The Haunting of Patricia Sta. Maria: May the Lord Have Mercy on Our Souls
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The rape bed was having its sheets changed.
I struggled to think of it as anything else, even though I knew how it had been changed since that night. It had been six months since Linda Tolentino had been attacked and killed in the bedroom where I now stood, and the house had been put up for sale not long after that. If the police hadn’t taken in the mattress for evidence, some realtor would probably have thrown it out into the trash and replaced it with something new and without a history.
Still, any bed in this room, in this house, would always be the rape bed.
Production assistants scrambled to put a hideously tacky bedsheet covered in blooming flowers over the mattress. Direk Jamie wanted something that showed the innocence of Linda, that “wasn’t as boring as just a plain white sheet.”
The director leaned against the wall, sipping on a tall glass of Coke as the crew bustled around the bedroom.
“Stop, stop, stop!” he said, hand flailing at the crew. “That is hideous. Who chose this?”
No one spoke up to mention that Direk Jamie had cleared it at a recent prod meeting.
“My God, get rid of it. Can we get a crisp white sheet in?”
Crew members bit their lips as they continued about their business. Between all the assistants, cameramen, sound people, and whoever else was milling about, the tiny bedroom felt like the stuffiest place in the world. Everyone had been sweating on top of each other for half an hour at this point.
Everyone knew not to argue too much, today meant too much. We were filming the climax to The Linda Tolentino Story: …Lord Deliver Us! Really, as far as most people were concerned, it was the only scene that mattered. We had come to film Linda Tolentino’s death.
The house bustled with activity from the busy production. Only one person could really relax in the whole team. My boss, Ma’am Trish, would be waiting patiently outside in a van with the engine running and the aircon at full blast.
Even before I started working for her, Patricia Sta. Maria was already the Queen of the Massacres. She’d had a death grip on that title since 1994, when The Valencia Murders: Mother Mary Protect Us dropped. Directed by Jamie Flores, it told the mostly true story of Anita Valencia and her daughters, Crista and Geraldine, who were assaulted and murdered by drugged-up gangsters in their fancy Quezon City subdivision home.
Ma’am Trish played Crista, the virginal young woman who spent most of the movie falling in love with a schoolmate before her brutal death in the climax. The critics didn’t care for it, but they had no power against the millions of pesos the movie raked in. The memory of the rape slay was so fresh, that the thought of seeing it laid bare on the big screen proved too irresistible for the public.
The imitators came rushing in from there.
Any time a girl got murdered in the Philippines, it would only take a few months for a movie about it to roll out into cinemas. And since Ma’am Trish did it so well for Crista Valencia, she was called upon to repeat the feat for other dead women as well. The Jenny Flores Story: May the Saints Save Our Souls! and The Batangas Governor Slaying: God Save Us! followed in 1994, then The True Eliza Santos Story…Jesus Have Mercy! came the year after, all with Patricia Sta. Maria to play the dead girl.
I applied to be her personal assistant right before she filmed the Eliza Santos movie.
“Last question, Steph,” said Ma’am Trish, “are you uncomfortable with the world beyond?”
“Ma’am?”
“I don’t mean to scare you, ha? But I have a very open third eye, so sometimes I see spirits, ghosts, sometimes duwende. I just don’t want to shock you.”
“It’s okay, ma’am. Actually, my parents always told me I was malapitin.”
“How so?”
“Well, when I was three years old, my mom found me playing with a box of matches in the bedroom. But they weren’t the same matches that we bought in the grocery, and besides the normal box of matches was still in the kitchen. When they asked me where I got it, I just said, ‘The man made of wind.’”
“And you remember this?”
“No, they just told me the story. My mom says I got it from her side of the family.”
Ma’am Trish hired me on the spot.
I felt bad that she saw such a similarity between us. The way she described things never really lined up with how I seemed to experience the things that couldn’t normally be explained. I never really saw things, but I always got what my mom called “impressions.” A chill down the spine just as an aunt passed away elsewhere in the city, the scent of a burning candle in an apartment where a husband had killed his wife.
“The living leave their mark on the world, and we can feel it better than anyone else,” my mother explained.
I knocked on the car window. It rolled down just low enough to expose the massive pair of sunglasses that covered most of Ma’am Trish’s face.
“Ma’am, they’re ready for you po,” I said.
“Thank you, Steph.”
The door opened, and I held the door for Ma’am Trish. I offered her my hand to help steady her as she stepped down from the van. As quick as that, I heard the clicking of cameras as the mix of paparazzi and awestruck bystanders at the end of the street tried to catch a glimpse of her. Even at half an hour past midnight, they flocked to her.
Ma’am Trish was already in costume, a simple white nightgown. She wore it with confidence—as though it were a designer dress. The crew members parted before her when we got to the bedroom.
Direk Jamie rushed to his star, taking both her hands in his. “Hija, today’s the day. Are you ready for this?”
“Of course, direk. Always ready in your capable hands.”
“That’s what I like to hear. We need your special touch on this.”
She smiled, and a hush fell upon the room.
“Everyone, quiet on set!” called Direk Jamie.
Ma’am Trish walked to the center of the room and people crammed themselves into tight corners to give her space. She placed her hands together, and said, “Everyone let’s pray.”
Everyone made the sign of the cross, and Ma’am Trish led them. “Dearest Lord, thank you for this day. Give us the strength, the courage, and the wisdom to speak truth for those that need it most. Help us to be one with Linda, so that we may share her story with the world.”
She led everyone through three Hail Marys before ending the prayer.
Ma’am Trish turned to look at the rape bed. She reached out to the fresh white sheets the crew had set down. I leaned in closer, trying to sense what she did. Nothing came through though.
“Linda,” said Ma’am Trish, lifting a hand to reach for the space above the bed. “Linda, we are here for you. Do not be afraid.”
A brief silence.
“We are here to honor you and bring your truth to light. Give us your blessing for this day.”
The actress began to tremble. I rushed forward, placing a hand on her back to give her support as she continued staring towards that empty space. I followed her gaze, but all I saw was the plaster of the wall. It felt hot under the big lights, and I began sweating.
“Please, Linda,” said Ma’am Trish. “We seek your blessing to tell your truth.”
My boss relaxed in my arms. She then regained her posture and righted herself. I knew enough to get away now that she’d gotten her control back. I retreated back to the corner of the room as Ma’am Trish continued her conversation with the dead girl.
“Thank you,” said Ma’am Trish finally. “We pray for you always.”
She got up and turned to give me a nod.
“She’s ready,” I said.
“Cut!”
I bit back a groan, a sensation that many others in the crew seemed to share. This was the tenth take now, and the thought of seeing the actors give it another go made me want to shrivel into dust.
“Caloy, I really need you to give more here,” said Direk Jamie.
“More pa, direk?”
“Yes! It needs to be wild, crazy, like you’re out of your mind on drugs. I want you to be like an animal, barely human. Show me some teeth, show me some spit! You’re foaming at the mouth for this!”
Caloy nodded, taking in the direction. “Okay, direk.”
“Ten-minute break then we go again!”
Caloy Fernandez cleared his throat and helped Ma’am Trish get up. He ran a hand through his sweaty curly hair and took a swig from some bottled water offered to him. He had mostly been doing roles on TV, playing similar roles to this—bikers, gangsters, drug dealers.
This would be his first big movie role. He played Donny Sanchez, a known troublemaker in the neighborhood that police had interrogated in connection to the murder. For one reason or another, they hadn’t been able to make an official arrest, and to date, no one had been charged with the murder of Linda Tolentino.
Direk Jamie and his screenwriters didn’t mind committing their best guess to the movie, so Caloy Fernandez’s Donny Sanchez would be the villain of it all.
I hurried to Ma’am Trish’s side to ask if she needed anything. She politely shook her head as a pair of hair and makeup artists came over to give her a retouch. Ma’am Trish idly ran her hands along the rumpled bed sheets. I could hear her skin caressing the soft white fabric.
Just then, a stench filled my nose. It took me a second to control my gag reflex. It smelled like a dead animal on the street, its raw flesh blooming its smell into the open air. Another wave of nausea came from the image, and I stumbled back from the sensation.
“Steph, are you okay?” said Ma’am Trish.
I nodded, making my head spin more from the stink. “Excuse me.”
The stench stopped assaulting me only once I got to the house’s bathroom on the second floor. Even then, its slimy foulness coated the back of my throat. My gut couldn’t take it any longer, and I vomited into the toilet five times until I felt empty. Only after did I realize the walls were probably thin enough that they could still hear me on the set.
When I finally stepped out, Ma’am Trish was waiting for me in the hall.
“Do you need to go to the hospital?”
“I’m better now,” I said, shocked to find it was true. I still didn’t feel good but my stomach had settled.
Ma’am Trish nodded, concern in her eyes. “Go have some fresh air and water first. We’ll be starting a new take in a bit anyway.”
I nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
Even from outside, I could hear the wild noises from the set. Ma’am Trish’s high-pitched voice crying out exaggerated pleas for help, with an awful growling for Caloy. For a couple of takes, he actually tried barking like a dog before Direk Jamie called cut. It all sounded far more pornographic than terrifying.
The street still hadn’t cleared of curious bystanders, drawn in by the sight of all the lights and film equipment. I imagined that a similar scene played out on the night of the murder, except then it would have been police tape and uniformed officers. Odds are the same people gathered out there on the street, watching the same house.
Upstairs, the moaning and growling started up again. A wave of laughter went through the bystanders. The sound of it made my stomach churn.
I ducked back into the house to get away from the sound of laughter, although inside wasn’t much better with the sounds of the acting above bouncing off the walls.
“Cut!”
Direk’s voice grew louder as I climbed the stairs back to the second floor. The exasperation in his voice was matched only by the exhaustion on the faces of the crew. But then, something else came through in his voice. Concern, the tone of it registering in my mind before the words did. My heart began racing.
“Patricia, are you okay?” he said.
I rushed into the bedroom, that rotten smell hitting my again. I lifted an arm up to cover my nose and powered through that wall of stench to get to the bedside. Ma’am Trish lay rigid as a board, her face contorted in discomfort. A sheen of sweat covered her brow, and she whimpered.
Caloy kneeled by the bedside next to me, holding Ma’am Trish’s hand.
“Trish, what’s going on?” he asked.
“I can’t move,” Ma’am Trish said through her ragged breath.
“Ma’am? Ma’am, we can take you to a hospital.”
“Can’t. Move.”
Her breathing grew more strained. Drawing air was a struggle.
“What happened?” I asked.
“We were just filming,” said Caloy. “She stopped screaming, and then she was like this, I don’t know.”
Another wave of that rotten smell assaulted my nose. I retched, praying to God I wouldn’t end up barfing on my boss. Behind me, Direk Jamie was demanding someone call an ambulance. The room burst into panicked activity, making the small space feel hotter and tighter than it already was.
Ma’am Trish let out a gasp, then a long cry—ugly and low, entirely unlike her acted fear.
More people crowded around her in concern. She let out another pained scream, a sound that split the air and drove everyone a step back. I took her hand and tried to lift her up off the bed, but that just made her scream again.
“We can’t move her!” I shouted over my shoulder.
I smelled it again before I saw it. But once I turned back to face the bed, the source of that rot filled my sight. A dark figure in the shape of a man lay on top of Ma’am Trish. Its flesh looked to be made of solid shadow, muscles teeming with an angry, vicious energy under a layer of dirty smoke. The figure stank of frustrated sweat and pumping hormones, as though pure testosterone surged within it.
The shadowy form turned its head to face me. There were no features anywhere to denote a face, but I knew that it looked right at me. It could tell that I could see it, and even worse, it liked that. It placed a hand—paw? claw?—over Ma’am Trish’s mouth, its head tilting as it watched me taking in the whole thing.
Ma’am Trish’s muffled whimpers came from beneath the thing’s hand, and my body finally caught up with my eyes. I let loose a scream, stumbling back away from the bed and the darkness on it. I crashed into something, sending me down to the floor in a tangle of metal, wires, and broken glass from a fallen lighting rig.
My vision blurred and a dull ache bloomed from the back of my head. All around me panicked voices cried out.
Someone came to help me up off the floor. On reflex, I looked toward the bed, and the dark thing was gone. Ma’am Trish sat upright, Caloy holding her hand and sitting by her as she caught her breath. She looked at me with tired and confused eyes.
She hadn’t seen a thing.
After that night, I read everything I could about Linda Tolentino. There wasn’t much in the newspapers outside of the fact that she was twenty-one and working as a teller at a bank in Quezon City. She’d been dating an officemate who had never been suspected because he had several people confirming he’d been out drinking with friends on the night of the murder. A month away from the movie’s scheduled release date, and her killer had yet to be arrested. When last asked, a captain from the Philippine National Police stated that Donny Sanchez had been cleared of suspicion.
The studio had sent over some copies of police files for Ma’am Trish to study for the role. She’d never touched them as far as I knew, and I’d stored them in a spare room in her large house. I dusted them off, hoping I’d find out more about the dead woman.
I skimmed over the photos of her corpse and autopsy reports. Everyone knew her dead, but I had an aching need to find out what she might have been like alive. Crime scene officers had taken several pictures of the bedroom and house. The vanity she kept in her bedroom was littered with hair product, makeup of varying prices, gels, and creams. Around the mirror, she’d stuck photos of herself out with friends, family, or with her boyfriend.
She liked to read cheap romance pocketbooks. The police had found a small bookshelf stacked with them. An old notebook had been found stuffed into a drawer. Not a diary but just a dog-eared list of recipes probably passed down from generations. There were no pets in the house, but there’d been a row of potted plants out in the garden that seemed well-tended.
Her bedsheets were baby blue, not white.
When asked, no one interviewed could think of anyone that Linda had done wrong. A few jilted ex-boyfriends had been interrogated by police, but all of them had been cleared from suspicion for one reason or another. As far as anyone was concerned, the killer likely didn’t have any close connection to her.
The more I read up on her, the less I felt like I’d ever really know her. She existed beyond the borders of crime scene photos and witness testimony. That house I’d spent a few hours in had been bare of her presence. And that thing that had crushed Ma’am Trish beneath its weight, that couldn’t have been her. I knew for certain that no part of Linda Tolentino’s spirit had been in that house since the day she died.
Her death, though, that lived on. Ma’am Trish gave interviews about the movie’s production that talked extensively about the taping of the rape scene. She and whatever talk show host spoke of how Linda Tolentino’s restless spirit had caused a disruption in the new film’s production. In a way, I couldn’t help but be impressed by how quickly she’d turned the horror of that night into something she could control and sell.
I put in my notice after that first interview.
“That’s a shame,” said Ma’am Trish. “I thought you’d be stronger than that.”
“Sorry, ma’am.”
“I suppose it’s all right. The other side isn’t for everyone.”
I wanted to tell her that she was right for all the wrong reasons, but I’d used up enough of my courage quitting in the first place.
“I never saw anything quite like that,” said my mother.
She had been the only person I could bear to tell about that night. She was the only one who really understood the things that I experienced.
“What do you think it was?” I asked.
“An impression, like always,” she said. “Or maybe, in this case, a scar.”
I nodded.
“An act that horrible leaves a deep wound on the world.”
“And we picked at it.”
After lunch, we went to see The Linda Tolentino Story: …Lord Deliver Us! My mother didn’t ask why, but I would have told her that I had to face it for my own peace of mind. The truth was, I was just curious like everyone else. Who didn’t have the urge to gawk at a bleeding wound? Reopen it constantly, and more would come to watch. Even if the wound were your own, there was some pleasure in seeing the blood run. This scar, as my mother called it, had been picked at for months, and the film production was just the latest assault on the infected, pus-filled flesh. Something rancid was bound to spill out.
Most of the movie bored me. It seemed to do about the same for everyone else packed into the theater that day. It was the opening weekend, so the crowds were still thick. Still, the first two acts were mostly everyday drama for Linda at home. No one came to see that—they came to see Linda die.
The closer the big scene came, the tighter my chest felt. A part of me wondered if I would no longer see Caloy Fernandez on screen, but a man made of shadow. The thought of it made it hard to breathe or concentrate.
By the time the scene came though, my apprehensions evaporated. The editing and post-production had done little to overcome Ma’am Trish’s awkward squealing and Caloy’s overdone grunting. Even as the crowd gasped and screamed, I just watched on in silence.
In the middle of the scene, a man sitting close to the screen stood up to leave. The projector light outlined his silhouette, and I felt my throat clench.
I would know that shape anywhere. What I’d encountered in the murder house stood before me now, no longer mere shadow but muscle and bone. This was no apparition, but a living person. The taste of his sin coated my mouth, and I knew from that foul taste that this man had murdered Linda Tolentino.
The man started heading out of the theater. Without thinking, I swallowed back my nausea, got up from my seat and followed.
“Steph?” said my mother.
I didn’t respond and just walked out.
Outside the cinema, people milled about waiting on their films to start. They carried popcorn and large soda cups, talked among themselves, scanned the posters of the movies playing. I searched for the man I’d seen, my heart pounding in my chest. I knew I would recognize his form, and maybe if I got close enough, I could smell the stench of guilt on him too.
I wandered, searching for him. Neither my eyes nor my instincts could pick up on him. Every man I passed looked plain and nondescript, the only scent on the air that of butter melting in popcorn machines. I even milled about outside the men’s bathroom, waiting to see if anyone who came out resembled him.
No luck. He had dissipated like a cloud of smoke.
I kept searching. By the time I gave up, the movie had ended. Linda Tolentino was dead again.
The next screening would start soon.
Joseph Anthony Montecillo has had short fiction published in Philippines Graphic magazine, Horror: Filipino Fiction for Young Adults, the Philippine Speculative Fiction anthology series, Ombak Magazine, and more. He also currently writes about professional wrestling for his YouTube channel and the online newsletter BIG EGG.
Read more short stories on Esquire:
Woman in a Glass House by Joel Pablo Salud
The Apartment by Sarge Lacuesta
Zombie Queen by Yvette Fernandez
