brothers were already carrying them away from and towards the stump.
"Maybe from a secret admirer," said the brother-who-stares coyly. Then he smiled at me affectionately. Seriously, what was up with the guy. First he was closed off, now he was what... flirting?
"Uhm," I said moving a step away from him. "I don't think I've been here long enough for a rich man to fancy me."
He laughed and then he said. "But you have been around enough to catch a cousin's attention, right, niña?"
"A cousin?" I asked frowning. It was no secret that in ancient times cousins were allowed to marry one another. But these days, there are so many people out there to meet why would anyone limit themselves to the same circles. Not to mention the genetic chaos it might cause.
He smiled again and motioned for me to watch the plants.
I froze. For a moment it seemed the plants were entirely covered with blood.
"Do you like what you see, nina?" he asked, his eyes fixed on the plant. "They're called [insert the name I can't remember here], which means blood suckers."
I merely looked at him in horror.
Later that day, I decided to rummage around my room, opening trunks and boxes in the hope of finding something, anything that would help me... help me do what exactly? Exorcise a ghost? Solve the mystery of the missing and perhaps dead psycho who was obsessed with my grandfather? (Well, I suppose 'great grandfather' would be the proper term but in Tagalog we only use the term 'Lolo' meaning grandfather for both)
I was about ready to give up when my eyes fell upon another box filled with black and white pictures, the pictures where they weren't allowed to smile or the concept of smiling in a picture hadn't crossed their minds yet. I leafed through them and saw pictures of my lolo as a young kid, my lolo as he grew up. There were even pictures of him with his family and with his grandson (our dad). He seemed to have come back and visited this place time and again. But when my dad got married, that was the last time. Newer pictures with color are included where lolo was smiling but this was in our house in the city. There was a picture of me and him, before he died. He had one arm around me and I was wearing the white toga for my high school graduation. We were both smiling and waving at the camera.
"That should be me," I heard someone whispered from behind me. I turned and I caught a glimpse of someone in a wedding dress vanishing in the air.
There was a sudden gust of wind that scattered the photos and I hastily tried to gather all of them before they slip through a crack or get lost under the bed. I picked up one photo that almost did go under the bed and turned it. I saw a picture of a young lolo smiling, the camachile tree behind him. And beside the camachile tree were two people, the woman I recognize as the ghost bride I keep seeing, and I held my breath as I confirmed she looked exactly like me. There was a guy beside her in the background but some dirt on the photo was covering his face. I was about to remove said dirt when tita began calling us down to dinner. Apparently, I had stayed up here all afternoon.
I put the pictures back in the box, vowing to check them again later that night. I didn't have to wait long.
After dinner, strange things began to happen. Electricity started to come and go. For our safety, tito suggested we just turn off everything. This means my brothers and cousins had to get the gas tanks and wood outside the house while we girls gathered the candles. We tried to call for help but the phone line was dead. Tito said it happens now and again especially if birds mess with the cables. Unfortunately, like in all provinces, the night has a way of swallowing everything in sight. So before we were completely eaten by the darkness, tito managed to call his sons to get help from the neighbors, which of course included the brothers.
But tito was wrong. This type of thing doesn't happen time and again. In fact, to most people, this doesn't happen at all. The moment we locked in for the night, the sound of a woman crying echoed around us. The silly brothers were easily scared, it seemed, but it was because they had part of the story too.
They were descendants of the sister of the crazy girl who was obsessed with lolo. They said that their great great grandfather, (the crazy girl's father) was a very strict man and used to beat his children if they misbehaved. That was nothing new to us since we've been whipped as well. But according to the brothers, he took it to another level. The brother-who-stares visibly tensed at the retelling of her story. His eyes drifted to mine and he suddenly relaxed and smiled. For some reason, I can't help but smile back at him.
As the story progressed, it's revealed that she mistook lolo's kindness for affection and since her father seemed to approve of lolo, she took it upon herself to marry him. But we all know how that ended.
As the cries began to get louder, we heard someone moving upstairs. I felt a pull towards it so I ran upstairs as quick as possible. I saw my room open but that was no longer a surprise. I knew that was my grandfather's room and that's where she'll be.
I stepped inside and the violent gusts of winds stopped. As the drapes began to fall to the side of the window, I saw the camachile tree filled with ripe pods almost like it was peppered with drops of blood. I took another step towards it until I heard her.
"It's the plants. He brought them back. He brought ME back," cried the girl, her face buried in her dirt covered veil.
A stampede of feet was behind me and I saw my family in the narrow hallway.
"It's the plants!" cried one of the silly brothers, the chubbiest one. He had an itak in one hand. "You heard her, we have to cut down that camachile tree!"
"No!" I cried. I was suddenly pulled into an embrace by the brother-who-stares.
"Don't look," he said.
But I did.
The brother tried to get to the camachile tree by the window, brandishing the itak. Losing his balance he fell off the window and was impaled by one of the cactus, the earth being stained with his blood. The ghost bride was now sitting on the boughs of the tree and she cried even louder at the death of the brother.
"It's NOT her!" I cried as we all raced downstairs and outside to the garden.
Another brother had gotten an axe on hand and he too charged at the tree. Suddenly a cactus sprung from the ground impaling him too.
The girl wailed at the death of another, causing a mighty wind to blow around us. The brother-who-stares hugged me tighter. My room, my grandfather's room, began to creak. Papers and photos were being blown out of the rooms and into the porch and back yard.
She blew gently at a photo she seemed to recognized and it landed on the floor next to me. It was the picture of lolo by the camachile tree. Feeling chills down my spine, I took the picture and swallowed as I rubbed of the dirt from the background man's face. I slowly looked at the brother-who-stares and said, "It was you."
"No!" he said frowning. He took the picture from my hand and stared at the picture of the man next to the girl who looked like me. "It's not me."
"He won't let me go," cried the girl harder.
I backed away from the brother-who-stares slowly. My family was still trying to figure out how to destroy the tree and weren't able to hear our exchange.
"Niña, this is not me!" he cried out.
I continued backing away until I felt someone behind me. My eyes almost popped out from their sockets as I looked up at him.
"My dear, I'm here to set you free."
"You're..." I didn't even finish my sentence before he spoke.
"I loved you, cousin," he said with that same smile. "I loved you so much."
"I'm not your cousin," I said.
"No," he said with another smile. "But seeing as you look like her, I thought maybe, she can use your body."
"Lolo?" asked the brother-who-stares. "It can't be."
The man smiled again. "I always told you, niño, that you were my spitting image."
"You're dead," said the brother.
He shook his head. "Dear boy, love never dies and I've loved her for so long."
"So that afternoon when the plants arrived. It wasn't him who was talking to me."
"It was me, sweet niña. I just had to see you again. You left me after all these years and I just needed to see you."
"She's not your cousin," said the brother as he pulled me to him. "And you've let your grandsons die. You're a murderer!"
I didn't know I was crying but apparently I was as I said. "You killed her."
"I set her free! I gave her another chance at life but she wouldn't take it. She'd rather stay at that stupid camachile tree so I had no choice."
"The reason why she wanted me gone, she wanted to kill me," I said. "Was to protect my soul from you!"
I can vaguely hear my brothers hauling the gas tanks out of the house once more. They were going to burn the tree.
I ran away as fast as I can, the name of the plants echoing in my head: 'blood suckers'. "Stop!" I cried. "Burn the cacti instead!" I yelled as I continued to place on foot after another.
I heard the brother-who-stares running behind me.
"No!!!" cried the girl's cousin as he saw us set the plants on fire.
The girl hearing her cousin screaming, screamed as well. Then she jumped off the camachile tree. I tried to grab her but she seemed to go through the earth, like she was swallowed up by the rocks. A piece of her veil was sticking out so I tried to pull it but something was pulling it back. The brother pulled me away. "Leave it!" he said.
As the plants burned, the blood they drank seem to flow back to the impaled bodies. The brothers hastily got off the dying plants trying to remember what it was like to breathe.
----
I was sitting on the train going home. I was the last to leave our ancestral land. My family had rented a van and had to go back before my siblings' school began the next day. I however, was still searching for a job.
Looking out the window towards the mountains, green fields and fresh air, I couldn't help but think of the bizarre events of our few nights stay at lolo's house, how it had affected us all. Mainly I was thinking, how do we move on from here.
"Is the seat taken?" asked a man, but I didn't look up to see who it was. I merely shook my head, my eyes still watching the passing landscape.
He sat down across me and I would have been glad to ignore him had I not felt the weight of his stare. I slowly looked at him and frowned. "What?" I asked. "It's not nice to stare."
"Pardon me," he said. He was dressed casually but the Bulgari watch told me he was a man of fortune. "It was just... I'm sorry, it's just, I know your face."
My frown deepened. "You know my face?" I asked.
He nodded enthusiastically and took out his iPhone. "I'm an art collector and this province has very interesting pieces especially since these mountains were once a home to tribes."
"Ok," I said shrugging. I don't really know where this was going.
"Ah here it is," he said. He apparently found the picture he was looking for.
"An artist from the city, Spanish era, I think, attended one of the tribes' special binding ceremony."
"Like a wedding ceremony?" I asked with a smile. He handed me the phone and I took it from him.
"Well, almost. But it was more than that, like it was a binding of souls. Anyway, this guy went there and painted the event, feeling lucky he was allowed to capture such a moment."
I couldn't breathe. Not at all. I looked at the picture for the third time and then at the man who was smiling at me. "Uncanny resemblance, isn't it?" he said.
I looked at the picture again and felt my hands shake. The man had painted a circle of elders surrounding a pair. Woven bands and threads decorated their bodies, entangling the two forms together. Strange plants were also encircling the elders in an outer circle, plants that not long ago, we had encountered. I don't think I need to mention this but the girl looked exactly like me... and the guy she was being bound too looked exactly like the brother-who-stares.
With a shake of my head, I handed the iPhone back to the man. "Yes," I said in a calm tone. "Very uncanny." Then I took my earphones and wore it. I closed my eyes. It was going to be a long ride.
