Beware All Who Enter

Cantao ocellatus

Mango & Sticky Rice by Khristina Cruz

My favorite piece from Will Draw For Good 2020. You can check out her Insta here

reasons.

Imagine you're a writer, and there are people scribbling in the margins of your books, underlining their favorite passages, leaving makeshift bookmarks between the pages (subway tickets, library receipts, handwritten notes), reading excerpts out loud to their friends and lovers or to themselves just to feel the words on their tongue, memorizing quotes and then copying them in their notebooks, daydreaming about your characters and excitingly speculating about what's going to happen to them in the sequel, writing reviews in their school newspaper.

The Tenement - a menace to all by Udo J. Keppler, (1872 - 1956) The illustration shows the spirits of alcoholism, opium, dens, prostitution, gambling and street crime, as well as the figure of Death, issuing from a tenement house

“The best aid for supplication is humility.”

— Imam Ali (a.s.), Ghurar al-Hikam, no. 9945

Le Manoir du Diable (1896)

Considered the earliest horror film ever made, Le Manoir du Diable, French for House of the Devil, is an 1896 silent film by George Méliès about two wandering cavaliers and how the Devil played tricks on them.

Far from being terror-inducing, the entire 3-minute short film (quite ambitious at the time) was actually a comic sketch meant to evoke laughter and amusement from its audience, rather than fear. It was presumed lost until the late 1980s when a copy was found again and restored by the New Zealand Film Archives.

“If the coffin hits anything at all, Death will come back for more.”

That’s what old people say.

In the Philippines, whenever someone dies, we hold a wake for 5-7 days. During this time, friends and family visit the deceased to pay their respects. There are prayers, feasting, singing and games. A celebration of a life that once was.

And the most critical moment? The last one on the last day. Pallbearers must ensure that when moving the coffin from the family home into the funeral hearse… it never hits a corner, a wall or anything at all.

Because according to superstition, if it does, Death considers it an invitation to return to the home and fetch more souls.

I’ve heard numerous anecdotes about this being true. Told over and over again. Stories passed down for generations. A family of five that all died within a week. Friends who passed away within days of each other. An entire village that was felled by what seemed like a plague. All because a coffin hit a wall.

But none of it is true.

My ancestors made it up.

To keep the truth hidden.

They were seven siblings in all. Four girls and three boys. The first six were supernaturally blessed. The youngest was not.

Today, we don’t care if this happens. So what if little Johnny can’t tell the future or cast a spell? He could be a successful lawyer, doctor, entrepreneur. He’s not missing out on the chance to become fulfilled in this incarnation.

But back then, being a “Squib” in a witching family meant you were worthless.

And so Teofilo and Saturnina — the eldest two — asked the rest, “Should we share our powers with our youngest?” And they all said yes.

A ritual was performed. Orisons were chanted. Blood magic was invoked. And so their powers flowed, from one sibling to another. Which means they now shared one life. If one dies, the rest would follow.

Then and until very recently, traditional witches in my country pretended to be Catholics. The truth would have made them outcasts. Labelled as evil. 

And so to hide the supernatural way they would die in the future, and prevent their children being branded as witches, the siblings made up a superstition and spread it: “If the coffin hits anything at all, Death will come back for more.”

Many decades after they planted the seed, it fully bloomed. So when Crisanta, the third sibling, died of an illness, and the other six followed within a matter of minutes… nobody suspected they were witches.

Instead, all the neighbors said, “Alas. The pallbearers must have hit a wall, inviting Death to come back for more.”

A part of being an adult is living with regret and not allowing it to consume you. The older you get, the more mistakes you’ve made, opportunities you’ve missed, people you’ve disappointed. And every day you have to remind yourself to be kind and forgiving of yourself. You accept and love the you from the past and understand that it’s all a part of the process. Then you move on and live your best life, knowing now as old as you feel today, you’ll never be this young again.