Wounded Little Gods Read online

  “What a stupid topic to bring up,” Diana said.

  “It’s all right.”

  “Do you know that I even began writing these ideas into this game I’m working on?”

  “A game?”

  “Yes. Do you play?” Diana stood up, not waiting for her reply. “Let me show you something.”

  She talked as she opened windows on her PC. “I have some notes and I’ve started working on an interactive environment. Just something to play with. Try this. It’s more virtual tour right now than game, actually.”

  Regina sat in the computer chair softened with about ten throw pillows, and moved the mouse. Onscreen were four buildings that, due to the crude CG, looked more like steel boxes with holes. The grass like shards of green glass. Three flies were painted on one wall of the nearest building. Two of the insects, separated by a plus sign, had red eyes; the one beneath, preceded by an arrow, had white eyes. Regina recognized this. For some reason, she wanted to impress Diana. The flies were fruit flies, and they referred to Thomas Hunt Morgan’s experiments with—what was the scientific name for fruit fly? Droso-something—Anyway—fruit flies, which proved that genetic changes could happen outside of inheritance, and which he used to criticize eugenics.

  Is there a prize for people who solved Easter eggs? Regina wanted to say, feeling clever, but then Diana moved the mouse again and swiped the screen to the right.

  More sharp blades of grass, now dotted with gold. Palay. Rice ready for harvest.

  In the far distance, an outline of a house with what seemed to be a broken roof. Regina stared at this in disbelief. She knew this house, and would recognize this house and that telltale bend of its roof in a heartbeat. As a child she passed by it nearly every day with her parents. It was where Ka Edgar lived. It was abandoned after the old man died, and the roof caved in after a storm.

  So instead of the Easter egg quip, all Regina could think to say was Are you from Heridos, and do we know each other? as she turned to Diana to demand an explanation.

  Diana, sitting on an ottoman she had pulled from one corner of the apartment, stared at the computer screen with tears flowing from her eyes. Regina was shocked and disturbed by this.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  Diana’s reflexes were slow. She turned her head, stared at Regina for a few unnerving seconds, and said, “Hm?”

  “You know what,” Regina said, thinking, I’m too tired to get involved in this, “I think the streets are manageable now. I should get out of your hair.”

  Diana blinked and wiped her face with an open palm. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I could take the train.” Lie. It was already 11 PM, and the MRT was already closed.

  “Let me get your bag.”

  It took Diana a while to retrieve Regina’s bag from the floor. She wondered if Diana was on medication and if it was okay to leave her alone.

  “Will you be all right?” Regina asked as Diana handed her bag to her.

  Diana looked surprised by this. What? Me? Why wouldn’t I be? “Of course.” As though she had not been crying just five minutes ago. “Take care of yourself, okay?”

  “See you on Monday?” Regina said.

  “Sure.”

  Lie. Regina did not see Diana on Monday. Or the next day. Or the day after that. The office assumed Diana hated the job too much to even tender a proper resignation and just decided to go AWOL (which in the office was a frequent enough occurrence). Regina was worried. On Wednesday, she told HR about Diana’s inexplicable crying on Friday night (omitting the part where Diana started talking at length about Nazi experiments and genocide), and accompanied her supervisors to Diana’s building. They met Diana’s landlord, who said he had not seen Diana around but that she had already paid her rent for the month.

  Of course they couldn’t bring the police in on it (“Maybe she just went on vacation!”), even though their emails to Diana’s address went unanswered, they couldn’t contact the numbers, emergency or otherwise, that she had written in her employment records, and the provincial address and previous employers she had provided them turned out to be nonexistent. Who knew? Maybe she had even given them a fake name. HR didn’t look into unimportant things like character references, so the office didn’t know anyone else who knew Diana beyond her name.

  On Thursday night, Regina cleared out her bag and found a folded piece of paper in one of the pockets.

  On Friday night she was on a bus that would take her to Heridos. She had not been home for months and her mother had been giving her hell for it. Might as well make the trip, she thought, even though, of course, she had other concerns.

  When Regina unfolded the piece of paper, it showed a map on one side and two names on the other.

  The paper was old, stained with coffee, and creased from being folded and unfolded repeatedly. The map was drawn and annotated with a black pen. Regina knew from internal office missives (Kindly handle—Can you please—TY!) that it was Diana’s own handwriting.

  It was a very simple map. Just shapes and lines. One big square to the right was marked EAC FARM. Edgar A. Cajucom was the old man’s full name. An arrow pointing to the bottom of the page was marked TOWN PROPER, followed by several squares marked Hospital and Town Hall and Mall/Ukay Place and Big Church and Market. Big Church (actually the National Shrine of St. Therese) was exactly what they called the church in the town proper, because the Little Church (a small square at the top of the page) was an abandoned chapel at the edge of Ka Edgar’s property. To the left of the page were rectangles and squares marked Elementary/High School and Residential and Old Farms. The school was a big property that had already been abandoned. Now, out-of-towners used it to shoot prenups and horror specials. Residential was composed of several squares, several houses now also abandoned. Between two Old Farms were two parallel lines flowing to the left of the page and beyond marked Diversion Road to Malolos.

  At the very center of the page were five squares, with an X in one of the squares. No label, just that black X.

  This didn’t make sense to Regina. Everything else was correct, but there weren’t any buildings near Ka Edgar’s old farm.

  She turned the page over and saw:

  Loretta Juni

  Emil Macaraeg

  The names meant nothing to her.

  Regina planned to only call her mother (“Did they happen to build a mall near Ka Edgar’s place?”), but the moment the call connected her mother said, “So when are you coming home?”

  As usual, the moment Regina stepped foot in their house her parents bombarded her with various updates about her aunts, uncles, cousins, former neighbors, and people she had not heard of before but whom her parents deemed important or interesting enough to warrant an update.

  Her parents’ story was the story of any other couple in Heridos, give or take one element. They were (1) in their fifties who had children in their twenties. They were (2) one of ten or more siblings. They (3) started working very young, (4) paid for their own education, and (5) worked in the city after college before returning to Heridos to raise a family.

  When Regina turned seven, her father left to do blue-collar work in Taipei for five years, and her mother ran their newly opened grocery store. They saved enough money to finish the construction of the two-story house where they now lived.

  Now her parents manned the store full-time, opening up at two in the morning and closing down at five in the afternoon, not changing their schedule or their lifestyle even after both of their children had finished college. They were used to hard labor. They had no use for expensive gourmet food or art films. They went to Church on Sundays, slept early, and woke up early.

  Sometimes Regina wondered if they had regrets, if her father ever wished he had just stayed in Taipei, or if her mother had desires beyond raising children and living in this town, but she didn’t dwell on these thoughts. In her mind her parents were always content, always happy.

  “So is your brother coming home?” her father asked when they met her at the gate.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why won’t the two of you coordinate? Come home at the same time at least once so your mother will have a reason to cook me a nice dinner.”

  They sat down for some caldereta. This was Regina’s favorite part of coming home, eating a meal that did not come from a can.

  Her mother kept her up-to-date with her running tally of who’s dead, alive, married, pregnant.

  “Can you believe that Jocelyn is already turning three this year?” she said.

  “Who’s Jocelyn?”

  “Diyos ko, your cousin Maia’s daughter! Don’t you remember?”

  “Oh, is Maia the one who got pregnant in high school?”

  “And she’s pregnant again. With twins.”

  “What?”

  “Well, she’s married to the boy now,” her father said, in a tone that seemed to say, That should fix it!

  “Did you know that Mr. Soriano’s passed on?” her mother said.

  “Who’s Mr. Soriano?”

  “Ano ka ba, your father’s friend, the masahista? We used to go visit him in Sto. Rosario, don’t you remember? He’d give us foot massages. Your father would fall asleep during a back massage. Remember?”

  “Oh, him. That’s too bad.”

  “You remember your cousin Sonia’s boyfriend, Arthur? He was your age, got hit by a truck last month.”

  “Yikes,” Regina said, and thought, Well, what else could you say to that?

  “He went home drunk, drove home on his motorcycle,” her father said. “Ayun.”

  “Do you know what happened to Len-len?” her mother said.

  “Who in the world is Len-len?” said Regina.

  And so on.

  Before her parents
went to bed, Regina stood by their door and said, “Is there anything being built near Ka Edgar’s property? A mall? A house?”

  Her parents looked at each other. “I don’t think so,” her father replied.

  “Last I heard the family’s still looking for a buyer for that land,” her mother said. “They had barbed wire around the old farm and the old man’s house. With that big sign.”

  “Do you know someone named Loretta Juni?”

  “I know some Junis in San Jose,” said her father. “I don’t remember a Loretta.”

  “How about Emil Macaraeg?”

  “I think there’s a Dr. Macaraeg at the hospital,” her mother said.

  “The hospital here in town?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” Regina said, filing away this information. “Someone at work used to live here in Heridos, asked me if I knew these people.”

  “What’s the name of your office mate?”

  “Diana de Leon.”

  Her parents looked at each other and shrugged. “Don’t know any Dianas,” her mother said, and her father added, hopeful, “There are some De Leons in Sta. Rita.”

  Regina shrugged. “I don’t know her too well, anyway. Good night.”

  She went to her room and called her brother. Her bedspread was new and crisp and smelled like fabric softener. Her faux-gold-gilded wooden certificate from kindergarten was still on the wall. She was surrounded by old things: old books, old photos with her old friends from high school, her old life.

  “Aren’t you going home?” she asked. Her brother’s voice sounded tiny.

  “No. I have work to finish. What’s up?”

  “Do you know anyone named Diana de Leon?”

  “No. Who’s that?”

  “Never mind. Do you know that Mr. Soriano’s dead?”

  “Who’s that?”

  “The masahista? You remember him? He had this little black massager that went brrrrrrrmmmmm.”

  Luciano was laughing. “What?”

  “That was my approximation of the sound of a massager.”

  Luciano laughed for a good ten seconds, and turned serious. “Sure, I remember him. That’s too bad.”

  “How about Len-len?” she said. “You know what happened to Len-len?”

  “Who the hell is Len-len?”

  And so on, until she got sleepy.

  The next day she got ready to look for the square marked with an X on Diana’s map.

  Regina hated Heridos during the summer. In fact, she hated everything during the summer—humidity was high, temperature could peak at the mid-30s, and she could get ready for the day at an early hour and still feel like she just stepped into a sauna. She woke up on Saturday at 7 AM not because her alarm clock was blaring, but because it was too damn hot. After breakfast and a shower, she put on a pair of shorts and the thinnest shirt she could find in her cabinet. She was already damp with sweat by the time she stepped out of the gates under an umbrella.

  She hailed a tricycle and chatted with the elderly driver, his leathered face crinkling as he smiled at her. She paid him, got off the tricycle, and shaded her eyes against the glare of the sun as she read the sign looming in front of her—CAJUCOM PROPERTY PRIVATE PROPERTY NO TRESPASSING—all the while wondering why she was going through all this hassle for a girl she had only known for at most two weeks.

  But she was curious, and she was here, and now she trudged up the path alongside the barbed wire fence, her phone in hand. She didn’t want to sweat on the paper (it could be a vital piece of evidence in the event that Diana turned up dead, a notion that Regina didn’t want to entertain at length) so she took a photo of both pages last night, and kept the paper in her bag where she first found it.

  The barbed wire coils were rusty; the wooden poles they were attached to pockmarked with termite holes. She traversed the length of the fence and entered a heavily wooded track. She stopped to zoom in on the image on her phone. If the map were correct, the X should be right—

  Here?

  Regina lowered her phone and looked around. There was nothing there, just more trees and tall grass. She walked out of the track, turned right, and walked some more—It’s exercise, she told herself, wiping sweat from her face, Good cardio and shit—until she reached the chapel, the white walls now moldy and overrun with vines, like some set piece from a post-apocalyptic movie.

  She turned back. Ka Edgar’s house with its crooked roof was on her left. She remembered Diana’s game, the fruit flies (and now she remembered the scientific name for them, Drosophila melanogaster), and the house in the far distance.

  Should she move deeper into the wooded area?

  Well, it would be cooler there, Regina thought.

  She followed the wooded track and was surprised when the trees opened up into a clearing.

  It took Regina several minutes of horrified staring, looking around, and checking her mental state before she finally accepted that this was happening. She had heard stories of people in town finding a path that was not there before, entering an immaculate room that had in fact burned down years ago, getting lost inside their own house—but they were stories from her childhood, and weren’t they like getting held-up or kidnapped, the sort of things that happened to other people?

  But it was also highly possible that she had simply missed this spot.

  Yes, she thought, stepping into the clearing and making sure her phone still had a signal. Let’s go with that.

  Five steps in and the undergrowth beneath her shoes turned to grass and then to pavement. She emerged on a sidewalk. Up ahead was a collection of buildings. It was like stepping into her university right after the end of summer classes. It had the same silence, the same air of abandonment.

  The buildings were gray and white, streamlined and modern, unadorned. They didn’t look new but they didn’t look like they had been left behind for years, like the forsaken chapel. They made Regina think of hospitals, which made her think of cemeteries, which made her think, I really shouldn’t be thinking of cemeteries right now.

  There were four three-story buildings arranged in a square. Regina approached the nearest and peered in through the open windows. She saw a room; empty save for a wooden desk and a couple of metal chairs. A breeze blew, and dried leaves skittered across the dusty floor, like tiny feet, or claws.

  The place was making her skin crawl. She was just about to turn back when she saw a monument through the building’s double doors. It was in the middle of the grassy quadrangle that the four buildings boxed in. Regina glanced back once to make sure that the path through the clearing was still there, that she still had phone signal, and walked around the building toward the huge slab of black granite. The words were carved into the stone and painted silver:

  MAXIMILLIAN FORTES CENTER FOR HEREDITY AND GENETICS

  EST. 1976

  A SATELLITE FACILITY

  OF THE

  NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

  Is this the X? she thought, placing her hand on the warm stone. She looked up, and twenty feet away was a house.

  It looked just like any bungalow in town. If it were on her street, Regina wouldn’t have looked twice at its peeling peach paint, its rusty red roof, its window grills, its floral print curtains, and that tiny chime hanging above the gleaming brown door. But it was a bungalow in the middle of a quadrangle of what could be a research facility.

  Regina took photos of the monument and the house with her phone. The house somehow made her less afraid of the place, as though the house, despite being out of place, added a dose of normalcy to the Maximillian Fortes Center for Heredity and Genetics.

  She walked over to it and was just about to reach the door when a female voice said, “Doreen?”

  Regina shrieked.

  “Doreen?” the voice said again. It was coming from inside the house.

  The door opened and “Doreen?” the woman said, nearly crashing into Regina in her haste before shrinking back just as fast and using the door as a shield.

  “You’re not Doreen,” she said, peeking from behind the door. The woman was older than Regina; she was perhaps in her mid-20s, pretty, but with tired eyes. These eyes were scanning Regina’s face now.

  “Hi,” Regina said. “I’m looking for someone.” She took the map from her bag and showed it to the woman.

  The woman emerged from behind the door and took the piece of paper. She was wearing a dress and a shawl. A shawl in this heat? Regina felt suffocated just by looking at her.