Box of Bones

by Bates, Jeremy

The disconnect tone sounded in my ear, only I hadn’t hung up.

  It took me a moment to realize I’d run out of credit.

  ▬

  I was in bed with Ava, in her apartment in Fort Bonifacio. It was dark, nighttime, late. I was sitting upright, contemplating slipping out and going home.

  The right thing to do, of course, the proper thing to do, would be to go back to sleep and get up with Ava in the morning. Get up together, have coffee together, chat for a bit, then tell her I had to get going, chores to run, et cetera. Yet I knew I couldn’t fall back to sleep. If I tried, I would lie awake all night, staring at the ceiling. Then when morning came around and I finally got back to my place I would be so exhausted I would sleep away the day, waste away the day, and I didn’t want to do that. I was scared of doing that, scared I would wake and be fifty years old, having slept away half my life, having wasted it. And you only got one chance at life, so I didn’t want to blow it. I didn’t want to leave the game early.

  “Just go,” Ava told me.

  I turned. I could only see her silhouette in the dark, and the pale reflection of her eyes.

  “Huh?” I said.

  “Just go if you want. I don’t mind.”

  “Go where?”

  “Home.”

  “I don’t want to go home,” I said.

  “Why are you sitting up then?”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” I answered truthfully.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is it me?”

  “Huh?”

  “You don’t like dating me?”

  I frowned, because we weren’t dating. We were only seeing each other, and casually at that. She knew this. She knew the difference.

  Nevertheless, I didn’t feel it appropriate to point this out, so I said, “It’s not you.”

  “Why don’t you answer my calls?”

  “I do.”

  “You answer maybe every third one. You ignore the first and second, but you answer the third, because you can miss two calls, that’s acceptable, but to miss three borders on being rude.”

  Her astuteness surprised me. I hadn’t known she’d been keeping such close track of the minutiae of our calls.

  “So go,” she said.

  I almost gave her an excuse for my poor phone etiquette, such as I’d been busy lately, or something along those lines. Instead, I stood. If she was so insistent I leave, I would leave. This was her decision, not mine. She was ending it, not me. At least, this was the bullshit I fed myself. Because if I said I wanted to stay, she would let me. We would talk. We would work things out. We would start to date steadily. We would get serious…

  I began moving around the bedroom, feeling for my clothes with my feet. I found my boxers, pulled them on.

  Ava turned on the lamp on the nightstand next to her. The covers were bunched at her waist, revealing her breasts. I’d always liked her breasts. They were pretty much perfect. In fact, in the glow of the lamp, she looked great. Curly hair looped casually but sexily atop her head, like a golden crown, blue eyes bright with anger, cheeks flushed, lips a tight, determined line.

  Not great.

  Beautiful.

  I found the rest of my clothes, dressed, and headed toward the door.

  “Are you going to her house?”

  I stopped at the threshold to the living room. “Whose house?”

  “Candy’s.”

  I turned back to Ava and frowned. “Candy’s?” I hadn’t known Candy while Ava and I were sleeping together, and I was wondering about this, the paradox of how Ava could know about Candy, how I could know about Candy, when I realized I was dreaming—

  I opened my eyes to a blackness that seemed never touched by sunlight, and with the recognition of where I was, a coldness chilled me from the inside out. I coughed, spitting out air that was thin and dry, sauna-like, sandpaper on my throat.

  My eyelids were already closing again. They felt so heavy, like concrete pillows. I’d once read that antelope didn’t feel any pain if they succumbed to the unfortunate doom of being eaten alive by a lion or hyena or other such predator. This non sequitur was a gift from evolution, a way to make life in a kill-or-be-killed world a little less cruel. And apparently it applied to humans as well, as people who’d survived a near-death mauling by a wild animal reported feeling nothing but a morphine-like high even as teeth punctured and tore at their flesh.

  I think I was experiencing that same high right now.

  It was a dreamy sensation, a profound resignation that death wouldn’t be so bad, that this nightmare would finally be over, all I had to do was accept the inevitable and give myself to the darkness—

  No!

  I snapped open my eyes and fumbled weakly for my phone. I held it in front of my face. It felt like an alien device in my hands, heavy, cumbersome to use. After what seemed like a very long time I navigated to Ava’s number and dialed it.

  A robotic, female voice informed me that I was out of credit.

  How had I forgotten about that?

  It had run out while I was speaking to my mother.

  I wasn’t thinking straight…hard to think…so tired…

  ▬

  …and where’s that ringing coming from…the army bugle wake-up call…I must be late for work, my head teacher is calling because I’m late and classes have already begun and—

  I opened my eyes. The ringing was now loud and piercing, urgent. My phone was still clutched in my hand, at my side. I answered the call.

  “Jim?” It was Ava.

  “What’s…happening?” I managed.

  “We have some leads, Jim.” She sounded far away, her voice clear yet small. “We’re getting close. It won’t be long—”

  I tuned out. Leads? It was too late for leads. It was too late for anything.

  Ava was still talking. I said, “I’m sorry,” cutting her off.

  “Sorry?” she said after a pause. “What are you sorry for?”

  “We were…good.”

  “Jim…”

  “It was stupid. Me. I don’t know…wasn’t thinking…”

  “That doesn’t matter. None of that matters now.”

  “Stupid…”

  “Jim…?”

  Was the connection breaking up? I couldn’t tell. I didn’t care. I felt lethargic and calm. “You didn’t…”

  “I didn’t what?”

  “Party. You didn’t…”

  “Jim…?”

  “Your party. You didn’t invite me…”

  Silence ensued. I thought she’d hung up, or we’d been disconnected.

  “…vah?” I said.

  “I was really mad at you,” she said, quietly, and then she chuckled.

  “Heard…was good.”

  “Everyone was there, but I didn’t have fun.”

  “Why…?”

  “Because you weren’t there,” she said, and she was no longer chuckling; she was crying.

  “If I get out—”

  “You will, Jim, we’re close, so close!”

  “—I’m going…take you…dinner. Okay?”

  “Yes, Jim. Definitely. That would be lovely.”

  “I’m tired.”

  “Don’t close your eyes.”

  “Need…rest.”

  “Jim!”

  A beep sounded. I had no idea what that meant.

  “Was that your phone?” Ava said. “Jim! You have a message!”

  “Message?”

  “It could be Toto! Answer it. Check it now. Can you do that while talking to me?”

  “Don’t think.”

  “Then I’ll call back in exactly two minutes. Okay? Two minutes. Okay?”

  “’kay.”

  ▬

  The message was indeed from Toto:

  Candy saw video.

  With almost exaggerated effort, I typed:

  Let meet out.

  I couldn’t be damned to correct the autocorrect.

  Toto’s repl
y:

  Stupid fucker American. You come here, you take our girls. They don’t like you. They use you. Kainin mo tae ko!

  I think Toto just told me to eat his shit. With nothing left to lose, I typed:

  FUCK YOU

  The phone beeped almost immediately. I was going to ignore the message, sink back into the yawning, waiting abyss, but I couldn’t help my curiosity.

  No text. Only a video attachment.

  I downloaded it, then played it. My half-slit eyes opened wider.

  Candy sat in a chair in a dark cinderblock room, wearing white shorts and a yellow top that outlined her small breasts. Her arms were secured behind the chair’s ladderback, perhaps with a zip tie. Her heavily lashed eyes shimmered with tears, which had leaked down her rounded cheeks. A gag secured her mouth.

  The camera swung about to reveal Toto’s face. His eyes appeared dull and glassy, as if he was drunk. Strands of long, black hair had come loose from his ponytail and frizzed out from his head like cobwebs. A lit cigarette dangled from his scowling mouth. He snatched it away with his fingers, exhaled a jet of smoke, and said in his accented English, which had a lilting quality and emphasis on the wrong syllables, “So you like fucking her so much, huh?” He flicked the butt away and turned the camera back on Candy. He grabbed her right breast with his hand. She moaned and squirmed. He fondled it roughly. “You like these?” He squeezed her cheeks next, forcing her lips to pucker. “You like these? You like kissing these?”

  Candy’s eyes bulged wider. She went manic in the chair, twisting her body and shaking her head. The next moment Toto’s hand appeared, holding an old revolver. He tore the gag free of Candy’s mouth and shoved the barrel in its place. I could hear her teeth scrape the chrome.

  “No—” I hissed.

  The report of the gunshot sounded hollow coming from the phone’s speakers.

  I stared in horror as Candy’s head kicked backward, and then slumped forward when Toto removed the gun from between her lips. Her open eyes gazed at the camera, empty, unseeing. Blood began to leak from her nose and mouth in slow trickles.

  A scream built in my chest but didn’t escape my throat. I kept telling myself Toto didn’t just kill Candy, it was theater, an elaborate hoax, part of his sick game—

  Toto’s face reappeared, the revolver pressed to his temple. “I die too. Nobody comes to save you.”

  The video ended.

  “No!” I said, whipping my phone toward my feet as if it had started to bleed through the circuits. “No! No! No!”

  ▬

  I cried until my eyes and throat ached, until I could no longer draw any oxygen into my lungs without feeling as though I were drowning. Then I rolled onto my side and retched. Something foul and slippery came out of my mouth, splattering the coffin floor, stringing from my chin. I mumbled incoherently to myself, berating myself, because it was my fault Candy was dead. I’d mucked up Toto’s plans. By contacting Ava and the embassy, I put heat on him. I caused him to go on the run and kidnap Candy. I forced him into a dead end from which he couldn’t turn back.

  “It’s not your fault, po,” a soft, feminine voice said.

  I blinked wetly, which brought nothing into focus. “Who are you?” I asked, staring into the blackness.

  “My name’s Peach.”

  Her voice was very close. I couldn’t be bothered to search for the Zippo and instead explored the dark before me with one hand, brushing aside the scattered bones. Then I touched something large and smooth: the crown of a skull. I stroked the top of it with my fingers.

  “That feels nice,” Peach said.

  “This is your coffin?”

  “Yes, po,” she said.

  “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  “I like your company.”

  “Have you been listening to everything going on?”

  “Yes. And I’m sorry. You’re not supposed to be in here with me. It’s not your time yet.”

  “I’m only twenty-four.”

  “I’m only twenty-one.”

  Maybe it was Peach’s chaste, apologetic voice, but when I tried to visualize what she’d once looked like in my mind’s eye, I saw a petite young woman with glassy-black hair and svelte limbs, one of those girls who don’t seem to appreciate the extent of their attractiveness, which makes them all the more attractive.

  I continued to stroke her skull, which was oddly erotic.

  I said, “You died when you were twenty-one?”

  “Yes, po.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t like to talk about it.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s not good.”

  “But you know how I died,” I protested.

  “You’re not dead.”

  “I will be soon.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Peach?” I said.

  “It happened a long time ago,” she said.

  “How long?”

  “A long time, po. I was with my friend, Mercy. We decided to take a couple of drinks in a bar in the hills outside Sagada, our hometown. I got so drunk I didn’t realize the time until it was very late. The last jeepney to my barangay stopped service an hour earlier. So I walked home.”

  “It was far?” I asked.

  “So far. And someone followed me.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. He caught up to me on an empty street. He had a gunong in his hand.”

  “Oh no,” I said. A gunong is a traditional Filipino thrusting dagger with a pistol-grip hilt used for close-quarter fighting. Nowadays they also double as utility knifes.

  “I think Toto used a gunong to stab me,” I said.

  “But you’re his size, you could fight him,” she said. “I’m small. So he killed me. He stabbed me many times—and then I ended up here, in this coffin.”

  “What’s it like being dead?” I asked her.

  “Boring.”

  “What do you do?”

  She seemed amused. “Nothing, po. You just lie here.”

  “For eternity?”

  “I guess so.”

  This sounded terrible, and my mind reeled for a way to discredit what Peach was telling me. “Can’t you just…die?” I said.

  “You can’t die twice, po!”

  “But you’re not dead if you can think and talk!”

  She didn’t answer, and an epiphany struck me.

  “I’m not really talking to you, am I, Peach?” I said as relief flooded through me. I was not going to spend eternity in a box, conscious of every passing second. Death—traditional death—suddenly seemed very desirable. I eased onto my back and stared up at the blackness—and frowned. “Peach?”

  “Yes, po?”

  “I think I’m dying. I can see a white light.”

  It was directly above me, more gray than white, though the longer I stared at it, the larger and brighter it seemed to become.

  Caw! Caw!

  “Peach?” I said, alarmed.

  Caw…caw, caw.

  What the hell was that sound? Who or what was making it? Not Peach. Her voice had been inside my head. This was different, external to me. I was fairly certain of that.

  I reached for the light, wondering whether I could catch it in my palm, or whether it was some sort of trick of perspective, like a star that seemed much closer than it was.

  My hand bumped the wood lid of the coffin. The light vanished. I moved my hand to the side. The light returned.

  Caw…caw…caw…caw…

  Could it be?

  But how…?

  The neurons in my brain abruptly fired on all cylinders, sending wake-up jolts to every nerve cell in my body, shocking me lucid. The fogginess clouding my thoughts cleared. Strength flowed back into my muscles. I sat up as far as I could in the confined space and rummaged through the riot of forgotten bones until I found a splintered one with a tapered end. I wedged the bone’s pointy tip between two planks in the coffin lid and worked it back and forth, grunting wit
h the effort.

  The stubborn plank was finally loosening when the bone snapped. I drove my fist into the plank over and over, smashing my knuckles and tearing the skin. Yet I was seized by an ecstasy that bordered on lunacy and didn’t feel any pain.

  With an ear-splitting crack, the plank burst free.

  The daylight that poured into the coffin was so bright it seared my black-rusted eyes, temporarily blinding me. But I could feel the cool morning breeze on my skin, I could smell the freshness of it. I inhaled greedily.

  As the spangles faded from my vision, I found myself staring up in wondrous awe at the dawn-streaked, cloud-padded sky overhead. It was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen, and I remained staring at it, transfixed, as the ordeal I’d been through played over in my head like a scene from a bad horror movie.

  I began laughing—laughing and cursing, unable to believe it had been so easy to escape the coffin, castigating myself for not trying to pry a board free earlier, even though I’d had no reason to attempt such a feat, given I’d believed several tons of dirt had been resting on top of me.

  And then I saw birds in the sky—seagulls, I think—cawing and wheeling freely.

  I saw a towering cliff face immediately to my left, a vertical expanse of jagged slabs with narrow ledges, home to crumbling shale and stunted trees.

  I saw strange boxy shapes attached to the rocky wall.

  My laughter sputtered to a halt. Confusion followed, then understanding, and with the understanding, a sinking feeling in the pit of my gut.

  I peered over the side of the coffin and was force-fed a shot of vertigo.

  ▬

  Sagada.

  The name had rung a bell when Peach had told me she was from there. But Peach had never existed. She’d been a manifestation of my subconscious—which, clearly, had clued into the truth of my predicament before my conscious mind had, because Sagada is a town in the province directly to the south of Kalinga, famous for its hanging coffins.

  I think someone had mentioned the hanging coffins to me during my first week in the Philippines, or maybe I’d heard about them on TV, I can’t remember. But I hadn’t given them another thought until now. I certainly never suspected Toto had put me in one.