“Don’t go in there!” Raisa screamed. “We’re not even supposed to be here.” She didn’t know how her friends convinced her to explore this abandoned elementary school and she didn’t like being here. There were too many stories about this place, too many stories about missing children. She didn’t want to be the next.
Her “friends” left her alone at the entrance, laughing as they went into the school. Raisa tried to follow them, but she was too scared. She figured that they would be back eventually and she sat on a bench nearby.
“Hello,” said a little boy. He was very young, about the age of a Grade 1 student, strangely he was in uniform even though it was supposed to be summer. Raisa did her best to smile and she asked the little boy what he was doing here. “Going to school,” was his reply.
“The school’s been closed for years.” Raisa was starting to feel uneasy, was this a prank by one of her friends?
“You’re silly. The school is always going to be here as long as Ms. Rena says so.” The little boy smiled and then walked to the gate of the school. “Make sure you say hi to her, she likes visitors.” The little boy pointed towards the river.
Raisa took a quick look at where the boy was pointing, and when she looked back he was gone. Shivers went down her spine, and she wanted to run home, but curiosity overtook her. She knew what she was doing was monumentally stupid, but she started walking to the edge of the river anyway.
This part of the Pasig river had a history of being calm, even in the roughest storm. The lolos and lolas would say that it was under special protection, though in recent times the area was prone to flooding. Raisa grabbed the rosary her lola made her keep in her bag, she didn’t know why, but it made her feel safer.
She made her way to the point that the child directed to and she her whole body stopped when she saw it. Raisa was more confused than scared when she saw the sight, two skeletons lying side by side, one with a knife and the other one with a fish-tail.
Raisa took a deep breath and stepped forward. She noticed that the skeleton with a knife was a woman, and she was wearing a teacher’s uniform. Raisa tried to get closer to the one with a fish tail, that part of it was still rotting even though the upper part was nothing but bones, but a strange insect was wrapping itself around the remains.
She stayed there, looking at the bones until it was almost sunset. Raisa realized her friends would be looking for her. She still didn’t know what she stumbled upon, and she didn’t know if she ever would.
There was no reason for it, but she said a quiet word of thanks to the woman with a knife.
The ghost of Ms. Rena smiled at the girl who found her body. The girl couldn’t see her of course, but it was always nice to have visitors. The girl would have made an excellent student, she had good instincts and was curious, something Ms. Rena wanted for all of her charges.
“You pitiful human! How dare you defile a spirit of the waters! I will have my revenge against you and all your children!”
The sirena’s ghost wailed her usual warnings. Ms. Rena had long since learned to ignore the other spirit in the vicinity. From what she could tell, both of them were trapped by the river and there was nothing either of them could do to move on.
Ms. Rena sat by the riverside and waited for the spirits of her students to make their visit. She didn’t want them anywhere near the sirena, that thing had already caused too much suffering for one lifetime.
The day the first student disappeared was the most painful. Ms. Rena was a gentle soul, she didn’t know how anyone could even think to hurt a child. But as she learned there was more to the world than kindness. Sometimes there dark edges make their way to your life and you have to fight to see a better tomorrow.
That was always what she wanted her kids to learn. Sometimes wishing isn’t the only way to make dreams come true, there would always have to be a fight, something that you know you have to work with. And that something might not always be a thing you can walk back from.
The sirena was behind her when it tried to choke Ms. Rena with its ghostly hands. It didn’t work, of course, they couldn’t do anything to each other, and they had spent many years learning that.
“You will curse the day you dared to stand against a sirena!”
“No monster. You curse the day you ever tried to take my students away from me. You curse the day you ever thought that you could get even one of them as tribute. Don’t you see? You’ve already lost. We both have.”
Evening made itself known through the first slivers of moonlight by the riverside. Ms. Rena stared down the sirena until it left her alone.
But Ms. Rena was never alone. Her first student was walking up from the river.
“Hello Ms. Rena, what are we going to learn tonight po?”
=—————————————————————————-=
Written by Karl Gaverza
Copyright © Karl Gaverza
Inspired by the Sirena entry in Creatures of Philippine Lower Mythology. Ramos. 1971.
Sirena (Tagalog) Illustration by Leandro Geniston from Aklat ng mga Anito
FB: That Guy With A Pen
Watercolor by Mykie Concepcion
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