Spirit Wars (13 page)

Yet
I held on to hope because our worlds inched closer and closer as she counted
down the remaining days of her life. At exactly midnight in her clock, our
worlds would both orbit near enough to touch.

But
then she was inducted into Heaven. They called it by a different name: Helium,
but it was the same paradise most people had been raised to believe. To this
ethereal land, it was the elemental Storks, the great white angels, who
escorted Aquilia and robbed me of my fraction of time, my sliver of
opportunity. There was no possibility for a servant of the dark like me to
steal even a glimpse of her or to send word to where she was. Aquilia and I had
drifted close and were worlds apart again; this time forever.

The
only chance, my predecessor explained, lay in Aquilia’s choosing to be reborn
to earth. And tragically, to be reborn is to allow one’s mind to be wiped clean
like a slate.

“To
find a single soul in all creation is to find a particular star in all the
universes,” the previous Atropos taught me. “Leave her be. Refrain from turning
back to your mortal shell. Shed all order, outward or inward, that you find
comforting. All this sentimentality and your need for a familiar face; what you
consider strength is weakness in the eyes of the inhabitants of Terra Mortis.
And in the eyes of the Crows in particular. Do not appear humanly weak to them
or they shall overthrow you.”

I
heeded her advice. It occurred to me then how the human quality, no matter how
diluted, was inserted into the equation in the guise of the Atropos. This even
though the two other elements of the Fate Trinity, Clotho and Lachesis, were
purebred immortals. Indeed, no matter how the Crows detested it, the Atropos
Wyrd played a humanizing and balancing role.

Old
Death left me to be the last of my breed. She disintegrated and passed on to
the Smoke, a place that was neither Heaven nor Hell (nor Limbo) built
especially for semi-immortal and ambiguous workers like us.

But
let me give you an idea how immense the undertaking was to search for Aquilia
in the ocean of souls. Human scientists have estimated that there are ten times
more stars than grains of sand in all the beaches and deserts of the world
combined. And if I gave them precise knowledge of how big the universe actually
was (and how many others there are), it would surely break their flimsy grasp
on reality.

I
take my
leave. My job in hooking up the two love birds is done and there’s little else
I can contribute. Sephtimus seems to be doing just fine on his own, too, having
assimilated a working knowledge of human communication and behavior through the
Lachesis monitors.

More
importantly, seeing the possibility of love in the shape of Lessa and Chester
leaning towards each other across the diner table has torn open a wound in me
that no amount of discipline can plug up. I feel like an old, mangy lion that
remembers the smell of grass on the savannah but forced to spend all the
remaining days of its life inside a cage.

I
need you, Sam. Now more than ever.

I
walk
through the memory-riddled streets, taking in the dim lights and the muted
sounds of the city that acts like a baby – little by little quieting down but
still refusing to fall asleep. I put my fluid, chameleonic, now-you-see-’em-now-you-don’t
hands into the pockets of my aqueous hips and jeans, and hang my head. It seems
as though I’ve retained the erratic properties of the carriage.

I
wander the avenues that I used to take on my way to university. To be exact, I
haunt them. A grotesque specter of a man that had his shot at happiness but
totally blew it. I had crossed a line where as soon as I did, I realized I had
left the most important thing behind and there was no turning back. Now I’m the
one doing the haunting but I’m still not left alone by the memories. 

I
remember
the psychiatrist breaking the news to me in the small, sublet office. The
doctor dispensed scientific words but I fancied I could read his mind like I
sometimes could and catch the gist of what he refused to say in so many words:
That I was going crazy. In those days, I would often feel the street wobble
under my feet as though it couldn’t wait to swallow me whole. I was an outsider
in the midst of normal people because I never got the hang of the business of
living. There was something seriously broken inside me; a fatal flaw in logic
or the absence of a reason for being. Something that had to be fixed first
before the world would accept me, or I would accept myself.

So
I shut the door, locked out Sam. Started fantasizing about death. And who would
think Death, of all the angels, had his eyes on me and listened to my prayers?

Then
again, I probably wasn’t as tough a job for him as I hoped I was. Technically I
didn’t even exist. My own mother didn’t stick around long enough to give me a
name so it followed that every extension of my special birth certificate – my
social security number, tax ID, everything about me was a lie.  If I
wanted to, it was easy enough to fall through the cracks because that was what
I had been born to do anyway, to disappear.   

But
for a while, none of those things mattered. I was able to trick myself into
believing I had a shot. I felt content, laughed, celebrated life with my
friends and fell in love so passionately. Here in this very city.

Whenever
people asked how Sam and I met, this was the story I told them:

She
was a striking freshman in ponytail and sleeveless blouses. She’d bring you
right back to the high school days you thought you’d left behind, when girls
were women and boys were still kids. She’d make you feel this even in the
university you had staked out for your own by virtue of seniority. The
effortless grace with which she carried herself, whether seated or walking,
hugging her textbooks on the way to class or eating a burger at the cafeteria;
her voice which rang as clear and musical as a bell of fate; the air of
independence that bordered on arrogance; all these affected you with animal
magnetism, things that no man of any generation could resist.

We
both sat
in the last row of Philos I, which was an introductory course but belonged to
the General Education curriculum, meaning it was something impossible to
escape. I had put it off for so long I had to take it together with all the
snotty-nosed freshies and – but the stars did shine on me – with Her. I paid
little attention to the lectures and spent all my energies rediscovering the
lost teenage (and caveman) art of charcoal painting like some unwashed hippie
Art major, perfecting her profile in the middle back row and with the edges of
my hands always sooty.

This,
in hindsight, was the wrong medium of expression. Being a Math major, I was a
complete amateur in the eyes of a Visual Arts major. Nevertheless, after an
unimaginably long period of practice that lasted well into the second quarter,
I finally bit the bullet and in a very small voice asked my seatmate to please
pass my masterpiece.

But
our professor, who of course had been on to me from day one, intercepted the
sketch and saw it fit to show the whole class and to read aloud my love note on
the back:
Venisti, Vidi, Vicisti
. (You came, I saw, You conquered.) Both
Sam and I blushed furiously amid giggles and cheers. From that day on, I always
had with me two things: the nickname “Caesar’s Salad” and her phone number.

****

Tonight
it seems the Lachesis monitors back in Death’s office won’t give me a moment’s
peace. It’s hard to tell if I’m acting of my own volition or for an audience as
I walk towards a very familiar place, People’s Park, teeming with live memories
like a fisherman’s net. Towards memories that were once happy but now only too
painful, I find my immaterial feet carrying me.

The
park of course is gated and guarded at this time of night. But not against my
vacillating form. I walk right to and between the impossible bars and catch a
glimpse of the napping security guard’s partly open mouth. Though it feels
miserable realizing that even in death I’m trapped in indecision manifested in
my very shape, I take consolation in how I have more or less stabilized back
into my human form, still sporting the coachman’s uniform, the jacket that’s
very likely someone else’s burial suit.

It’s
pitch-black in the park but shadowy and dappled in places by moonlight. More
silvery and magical than ever. I wonder how it is I never noticed these things
when I was still alive.

Fortunately,
the spiritual dimension seems keener on remembering, which supports a theory of
mine that the places people haunt in their lifetimes will carry traces of their
presence forever. And to the psychically-gifted, the voices would still ring as
true as when they first did:

-
What’s this? Is this another of our heart-to-heart talks? Because they all boil
down to one thing, you know, to me not introducing you to my parents. Is that what
this is about?

-
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to meet your parents. It follows, if we’re
seriously committed to this relationship.

-
What’s wrong is you’re always asking about my personal life. You know why you
keep getting disappointed? It’s because of me. I keep pretending I’m who you
want me to be. So why don’t you do both of us a favor and just leave me the
hell alone?

We
broke up. That was the longest we had ever gone without speaking to each other.
But not a day passed that she wasn’t in my thoughts. Every morning that I
opened my eyes I would just lie in bed and think about what I had lost and the
emptiness that waited for me the rest of the day, adding joyless testament to
the adage that humans never truly appreciated anything till they had lost it.

I
was determined to win her back. So what I did was go to a music store and buy
an acoustic guitar. This was something I had been putting off all my life. From
the Internet I started to learn how to tune, read chords, and play. Every time
I found myself thinking of Sam, I just grabbed the guitar and played away.

Day
after day I practiced till my fingers were sore. I didn’t want to stop playing
till I knew Sam would be satisfied with the result. I even dared to write a
song of my own. I called it “The Right Time” and it was about a guy waiting for
his soulmate.

All
these happened in August and September, the rainy season in the Philippines. I
was trapped indoors a lot and it hurt to be missing her all the time. We were
still not on speaking terms and avoided each other on campus. I had noticed her
eyes were swollen from crying in the first few weeks of our breakup and she
dropped out of the couple of classes we were taking together. But then she
started hanging out with her friends and she at last looked happier.

As
soon as I felt ready, I recorded a video of myself playing and singing the song
I wrote. I burned my performance to a DVD and then placed disk and accompanying
letter in her school locker. Truth be told, I still had a duplicate key to the
locker that we used to share and apparently Sam still hadn’t gotten around to
changing the lock.

I
waited, for a call or text, but I didn’t hear from her. Weeks passed and the
DVD went unmentioned. I was tempted a couple of times to ask her in person but
I had to assume that she didn’t want me to do precisely that. She seemed to be
doing better and better and it just felt wrong to suddenly be pulling her back
to my life, to all my angst and complexity.

Then
one time it was raining hard, I saw a chance to finally make casual
conversation with her on the steps of her college building. She was waiting for
the rain to stop but it showed no signs of abating. Unfortunately, when I
finally plucked up the courage to approach her, someone else had beaten me to
it. I couldn’t see who it was, only that the guy was wearing our school varsity
jacket. The man held out an umbrella for Sam and she easily stepped under it
like they had known each for some time. They both got in his car.

I
was devastated. Without thinking, I walked to where my bike was parked. I
didn’t care that it was pelting and I was getting soaked. I rode home, guitar
case slung and lugged like some child’s coffin against my back; an erect, recalcitrant
finger through the walls of water. It didn’t occur to me right away that I was
taking a detour to Sam’s boarding house.

When
I got there, a light was on in Sam’s upstairs room and her visitor’s car was
parked in front. I picked up a pebble and threw it at her window, just as I
used to whenever I wanted to see her late at night. On my third try, Sam heard
and looked out. Her eyes widened when she realized it was me.

It
was a good thing the rain had let up and provided just the opening for what I
intended to do. I took out my guitar and started to play.  

****

Never
had I imagined I’d be singing a song for a girl. In the rain, for starters.

But
I did. I sang as loud as I could so she would hear. The sweet music of the
guitar floated through the patter of rain and the words I had written rang with
the unique charm of my deep masculine voice, with as much confidence as I
trained and hoped it would.

When the right time comes

I shall hold you in my arms

Wrap in mine your hand

Stroke
your hair, my love

It
also helped that I sang with emotion. This I knew because I saw, through all
the rainwater dripping down fangs of my hair, Sam covering her mouth as tears
soaked her eyes.

I
also found myself crying a little in the cover of rain. I barely noticed when I
had started to, but I was thinking of all the times I had to hide my dark
feelings behind a fake smile and the giant loneliness that always threatened to
knock me down and eat me alive. Sam was the only person who truly understood
me. She kept all the sadness and worries at bay. With her I felt free to be who
I was: optimistic and scarred and courageous and insecure all at the same time.

When the right time comes

I shall whisper words of love

Shout your name out high

Let the
world know why

When
the other guy heard me singing, he knew better than to stick around. He slipped
by and drove away without Sam or me noticing. This was a good call. We were too
thrilled over our sudden reunion to care anymore.

I
never told anyone anything, not even Sam, but an irrational, terrifying idea
occurred to me then. It even haunted me a couple of times in my dreams. I
imagined Sam’s visitor was in fact a completely different person from who he
really was and He was a man who had bad intentions for Sam. It was only my song
and the talismanic effect it had that drove the blackness away, that pushed
back the shift in reality where an alternate dimension peeked out with one
glaring evil eye.

Sam
hurried me in and got me a fresh shirt, dried my hair with a towel. She made
some hot tea, too. I felt chilled to the bone not only because of the rain but
especially because of the epiphany that had briefly touched my mind. Yes, it
was an incredible idea but I felt I had just warded off the hair-raising
glimpse of an entity that managed to wedge itself between the two of us,
sinister and ever so subtle. Miraculously I had overcome it and it was relief
from naked fear that sent shudders through my entire body.

Now
with the benefit of hindsight, I suspect Sephtimus had something to do with
that particular episode. The only explanation is that as early as then, the
Grim Reaper was already interfering with my life and making his preparations.