The Phantom Lover

Matilde had a pleasant home life until she bought an
 ancient armchair  that came from an era where suspected

witches were tortured and burned at the stake……


The Phantom Lover
(and the horror of spectrophilia)

          This was circa late 90s and I was somewhere in Granada Hills, California. I knew my $100 would go a long way since all I wanted to buy were second hand handicraft books and a few carpentry tools. But as it was, my wire basket was already full of cute stuff I knew my daughters would fancy as pasalubongs. These were not in my list but I was simply unable to resist the giveaway prices.
          “Haay naku, Pinay ka nga …” my younger sister Rori teased, shaking her head in mock disbelief. “Akala ko ba, this time you will stick to your list. We’re  still checking on that advertised  garage sales in Beverley Hills remember?”

           I knew exactly what she meant. But there was no helping it, I  just couldn’t resist  rummaging over the boxes upon boxes  of  attractive American junk that was laid out in the yard.   “ There are still a lot more over there…”  she laughed and pointed  to a long makeshift table at the end of the garage where a disarray of colourful towels, thick comforters, blankets and velvety draperies were displayed in attractive confusion. Just beside the table was an ancient-looking rocking chair.

          “Do you see what I see?” I asked my sister excitedly. “That rocking chair looks at least a hundred years old. It’s definitely from the Civil War era!”

          “Don’t even consider buying…or better still, don’t touch it. Have you forgotten the warnings of Mrs. Gulmatico about ancient furniture pieces?!”

          Mrs. Gulmatico was a  widowed UCLA professor whom we met at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.  She had looked so forlorn and woebegone seated all by herself beside her husband’s grave. My uncle’s gravesite was just a couple of markers away from where she sat and so my cousins and I invited her to come over and join us. The frail, old lady readily accepted our invitation with a grateful smile.

          We had already finished our prayers for the dead and were now comfortably partaking of the delicious Filipino food Tita Dahlia had packed for us. We were a noisy lot, my cousins and I, and we were celebrating Todos Los Santos  with the usual Filipino flair, picnic-style with lots of native delicacies, card games, radio music and stories about happier days with our beloved dead uncle. And then, somehow, the topic shifted to Swap Meet Halloween Specials and garage sales. The prospect of bargain hunting for December pasalubongs got  everybody excited and everybody began talking at the same time.

          “Be wary of garage sales and second-hand items,” Mrs. Gulmatico suddenly warned us, much to our surprise. “Do not be shy to ask if the items for sale belonged an estate. ”  She warned us to be careful of ancient mirrors, hand-me-down furniture from generations past  and even time pieces. She knew two people who narrowly escaped with their sanity because of them. And then there was this co-teacher from the Philippines who had this horrifying experience with a haunted armchair and the demon that came with it .  Shivers…shivers…shivers!!  The old professor  impressed on us not to mess around with artefacts we knew nothing about because they were not meant to be decors;  that many religious and superstitious beliefs are associated with relics believed to be endowed with mysterious supernatural powers.

          Twilight had descended upon us and the nippy  air was thick with the scent of evergreen pines, eucalyptus and willow trees but we remained unperturbed. We begged her for another tale…. And this one really horrified us - - -





The Haunted Armchair

       This story began on the eve of the Feast of St. John the Baptist, 1960. To be companionable to her next door neighbour who owned the small sari-sari store where she got most of her things on credit, Ma’am Tilde, a middle aged public school teacher , was persuaded to invest her winning from the Barangay Raffle Draw, in an auction sale of second hand furniture.

          An ailing celebrity who used to be a bit player in the pre-war movies was leaving for medical treatment in the US and wanted to sell her exquisite collections for extra cash. Ma’am Tilde managed  to wangle a fantastically “good price”” for  an overstuffed, re-upholstered armchair said to be a relic from the Spanish Inquisition Era.   

          The armchair had an attractive velvet-like cover  which blended well with the color of the teacher’s house – deep rose with brown mulberry prints. The public school teacher excited over her “great find”,  promptly converted a walk-in closet next to her bedroom into a private mini-study room. She had a window and some shelves installed, and even bought  a new secretarial desk which was  placed in front of it. The armchair was positioned right beside the table facing window. On display in the new shelves were a few choice books and a sewing basket.  To her own surprise,  Tilde’s interest had now shifted from timeless classics to sexually stimulating novels of her time.

          About four months after she had bought the armchair, word reached the community that the celebrity movie bit player died while undergoing treatment in the US.  It was also around this time when Tilde’s  friends and neighbours began talking openly on how the once sociable teacher had turned into a sulking recluse. It was so unlike her. She no longer lingered  with her co-teachers after school and had lost all interest in church activities and was hardly ever present when the Barangay Captain called for a meeting. Even her two teenage daughters noticed the change and complained to their father how their mother isolated herself too frequently during her spare hours, locked up in her mini-study room.

          “Itay, we are worried. Sometimes we hear Inay moaning but she does not sound as though she is in pain . She also talks to herself and worse, we hear her giggling like a school girl. Hindi kaya naloloka na siya?”

          Pabling was concerned too. It was customary for him to arrive late in the evenings and he would always find his wife cheerfully waiting for him. Although Tilde and the girls had already eaten by that time, she’d reheat his supper and join him at the table eager to know how his day had been.
          He had also noticed that for the past weeks, Tilde preferred to wait for him in her study room. But what really worried him was that one time when he found her asleep on the armchair in a state of undress.  And to aggravate matters, the room smelled of stale masculine sweat…a smell that conjured ugly thoughts in the husband’s mind.

          “ When you feel hot and want to disrobe, please lock the door, sweetheart,”  Pabling gently reminded his wife. “ I don’t want your daughters to see you like this.”
          Tilde was baffled by her own state of undress and insulted by her husband’s condescending look. She knew this could lead to a fight and so decided to keep quite. She had been having erotic dreams lately. Was it possible she had disrobed in her sleep?

          A few weeks after that incident, Pabling came home way past midnight and did not find  his wife in their bedroom. Barefoot and in his pyjamas, he tiptoed to her mini-study. A sliver of moonlight streamed from the open window  half illuminating the small room. His wife was lying on top of her working table, naked with her knees bent and thrown wide open. She was moaning and bucking up like a wild mare. A familiar unwashed smell filled the room.

          The horrified husband was momentarily rigid with shock. Then he almost leaped across the distance to shake her.

          “ Tilde, my God, what’s gotten into you?” he shouted.

          To his consternation he found his wife in deep slumber. She was seemingly in the midst of an erotic nightmare. Earlier that night, Mang Pabling had taken a client to one of those joints known for their lewd shows. He had thoroughly enjoyed himself and gone home tipsy. Was it possible he may just have imagined the whole thing? As he helped his still dazed wife into her night dress, a strange sensation overcame him. The scent of a musky male cologne was so strong, he would have sworn there was another man in the room.

          “ I want to see you again just the way you were a few minutes ago!” Mang Pabling’s reaction was fierce and downright hostile.  He grabbed Tilde  by her hair that was wet with perspiration,  slammed her back on the table and  mounted her like some animal  on the heat.

          The incident was a terrible embarrassment for  the couple when their two teen-age daughters barged into the room upon hearing their mother’s screams. The two girls were rigid with shock but readily accepted their parents explanation that their father came home drank and did not know what he was doing. Everybody agreed not to talk about the incident.

          The succeeding months rolled  by peacefully and happily too. Tilde was back to her old bubbly, friendly self. Until the Feast of All Hallows, the night before All Saints Day.

          The two girls were away to spend the holiday with their grandmother. Mang Pabling came home earlier than usual, expecting a quiet evening with his wife who had promised to cook his favourite sinigang na kanduli  for supper. He found the door of the study ajar, a tiny lighted candle was on the table. Tilde was asleep on the armchair snoring softly.

          His skin began to crawl; instinctively he knew something unnatural was going on. His wife had her housedress on  but her skirt had been lifted to reveal her scantily clad lower torso. He shouted for her to wake up and even tried to run to her but he was helplessly immobilized. No word came from his mouth either. A supernatural force was in control of his body, forcing him to watch the lurid tableau as it unfolded before his horrified eyes.

          The shadow of an exceptionally tall and lithe man leaped out from nowhere. Pabling immediately noticed his huge, erect phallus and the flicking serpentine tongue. The phantom was now dancing to some spectral sound as he slowly began peeling off Tilde’s garments piece by piece. When she was completely disrobed he began licking her all over, making wet, slurping sounds as he did. After a while, he opened her legs and  with noisy, powerful thrusts drove Tilde in a screaming frenzy. 

          It was dawn when Mang Pabling woke up, clutching a blanket. His rumpled clothes were on the floor but he didn’t recall stripping during the night. The room reeked of stale beer and vomit. Who had brought him to bed? Tilde was in the kitchen cheerfully preparing breakfast. She had no memory of what happened that night.

          When her husband confronted Tilde about the lewd “evening show”, she was aghast. Totally humiliated, she confessed to her disbelieving husband her recurring dreams. Apparently she was aware that the lewd dreams occurred only when she slept in the armchair. And so each time she felt unappreciated by her family, she would “rebel” by sleeping inside her study. There in her dreams she would meet her phantom lover.

          “I had no idea this was happening. I saw nothing wrong with having an affair in my dreams,” she wept.

          Had his wife’s thoughts and unhappiness summoned this spectral lover? Pabling shuddered at the thought he might have been partly to blame for all these.  There was no time to lose! He needed to destroy the armchair.

          “ Help me bring this out of the house!”, he ordered his still sobbing wife. In their back yard, he doused the armchair with lighter fluid and set it ablaze. Husband and wife made sure the accursed piece of furniture was totally consumed by fire. The ashes were swept into a plastic bag and scattered into a river twenty kilometres away.

          Many years later, in a wedding party the couple attended, they were introduced to a woman who turned out to be the niece of the  pre-war bit player who had died in the states.  She told them her aunt had been diagnosed with Vulvar Intraepithelial Neoplasia (VIN), a very painful and debilitating disease. This was aggravated by uncontrollable sexual activity  which ultimately led to cancer of the vulva.  


          Did the death have anything to do with the armchair? I don’t think any one can truly say for sure. But what was disturbingly coincidental was the fact that Tilde was also diagnosed with VIN but had fortunately survived. 


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