The Porcelain Guest

In the autumn of 2012, I was a trainee at the Golden Orchid Resort, a sprawling beachfront property on the outskirts of Cebu City. My best friend, Marco, and I were assigned to the food and beverage department under the stern eye of Mr. Dela Cruz, a man who treated every napkin fold like a matter of life and death. On a humid Tuesday, he handed us our posts: Marco would man the Tides Pavilion, and I was sent to the Lagoon Bistro, a glass-walled restaurant perched beside the resort’s famous man-made saltwater pool.

The afternoon sun blazed, turning the pool into a sheet of white fire. I was arranging the dessert display when I noticed an elderly woman standing at the entrance, her silhouette framed by the frangipani trees. She was impossibly still, like a statue that had been placed there moments ago. Her skin was the color of old porcelain, and her white hair was pulled back so tightly that it stretched the corners of her eyes. She wore a simple grey dress that seemed too thin for the heat, and she clutched a small black purse with both hands.

I approached her, forcing a professional smile. ‘Table for one, ma’am?’ I asked. She turned her head slowly, and her eyes met mine. They were pale blue, almost colorless, and her smile was a thin, practiced curve. She nodded without a word. I led her to a table near the garden window, where the view overlooked the koi pond. As she settled into the chair, I placed the menu in front of her. ‘May I get you something to drink while you look over the menu?’ I asked. She looked at the menu for a long moment, then pushed it away gently. ‘Water,’ she said, her voice like the rustle of dry leaves. ‘And a bowl of the fish chowder, please.’ She smiled again, and I noticed her teeth were perfectly white, too white for a woman her age.

I fetched her water and placed the order. As the kitchen prepared her food, I went about my duties, but I found myself glancing at her whenever I passed. She wasn’t looking at the garden or the pond; she was watching me. Her head would tilt slightly, following my movements, and that smile never left her face. It was polite enough, but there was something in the way she held her hands, folded on the table, that made my skin prickle.

Her chowder arrived. She took a spoonful, tasted it, and then set the spoon down. She looked up at me again and beckoned with one finger. I walked over, my heart starting to thud. ‘Is there something wrong with the soup, ma’am?’ I asked. She shook her head and said, ‘No, it’s perfect. But I have a question. Do you know the story of this pool?’

I blinked. The pool was simply a pool, I thought. But she leaned forward, and her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘When the resort was being built, twenty years ago, the construction crew found something buried in the ground. They thought it was a broken doll, but it was a woman’s face, carved in wood. Old, very old. The foreman, a man named Pio, took it home. He wanted to keep it as a souvenir. But every night, he heard a woman crying in his house. He brought the face back the next day and buried it again, exactly where he found it. But no one ever saw him after that. He vanished.’ She leaned back and took another sip of water. ‘They say the pool was built right over that spot to bless the earth, but the woman didn’t want to be blessed. She wanted to be found.’

I forced a laugh. ‘That’s quite a story, ma’am. Where did you hear it?’ She didn’t answer. She just looked at me, her eyes unblinking, and then went back to her soup. I was glad when her meal was finished. She paid in exact change, with crisp bills that felt unusually cold, and left as silently as she had come. I watched her walk out to the garden and disappear around the hedge.

The rest of my shift passed uneventfully, but I couldn’t shake her story. As the sun set, the pool lights came on, casting a deep green glow across the water. I was clearing a nearby table when I noticed something floating in the pool. It was a small, pale object, bobbing near the steps. I walked closer, my shoes squelching on the wet tiles, and peered down. It was a face: a woman’s face, carved from a piece of driftwood, the paint worn away except for the faded red lips. It looked up at me with hollow eye sockets.

I froze. My breath caught. I wanted to call out, but my voice was stuck. The face turned in the water, as if it were looking at me, and then it sank slowly, vanishing into the dark depths. I stumbled back, nearly tripping over a chair. I searched the water, but there was nothing. Just ripples.

I told Marco about it later that night. He laughed and said I was imagining things, blamed the heat. But when I went back to the spot the next morning, I found something half-buried in the flower bed next to the pool: a small, grey dress, the exact one the old woman had been wearing. It was dry, but it smelled of damp earth. I showed it to the manager, who looked at me strangely and said, ‘We don’t have any dresses like that in uniform. And we didn’t see any old woman here yesterday.’ He pulled up the reservation log; no one matching her description had signed in. The only entry for that afternoon was a walk-in for lunch, a young couple.

I went home that night, but I couldn’t sleep. I kept hearing the whisper of her voice: ‘She wanted to be found.’ The next day, I took a leave of absence. I couldn’t go back to the Lagoon Bistro. Marco said I was overreacting, but I know what I saw. And sometimes, late at night, I still feel her eyes on me, watching from the corner of the room, waiting for me to tell her story again. But I won’t. Some things are best left buried.