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.
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