Lost in Ibalon (How I Disappeared): Rise Of The Enchantress Book 1

Visitor's Demand

"This will be hard, but we can try. Try to recall what you may have heard. I'll read the titles."

"Estrar? Niyami? Oryol?" I turned my head with every name.

"Ananias is here." He pointed it out, but I cannot understand.

"Arapayan? Makburabak?" I turned my head, but the names resounded in my head, Pagtuga and the last name he said kind of clinked.

"It has that 'pag' and some of the last name you said."

"Don't tell me. . ." he browsed the book rapidly.

3

I was under the shade of the coffee trees roofing the path. I can see the figure of the house from the leaves. But I cannot just march in there. I leaned on my both knees catching breath. My hands and feet are cold, and I'm trembling. Why am I trembling? I did what I can. I hope that he is free and goes away with it. My heart is banging sending hard beats reverberating on the back of my ears. The heat releasing from my body is so intense that I feel like I'm glowing. A soft gale lost its way to where I was, and it made me a little dizzy. I straightened, took a few deep breaths. Calm down now.

I was a few paces from the house, and it seemed dark from here. The lamp probably went out. It was very silent, and it was deafening. The air was chilly, and a few mists starts to dampen the ground. I wish they were sleeping soundly still. Slowly, I moved the door to open. My senses somehow returned to normal. The door creaked a little, but I went on with it. Slowly I opened it just for me to slide through. As I closed the door behind me, I heard slight murmurings followed by a faint cry. Crying? Someone is crying. It followed by the sound of like breathing.

"Mother?"

Scratching sounds fell in the whole dark kitchen. And a light broke out from the lamp. There is the bench, there I saw mother and father tied side by side, hands on their backs and each has cloth tied on their mouths.

"Mother! Father!" I was about to go near when someone held my right arm tightly. When I turned to look, it was him! He survived and is now big like me. But then, several hands held me too and as I turned, it was him also. From where I stood, by the sink, I was being held by hands and they were the same as the one who was with me in the woods.

"Let go of me! I saved you right!" No matter how hard I tried, their grip was much stronger that it kind of burying in my flesh. Figures from the ground began to emerge, they are all untidy children dressed in tattered leaves or moss. They all look the same as the one who was indeed with me. They filled every corner like mushrooms, and some stood close to my old ones.

"What are you?! Let go of them! What do you all want!?" Fear envelopes me, eating every of my insides.

Suddenly, a sound came from the room. The first thing I heard was a tapping sound and it seemed like it was dragging something. Every tap in the ground sent shivers down my being. And then the end of a staff appeared in the light held by a wrinkly hand. And an old woman in a hood appeared. Her grey hair flowing like the roots of a balete, a tree. Her skin was like a snail. Shinny but dry at the same time. But her eyes, buried in deep sockets of flesh that were so fierce.

"Ah! Alas I've heard that question again." She said, her voice was a bit husky.

"Who are you!?" I asked out in both anger and fear.

"I am who I am, and you need not to know." She said walking back and forth in front of me. Her smell is like rotting wood, damp weeds and seemed like freshly dug out soil.