The Balete's Whisper

Ilog ng Hiram, Philippines - 1972

The rain had not stopped for three days.

It wept over the mossy rooftops of Ilog ng Hiram, a river town carved between thick jungles and forgotten roads, where time moved slowly and secrets grew fat in the silence. The villagers said the floods were just the monsoon season. But the elders, the ones with eyes like clouded glass and rosaries clutched like weapons, whispered otherwise. They also whispered about how the town’s only internet café kept flickering out, which was, frankly, more disruptive than the rain.

Tonight, the water rose with purpose.

And deep within the banyan-thick forest at the town’s edge, beneath the twisted skeleton of a 500-year-old balete tree, Amang Lira waited.

She was blind—her cataracts thick as salt pearls—but she saw more than most. Her face was a web of deep lines, skin like paper burnt at the edges, and her hair hung in brittle cords beneath a soaked pañuelo. Around her neck dangled anting-anting of teeth and bone. She clutched a hollowed bao half-filled with river mud, ash, and the brittle rib of her daughter.

Kulasa.

Kulasa ng Ilog. Wild-eyed. Barefoot. Gone too soon.

Drowned in the river ten moons ago—swept under during the ghost tide. Lira had heard her laugh in the mist since then. Laughing when it rained. Laughing from the river’s edge. Sometimes, Amang Lira swore she could hear Kulasa humming off-key renditions of popular folk songs. The dead were cruel like that, always leaving something behind, usually something mildly annoying.

She should not be doing this.

Even she knew that.

But grief has a way of making even witches forget the price of old magic, and also, sometimes, forget where they put their reading glasses.

Around her, the makeshift altar was a chaotic collection of power. Three kandila (candles) made of human fat flickered, their greasy smoke clinging to the humid air. A dried buntot pagi (stingray tail) lay coiled, a silent guardian against lesser evils. Amang Lira’s gnarled fingers, twisted like balete roots themselves, crushed chicken blood into a clay bowl, the rich, metallic scent mingling with the damp earth.

She began to hum. Low and cracked. A lullaby older than the alphabet. Then, mid-hum, she let out a surprisingly loud, very human sneeze, followed by a mumbled “Bless me.”

Then she spoke—no, chanted, the forbidden prayer:

“Ina ng Hangin, Ina ng Araw,

Ibalik mo ang anak kong ligaw.

Tubig ng ilog, dugo ng laman,

Buksan ang ugat ng punong libingan.

Katawan ko’y alay, puso’y sinunog,

Bangon, Kulasa, sa gabing basang-dugo!”

She paused, taking a ragged breath. The air crackled.

“Lupa, tubig, kahoy... ibalik ang anak ko!” she chanted, her voice raw with desperation.

With the final line, her voice splintered into a rasp.

A sudden gust of wind tore through the glade.

The candle jars flared green, dancing like mad things. The roots of the balete—thick, veiny, bloated—twitched, groaned, and cracked open like splitting bark. The balete tree’s roots pulsed like veins, a slow, rhythmic throb. Something deep beneath the earth exhaled, smelling faintly of damp earth and stale bubblegum.

Amang Lira opened her satchel.

Inside were twelve hand-carved dolls, each one wrapped in red thread, marked with sigils inked in chicken blood. The dolls represented the twelve rivers of the region—each one tied to ancestral pacts and old protections. They looked rather judgmental, even for dolls.

With shaking hands, Lira smashed the first doll against a stone. CRUNCH.

Then the second. SPLAT!

Then all twelve. Snap. Crack. Shatter. POP!

With each fracture, a wave of cold air blew from the tree’s base, carrying the distinct scent of burnt toast. The forest groaned. Birds fell silent, probably wondering what that smell was.

Then—

A laugh.

It came from everywhere and nowhere at once. Childlike. High-pitched. But stretched… warbled… like someone dragging a violin string across broken glass, or a poorly recorded ringtone from 2005. It sounded like a chorus of kulam bells, tinkling with malevolent glee.

The laughter spiraled into a crescendo—then suddenly stopped, as if someone had hit the pause button.

From the hollow beneath the balete, the ground split further. A doll-sized figure, compact and unnervingly agile, crawled out. This was Labubu. Its face was smooth and porcelain-pale, save for the black ichor that oozed from a hairline crack across its brow. It had nine needle teeth, and its eyes were hollow, like sockets that drank the light, yet somehow managed to convey a faint, perpetual smirk. Its grin split its face, stretching impossibly wide. Its legs—hooved like a goat’s, bent wrong like a horse mid-prance—clicked against the roots with a faint, unsettling squeak. It seemed to wobble slightly, as if still getting used to its new limbs.

It grinned.

And giggled again.

“Amang Lira…” it chirped in a singsong voice, mimicking Kulasa’s cadence but looping it like a broken record that occasionally skipped. “You called?”

Amang Lira’s breath caught. She had known many spirits. But this—this was older than the forest. Older than the church. It reeked of river rot and burnt cinnamon, and just a hint of something vaguely synthetic, like cheap plastic.

“Give her back,” Lira croaked. “I did what was required.”

The creature tilted its head, a movement that made its neck creak. “Not quite,” it whispered, its voice oddly polite, almost bureaucratic. “You cracked the root. And now... Mother can hum again.”

It then offered her a doll. Not one of the smashed twelve, but a new one, pristine and unsettling. It was a TWINKLY FAIRY TALE doll, its plastic hair perfectly coiffed. But its face—it was Kulasa’s, frozen in porcelain, a saccharine, unblinking smile. Amang sobbed, clutching it to her chest, the cold porcelain a cruel mockery of her daughter’s warmth. The doll’s eyes flickered open: river water dripped from its lashes, leaving tiny, cold trails on its painted cheeks.

Lightning split the sky—and in its flash, Lira saw what truly hid behind the doll’s face: needle limbs curled like antennae, a second mouth stitched beneath its jaw, and the flicker of tiny hands pressed against the inside of its belly.

Hands of children.

Begging to be let out. One tiny hand even seemed to be waving.

But the creature raised its small hand.

A ripple stirred the nearby river. The water parted in the shape of a girl. Kulasa. She stood at the edge of the water in her favorite red dress, barefoot and dripping with light. Her eyes glowed pale blue, and her laughter echoed—distorted, like an old cassette underwater, or a phone call with bad reception.

She did not speak. Only giggled.

Amang Lira reached for her, tears blurring what little her blind eyes imagined. “Anak…” (daughter…)

But the girl didn’t step forward. She began to float, with a slight, awkward wobble. Laughing. Spinning. Fading into mist.

Amang Lira screamed, but her voice was drowned by the wind. Below her, the earth split again. From the deepest roots of the balete, something began to whisper. Not in Tagalog. Not in Latin.

But in lullabies. Soft, poisonous lullabies. As if a mother were singing her child to sleep… while sharpening a butter knife. Labubu turned and began to vanish into the roots, its voice trailing like wind chimes made of teeth, or a child’s toy running out of batteries.

“Ina ni Labubu says thank you for the pretty doll.”

“One... two...

I’ll come for you.

Three... four...

Don’t lock the door…”

And then it was gone. The candles blew out. The tree sealed itself.

But the whispers did not.

They lingered in the roots. In the wind. In the water. And Amang Lira could swear she heard a faint, rhythmic thump-thump-thump from deep within the earth, like someone impatiently tapping their foot.

And Amang Lira—blind, but not deaf—could hear them still:

“Mother is waking…”