What do you feel when you drown?
Scientifically, it is a process where your respiration is impaired from submersion in a liquid.
Drowning causes the death of 1000 people worldwide every day.
But there is a place where the average is much higher.
It send chills just thinking about it.
In the rivers of the Isnag people it lies in wait. Men, women, children and even livestock are not immune to its capricious moods.
They call it evil.
The Darantan doesn’t care.
It delights in watching its victims.
The struggle to keep water out of their lungs makes its grim heart grin.
The initial time spent under, the filling aspiration of liquid until they lose consciousness, to it are all entertainment in its view.
Its favorite part is when there is the final arrest of the heart, watching them slowly embraced by the water.
And death, of course, but it isn’t as fulfilling as watching the drowning process.
The Darnatan does not take trophies, its memory is enough. It remembers all that it drowns, savoring their muffled cries for help.
It is an old spirit, stretching back from the first settlers of this land, long before the white skins arrived.
The Darantan detests one particular type of victim, if you can call them that.
Those who want life taken from them made the spirit exasperated.
They take to the waters, and that was it.
No struggle, no fight, a very boring affair.
The spirit shrugs when it thinks about this place.
Is drowning humans all that there is?
Yes. It is.
It will never tire of dispatching its victims, reveling in their suffering.
Watch for the Darantan in the rivers.
You may be his next memory.
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Written by Karl Gaverza
Copyright © Karl Gaverza
Inspired by the description in Wilson, Laurence Lee. (1947). Apayao Life and Legends. Baguio, P. I.: Human Relations Area Files OA5, OA1, p. 23.
Illustration by Yan Tamba used with permission from Rob Martin of Pine Box Entertainment and Secret Garden Games
