Sidapa

Chapter 5: The River Beneath the Tree

Flashback: May 1994

The room was dark and cold. Calista snuggled warmly in between the arms of her mother and father. She the night was not getting any younger but her eyes cannot succumb to her sleep. Her mind was racing around the thought of the knock as she cuddled her mother hugging her tight covering herself with the blanket. She closed her eyes tight as she prayed again for sleep where she finally dozed off.

Calista suddenly woke up from a cold breeze that found its way inside the blanket. The chill was lingering and felt like tendrils caressing her spine. She jolted from her mother's warm embrace and peeped her head to the blanket were only the pale light from the moonlit room drew the silhouettes of everything around her.

Surprisingly, her actions did not awaken her parents. Instead, they were dead asleep during the entire moment. Calista attempted to shake her parents to wake them up but they were deeply unresponsive. The chill still lingered on her and the silhouettes of the room danced as if they were alive. Calista hastily hid underneath the blankets and cuddled close to her sleep mother, closing her eyes shut while whispering for her mother to wake up. She was still not responding, so is her father.  

She then heard the sound of dogs howling from the distance. It was dreadful and incapacitating. The howls were beginning to grow louder and louder and then it suddenly stopped followed by audible sound of dogs whimpering before it went back to quiet again.

Calista was shaking in terror but she held back her tears and hugged her mother tightly. She closed her eyes again but this time she heard a creaking sound of wood from an earshot. It sounded like someone is inside the room with them but she never heard the door open. 

She heard the wind whispering to her, a low disembodied hissing sound conveniently audible from with in the blanket. She closed her eyes as her terrifying call began.

"Calista..." the disembodied voice called her out. " Calista, apo..." the voice sounded now like her Lola. 

She was tempted to open her get out from bed. But the her fear crippled her and her sense of dread prevented her to get up from where she was. She prayed for her life. She prayed for her safety and for her parents as well who were asleep the entire time. 

She then began hearing a soft knock coming from somewhere. She assumed it was the door and the stories her cousin told her about flooded her mind.  She remembered it well and along with the story of the ghastly knock. This made her stomach turn as the knocks became increasingly audible as one knock ends. 

The knocks are now becoming more like a banging in the door. As one knock seemed to batter the door with such force and sound. However, despite of this her parents remain to sleep soundly not even flinching with the sound of a violently banging door. 

As the night continued, the knocks became terrifying. There were always three set of knocks in varying degree of tempo and sound. Mostly, it would start with three slow knocks and would end up with violent knocking. And the knocks seemed to not focus on the door alone. As she found it alternating with the windows. 

Calista was too scared and so she prayed even deeper. She prayed the Lord's Prayer, which she jumbled or at times forget the words. As she prayed the knocks became louder as if silencing her from her prayers and times the knocks would stop if she finishes the prayer, only to be scared witlessly by a loud and aggressive banging of the door.

The knocking never stopped until the first sound of the rooster crowing. That's when Calista realized morning broke the dead night and finally her fears faded away like the mist kissed by a ray of sunshine. Calista sighed in relief as her tears dried up staining her cheeks, her eyes became heavy from exhaustion, she didn't want to sleep but her eyes finally succumbed to it.