Chapter 14

"Nana, I'm home..." I mumbled at the front porch.

Nobody answered.

I presumed Nana went downtown to buy weekly provisions in the Supermarket.

I climbed upstairs and saw my dad's room, which was also my uncles' room when they were kids, was left ajar. I peered closer and saw Nana's silhouette with a ghostly appearance. She was holding what appeared to be a Photo Album she retrieved from the wooden box that was lying on the bed.

At 72 years old, Nana was already at the peak of her years. But she has always been strong and the vigor of her younger days have never stopped shining through her loving eyes.

But not at this moment.

Nana's figure appeared frail and defeated. She pressed the Photo Album on her bosom and let-out a suppressed wail. Her shoulders shook as she rocked back and forth clasping the photos of her dead sons in her chest.

Nana was crying. It's the first time I saw her crying ever since my father's death.

Does she always cry surreptitiously? 

What about the photos? I thought she buried all of them? Why did she lie to me? I wanna come to her and ask her these questions. I wanna tell her that I am old enough to deal with older people. But I can't move my feet. And she's drifting further and further away by the second. Her cries echoed in the room like voices coming from the depths of the earth.

I'm scared.

The ghosts of my childhood have came to haunt me again.

It's getting dark outside and the birds were back from wherever hell they've been during the day. They're cawing simultaneously above the trees. I'm gonna get them someday. I swear to god I'm gonna get them someday and maybe they would stop laughing at me if I choke the life out of them.

I ran towards my room and shut the door behind me. I sank to the same corner I cried when I was a kid.

What a pity.

My heart felt heavy and so did my head.

I punched the concrete wall in my room a lot of times, as hard as I can until my knuckles bled. I wanted to scream out loud but I can't let Nana hear me break-down. I'm supposed to be the force that held us together.

Helpless, useless, worthless, all these years of pretending to be tough yet I'm still that scared kid after all...

I heaved and cursed under my breath and punched the mother-fucking wall over and over again until my knuckles hurt so much that I can no longer feel them.

When I was a kid, I was afraid of ghosts. I would always have Nana check underneath my bed for reassurance before I sleep. But when I grew older, the ghosts of my childhood took on another form. Sometimes I see them on my father's grave in a cold and desolate place above the hills. Sometimes I see them on mom's disappointments towards me. She never loved me. All these years, she never even bothered to check on me if I'm still breathing. For her, I was as good as dead. Yet no matter how I tried to forget her, I always fail miserably.

Our house had always been haunted by the ghosts of our past which I and Nana pretended to ignore all along. I can see them everywhere. In my father's room. In my uncles' room, and now in the old photos that Nana hid clandestinely.

But most of the time, these ghosts were with me. Everywhere I went. They were in my head whispering self-doubts and spreading melancholy.

And no matter how fast I ran, I can never outpace them.

I stared at the gathering darkness outside the windows and thought of Larry and his smiles. His face that beamed with so much light that I sometimes drown.