The Stage That Waits

In the humid afternoons of my childhood in Cebu, the old school building stood like a weary beast under the tin roof. It had been a maternity ward during the war, they said, then a market, then a school. The walls were thick, painted a sickly green, and the floors were a patchwork of tiles that never quite matched. Every morning, we gathered on the wide wooden stage at the entrance for prayers and announcements. The stage was our altar, our stage, our battleground for tag when the teachers weren’t looking. But there was a hidden room beneath it, accessible by a trapdoor that was always locked, though sometimes I’d see a sliver of darkness through the cracks, and I’d swear I heard something breathing down there.

One Tuesday, after the final bell, the rains came sudden and violent, trapping my friend Benjie and me under the eaves. Our rides were late, and the school had emptied out except for a few teachers huddled in the faculty room, their laughter muffled by the storm. We sat on the stage steps, our legs dangling, watching the rain turn the courtyard into a shallow lake. To pass the time, I started telling Benjie about what I’d seen the week before—a woman in a white dress standing by the windows of the old infirmary, her lips moving but no sound coming out. He laughed, called me ‘spooky,’ but his eyes kept darting to the corners.

Then it happened. A sound rose from beneath us, faint at first, like the scrabble of rats, but then it became a series of soft knocks, rhythmic, as if someone were tapping a lullaby on the underside of the stage. We froze. Benjie whispered, ‘Is that the pipes?’ I shook my head because the knocks were answering each other—three taps, then a pause, then two taps, then a single, slow knock. And then the trapdoor, the one at the center of the stage, creaked open on its own, revealing blackness and the faint smell of wet earth and old herbs.

I should have run, but my legs were locked. Benjie was behind me, his hands digging into my shoulders. From the dark, a voice rose, not a whisper but a rasping, like dry leaves: ‘Little birds, you’ve come to see me.’ The voice was old, brittle, and it seemed to come from every direction at once. I saw a pale hand emerge from the hole, fingers long and thin, nails caked with dirt, and it beckoned. ‘Come, I have stories that will make your blood thick as honey.’ Then I heard a mother’s hum, a lullaby I didn’t recognize, but it was the same tune I’d heard in my dreams, the one that always led to a white room and a crib that rocked itself.

Benjie broke first, screaming and running out into the rain, his flip-flops slapping the wet concrete. I stayed, frozen, as the hand began to climb the stage steps. I saw a face, but it wasn’t human—it was a mask of wax, melting, with eyeholes that were empty but somehow watching me. I whispered, ‘You’re not real,’ and it smiled, a mouth that split too wide, and said, ‘Everything is real if you believe it long enough.’ Then the storm swallowed the light, and the trapdoor slammed shut, leaving me alone on the stage with the rain pounding like a heartbeat.

I never went back to that school. My parents thought I was sick, but they moved us to Manila the next year. To this day, I can’t listen to lullabies without checking under the bed. And sometimes, when I’m in a room with wooden floors, I hear that tapping—three, pause, two, pause, one—waiting for me to respond. I always do, because I know that if I ignore it, she’ll climb out from wherever she’s hiding and take me back to the stage that waits.

Years later, I returned to Cebu for a funeral, and out of morbid curiosity, I drove past the old school. It was abandoned, the tin roof rusted, the green paint peeling. But the stage was still there, and through the grimy windows, I could see the trapdoor, slightly ajar. I got out of the car, my heart pounding, and walked to the gate. The door was open, as if expecting me. I stepped onto the stage, and the floorboards groaned. I knelt beside the trapdoor and whispered, ‘I’m here.’ From below, a voice, dry as leaves, answered, ‘I know, child. You never left.’ And I felt a cold, creeping hand wrap around my ankle, pulling me down into the dark, where the lullaby began anew.