The Glass Chime

In the summer of 2004, I finally set foot in my grandmother’s abandoned boarding house in the coastal town of San Vicente, Zambales. It was a sprawling, two-story structure from the 1970s, with peeling paint and a rusted corrugated roof that groaned under the weight of the sun. My family had moved to Quezon City years ago, and I had only heard whispers of the place—tales of restless spirits and strange happenings. But as a flamboyant, carefree gay man, I brushed them off as superstition. I was there to oversee the renovation, along with my loud and vibrant group of gay friends, who had decided to rent out the rooms to tourists and locals alike. The ground floor had been converted into a small convenience store and a karaoke bar, and the air was always filled with laughter and off-key singing.

My room was on the second floor, at the end of a long, dim hallway. It had a large window that overlooked the back garden, where a solitary narra tree stood. As I unpacked, my mother called from downstairs, telling me she was heading back to the city. I waved her off, then flopped onto the creaky bed, exhausted from the trip. Just as I closed my eyes, a sharp *tink* against the window made me jump. I assumed it was a bird or a falling branch, but then it came again—three quick taps, like someone flicking a small stone against the glass. I pulled back the curtain, but the garden was empty. The only sound was the distant rumble of the sea. I shrugged and lay back down, but the tapping continued, rhythmic and deliberate, almost like a code. I decided to ignore it and drifted into a restless sleep.

That night, my friends and I were having a party in the bar downstairs. We were all a bit tipsy, belting out karaoke classics, when one of our tenants, a middle-aged woman named Lita, came rushing down the stairs, pale as a ghost. She claimed something had been shaking her bed and whispering her name in a raspy voice. We laughed it off, telling her it was just the wind or her imagination. But as the night wore on, more tenants came down with similar stories—a cold hand brushing their cheek, a shadow standing at the foot of the bed, a child’s laughter coming from the empty hallway. My friends and I exchanged uneasy glances, but we were too proud to admit fear. We decided to do a ‘ghost hunt’ ourselves, armed with flashlights and our usual bravado.

We crept up the stairs, the old wooden steps groaning beneath our weight. The hallway was pitch black, and the only light came from a flickering fluorescent bulb at the far end. As we passed my room, I noticed the window was open, the white curtain billowing like a specter. I was about to close it when I saw something glinting on the windowsill—a small, clear glass chime, the kind you hang on a porch. I hadn’t put it there. My friends gathered around, and one of them, a tall drag queen named Marco, picked it up. He said it was pretty, but the moment he touched it, the wind died, and all the doors along the hallway slammed shut in unison. We stood frozen, the silence deafening. Then, from the garden below, we heard a faint, melodic tinkling—the same sound as the chime.

I felt a cold breath on my neck, and I spun around, but there was nothing. My friends were all looking at me, their faces drawn. Marco dropped the chime, and it shattered on the floor. As the pieces scattered, I heard a voice—a low, guttural whisper—right in my ear: ‘You broke my gift.’ The temperature plummeted. We ran downstairs, but the bar was empty, the lights off. The only sound was the slow, rhythmic creaking of the rocking chair by the window, moving on its own. That’s when we knew we had awakened something.

Over the next week, the haunting intensified. Tenants moved out one by one, leaving only me and my friends. The chime’s fragments still lay on the hallway floor, but every night, I would find them rearranged into a circle outside my door. My friends started hearing a child crying in the walls, and one of them, a petite queen named Mimi, was scratched on the arm by an invisible hand. I tried to rationalize it, but deep down, I felt a growing dread. One evening, as I sat alone in my room, the window creaked open by itself. I saw a shadowy figure in the garden, standing under the narra tree, watching me. It had no face, only a hollow void. It raised a hand, and in its palm was a perfect glass chime. It motioned for me to come closer.

I couldn’t move. The figure began to walk toward the house, and as it passed through the wall, the temperature dropped even more. I heard a voice, now clear and sorrowful, echoing in my mind: ‘I was the first to live here. I made this chime for my daughter, but she died. Now I wait for someone to hear it.’ I saw a flash of a young woman in a white dress, her neck bruised, and then it was gone. The figure disappeared, leaving only the chime on the windowsill, whole and gleaming. I knew then that the ghost was not malicious—it was a mother grieving for her child, using the chime to call out across the years. But the way it had tormented us was meant to make us leave, to protect the memory of her beloved.

I decided to honor her. I took the chime, hung it outside my window, and for the first time, I spoke aloud: ‘I’m sorry for your loss. I will remember her.’ The chime tinkled softly, a gentle sound like a sigh. From that night on, the haunting ceased. The tenants returned, and the house felt lighter. My friends and I stayed, and each evening, we would hear the chime and share a moment of silence for the ghost mother and her child. I never told anyone the full story, but I kept the chime as a reminder that even in the deepest darkness, there is a heart that longs to be heard, and sometimes, all it takes is a listening ear.