He knew her as Illusion. Her real name, she said, was Maria.
Rain against the window, too wild to be soothing, and a wind that bullied more than blew. They matched the storm for passion, for energy. David with his body ceaseless, Maria rising into him with the power and delicacy of warm air. She wrapped her legs around him, ankles crossed at the small of his back. He spoke her name—Illusion, not Maria—and her tongue glazed his throat. They finished breathless. She took her contact lenses out.
They sat afterward at the window, in the same chair, the same sheet wrapped around them. They watched the storm. In the last hour, PAGASA had advanced the warning signal from number two to number three. It wasn’t Alayna, but people were understandably scared. Many had packed what they could and left their homes, intent on reaching points farther inland. The storm was named Diwata, meaning “goddess”—mostly benevolent, but known to evoke wrath if not afforded sufficient respect.
David stood and walked naked to the table. The laptop he’d used to Skype with Angie was shut down, lid closed. Next to it, a fresh bottle of Calibre 69 and a glass. He unscrewed the cap, poured generously.
“You want some?”
“No.”
“I have another glass.”
“I’m okay.”
He nodded, sipped. Maria gathered the sheet to her body and he shook his head. She removed it completely.
“Open your legs.”
She did.
He stood for a moment and looked at her, sipping his whiskey. She smiled, then gestured toward the window.
“Aren’t you scared?”
“I don’t scare easily,” he said.
His flight to Manila had been canceled. Consequently, he would miss his connection to Hong Kong, and then Toronto. This trip had proved demanding, and all he wanted was to go home. A visit to Snakebite—with its unbridled sound and strong alcohol—had numbed his exasperation. Maria was there, as Illusion, with her blue hair and green eyes. The banknotes in David’s wallet led like bread crumbs to his hotel room. That was when the storm rolled in, wilder than forecast.
He sat with her again. She curled herself around him. He kissed her hand and she kissed his—his left hand, close to his wedding ring.
“How long have you been married?” she asked.
“Eight years.”
“You have children?”
“No,” he replied after a pause. He drew his hand from hers. “I’m not comfortable talking about this.”
“Okay.”
“She’s a better wife than I am a husband.” He finished his whiskey. “That’s all you need to know.”
She sighed and kissed his shoulder. He felt the quick tick of her heart against his back. The wind roared and something wet slapped against the balcony door. Maria jumped and clutched him, but it was only a palm frond. It tapped plaintively against the glass before being whipped away.
“What about your family?” David asked. “What do they think about what you do?”
“My father and two brothers were killed by Alayna. Too proud to evacuate. My mother lives with a family she barely knows in Tent City. It’s cramped and uncomfortable. She has no privacy, no respect. I dance—I do what I do—so that I can buy her clean clothes and warm blankets, so that she doesn’t have to eat out of a box. I’m also saving for a place for us both to live. Away from Palla. I want to put all this behind me and start again.”
“You’re ashamed of yourself?”
“I was raised an honest Catholic girl. This is why I wear the blue hair and green eyes. It’s a mask. It would break my father’s heart if he could see me . . . but I do what needs to be done.”
“Where’s your mother tonight?”
Tent City had been dismantled, packed into boxes, to be reassembled when the storm had passed. The residents of this makeshift town were bused elsewhere. It was no way to live.
“Somewhere safe,” she said. “I hope.”
The lights fluttered, then went out, along with the glowing green digits of the clock on the nightstand, and the air conditioner. Power outages were frequent, even on calm days. Neither David nor Maria flinched. She curled closer in the darkness. A few seconds later, the generator kicked in. The lamp came back on, not quite as bright. The air conditioner pulsed more than flowed.
“Let’s go back to bed,” David said.
They never made it.
The drapes on both the window and balcony doors were open; David wanted to see—and feel closer to—the storm. Privacy wasn’t a concern; they were on the top floor, sixty feet above street level. Nobody could see in. David, therefore, assumed the woman swirling on the other side of the balcony doors was Maria’s partial reflection. At least to begin with. Then he realized it couldn’t be; Maria was facing the wrong way, and as she stepped toward the bed—away from the doors—the “reflection” loomed nearer.
David’s mind struggled to explicate the impossible. Other details filtered through, confusing him further. The reflection had yellow eyes that pierced the rain, the darkness, like tiny headlights. She had nothing below the waist but a tied rope of intestine that thrashed in the wind. She had wings.
“No,” David said. A single syllable—a roadblock—between his eyes and brain.
Even when Maria turned, saw the creature, and screamed, he still refused to believe it was real. It was an ornate kite or elaborate prop. Something thrown up by the wind. Soon it would clatter harmlessly against the building and be carried away. He wiped his tired eyes. Looked again. The woman outside—the half woman—angled her muscular wings to combat the storm. Her long hair whipped and snapped.
Maria had stumbled backward, tripped over the sheet she had recently thrown from her body, and dropped to her knees. Urine squirted from between her legs. She scratched her eyes, as if she could claw what she had seen from them.
“Manananggal,” she said, and then screamed it: “MANANANGGAL!”
David blinked, and in that millisecond he saw a dirty child pointing toward the thing she feared most of all. He saw a pair of legs with nothing above them standing in the shadows, and a decrepit shack folding beneath the blade of a Komatsu bulldozer.
“No,” he said again.
The manananggal grasped the balcony rail in bony hands, like a bird clutching its perch. She howled even above the storm. A long tongue unfurled from her mouth, rippled in the wind like a scarf. The balcony door trembled—the glass cracked—as she slammed her forehead against it. David thought of the cobra at Snakebite, always furious, always banging. He’d linked it to his guilt and that felt right.
She struck the glass a second time. And a third. The crack lengthened. A gust of wind filled her wings and she battled it, grasping the rail with one hand. She lowered her shoulders and threw her forehead against the glass once again. It shattered. The storm blew inward. The creature, too.
Rain and broken glass whipped around the room. It lacerated David’s face and chest. He curled into a ball and screamed. The manananggal clawed across the floor with her entrails bumping along behind, then unfolded her wings and lifted herself into the air, shrieking. David saw teeth unevenly spaced, brownish yellow, sharp as fishhooks. Rainwater sprayed from her wings as she worked them.
Maria reacted first—not surprising, given David’s state of disbelief. She grabbed his laptop from the table and threw it at the creature. It thumped between her sagging breasts and dropped to the floor. Maria followed with the whiskey bottle, then the glass, then the lamp. Each projectile found its target, but the manananggal barely flinched. Maria shook her head. She spread her naked arms and wept. The creature attacked.
Brutal power. Maria was whipped from her feet and thrown against the wall. Her pelvis shattered. Her skull cracked. She moaned and rolled in broken glass and tried getting to her feet, but there was no way. The manananggal flexed her wings and attacked again. Her ribbon tongue coiled around Maria’s throat and squeezed until blood leaked from her eyes. She let go and bit Maria’s face three times, tearing her lips
and nose away and chewing them. Maria’s screams were weak and choked with blood. The manananggal flipped her onto her stomach. Tore chunks out of her lower back. Uncovered the base of her spine, grabbed it in one tight fist, and pulled. There was a tearing—almost a purring—sound as the vertebrae detached from the rib cage. Maria’s limbs jerked and flopped and she died with her throat bulging. The manananggal ate her stomach through the hole in her back. Her tongue slithered deep into Maria’s chest, grasped her heart, and plucked it free. She held it for David to see and then swallowed it completely. Her wings slapped at the swirling air. She grabbed Maria’s dangling spine in both hands, lifting her upper body from the floor, and with a savage twist—a revolting crack—she separated Maria’s head from her shoulders. It swung at the end of the vertebral column, like a watch on a chain, reminding David of the monkeys strung by their tails in the old woman’s shack. He blinked stupidly, his hold on reality weakening with every ragged breath, every drop of blood and rain. He watched the manananggal swing Maria’s head against the wall, leaving red prints the size of footballs, until it popped loose from the spine and rolled toward him. The creature scooped it up and smashed it repeatedly against the corner of the table, like a bird cracking a snail against a stone, until the skull first crumbled, then opened. She ate the brain quickly, noisily, then pushed her fingers into Maria’s mouth and split her jaw open. She ate Maria’s tongue and crunched the thin bone of her hard palate. Shell-like remains spilled through her fingers. Another shriek—still hungry—and she turned her glowing eyes on David. He screamed again and ran for the door. The manananggal grabbed the back of his neck, lifted him from the floor. She twisted her half body and threw him effortlessly across the room, out the window, into the storm.
He plummeted forty feet screaming. Rain stung his eyes, but he saw the sidewalk rushing toward him. In the second before impact, a hand fastened to his ankle and lifted. He first slowed, then reversed direction. The manananggal worked her wings and carried him away.
Over rooftops and furiously swaying trees. His body whipped in the storm and turned gray-cold. He couldn’t breathe. His arms hung like wet sleeves. The manananggal screeched and either lost her grip or let him go. He caught the wind like a sheet and was blown sideways, landing in a palm tree, tumbling then onto a steel roof that clattered beneath him. He bled from so many wounds. His right leg was broken and twisted beneath him. The wind rolled him across the roof and he fell twelve feet to the street below. Floodwater broke his fall. He floated belly-up and was reminded of dead insects in a certain basin filled with dirty water.
Nobody on the street. Abandoned vehicles cluttered the road. Rain fell into his open eyes and bounced off his chest. He sank beneath the surface and emerged a second later, blinking and gasping. The flowing water carried him between vehicles and he wondered if he could use one of them to hide in. He saw the creature through flashes of rain. She looped in the sky.
“Please,” David said. He rolled onto his front and grabbed the door handle of a small car turned sideways in the road, driver’s window open. He pulled himself inside, screaming as his broken leg was bumped and pulled. Water flooded the car, but he was protected somewhat from the wind and rain. He could breathe, at least. More importantly, he was—hopefully—hidden from the creature. He crawled onto the backseat and wept.
She’ll find you, he thought, teeth clenched, shivering. Just like she found you at the hotel. Tracked you like a bloodhound. She knows your scent.
“Please . . .”
Do you believe now? Or are you still in denial . . . the way you deny your actions, your sins?
He buried his face in his hands and screamed.
Are you sorry?
“Yes . . . yes!”
A now-familiar screech that was not the storm, but equally real, and more feared. David lowered his hands. He looked through the open window and saw the manananggal land on the roof of a jeepney, maybe thirty feet away. She folded her wings and peered through the darkness, the swirling rain. Her yellow eyes tracked left to right, looking for him.
David moaned and lowered himself into the water behind the driver and passenger seats. Only his face broke the surface, like a floating mask. His heart hammered so hard that he imagined the water trembling, ripples forming. His blue lips moved silently.
Please . . .
She screeched again, the sound cutting through the storm. A palm tree fell nearby and the force of it nudged the car through the water. It caught the current, and David cried out—couldn’t help himself—as it edged toward the jeepney. He raised his head and braved a look. The manananggal tasted the air with her long tongue. Her eyes searched brightly. The car bumped another vehicle, turned a slow circle, but kept moving toward her.
She extended her wings and hovered, arms hanging.
David held his breath and slipped beneath the water. He bled and trembled. But for this storm—this act of God—he would be on a plane back home. But for this creature—decidedly ungodly—he would be in his hotel room, blissfully sinning.
He heard his heartbeat, felt his guilt, banging . . . banging.
I’m sorry.
He imagined safety, happiness, comfort. Not his Toronto home with its luxury furnishings, but his wife. She gave him these things, and so much more. The only thing she couldn’t give him—and what he desperately wanted—was a child. But it didn’t matter. Angie was, in every other way, everything he needed.
I’m so sorry.
The little car struck the heavier jeepney and stopped. David came up for air. He wiped his eyes. The windshield was blurred with rain, but he saw her terrible wings clearly.
She pulled him through the open window and he was too limp to fight. High into the sky, the storm ebbing now, still ferocious. Her tongue lashed over his open wounds and came away red. She bit off three of his fingers and dropped him. He landed on a concrete wall, back broken. The manananggal circled and swooped and plucked him—dead from the chest down—into her strong arms and carried him to the outskirts of Palla.
The rain forest here had been partially cleared, not by the storm, but by harvesters, forest mowers, and forwarders. There was storm damage, though: two glaring billboards had been blown to the ground. One depicted the site’s shimmering future. The other brandished the land developer’s name and logo. The manananggal dropped David on this latter billboard. He landed faceup, his body buckled. The final precious beats of his life were spent watching the creature tear him apart. She chewed off his withered penis and swallowed it, grinning. She gobbled his testicles, then thrust her hands into the wound between his legs and tore upward, unzipping him to the sternum. His guts flopped out and steamed. She fed on them and he felt nothing but the pain inside—the pain of loss, fear, and understanding. He blinked rain from his eyes and died.
The manananggal licked her lips, spread her wings.
Blood covered most of the billboard. It pooled across the company logo and part of the name.
Above David Payne’s separated corpse, in a font designed to catch the eye, the word REALITY.
She landed in Manila on time, but her connection to Palla was delayed. She knew it would be; the city was on its knees after the latest storm. Damage was estimated at one hundred million US dollars. Sixty-three dead. Reporters the world over said the same thing: a tragedy indeed, but nothing—a mere breeze—compared to Alayna.
Angie sat on a hard chair at Manila’s airport, head down, locked in her grief. She waited six hours and finally boarded her flight. It was late evening by the time she arrived in Palla. She’d arranged transportation from the airport—had been told not to trust taxi drivers in foreign countries. A woman traveling on her own should take few chances. A pregnant woman should take none.
They had been trying for six years. David—who claimed to always get what he wanted—insisted they keep trying. I want this, he’d said to her. I’m not giving up. She’d had surgery to open her fallopian tubes. Two failed IVFs. Doctors told her she had only a 2 percent cha
nce of natural conception. She felt unworthy. Unwomanly. It broke her heart.
David had been in the Philippines for only a few days when she found out. She had woken that morning feeling different. Nothing she could put her finger on. Just . . . different. She went immediately to the bathroom cabinet and took out one of the pregnancy tests she kept on hand. Peed on it without expectation. Fell trembling to her knees and cried tears of disbelief when two blue lines appeared in the little window.
Angie came close to calling him right away—didn’t care what time it was in the Philippines or what he might be doing. After some thought, she decided to wait for his return home. She wanted to feel his reaction, not just hear it. She’d bought a pacifier and had the due date printed on it. The plan was to pop it into his mouth when he closed in for that first kiss.
The storm—Diwata—had raged eight thousand miles away but still managed to turn her world upside down. Instead of giving David the child he so desperately wanted, she was flying to the Philippines to identify and bring back his body.
The driver was waiting for her at the airport in Palla, holding up a misspelled sign—PAIN—written in blue ink. He spoke English but chose not to. They drove into the city in silence, passing countless scenes of devastation and loss. Angie clutched her belly instinctively. The setting sun drew orange shades across the sky.
The buildings leaned into one another, as if huddled, as if afraid.
WHAT KEPT YOU SO LONG?
JOHN AJVIDE LINDQVIST
Translated by Marlaine Delargy
The woman standing by the side of the road wasn’t a typical hitchhiker. Most are young men, then there are a few young women, plus a small number of older men. The woman who had carefully positioned herself some twenty yards before the rest area with her thumb outstretched belonged to the almost nonexistent category of older women.
My ability to see in the dark has improved significantly since I became infected, so in spite of the November twilight, and the fact that the woman was standing outside the beam of my headlights, I could see that she had medium-length gray hair, and blue eyes with an alert expression, which is unusual in hitchhikers.
Seize the Night Page 46