Garden Residents

I used to work in the graveyard shift (yeah, a call center). That day, I came home from work at about 9 in the morning. There's a 25 feet distance from our gate to our house because of our front yard (or garden as we call it because of the overgrown trees and abundance of green things growing).

I walked through the garden to reach our front door but stopped midway when I noticed something off. The branches on the right side of the tree nearest to our house have been chopped off. My mom would often cut some branches when they grow all over the place and become fire hazards. What's unusual is that only one tree was trimmed, and a third of that tree's branches, all of them from the right side, were cut. The left side of the tree's branches were pretty much left alone.

So I went inside our house and asked my mom who "remodeled" the tree. In hushed tones, she said our neighbor, Len (not her true name), hired someone for the job. According to Len, her nephew was down with fever the night before. Their room was on the second floor with a full view of our roof and a little of the garden. As they were getting ready to sleep, she noticed her nephew unmoving and staring straight out of the window for quite some time.

She stood next to him and asked "Anong tinitingnan mo dyan?" (What are you looking at out there?).

"Yung mamang nakaitim, nakatingin sa akin," (The man dressed in black, looking at me), he replied, pointing at the tree. Shocked, she told her nephew to go to sleep.

The next day, Len related her story to mom and asked permission to cut off the branches that were near their window. Mom advised her to offer some food and talk to the tree spirit (or elemental - I don't know what to call it) before cutting off the branches. Len's nephew hasn't seen the man again.

Maybe it's the fever, the kid's wild imagination or something else, but it sure spooked me out. We do have instances where some of my mom's friends (and a few neighbors) experienced getting hit by pebbles (out of nowhere) or heard someone calling their attention in the garden when no one's around. It usually occurs when they go in uninvited.

My mom, my siblings and I do not have any supernatural experiences here at home. We've lived here all of our lives. But my dad said that years ago, when my youngest sister was a toddler, he would arrive really late from work and find her playing with some invisible friends. Often, they remain invisible to my dad but there were times when he would catch glimpses of the little garden dwende (dwarf) keeping my sister entertained late at night (when he comes home from work).

I fervently hope that I don't see any of them - the man dressed in black or the dwende. You see, I have a nasty habit of hanging out in the garden and looking up at the trees and the sky for hours at night while listening to my mp3 player.