James Jenkins: The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories. Volume 1

Anne and I learned a lot from her aunt. How to cultivate a garden, how to tell which plants were edible, which herbs cured what. Anne and I were inseparable. I don’t blame her when she took it very badly when my parents offered to send me to college in Manila and I said yes.

We wrote each other at first. Always snail mail, because Anne wasn’t comfortable with technology. Their hut didn’t even have electricity, even though it had been available in the barrio forever. They were weird like that. But my letters got shorter and her replies got more bitter until we stopped writing altogether. Tim and I had just started dating then, so I didn’t think much of it when I should have. I wasn’t much of a friend.

Turned out she had been ill for a while. She had always been sickly, but she got steadily worse after her aunt passed away and she tried to keep pace with responsibilities. At first she could, and then she couldn’t. It was my mom, now retired, who found her sprawled at the foot of her hut. She refused to go to a hospital. She asked for me.

Breakfast is instant coffee and champorado. We had salted duck eggs and rice the day before, and were now craving something salty-­sweet. I pour evaporated milk into my, by regular standards, extremely sweet coffee before adding some to my chocolate porridge as well.

Anne wrinkles her nose distastefully at the amount of sugar and dairy I mix into my coffee.

‘What do you want for lunch?’ I ask as I mix my cham­porado, cooling it as fast as I can so I can eat it right away.

She laughs. ‘How Pinoy of you to be talking about the next meal even before you’ve eaten this one.’

Times like this, she doesn’t seem sick. Times like this, when her eyes sparkle as she laughs from her belly, I tell myself that she isn’t really sick, that I am just visiting, that I will go home when she is better, back to Tim, back to work, back to my life far, far away from here.

But nowadays, one laugh is all it takes before she doubles up, coughing, hacking, trying to expel something, the demon that lives within, the one that courses through her veins and consumes her from the inside. I catch her as she bends over the table.

We eat in silence.

‘I don’t want to die.’

The words were uttered under her breath as we sat on the edge of the hut, watching the birds. There was almost a ridiculous amount of them in the yard now. It was almost funny.

I take her hand and squeeze it. She traces her other hand down my face.

‘They’re waiting, you know,’ she said. ‘For me.’

‘Don’t you think they’re overdoing it just a little?’

‘I know you’re here because you pity me.’

I take my hand away, hurt, angry. ‘You don’t get to talk to me like that,’ I say. ‘You don’t get to push me away.’ I get up and go inside.

There is always something to do at Anne’s. Picking herbs, drying herbs, preparing tinctures, preparing teas. Seeing to the vegetable garden, seeing to the chickens, gathering firewood and water, the general upkeep of a hut that’s slowly falling apart as if it was a reflection of its owner, who was slowly wasting away.

Out here, in the middle of nowhere, it is as easy to keep busy as it is to do nothing.

And there is always food. Anne and I, we’re eaters. We eat when we’re stressed, we eat when we’re bored. We eat when we want to avoid things. I distract myself by cooking, which I have to do anyway. I munch on some cashews as I make dinner. I’ve been eating a lot lately. I’m always hungry, always reaching for a meal, a snack. Anne, meanwhile, has lost some appetite, but not enough so that it’s alarming.

When we’re not keeping house or making sure herbs are stocked, we’re making food. She chops, I cook. It’s a rhythm we developed by accident, because neither of us can stand being still. It also helps fill the silences when we argue, an occurrence that has become alarming in its frequency.

We don’t talk until after dinner, when she takes my hand and says she is sorry. We hug. She gives me a peck on the lips; I let her. We lie beside each other, and I stroke her hair until she falls asleep. Then I go out to send Tim an SMS.

‘Tao po!’

The call comes at about five in the morning. Manong Albert, the baker.

Tao po. I’m a person. I’m not a beast or bird or monster. I am a person. I am a baker. Are you home? I need your help.

I check to see if the noise has woken Anne, but she is sleeping soundly. I put on a jacket and see to the visitor.

Five a.m. is still dark in these parts. The air is chilly and has yet to warm up. I find Manong at the entrance of the gate, battery operated lantern in hand, eyeing the yard full of birds warily. Most of the birds are asleep; you can hear them snoring very softly. The few that are awake are silent. They watch the intruder from their places on the ground, their perches on the trees.

Manong is visibly glad to see me. He calls out my name in relief. ‘Avery!’

‘Good morning, Manong.’ I walk towards the gate.

He looks worried. ‘I know Anne’s sick but – ’

‘I’m filling in for her for a while. What do you need?’

‘George, you remember my youngest boy? He has a toothache. It’s been bothering him all night.’

I give him a disapproving look. ‘We have a dentist in the barangay, you know.’

‘Ay, it’s not the same,’ he says good-­naturedly. ‘You know that. Don’t let working in Manila make you think otherwise.’

I sigh. ‘Let me get something for him. Want to wait inside?’

He eyes the birds. ‘I’ll wait out here.’

It doesn’t take long to find what he needs. I wrap it up and hand it over. ‘Take Selo to the dentist as soon as you can, okay?’

Manong smiles. ‘Hay, ija. They don’t know what Anne does. What you do.’

‘I’m only here on vacation. I leave as soon as Anne’s better.’

‘I know, ija.’ He hands me two paper bags. One of them is comfortably warm. ‘For your breakfast,’ he says. ‘Thank you for your help.’

We have the pan de sal and Star margarine Manong Albert brought for breakfast. Anne was surprised.

‘I can’t believe I slept through that,’ she says miserably.

‘It wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.’

‘I know. It’s just that I used to wake at the littlest sound. Now I sleep through everything.’

‘You need to rest to get better.’

‘I know,’ she sighs. ‘It’s just that I’m asleep longer and longer each day. I’m afraid that one day, I’ll just forget to wake up.’

The birds come when Anne’s asleep. They fly in softly and never leave. You’d think that this would result in a dirty, bloody mess, but the yard is clean. They eat and hunt and shit elsewhere. They pick the air clean of insects, and I swear – swear – that they keep the outside of the hut clean as well. They are usually silent. It is the newcomers who are noisy at first, but they calm down eventually. They learn to wait.

Dinner is steamed vegetables – okra, eggplant, string beans – with bagoong and steamed white rice. We have Coke because Anne is feeling celebratory at not having coughed all day, at not having buckled.

‘Do you love him?’

The question comes out of the blue, though I’ve been dreading it ever since I arrived. Anne had never brought up Tim until now.

‘What kind of question is that?’

She shrugs.

I don’t answer.

Anne and I, we have this thing. She likes to hold my hand and bury her face in my hair – things friends don’t normally do. Sometimes I let her, but sometimes, I pull my hand away, move my head, even though I want to keep them there, even though it is comfortable, even though it feels right. I like to think that we would have made a good pair, but I had things I wanted to do in life, and I knew that I would have to leave home to do them, something that Anne was never willing to do.