There was too much to write, he thought. Perhaps the length of one evening would never be enough for him to pen down every crucial piece in his mind. The stream of words would come out eventually. Writing was something he could do anytime. The only question there was right now was how enough would the evening flow in length in accord with the things he would want to write down. The final words they would hear of me.
The prison room was poorly lit. Aside from the oil lamp on the table, the room was barely illuminated by a few faint rays from the moon passing through the metal grates that spanned the length of the window beside where the table was. All the corners were dim. Void. The dance made by the tiny light of the oil lamp could not keep a steady eye on those corners, which in turn made the doctor put them as a background for the swarm of thoughts inside his head. Was he desperate? Was he grieving?
A while ago he had seen a man walk out of one of the corner’s shadows. He knew the man very well. He might have been him actually. The man was just a mirror reflection of the very person that he was—it was him who created that man.
“What will happen now, doctor?” the stranger asked.
“The people will know what to do,” the doctor answered, looking up eagerly at him. Or it was rather an expression of fright.
“Will they?”
“They will. Eventually. In time.”
“You’ve worked all your life to open their eyes to the truth, doctor. I don’t doubt they will know what to do, eventually and in time. But what I wanted to know is what will happen now?”
“I’ve had my share of the sorrows, my friend. What will happen is that they’re going to kill me—I will no longer be here before the next day would pass. I will be going back to my Creator, and it’s up to the people left to keep on with the struggle.”
“What you gave to the people is freedom through peaceful means, doctor. What the country needs is a revolution.”
“They will know.”
“You killed me. You threw the lamp into the waters and left the hope dangling.”
The doctor looked through the eyes of the figure with his own fierce eyes. “What do you want, Ibarra?”
“You will know, doctor,” Crisostomo Ibarra replied before he turned his back slowly and walked his way back into the shadows of the corner of the room. And just as the figure vanished among the empty dark, another voice rolled around the room, a voice he remembered very well.
“Pepe.”
“Inang?”
Walking from the shadows of another corner of the room, his old mother was carrying a small bundle of blankets over her arms. But it was not just a bundle of blankets. It was a newborn wrapped completely by some amount of cloth soiled with mud in many places. He felt a nerve twitch painfully inside his heart when he saw it. That was exactly how he had wrapped his dead son before he buried it under his hut back in Dapitan.
He stood up immediately and moved toward his mother and the dead boy. Teodora Alonzo was crying, her tears visibly falling on the corpse she was cradling on her arms.
“Inang—”
“What’s going to happen, Pepe?” his mother asked the same question, now coming to him tearfully. “Who will die? How many more will die?”
The doctor looked at the woman with heavy eyes, aiming to seize the time to speak, but could not get another word to push out of his mouth. Beamed by the scanty light of the moon, the dead infant’s face looked like some molded Plasticine that had apparently started to decay. He looked at it with some reticent bliss, thinking it would not be long now before he was going to see him again in the place after this life. My son, my son. The feeling of relief somehow washed away the desperation heightened up in his head which filled with rambling thoughts. He averted his eyes toward the face of his mother, and she looked at him now as if she was going to smile, in contrast to the outburst she showed a moment ago.
“Everything will be alright, Inang,” the doctor at last spoke. “Everything will be alright. My death will spark a hope among the people, and they will know what to do. The time is coming.”
“The people will look up to you, Pepe.”
“And it’s a shame to die at the height of it all, sir.” Suddenly another voice stole the current scene of the prison room, grabbing the attention of the doctor and made it go on a complete turn. A figure gradually emerged from behind the one of his mother. As it moved forward toward him, it passed through the woman and left it as a thin perturbed smoke which then slowly fell into complete disappearance as it did actually vanished inside the head of Dr. Rizal. His attention was now on the newcomer, a figure that did not belong in any of the current swarm of thoughts inside his head.
“Who are you?” he asked.
The man did not look like a Spaniard or a Filipino. He was clad in a neat set of dark coat and tie, almost invisible in camouflage with the dark corner behind him. He spoke a smooth tone of English which readily made the doctor associate with an American. He was actually one.
“My name is Henry Sturges, doctor,” the man answered, offering his hand for a shake. “It will be a pleasure to meet and finally speak to you.”
“I’m Jose Rizal,” the doctor returned, slightly hesitating.
“Yes, I know you. I have been watching your whereabouts for the past few years.”
“The past few years?” Dr. Rizal stared at him in surprise.
“Yes, doctor. I know all about your travels. I know all about your ideals. And I find you interesting.”
This time the face of the doctor turned sour. “Were you following me? Who really are you? Are you a spy of the Spanish government?”
“Easy, doctor. I’m not here to cause you any trouble or harm. I looked up to you and your abilities, and maybe I could in fact be of help.”
“What are you talking about? I am not getting any of what you are saying anymore. Why are you here, by the way?”
“I’m here to offer you a choice, doctor. It is a choice that may help you in any way of your cause. And most of all I’m here to tell you a truth that had been kept a secret and a mystery throughout the ages. It’s kept reduced merely as a myth, a bedtime story for children. Something many of us don’t believe, which I will no doubt receive a similar side from you.”
“I don’t understand you, sir. I have a lot to write about tonight. Tomorrow is my execution and I can’t afford to pass this night without composing my final thoughts to leave to the people. If you’re just a fabrication of my mind, then I’m telling you I have to quell you right now. I don’t know how I got to mend something like you inside my head, but I really don’t need you this time. Especially this time.”
“You can try washing me off, doctor. Go try.”
The doctor threw himself back on his seat by the table and quickly grabbed his pen. He moved his hand over the stack of paper on one side of the table and resumed writing. His head bowed down and eyes adhered to the paper, he wrote in his usual swift strokes, thinking that the stranger was no longer in the room with him. But he was wrong. His eyes moved up with his head still bowed down, trying to catch a glimpse of the man, at least his shadow on the floor before him, and expecting to see nothing of it this time. Henry Sturges was still there however.
“I’m sorry to upset you, doctor,” Henry spoke.
“You’re supposed to be gone by now.”
“Again, my apologies that I may only upset you, doctor. But quelling me out of your head, just like what you said, is simply impossible. You can’t do that, is what I’m saying.”
The doctor gave out a short sarcastic laugh. “You’re starting to get funny, sir.”
“Henry, doctor.”
“Yes, Henry. It is I who may upset you, actually. In a short time, say five seconds, you’ll vanish like a popped bubble. In five, four, three, two—”
Nothing happened. Henry was still standing in his place.
“Doctor? I’m still here.”
“Let’s count again. Five, four…”
“No, doctor. We don’t need another round of your disappointment. You see, I’m real. I’m no fabrication of your rather expansive mind.”
“What do you want from me, Henry!”
“I want to give you a chance to pursue what you have started, doctor.”
A series of silent seconds followed after that statement. Dr. Rizal could not look at the stranger before him with anything other than a touch of surprise in his face. His thoughts had gone in a haze, out of control, reduced to a state of complete chaos.
Henry walked toward the sealed window beside the table and took a couple of seconds looking up at the sky outside. Tranquil and still, the moon beamed its rays all over his face and his complexion shone as bright as the moonlight that bounced over it. The doctor was seeing this in aghast. The mystery of this strange man had become more and more suggested as time went by.
“As a child, have you been sent to bed by your mother at night and then told stories about strange creatures that roam the land and bring around macabre and frightful scare, doctor? Have you been scared with supernatural tales during those times?”
“What are you talking about? What’s that to do with our situation here?”
“Do you believe in ghosts, doctor? Witches? Lycanthropes?” Henry paused for a split of a second, wanting to draw some height on the next word he was going to say: “Vampires?”
“This isn’t making any sense, sir.”
“It will.” From the moon outside the window, Henry shifted the direction of his eyes toward the doctor and showed him a wide grin—a terrifying, wide grin. Two sharp canines sprouted from either side of his smile and made his over-all countenance a picture of grimacing terror. The doctor was in utter disbelief, all color in his skin seemingly drained from fear. The air passing in between them became very cold for the doctor to handle. He felt he was freezing to death from what he was witnessing.
Henry erased the smile he put out from his face. His teeth now hidden from view, the doctor was then subsequently able to gather himself, as if seeing that monstrous indication was like putting him under a spell of catatonia.
“Stay back, sir!” he exclaimed, walking a few steps backward.
“I suggest you keep your voice low, doctor. Catching a few more set of ears won’t do us any good here right now. Calm down.”
“God help us!”
“Relax, doctor. You don’t have any reason to fear me, that is, if you are. Either way, I would suggest that you calm yourself down, return on the chair, and listen to me. This is very important.”
“And you expect me to do such things? You’re a…you’re a vampire, for God’s sake!”
“Yes, a vampire in the same room with you. A vampire who wants to talk things with you. Please, doctor, if you would just listen to me.”
The doctor was now drawing a series of heavy breaths while staring frightfully at the vampire. The moonlight reflecting on Henry’s face turning it more sinister, and all the while his pale lips mumbling and asking for trust.
Lend me your ears, doctor. Let me tell you a story about a hideous vampire—
“Here, sit down.” Henry pushed the chair to a little distance toward the doctor. Slowly, cautiously, Dr. Rizal moved to take the chair. His eyes were still locked on Henry nevertheless. “That’s it. That’s it.”
“This is a dream, you know. A product my mind has made out of sheer desperation.”
“It may be a dismay to know that it isn’t true, doctor. I am real.”
Dr. Rizal had sat down.
As the silence passed off between them, Henry slipped his hand inside his coat and fumbled something inside his pocket. From it he drew a booklet out and thrust it forward on the table, looking intently at the yet stirred doctor.
“This is part of the diary of a good friend of mine,” he spoke. “Like myself, he’s also a vampire.”
Dr. Rizal picked the diary up and started to open the pages. He skimmed over them, not really finding interest. Not even reading a single word from any of the pages. He was however curious whose diary it was.
“A man named Abraham Lincoln,” Henry said.
The doctor caught the name with surprise, and immediately returned to the diary, skimming again over the pages with an intention to read now. From random pages his eyes were catching the words “President,” “Office,” “Gettysburg,” “Vampires.” He stopped abruptly on the last word. Lincoln mentioning vampires in his diary?
“I would have wanted the two of you to meet, doctor,” Henry spoke, noticing the look of doubt and surprise on the face of Dr. Rizal. “But the president has become busy these past few months with his duties in the Circle.”
“The Circle?”
“A group of vampires, doctor. Our group. With the most recent members being Abraham Lincoln and Edgar Allan Poe.”
Dr. Rizal nodded briefly, with still a trace of doubt mingled with the gesture. Doubt had been consistently existent in the doctor’s thoughts since Henry had appeared. But who could blame him? It is not everyday that someone barges into your room and tells you he is a vampire—and that the great Abraham Lincoln and Edgar Allan Poe are vampires as well.
“This group of yours,” the doctor spoke, “what do you aim for? What are your objectives in forming such a group?”
“We are group of vampires who support the betterment of the majority, doctor. We are consisted of members who have ideals and a rather rational outlook on the world. We aren’t just the stereotyped vampires the myths have smeared our name with.”
“I think that needs further elaboration for my sake, Henry.”
“I understand so, doctor. I also see the need of it. And there are some things you have to know too.”
The doctor put aside the diary of Lincoln and heaved a sigh. The look on his face was one of deep contemplation, apparently reaching for his wit’s end to imbibe everything into his system completely. The night drawing nearer to its death, Henry suggested that they proceed at once with their impending discourses.
“There have been vampires over the course of time, doctor. Countless of them have roamed around the world, existing adjacent to the living, oftentimes feasting on them. Atrocities relating to vampires are more rampant than those that aren’t—those done by the very evil of humans.”
“You know these vampires?”
“Some of them I do. Many names have endured throughout the centuries, some of them you may have known. Elizabeth Bathory. Vlad the Impaler. Ring a bell?”
“And they are still walking the Earth up to this day?”
Henry nodded.
“They are part of the Circle?”
“No, no, no. Of course not.”
“All this time I thought the world could no longer be more perilous.”
“We already have a constant eye on Bathory. The Impaler we are still tracking down. Currently he has been the most hunted vampire outside the Circle.”
“He could strike anytime then.”
“Anytime, you say. In fact, the latest cases we attributed to him just happened within the last decade.”
Dr. Rizal looked at him questioningly.
“1888. You know him as the Ripper.”
“Jack the Ripper?”
“Yes, he is, doctor.”
“That’s unbelievable. Almost.”
Henry was pleased with the nascent progress of the doctor’s interaction with him, and he felt it was the right time to get to the core of the matters at hand.
“But the Ripper is not the concern we have right now, doctor. I’m here because I wanted to offer you a chance to see your life’s works’ progress, nevertheless as an undead. If you’re willing, then you can have the opportunity of pursuing your cause for the Filipinos.”
“I can’t see how a vampire could pursue his patriotism, but I will not deny that I am up for a bit of consideration on the offer.”
“Well I doubt if there’s a better chance you’ll have in pursuing your patriotism in the coming years if you won’t be in a form of a vampire, doctor.”
“What do you mean?”
“Because they are coming here.”
“Vampires?”
“Yes. The ones outside the Circle.”
“Why are they coming here?”
“Abraham Lincoln has wiped them off in the United States. The Civil War not only quelled the forces that are supporting behind them, but has also hurt them where they could feel pain the most—their stomachs.”
“The Civil War victory of the Union crushed the Confederacy, and abolished slavery in the States.”
“Exactly. Turns out that the slavery has been an ulterior option for vampires outside the Circle to simply acquire their meals legally.”
Dr. Rizal’s face brightened with horror.
“I and the other members of the Circle fought alongside Lincoln in the Civil War. All just to end the bitter trade of slaves and the fatal abuses of the vampires behind the South.”
The web of information about the war of the States, Abraham Lincoln, and the vampires mapped the hazy thoughts of the doctor for the next couple of minutes. After his years of struggle to win the rights of his fellow Filipinos from the colonizers, he never thought that there had been a crisis in the United States that was far more sinister than what he had known. The logical sequence of events in the history seemed very much reasonable to not surpass any doubt. He had tried being suspicious a while ago, but it proved to be bootless. The truth was already laid here in front of him, where he could not bat a blind eye.
How would a war between supernatural forces proceed? How could one win such war? And Henry said that they were coming here. Obviously to feed off from the Filipinos who could no way resist them. Patriotism after all would take more than wits to possess.
“They shall not lay their hands on my fellow countrymen,” the doctor declared.
“You know better than I do about that spirit, doctor. What I wanted to know now is either your consent or your refusal to my offer.”
Dr. Rizal fell back into another round of deep thought. Weighing sides on each of his hands, he first considered the possible effect of it on his physical body assuming it would no longer be of a human being. Vampires had been a myth for him ever since, and wondering how it would feel like to be one had never crossed his mind before.
I’m a doctor. I know a whole lot about the human body. And being a blood-sucking, pale creature was out of the question, much more being answerable by any branch of Science.
On the other hand was the fact that if he refused it now, then this would be the end of it for him. All he could ever hope was that the people would eventually find the courage to stand up for their rights after the time of his execution. During such time, he would already be but a soul walking absent of the subsequent outcomes of his hopes. What a way to end his constant struggles. There were a lot of people out there hoping and looking up to him, possibly seeing his impending death as a tragic event on their search for individuality in this country.
“Will I be engaging in an armed revolution if I give you my consent?” the doctor asked, at length.
“There will always be a need for arms, doctor,” Henry answered. “These people, they have seized you using the power of arms. They oppressed your people. You try hard to search for your place in the society they put you in, but you are still nothing but a country of oppressed people. You know better than I do on that. I have read your novels.”
Dr. Rizal gazed at the man carefully through the swaying flicker of the oil lamp. He was studying every emotion in his face. A blood-sucking hideous creature himself in fact.
“You are not the first one I approached, doctor,” Henry spoke again. “Although you were the one I have considered approaching first.”
The doctor uttered no reply, just an inquiring look at him.
“There’s a brave young man I knew. By the fire he has in his heart and the courage he has, I can see a good potential in him to carry out my offer. Andres Bonifacio.”
“I know him, certainly.”
“And he does know you too. In fact he was admiring you. When I came to him, he was holding this book, your novel I found out afterward, and has required everyone in his group to read and understand it. He is hoping you could help him in his cause to win your independence. He has seen hope in your words, doctor.”
“But he’s doing it through violent means. What the country needs is Spain’s recognition of us as part of her. To have the same set of rights as her people have.”
“I know what you believe in, doctor. Pen is mightier than the sword. But for how long?”
“Henry—”
“How long would a pen serve you? Do you have enough ink for you to reach what you aim for? How many lives, how much more blood should be spilled for nothing?”
“By spilling more blood?”
“By showing them that you can outfight them. Even to death.”
Silence ensued, and the only noise audible was the heavy breathing of the doctor.
“What happened with your meeting with Andres?” the doctor asked.
“He refused. As what I’ve expected. Being an undead would deplete the very reason he is fighting. Of course, he is fighting for the lives of the people. And he’s doing it alive.”
“And you think I would do otherwise?”
“Don’t think I do. I have much more expected the same thing from you than from Andres.”
“Why are you offering it to me now?”
“Andres told me to try. He thinks you would be bound to consider this more now that you have been sentenced to die. He says there might be a chance that you would not let an opportunity to continue the fight for freedom slip.”
“He thinks I am desperate.”
“He thinks you are wiser.”
The night was slowly falling deeper and deeper. Time was running out for the doctor.
“I have seen some of the Confederate vampires communicating with the Spaniards in this country. They are slowly leeching their way in the situation. Doctor, they are bringing the slave trade here, using your people.”
“That cannot be!”
“They’re starving. And they’re looking to acquire their food in the means of the running society. Hunting is merely a myth right now.”
Dr. Rizal fell into another ponderous state. His face had turned gravely serious this time, and Henry hoped this was finally the time he had wanted to have. They both were silent for a very long time. Henry had walked over to the window again, looking straight into the bright moon. Blinking no eye. The doctor watched the swaying light of the lamp, and recalled the story his mother had once told him.
The moth flew around the flame, mesmerized by the beauty of it. Its mother warned it not to fly any closer. But it insisted. It wanted to touch the flame. And as the distance gradually thinned out, the flame caught its wing, and the moth vanished, burned out.
Tell me what to do, Inang.
And in his mind he thought he could see her. Smiling. You know what to do, Pepe.
I know what to do.
Dr. Rizal woke up at 4 AM. A guard was standing by the door of his cell, looking straight ahead. Slowly, he sat on his bed, feeling a little dizzy. And then he remembered what happened. Or what he thought had happened.
Was it all a dream?
Starting from Abraham Lincoln, to Edgar Allan Poe, to Henry, to Elizabeth Bathory, to Vlad the Impaler, to Andres Bonifacio. Puñeta! Of course, it’s all but a dream.
“Silly. Perhaps that’s a desperate measure to ease me on my deathbed,” he whispered to himself. He laughed quietly, but the guard had heard it however and looked at him, confusion traced in his eyes.
In English, the doctor said to him, “Can you compose my last words?”
But the guard just ignored it.
The doctor stood up finally and walked to the window, feeling the kind and cold breeze of the early dawn. He looked for the sun, and deep down in his mind, he thought, Will I burn in the sunlight? Then suddenly, a sharp pain rose up to his right arm. He twisted it for a check and found something in his wrist. Two pairs of small dots, almost the same distance apart for each one, were found in both the front and the back. The pain was escalating slowly.
He touched that part with his other hand, trying to calm the nerves inside. But he felt nothing—what nerves would he calm when there seemed to be not a nerve there at all? He searched for the throb, the sign of life in that part of a human body. And one discovery led to another: No nerve, no pulse, not a human body anymore.
He happened to look over the papers on his table. A line was written on the topmost paper on the pile. He read:
Some men are just too interesting to die.
—H
