The Unfolded Bed

When I was eight, we lived in a cramped apartment in the industrial part of town, where the only sounds at night were the distant clang of metal and the occasional growl of trucks. Our family of four shared one large room, my younger sister and I on a foldaway bed that creaked with every shift. My mother, born in the mountains of Samar, had a gift—or a curse—of seeing things others couldn’t. She’d often whisper about ‘the quiet ones’ that followed her from the province, but we never knew what she meant.

That night, I woke to a prickling at the back of my neck, like a cold breath that wasn’t mine. The room was steeped in darkness, but the red glow of the television’s standby light cast a faint halo. My parents’ bed was silent, my sister’s breathing even. The dogs in the alley had stopped barking, which was wrong—they always barked. I turned my head slowly, and there they were: two figures standing before the TV, their shapes darker than the shadows around them, as if they absorbed light. They didn’t move, just stood there, facing the blank screen, and I felt a deep, primal wrongness.

I squeezed my eyes shut, counting to ten, whispering a prayer I learned from my grandmother. When I opened them, the figures were gone. But the prickling remained, crawling up my scalp like ants. I tried to nudge my sister awake, but she was dead to the world. So I waited, heart thudding, and then I saw them again—not at the TV, but right beside our bed, leaning over me. They had no faces, just smooth, dark skin, and I could have sworn they were breathing, though no sound came. I let out a choked gasp, and my mother shot up in bed, her eyes wide and wild. She screamed, ‘Get away from my children!’ and the figures scattered like smoke, dissolving into the ceiling corners.

My father flicked on the light, demanding to know what was happening, but my mother was already on her knees, muttering a prayer in Visayan, her hands shaking. She turned to me, her face pale, and said, ‘Child, you saw them? The quiet ones?’ I nodded, crying, and she pulled me close, whispering, ‘They’ve been following me since I was a girl. They never harm, but they watch. Tonight, they wanted to see you.’ That only made me more terrified.

We never slept in that room alone again. My mother placed small mirrors on every wall and hung a string of garlic over the door. She told me that the quiet ones were drawn to fear, and my waking in the dead of night had given them an opening. But I think they were drawn to something else—the foldaway bed, which had once belonged to a man who’d died in the apartment, a man who’d sold his soul to the machines at the factory. I didn’t learn that until years later, when I found an old newspaper clipping in the basement.

Now, as an adult, I still see them sometimes, out of the corner of my eye—two dark figures standing in my peripheral vision. I’ve learned to ignore them, to count my breaths until they fade. But my daughter, who’s the same age I was then, recently told me she woke up one night and saw ‘two tall men’ watching her from the foot of her bed. I didn’t tell her about the foldaway bed or the quiet ones. I just held her tight and hung a mirror over her door, hoping that would be enough. But I know it’s not. They’re patient, and they’ve chosen our family for a reason I’m still trying to understand.