The
early morning wind gently rustles the moonlit neighborhood as towering coconut
trees, in hues of black and gold, sway in unison. The swooshing sound of the
wind lulls the mind to sink further into dreamland. However, one rooster decides
to break the hush of dawn. As if on cue, others follow until a hundred other
crows intrude what remains of the night.
A
bit sleepy, my mother makes her way to my room with a kerosene lamp on her
hand. She gives me a light shake and says, “Hey, time to wake up. It’s past 4
o’clock.” After making sure that I am up and about, she then goes to the
bathroom to pour a kettle-full of hot water into a pail of cold water. I take a
quick bath and get dressed in a span of 2 minutes. By 4:20 AM, a 14-year old
boy heads out to the dark and windy streets of the town plaza, with the ever
dependable morning star as his companion.
Despite
the grogginess, my eyes are wide alert as they dart from left to right. Stories
of headless priests and floating nuns keep entering my mind. These ghosts, they
say, are those of the early missionaries who arrived in our town almost a century
ago. Stories of them lurking in every crook and cranny of the old plaza, inside
our historic church and even on the grounds of a Jesuit-run school where I
attend classes are enough to make early morning trips like this quite a
challenge.
From
the plaza, the sound of ruffling Acacia leaves on the dusky street greets me as
I approach our century-old church situated on the top of
a hill. With the sudden gush of fresh cold wind, the dry fallen leaves seem to float
on mid-air, swirl with each other, and slowly descend on the ground before playfully
rolling on the pavement once more. The icy breeze makes me shiver as I bear
witness to this spectacle of rustling leaves, while being cautious, at the same
time, of the ghostly priests and nuns. With my arms crossed and my back leaning
on the immense church façade, and as my black innocent eyes try to pierce through
the vast dark square, I feel my senses - sight, smell and hearing - heighten
with the eerie grandeur of dawn.
After
a while, I proceed at the back of the church which overlooks a gorge, and
beyond it, the beautiful expanse of Palawan bay. The sea, smooth and silvery
from afar, seems to bask in the moon’s full glory. I am tempted to indulge some
more until I notice a flicker of light coming from the church’s back entrance.
With my heart pounding, I stealthily walk through the Sacristy and grab a
candle in front of an old mirror. What I see on the fuzzy reflection makes me
freeze in terror. Behind me is a white robe, or rather a headless priest, floating
in mid-air and gliding away before disappearing around a corner. I try to
scream but no words come out of my mouth. With my hair rising, I run out of the
room as fast as I can until I find myself back on the square. Catching my
breath and, by now, holding a flameless candle, I notice Fr. JC’s white pick-up
parked just a few yards away.
Reluctantly,
I head back to the sacristy door and loudly call for Fr. JC, our school
director and parish priest. Instead of a headless priest, Fr. JC appears in his
white robe and greets me in his usual jolly manner. He asks if I came in a
little earlier as he heard someone entering the room a few minutes ago. Feeling
foolish, I wonder to myself if it is he whom I mistook for the ghost. This
thought calms me down enough for me to put on my altar
boy’s robe, light all the candles and make sure that the thurible to be used for incense burning is ready. Fr. JC reminds me that we have 15 minutes before the 5 o'clock mass beings - meaning, as the only sacristan present, it is time for me to ring the church bell.
Inside the bell tower, I pull the rope repeatedly to swing the giant bell and hope that such act will prevent
the ghosts from appearing, at least temporarily. The sound it creates reverberates across the plaza and into
every other direction, pulling everyone from a state of deep slumber into a
sense of heightened awakening – physical and otherwise.
Like the cries of a hundred
roosters, or the sound of rustling leaves, or even the thought of a
headless priest, I, too, break the stillness of the dawn.
