Safe Spaces

In the Garden

My mom was a certified "plantita." During weekends, she would spend her mornings tilling soil, transferring her newly bought plants to pots, and then rearranging them. I was proud of it. Our garden lured neighbors and passersby who were in awe of our home's exterior, which almost appeared like a setting in a fantasy movie because of the vines, flowers, and shrubs.

But it also lured something else.

My mother and father went grocery shopping for the birthday of Vin, my older brother, tomorrow. They tasked Vin and me—nineteen and seventeen, respectively—to start decorating for Christmas while they were out. We could have finished it within an hour, but we were both busy playing our own mobile games. By the time we decided it was time to work, it was already past five. We decorated the Christmas tree first.

It was almost six when we decided to work on the Christmas lights. The sun has set, the sky has darkened.

We were attaching the exterior Christmas lights when both of us heard a rustling of leaves from Mother's garden. We looked at each other for a moment before dismissing it as a rat, laughing at how Mother would be horrified to know there was a pest in her garden.

When our parents arrived, we reported this to Mother. She panicked and went to the garden with a thick, wide stick in her hand, trying to search for the poor rat. However, what we found was something else—drops of liquid that looked like coconut milk but yellow and more viscid.

"Did you buy a plant that excretes sap?" Father asked.

"No," Mother replied, shaking her head. "Must be from a bird or another pest."

"Birds don't poop like that," I commented to make the situation lighter. "Neither does a rat."

Mother swept and tended to the garden while my brother and I were bringing in the plastic bags of groceries and Father was taking a bath. We all prepared dinner together so we were all ready to eat by seven thirty in the evening.

In the middle of eating dinner, Father asked one of us siblings to buy a liter of soft drinks from the sari-sari store. I was the one to go out since I lost in a game of rock paper scissors. I came back with a bottle of soda and chips in my hand.

As I was pushing my keys into the gate's keyhole, I felt movement, which made the leaves from the guava tree rustle. Again, I assumed it was just a big rat or a gecko, which was abundant in our area. While closing the gate, I saw Vin by the window of the living room; he was about to open the main door.

But then I heard the sound of the leaves again.

Curious, I turned my head to the garden. The noise stopped.

I heard Vin opened the main door, so I took two steps forward. But the rustling noise returned, causing me to stop and look up the guava tree.

"Kimmy," my brother called me, "what are you waiting—"

Both of us were frozen, not knowing whether speaking would end or save our lives.

A creature, around five feet tall, was on our guava tree. Its grimy hands and feet clung onto the trunk, like how a raccoon would. It had big swollen eyes, a wrinkly long face, and a mouth that almost reached its ears. Its few teeth were rotten, gums black. Its bones seemed to stick out of its bare chest, though he was wearing black rigged slacks.

It had the parts of a human, but it was not very human at all.

I screamed and ran toward the main door, pushing Vin who also shouted in terror. The bottle of soda nearly broke if not for Vin. Our parents came running to us, helped us gain our composure back, and asked what happened. Vin and I were both shaking in horror, trying to describe what we just saw in the garden.

With a thick, wide stick, Father went outside to check. Both of us even tried to stop him, as we did not want this human . . . or creature . . . or monster hurt our father. But it wasn't there anymore.

"Don't play jokes on us," Father said.

"It's true! We won't scream like that if it weren't! So much for 'it's just a rat.' We know it isn't!"

Our parents pointed their flashlights at the guava tree, but they found nothing. Until the end of the day, Vin and I insisted that we saw something.

The next day, our family celebrated Vin's birthday inside our house, though as always, dinner was the grandest. But my brother and I were more in the mood to prove that what we saw yesterday was real than to celebrate this twentieth birthday. We decided that we would eat near the window in the living room so we could take a glimpse of this monster. Our parents were hesitant, but they eventually agreed.

Then, when the clock ticked at eight, both of us peeked at the window.

And there it was again.

I screamed, "There! There! You see it? You see it now?" But Father, Mother, and Vin just stared at me, all with mouths open and eyebrows crossed.

"I can't see it," Vin commented. "You're joking."

"What?!"

"Sit down, Kimmy," Mother commanded. "You were both just exhausted yesterday."

Then, in a blink of an eye, it was not there anymore.

It puzzled me how come I saw it again and Vin didn't. I eventually got my answer when I saw the creature over and over in Mother's garden every night, seemingly watching me but unmoving.

Guess I can't wait for two more years.