Midnight Stories: Kagkag

About Midnight Stories: October is the month of spooks and things that go bump in the night, so what better than a series of scary stories to get you in the mood for Halloween? Read on.

This story was told by a Muslim student-teacher to my elder brother and a classmate of his named Mario during their school-at camp at Pasonanca when they were in the sixth grade.

The teacher lived in one of those small, sandy islands near the southwestern tip of the archipelago where drinking water still came from a communal artesian well.

Returning from the well one evening, he saw a blurry figure in the distance from the murky light spilling from the doorway he had left open as the rest of the household were already asleep.

He thought one of his relatives had woken and was waiting up for him, but as he neared the figure, he realized it was someone wrapped in the traditional white shroud of the dead with its face turned to one side, facing Mecca!

The teacher quickened his steps, taking care not to spill the water he had walked quite a distance to fetch.

As he neared the open door, he saw from his peripheral vision the figure moving in the same direction although in a slow, jerky manner.

He broke out in a cold sweat and ran the rest of the way, unmindful now of the water sloshing and spilling along the path.

When he got to the house he headed first to the kitchen to deposit the water container and went back to secure the door.

Taking a quick furtive look outside before he did so, he was relieved to see only the empty yard and the line of small and crude houses of the neighbors. Might he have just imagined what he saw? Perhaps he was more tired than he thought.

Heaving a sigh, he lowered himself into the wooden slat bench he used for a bed.

Lying in the dim light of a low-wattage fluorescent bulb, he suddenly had the spine-tingling feeling he was not alone.

The room was in shadows and a cold breeze lifted the edge of a wall calendar, stirred the curtains in the windows but the silence was unbroken save for far-off barking of a dog.

Unable to shake off the feeling, he nevertheless began his routines to prepare for sleep.

Turning on his side to curl up in a fetal position as was his nightly ritual, his eyes widened in horror.

There underneath the papag, its eyes open and its head and face kafan undone, was the apparition he thought he’d escaped!

He shut his eyes as  the unmistakable smell of freshly-turned earth and the faint, mouldering taint of the grave assailed his nostrils.

The teacher leaped from the bench and yelled for his relatives, knocking down furniture in his path.

But no matter how much noise he made, he failed to rouse his sleeping relatives.

He flung open the door and shouted for help from the neighbors, but no light came on in any of the darkened windows, and no one came running to check who was creating the commotion.

He never felt more afraid or more alone.

He returned to the bench defeated and looked at the apparition in its white shroud, laid according to the Islamic burial ritual on its right side, without a coffin.

The corpse was most likely "kagkag," or the restless dead who were put in their graves without following Islamic burial rituals.

Forcing fear from his mind he turned to tradition and offered up the prayer for the forgiveness of the dead, or Salat al-Janazah, re-assuming his sleep position on the hard bed when he was done.

He must have slept for when he woke – the cold grey light of dawn was stealing in through the curtains and his unwelcome visitor was gone, with only the front door creaking on its hinges to mark its passing.

But the day after he saw the apparition, my brother’s teacher said he remained in a state of numb terror and could not bear to be left alone.

And it took weeks before he was himself again.

Postscript: That teacher went on to hold a responsible position in DepEd 9. The other boy who heard the story alongside my brother is now the city veterinarian. — BM, GMA News