Philippine Speculative Fiction 9 Read online

  Everyone was struck dumb when one of the City Pound workers raised his air gun, aimed it at the receding doglike figure, and fired: the pop of the gun was suddenly replaced by a sharp whine—and then died.

  Jenny Ortuoste

  Last Race

  Jenny Ortuoste writes opinion and horseracing columns for Manila Standard-Today and opinion and lifestyle for GMA News Online. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Philippines Graphic, Likhaan, Esquire Philippines, and elsewhere. Her novel Fire and Ice was published in 1993. In 2011, she was a Fellow at the 50th University of the Philippines National Writers’ Workshop. She also has radio and television experience (production, writing, and hosting).

  She has won a Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Essay (1st, 2011) and a Nick Joaquin Literary Award (3rd, 2013). Jenny is a dissertation shy of obtaining her PhD Communication degree from UP.

  CARLOS MENDOZA SQUINTED at the fine print of the Dividendazo horseracing program. As chairman of the board of stewards of Santa Alma Park, and therefore the highest official on racedays, it was part of his job to study ‘Dazo’s past performances of the horses running that day. He couldn’t understand why it was so dark. Was it brownout again?

  Where were his glasses? Grunting, he sifted through the clutter on his table overlooking the racetrack. Things were never around when you needed them. People, too. Why wasn’t he informed about the lights failing? Looking around him in the dim light, he saw he was alone. Where were the other stewards? His vice-chairman, Sparky Cruz? The racing secretary? Slacking off, most likely, just because it was in between races. What effrontery to leave their chief alone on a race day! He’d have the lot of them fired.

  He resolved to speak to the CEO of the racetrack the next day. He had the ear of the owner, and putang ina nilang lahat if they didn’t toe the line he drew for them.

  The corners of his mouth drew up in grim smile. Let them dig their own professional graves. The racing club’s board of directors would see how dedicated he was, how eminently fit for his post, and that would assure his tenure, perhaps even a raise and a bonus come the holidays.

  He smoothed the surface of the ‘Dazo. Now where were those glasses…?

  JANE ORTIZ HAD been running Santa Alma’s broadcast coverage for years. She knew the basics of broadcasting from experience. Her father had been a newscaster for ABS-CBN in the ‘60s, and, through observation and mentoring, Jane learned a gamut of skills, from camera work to dubbing to editing to performing as an on-cam talent.

  The world of mainstream broadcasting was too competitive for her, so when she was given a chance to work for the racing industry she grabbed it. Producing the live race coverage wasn’t too difficult. All that people needed to see, racing executives told her, were the horses running and the betting odds matrix.

  There were two racetracks, Santa Alma Park and San Lauro Hippodrome. Both were founded decades ago—Santa Alma in 1937, and San Lauro even earlier, in 1867. Their racetracks were in Makati and Manila respectively, but when land prices in the city shot up, the racetracks were developed into mixed-use commercial properties. Where formerly jockeys trod, resplendent in their silks, snapping whips against their shiny calf-high boots, call-center agents now circled, pallid from hours spent indoors, sucking on cigarettes during their all-too short breaks.

  Since the racetracks had franchises to operate from Congress, they had to transfer the facilities, not simply shut them down. Both racing clubs bought extensive tracts of land in Cavite City—Santa Alma in Naic, San Lauro in Carmona—where few people went, because they weren’t as accessible as the city-based racetracks had been. Track attendance dwindled from 20 percent to 4 percent, and most of those were taga-karera—raceclub workers, jockeys, trainers—and not karerista as before.

  The broadcast, therefore, gained a new importance as a medium to deliver the spectacle of the races. Jane had high standards for the coverage and imposed them.

  The crew worked long hours. The two racetracks alternated racing each week. A raceweek lasted from Tuesday to Sunday. In the live coverage of horseracing, the broadcast team is the first to arrive and the last to leave. Setting up and testing worn and sorry equipment takes time, as does wrapping up and troubleshooting.

  Transferring the entire setup from Makati to Naic had been another backbreaking challenge, but she had a great crew.

  It was Niño’s job, for instance, as the electronics and communications engineer, to clamber to the roof and keep the transmission antenna working with duct tape and prayers. Roel kept the sound system running. Cesar babied the aging chargen and editing machines. The cameramen took care of their cameras and cables, while the talents–the announcers–hunched over their ‘Dazos and analyzed the races for the fans.

  The crew couldn’t afford to be distracted. They were fatigued enough as it was, working six days straight for a week, from six to eleven at night Tuesday to Friday, and two in the afternoon till nine at night on weekends. The off weeks weren’t enough to rest–they still had to report to the office for duty from eight to five.

  So when the guys in traffic—the chargen operator and the switchers—and the cameramen returning from their eyries began talking about receiving eerie phone calls, Jane stepped in. It wouldn’t do to have them spooking themselves.

  “What’s this all about?” she asked, putting in her voice as much authority as she could muster.

  The muttering died down and all eyes turned to Cesar, the chargen operator.

  “Ma’am Jane, it’s the dedicated phone from the stewards’ stand to here, the broadcast,” Cesar said. “The phone connects only between the two departments. After the races, when’s everybody’s gone, sometimes the phone rings. And we hear a voice…”

  “That’s impossible,” said Jane. “If there’s no one up there, how can we get a call?”

  “That’s what we don’t understand, ma’am,” Niño said.

  Jane shook her head. “What kind of voice is it that you think you hear, anyway?”

  “A deep voice. Like nothing I’ve ever heard,” Cesar said. The others nodded in agreement.

  “Nakakatakot.” Roel.

  “Garalgal.” Ronnie.

  “Parang hindi tao.” Wendell.

  “Now that’s enough,” Jane said. “Over na ‘yan, ha. The next time the phone rings after the last race, I’ll answer it myself.”

  The mood lifted. Smiles broke out among the crew. It was Jane’s job to deal with things, even the unexplained.

  MENDOZA SHIFTED IN his seat, his bulk making him uncomfortable. He thought of seeing his doctor again. For one thing, his breath seemed to be hitching in his chest. His heart would speed up, then slow down, the fear of a stroke spiking his adrenalin until the episodes of palpitation passed.

  The quack kept warning him to quit smoking, eat more vegetables and less lechon, drink more water and no Johnny Walker, but what did he know about the stresses of being a steward? A man needed his pleasures.

  Still, that tonto went through all those years of medical school and should know his business, as Mendoza knew his.

  What alarmed him most was that his eyesight seemed to be failing. He thought of getting a new pair of binoculars, but they were not as necessary as they used to be, now that the stewards had the TV monitors in their room.

  His attention span seemed reduced, his concentration weak. The change from day to night racing felt too abrupt, the sunlight on the sand giving way to a track flooded with light from the powerful arc lamps imported from abroad.

  And he still couldn’t find his reading glasses.

  The lack of respect from his colleagues galled him. They would not make eye contact as they went about their work. He spoke to them gruffly, but they refused him the courtesy of a reply, mga hijo de puta. They simply went through the motions. They’d all worked together for years, and race day conduct and monitoring was as automatic to them as breathing. They didn’t need his instructions to perform their duties, but still, rudeness would not be tolerated.
r />   Perhaps they were still angry at him for reporting their laziness to management. Bahala silang magtampo. He was still the boss around here.

  Mendoza massaged his neck. The interminable hours crawled by. Would this race day never end?

  Now look at that! The floodlights flickered, and died. The track was dark. He’d have to delay the races again. What was the matter this time? Didn’t the owners realize what delays cost them in lost sales?

  He lifted the phone to call the broadcast crew. They’d have to make an announcement to the bettors about “technical difficulties.”

  WHEN THE NEXT Santa Alma raceweek rolled around, Jane mulled over the odd incident of the phone in her mind. Niño told her it had been going on for a couple of months now, and that it was disturbing the crew. None of them could account for it.

  She decided to ask the stewards. Climbing up one floor to the stewards’ stand, she saw the racing secretary with a hand on the doorknob, about to enter the room. It was a restricted area; even Jane was forbidden to go inside during the races.

  “Aileen, wait!”

  The secretary turned. “Yes, po?”

  Jane put a hand her shoulder. “After the last race, do any of you stay up here?”

  Aileen shook her head. “Of course not. We want to go home as soon as we can. Most of us ride the company bus back to Manila. We don’t want to be left behind, so right after we and the judges give you guys in broadcast the official order of arrival, we run down.”

  “You’re saying the stewards, judges, and the rest of the staff here leave before we do?”

  “Yes, because you still have to wait for the computer to calculate and send you the official results—the dividends, and so on. Then you do your closing spiels, right? The goodbyes and thank yous and see you again tomorrows. Or next week. We don’t wait for all that anymore. The bus would leave us and how would we get home?”

  Jane was puzzled. It was certain, then, that after the last race, there were no calls made from the stewards’ stand to the broadcast room. Why did the phone sometimes ring?

  She set off in search of the racing manager, Den Valtorre, and found him with the handicappers going over the next day’s race lineups.

  “Boss Den, may I please have a word?”

  He looked up from sheets covered closely with horses’ names and time clock-ins.

  “Sure, sweetheart. What about?”

  She told him about the phone calls.

  A troubled expression came over Valtorre’s face. He looked around to see if the handicappers beside him had heard her. They seemed engrossed in their work. “Let’s take a ride to stables, hija,” he said. “I’ll show you the new stalls we added. You can announce over the broadcast tonight that they’re open for rental.”

  A non sequitur if ever she heard one, but she followed him to his car. He drove aimlessly around Santa Alma’s 70-hectare spread.

  “I don’t want anyone else to hear this,” Valtorre said. “But I’m not surprised your crew has been hearing things. Wala kang third eye, ano?”

  “Wala po,” Jane replied. “I’m not sensitive to such things. I don’t believe in the supernatural! That’s not rational.”

  “That may be so, but ‘there are things, Horatio’. The security guards and janitors say they hear footsteps and unearthly noises at the top floor of the grandstand, when no one’s around. The jockeys in their quarters complain about babies crying and women screaming in pain. Usually the reports come from the riders in the last race, washing the sand off before leaving.”

  “But that’s absurd!”

  “Even the construction workers who built the grandstand and stables had their stories. Many of them left. Those who stayed on the job wouldn’t work alone in certain places, always two-by-two. There were too many reports to ignore.”

  “All this is illogical.”

  “Just because you haven’t seen or experienced it yourself, hija, doesn’t mean a thing doesn’t exist.”

  “Alright, granted. So how did you resolve all that?”

  “Santa Alma Park’s owners, who are Filipino-Chinese, had a Taoist shaman come and perform a cleansing ritual. He said he felt evil influences here. Naic was a dumping ground for the corpses of murder and salvaging victims, didn’t you know? Or at least that’s what the folks around here say.”

  “But from what you’ve told me, the malign forces the shaman felt aren’t connected to racing but to the place itself?”

  He nodded. “Hindi konektado sa karera, sweetheart. I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone about the ritual I witnessed, but I thought it brought closure. I haven’t heard anything about ghosts since.”

  “What do I tell my crew about the mysterious calls?”

  “Overactive imaginations? You know as well as I do they sometimes smuggle in beer or something harder. Make sure they’re not just drunk.”

  A STORM STRUCK the following Santa Alma race week. It was horrible on Friday night. The bad weather made transmissions from Naic to the Makati office, where the servers were, spotty and unreliable. There was a lag in getting the final results from the main pari-mutuel computers. It was flooded in some parts of Manila, and many racing fans couldn’t make it to their favorite off-track betting stations. The track lights failed in Race Four. Sales plunged. The races ended an hour later than usual.

  Everyone in the broadcast department was glum. Murphy’s Law had been strictly enforced that night. They wrapped up as quickly as they could, eager to leave.

  The stewards’ phone rang.

  Ronnie dropped his cables.

  Roel, who was filling a glass from the dispenser, seemed not to notice that the water had overflowed, drenching his hand.

  Cesar’s face went white. The phone was beside him, and it was his job to answer it. He stared at Jane mutely.

  “Now that’s enough, all of you,” she said. She snatched up the phone. “Hello? Who is this? What do you want?”

  From far away, a deep voice speaking a language she could not understand.

  The hair on her arms rose. The voice in her ears echoed as if from the depths of a grave.

  Jane angrily pushed the thought away. There had to be a logical explanation for what she’d just heard. She slammed the phone back into its cradle.

  “I’m going up there and I’ll catch whoever’s playing a prank on us. That’s all it is, don’t you see? A joke. Maybe it’s one of the janitors. Or the security guards. God knows their job is mind-numbingly boring. Who’s coming with me?”

  The crew looked at each other. “I have to fix the antenna,” Niño mumbled. Cesar and Roel turned back to their machines. “We have to shut down.” The others had their own excuses. That left Wendell the cameraman, the most cheerful of them all.

  “Sige, Ma’am Jane,” said Wendell. “I’ll go with you.”

  Jane smiled, heartened by his courage. “Thanks, Wendell, you’re a brave man.”

  “Go ahead, ma’am. You lead the way. Don’t worry, I’ll be right behind you.”

  They took the back stairwell to the fourth floor. The doors were large and sometimes when they shut they couldn’t be opened from the stairway side. They could hammer on the doors all they could and good luck if anyone heard them. But it was the fastest route.

  Upon reaching the fourth floor, Wendell stayed at the top of the stairs, refusing to go further. Jane hugged the walls as she crept toward the stewards’ room. The lights on the entire floor had been switched off–the management strictly implemented cost-cutting measures–and it was slow going. Not only because it was dark, but because she felt a steadily rising fear. Her nerves screamed with tension. She was not superstitious, but then she’d never been in a situation like this before.

  Outside the stewards’ room door, she took a deep breath. What would she find in there?

  She turned the doorknob and pushed the door open. The hinges squeaked and made her jump. One foot over the threshold, then another. She was inside.

  The room was pitch-black at first, but mo
onlight streamed through the big picture window that overlooked the track. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she began to make out things–the monitors on the wall, the tables with the computers and printers for churning out the stewards’ reports and notices of suspensions, the small refrigerator that could no longer make ice but at least kept cans of soda cool.

  At the chief steward’s table, where Sparky usually sat, was a heavyset man. No, a large man whose bulk strained his chair. The man turned his face toward Jane. His mouth opened.

  Sounds issued from his throat.

  Jane was stiff with fear. She could not understand a word he said. She wondered where her hearing had gone. Wait, she could hear. It was her brain that wasn’t working properly, it wasn’t processing the data her senses were receiving.

  Jane began to hyperventilate.

  The man in the chair spoke again, wretched guttural sounds that made no sense.

  “Who…” Jane’s throat was dry. Her heart slammed in her chest. To keep from fainting, she clenched her fists and dug her nails into her clammy hands. “Who are you?”

  The man raised his eyebrows and glared. The moonlight shone full on his face.

  Jane was shocked to realize that she recognized him.

  It was Carlos Mendoza.

  One of the best stewards of Santa Alma Park for two decades at the old track in Makati, he’d risen to be chairman over the years, mostly because he was a no-nonsense hard-ass who’d worked in racing his entire career. He was hated and feared for his short temper.

  There were many complaints about his strictness and obsession with detail, and his outbursts of profanity, but he did perform race monitoring with probity and integrity. He didn’t make the move to the new track in Naic, though.

  He’d died five years ago at the old stewards’ stand in Makati.

  It was during the final stages of an important stakes race. It also happened to be the showdown between two track champions, Empire King and Wind Blown, and the 2,000-meter competition that drew ten entries seemed only a match race between the two idols. It was the first time for the two colts to go head-to-head, and the winner would cement his reputation as the champion for that season.