Hounds of hell

The world used to go quiet on Good Friday, quiet in the way of mourning and introspection, of something solemn pressing down on the day, cloaked darkly by a hush that was not imposed but understood.

At 3 o’clock in the afternoon, with Christ gasping his last, old people would say the gates of hell opened — not a metaphor but an actual rupture, a moment when the balance of the world tipped. With the Son gone, darkness got to stretch its legs.

“Keep your voice down,” my grandmother would tell us kids. “The hounds might hear you.” Not ordinary dogs — these were jet-black, red-eyed creatures not seen but felt in the heaviness of the air and in the breeze that made the candle flicker even when the windows were shut.

But the hounds were just the vanguard: there was the tikbalang, part-horse part-man, waiting at the forest edge for the lost; the kapre, lounging in the balete tree, puffing on phantom cigars; the tiyanak, crying like an infant in the brush, leading the soft-hearted to strange fates; and the aswang, of course, who needed no introduction.

Though it feels more like something remembered than learned, I once read that these creatures were once angels too, fallen not into hell but onto our fields, our trees, our rural corners. Cast from heaven, they took the forms our fears gave them, and every Holy Week, when Christ lay dead and heaven itself seemed closed for maintenance, they moved a little more freely.

We didn’t go out on Good Friday. No games, no bikes, no laughter. Even the most stubbornly alcoholic uncle sobered up. The world stilled, candles were lit, and radios — emitting mere white noise as stations had signed off — were turned off.

Today, it’s different

Holy Week now sounds like luggage wheels on airport tiles, the silence replaced by the clink of ice cubes in a resort bar. For many families, Holy Week is the only time they can escape the chokehold of work or school. And who can blame them? The Stations of the Cross have become pit stops on the way to Baler or some other tourist spot.

No judgment here. In a country where rest is rationed and salaries are stretched thinner than communion wafers, Holy Week has become our de facto summer break, and sometimes rest is the most sacred thing of all — even if it comes with sand between your toes and buffet breakfast at 7.

Still, there’s something to be said for remembering, even if only in passing, even if only between the second round of margaritas and your child’s sunburned nose — remembering that once, this time was heavy, that once, it was full of whispered warnings meant to keep children in line and adults mindful of the thin veil between the world of the living and whatever else watches when the Light recedes.

And of course, we mustn’t forget the real hounds of hell.

They don’t come out on Good Friday. No, they wait, they lurk. Then on Easter Sunday, when everyone’s back to normal programming, they reemerge — fresh from spiritual leave — to resume the real haunting. These aren’t creatures of folklore. These wear suits and barongs, speak in sound bites, and have an uncanny talent for disappearing funds.

They steal not babies but budgets. They don’t howl — they grin for the cameras. The kapre may sit in trees, but these ones sit in Congress. The aswang suck blood; these suck dry the promise of public service. And unlike the old myths, we don’t scare our children with these monsters — we elect them.

So while you were out there, soaking up the sun and silence, maybe you should have spared a thought for the old stories. They may not all be true, but neither are the campaign promises we are being bombarded with for this May’s elections.

Somewhere between Christ’s death and resurrection, between the sacred and the sandbar, remember: some hounds of hell only get stronger once the lights come back on.