The Hollow Palaver

In the outskirts of Silang, Cavite, where the fog crawls like a living thing and the houses cling to the hillside, I found myself at the estate of the Villanueva family. I was sixteen, a sophomore at the local science high school, and my girlfriend, Mara, had invited me to stay for the long weekend. Her family owned a sprawling property with a detached garage converted into a music studio, and her grandfather, Lolo Isko, lay dying in a makeshift sickroom off the kitchen. He had been bedridden for months, mute and immobile, his only movement the occasional twitch of his eyes.

On that Thursday night, after a marathon of horror movies that made us both jump at every creak, Mara’s parents and siblings retired to their rooms. Lolo Isko’s part-time caretaker had gone home for the night, leaving only the old man’s shallow breaths and the hum of the fluorescent light in the sickroom. Mara fell asleep almost instantly, her hand still curled around mine. But I couldn’t drift off. Something about the house felt off—a pressure in the air, a metallic taste on my tongue.

I lay there, staring at the ceiling, listening to the wind whip through the acacia trees outside. Then I heard it: a low, rhythmic sound, like a mallet hitting soft earth. It came from the direction of the sickroom. I thought perhaps it was Grandpa’s breathing, but the pattern was too deliberate. I slipped out of bed and padded barefoot down the hallway, the cold tiles biting my soles. The door to the sickroom was ajar, and a sliver of yellow light spilled onto the floor.

Inside, Lolo Isko lay in his iron-framed bed, his chest barely rising. The room smelled of liniment and decay. The rhythmic sound grew clearer—it was coming from the corner by a small table where a wooden rosary hung. There, crouched on the floor, was a figure: a small, hunched shape, perhaps a child, but wreathed in shadow so thick it seemed to drink the light. It was whispering, but not in any language I knew. It sounded like a palaver—a rapid, urgent conversation with someone unseen.

A thin, reedy voice answered from the bed. I recoiled. Lolo Isko’s lips were moving, his eyes wide open, staring at the crouching figure. The rest of his body remained as still as a corpse, but his mouth formed words that cracked with years of disuse: ‘You come for what’s taken, and you take what’s come.’ The figure responded in that gibberish, and Lolo Isko let out a wavering sigh.

I must have made a noise—a gasp, a stumble—because the figure turned its head. There were no eyes, just deep sockets that held a glimmer, like wet stones. It spoke to me directly, its voice like dry leaves crumbling: ‘The palaver is not for you, but your presence is noted.’ The words crawled under my skin, and I felt a cold that had nothing to do with the night air.

I backed away, my heart pounding. When I reached the bedroom, I shook Mara awake, but she only murmured, ‘It’s just Grandpa’s teleserye, go back to sleep.’ I didn’t sleep. I sat against the headboard, watching the door, too terrified to move.

By dawn, the house was quiet. When I crept back to the sickroom, Lolo Isko was dead. His face was peaceful, but his lips were slightly parted, as if he had been mid-sentence. On the table beside his bed, the rosary had been unstrung, its beads scattered like black seeds. I didn’t tell anyone what I had seen. But that evening, as I helped Mara’s father clean out the room, I noticed a small, smooth stone on the floor where the figure had crouched. It was warm to the touch, and when I picked it up, I heard the whispers again—faint, but unmistakable, like a thousand tiny voices all at once.

I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that the palaver never truly ended. Sometimes, in my dreams, I am that crouched figure, whispering to a man in a bed, and the man’s eyes are mine. And I know, with a certainty that chills me, that the stone is not a keepsake—it is an invitation. The palaver is always open on this side, and someday, my turn to answer will come.