Through the mangrove ridden swamps, past the riverbanks, lies a small grove of trees. Now, most people would find nothing strange about it, they would probably find it stranger if there weren’t any trees by the riverside.
As they look closer, they can see what makes this copse so horrifying. Each tree is etched with the face of a person, twisted in agony. The bark of the tree outlines their wretched visages.
Locals call the area cursed and most do well to avoid these trees.
But one brave soul dared to brave the wilderness to seek answers that only the trees can whisper.
This is his story.
Simeon Boñaga always hated his name. His namesake was a hero, the last general to surrender during the Philippine-American war and here he was, a 27-year-old burnout, whose best days were behind him.
He was the first of his family to graduate university. Coming from a small town where you either became a fisherman or starve, it was a big accomplishment. That is, up until the real world turned its ugly head.
His first job after university was in a large multinational company, the kind of place that he had always heard about but never got the opportunity to see up close. The pay was good and the hours were reasonable, he finally felt he had it all.
But there was always that voice in his head that nagged him. It was like a weight that slowed him down every day. He noticed it after the fifth month of work. His mind didn’t think as fast, he was angry and irritable to his coworkers and he couldn’t sleep.
He thought it would pass, that it was just a bad dream he would wake up from eventually. Then the second month came and things started to get worse. His eyebags got so big and obvious that people couldn’t help but comment on them.
That made him feel more terrible. He tried to ignore the gossip floating around, but the voices outside were just as loud as the voices in his head. Simeon noticed that his officemates started to avoid him. Whenever he would walk up to the lounge people seemed to disperse.
His mood affected his performance at work. At the start of the year he could glide through spreadsheets and was confident with presentations. As the months went by Simeon retreated more into himself, pushing away even his friends that tried to help.
If he had gotten help early maybe he could have avoided shouting at his boss. If he admitted that there was something wrong, he could have kept his job. If he wasn’t so prideful, there would have been a way to continue the life he was living.
Simeon thought back to those days as he stared at the river by his home. He didn’t want to have to go back to the province, but after what he did there was no choice. He felt alone now more than ever, sitting by the rocks and watching the water flow through the forest.
His parents didn’t understand what was wrong with him. They told him it was all in his head. He wanted to reply, “of course it’s in my head, where do you think my brain is?” but that would be unnecessary. His parents were simple people, far removed from the medical jargon that became his new reality.
It was a life he wouldn’t have wished on anyone else. He sighed and started the long to the nearby town. Simeon hated being alone with his thoughts. It was a burden put upon his shoulders that he wished he could just shrug off.
As he entered the town, he saw people gather around the square. For a few brief moments the voices in his head quieted down and he was able to focus on what was happening before him.
A woman who he recognized as Aling Norma was sobbing hysterically. She shouted, “Angongolood! Angongolood!” as the crowd watched silently.
He knew the legends, of course. Every person in town did. The giant gorilla-like beast preying on fishermen at the mouth of the riverbank.
It was all just superstition, a story made up to scare fisherfolk away from dangerous areas in the swamp. But it seemed like Aling Norma believed every word of it. Simeon would always remember the look on her tear-stained face as she cried out for her husband.
“Jherick! Jherick why didn’t you listen?! What will happen to us now? Why didn’t you think about your children?!” Her cries echoed through the town square, made even louder by the silence of the bystanders.
It seemed that people were just content to watch the spectacle and Simeon couldn’t help but feel pity for the crowd as well as Aling Norma. This scene wasn’t meant to turn out like this. He walked towards Aling Norma and bent down beside her, putting his hand on her shoulder.
Aling Norma was surprised by Simeone’s touch. She stopped crying long enough to crumple into his arms.He didn’t know how long he held Aling Norma. The crowd dispersed, bit by bit until the only people left were Simeon and Aling Norma as well as a few stragglers.
Aling Norma looked at Simeon with tired eyes. She composed herself and thanked him for comforting her. Simeon said it was nothing, but she disagreed. “No one would even come near me when they found out my husband went missing. Thank you.”
Simeon didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t tell her that he would cry himself to sleep every night the way she did. Or how there was a storm brewing inside him and it helped to be of help to others to forget the emotional buildup that threatened to burst.
He asked Aling Norma why she thought it was the angongolood that took her husband and she replied, “He went to the trees.”
“What trees?” Simeon asked.
“The angongolood’s embrace is poison to the touch, anyone caught in its arms is twisted into a horrible tree,” she said, new tears forming in her eyes.
“I’m sure they’ll be able to find him.”
“They won’t. It’s too late. Far too late.” Aling Norma looked Simeon in the eye and her piercing gaze shot to his soul. “Do not go out to the swamp, nothing good can come from that place.”
She stood up and left Simeon standing alone in the town square. He thought back to her words and he was moved by her assurance that her husband’s disappearance was tied to a mythical beast. But Simeon was a man of logic.
There had to be something or someone responsible. Someone had to do something and there was a persistent voice in his head that it should be him. The feeling passed though and once again Simeon was a slave to his emotions. The feeling of ennui showered over him and he couldn’t even remember why he went to the town.
“Someone else has to do something,” he said to himself as he started the long walk home.
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“Get up! It’s nearly sunrise!”
Simeon was jolted awake by his father. He didn’t appreciate being woken up this early. His father had said that they needed to spend more time together, to do honest work, and Simeon reluctantly agreed. It was like this when he was younger, his father waking him up at the break of dawn and both of them going out to the river to get a fresh catch.
They got ready with their nets and Simeon yawned as they pushed out into the river.
The mangroves were radiant in the morning sun and they both were silent as they went upriver. Simeon’s father was a man of few words and he couldn’t express as much as he would like to. Throughout the boat ride his father had tried to talk Simeon into going back to the city and finding work, how he was doing so well and it was about time he tried again.
Simeon ignored him. What would his father know about what he was going through, what did anyone know? He thought back to the last therapist he was seeing. She cared more about herself than she did Simeon’s well being and he was still mad that he spent too much money on sessions that made things more difficult.
And there was the medicine. Half the time Simeon felt like a zombie going through the motions of life. He couldn’t think straight, he was always thirsty and nauseous and it didn’t help with his night terrors.
Maybe he would go back to the city to find a psychiatrist that would help, but that would have to wait. Now was the time for fishing.
They cast out the nets and hoped that they would find something good, maybe tuna. The catch was disappointing, nothing but small fish and they moved on to another area. They repeated this for hours, finding nothing all while Simeon was getting frustrated.
They had drifted near the swamp where it was sure they wouldn’t get a good catch. Maybe this was his father’s way of giving them some alone time, though Simeon didn’t appreciate it.
He didn’t want to be here, not in this town, not with his family. Simeon wished so hard that he could scream out into the world, but he knew no one would listen. He had to suffer in silence and put on a façade of being ‘alright’. More than anything he wanted to be understood by someone, anyone.
He turned his back to his father and tried to breathe. One of his older therapists had taught him breathing exercises to minimize anxiety. Three deep breaths and he would be able to handle things, or so he hoped.
When he was ready, he turned back to face his father. He was calmer now. He had expected his father to be angry, his father never understood anything about his condition, so he had to be more patient.
He turned and was surprised to find his father missing. Simeon rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn’t dreaming or a trick of his medication, but there was nothing more than empty air on the other side of the boat.
He called out for his father, screaming until his lungs gave out. It didn’t matter though, there was only the sounds of nature that answered him.
Simeon was alone.
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The service was brief and solemn.
It had been a year since his father had disappeared and it was time to put his memory to rest.
Simeon’s mother didn’t stop crying through the funeral. She never looked at Simeon the same way since the incident. He could see in her eyes that he should have been the one that vanished.
The year was not kind to Simeon. His father’s disappearance only led to him retreating from the world. As far as he was concerned there was nothing outside the four walls of his room.
If he had cared more, he might have realized that his savings were dwindling and he would have to look for a job soon. Unfortunately, he couldn’t move past the mire he found himself in. The voices in his head were getting louder and he wished he could find some way to make them stop. The meds weren’t working anymore and he had decided a few months ago to stop taking them.
He just wanted to see his father one more time. Simeon wanted to tell him that he was sorry he was a bad son and that he brought shame upon the family. He wanted to apologize for his condition, as strange as it sounds. He just wanted to be normal.
That would never happen now, as they slowly lowered an empty casket into the grave. They hadn’t even found a trace of his father.
There were rumors of course. The elders in town would whisper of the angongolood as more disappearances happened.
But that didn’t matter to Simeon.
He felt like he was moving through mud. The simplest things like cleaning the house or getting out of bed were getting more and more difficult for him. His mother saw it as laziness, a burden that she had to bear as well. To her, nothing was fair. She had lost the love of her life and her son was retreating from reality. She knew that something had to be done.
One morning as the dawn began, she took her husband’s boat and made her way to the swamp.
Simeon woke up and expected to find his mother making breakfast. He was puzzled why she wasn’t there. As soon as he looked out and saw the boat was missing, he knew where she had gone.
It would have been easy for Simeon to just ignore it, to wallow in his own sadness and grieve for his missing mother. Where he found strength, he didn’t know, and he went to his neighbor’s house and asked to borrow their boat to find his mother.
As he delved deeper into the swamp fear gripped his heart. He didn’t know what he was doing, he would find his mother and then what? Why had she gone to the swamp in the first place? To find his father?
He wasn’t prepared to talk his mother off that ledge, but he breathed in deep and pushed forward. He lost his father, he wouldn’t lose his mother too.
Simeon found the boat his mother used by the mangrove trees. It was empty and it looked like she had gone deeper into the swamp on foot.
He got out of his boat and followed the trail that she left.The air was thick and humid and Simeon began to sweat through his shirt. Trudging through the bog reminded him of how he felt every day. Moving through rough terrain, feeling like every step forward took everything within you and being uncomfortable through it all.
He didn’t have time to reflect on that as he heard soft sobbing ahead of him.
What he saw was a macabre sight. A tree with the face of his father, twisted in pain, stood with his mother weeping under it.
“You shouldn’t have come,” his mother said through the tears.
Simeon had no answer, things were happening too fast. He didn’t understand why the tree had the face of his father etched in its bark.
They stayed there for hours until Simeon was brave enough to ask his mother to go back home.
“Why did you come here?” he asked.
“I needed to know for sure.”
They made their way back and as the sun set, they sat in silence, desperately trying to find the words to describe what they had seen.
As soon as they reached their boats, they saw it. In the dark it looked almost human, like a tall, burly man hunched over. Simeon knew what it was, and he was prepared.
“Take the boat and go home,” he told his mother.
“I won’t leave you.”
“This is what I have to do.”
He walked towards the creature with open arms. This was what he was searching for. A final release from the prison he called life.
His mother screamed for him to stop. He didn’t listen.As the monster embraced Simeon, he could feel his skin harden and his legs turn to roots.
The bark etched his face in a solemn smile.
Finally he was free.
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Written by Karl GaverzaCopyright © Karl Gaverza
Based on the angongolood description in Bikol Beliefs and Folkways: A Showcase of Tradition. Nasayao 2010.
Angongolood Illustration by Justine André Villapa
Instagram: @art.justineandrev
