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MikeAnthony
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Horror scribe | AI tinkerer | Strange stories from the dark side | Talking hoops & haunts | London-based | Join the chaos 🏀🌑| The Siquijor Chronicles 📖
London, England
Joined December 2010
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The Lugusin Hunts Beneath the Red Sky
THE LAST STICK HOUSE
An Original Folk Horror Story
18/6/2026
Mystical island of Siquijor
The Well That Smiled
The guide told them not to look into the well.
So, naturally, Ben looked first.
It was the sort of old Maltese well that seemed less built than grown from the island itself. A circular throat of pale limestone sat in the middle of an abandoned farmhouse courtyard, its rim polished by centuries of rope, rain, and careless hands. Beyond it, the countryside of western Malta rolled away into dusk: stone walls, prickly pear, dry grass, distant cliffs, and the sea breathing somewhere in the dark.
The farmhouse had no roof. Only walls. Only shadows. Only a doorway that opened into a room where nobody had cooked, prayed, or slept for a hundred years.
“Ben,” Clara hissed. “He said don’t.”
Ben grinned, phone in hand. “That’s exactly what makes it content.”
He leaned over the well.
The guide, Joseph, moved faster than a man his age should have. He grabbed Ben by the back of his shirt and yanked him away so hard Ben nearly dropped his phone.
“Are you mad?” Joseph snapped.
The group went quiet.
There were four of them, British tourists on their last night in Malta: Ben, who filmed everything; Clara, his girlfriend, who pretended not to be tired of it; Maya, a nurse from Manchester who had spent the whole trip trying to make everyone drink water; and Tom, Maya’s younger brother, who had come to Malta for sun, diving, and a break from his failed engagement.
Joseph was not the guide they had booked. The original “haunted Malta by night” tour had cancelled because of high winds near the cliffs. Ben had found Joseph outside Mdina, smoking under a yellow streetlamp beside a van that smelled of petrol and sea salt.
“You want real story?” Joseph had asked.
Ben had smiled. “We want something scary.”
Joseph had studied his face.
“No,” he said. “You want something to upload.”
That should have been the first warning.
Now the wind moved through the broken farmhouse, carrying a faint smell from the well. Damp stone. Old coins. Something like rotten seaweed left too long in a church font.
Joseph released Ben’s shirt.
“You don’t look down,” he said. “Not here.”
Ben laughed, but not loudly. “What, because of the monster?”
Joseph crossed himself.
Clara noticed.
“The Ga-Gaou?” she asked.
Joseph’s eyes flicked to her.
Earlier in the van, while the headlights carved through narrow lanes, he had told them about Malta’s old night creatures. Il-Gawgaw, the Christmas monster. Il-Belliegħa, the thing in wells. The KawKaw, grey and slimy, smelling guilt through walls. Stories for children, he said. Stories for men too proud to admit they were still children.
But he had not laughed when he said the name Ga-Gaou.
“People mix stories,” Joseph said now. “They say names wrong. They make videos. They sell T-shirts. But some names don’t care if you pronounce them properly.”
The farmhouse creaked.
It had no roof, but it creaked anyway.
Maya folded her arms. “Can we leave? This place feels unsafe.”
“It is unsafe,” Joseph said.
“Great tour,” Tom muttered.
Joseph turned to the old doorway at the back of the courtyard. Inside, stone steps descended into the dark.
“There is a cistern below,” he said. “Old. Maybe older than the house. The well and the chamber connect. During the war, families hid down there when bombs came. Before that, farmers stored water. Before that…” He shrugged. “Malta remembers things badly. Or too well.”
Ben lifted his phone again. “That’s brilliant. Say that again but slower.”
Joseph stared at him.
Then, from inside the well, something clicked.
Not a pebble falling.
Not water dripping.
A wet, deliberate click.
Like a tongue touching the roof of a mouth.
Clara stepped back. “What was that?”
Joseph’s face changed. The stern guide vanished. In his place stood a frightened old man.
“We go,” he said.
The wind slammed the wooden gate shut.
Everyone jumped.
Ben swore. Maya grabbed Tom’s sleeve. Clara looked toward the gate, then toward the stairs leading underground.
A sound rose from below.
Not from the well this time.
From under the courtyard.
A long scraping noise.
Metal dragged over stone.
Joseph whispered something in Maltese. Then in English he said, “No.”
Ben’s phone light flickered.
The screen went black.
All at once, every phone died.
The courtyard sank into blue twilight.
From underground came the scraping again.
Closer.
Tom tried the gate. It would not open.
“It’s stuck,” he said.
“Move.” Ben shoved beside him. Together they pulled. The gate rattled but held fast, as though the island itself had clenched around it.
Maya turned to Joseph. “Is there another way out?”
Joseph pointed to the broken doorway and the descending steps.
“No,” Clara said immediately.
Joseph swallowed. “The lower passage connects to another yard. Maybe. If it has not collapsed.”
“Maybe?” Ben said.
The scraping came again.
Then a groan.
Low, bovine, and human at the same time.
It rolled up through the stones and into their feet.
Clara began to cry silently.
Joseph took a small rosary from his pocket and wrapped it around his fist.
“Stay close,” he said. “Do not look into water. Do not answer if you hear your name. And if you smell something sweet, run.”
“Sweet?” Tom said.
Joseph was already moving.
They followed him down.
The stairs were narrow and slick. Limestone sweated around them. The air cooled at once, pressing damp fingers against their faces. Ben kept trying his phone, muttering, “Come on, come on,” but the screen remained dead.
Below, the passage widened into a chamber with a low ceiling. Their only light came from Joseph’s old torch, which he produced from his satchel. Its beam shook across walls scratched with names, dates, crude crosses, and older marks that looked less like writing than wounds.
Maya touched the wall. “This is really old.”
“Do not touch,” Joseph said.
She pulled her hand back.
The chamber smelled of clay jars, mildew, and something underneath, something animal.
In the middle of the floor was a shallow channel where rainwater must once have run. It led to a black archway at the far end. Beside it lay a rusted iron harrow, its teeth bent and rotten.
Ben pointed. “That’s staged.”
“No,” Joseph said.
“How would an old farm tool get down here?”
Joseph did not answer.
A wet slap echoed behind them.
Everyone turned.
At the top of the stairs, something pale moved across the last thread of evening light.
It was only there for a second.
Long fingers curling over the stair edge.
Then gone.
Tom whispered, “Did anyone else see that?”
Nobody answered.
The torch flickered.
Joseph hurried toward the black archway. “Move.”
They entered the passage.
It was worse than the chamber. The walls pressed close. The ceiling dipped so low Ben had to crouch. Somewhere nearby, water dripped with perfect patience.
Plink.
Plink.
Plink.
Then another sound joined it.
Breathing.
Not behind them.
Not ahead.
Inside the walls.
Clara clutched Ben’s arm. “Please stop filming.”
“I’m not,” Ben said, voice cracking.
“You would if you could.”
That shut him up.
The passage split into three.
Joseph froze.
His torch beam moved left, right, centre.
“Which one?” Maya asked.
Joseph’s mouth opened, then closed.
“You don’t know,” Tom said.
“I knew,” Joseph said. “Years ago.”
“Years ago?” Ben stepped toward him. “You brought us here and you don’t even know the way?”
Joseph turned on him. “You asked for real.”
The scrape of metal screamed through the tunnel behind them.
Closer now.
The harrow.
Something was dragging it.
Joseph shone the torch back.
Far behind them, at the edge of the light, a shape bent under the low ceiling.
Grey.
Wet.
Too tall for the tunnel, yet folding itself easily. Its skin shone like slug flesh. Its arms were long enough for the knuckles to brush the ground. Its head hung forward, almost featureless except for a mouth.
A wide, toothless mouth.
Smiling.
The torch went out.
Clara screamed.
Chaos exploded in the dark.
Maya shouted for Tom. Ben stumbled into the wall. Joseph yelled, “Left! Left!” and shoved them into one of the tunnels as the scraping thundered behind them.
They ran blind.
Hands scraped stone. Shoes splashed through puddles. Ben hit his head and cursed. Clara sobbed for air. Something groaned behind them, deep and delighted, and then came the smell.
Sweet.
Honeyed.
Like overripe figs split open in the sun.
“Run!” Joseph roared.
The passage dropped suddenly.
Tom vanished.
Maya screamed his name before she could stop herself.
A voice answered from below.
“Maya?”
She froze.
It was Tom’s voice.
But Tom was not speaking.
The real Tom groaned somewhere ahead, lower down. “I’m here! I fell!”
The false voice came again, soft and wet.
“Maya… help me…”
Joseph slapped a hand over her mouth before she could answer.
“No names,” he breathed.
They found Tom at the bottom of a sloped passage, ankle twisted, face white with pain. Maya dropped beside him, checking him automatically.
“Can you stand?”
“No.”
“Yes, you can,” she said. “Because the alternative is getting eaten by Maltese nightmare porridge.”
Even terrified, Tom barked a laugh.
Ben helped haul him up. For once, he did it without a joke.
Behind them, the Ga-Gaou began to click.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Like it was counting.
They limped forward and emerged into a vast underground cistern.
The torch suddenly flickered back to life in Joseph’s hand.
Its beam revealed a chamber carved from honey-coloured stone, its ceiling held by thick pillars. Black water filled most of the floor, still as glass. Above, a circular opening showed the bottom of the well. A disc of night sky floated far overhead.
Clara whispered, “That’s where we started.”
“No,” Joseph said. “That is where it lets you think you started.”
On the far side of the cistern, another stairway climbed into darkness.
“There,” he said. “That should lead out.”
They edged along a narrow stone walkway beside the water. Tom leaned heavily on Maya. Ben and Clara followed. Joseph went last, torch trembling.
Halfway across, the water moved.
A ripple widened.
Then another.
Something pale slid beneath the surface.
Ben saw it and whimpered.
Clara squeezed her eyes shut. “Don’t look.”
The water bulged beside them.
A hand rose.
Not quite a hand.
A tail-tip with seven long fingers spread open and slapped the stones.
Maya yanked Tom away as the fingers snapped shut inches from his injured leg.
The water erupted.
The Ga-Gaou rose from it.
It did not climb. It unfolded.
Its body stretched from the cistern like wet cloth pulled from a drain. Its head tilted sideways, that impossible grin widening until the corners seemed to reach its ears. It smelled of figs, brine, and guilty breath.
Ben backed away. “What does it want?”
Joseph’s voice shook. “What all old things want. To be fed. To be remembered. To be obeyed.”
The creature opened its mouth.
Inside was no tongue.
Only darkness.
Then it spoke in Ben’s voice.
“Content.”
Ben went still.
The creature turned its blind face toward him.
“Content,” it repeated.
Clara looked at Ben. “What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
The Ga-Gaou clicked.
Joseph whispered, “It smells guilt. Tell the truth.”
Ben shook his head. “This is insane.”
The creature dragged one hand onto the walkway.
Stone smoked under its fingers.
“Tell it,” Joseph said.
Ben’s face crumpled. “I knew the cancelled tour wasn’t cancelled.”
“What?” Clara said.
“I messaged the company pretending to be you,” Ben said quickly. “I cancelled it. I wanted something more extreme. Something no one else had. I paid Joseph double to take us somewhere off-book.”
Clara stared at him, horror blooming fresh.
“You used my name?”
“I’m sorry.”
The Ga-Gaou smiled wider.
The water shivered.
Clara whispered, “That’s not all, is it?”
Ben swallowed.
He looked at Maya, then Tom, then at the monster.
“I also saw the warning sign outside,” he said. “The one in Maltese and English. I moved it. For the shot.”
The cistern went silent.
Maya’s voice was cold. “You moved a safety sign?”
“I didn’t think…”
“No,” she snapped. “You didn’t.”
The Ga-Gaou leaned closer. Its mouth opened around a breath that smelled like damp confession.
Then Clara stepped between Ben and the thing.
“No,” she said.
Ben grabbed her arm. “Clara, don’t.”
She pulled free.
“I knew he did it,” she said.
Everyone looked at her.
“I saw the message on his phone in the van. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want another fight. I let us come.”
The Ga-Gaou turned to her.
Its mouth softened into something almost tender.
From the darkness behind them came another voice.
Clara’s voice.
“Good girl.”
Clara sobbed.
Joseph lifted the rosary. “Enough.”
The creature recoiled slightly, not afraid exactly, but irritated, as though prayer were smoke in its nostrils.
“Move,” Joseph said. “To the stairs.”
They backed away.
The Ga-Gaou followed.
Slowly.
Playing.
Tom groaned with each step. Maya held him upright, whispering, “Nearly there, nearly there,” though they were not nearly anywhere.
They reached the far stairs just as the torch died again.
In the dark, the creature screamed.
It was not loud.
It was enormous.
A bull’s rage, a drowned man’s grief, a child crying at the bottom of a well. The sound punched through the chamber. Clara fell. Ben grabbed her. Maya and Tom stumbled upward.
Joseph stayed at the bottom.
“Go!” he shouted.
“What are you doing?” Maya yelled.
Joseph pulled something from his satchel.
A round wooden sieve.
Old, cracked, full of tiny holes.
Ben, halfway up the stairs, stared. “You brought that?”
Joseph gave a bitter smile. “I told myself it was for tourists.”
He threw the sieve across the walkway.
It landed between them and the monster.
The Ga-Gaou stopped.
Its head lowered.
Click.
Click.
Click.
It began counting the holes.
Joseph backed up the stairs.
“Now,” he whispered.
They climbed.
Behind them, the counting grew faster.
Click-click-click-click.
The stairs twisted upward through choking dark. The air warmed. Wind brushed their faces. A square of night appeared above.
Then the counting stopped.
Joseph cursed.
A hand shot up from below and seized his ankle.
He fell hard.
The rosary scattered from his fist, beads bouncing down the steps like tiny bones.
Maya lunged, but Joseph shouted, “No!”
The Ga-Gaou pulled.
Joseph slid down one step, then two. His fingers clawed at the stone.
Tom, pale and shaking, grabbed Maya’s jacket. “We can’t leave him.”
Ben stared at Joseph.
Something changed in his face.
Not bravery. Not exactly.
Something more useful.
Shame with legs.
He shoved Clara upward. “Go.”
Then he ran down the stairs.
“Ben!” Clara screamed.
Ben grabbed Joseph under the arms and pulled. The Ga-Gaou hissed below, its wet grip tightening. Joseph cried out.
Maya looked once at Tom.
“Hold the wall,” she ordered.
Then she went down too.
Together, Maya and Ben pulled Joseph. Clara, swearing through tears, came back and grabbed Ben’s belt. Tom wedged himself against the stairwell and reached down with both hands.
For one horrible second, they were a chain of frightened tourists and one old guide, all of them caught between Malta and whatever Malta had buried.
Then Clara’s hand found the fallen rosary.
She wrapped it around Ben’s wrist.
“Pull,” she whispered.
They pulled.
Joseph’s ankle slipped free with a sound like a boot coming out of mud.
The Ga-Gaou shrieked.
They fell backward up the steps and scrambled into open air.
They burst out into another courtyard, smaller than the first, choked with weeds and silvered by moonlight. Beyond it stood a narrow lane, and beyond that, the faint glow of a village.
A church bell began to ring.
One.
Two.
Three.
The sound rolled across the fields.
Joseph lay on his back, gasping.
Maya checked his ankle, then Tom’s, hands shaking but efficient.
Clara held Ben and hit his chest once, hard.
“You absolute idiot,” she cried.
“I know,” he said.
“No, you don’t.”
“I’m starting to.”
Behind them, beneath the stones, the Ga-Gaou screamed again.
But the bell rang over it.
Four.
Five.
Six.
With each note, the scream sank lower, dragged back into the earth.
Joseph sat up, face wet with sweat. “The first prayer,” he whispered. “The morning bell.”
“But it’s not morning,” Tom said.
Joseph looked toward the village.
“It is somewhere.”
The ground trembled.
The well in the hidden courtyard gave one last groan, like a throat swallowing a secret.
Then silence fell.
Real silence.
No dripping. No scraping. No sweet smell.
Only wind moving through grass.
They limped toward the village road just as a pair of headlights appeared. A farmer in a battered pickup stopped so suddenly his tyres spat gravel. He got out, took one look at them, and crossed himself.
Joseph spoke to him rapidly in Maltese.
The farmer’s eyes widened at the name.
Ga-Gaou.
He made them climb into the back.
Nobody argued.
As the truck carried them toward lights, houses, and the ordinary world, Ben looked down at his phone.
It turned on.
Battery: 64%.
No signal.
One video file sat in the gallery.
He had not filmed anything.
Still, the thumbnail showed the well.
He tapped it before Clara could stop him.
The video lasted seven seconds.
Blackness.
Wet breathing.
Then Ben’s own voice, whispering from somewhere deep below:
“Look down.”
He deleted it.
This time, no one told him to.
By sunrise, Joseph had taken them to a small church. Not for drama. Not for content. Just somewhere with candles, stone floors, and a silence that did not feel hungry.
Ben sat in the back pew with his head in his hands.
Clara sat beside him, not touching him yet, but not leaving either.
Maya wrapped Tom’s ankle with supplies from the farmer’s wife and told him he was banned from “haunted anything” for life.
Joseph lit one candle.
Then another.
“What happens now?” Ben asked.
Joseph watched the flames.
“Now you go home,” he said. “You tell no one where it is. You do not make a video. You do not turn old fear into a toy.”
Ben nodded.
“And the well?” Maya asked.
Joseph’s expression hardened.
“The village will close it again. Properly this time.”
“Again?” Clara said.
Joseph did not answer.
Outside, Malta brightened into gold. Church bells rang. Buses started. Cafés opened. The island put on its daylight face, all honey stone and blue sea, as if nothing beneath it had ever smiled.
At the airport, Ben found a scratch across his phone screen.
Seven lines.
Like fingers.
He almost showed Clara.
Then he stopped.
For once, he let a secret die unfed.
Years later, when people asked about Malta, Clara would say it was beautiful. Maya would say the history was incredible. Tom would say the steps were murder on the ankles.
Ben would say very little.
But every Christmas Eve, wherever he was, he stayed awake until dawn.
And on the table in front of him, always, was a sieve.
Not because he believed.
Not exactly.
Because once, under an old Maltese courtyard, something grey and smiling had counted the holes.
And when it reached the last one, it had looked up at him from the dark.
Still hungry.
Still waiting.
But not winning.
Not that night.
@Angaisb_ Polymarkrt says most likely next week but theres like a 30 percent chance this week they say.
@neerajjj6785 Chat GPT and Grok
Its back.....
The Child on the Red Road
The road between Capiz and Iloilo always looked different after rain.
By daylight, it was only a provincial road, narrow and patched, winding through coconut groves, rice fields, and sudden pockets of forest where bamboo leaned close enough to scratch the sides of passing vehicles. But after sunset, when the rain had washed the dust from the asphalt and the sky turned the colour of old bruises, the road became something else.
A ribbon of black water.
A mouth.
A thing that waited.
That night, the clouds hung low over the hills. The moon was hidden. Somewhere beyond the trees, lightning flickered red behind the clouds, not bright enough to show the world clearly, only enough to make it seem wrong.
Tomas Aguilar drove with both hands on the wheel. Beside him, his wife Mira stared through the windshield, her face reflected faintly in the glass. In the back seat, Tomas’s mother, Aling Corazon, held a rosary wrapped around her fingers.
None of them had spoken for almost an hour.
They had come from Roxas City, from the grave of the child who had never learned to walk.
Their son.
Gabriel.
Three months old when the fever took him.
Two years gone, and still Mira woke at dawn with milkless pain in her chest, listening for a cry that never came.
Tomas had thought visiting the grave would help. He had told himself it would bring peace. Light a candle. Say a prayer. Leave flowers. Drive home before dark.
But grief had its own weather.
It delayed people.
It made them stand too long before small white crosses. It made mothers kneel in mud and whisper apologies to the soil. It made fathers pretend to check their phones so nobody saw their hands shaking.
Now they were late, and the road was dark.
“Almost there,” Tomas said, though he was not sure.
Mira did not answer.
Aling Corazon clicked one bead of the rosary with her thumbnail.
“Hail Mary, full of grace…”
“Mama,” Tomas said gently. “Not now.”
His mother’s eyes lifted in the rearview mirror. “Especially now.”
The van’s headlights curved around a bend. The forest thickened on both sides. The trees there were older, their trunks knotted and dark, their leaves shining wet. The air seemed to press against the glass.
Then the engine coughed.
Once.
Twice.
Tomas frowned. “No. No, no, no.”
The van lurched. The dashboard lights flickered. The engine gave a final choking sound, then died.
They rolled to a stop at the shoulder, headlights still burning weakly into the rain-slick curve of road.
For a moment, no one moved.
Only the wipers continued their tired sweep.
Scrape.
Pause.
Scrape.
“What happened?” Mira asked.
“Maybe the battery. Maybe fuel line.” Tomas turned the key.
Nothing.
He tried again.
The engine clicked like teeth.
Aling Corazon leaned forward. “Do not get out.”
Tomas exhaled sharply. “Mama, please. I have to check.”
“Not here.”
“It’s a road, Ma.”
“No,” she said. “It is a place between roads.”
Mira turned slightly. “What does that mean?”
Aling Corazon’s mouth tightened. “It means we should pray and wait for another car.”
Tomas almost laughed, but the sound died before leaving him. There had been no other car for twenty minutes.
Rain tapped softly on the roof.
Then they heard it.
A baby crying.
Mira’s body changed before her face did. She sat upright, eyes wide, breath caught in her throat.
The cry came from the trees on the left side of the road.
Small.
Wet.
Terrified.
Tomas froze.
Again, the cry came.
Not loud. Not dramatic. Just a thin, broken wail, the kind that pierces straight through the ribs and finds whatever softness is left inside.
Mira’s hand went to the door handle.
Aling Corazon grabbed her shoulder. “No.”
“There’s a baby,” Mira whispered.
“No.”
“Mama, there’s a baby outside.”
Aling Corazon’s grip tightened. “That is not a baby.”
The cry came again, weaker now.
Mira’s eyes filled with tears. “What if someone abandoned him?”
“In the middle of the forest?” Tomas said, but even he heard the uncertainty in his voice.
Mira looked at him, and he saw all the nights she had sat awake holding Gabriel’s blanket. He saw the empty nursery. He saw the tiny clothes folded in a drawer neither of them could open.
“Tomas,” she said. “We can’t leave a child.”
Aling Corazon made the sign of the cross. “Mira, listen to me. In the old stories, when the cry sounds far, it is near. When it sounds near, it is far. They cry like children because they know mothers will come.”
“Stories,” Mira snapped, surprising them both. “Always stories. Aswang. Manananggal. Kapre. Everything is a monster if it happens after dark.”
The crying stopped.
That silence was worse.
Tomas opened his door. “I’ll look. Just from the road.”
His mother whispered, “Turn your shirt inside out.”
“What?”
“Do it.”
“Mama, I’m not doing that.”
The moment he stepped out, the smell of wet earth swallowed him. The road steamed faintly under the van’s headlights. He took the torch from the glove box and shone it toward the trees.
“Mira, stay inside.”
She did not.
By the time he reached the roadside, she was beside him, one hand over her mouth.
The beam of the torch trembled over leaves, ferns, bamboo, mud.
Then it caught a shape near the base of a balete tree.
A child sat there.
A toddler, perhaps no more than two years old, wearing a dirty white shirt. His hair was black and plastered to his forehead. His skin looked pale under the torchlight. Too pale. But his eyes were open, huge and dark, reflecting the beam.
He was not crying now.
He was smiling.
Mira made a sound that was almost a sob.
“Baby…”
The child lifted one hand.
His fingers were small.
Almost small.
Tomas felt something cold move along his spine.
“Mira,” he said. “Wait.”
But she was already stepping into the wet grass.
The child looked at her and opened his mouth.
“Mama.”
Mira stopped breathing.
Tomas heard it too.
Not Nanay.
Not Mommy.
Mama.
The word Gabriel had never lived long enough to say.
Mira broke.
She ran to the child, scooped him into her arms, and held him against her chest as if someone had returned the sun.
The child rested his cheek on her shoulder.
Over Mira’s back, his eyes turned toward Tomas.
And winked.
At home in Iloilo, the house received the child like a secret.
They did not call the police that night. Tomas told himself it was because the signal was weak, because Mira was exhausted, because the child needed warmth first. The truth was uglier. He was afraid that if they reported the child, someone would take him away, and Mira would shatter all over again.
They bathed him. The water in the basin turned grey.
Mira found old baby clothes from the locked drawer. Gabriel’s clothes.
The child fit them perfectly.
Too perfectly.
Aling Corazon refused to touch him.
“What name?” she asked from the doorway.
Mira looked down at the child sitting on the bed. “He hasn’t told us.”
“He spoke on the road.”
Mira’s expression hardened. “He called me Mama.”
“That is not a name.”
Tomas rubbed his face. “We’ll bring him to the barangay hall in the morning.”
The child giggled.
All three adults turned.
It was not a sweet sound. It was too low, too knowing, coming from a throat that small.
Mira forced a smile. “He’s tired.”
Aling Corazon lifted her rosary.
The child’s smile disappeared.
For one second, his face became old.
Not older.
Old.
Wrinkled at the corners of the eyes. Mouth thin. Nose flattened. Eyes shining like coins at the bottom of a well.
Then he blinked, and he was a toddler again.
Aling Corazon whispered, “Santissima.”
That night, Mira slept with the child beside her.
Tomas slept badly.
At 2:13 a.m., he woke to the sound of whispering.
The room was dark. Rain tapped the windows. Mira slept on her side, one hand curled near her face.
The child sat at the foot of the bed.
He was facing the hallway.
Whispering.
Tomas could not understand the words at first. They were too soft, wet little syllables sliding over each other.
Then he heard his son’s name.
Gabriel.
Gabriel.
Gabriel.
The child turned slowly.
His eyes glowed faintly in the dark.
“Tatay,” he said.
Tomas could not move.
The word was perfect. Gabriel’s voice, somehow. The voice Tomas had imagined but never heard. The voice that had haunted him in dreams.
“Tatay, why did you bury me?”
Tomas’s throat closed.
The child smiled with too many teeth.
The next morning, every mirror in the house was fogged from the inside.
Not bathroom mirrors. Every mirror.
The old dressing mirror in Aling Corazon’s room. The small mirror by the front door. Even Tomas’s phone screen, when it was off, showed a white mist behind the glass.
Mira said it was humidity.
Aling Corazon said nothing.
At breakfast, the child refused rice, egg, milk, and pandesal.
He stared at the family dog through the screen door.
Brownie was a gentle old aspin who had never growled at anyone.
Now he stood rigid in the yard, hackles raised, a low trembling sound in his throat.
The child laughed.
Brownie ran under the house and did not come out again.
By noon, Tomas’s younger sister Lani arrived with her husband Berting and their teenage daughter Ana. They came because Mira had sent a message: We found a child. Long story. Come over.
Lani arrived smiling, full of questions. The smile faded when she saw her mother sitting in the corner with a rosary and a bowl of salt in her lap.
“Mama, what’s this?”
“Protection.”
“For what?”
From the hallway came the child’s voice.
“Tita Lani.”
Lani turned pale. “How does he know me?”
Mira smiled too quickly. “Maybe he heard us.”
The child stood at the hallway entrance, wearing Gabriel’s blue shirt. His head tilted to one side.
Ana crouched. “Hi, baby. What’s your name?”
The child said nothing.
“What a cute little boy,” Ana said.
His eyes moved to her bracelet, a silver chain with a small cross.
He hissed.
Not like a cat.
Like steam escaping from a grave.
Ana stumbled backward.
Everyone heard it. Even Mira.
For the first time, uncertainty crossed her face.
Then a picture frame fell from the wall.
Glass shattered.
The photograph inside was Gabriel’s baptismal photo. Tomas holding him. Mira smiling. Father Ramon’s hand raised above the baby’s head.
The child stared at the broken frame.
His face twisted.
“Not him,” he said.
His voice was no longer Gabriel’s.
It was deeper.
Older.
Angrier.
“Me.”
The lights went out.
In the darkness, Ana screamed.
When the power returned, she was standing by the stairs, shaking, both hands over her mouth. No wound. No blood. Nothing visible.
But her hair, long and black a moment earlier, had turned white at the ends.
“I saw him,” she whispered. “I saw him behind his face.”
Berting tried to laugh, but it came out flat. “This is enough. We take him to the police.”
The child turned to him.
The house became very quiet.
Outside, in the middle of daylight, something knocked three times on the front door.
Tok.
Tok.
Tok.
Berting opened it.
No one stood outside.
Only muddy footprints led from the door to the gate.
Small footprints.
The child was still inside.
By evening, Berting was dead.
They found him in the backyard beside the mango tree, sitting upright as if he had simply grown tired and lowered himself to the grass. His face was calm. His hands were folded in his lap.
No wound.
No sign of struggle.
Only his mouth remained slightly open, and from deep inside his throat came a sound like a baby crying very far away.
Lani collapsed.
Mira screamed.
Tomas ran to call for help, but every phone in the house displayed the same message.
No signal.
Then the child began to clap.
Slowly.
Softly.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Aling Corazon stood.
Her voice was no louder than a breath. “Enough.”
The child looked at her.
She took the bowl of salt and began pouring a line across the hallway floor.
Mira grabbed her wrist. “What are you doing?”
“Saving what can still be saved.”
“He’s a child!”
Aling Corazon looked at her daughter-in-law with tears in her eyes. “No, hija. He is wearing your grief because you opened the door.”
The child’s mouth stretched into a grin.
“Mama loves me,” he said.
Mira looked at him.
For a moment, the house held its breath.
The child opened his arms.
“Mama.”
Mira took one step toward him.
Tomas caught her. “Mira, look at me.”
“He needs me.”
“No.” Tomas’s voice broke. “Gabriel needed you. This thing knows that.”
The child’s eyes darkened.
The walls began to weep.
Water slid down the paint in thin lines, though the roof did not leak. The framed saints on the walls tilted. The air filled with the sour smell of old milk.
From every room in the house came the sound of babies crying.
One cry.
Ten cries.
A house full of invisible cradles.
Mira covered her ears.
The child crawled toward the salt line.
When his small hand touched it, smoke curled from his fingers.
He shrieked.
It was not loud like a person. It was loud like metal tearing.
The glass in the windows trembled.
Aling Corazon raised the rosary. “In the name of Jesus Christ, you will not cross.”
The child lifted his head.
His eyes were no longer human.
“Old woman,” he whispered. “You should have died first.”
The front door flew open.
Rain blasted into the house.
A shape stood beyond the threshold, barely visible through the curtain of water.
A priest.
Father Ramon from the parish.
He held a small bag in one hand and an umbrella in the other, though the umbrella had turned inside out from the wind.
Behind him stood Mang Isko, an old healer from the next barangay, carrying a bundle of dried herbs, a bottle of blessed oil from the church, and a face that looked as if it had expected this all along.
“I got your mother’s message before the signal died,” Father Ramon said.
Tomas stared. “Message?”
Aling Corazon did not look away from the child. “I sent it before we left Capiz.”
“You knew?”
“I feared.”
Father Ramon stepped inside and made the sign of the cross.
The child hissed and scrambled backward, too fast, limbs bending wrong, body flickering between toddler and something smaller, older, darker.
Mira sobbed.
Father Ramon’s voice softened. “Mira, listen carefully. Evil often comes through the wound that hurts most. It does not mean your love was wrong. It means your love was used.”
Mira shook her head. “I held him.”
“You held a lie wearing the shape of mercy.”
Mang Isko sprinkled salt at each corner of the room. “This one is hungry for a name,” he muttered. “And angry because it has none.”
The child crouched in the hallway, fingers curled.
“No name,” it said. “No grave. No bell. No candle.”
The voice was many voices now. Infant. Old man. Woman weeping. Something beneath all of them, dry and patient.
Father Ramon took out a small bottle of holy water.
The child’s body trembled.
“I am not here to bargain,” the priest said.
The lights flickered.
“I am not here to ask what you want.”
The crying from the rooms grew louder.
“I am here to command what you are not allowed to keep.”
The child screamed again, and the house shook. The kitchen cabinets opened and slammed. Plates fell. The crucifix above the dining table swung on its nail.
Mira sank to her knees.
The child suddenly changed.
His face softened. His eyes became brown and wet. His mouth trembled.
He looked exactly like Gabriel might have looked at two years old.
“Mama,” he whispered. “Why did you leave me in the ground?”
Mira made a sound that tore through Tomas.
The priest stepped between her and the child. “Do not answer.”
But Mira crawled forward.
Tomas caught her, weeping now. “Mira, please.”
The child reached out.
“I’m cold.”
Mira broke again. “Gabriel?”
The house went silent.
Even the rain seemed to stop.
Then Aling Corazon, still standing behind the salt line, said clearly:
“That is not Gabriel.”
The child’s eyes snapped to her.
“My grandson was baptised,” she said. “My grandson was loved. My grandson belongs to God.”
The child’s face twisted.
“He is not yours,” she said.
For the first time, Mira looked fully at the thing in the hallway.
Not with grief.
With sight.
The child’s borrowed face quivered, unable to hold its shape. Beneath it, something pressed outward. Thin limbs. Skin like old ash. A mouth too wide. Teeth like broken rice grains. Eyes bright and furious, round as coins.
Mira whispered, “You are not my son.”
The creature shrieked so hard the candles went out.
Then Father Ramon began the prayer.
His voice was steady, though his hands shook.
Mang Isko lit a white candle and placed it in a bowl of rice. Aling Corazon poured salt in a circle around it. Tomas held Mira as she sobbed into his shoulder.
The priest prayed over the house, over the family, over the dead, over every wound that had been opened and every lie that had entered through it.
The creature crawled along the wall now, no longer pretending. It moved like a shadow with bones. Sometimes it became a baby again. Sometimes an old man. Sometimes only a small black shape with glowing eyes.
It laughed.
It cursed.
It called them by names only their dead relatives had used.
It whispered secrets.
It told Lani that Berting had been afraid in his last moment.
It told Ana she would dream of white hair forever.
It told Tomas he had failed his son.
It told Mira that no mother deserved to bury a child.
At that, Mira stood.
Her face was wet, but her voice was clear.
“No,” she said. “No mother deserves it. But grief is not your kingdom.”
The creature stopped moving.
Mira took the white candle from the bowl.
Father Ramon warned, “Careful.”
She stepped to the edge of the salt line. Not across it.
“What do you want?” she asked.
The creature grinned. “Carry me.”
“No.”
“Name me.”
Mira’s hand tightened around the candle.
Father Ramon nodded slowly. “A name can be mercy. But not possession. Not invitation.”
Mira looked at the creature, and her voice softened, not with love for it, but with pity for whatever wound had first made it.
“You are not Gabriel,” she said. “You are not my child. You do not belong in this house.”
The creature’s eyes narrowed.
“But you were once lost,” she continued. “So I will call you Luz.”
Light.
The creature recoiled as if struck.
“No.”
“Luz,” Mira said again.
“No name!”
“Luz,” said Aling Corazon.
“Luz,” said Tomas.
“Luz,” whispered Ana, trembling.
Father Ramon lifted the crucifix. “Luz, if there is a soul bound beneath this darkness, may God judge with mercy. If there is evil clinging to this form, may it be cast out. In the name of Jesus Christ, leave this house.”
The candle flame rose.
Not flickered.
Rose.
A thin spear of gold in the wet dark.
The creature screamed, but the scream changed halfway through. The rage thinned. Beneath it came a smaller sound, not the false crying from the road, but something tired. Something very far away.
Mang Isko threw blessed salt into the air.
Father Ramon sprinkled holy water.
Aling Corazon rang a small brass bell she had brought from the family altar.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
The creature’s body cracked like dry mud.
No blood.
No flesh.
Only ash beneath the shape, grey and weightless.
The red light outside the windows faded.
The baby cries stopped.
The creature looked at Mira one last time.
For a heartbeat, it was only a small child sitting by the roadside, waiting for arms that never came.
Then the candle flame bent toward it.
The Chanak opened its mouth, but no sound came out.
It collapsed into ash.
The wind carried it across the salt line, across the floor, out through the open door, and into the rain.
By dawn, the road outside was quiet.
The storm had passed. The sky over Iloilo turned pale blue. Roosters called from neighbouring yards. Somewhere, a tricycle engine coughed awake. The world resumed itself with indecent ease, as if it had not nearly split open in the night.
Berting was buried three days later.
The doctors called it cardiac arrest. Lani said nothing. Ana wore her cross under her shirt and never removed it again.
Mira and Tomas returned to Gabriel’s grave one week later.
This time, they went in daylight.
They brought white flowers, a blue candle, and a small wooden toy car.
Mira knelt in the grass.
“I know you are not there,” she whispered. “Not trapped. Not cold. Not crying on some road.”
Tomas put his hand on her shoulder.
Aling Corazon stood behind them, rosary in hand, eyes on the trees.
Before they left, Mira lit one more candle.
Not for Gabriel.
For Luz.
“For whatever was lost before it became cruel,” she said.
Aling Corazon frowned but did not stop her.
On the drive home, they passed the same winding road.
The van did not break down.
The trees stood still.
No baby cried.
But as they rounded the bend, Tomas saw something at the edge of the forest.
A small patch of ash.
Untouched by rain.
And beside it, pressed into the mud, were two tiny footprints leading away from the road.
Not toward the forest.
Toward the light.
@AnthropicAI This woumd is self inflicted
BREAKING: The U.S. and Iran have reached a "final, agreed upon text" for a peace deal, says Pakistan's prime minister.
Pakistan is "working closely with both sides to finalize the next steps", Shehbaz Sharif says in a post on X.
Latest 🔗 https://t.co/HZ2OhEsKbJ
📺 Sky 501
Elon just created 4,400 millionaires in a single day.
400 of them are now worth over $100 million.
These aren't VCs. They're SpaceX employees, and the list includes welders, technicians, and cafeteria staff, because for two decades the company paid every level of the workforce in stock instead of higher salaries.
Juan Hernandez immigrated from Mexico and took a $28 an hour contractor welding job in 2015. He says he didn't even know what SpaceX was. The company gave him a $10,000 equity grant and let him buy more shares through payroll deductions. That stake is now worth $880,000.
Trevor Hise's parents wanted him to take a stable job at General Electric. He picked SpaceX instead, stayed 12 years, and accumulated over 100,000 shares. At the $135 listing price that's $13.5 million. He's 37 and semiretired. His words: "The magnitude of this has been ridiculous."
The most telling detail came before the listing. Over 100 employees quietly banded together and negotiated a group wealth management deal covering up to $5 billion, because none of them had ever needed a wealth manager before.
Software IPOs have minted millionaires for 30 years. This is the first one where the money went to the factory floor.
@SkyNews XAI is the ai industries dark horse. My bet is on Grok on this one.
@mark_k I would rather watch- Lee Cronin's The Mummy. Now thats a good horror flick....
@mark_k @iamGastongoity @OpenAI Even if 5.6 is only like 90 percent as good as Fable as long as its cheaper and available Im good.
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