My Childhood

     Our parents and their grand parents makes us believe in all the things that are just imaginative, that are just created by our minds. I can say that many of us didn't believe in things that our eyes can't see, but once we experience some of this things, we surely will believe in it.

     Back when I was young. I lived in not civilized and not known village. I lived there with my mother and and my other brother, my father is not there because he left us and look for another woman. Even without my father, we are happy because even we are just a poor family, every one of us works together to get our daily needs.

     We are far from our neighbors, only two lived near us, the friend of my mother and a mean and old lady. She doesn't want children, so if we are playing near her house, she shouts to drive us away. Some say that she killed her own husband and eat him, some say that her husband left her and never comes back. She likes an animal that are wild, so she has a dog that the teeth are always bleeding. She only goes out when the moon is full accompany by her dog, and when the moon is full, one child began missing. But we never mind that.

     There was a time that I and my little brother are playing near the house of the mean and old lady, then suddenly a something bit my leg and then I fell off unconscious. I woke up late at night, with someone watching me, it was the mean and old woman. She gets closer and closer and closer, until she is in front of my face, then I woke up from my scary dream. It was just a dream but I felt like it was real. The incident that happen yesterday was true, my mother sent me to magtatawas. 

     Pagtatawas is a divination ritual in pseudo medicine in Filipino psychology (but considered superstition in Western psychology). It attempts to diagnose an affliction or psychological disorder by interpreting shapes produced in water by heated alum or molten wax dropping from a burning candle. The magtatawas says that the thing that bit my leg was a dog, and the dog was sent by a witch to get me.

     So, every time that I was asleep, I always dream about the mean and old woman and it's getting worst and worst.

     My mother, warns me not to go out when I was alone and when it's dark. There came a day that she and my two older brother leaves our home to find a job, and entrusted us to her friend.

     In the middle of the night, we we're awaken by a loud bang on the roof, and a loud noise of a chain and neigh of a horse circling the house. When we get outside to know who is there, but there is none. And when we get inside , a minute later, a loud bang in the roof and a loud noise of a chain and a neigh of a horse happen again, but this time, I was the only one who hear it, so I went outside to look, there is a horse  and a child trying to get inside. I rush into the house to wake them up. Grandmother told me to bring a cup of grains and told me to throw it to the roof because I am the one whose the child is looking for. I go out and throw the grain quickly in the roof and say that "if I'm the one that they are looking for, take the grains in exchange for me". Then I get inside and goes to sleep again.

     In the morning, the grains that I threw  on the roof was gone, not a single one was left behind. So, I think that the incident that happens to me was now gone. But what I do not know is that something terrible than that will happen to me.

     A week after that. The moon becomes full and it was a bloody night. When I see the old woman again but now with her dog, I thought that it was just a dream, but when the dog jump at me and said, "look into the moon, it was full", so, I looked to the moon and I realized that it was not a dream, it was real. The dog is a witch, and the human looking thing is the body of the good lady that lived there a long time ago. The witch took the body of a dog and killed the couple, now the body of the woman is controlled by the witch. The horse with a chain is the itch's vehicle and the child in the roof is the witch servant.

     Now that I will become their food, well I don't what they will do to me, but I'm really sure that they will eat me because that is what my grandfather told me.

     There is nowhere to run but to accept the reality that I am going to die. But when the witch is going to bite my neck, a strange thing happens.

     The witch was stab from the back then died and all of her companions are now gone. Thanks to our fellow neighbors who is looking for me for an hour. They said that they know where will I be, because it is now a full moon and other children will be gone, so they found me quick.

     After the witch has been killed, they look all around the house and found the clothes of their lost children and their skeletons. They also found the big photos of the couple who lived there. After they look all around, they burnt the house down, with the clothes and skeleton of their lost children.

     After that night, I was healed in the hospital, the dream that I always dreams are now gone.

     We now moved in the civilized village in Rizal, where all the neighbors are close to each other.

     But even I experienced those things, for me, still, it's just a dream. It's just because of my condition that day, that I was sick. It's because of my too much imagination.