The Lantern That Folded the Sky

It was the summer I turned four, and my mother’s cousin, Lola Ising, had passed in the night. We left the city in our battered pickup truck, my father driving, my mother clutching a rosary, and me tucked between them on the bench seat. The funeral was to be held in a remote village past the town of San Cipriano, a place I had never heard of, and we drove through the dark, past the last flickering streetlights until the road dissolved into a ribbon of gravel and dust.

We had been driving for hours when my father muttered, ‘We should have taken the north road.’ He made a sharp left at a forgotten junction, where a single gas station stood like a beached whale, its pumps rusted and its windows dark. A bulbous sign above the door buzzed with a sickly yellow light, and for a moment, I saw a man inside, his face pressed against the glass, but when I blinked, he was gone. My mother whispered, ‘He’s just a night attendant, Jun.’ But her voice was tight, and she clutched her cross tighter.

The road narrowed, flanked by tall grass that whispered in the wind, and soon we crossed a succession of bridges, each one narrow and wooden, the planks groaning under our tires. My father counted them aloud, ‘One, two, three…’ but by the fifth, his voice dropped to a whisper. ‘This is too many,’ he said. ‘Bayambang only has three bridges.’ My mother told him to hush, that he was just tired, but I saw her eyes scanning the edges of the road.

Then we hit the balete trees. They lined the road on both sides, their massive roots sprawling across the asphalt like veins, their branches so thick and interlaced they blotted out the moon. The air grew cold, and the headlights seemed to dim, swallowed by the density of leaves and hanging vines. My father slowed to a crawl, and we crept along for almost a kilometer, the only sounds the crunch of gravel and the distant drumming of insects. I remember staring up through the windshield, and the sky was a black sheet, as if the trees had folded the heavens into a dark curtain.

We came to a halt at the edge of a bridge, wider than the others, with steel rails and a concrete deck. My father cut the engine, and we sat in silence. He stepped out, and my mother and I followed. The bridge spanned a gorge, and far below, a river rushed, invisible in the dark. My father pointed to a spot just ahead, where the road ended in a sheer drop. ‘We nearly went over,’ he said, his voice shaking. ‘That rail is new, but I don’t remember it.’ Then he saw the boat.

It was a small wooden banca, floating in the river below, carrying a cluster of people. They held a gas lamp that cast a warm orange glow against the blackness. My father cupped his hands and called out, ‘Hey, which way to the village?’ The boat drifted closer, and the people turned their faces toward us, but their features were indistinct, shadowed. The lamp swung gently. Then, as we watched, the flame guttered and died, and the boat vanished, as if it had never been. The river was empty, and the only sound was the lapping of water against the rocks.

My mother grabbed my father’s arm. ‘Jun, let’s go. We need to find help.’ She left us on the bridge, walking down the road with a small flashlight, her footsteps crunching. I stayed with my father, who stared at the river, his lips moving in a silent prayer. Minutes later, my mother returned, pale, and she said, ‘There’s a farmhouse about a mile down, but I walked through a field of frogs. They were everywhere, hundreds of them, all sitting quietly, watching me.’ She shuddered. ‘They didn’t move. They just watched.’

We got back in the truck, and my father drove slowly down the road, past the rice fields that stretched into murky darkness. Then my mother screamed. ‘There’s a car following us.’ I turned in my seat and saw a red Volkswagen bug, its headlights off but its shape unmistakable, trailing us at a constant distance. ‘It came out of nowhere,’ she said. We sped up, but the Volkswagen kept pace, its reflection in the rearview mirror like a blood-red scar. It followed us past a grove of bamboo, past a crumbling chapel, until my father skidded to a stop at a T-junction. The Volkswagen sat at the corner, idling, and through its windshield we saw a figure with a pale face, but the details were wrong, the eyes too wide, the smile too tight.

My father floored the accelerator, and we tore down the road, the engine screaming. The Volkswagen vanished, but my mother kept staring out the back window, and she said, ‘It’s gone. But the frogs are back.’ I looked, and the road was covered with frogs, a thick carpet of them, their eyes glinting like tiny mirrors. We drove over them, the sickening crunch of their bodies beneath the tires, but they parted and closed behind us, as if following.

We finally reached the village at dawn, the sky bleeding pink and orange over the tin roofs. My mother’s relatives met us at the gate, their faces drawn with grief. They asked if we had any trouble, and my mother told them about the bridges, the boat, the frogs, the red car. An old aunt, Lola Biring, crossed herself and said, ‘You must have taken the old road. That bridge has been gone for years. It fell during the typhoon. And the boat, that’s the ferryman who drowned with his passengers, he still thinks they can cross. The frogs, they’re the souls of the unbaptized. And the red car, that appeared to my grandfather back in the war. It only shows itself to those who are already dead.’

My mother laughed, a brittle sound. ‘But we’re here. We’re alive.’ Lola Biring shook her head. ‘Alive, are you? When you crossed that bridge, you crossed a boundary. You’re here, but you’re not all here. Some of you stayed behind. Look at your boy.’ And I looked down at my hands, and they were thin, translucent, and I could see the ground through them. The morning light passed through me, and I felt the weight of the lamp, the heat of the flame, the cold of the river, all at once. My father reached for me, but his fingers passed through my arm. The frogs in the fields all turned their heads in unison, and their mouths opened, but no sound came out.

I have not aged since that day. My mother and father grew old, buried me in a small plot behind the church, but I still stand at the edge of the river, watching for boats, counting the bridges that no longer exist. And sometimes, at night, when the gas lamp at the station flickers, I see a family in a truck, and I wave to them, trying to warn them, but my voice is the rustle of balete leaves, and they never hear me.