Beth

“Finally, we’re here,” Kaiser says releasing a loud sigh. He smiles as he places his hands on his waist after an eight-hour land trip from our town.

He pats his small sling bag and ambles to the wooden gate underneath the forest that surrounds the area.

I look above and see the full moon smiling down on us. Its light shines an ample amount of light. Enough to see the beauty of the place in the pitch black.

Glancing to each corner, I realize the property is in a secluded place. Nobody is around. Not even a few pedicabs or a few residents passing by. And it’s not late in the evening.

I stay behind him and glance at the picturesque view of the trees－around a hundred years old－in an array. They lie along the small wooden gate, creating an illusion of a fence. The metal mesh is also placed as a finishing touch.

There are no street lights. And it’s quiet. It’s deafening as if nobody is living here. If there is someone, he’s either an insane old man, a hermit, or an ancient voodoo practitioner.

Although I know looking around now seems scary, my curiosity urges me to turn my head and have a good look behind me.

The chilly cold in my spine gushes through the base of my head. I tremble, instinctively. My hands seem to have a life of their own, wrapping around the sling of my small leather bag.

I press my lips. My imagination runs wild－a scary-looking ghost of a woman with long hair I saw in movies will appear. Wide-eyed, I try to fix my sight to Kaiser, who keeps pressing the doorbell.

Minutes later, someone turns on the lamp lying above the gate － above us.

I release a sigh full of desperation. Do I have to go through this to get an A grade?

As much as I want to run away and return to the bus terminal, I couldn’t. I need Kaiser’s aunt to tell the story or else I experience hell. A hell without escape.

The footsteps become louder towards the gate. My mind rushes with unnecessary thoughts.

But one thing is clear: Kaiser’s aunt is my last hope.

If this still won’t work, I don’t have another choice but to fake my story and submit it to Mr. Dizon. I don’t think he’ll examine it anyway. Hopefully not.

When the gate opens, I squint to have a clear view of the person behind. “Aunt Jessica!” Kaiser’s loud voice echoes the whole space.

“Shut it out, Kaiser. You might disturb neighbors,” she shushes.

I look around to check if there are neighbors. But there are no houses next to hers. I raise my eyebrow, wondering what she means.

“Come on, you don’t have other neighbors besides the trees,” Kaiser exclaims exactly what I thought.

How come she says something like that? Is she kidding us? She refuses to answer and gestures to enter the gate instead.

She lights her face with the lamp a bit higher than her face. “That’s what I’m saying. You might disturb the fairies in the trees with your loud voice, Kaiser,” she says after a few walks. “They might be angry at you or annoyed.”

He scoffs and laughs. What could she expect from a carefree guy from abroad? Germans don’t believe in such things. Afterlife, for example. As they say, ‘Your life ends when you die. And there is no such thing as a ghost.’ I heard those from him many times.

She turns her body to face me and extends her arm with the lamp trying to see me clear. Her eyes wince and lifts the lamp closer to my face. “I see you brought a girl. Your girlfriend?”

I flush out of the blue and look away to keep my embarrassment. “Hello,” I say after calming myself a bit with an awkward smile.

She smiles back. “You’re a pretty girl.”

My smile fades. “Pardon?”

“You’re a pretty young lady,” she says and turns to Kaiser. “Our family has always been good to pick up the finest genes, don’t we?” He didn’t respond.

She stops walking and looks at me. “May I know your name?” I yelp and clench my fists to calm down. She giggles. “I don’t mean to pry but it’s the first time Kaiser brought home a girl. So, I hope you don’t mind me asking about your precious name.” Her words are cringing. They sound too ridiculous.

“B-beth,” I say, stammering. I clear my throat and gulp. She laughs and taps my shoulders, squeezing it as gentle as she can. I smile back, giggling.

“Don’t be nervous. I won’t bite.” She extends her arms to reach my hand, shaking it a bit. “Nice to meet you, Beth. I’m Jessica. Kaiser’s aunt.” She looks at me with intent, as she releases her grip and turns around to approach Kaiser. “Come in, Beth.”

“Okay,” I take my steps forward along the stone pathways arranged next to each other.

The nearer I am to the front porch, the larger the stones become. And the brighter the light is. When I reach the largest stone, I raise my face to see the mansion. It look like a traditional Nipa hut underneath the trees and in the middle of a grassland.

It looks modern and minimalist.

Dried bamboo shoots cover most of the exterior and painted with chocolate-colored varnish. With its structure, I assume they used more than a hectare of bamboo harvests to achieve this design.

For the roof, they use the modern roofing system instead of the traditional Nipa. Her peculiar but stunning taste for architecture reveals how she is. Her style shows how she admires the modern and historical Filipino design. I never thought the mix of Spanish, American, Japanese, and Filipino cultures could look this good.

Yet in a horrifying place, who would expect a hidden property everyone thought abandoned?

I enter the house with all eyes in the interior. The floors, made from slabs of hardwood placed next to each other, polished. The expensive paintings from different artists－local and abroad－make up the wall.

On the other side are portraits of the family. In the center shows the couple, the younger Aunt Jessica and her husband. Like Kaiser, he is good-looking, although he appears aged in the photo. More or like in his late forties. He looks tall and lean. The same with Aunt Jessica, who sat in a carved wooden chair, beside him.

He wore a white Barong Tagalog and her with a white Filipiniana attire. Both are traditional Filipino clothing.

In the portrait, they hold hands. Her husband’s hand was on top of hers.

While looking at it, I am thinking of meeting my man. Is he waiting for me? Can we meet some other time soon?

Though I see my parents as an epitome of a weird couple, they survive their marriage both in ups and downs. I even saw them bickering and hugging, sometimes kissing at the kitchen when Jana and I aren’t around. That alone is a living proof that true love exists. Can I experience something like that, too?

I sigh as my hands remain on the bag sling. “Silly me. Thinking about these things is ridiculous,” I whisper and face down. I raise my head to see the other photos. They are candid photos of their children way back they were young until they became adults. What a nice sight it is!

Before I turn to approach Kaiser and her Aunt, I startle seeing him already standing behind me. His hands on his waist and his eyes look up on the same big portrait I saw before. “They are a happy couple,” he says with a faint smile.

He stares at me as if he wants to tell me something. A secret? My eyebrows raise to tell him ‘What?’ without saying a word. He shakes his hand and says, “Nothing. Let’s go.”

He heads up the stairs, and I follow behind him. “Who is that man beside her?” He holds the wooden rails and steps aside waiting for me to catch up on him on the staircase. “That was my Uncle Lucas.”

“Is he here, too?” He shakes his head. “He already passed away three years ago. He died from this weird disease he got from their father. His brother also died for the same reason. But, my Uncle Lucas survived longer than him.” I nod while listening.

For whatever reason, I start to feel a kind of an attachment to Kaiser’s family tree. There’s one thing that bothers me. They like to marry pretty people.

Their genealogy runs with pretty faces of both genders. Even her Aunt Jessica, though she’s a wife and doesn’t belong to the Mendiolas, looks young and beautiful for her age.

Aunt Jessica, at her early late forties－I assumed－she doesn’t look like the rest of the women in her same age group. She’s tall. In fact, she’s taller than I am even with her slippers against my three-inch heels.

Her body remains lean. Her dark hair makes her look younger, compared to Kaiser's ashen hair. She looks younger than how I look with my make up on. Her beauty is Venus and somehow eternal.

“What brings you here?” Aunt Jessica asks while she pours a hot coffee in our cups. Kaiser and I sit in front of each other, near to the edge of the table where she seated. He places his right elbow on top of the table as he looks at her sitting on her chair.

“We want to visit you, Aunt Jessica. You know, it’s been a year since I did.”

She smiles wide-reaching her ears as she tries hiding her face turning red. “Your flattery does sound nice, Kaiser.”

Aside from having such a beauty, she’s also smart. She looks quick to determine flattery and not. Well, how she speaks, she sounds a bit formal but friendly. “I know you’re here for something rather important than a simple visit.”

Kaiser remains silent as he glances at me, waiting for a right timing to say the real intention of our coming. I nod as a signal of telling her the truth or a part of it, at least. “We want to know about your friend, Alexandra Montenegro.”

As soon as she places the kettle on the table, she goes silent. In deep thoughts as she fixes her sight in her cup. It feels like as if we did a terrible mistake.