The Moth’s Last Flight

When I was twelve, in the humid heart of Cebu, I thought love was a game of hopscotch and stolen glances. My lola kept a boarding house near the old cathedral, and among our tenants was a quiet, weathered man named Tito Andoy, who repaired watches for a living. He had a nephew, Efren, who visited him every other Sunday, bringing with him the scent of tobacco and the faint, metallic tang of his uncle’s trade. Efren was seventeen, with calloused hands from his work at a nearby sugarcane plantation, and eyes that lingered on me a moment too long when I brought out the cold calamansi juice.

At first, I paid him no heed. My world was filled with catechism classes and the thrill of climbing the acacia tree in our backyard. But Efren was persistent. He would come early, before the church bells rang, and stand by the gate, scuffing his worn boots in the dust. He never asked to come in—my lola was strict about visitors—but he would talk to my lola’s helper, Ate Lita, who was his cousin from Leyte. His visits became a ritual, his silhouette a familiar fixture against the bougainvillea vines. He would bring me small gifts, like a carved wooden bird or a shiny sea shell, which I would firmly but politely return, feeling a strange mix of embarrassment and curiosity.

Then came the year of my first communion. The visits stopped, and Efren vanished from our gate. I felt a pang of something—relief, perhaps, and a tiny, unacknowledged disappointment. Ate Lita said he had gone to the city to find better work. Life moved on. I entered high school, and the memory of Efren softened into a faint ink stain on the fabric of my childhood.

One sweltering afternoon, a letter arrived, addressed to me in a labored, angular handwriting. It was from Efren. He wrote of his new life, but his words were a cage. He spoke of his loneliness, of how the city lights reminded him of the fireflies in the province, and how he prayed to the Santo Niño that I would wait for him. I laughed nervously and threw the letter into the firepit, but that night, I dreamed of the moth that used to circle the lamplight in our kitchen, singeing its wings, yet unable to stop.

The letters kept coming, each one more frantic and detailed. He described his dreams, which he said were filled with me—me walking through a field of sugarcane, me humming the lullaby my lola sang. He claimed he could see me, that his spirit traveled to me in his sleep. I began to feel a phantom unease, as if an unseen eye was watching my every move. I would wake in the night, certain I heard something scratch against my window, but the branches were too high.

One rainy evening, Ate Lita came to me with a trembling expression. She held a battered hat in her hands. ‘Neneng,’ she said, ‘this was Efren’s. They found it by the railroad tracks.’ My blood chilled. ‘He went missing, they say he fell from the train,’ she whispered. ‘But this—this is impossible.’ She shook her head and refused to say more. I felt a cold dread curl in my stomach. That same night, I found a piece of paper slipped under my bedroom door. It had a single line: ‘I am not gone. I am watching over you.’

I told my lola, but she dismissed it as a prank. Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that Efren had not simply vanished. I began to notice small, inexplicable things: my comb would be moved an inch, a button from my favorite blouse would appear on my windowsill, and once, I found a single strand of tobacco in my prayer book. It was as if he had left a trail of his earthly remains to prove his presence.

One day, while dusting my lola’s cabinet, I discovered an old photograph. It was of Efren, but not as I remembered him. He looked gaunt, his eyes hollow, and in his hands he clutched a strange, twisted root that looked like a human hand. On the back, in faded ink, was written: ‘For my last night with her.’ My heart hammered against my ribs. I took the photo to Ate Lita, who turned pale. She told me that the root was from a ‘bulag,’ a blind tree that was said to be a conduit for spirits. ‘He used it to bind himself to you,’ she said, her voice cracking. ‘In our province, when a man dies with a strong longing, he can become a dilo, a wandering spirit. But Efren… he wanted more. He wanted to be with you always.’

That night, I locked my windows and said all the prayers I knew. But in the silence, I heard a slow, rhythmic scraping against the wall, like the sound of a finger dragging along the paint. I pressed my hands to my ears, but it became louder, and then came the whispering—a guttural, desperate murmur that twisted my name into a foreign curse. ‘Mariecris… Mariecris…’ It was not a voice from outside; it was inside my head, coiling through my thoughts like smoke. I fled to my lola’s room, and she called in a priest to bless the house. The priest found no evil, only an overwhelming sorrow that filled the rooms, making the air thick and cold. He said, ‘Someone has made an offering here, a sacrifice of longing. The spirit is not malevolent, but it is bound, and it will not leave until its desire is either fulfilled or broken.’

After that, the manifestations grew bold. I would find the shape of a man pressed into my sheets in the morning. My lola’s antique mirror would fog up in the middle of the day, and when I wiped it, I saw a reflection that was not mine—a younger version of Efren, smiling, his lips moving in a soundless plea. I became a prisoner in my own home, afraid to sleep, afraid to be alone.

One dusk, as I stood by the kitchen window, I saw a moth circling the kerosene lamp, its wings singed and fluttering. I remembered the line from his last letter: ‘I fly to you, my little moth.’ A terrible clarity struck me. He was not haunting the house; he was haunting me. He was the moth, drawn to my light, destined to burn. And I realized, with a heart-stopping dread, that his final flight was not a fall from a train, but an act of will. He had bound his soul to the moment of his death, so that his last breath would carry him to me.

Now, years later, I am a grown woman with a family of my own. I have moved far from Cebu, to a quiet town by the sea. But every night, at the stroke of twelve, I hear a faint scratching on my bedroom window. And sometimes, in the dim light of the moon, I see a moth, not of this world, staring at me with the desperate, hollow eyes of Efren, waiting for me to finally open the window and let him in. I keep the window closed, but I know, in the deepest part of my being, that one night, when I am too tired to get up and close it, the moth will find his way in. And I will finally understand the last line of his final letter, which I have kept hidden in my heart: ‘I am not coming home, because you are my home.’