The woodcutter had never quite been a man of the temple. Yet as he dragged his feet deeper into the humid bogland, his choked whisper of a voice grasped for the words chanted by the priest in the village square every night. The fragmented prayers danced tantalizingly on his tongue, a broken and visceral plea strained by the desperation of a man confronting forces he could not begin to understand. Flashing before his eyes were the sins he had not yet answered for. He was once again a repentant boy begging for absolution from a sky that was unforgiving in its silence.
The woodcutter was no stranger to the swamp. His daughter’s favorite dress was woven from its cattail reeds, and his wife’s beloved tilapia were scooped up from its monsoon-flooded waters. Just two months ago he had hauled bundles of chopped mangrove from its trees to help build the new temple. Yet that hopeful familiarity had withered into foreboding, a creeping odor of decay that knotted his stomach. The light of his lantern dissipated into the darkness that suffocated him. In the blue-black hues of dawn, the flowerless grass that brushed against his waist stretched endlessly into a gray void, and murky puddles soaked through his boots and numbed his toes. By now, his prayers had grown into hoarse, breathless murmurs between rattling teeth, but they too seemed to evaporate into the humid air. He didn’t know what he was looking for. He didn’t know what he would do if he found it. But he knew, for his daughter, for his little girl, he had to keep pressing on in the dark.
A sudden noise fractured the silence of the early morning, sending his hand thoughtlessly springing to the small ax strapped to his waist. The woodcutter’s heart squeezed itself into his throat. Somewhere in his mind, he knew it had been the lazy croaking of a frog somewhere among the shrubbery; yet his shoulders refused to loosen, and his fingers lingered tentatively near his weapon. The trees had never felt so imposing, the water so cold, the air so pungent. But that was before the dreams had started.
It lived in the swamp. The children had said so. They had described its slick, matted head protruding from between the marsh ferns, waiting unblinkingly until wandering eyes made contact with its own. They had spoken of the squelching of its bare toes on the damp soil, the hissing of swamp water as it boiled at the touch of the creature’s feet – rotting, misshapen, and facing the wrong way. When asked what its voice sounded like, the children could only sob. The woodcutter’s ears crawled with the sounds of their whimpers, the quiet weeping of his own girl. His calloused hands trembled – from the cold, the fear, and the rage that seared his veins.
The woodcutter’s rambling prayers were cut short as he suddenly lurched forward, losing his grip on the lantern. His foot had caught on something. The lantern bounced once on the soft mud and rolled in a circle back to his feet, illuminating the dark strands wrapped around it. Vines? Some kind of grass? It was unlike anything he had seen in the swamp before, but as he gingerly touched it, rolling its silky smoothness between his fingers, it was a little too familiar –
It was hair. Human hair. Long, damp, dark strands, clinging to his boot. In the dim glow of the lantern, he could see there was more – clumps of hair matted on the soil, dense locks of it protruding from puddles. The woodcutter slowly lifted his gaze, inch by inch, and in the grayness of dawn, he could’ve sworn he saw in front of him black hair descending from the canopy of a mangrove tree, as if dangling from an unseen head high up among the branches.
A sound left his mouth. Whether it was a choked gasp for air, a prayer half-caught in his throat, or the beginning of a garbled scream, he couldn’t make out. His ears had gone numb, and all he could hear was a distant, dull ringing. Leaving the lantern at his feet, he turned and fled, his flailing legs kicking up mud as he ripped through the tall grass.
*
The girl pretended to be asleep when she heard her father’s boots weigh on the groaning floorboards outside her bedroom. The door creaked open, splaying the warm glow of a lantern against her wall. She lay as still as she could, her wide-open eyes turned away from the door, as she had done every day that week when her father had come to check on her. The door closed, and she watched out her window until she could see her father’s cloaked figure disappear into the blue-black dawn, axe in hand.
The night had once again come and gone without any sleep. The woodcutter’s daughter had lost count of how many hours she spent staring blankly at her wall, her ears crawling with the sounds of her mother’s sobbing and her father’s broken prayers. They had run out of silver to pay the priest to come cleanse their home and pray at her bedside. They were scared, she knew. So was she. She was scared to shut her eyes, knowing she could only go so long without falling asleep. Just the prior evening, their neighbor’s fear-drenched screams had pierced the silence that hung heavily over their home, and she knew it had happened to their son once again. He was only nine, just a year younger than her, and it had already happened to him three times.
The girl sat up in bed, her blankets pulled to her chin. A bowl of water sat on the floor beside her, from which she had been dabbing her eyes like clockwork to keep sleep at bay. Her temples throbbed, and her vision blurred with exhaustion. Her eyelids felt heavier by the second, and the sight of her room had started to fade from view when a loud gong startled her back to her senses. It was from the new temple, which had finished construction just a few weeks prior. The silhouette of its bulky frame and mangrove towers, visible from her bedroom window, loomed large against the dimness of early morning. Ever since the dreams had started, the temple had become a sanctuary, and the only place in the village that still felt alive. The school had closed after the first few incidents. Main Street had gone dark, abandoned by shopkeepers too terrified to leave their children. Each night, the village square became a writhing, wailing mass of prayer.
The woodcutter’s daughter shifted in her bed, rubbing her eyes furiously. Stars and specks of light danced across her vision. The fuzzy silhouette of the temple slowly returned to focus, and she forced herself to concentrate on its darkened outline. The memories of the priest’s chanting echoed in her ears, and the more firmly she fixed her gaze on the temple, the sooner its shape unspooled into inky shadows.
“Father . . .” she murmured, calling out aimlessly before her eyes closed.
When they opened, the girl’s blood ran cold. She found herself amid a cluster of trees. Her ankles were submerged in a cold, murky puddle, and the wind pricked at her flesh like needles. Even in the blue-black hues of dawn, she recognized the wooded swamp she had spent her childhood frolicking through. But that familiarity withered into foreboding, a creeping sense of dread that knotted her stomach. Her eyes swelled with fearful tears. She had had this dream before. She knew who – what – was coming.
In front of her was a felled tree, a disfigured and rotting mangrove that lay on its side. Its trunk had been shredded and gashed, as if brutally chopped through. In a sprawling hole in the ground, where its roots had been torn out of, something was moving.
The woodcutter’s daughter tried to press her eyes shut, her fists clenched and shaking, but it was of no use. An arm emerged from the hole, a deathly pale appendage that grabbed onto the soil and hoisted out the body it belonged to. She tried to scramble back, but her legs had gone numb. A giant, black, tangled mass crawled out of the space, and as it stood to its full height, she saw that it was hair – soaking wet hair that dragged along the ground as the creature took a step towards her. Its clawlike hand pulled hair out of its face, uncovering a sight that tightened the girl’s throat with choked whimpers. It looked almost like a human. A woman. Its cheekbones jutted out of a gaunt face the color of raw, skinless flesh. A pair of empty, pitch black eyes stared blankly ahead, and slits ran across its face in place of nostrils. Standing just a few inches above the girl, its body was a mangled skeleton with bare flesh stretched tightly over its inhumanly shaped bones. It had no mouth, but a sound emerged from within it – a muffled, garbled wail that sounded like nothing any animal could ever produce.
The woodcutter’s daughter opened her mouth to scream, and with a sharp jolt, she suddenly awoke in her own room. She was in her bed, her body shaking and drenched. A stench immediately flooded her nostrils – an odor so noxious, no putrid, that it tightened her throat and drew bile to her tongue. It was the smell of rot. Her eyes watered as the deathly air billowed into her face, and it took several seconds for the surreal scene to come into focus.
Scattered around her were clumps of black hair, thick and tangled, soaked in puddles of dirty water that slowly trickled their way around her bare feet. Tangled amid the dark locks were small bones. They were splintered and crushed as if violently chewed through, and through their cracks oozed lumps of dark, glistening bone marrow. A dull roar crawled in her ears, and it took her several seconds to register what it was. It was the buzz of hundreds of flies, gathered in swarms over the leaking bones and crawling up the walls. Masses of insects congregated in the corners of the room and formed a black cloud on the closed window, casting a living, pulsating shadow over her room.
The young girl’s body went limp with shock. She curled into a fetal ball in her bed, her mouth agape in a soundless, shaking scream. The flies surrounded her in their ceaseless roar.
*
It was a cool, moonless night when the batibat crept out of the swampy puddle. The rumbling and rustling of many footsteps had awoken her.
Her bare body was still soaking wet as she scampered up a tree, her slender form slipping into the lightless canopy. She dug her nails into the soft bark as she steadied herself on a wavering branch. Grabbing a handful of her black hair, she wrung muddy swamp water out and sent it splattering onto the soil below. One of the villagers turned, startled, and glanced uncertainly into the branches. If he had looked just a little closer, he would’ve seen a pair of empty eyes staring right back at him.
With their silhouettes illuminated only by the flickering orange of their torches, the swarm of villagers looked like a pulsating shadow crawling beneath her. Most hoisted large sticks as they trooped forward, while a few lugged along axes, saws, even hammers. The mob was armed to the teeth, but the weaponry seemed to do little to soothe their nerves. They advanced in hushed silence, passing between them low murmurs and hoarse prayers that just as quickly dissipated into the wind. One voice, however, rose above the cackling fire – the barking of a short, broad-shouldered man who helmed the congregation, donning a flowing orange garb and a diamond-studded garland around his neck. Swirls of crimson ink decorated his face and palms. As he turned to face his followers, she recognized his bellowing voice from his sermons in the town square. She recalled squatting on the rooftop of a tea shop, enveloped in the darkness of night, watching him flog a pleading disbeliever to set an example for the village.
“Enough!” The bass of the priest’s voice was thunderous, shaking the audience into a captive silence.
“Have we not been terrorized enough? Have our children not wept, have our own homes not been violated? Have we not suffered too long at the hands of this devil?” He brandished his arms at his sides with each word, harkening back to the grandiosity and flair of his sermons. The red paint only accentuated the vein pulsating on his bald head. Villagers among the crowd roared back in affirmation.
“Your sins have brought this violence upon us,” the priest declared, pointing accusingly into the audience, his stubby finger trailing from one villager to the next. “You, and you, and you – all of you have disobeyed, sinned, coveted, connived, and now the gods you have forgotten rain hellfire on our homes. Can you not see? Can you not see? You skip your prayers, you forsake your truths, and you fraternize with demons!” He spat on the ground with contempt. “And in the end, where do your sins bring you? Back to me – back to purity, back to faith, back to the prophet. Alas. Were I a crueler man, I might have let you burn, might have left you to weep, might have left your children to be torn to shreds” – an outburst of panicked no’s rippled through the villagers – “but I am a merciful prophet. I am the vessel through which the gods speak. Beg them to act through me. Beg them to cleanse this village, to tear evil from your homes.”
A collective wail arose from the crowd, a strained and visceral plea almost animal in nature. Knees sank into damp soil and splashed into shallow puddles as villagers knelt. Cries of repentance harmonized into a wordless howl. The priest flailed his arms to and fro as if in orchestration. He yelled at the top of his lungs, shouting unintelligible words from a language so ancient that time had stripped it of any meaning. The vein on his head stretched against his flesh. He now faced the swamp, the muscles on his back visibly throbbing as he waved his arms in wild circles, as if physically sweeping his chants and prayers into the throngs of mangrove trees.
Suddenly, he thrust out an empty palm behind him, and a villager sprang to his feet to place a flaming torch in his hand. With one swift motion, the priest hurled the torch into the sprawling roots of the tree in front of him, and within seconds the towering mangrove roared alight in a blinding blaze. A rallying cry brought the mob to their feet, and forward they swept, tearing into the swamp with fire and blades. Axes gashed trunks and machetes ripped branches off trees. Torches hurtled into canopies, erupting into tongues of flame that lapped at the night sky. Within minutes, vesuvian pillars of smoke billowed up from the swamp, mingling with the humid bogland air to form dense clouds that streamed out through the treeline. Amid the crackling of the forest burning to a crisp, the hollering and chanting of the villagers grew ever louder.
From her cradle among the leaves, she watched the fire engulf her home, knowing the blaze would soon bring down the tree she was hiding in. Yet her eyes remained on the priest’s silhouette against the flickering flame. He stood atop a stump, hands planted on his hips, bellowing directions to his followers. He did not recognize the stump, for he was a cowardly man who never set foot in the swamp by himself. She, however, would know that stump anywhere, because the wood of its tree had been stolen to build the priest’s new temple. She knew that stump, for that tree had been hers. As had been the swamp that now withered away under a shroud of smoke.
With a catlike leap, she sprang out of her canopy and landed soundlessly on all fours, scampering away into the darkness before anyone spotted her bare, inhumanly pale body. The roar of the flames and the clamoring of the villagers disappeared into the distance as she crawled into the tangled corners of the swamp that the humans had not corroded yet. Running her colorless hands across the ground, she found a spot of warm, fresh soil and began pawing a hole in it. When it was several feet deep, she curled into a bony ball and stuffed herself inside.
The batibat slept. And the batibat dreamt.
*
A day passed, and then another. Then several more. The children slept. Neither bones nor hair appeared in their rooms. The charred remnants of the swamp smoldered, sending light tufts of smoke wafting into the village. Padlocks on doors came off. Lights in shops came on. The demon had been exorcised, the villagers told each other. The schoolground was once again abuzz, classrooms bustling, and the temple packed. The barren, leafless, broken trees in the distance offered testimony to the cleansing of their homes. Bowls of warm soup exchanged hands in the town square, sweets were unpacked from cartons, and gold was delivered to the temple’s mangrove doors.
It was on such a morning, tranquil and relaxed, that the woodcutter awoke. He made his way to his kitchen, and mid-yawn he realized the front door was open. He checked his living quarters. Nothing seemed to be missing. Scratching his beard, he peered into his own room, where his wife still slept. He crept down the hall and opened the door to his daughter’s room. Her bed was empty.
He was not alone as he rushed out into the street. Panicked men and women streamed out of their homes, seizing each other in their search for answers. Sobbing mothers wrung their hands. The town square offered no clues. The deserted schoolground was of no help. In between choked prayers, the woodcutter retrieved his axe, and a band of villagers headed down the crumbling path to the swamp. Their palms ran bloodless and cold as they imagined what they would find.
It didn’t take long. The first child they found was a young boy, no more than five years in age, his hair disheveled and dotted with grime. His hands were caked with mud. He stood ankle-deep in a puddle, staring at them blankly, his mouth slightly agape. The villagers stared back, stunned. The woodcutter crept forward, a shaking hand outstretched, and the child wordlessly turned and began walking deeper into the swamp. Glances of stricken confusion rippled through the crowd, and they followed him for several winding yards, stepping over battered branches and charred stumps. The child stopped in front of a clearing, its contents obfuscated by thick mist. The villagers, fingers digging into their weapons, watched as the gradual dissipation of the fog allowed the moving shadows to come into focus.
Several dozen small bodies scurried around on their hands and feet. Some knelt, some squatted, some pushed each other out of the way as they pawed at something on the ground. These were their children. Boys and girls, their clothes smeared and tattered, their skin scratched and filthy, scampered around noiselessly. None seemed to register the appearance of the nonplussed villagers. The woodcutter spotted his daughter. He opened his mouth to call out, but his voice caught in his throat. Her eyes were unblinking and glazed over, as if in a trance. As if moving in their sleep. Her mouth hung open, strings of thick fluid leaking down her chins. Some children were chewing. Others licked their hands. Small, dirty hands, coated in blood and morsels of flesh.
The object at their center was a large, mangled lump of meat. An odor most noxious emanated from it, drawing bile to the villagers’ tongues. The children buried their faces in the meat, their teeth ripping skin off bones, their little fingers probing deeper into its crevices. The carcass was laid out on a large orange cloth, darkened with mud and deep red fluid. Shoes, a diamond-studded garland, and pieces of jewelry lay flung to the side. The villagers would recognize these items anywhere; their tithes and taxes had paid for them. The woodcutter’s daughter crawled off of the corpse’s neck, revealing what had once been its face. Even with its mangled jaw and broken sockets, there was little doubt left. Still visible under smudged red paint, a telltale vein streaked across its bald head.
The villagers stood unmoving. The woodcutter’s axe slipped from his defeated grasp as he listened to the sounds of his daughter chewing. Not far behind them, a small figure squatted on the scarred remains of a tree, her flowing black hair dangling down the charred branches. If only the batibat could smile.