Eyes watery and bloodshot, facial orifices spewing out disease carrying fluids…
Pau's got a case of the sniffles. The both of us have always been snotty little bastards but I had never seen her allergies this bad. Apparently, her sense of the supernatural piggybacked off her sense of smell.
"Chaps? The Aswang smell like… old man perfume… to you?" I asked her. Pau simply grumbled affirmatively.
"Malevolent spirits—only when… they're real close," Pau did her best to explain in between sneezes. No more than five minutes in, she already looked like she'd been in a five-hour foot chase. I could only imagine the strong grandfatherly fragrance burning through her sinuses.
"Okay, I'll go get you some water, alright? I'll find my own way to the principal's office and meet you guys there. Sound good?" Pau responded with yet another grumble.
Certain areas appeared to be off limits. Probably what yellow tape stood for, right? The playground, cafeteria, one of the boys' restrooms—even a bunch of trees. Off limits. On my way back to the gate, a bunch of gardeners uprooted a few shrubs from one of the patches of garden scattered throughout the school grounds, then sealed the area off with the same yellow tape like an active crime scene.
Anyway, I had to go back outside to buy bottled water from one of the street vendors who sold assortments of goodies for children.
Toys, packets of trading-cards, trinkets, and fighting spiders adorned the cart. I approached the vendor, eyeballing the cooler he sat on. Business must have been slow since the haunting fiasco as the forty-something vendor lit up when I asked, "Got some water in that ice box, boss?"
I was never any good with the small talk but the warmth in the strip of traveling merchants gave me every reason to want to stay. I was welcomed with the temperament of cool uncles that whipped up great food and told the funniest stories at family reunions. And speaking of great food, my stomach growled at the enticing scent of isaw and other grilled snacks I couldn't quite place.
The toy vendor and I managed to exchange a few pleasantries. I squeezed in a few questions here and there, before I got what I asked for and went on my way. According to the jolly old man, no one was allowed to stay in the campus after classes. Right after the last bell, the first graders were to line up and go immediately to their parents who waited outside. The second graders followed, then the third, and so on. Sales took a hit since the kids didn't stick around to spend their lunch money on pogs and kisses.
(Alright, I just realized how that last part sounded inappropriate. Just to be clear, I wasn't talking about jamming wet mouths onto another's face, expressing affection. Kisses are these squishy beads that are said to multiply when soaked in rubbing alcohol overnight. Children keep them as "pets").
The place was ground zero for harmful speculation on headless specters, however. Harbinger of bad news; undead vigilante; Asian Michael Myers—what have you. Not that I've ever encountered a pugòt myself, but I didn't get the scare around some guy missing a head. The whole concept to me seemed so cartoony—roaming after death, the world an eternal blackout where you looked for your own severed noggin like we did with candles and matches.
If there was vengeance to be made, the pugòt stayed on mission, and executed quite effectively based on my compilation of "eyewitness accounts" (i.e., barbers, cab drivers, and drunk uncles). After the business was over, the pugòt gave themselves the burial they saw fit, resting in peace on their own terms, of their own accord.
Walking the deserted campus was a fever dream come to life. What was once a place of learning morphed into a pseudo-prison, complete with lockdown procedures that kept the kids confined for almost the entire day. Morning assemblies were suspended. Kids from first to sixth grades weren't allowed to leave their rooms under any circumstance from 8AM to 12PM and 1PM to 4PM. Everyone went out in threes or fours at lunch break. (Apparently, this was also the only time the kids could go take a piss).
With three bags of ice-water on one hand and two bags of kisses on the other, I sought my way back to the detectives. The sharp scent of bleach and mothballs blanketed the corridors leading to the principal's office. Strips of salt marked invisible barriers along classroom doorways and window sills. It was the outdoor equivalent of a defensive perimeter of pillows at the edge of your bed at night.
Apart from the stricter rules and ritualistic defenses put up by the school administrators, the students went on about their day like there was nothing out of the ordinary. A cry here, a laugh there, these rooms of seven and eight-year-olds were the last vestiges of normalcy in Dadiangas West Elementary.
One of the more mischievous boys, grinning like a Cheshire cat despite the void of front teeth, sauntered up to the window and gave me the finger. Seeing as how his teacher's back was turned, I had to oblige with an identical salute myself; not forgetting to reciprocate with a nose-scrunching smile.
The faculty and administrators' offices were salted as well. "Ma'am, calling off classes for a day or two wouldn't hurt anyone. We just need to keep the kids away from an ongoing police investigation," Ricafrente's muffled voice hummed outside the room. He must have taken over as lead investigator.
"We're not calling off anything until you find any indication of a clear and present threat, Detective," the principal snapped.
She was a five-hundred-year old Balete. Next to Ricafrente's boy band aesthetic though, she looked most likely to have had a fling with Judas Escariot. So, her plan to assert dominance by standing their ground, using faculty and students as human shields—I'd be just as miserable if I withered away surrounded by this ugly yellow plaster and the scholarly writings of my former, mostly dead, colleagues.
"Ma'am, I really do understand your skepticism not having seen anything unusual yourself. But we can't afford to wait until something happens before taking precautionary measures because… well, that just takes away the pre from precautionary."
"Don't you take that tone with me, smart-ass. Have you ever been school principal for 40 years? I think not. You don't even know what you're talking about. You're no principal for 40 years…"
She was a little too preoccupied rubbing the whole 40-year thing in Ricafrente's face so I just let myself in and sat next to Pau who simply observed in uncharacteristic silence. Her right leg tapped to the rapid double-bass of a heavy metal song only she could hear. Soon enough, I realized that the only barrier between the principal's chin and the ball of Pau's foot was Ricafrente making a case for class suspension. I guess Pau didn't want to ruin that for him.
Ricafrente said, "I'm, uh, only 21 years old, Ma'am. I don't think I'm physically capable of garnering that much work experience." He increased the smart-assery, with an added pinch of spite. Certainly a first, given that the man has been nothing short of a teddy bear all morning.
"Exactly… You're clueless. So, do us a favor and zip it, you punk!"
Ricafrente turned to us sheepishly, awaiting guidance from his sergeant. We just gave each other confused looks in complete silence for about a minute. Even Pau stopped sneezing and looked like she was about to strangle the attitude out of the lady.
(Seriously, what the fuck happened before I came in?)
Getting the principal to budge was like talking to a crusty old wall. Except Pau wouldn't just leave without taking a crack at the miserable hag. She sent Ricafrente to cross-check statements from other faculty members instead. I sat back, bracing myself for Typhoon Paula after she downed a bag of ice water and not-so-subtly cracked her knuckles.
Much to my disappointment, Pau wasn't in any mood nor condition to play bad cop to Ricafrente's good cop. She sounded weary, struggling to push her words through her stuffy nose.
"Ba'ab… we cadot help you if you doad gib us space to wirk. Udtil we figure out wat exactly is goig od, da edtire school is at risk of escalatig idto a red-zode ob paradormal actibity. Also, your lack ob respek towards Detective Ricafrente was udcawled for. He was oudli codserd about da studets' safety." She sounded way worse than when we first showed up.
"You're talking to me about lack of respect? I'll tell you who lacks respect: you! You and your… lack of respect for boundaries!" The principal waved a wooden ruler dangerously close to Pau's face. "Back the hell up! Don't you be spreading your germs here, snot-nosed br—"
"Dis behavior kud hab you arrested for… obstrukshod ob justice, Ba'ab!"
It couldn't, in fact, and the principal, well aware of this, began jabbing her ruler onto Pau's chest. She doubled down, launching a full-blown harangue about R-E-S-P-E-C-T, with every bit of Arethan sass minus the soul. I clamped my mouth shut as Pau seemed on the brink of rearranging the old bat's face.
Poke. "Do your job…" Two pokes. "And get the hell out of my way while I do mine," the principal concluded.
Pau squinted, likely anticipating the rhythm of the pokes and zeroing in on pressure points. She could time it right. Disarm her. Use the principal's own weapon against her. Would the catharsis be worth the pink slip though?
(It's only police brutality if the press caught wind of it. I was the press, but surely a slight twist of the arm wouldn't make it to print).
Pau's nostrils flared, except she ended up loudly sucking in her snot. "You dote wad to play dis gabe wid be," she said, busting out the rogue cop movie lines.
The two glared at each other, a bit too long for my comfort. I would have left sooner, instead I found myself stuck in the suspense, wanting to see my friend win in this battle of wills.
A cackle of static from Pau's walkie blueballed the intense staredown. "Sarge! Sarge, I've got ID on… I don't know, something." Ricafrente radioed. "I'm—"
"Ric? Ric?" Pau nodded her head towards the office exit, signaling me to follow. "Detective Ricafredte, do you read? Where are you?"
"Sus—dang it… Suspect headed towards the canteen," Ricafrente finally responded after a few uncomfortable seconds of silence on his end. "I've boxed him in, Sarge! He's—"
(That's not good).
Navigating through the corridors in this alerted state was a headache. I don't think I had trouble finding the principal's office on my way inside. Now that we're in a hurry, we ran in nonsensical loops. Picture every Scooby Doo episode where the crew along with the monsters themselves wound up chasing their own tails careening in and out of multiple doors in confusing sequence.
"Did we get hexed? Dis is supposed to be a sball school, how are we lost?"
Good question; though, I couldn't respond verbally as I was starting to lose breath. It didn't seem to matter where we turned. These hallways all looked the same.
My lungs were on the verge of collapse. "This entity has got to be fucking with us or something," I muttered, gasping for air.
"Ded dis is dot just edi headless priest we're lookig for," she said, wiping the sweat from her forehead and snot from above her lip with her sleeves.
While trying to catch my breath, something caught my eye. "That kid flipped me off on the way to the principal's office!"
Pau gave me a bewildered look as if wondering what got me so excited about getting flipped off. The toothless kid, still wearing that mocking grin on his face, peeked out their classroom's doorway before presumably getting yanked back inside by the ear.
"Straight ahead…" I hollered. "That's the way back to the courtyard!"
We picked up the pace and arrived at the canteen not too long after. God forbid, the scene that greeted us was not what I feared. In my mind, Ricafrente already lay hurt on the ground or worse. He was on the ground, alright—in a patch of garden not far from the cafeteria—very much alive and practically hugging it.
"You better hope that when we find that thing it still works. Otherwise, I swear to god…" Ricafrente barked at an inconspicuous-looking bush made conspicuous due to the fact that he (yes, he) stood on hind legs and spoke like a developed human adult.
He looked a little too young to be doing what he was doing though. That or he simply was the kind of guy who had yet to get acquainted with grass and sunlight. He wore a crude camouflage suit—more accurately a hodgepodge of dried leaves, carabao grass, and cardboard. The textures of which crinkled and crackled with every move. Pieces of cardboard jutted out at weird angles, turning him into a walking abstract sculpture—more modern art than practical gear for a stakeout.
He was thin, with a puffy crown of spaghetti hair that made his head look small. Rather than wearing the makeshift ghillie suit, he was pretty much gobbled up by it. It was like he became one with the garden, personifying a low budget remake of the Swamp Thing.
By the time Pau and I caught up to Ricafrente, we found them like this, rifling through thistle and clawing at the ground they were planted on. "I'm doing the best I can," the ghillie clad stranger said.
(He wasn't. He dug at the plants like a creepy hobbyist fascinated with nailing butterflies to a plank).
"Not good enough, Clarence. Look harder." Apparently his name was Clarence.
"Ric?" Pau hollered, though reluctant to interrupt the strange scene. "Uhh, what're you doing there, bud?"
"Oh, didn't see you there, Sarge." Ricafrente jumped to his feet and stood in attention to his superior. "We're searching for my walkie." Devoid of any further orders, including one telling him to continue as he were, he froze in place.
"What're you—oh… As you were, uhh, Detective."
My eyes never left Clarence. Too many questions arose from a creepy-looking guy who wore a camouflage suit to an elementary school. On top of that, a camera and a pair of binoculars stood out from his grassy ensemble, my eyes calibrated for similar-looking gizmos. The sight of him transformed the garden into a page from I Spy.
(Camera, binoculars, badge. Camera, binoculars, stun gun. Camera, binoculars, radio antenna sticking out of the puddle underneath Clarence's left foot. Should I tell them?)
Before he went back to digging, Ricafrente made sure to get his Sergeant back up to speed. "That's Clarence. He's an intern from IA."
Intern from IA was less worse than scheming predator. Less worse. Why would an intern be snooping around on IA's behalf?
"Why wud ad idterd be sdoppig arowd od IA's behalf?" Pau eerily echoed my thoughts back to me, exactly as I worded them. "Ed so close to da dext audit." (Was it just me or did she glare at me with that one?)
The next audit wasn't until another two weeks. I figured it would be IA's job to scramble for whatever dirt they could find on everyone around this time. Good to know our institutions against corruption do work like they're supposed to, but this was low.
Whenever they were on to something, IA normally made their presence known and looked into things like any investigator would. They asked questions, surveyed the workplace, and followed paper trails.
I'd hate to think that someone was overly keen on catching Pau and her men red-handed with something, that they were willing to compromise proper procedure for results. People usually didn't do this unless they thought they've got something solid only to be held back by politics and/or red tape.
Dirty tricks weren't beyond Pau, as she was sort of a wild thing growing up. The decision to join the force came as a surprise to pretty much all of San Vicente. I never mentioned the reason behind the firetruck incident back in daycare. (The specifics of which explain the surprise).
I got my hands on this toy truck a split second before this kid named Reuben Dimaano contaminated the rear bumper with his booger-infested clutches. I remember the toy being half my size. Reuben took advantage of my difficulty holding it.
He jerked the toy in my direction, staggering me back into a Lego tower like a dying kaiju. The nametag on the architect of that tower read: PAULA MARIE S.
Apparently, Pau heard the whole thing go down but didn't give a crap. That was until her meticulously crafted creation crumbled as collateral in our scuffle.
She took a moment of silence, soaking in the wreckage. Accepting its irreparable fate, she stood up—her expression blank, like she just hit pause on feeling stuff. She grabbed the truck, held the toy like a battering ram. I felt butterflies in my stomach, anticipating Reuben's comeuppance, to be delivered by my hero.
But in one fluid motion, I became a deer in the toy truck's headlights. Pau immediately handed the truck back to Reuben after caving in my face. After that, she pinned the assault on Reuben while pretending to nurse me.
My first heartbreak—her betrayal—lasted for a minute and a half. Seeing Reuben kneel on mung beans was worth the broken nose. And, like I said, Pau and I have been friends ever since. I just pray she didn't bring this brand of scheming into the force.
Perhaps IA was desperate for any reason to axe the nuisance department that didn't have much going on in the first place. Regardless, Clarence was bad news. To be fair, I've been sent on this job myself to gather information of similar nature. But it's all in the spirit of fair journalism so as not to leave the public out of the loop. (Also, I'm way way way way behind rent).
Clarence, looking like he just rolled out of a compost heap, mumbled, "Your radio, Sir."
"How'd they mistake this guy for a headless priest?" I asked.
"They didn't." Ricafrente snatched the walkie from Clarence's grass-covered hands. "I questioned everyone separately. They all described the same thing: a headless figure in a brown robe."
"They would have discussed details of the edcoudters as sood as they happedd. Group hysteria is dot out of the queschud," Paula conjectured.
From time to time, logic and surface-level science would shatter like jigsaw pieces. Whenever they did, people didn't simply fuck off and call it a day. We retreated to the primal instinct that made us us. We thought; we tried to cannibalize some sense from the nonsensical. And we didn't do it in solitude, it was always a team effort.
It had to be a team effort. You always had to tell someone else to process the unexplained. The weird wouldn't let you sleep at night. The least you could do was get it out of your system.
Maybe you'd figure out what had happened. Maybe you wouldn't. Either way, confidants of peculiar phenomena would have to confide in others as well. And the confidants of the confidants must process their confusion with confidants of their own. It became a pyramid scheme of infohazard exchange. Connections between previously unrelated accounts would interweave into a demented web that either materialized into local legend or devolved into mass hysteria.
As I was about to share my ideas with the group, Pau in all her phlegmy glory said, "Ed by do beads are we dud with you, Clareds. Let's go track dowd our domido, Ric."
(I take it "domino" meant the first person who got spooked and started the entire web of legend).