It all started three weeks ago. I met him at an overpass near Ortigas. He was selling his art by the stairs and I couldn’t help but admire the illustrations.
It seemed the moon was his muse. Each painting was beautifully crafted with moonlight in mind, the landscapes almost glowed the more you looked at it.
I asked him how much a painting was and was surprised when he said 100 pesos. I couldn’t let him sell something so beautiful for such a low cost so I handed him a thousand and slung the canvas under my arm.
He thanked me profusely for the money and told me I was welcome to get another painting. I readily accepted and made my way home.
That night I put the paintings up in my living room and looked closer at the compositions. They looked like they were depicting the same place at different times, one when the moon was full and another when the moon was at a crescent. The way the painter made the shadows dance in the moonlight was incredibly impressive and I fell asleep dreaming about the landscape.
That’s when it first started. I can’t pinpoint the exact moment that it happened. I would leave a light on in the bathroom or somewhere and I’d find that it was off when I went back to check. I thought it was just me being absentminded, but things began to escalate.
I woke up to the sound of a screech from my kitchen. Once, when I was a child I heard an owl screech as it caught a rat right in front of me, it was something like that but louder. The sound echoed in my bones and I ran towards it to see if a bird had gotten into my house. I fumbled through my hallway as all the lights were out and when I looked back to my bedroom it seemed that the light got darker. Another screech came, this time from my guest room and I nearly shouted.
I ran towards the living room and turned on the lights, after a few minutes to gather my thoughts I went back to the kitchen to find nothing.
I thought I was going crazy until I walked by the living room and saw it.
The paintings had changed. There was a larger shadow on the painting with the crescent moon, and on the other one there was a shadow on the full moon that looked like a triangle.
I’m a grown man and I can admit when I’m afraid. I asked to stay with my friend and left my apartment for a few days to collect my thoughts.
The next day I went to the overpass to ask the man about the paintings. I didn’t know what to expect but I was still surprised that he wasn’t there. I asked the other beggars around the area if they saw him, and they all said they didn’t know where he was. One night he just packed up his paintings and left.
I wasn’t about to let a pair of paintings get to me so as soon as I was ready to go back to my house I threw them in the garbage. I don’t think I was as relieved at any other point in my life. I was still a little afraid, I won’t lie, so that night I left the light on in my room.
I shouldn’t have done that.
I woke up to darkness and screeching. I didn’t know where the sound was coming from and I turned on the flashlight in my cellphone and looked around. The bulb of the light had been broken by something and I rushed out of my room to get my bearings.
I ran through the hallway, crashing into pictures and side tables and tripped on my couch as I heard another screech.
I swung my cellphone around and I saw them.
The paintings were back.
I cautiously switched the lights back on and looked around my living room. There was nothing to indicate someone had broken in. But why would anyone break in to leave two paintings I had thrown out?
I looked at the paintings and they had changed again. The shadow was bigger in the one with a full moon, it almost looked like a bird’s head. The other canvas was almost black, it was like a giant figure blocked all the light that was supposed to reach the ground.
This was all getting too much for me. I tried to rid myself of the paintings but they come back each time. I even tried burning them, but they appeared, like clockwork, on my living room wall.
The paintings get darker each time.
I don’t know what will happen when they both fade to black, and I don’t want to know. I put my apartment on the market that day and never looked back.
Let the next person deal with this.
Better him than me.
Written by Karl Gaverza
Copyright © Karl Gaverza
Inspired by the Minokawa description in Creatures of Philippine Lower Mythology. Ramos. 1971.
Minokawa illustration by Dyani Lao:
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