Amaranhig

By Alvin E. Lauran

'They came to record forgotten myths. What they found was waiting for them.

Professor Ernesto Abrenica and his student Adrian Reyes travel into the wild heart of Aklan to document Visayan folklore-legends of spirits, rituals, and the Amalanhig, the vampire-like dead said to rise from their graves. But as their footage

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ukiyoto Publishing
• Release date: Oct 31, 2025
• ISBN: 9789353537579

Book preview

Chapter 1

T

he Ceres Liner hummed like a beast at rest, its yellow hull streaked with dust, its windows fogged faintly from the air-conditioning that leaked even while the driver smoked a last cigarette outside. Morning had only begun in Jaro, Iloilo, but the terminal was alive with a clamor that seemed to pulse from the concrete itself—vendors shouting Tubig! Mani! Kape!, the smell of fried lumpia curling into the humid air, the shuffle of passengers dragging taped-up boxes marked fragile.

Adrian Reyes stood in line, clutching the strap of his worn backpack. His other hand hovered protectively over the digital video camera slung across his chest. It was heavier than he expected, though he had only borrowed it from the university’s media lab. For the first time, he wondered if he was really ready—not just for the trip, but for what it might demand of him.

Beside him, Dr. Ernesto Abrenica adjusted the notebook wedged under his arm. The professor looked out of place here, his crisp linen barong and polished leather shoes a sharp contrast to the passengers in faded shirts and slippers. But there was something restless about him too, a flicker of fever behind the spectacles perched on his nose, as though the bus station itself was a threshold to discovery.

Film this, Adrian, the professor said suddenly, his voice clipped, impatient. Every journey begins with departure. And every departure is an ending for someone.

Obediently, Adrian lifted the camera, letting its whir fill the moment. The viewfinder framed the chaos: mothers cradling children, men balancing sacks of rice on their shoulders, vendors waving packs of chicharon and bottled soda at the bus windows. A rooster, inexplicably, was tethered to the handle of a plastic basket, crowing above the human noise.

When the conductor barked Iloilo—Caticlan, diretso!, the two of them boarded. The bus smelled faintly of vinyl and sweat, the cracked green seats patched with duct tape. The air-conditioning roared with uneven breath. Adrian slid into the window seat while Abrenica settled beside him, already jotting down notes as though the trip had officially begun the moment wheels touched asphalt.

As the bus lurched forward, Adrian pointed the lens toward the streets of Iloilo. Jeepneys painted with saints and slogans swerved past, each one a blur of color and dust. Wet markets spilled onto sidewalks—stalls crowded with bangus on ice, pyramids of tomatoes, and the metallic smell of fresh fish. Tricycles rattled dangerously close, their drivers hunched over handlebars, their sidecars crammed with passengers.

Remember this, Abrenica said without looking up, his pen scratching furiously. We are not tourists. We are not wanderers. We are chroniclers. The Amalanhig, the sigbin, the tamawo—these are vanishing species, Adrian. Endangered not in body, but in memory. If we fail to capture them now, they will be gone forever.

Adrian shivered despite the overzealous air-conditioning. He wrote the phrase down in his small diary: We are chroniclers of death. Then he underlined it twice.

Outside, Iloilo City began to thin. The landscape opened into wide green paddies, the water reflecting the sky in fractured mirrors. Farmers bent low in the fields, their silhouettes rhythmic, their carabaos grazing nearby. The bus engine droned steadily, like an incantation against silence.

By late morning, the bus rattled along the highway toward Passi. The flat lands rolled endlessly, rice paddies shimmering under the white blaze of sun, with nipa huts dotting the fields like solitary watchmen. Adrian filmed everything—farmers bent over ankle-deep water, scarecrows waving their ragged arms in the breeze, distant church steeples cutting into the sky.

When the bus slowed at a roadside terminal, a flurry of vendors rushed in. The aisle filled with baskets of boiled corn, sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves, packs of chicharon dangling like trophies. A woman pushed past Adrian, her arms laden with bottled water. She paused to glance at his camera, her face tightening, before she turned quickly away.

Adrian bought a pack of banana chips out of politeness. The woman gave him his change without speaking, as if contact itself carried a weight she did not want.

Meanwhile, Dr. Abrenica leaned toward an old man sitting across the aisle. We are traveling to Aklan, he said, voice pitched just enough to be heard. I teach at the university. We are recording old tales—the Amalanhig, the sigbin, those the young people no longer care for.

The old man stiffened. His eyes slid to the professor’s notebook, then back to the window. He muttered something that sounded like a prayer and did not answer.

Adrian lowered the camera. He could feel the shift, the way the conversation had frozen. A child beside the man pulled at his sleeve, whispering. The man hushed the child, staring determinedly outside.

The professor frowned, undeterred. He scribbled a line in his notebook: Fear strengthens the tale. Silence is testimony.

The bus roared back to life, leaving behind the vendors waving their unsold snacks. Soon the road curved, opening to glimpses of the sea, gray and restless. Palms lined the shore, bending in the wind as if bowing to something unseen.

At Roxas City in Capiz, passengers shuffled on and off. The bus paused near a roadside eatery where the smell of frying garlic and oil spilled into the aisles. Some passengers stretched their legs. A woman boarded with a bundle of dried fish tied in straw. She sat two rows ahead, close enough for Adrian to see her stiffen when Abrenica spoke again.

We hope to visit the caves near Kalibo, the professor told her. The people there used to say the Amalanhig lurk in the earth, not the sky. Have you heard—

Before he could finish, she crossed herself. The motion was sharp, as if warding off an offense. She turned her face away, her lips moving in a quick prayer.

Adrian caught it all on camera—the professor’s intensity, the woman’s fearful gesture. But when he played the clip back, it looked ordinary, almost laughably so. No one watching the footage would feel the chill he felt in his own chest, the weight of unspoken warning.

The bus pulled out of Roxas and the sky began to change. Afternoon clouds gathered thick, heavy with rain, casting the landscape in a strange, bruised light. Adrian wrote quickly in his diary, the page jostling with the bumps of the road:

They do not want to talk. They do not want us to know. When Professor speaks of the Amalanhig, it is as if the air itself stiffens. I tell myself it is only superstition. But why does silence feel heavier than words?

The bus left Capiz behind and entered Aklan as the first drops of rain struck the windows. At first it was only a drizzle, tapping faintly against the glass, but soon the downpour thickened, blurring the world into shifting streaks of gray.

Adrian pressed his camera against the window, trying to capture the motion of rain across the fields. Carabaos lumbered slowly through the mud, their hides shining slick under the water. Here and there, nipa huts hunched against the weather, their thatched roofs dripping steadily.

The professor, however, seemed unaffected by the storm. He leaned forward, scribbling more furiously than before. Adrian could see fragments of words on the notebook’s page: Amalanhig. Burial ground. Silence. Fear = memory preserved.

Professor, Adrian said softly, maybe we should rest? It’s still a long ride.

But Dr. Abrenica only shook his head. Do you hear it, Adrian? The storm is a kind of veil. Old people used to say the dead walk easier when rain falls—they move unseen. If the Amalanhig were to stir now, they would choose such weather.

Adrian turned quickly back to the window. His reflection stared at him from the glass, but in the rain-distorted light, it looked wrong—his face stretched, the eyes hollowed into shadows. For a heartbeat he thought someone else was looking back at him. He blinked, and the reflection was normal again.

The bus slowed as it wound through a small roadside barangay. Children stood barefoot at the edge of the muddy road, their clothes clinging to their skin. Some waved at the bus, smiling shyly. Others simply stared, their eyes wide and unblinking. Adrian lifted the camera, zooming in on one girl who did not wave, did not smile. She simply watched, her face pale against the backdrop of rain. The camera’s red light blinked as it recorded, and in that instant, she lifted her hand—not to wave, but to point at him.

Adrian’s chest tightened. He lowered the camera, searching for her through the window. But by then the bus had already lurched forward, and the figure blurred into the rain.

He glanced at Dr. Abrenica, but the professor was still writing, oblivious. Adrian scribbled a rushed line in his diary:

A child pointed. Not waving, not greeting—pointing directly at me. I don’t know why, but it felt like an accusation. Or a warning.

As the bus pressed deeper into Aklan, the sky darkened prematurely. The rain battered harder against the roof, drowning out most conversation. Passengers hunched in their seats, heads bowed, as though they too sensed the weight of the journey. Adrian wondered if anyone else had seen the girl. He dared not ask.

The road narrowed. Palms bent low over the highway, their leaves shaking violently in the storm. The glass fogged from the temperature inside, and the windows became mirrors again. Adrian wiped a circle clear with his sleeve, and for a second he swore the figure reflected there was not himself but the old man from earlier—the one who had fallen silent when Amalanhig was mentioned.

He snapped his eyes shut, clutching the camera tightly.

By the time the bus rolled past Kalibo, the rain had dwindled to a mist. The capital town glowed with damp lights—tricycles buzzed through puddles, headlights reflecting like broken glass, and roadside eateries sizzled with the smell of garlic and frying fish. Yet even here, where life seemed ordinary, Adrian felt the same quiet stares.

At one corner, a group of teenagers huddled under the eaves of a sari-sari store. When Abrenica leaned across the aisle and muttered, almost proudly, We’re here for the Amalanhig, one of the boys spat to the ground. Another raised his hand in a hurried sign of the cross. The laughter that had filled the group a moment earlier fell flat, replaced by silence.

The professor only chuckled, jotting something in his notebook. Fear preserves, he said under his breath, as if savoring the words. They know what lingers here.

Adrian turned back to his lens, but the camera felt heavier now, as though it resisted being lifted. He filmed anyway: the streets slick with rain, the women balancing baskets of vegetables on their hips, the neon signs flickering against a sky that had already surrendered to dusk.

The bus pressed onward, and Kalibo gave way to long, unlit stretches of road. Shadows stretched across the fields, bending into the highway as if the dark itself was creeping closer. Adrian leaned his head against the cold glass, letting the hum of the engine lull him into something like sleep.

But then—half-dreaming, half-awake—he thought he heard it. A sound beneath the engine, beneath the rain, like the dragging of bare feet on wet ground. He lifted his head sharply, heart pounding, but there was nothing except the steady thrum of tires and the occasional bark of a dog as the bus passed lonely houses.

By the time