The Stilted Pilgrim

I’ve lived in the lowlands of Panay all my life, where the sun scorches the rice paddies and the evenings hum with insects. My grandfather’s wake was on its fifth night, and my mother, feverish and weak from a lingering cough, couldn’t go. She insisted I attend the novena prayers, as a dutiful grandson. I saddled up my old Honda TMX, the one with the rattling chain, and took the shortcut along the river dike. It was barely eight, but the darkness was absolute, punctured only by the scattered lights of distant huts.

The dike ran parallel to the old municipal cemetery, its coral-stone wall crumbling in places. As I approached the gate, I saw a figure—a woman, I thought—standing on the grassy verge, perfectly still. She wore a dusty white dress that hung to her ankles, and her hair was long and black, plastered to her head as if she’d been caught in a sudden rain. But there’d been no rain. The air was heavy with the smell of dried fish and diesel from my bike. I slowed, not out of caution, but because something in the way she stood—her feet pointed slightly inward, her arms hanging limp—made my chest feel tight. She didn’t turn her head as I passed, but I felt her gaze like a cold finger tracing my spine. I twisted the throttle and sped up, chalking it up to a mourner resting before entering the wake.

The wake was held in my grandfather’s nipa hut, crammed with relatives playing cards and murmuring prayers. The air was thick with incense and coffee. I found a spot on a bench, said my prayers, and pretended to listen to an uncle’s story about a carabao. But my mind kept drifting back to the woman. I asked my cousin, a barangay tanod, if anyone had reported a lost or disturbed person near the cemetery. He laughed. ‘You’ve been in the city too long,’ he said. ‘That’s just Aling Marta’s ghost. She wanders the dike every night, waiting for her husband to come home from the war.’ I’d heard the tale—a bride whose groom never returned, who died of a broken heart. But this figure didn’t feel like a ghost story. It felt like a message.

The next night, I took the same route, and she was there again, closer to the road this time, her head tilted as if listening to the gravel. I gripped the handlebars, and as I passed, I heard a whisper—thin, like wind through bamboo—but distinct: ‘My turn.’ I nearly swerved into the ditch. When I reached the wake, I asked my grandmother, who was dozing by the coffin, about the woman. She opened one eye, rheumy with cataracts. ‘Ah, you’ve seen her. She’s been coming closer each night since your grandfather’s soul left. She’s not Aling Marta. She’s a liminal—a spirit that feeds on unfinished mourning. She takes the form of someone you’d pity. Don’t answer her, and don’t look back.’ I didn’t sleep that night, listening to the geckos and the far-off dogs.

On the sixth night, the sky was overcast, and the dike was darker than ever. I rode slower, heart thudding against my ribs, reciting a Hail Mary under my breath. There she was, standing at the edge of the cemetery gate, her back to me, but I could see her profile was wrong—her jaw too long, her fingers ending in points. As I approached, she turned, and her face was not a face but a smear of pale light, like a glitch in a photograph. Her lips moved, and I heard, not with my ears but inside my skull, ‘You will be my last.’ I remembered my grandmother’s warning, and instead of looking away, I did the opposite: I stopped the bike, killed the engine, and dismounted. My legs shook as I walked toward her, my hand reaching for the small bottle of holy water I’d tucked in my pocket. She didn’t move as I uncapped it, and I splashed the water in her direction. She didn’t scream or fade; she just smiled—a wide, wet smile that split her face—and said, ‘That won’t work, ’cause I’m not a ghost. I’m a parasite, and you’re full of grief.’ She began to walk toward me, her gait jerky, like a marionette. I bolted back to my bike, kicked the starter, and roared away. I didn’t look back until I reached the main road, and when I did, she was gone.

That night, I told my grandfather’s body, lying in the coffin, everything. I apologized for being afraid. But as I spoke, I noticed the corpse’s lips were slightly parted, and there was a faint, damp smell in the air, like from a freshly turned grave. I leaned closer, and I realized his mouth was full of river silt, and in the silt, there was a small, polished pebble—the kind you’d find on the riverbed. I didn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t. The wake ended, we buried him, and I returned to the city. But every night since, at 8 PM, I hear a knock at my apartment door. When I open it, there’s no one there, but on the mat is a single, wet pebble. Last night, there were two. I don’t know how many it will take before I open the door and she’s standing there, with her too-long fingers reaching for me. And I’m afraid that when I do, I’ll be the one to say, ‘My turn.’