-Queenie Alipio Albidas
“No napigsa dy tugtug adayo da, ngem no nakapsot asideg da (If the beat is loud it means they are far from beyond, but if the sound feels like fainting, they’re closer like you think they were.)
A dead of silence filled the air after a long over due of heavy sweats falling down, up into the sky. Her ears ringed, a loud beat coming from her heart began to pump almost breaking her rib cage, for a band that cannot be seen is taking the silence. She suddenly shivers the sleeping hair on her skin and starts to wake up, standing straight like a soldier waiting for a war. Yet, this soldier is different, it was a scared soldier cat. It stands tall because something ranged him— things that cannot be seen.
She remembered what her grandma exactly told her about those things. “Kaykayat dagidta nga sursuruten ti karayan. Karkaro no kalkalpas tudo, adidta da nga agpatpatukar. Pati iti balay nga awan ag iiyan nga kanayon, adidta da. Haan man nga makita ngem mangeg mo ken mariknam (Things like them love to follow the curves of the river side, especially after the sky cried their sound suddenly appears beyond nowhere. Even in a house where a family rarely occupied the house, they stayed there. You may not seem to sense them with your eyes but the bands are there whispering loudly and faintly in your ears.)
Their band is likely different from Nixies— spirits who played enchanted songs on violins to lure people to drown. They were like a live band. The trumpets are there. The drums are there. They were like marching bands. A band of unseen creatures, producing the sound of unsolved mysteries.
“Amom no inya dagidta? Dagidta dagidjy tattao edi gubat nga na awawan. Edi panawen ti Hapon pinilit da nga pinagmarmarcha da ti tatao dtoi edi inggana mabanog ken maawanab da ti anges ( Do you know what they are? Those are people who fled to the sky during wars. During the time of the Japanese, they forced people to march barefoot, no water, no food, no rest until they felt exhausted and until they caught their last breath,)” her grandma spokes as she cut the end of the thread. The march that her grandma was luring her about is called the “Bataan Death March.”
Words failed her to give justice to this story but only one thing she truly knows, they are everywhere. They may faint but never die. People might not see them, but only a beat from their set lives as “ghost” bumps in their lives.
