The Hollow Night Watch

The city never sleeps, or so they say. But at 2:47 AM, even the flickering neon of late-night convenience stores seemed to hold its breath. I was a skeptic, a product of concrete and Wi-Fi, who’d laughed off the old wives’ tales from the province. My grandmother’s warnings about the tikbalang and the manananggal were just stories to frighten children, not real threats for a grown man with a data plan and a gym membership.

My friend Diego, however, was not. He’d grown up in a mountain town where the trees whispered secrets and the elders knew better than to venture out after sunset. When his Lola died, he insisted on holding the traditional three-day wake at their ancestral home, miles from the nearest streetlight. I, ever the pragmatist, offered to drive up with a cooler of energy drinks and a playlist of true crime podcasts.

The wakehouse was a relic of a bygone era, with creaking wooden floors and windows that rattled in the wind. The old woman lay in an open casket in the living room, her face serene, her hands folded over a rosary. Around her, a phalanx of candles cast dancing shadows that seemed to writhe with the draft. Diego and his cousins took turns chanting prayers, but by the third night, exhaustion had worn everyone thin. My podcast had long run out of episodes, and I found myself staring at the corpse, half-expecting it to twitch.

It was then that I heard it—a sound I couldn’t place, like a wet cloth being wrung out, followed by a low, guttural gurgle. I dismissed it as the house settling, but Diego’s face had gone pale. He pulled me aside, his voice barely a whisper. ‘It’s here. I’ve seen it before, in my dreams. It comes when the last light flickers.’ I laughed, but he pointed to the candles—one by one, they were snuffing out, as if a hand was passing over them.

Then the smell hit. It was a cloying sweetness, like rotting flowers mixed with copper. The candles went out completely, plunging the room into darkness. I fumbled for my phone’s flashlight, but the screen flickered and died. Diego was reciting a prayer I didn’t recognize, his voice trembling. From the corner of the room, a shape began to emerge—not from the shadows, but from the air itself, like heat rising off asphalt. It had the vague form of a woman, but her limbs were too long, her neck twisting in impossible angles. She knelt beside the casket and began to sniff, making that same wet noise.

I wanted to run, but my legs were frozen. The thing turned its head—no, it didn’t turn; it rotated, the neck becoming a spiral of flesh and bone. Its eyes were sunken pits, but I could feel them on me. It smiled, a lipless rictus, and spoke in a voice that was not a voice but a vibration in my chest. ‘The grave is cold, but I am hungry.’ I felt something pull from my core, like a hook dragging through my stomach, and I knew it was feeding on my fear.

Diego shouted something in Hiligaynon and threw a handful of salt at it. The creature hissed, recoiling, but the salt seemed to dissolve before it touched her. I scrambled backward, knocking over the casket. The body rolled out, and I saw that its face had shifted—it was now a perfect copy of my own. The ghoul laughed, a sound like breaking glass, and reached for me. I grabbed the rosary from the old woman’s hand—it burned cold in my grip—and held it up. The thing shrieked, shielding its eyes, and for a moment, the room was bathed in a sickly green light.

In that flash, I saw the truth: the wakehouse was not a house at all, but a hollowed-out shell. The walls were made of bone, the floorboards of teeth. And outside, the night was endless, a void that stretched into eternity. The ghoul gathered itself, growing taller, darker, and I knew the rosary wouldn’t hold it for long. I did the only thing I could think of: I whispered my grandmother’s old prayer, the one I’d mocked as a child, and promised my firstborn to the earth if I survived. Whether that worked, or whether the creature simply grew tired of its game, I don’t know. But the lights came back on, the candles relit, and the ghoul was gone.

We buried Lola the next day, in a plot that had been in the family for generations. The grave diggers refused to help, so Diego and I shoveled the dirt ourselves. As I lowered the coffin, I glanced at the tree line and saw her—a silhouette watching, her head tilted at an impossible angle. I blinked, and she was gone, but I knew she’d follow me home. To the city, to my apartment with its humming refrigerator and glowing screens, she’d find me. Because now I carry her in my mind, a whispered invitation, a hollow hunger that echoes in the quiet hours. The night is no longer just a time for sleep; it’s a vigil. I keep every light on, every corner lit, and I pray she never grows bold enough to step into my dreams again. But she will. They always do.