DARIO stared out of his bedroom window, studying the mass that congregated at his doorstep below. The dead of Barrio Masigasig had arrived at his house today, dug themselves out of their graves, many of them ancient and rotting, caked with dirt, their faces caved in, chests sunken, limbs falling or long gone. Others, freshly buried, looked almost alive, their skin unbroken, the pallor on their faces masked by funeral make-up. They were dressed in moldy barongs and musty party dresses, clothes that dragged on the ground or snagged in places, the damage gone unheeded because the dead did not think of these things.

“Why did you call us?” they whispered, their voices soft and ragged, sending chills down Dario’s spine. “Why did you wake us from our sleep?”

Beside Dario lay the scroll that had started it all; a document written on human skin, the letters branded onto the leather. The scroll, weathered by time and torn at the edges, gave instructions on how to raise the dead, the dark brown text written in an ancient language older than the Alibata, and much more complex. Dario had been translating it for 57 years and had, just the day before, managed to decipher the scroll’s last word, the word that, when said out loud, had completed the spell that called all the barrio’s dead to his gate.

“What do you want?” they asked in their thin voices as they clawed at the steel bars, unmindful of the townspeople that hid behind locked doors. “Why did you disturb our rest?”

Some of the dead were familiar to Dario― friends and neighbors, family members, faces he had passed on the street. He scanned the crowd again, until he caught sight of Maritess.

She had come with them, his sweet Maritess, his child-bride, the love of his life. Not even 57years of decay had diminished her beauty. Even without life, she walked with grace, seeming to him as if she was floating. Like the others, she held out her arms, her dead eyes pleading. And yet, even with half of her face gone, fragile bone broken and left behind, he thought he could hear her whisper, “Why?”

“You know very well why,” Dario answered, watching as the Maritess-thing made its way to the front of the gate, clamoring to get inside like the rest. “Please,” she whispered, “please.”

When he saw that she had reached the iron bars, Dario rolled up the scroll, lit a match, watched it catch fire. He tossed the burning document on his bed, then slowly made his way out.

He approached the gate, his eye on Maritess. She was dressed in her wedding gown, the white now a sickly yellow, its hem spattered with dirt. She wore on her head a crown of flowers long ago wilted―Dario remembered weaving it himself out of Maritess’ favorite wildflowers. Her belly had been torn open and inside, he could make out the white of a skull, livid red eyes and a mouth full of sharp teeth.

“Is that… our child?” he asked, rather stupidly, for the answer was obvious.

The creature in her belly hissed at him, its tiny forked tongue darting in and out like a lizard’s.

Dario smiled. He unlocked the gate and, as the fire engulfed the house behind him, stepped out to join his family.

• Translations of Rizal’s novels
• A Question of Villains
• Original Blessings

• Dysfunctionally Pinoy
• My Favorite Action Hero
• Pinoy Cult Films: The Cinema that Won’t Die
• Hearsay & Heroics
• Hope, sweat and a healthy cervix
• ‘Lights, Camera, AKSYON!’
• No One Can Cook Like Nana Meng
• Numbers