Dear Readers,
I am hereunder reprinting a personal experience that
I wrote in another one of my blogs and which I also
submitted to Shvoong, an article directory that I
am writing for. this personal experience happened
when I was in my early 20 s and in a far place and
situation that I am now in. Hope you will come to like
this story that happened to me.
It was a bleak Sunday afternoon. I was driving my
old Suzuki Samurai home after visiting our farm.
I decided to take a new route to the City where I live.
This new route was opened just several weeks ago
to the driving public to cut their travel time in half.
This road will pass three towns instead of the usual
six towns that you have to travel before reaching
the City.
I was already driving on the second town along the
seacoast when I saw this old remains of a Spanish
stone house on a hill. I have already passed by it
when something in me made me stop, reversed
gear and backed up towards the foot of the hill, got
out of my vehicle, and begun to ascend the stone
stairs leading to the top of the hill where the old and
broken down Spanish stone house was located.
I was all the while reasoning with myself why the heck
I am doing this , but a force I just could not explain made
me continue ascending the stone stairs until I realized I
was already standing on what was supposed to have been
the veranda of the house which were now a pile of moss
and foliage of wild plants surrounded by cracked and
blackened balusters with several stone pillars jutting
out to the darkening sky.
I begun hearing voices speaking a language that I understand
as I was good in my Spanish class. My mind was now going
back and forth, trying its darn best to separate my imagined
visualization from reality , as the moss covered remains of the
Spanish house begun its transformation to a palatial house
replete in the splendor of the Spanish era tradition with huge
chandeliers adorning the wide receiving room and a gilded
staircase winding towards the second floor.
A lady garbed in Spanish time clothing and whose beauty
I seemed to connect in some distant past appeared on the
second floor and was now rushing down the stairway
with open arms as if to meet and welcome me. Instinctively,
I also raised my hands in anticipation that we will hug each
other, when a sudden tap on my shoulders erased my imagined
visualization of sorts. I turned around to find an old man, who
introduced himself as the caretaker of the abandoned
property.
Dazed and confused, I asked him questions about the house.
He told me that many many years ago, the owner, a married
but childless Spanish mestiza whose name was Angelina
committed suicide after her husband whom she loves so much
left her to live with another woman.
Before she killed herself, she left a letter giving this property
to the town government, on the condition that the house should
never be touched and should be left alone to face and succumb
to the elements of time, as a testimony to her grief.
I thanked him for the story and was about to leave when out of
the blue, I asked him if who was the name of her husband. He
told me that the name of her husband was Eduardo.
Dumbfounded and feeling very cold, I went back to my
vehicle and drove home. Even now as I write this story, I can
feel the icy coldness that I felt then.