Story time again!
Okay, so my mom grew up in what we called a barangay, which is kinda like a village but without the connotations that you're probably thinking of right now. Anyway, it was the kind of community where everyone knew everyone and chances are, you're related to about half of your neighbors because family liked to live near each other. So my mom's parents' house is only one house away from my mom's dad's brother's family house. Within our family, we called this house "Bagatan" which means "south" because the house was, you guessed it, to the south side of our family house.
Bagatan was empty basically all of the time because only my late grandfather's cousin lived there. She took care of the property because the owners, my granduncle and his family all now live in Maui, but she's usually not there during the day. Anyway, when we were little, the three of us sometimes we would take afternoon strolls toward Bagatan, only to go back home because the tall, green, metal gates were usually locked. We were only able to get in if someone was inside, or someone left the gates open, or if we got one of our more able cousins to climb or reach over the top of the gate somehow (which was super hard to do because it was a wide solid gate and there was no place to put your hands or feet if you tried to climb it).
Anyway, no one ever really said that the house was "haunted." It was kind of implied. The house was bigger than most of the houses in the barangay. It had really high stone walls and the tops of the stone walls had shards of glass sticking up all over them. Then there was the old green gate that always made that creepy sound whenever you opened it. There was a bit of a lanai by the front door, but we never walked through there unless there were a lot of people with us in the property. We usually walked through the other gate to the left of the first green gate. Through there was a courtyard-like space where the pig pens and the chicken coops were. Despite the smell, we always liked visiting the animals. The back entrance was also around here and that entrance, I think, was about the only way we really knew into the house. Past the pig pens was another smaller gate, one that you had to jump over a low wall to get through. That smaller gate led to the kalamansi trees and the huge mango trees. We used to play there a lot, and pick mangos during the summer. Around the other side of the house was a small swing, like the one on which Mer and Hallie sat as they talked about Hallie's father in The Parent Trap (the Lindsay Lohan one).
The inside was the creepy part. It was always so silent in there, and so dark because, really, no one "lived" there. The living room was always dim; I remember having only seen it once. The couches and the sofa were covered with plastic, and it looked like no one had sat one them for years. Upstairs, I remember this chilling moment when we were exploring the rooms once because we found this life-size doll with big and black shiny eyes and perfect blonde curls. And it just stared at us, and we couldn't stand it anymore so we ran downstairs.
I have a couple more stories about this house. Another day...
Today......
I really loved...dinardaraan.
I smiled because...of dinardaraan.
Lyrics playing at this very moment as I type this portion of the blog:
"Take my hand and we will run away down to this place that I know..."
(Take My Hand by The Cab)
Hours of sleep last night: 7.5
--Jen
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