CONTENT WARNING

This chapter contains themes of death and profanity that may not be suitable for a very young audience.

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Danilo stared at the bright treasure inside the chest. A bubble of laughter escaped his lungs. "Ha! I'm rich!" he said, reaching out to touch a rock.

They were raw and unrefined. Nuggets dusted with bits of other metal. But it was what it was--gold.

"Dulnuan," he called, looking over his shoulder at the open door that led out of the room.

Remembering she wasn't there, his heart dropped, and a wonder began in his mind.

"No," he said, shaking his head. "No, she wouldn't trick me. She promised she'd return, and we'd find the gold." So then, why was the gold hidden under her bed? Did she not know? Was she using it as leverage? Did she not trust him?

Suspicions emerged from his head. But he trusted her. He came into this realm to help her--to save her. And what they shared the night before was undoubtedly love. He loved her, and she loved him.

Danilo pulled the chest out of the room. Scraping the bamboo floors and nearly breaking a hole because of its weight. Leaving it at the center of the room filled with trinkets, he left it open and sat beside it, facing the front door and waiting for Dulnuan to return.

"She promised," he told himself, and a reassured feeling sat in his stomach. All he had to do was wait. She would come back.

Hours passed. He didn't know how long. The sky outside never changed.

He'd get up and look outside the door to find no one. A frown would mask his face. He was alone.

He'd stare at the chest filled with gold. A smile would play on his lips. He was rich.

After a long period of waiting, something around him changed. It was neither the light nor the temperature. It was something that cannot be put into words. It was what broke the barriers between worlds, what created a terrorizing knot in the pit of his stomach, what slid under his skin and made all his tiny hairs rise.

"Danilo?"

He looked up and saw Dulnuan in the frame of the door. He grinned. "You're back." Standing, he kept his eyes on her and lingered on her attire--plain white shirt and tight-fitting jeans. "You look... hot," he said, staring at how everything shaped her body.

Dulnuan smiled, a tint of red forming on her face. "Thank you." She glanced behind him and saw the chest of gold on the floor.

Danilo looked over his shoulder. "I hope you don't mind. I found it under the bed," he said, turning back to her, hoping she wouldn't get mad.

She shook her head. "It is yours, Danilo. It is all yours. It is your reward for making me very happy."

Danilo grinned again, blessed with pride at her approval. "So, did it work? Did you get your body back?" He reached out to touch her face, but his hand passed through.

"Yes, it worked," she answered.

"What?" He frowned, trying again to seize her, but he felt nothing but air. "What's going on? Aren't you here?"

Dulnuan's eyes curved upward in the saddest manner he'd seen from her. "You are not here, Danilo."

"What?"

"I am in the land of the living, and you are on the other side."

"Well, come here." He gestured, anger coming from his tone.

Dulnuan winced at the command. "I am here, and I am not."

"Dulnuan, you're scaring me."

"I came back to apologize. To break my curse, I needed someone willing to take my place." She blinked, and there were tears in her eyes.

"What are you saying?" But he already knew what she meant.

She stared at him, her eyes turning sorrowful. "When I was fighting for my marriage with Ananayo, I became desperate. I went to see a mangkukulam for help. I begged her to make sure Ananayo would never marry again. And she asked for my soul. She said that she would take it when I died. I did not care about my soul because I would be dead anyway. But I did not know I would suffer from the loneliness of this prison. I agreed to it. When I returned home, I found my husband and his new bride dead in our house."

"You killed them," Danilo said, horrified.

"I did not." She shook her head, regretful. "I did not mean to. They came for me then. They hunted me for killing the chieftain. My family shunned me. When they captured me, they tortured me and made me suffer in my coffin for days until I died."

"You made a deal with the devil," he snarled, disgusted.

"I made a deal for love. But the mangkukulam tricked me, and in the end, she took my soul and got what she wanted."

"Because you're a stupid bitch!" Danilo's anger rose.

"Like you," she returned. "You made a deal for the gold. And now you have your wish."

"Fuck, Dulnuan! Don't fuck with me." He hissed and snarled, fisting his hands on his sides.

"This is not a joke. I came back to tell you how sorry and grateful I am to you. And I hadn't lied when I told you I was falling for you. I do love you, and I know you love me too."

"Then come here." He pointed to the floor. "If you love me, come here and help me get the gold out."

"I cannot. I am truly sorry, Danilo. I am grateful that we were finally together, even if only for a short moment. You have made me happy and feel ecstatic about being wanted. I know you wished for that too. I did. I wanted you. I still want you." She looked at him with longing in her dark eyes. "But I wanted my freedom more."

He shook his head. "No, no, no. You can't do this to me." He reached to grab her by the neck, but his actions proved fruitless.

"It is already done. And you are dying anyway," Dulnuan said, unmoving.

"What?" He blinked as if he didn't understand what she just said.

"All that drinking and smoking you have been doing. Do you think it does not affect your body?" She stepped aside from the door to reveal the outside. But instead of the eerie village, Danilo saw Burnham Park--the lake shining with the bright and early morning sun.

Danilo ran to the door. When he reached the threshold, he passed and returned to the park. "Ha!" He shouted, laughing. He made it back.

"I am sorry, Danilo." Dulnuan said behind him. "But you are merely a visitor here."

Danilo turned to her. "Fuck you! I'm back!"

Dulnuan shook her head, then inclined her chin toward the pathway, tracing the edge of the lake.

He turned to see people gathering around at the end of the pathway--the exact spot where he had crossed from the land of the living to the other side.

Then, someone was wailing.

He ran. Passing through the gathering crowd, he sprinted in and out without friction, without restrictions.

At the center of the bloom, a crying woman cradled a young man on a bench. Another man was rubbing her shoulders. Police were trying to keep the crowd back.

"Danilo!" The man beside the crying woman shouted.

"No." Danilo dared to step closer until their faces became clear. "No. No. No. Please, God."

He saw his mother screaming words that could not be understood, her arms looping around the neck of the man on the bench, his brother curling over his mother's shoulders, shouting Danilo's name. Then he saw the rest--his face, his eyes closed, his mouth gaping in a silent howl.

"Fuck! Please!" He stepped up to them. Tears ran down his face. "No. This isn't what I want." He fell on his knees.

"Oh, but it is, Danilo."

He looked over his shoulder, finding Dulnuan standing over him.

"You wanted to die, remember? This is your wish come true," Dulnuan said. The sadness in her eyes never left. "This is your escape from the life you hated."

"No. This is not--" Flashes of that night came to him--the heavy rock cradled against his belly, the rope tied to his ankle, the cold wind of December, the water of the lake shimmering in front of him. His escape. All he had to do was jump.

He gritted his teeth. This was not the way he wanted things to go.

"Fuck you!" He charged at her, springing up from his knees and twisting to catch her behind him. But his arms flailed at nothing, and as if in slow motion, he saw himself shifting in the air.

The surroundings became dark. The chill of the park was gone. The wails of his mother and brother fell silent.

They were back on the other side.

Danilo passed through Dulnuan, stumbling and falling to the ground as he tripped on the root of a pine tree.

"Shit!" He cursed as his face hit the grass. He turned on his back. Lying on the forest floor, he looked up at her, chest heaving, defeated. "You said I can come back."

"You can," Dulnuan confirmed. "As long as your body is intact and you can find someone willing to help you, you can."

"Please."

"I am sorry, Danilo. I cannot help you. And I am leaving now. I have other business to attend to. I believe the mangkukulam who cursed me is still alive."

Danilo pushed himself up. "So, you can make her reverse the curse."

Dulnuan gave a flat smile. "Even if I can do that, your body is dying. Coming back will not change that." She turned from him and started to walk.

He shot up from the ground. "Wait, no. Please. Dulnuan," he begged as he clambered after her. "You can't leave me here."

"You are free of your miserable life and have the gold you wished for." She kept on threading through the grass.

"Dulnuan, please!"

She started to fade, transparent like the first time he met her.

"No! Don't leave me!"

She said nothing, taking one more step, and then she was gone.

"Fuck!" He dove for the last hint of her, but there was nothing to break his momentum. He fell to the ground again, smacking his knees on pebbles. "No!"

He tugged on his hair, regret curled in his heart. He escaped the misery of his life, but this was so much worse.

The wind howled. The air turned.

The shadows on the trees moved, and the leaves began to whisper.

He stood, looking up. Fear overtook him. "Shit!" Remembering what Dulnuan had told him about lurking evil spirits, he ran back to the village, chased by the whispers that turned into audible voices.

When he reached the village, he ran past the huts and found his way to Dulnuan's home. He jumped, diving for the door, feeling a shadow lick his ankle.

He escaped the chase, but now he was trapped here. Trapped in a world unknown. Trapped in a layer so close to the living yet so unreachable by anyone from his own home.

His mother, his brothers, and his sister. Miguel, Ramon, and his boss. Would any of them miss him? Would any of them remember him?

And would they remember him for the high school boy he used to be or the drunk and nicotine-addicted man he turned into?

This was worse than prison. Jails had people in them--people who would beat up the new guy, people who would gather into groups to seem powerful, and people who shared the same dark and shady past. No, this wasn't prison. It was isolation. Abandonment. Foresakkeness. It was the very heart of eternal loneliness.

Falling in love sure wasn't easy, especially when Danilo fell in love with a ghost who fucked him over.

And all his wishes came true. He had become rich, after all--escaped his miserable life and whisked away from his disappointed family. Even for a little while, he had Dulnuan to himself, fucked her, and made love to her. And finally, death had come, only this wasn't the death he imagined.

Danilo looked out the door. The shadows were gone. The whispers had quieted. Dulnuan had left.

"Fuck!"

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☠ Fun Fact:

Baguio City Cathedral is one of the most historic sites in the city. It is also one of the longest-standing structures in the area. During the Second World War, the cathedral became an evacuation center. It stood against the carpet-bombing by Allied forces--the war of the American and Philippine Military against the Japanese. The thousands who died in the bombing were buried within the cathedral's boundaries.

Baguio City Cathedral