english,
Literary: When the Night Comes
In Western Visayas, it is believed that there exists an older, more cunning and more experienced species of the Aswang, called Gabunan. The Gabunan do not wait for the dark to capture their prey; they attack humans without being seen. After they create copies of their victims and send them home, the copies fall ill and die. That is when they devour their victims.
“Come on, hurry up!” the village boy shouted at his companion from atop the hill leading to their home. For this story to serve its purposes, we will be naming them X and Y, respectively.
X was a slight young boy, no taller than four feet at nine years old. His companion, Y, was his brother, only two years older and described by many to have a stocky build in spite of his young age. Both were residents of Cadiz City, beloved by all.
Y lagged way behind X at the foot of the hill. “Just keep going!” Y panted; he chuckled. They were running back home. It was almost dark, after all.
It had always been a practice of this town’s residents to get home before dark. They had to get where they would be safe, protected. It was not spoken of often, but the people knew that dangers lurked in the dark. That the night belonged to them.
X waited for his brother, still. He looked ahead of him. The rarely functioning streetlights were starting their flickering for the night. He glanced at his watch, gnashing his teeth in anxiety. X tended to be more nervous than Y; it was something his parents told him off for regularly. They said it attracted more spirits.
Y knew that X was nervous, and part of him wished he wouldn’t be. It was all for no reason—truly, he didn’t believe in all those myths people told them about.
For X, though, he sped up his pace.
He heard his brother yelp, and he looked over behind him. Y was limping towards him, pointing to a rock he must have tripped over. X nodded quickly and stayed silent.
He was nearing his brother when it happened. It felt like death: sudden, but oh-so-slow.
His skin prickled; the hairs on his arms stood on end. Without warning, he started running again. No one spoke; Y knew in times like this, it was better for X to just get where they needed to be.
He was choking. A hand wrapped around his neck. There was nothing there at all, but he felt the cold of the fingers that tightened around his airways and the sharpness of the nails that hooked themselves into his skin.
He was losing air; he could barely let out a sound.
He was running out of breath, but he did not dare stop.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw twigs rising up of their own accord, twisting and morphing themselves until he saw a mirror image of himself, smiling back at him.
It walked towards his brother at a menacing pace, not uttering a single word, only pointing at a rock.
He tried to scream for X, tried prying the force away from his throat, but it would not let go.
X’s throat was starting to hurt from the scratches of thirst against his flesh. Just a little bit farther, he thought.
His vision turned red; he lost consciousness.
It did not take long for them to reach home and be greeted by the worry on their parents’ faces, soon replaced with relief. It was like this every evening; they lived with their twelve-hour days.
Despite being home, X felt strange. Everything was the same, but there was the eerie feeling that something didn’t seem right. He could not place what it was. It bothered him to no end, but he decided not to bring it up.
When Y woke, he found himself in a dark and dank cave. Chills ran up his back as he sat against the cold stone walls. He gripped his arm to hold on to something; his knuckles were white, and he assumed his face was, too.
He stayed silent through dinner, only speaking when he was being directly addressed. He was grateful for Y not talking either; it made it less obvious for their parents that he felt there was something different. Their parents simply talked about what the neighbors had been up to recently and what happened at the market.
He could not register any shock anymore at the realness of it—only pure terror. Tears spilled out onto his face when an awful cackle sounded and bounced off the walls. It was unlike anything he’d ever heard before; it was utterly demonic.
He was filled with bile. He knew death was about to come.
X remained restless on the inside, but he dared not mention anything of it out loud. Anybody could hear, that’s what they always said. He was terrified; what if something happened to him on their way home, something he didn’t notice?
He hoped for anything to save him as a shadow appeared. He could barely make the figure out, but he knew it was not human.
He tossed and turned through the night, endless thoughts rushing through his head, until he finally, truly found rest.
As the figure drew closer, he accepted his fate. He closed his eyes, prayed to any gods out there that his family would be kept safe.
Fangs as long as his fingers and as sharp as knives seemed to pierce him even from afar; bloodshot eyes that he knew would haunt him even in the afterlife met his.
When he woke, he was told that his brother was dead. His mother, with her tear-stained cheeks, told him that he had fallen ill in the middle of the night. X cried.
Somewhere in a cave, not far from X’s home, scarlet blood drips onto the floor. Pale white bones that seem to shine from being licked clean are scattered on the ground.
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