Hands sprouting from the ground

Nora Sorino

ILIGAN City–My friend, Lingling and I had some snacks in a cafe and boy, were our sense of halloween “delight” perked up by those ah, “skulls” that hung above us in different sizes but all in their same macabre, “smiling” … look.

The walls too were decorated with “spiders.”

As I looked into the menu, there too was one which said, “Death by Chocolate.” There was also another menu that was called “Sendong Overload” which the waiters said looked like mud, making light of a deadly memory of the monstrosity that was Sendong in 2011.

We then got sufficiently turned on by “allied” things.  And Lingling, over our deadly chocolate and some brewed coffee had this to tell, too, in relation to the topic — of Halloween, among others.

She said that one day, she decided to retire in her job with an international NGO as she said it was too taxing to be going abroad always. (Her latest stint was in Nepal, which she said always had that earthquake threat when she was there, but luckily for her, she was already in PH when it actually happened.)

As a “retiree,” she said she got herself busy with some hobby of sorts.

She saw a good space by the side of her spacious home in Davao and decided to do some gardening. So she had the ground she had identified, cleaned, did some weeding and turned the soil loose on it, ready for some planting, which she said she still could not decide as to what plants. She also had portions of some drift woods scattered  for good measure, over the patch of earth. Maybe, as a sort of fertilizer and she left it at that in the meantime.

Some mornings later when she visited her garden to be, she was greeted with an acrid smell.

Aside from that there were sprouts that looked weird, she said. When she looked at them closely, she was looking at “hands” sprouting from the grounds. At the base of the “hands,” there seemed to be some “bracelets.” The hands had the color of death, white.   She then caught herself destroying those wretched “hands,” she said.

But soon curiousity got the better of her and repeated the procedure. The same thing happened.

Her analytical mind then made her do some researching.

There is some kind of mushroom, she found out in her search and some associate them with demons as they  come sprouting from the grounds, complete with fingers and some of them wearing bracelets.

Try it. If you are  lucky enough, you could see those “hands” sprouting from the grounds, maybe even ready to grasp a handshake, or to beg for food.

Now, does this qualify for a halloween story?