Pangangaluluwa

Tano

Tano, on the other hand, feared the dead very much. He knew they could hurt him, kill him, as if they were still living. Tano's companions from the guardia civil thought that he was insane, but he merely thought them foolish: foolish for not believing him, when all he spoke was the truth. And what was the truth? That the spirit of his father wanted him dead, join him in eternal damnation forevermore. His fellow soldiers only looked at him with either pity or contempt in their eyes.

He was all right, he insisted. He was afraid of his father's ghost, but he was all right, still in full capacity of his senses, and not goaded into despair despite everything. In fact, after what had happened back in the mountains, he even sometimes had this irrepressible urge to laugh—his sister was dead because of the priests he fought to protect and his grandfather was killed by his companions in the guardia civil and now his father was also dead because his own son killed him—the whole thing struck him as incredibly funny.

That surely meant he was all right, he reasoned. Other men, less strong, less stable, would undoubtedly have wasted away in their guilt, and eventually died of grief. Not him. He could still laugh. That meant he was going to be all right, at least if he could escape from his father's ghost.

It proved an impossible task, however. Because of the incident in the mountains—they thought he was insane, what fools they were—they refused to let him come to the next hunt for the tulisanes and left him in the barracks. Later, when they returned in the evening, they heard a shot from the barracks, and Tano came running towards them, screaming for help, clutching at his companions with a death-like grip. Deep, angry gashes were on his arms, legs, and abdomen. He insisted that his father did this to him.

He said that the first thing he had seen as he lay there in the darkness was his father's eyes, staring at him from the ceiling. Blood-red, almost popping out from their sockets. His father slowly grinned, teeth yellow, with maggots crawling in the spaces between them. The ghost stretched out a hand, all skin and bones, and grabbed him by the throat. Tano struggled, screaming, forgive me, father, but the ghost only gripped him harder. Why should I, his father hissed, when you killed me, murdered me, your own flesh and blood? In a panic, Tano reached out for his rifle, and he shot at his father (shot him again, he thought, and that made him laugh) and...the rest he had forgotten. There was just blood, and pain, too much of it.

They found the barracks as he had described it. His rifle lay in the corner, blood dripping from the pointed edge of the bayonet. There was also blood on his bedsheets, and on the bedroom floor. There were letters on the wall, scribbled in blood as well: Murderer, it said.

Mautang finally recommended that he be discharged after this, ignoring his explanations and dismissing the ghost as mere hallucinations. They said he inflicted the injuries on himself, either to fool his companions that he was telling the truth, or maybe because he truly had gone insane. Vainly he begged, pleaded with them that he was all right, but they thrust his papers of discharge at him and turned their backs on his pleas. They did not even bother turning him over to an insane asylum. They had no time to waste, not even for a fallen companion.

The last I heard of him was that he was found wandering the road that skirted the same mountain where the killing of Matanglawin happened, talking to things only he could see, pleading with them to let him free. When passersby stopped to speak to him, he always flinched, screaming, No, no, you cannot take me yet with you, Itay! He pointed at something behind him, but they saw nothing, only his madness. He called everyone who came near strange names, calling one woman Inay, and her younger companion, Lucia, and sometimes, he even called out the name of the woman I loved, Juli.

Once, he fell at the feet of an old man, begging for his forgiveness, for being so useless a son to not have recognized his own father and grandfather in the heat of battle—

Why the old man did what he did next, I cannot say. Some say it was because the old man was slightly deaf and did not understand what Tano said to him. The others say the old man himself was insane himself, or at least suffering from senility in his old age.

But the stories only say one thing: that the old man did not run from Tano, and only looked at him with pity in his eyes. The old man leaned over and took his hand, saying, "Don't be afraid. Everything is all right."

"Am I forgiven?" Tano had asked, voice hoarse, despair almost drowning out his words into incoherence. "After everything I have done?"

"There is forgiveness for everyone," said the old man. "You too, my grandson."

And Tano finally wept.

It was no longer the loud wails of a madman; but the joyful weeping of a man who has finally realized that he had not lost everything, after all, for he was not beyond forgiveness.

The townspeople there flocked around him, pulling him up from the ground, asking him to stay with them for a while. A genuine smile lit up his features, but he pulled free of them, shaking his head. He gave them his thanks and walked away from them, into the direction of the mountains.

The townspeople watched him until he was lost from their sight. They turned back to speak to the old man, but he, too, was nowhere in sight.

As strange as the events were, the strangest part was that the townspeople had never seen that old man in the town before or anywhere else. I stayed in that barrio for some time, and even dared to go to the mountain, but I did not see this old man they spoke of, or Tano.

He was never seen again after that. I would like to think he is living happily somewhere else in the country. There are stories that say that you will see him if you get lost in the mountains at night. He will not harm you or even say anything to you; he will only smile and point to something behind you. Sometimes, two other ghosts are seen with him, and the three of them wander the mountains for eternity.