WHAT DO you know? They’re playing James Taylor songs tonight. I tried to enjoy the mellow tunes as I waited for the vehicles in front of me to move. Hours melted away before I realized that it was time to consider alternative routes going home.
“It’s already twelve and I’m still stuck in traffic.” I shook my head in utter disgust.
The rain kept pouring, making the surroundings turn blurry. I was trying to make a hurried survey of the area when I saw a faint figure of a man waving at me. He appeared to be pointing to a small alley a few meters away.
Thinking that he was showing me a detour out of this mess, I drove my car into the alley. I rolled my window down a quarter of the way and tossed out a few coins to thank the man for the tip.
The fuzzy figure of the man kept waving, as if taunting me on my decision to take the path.
Suddenly, an eerie feeling of uncertainty ran through my body as I felt the temperature inside the car drop by several degrees. It was then that I decided to get myself out of the rain as soon as I could. I looked around but the rain obstructed whatever little view I had left. But even if it was not raining, the pitch darkness of the night hid whatever things or establishments might be out there.
I decided to stop until I could ascertain where the hell I was. There were no vehicles in sight. I immediately had the feeling that I was the only one who took the mysterious guy’s route.
“Okay, relax” I told myself.
I decided to turn back and return to the monstrous traffic jam I left behind. Too late. The numerous turns I had made from the main highway made it difficult for me to turn back, leaving me with only one logical choice.
“I’ll just go ask directions then,” I whispered, with the feeling that I should have endured the gridlock.
I must be kidding myself, I thought. Ask directions from whom? I couldn’t even see a thing outside. My car’s headlights couldn’t cut through the heavy downpour.
It was almost two in the morning and I was about to resign to the possibility of sleeping in my car and waiting for the morning when I noticed a faint light ahead.
I drove closer and saw that the light seemed to emanate from a solitary candle. Ignoring the rain outside, I alighted from my vehicle and ran towards the light.
“Maybe I can get a decent meal too,” I uttered as my stomach grumbled in agreement.
The rain was unforgiving but that did not prevent me from reaching my destination. As I moved closer, I noticed more candles. I could also hear sounds of people talking, as if exchanging pleasantries. I found it hard to accept, but I just stumbled on what appeared to be a small town café.
It was quite amazing that despite the deafening roar of the rain, I could hear the beautiful, rustic sound of guitars emanating from this queer establishment. The air was laced with the smell of jasmine and incense. Yet this very cozy atmosphere was not enough to overpower the sense of insecurity I felt.
I reached for the brazen doorknob as I tried to see through the frozen glass of the antique entrance.
“Ouch!”
My hand was stung by the intense frost that covered the knob’s surface. I opened my palm to assess the injury. The flesh was sliced to the bone but no blood was oozing from the gaping wound.
“It can’t be! It must be the cold and hunger,” I said, trying to find a logical explanation for my injury.
I blinked. The cut wasn’t there.
Hunger was still upon me and I was determined to seek shelter from the downpour. With hesitation, I once again reached for the knob but the ordinary coldness of brass was all I could feel.
Thrusting my body forward into the establishment, I felt my very soul jump out of its mortal shell after witnessing the frightful sight.
* * *
“Welcome to Cafeteria Indio, señor,” said a hoarse voice over my shoulder.
I turned to see the person who greeted me. I had seen some very horrifying faces but none would compare to the fright that this person gave me. He was a stocky man, with a stench of rotting flesh and skin as pale as bleached pavement. Only a mouth could be seen on his featureless face. He appeared to be a waiter.
At first, I thought it must have been the effect of the drenched feeling of rain or that of intense hunger and fatigue. But my senses disagreed. This creature had no eyes, no nose, and not even a trace of whatever distinguishing characteristic he might have had once.
On his forehead were Arabic-like markings, probably words or letters of some ancient or unknown alphabet, which I dared not ask him.
What was scarier was the funny way he seemed to be staring at me, even without any ocular faculties.
I struggled to respond but the words must have been crammed down my gut from the scare.
“Buenas noches, señor. My name is Luis. May I show you to your table?” he politely asked.
“Uh… uhmm… I… I was hoping to get something to eat and… a hot drink, maybe?” I stammered.
“You must be new here. Merely passing by? May I then recommend the house specialty, Paella Indio and our house coffee, yes?” suggested Luis.
“Coffee and paella would be fine. Thank you.”
Luis led me to a small table in the corner of the room. I tried not to look at the other customers but the temptation was just too much to resist.
Everybody in the establishment had something in common. Like Luis, they all had featureless faces and the strange mark on their foreheads. It was also then that I noticed that they were even dressed the same —— all clad in Filipiniana. The women wore long, lacy skirts and blouses and the men dressed in barong and dark pants.
I tried to pick up some of the conversations I could overhear, managing to recognize some phrases of what I thought was a mixture of Tagalog and Spanish.
I started having this funny yet creepy feeling coursing up my head that this whole place was beginning to notice the strange foreigner who was sitting at the corner table.
The eyeless crowd stared at me and I felt the place closing in on me. I was preparing to make a run to the door and out of this weird place when suddenly a menacing shadow covered me.
Everything seemed to come to a halt. A deafening silence reigned in the cafeteria.
I jolted from my seat at the thought of whom the shadow belonged to. Slowly turning around, I faced my unexpected guest. Due to the frightening things that I had already seen, I was expecting a horrible creature behind me.
It was beautiful young woman, dressed in the native baro’t saya (which was the same kind of dress that my late grandmother used to wear to church). She had very pale skin and long black hair running down to her heel. She was barefoot and the ground beneath her froze upon contact with her feet. She had eyes the color of coal. She had a peculiar shoal over her head, which was embroidered with some sacred inscriptions.
For some unknown reason, I bravely offered her a seat and silently she obliged.
“Can I offer you coffee?” I asked, hiding the terror that was eating me up inside.
“Yes. Coffee would be fine,” she answered without even moving her lips. It appears that she was communicating with me through my thoughts.
I motioned to Luis for the additional order.
“Are you lost too?” I asked, trying to spark a small conversation.
“Me? Lost? The word could never apply to me. I always have some business somewhere all the time,” she bluntly replied.
“And what, may I ask, brought you here tonight?” I muttered, fearing for the worst of possible answers. Her last answer stopped my heart for a moment.
“Actually, aside from this café being my favorite hangout, and this very table being my usual, I have come for you,” she said.
* * *
“Your order, señor,” Alberto said, putting down two cups of fragrant brewed coffee and a sumptuous plate of paella I earlier ordered.
I gasped for air, trying to recover from the shock that the lady brought to me.
“Me? Why me?”
“You mortals are so naïve. Did you honestly think that you came here by mere coincidence? You are no longer on the mortal plane. You are not among the living anymore,” she explained.
“Am I dead then? Is this the afterlife?” I asked.
“No. You are not dead. Not yet, I mean. This is what the dead call the Great Halfway, a mere holding place for souls who are still bound by their desire to live their former lives,” the lady lectured.
“Is this purgatory then?” I asked again.
“Purgatory? No. This is not Purgatory either. The last congress of the dead abolished Purgatory on the basis that it was being used by the living to further commit sin,“ she replied, “although I felt that they should have considered its repercussions more thoroughly.”
“Then what happened to the souls that were being cleansed in Purgatory? Where did they end up?” I curiously asked.
“Them? They ended up outside with absolutely nowhere to go. Haven’t you noticed the darkness that surrounds this establishment? That was caused by their cries of despair. They are more than ready to grab any opportunity to escape the unbearable torment of the outside. They don’t want to come in either for fear that they may be judged here. Actually, I’m a bit surprised that they did not attempt to take your body and use it to return to the mortal plane,” she said.
Fear gripped me once more with the impending possibility that my stay in this world might have become permanent.
“Can you explain what happened to this people? How did they end up looking like that?” I said as I continued with my query.
The lady gracefully lifted the cup and indulged in the warm coffee before moving on with our grim conversation.
“I was kind of expecting you’d figure that out for yourself, but I guess I was expecting too much from you. As I’ve said earlier, this is the place where souls still have regrets end up. They punish themselves. You may have already noticed the markings on their foreheads. It simply means that they are under my care until they have decided to move on.”
“But what happened to their faces?” I quickly replied.
“They have cursed themselves to this eternal state.”
She fashioned out a grin that only the devil could and went on.
“A very interesting lot, you mortals. You could learn from the dead,” she said, “to fully appreciate the power that He has given you.”
“What do you mean?” I further inquired.
“Free choice, what else? Free choice does not only mean the power to choose, it may also include the power to transform those choices into actions,” she said.
“But what has that have to do with their appearances?” I continued.
“You have eyes and yet you fail to use them to see the suffering of your brothers. You have ears and yet you are deaf to their pleas. You have the ability of speech to speak the truth and yet all you can do with it is lie.”
Her eyes were sharper and more menacing.
“You should be ashamed of yourselves. You turned these gifts into tools of discord instead of instruments of peace. You have corrupted the very essence of this senses to satisfy your selfish motives,” she continued.
The mood was getting serious. I tried taking a spoonful of paella to pacify my complaining stomach. Then I realized that the rain has stopped and all I could hear was the murmuring of the crowd around us.
I decided to ask her about what she said earlier. “What is your real business with me then?”
“I think you already have an idea of who I am. I have been in this business since the beginning of humanity. I can remember each of the countless souls that I have guided across the other side.”
“In short, I’m seriously considering retirement but the afterlife won’t allow me to leave a vacancy,” she went on.
“I’m looking for a replacement namely you.”
* * *
The terror that gripped me that moment was just too much to ignore. This being front of me wasn’t here to take my soul, she came here to ask me to take her place. I looked around and saw everybody giving me faceless stares that sent shivers down my spine.
“What if I refuse?” I asked.
“My dear boy, I have yet to meet a soul that refused me and I’m not about to allow that now,” the lady replied.
“Can I think about it for a moment? You said we have free choice, right? I’m at least entitled to that.”
The lady laughed.
“You HAD free choice. But that vanished when you left the mortal plane. Here, you belong to me.”
She laughed once more.
I realized that there was no reasoning with her. I had to think of something.
“Would you excuse me for one moment? I need to go to the bathroom,“ I said, trying to talk my way out of the conversation.
I stood up and made for the door. My body was still numb from the cold soak I got from the rain. Even without looking, I knew everybody was preventing my escape.
Somehow, I managed to look back. I could see faceless corpses turning into specters, wailing from the anguish that they had kept in their hearts for so long.
The woman was no longer at the table where I left her. Instead I saw Luis, running after me for the bill I left unpaid.
I saw my car in the darkness.
“I need to get out of here,” I told myself.
The rain started trickling again as I reached for my car keys. The moaning specters chased me, this time wailing louder than ever.
I managed to open the door of the vehicle in spite of my shaking hands. I placed the key into the ignition slot and started the engine.
The specters were now all over the car. Strange, that in their forms they were unable to penetrate the walls and windows of the car. I was now covered in darkness, the specters blocking off whatever light there might have been outside.
“They won’t come in, you know,” said a familiar voice from the back seat, “I told them not to.”
In the rear view mirror, I bravely looked at the owner of the voice.
The lady was reaching for me. I could only close my eyes in shock.
I felt another hand upon me. This time it was warm and the moans were gone. I slowly opened my eyes and saw the face of a man, trying to bring me back from my erstwhile frightening predicament.
“You were lucky, sir,” said the man, “you could have gone off the cliff like most of those unfortunate motorist who take this dangerous detour. Thank goodness for this sign that stopped your vehicle.”
“But I guess with the heavy downpour last night, road visibility must have been impossible for you,” he continued.
Still hazy, I felt pain in my hand. It bled profusely because of the crucifix it tight held. It was the very crucifix that usually hung around my rear view mirror.
“You better get that hand to a doctor, sir. That cut looks pretty bad,” he said, “you know, folks around here say that there used to be a small cafeteria standing on this very spot.”
I thanked the man for his assistance. He offered a ride back to the main road. I obliged.
Before getting into his car, I took a final glimpse at the cliff, which was a good half-kilometer drop. I gazed at the antique sign that the policeman said saved my life.
It read: CAFETERIA INDIO.
