Page 9 of Signal No. Us

“That just means they’re nearby, Tita, not literally under the⁠—”

“And this one,” Tita Gemma cut in, tapping a thumbnail with the reverence of a pageant judge, “very good bone structure. I give him a nine. Would look good in a barong. Ay wait, I’m now craving for sinigang na panga ng tuna.”

“Number two only shows his stomach,” Tita Yolanda sniffed. “No face? Suspicious. Grabe naman the abs. Penge palaman.”

“Delete it,” Allan said, reaching, only for the phone to be yanked out of reach with the reflexes of a woman half her age.

“Too late,” Tita Becky announced, beaming. “We already messaged three of them. Very polite naman. One said ‘Fun?’ We said, ‘yes we are having fun. God bless. Then he sent a photo of a weird looking sausage but I’m not wearing my glasses and the photo disappeared.’”

Allan put his face in his hands and gave serious thought to catching the next ferry straight back into the typhoon. He didn’t have to look up to know Robby was already losing it, silent-laughing so hard he’d gone red in the face.

CHAPTER 3

Cine sa Isla, up close, looked less like a cinema and more like a creepy, worn-out place that mothers use to scare their children into going to sleep early or eating their vegetables.

The marquee out front still had plastic letters spelling out a movie title from what must have been four years ago, NOW SHO ING, half the W missing, the rest sun-bleached to the color of old teeth. The ticket booth window was boarded. Somebody had spray-painted a crude heart on the side wall, which felt, Allan thought, almost too on the nose for what he was about to do with his life.

“Home sweet condemned building,” he said.

“Not condemned,” Robby said, unlocking the side door with a key that clearly took some coaxing. “That’s just what Kapitan says. Structurally, our engineer says it’s fine. It just needs cleaning, fixing, opening back up.”

“You have an engineer for this?”

“The barangay has an engineer for everything,” Robby said. “Part of DRRM. How houses collapse, what can hold, what can’t.” He pushed the door open with his shoulder. “Me, I make the maps and the plan and supply the charm. He makes sure things don’t fall down.”

Inside smelled like dust, mildew, and decades of spilled soda that had become part of the architecture. Rows of wooden seats sat in crooked lines, half of them collapsed, cobwebs strung between the armrests like tinsel nobody had bothered to take down. But the screen, patched, yellowed, sagging slightly in one corner, was still there. And above it, faded almost to nothing, the outline of a mural.

Allan walked toward it slowly, the way you’d walk toward something you weren’t sure was actually still breathing.

It was a mountain. Coconut trees. A sun with too many rays, drawn by someone who clearly loved suns more than accuracy. And in the corner, small enough that you’d miss it if you weren’t looking, a tiny painted rooster, mid-crow.

“Lolo painted that rooster for me,” Allan said, before he could stop himself. “I was seven. I told him I wanted a rooster in the background. He said, ‘why not.’ Months later, there it was.” He laughed, a little wet around the edges. “I thought he’d forgotten.”

Robby didn’t say anything for a second. Then: “He never really forgot anything. Every time there was a new movie, he’d say, ‘look at that rooster, still alive.’”

“You remember that?”

“The whole barangay has memories in this place,” Robby said. “That’s why we want to open it again.”

Allan turned in a slow circle, taking in the whole ruined, beloved shape of it, the screen, the seats, the ghost of a mural that had somehow survived years of neglect and one very committed rooster’s legacy.

“This,” he said finally, “is a lot bigger than the ‘little art’ you mentioned.”

“I said it needed a little art,” Robby said, unbothered. “I never said it would be a little work.”

“You tricked me.”

“I didn’t lie,” Robby said. “I just kept it brief.”

Before Allan could respond, the side door banged open, and a man about their age strolled in carrying a tape measure, a thermos, and the exact energy of someone who considered himself the most important guy in every room he entered.

“Hey! The barangay’s very own Wonder Kid,” the man announced, arms spread. “Still alive? I thought you were rich in Manila by now, that you’d never come back.”

“Jake,” Allan said, and something in his shoulders came down, unexpectedly glad. Jake had been the kind of kid who knew everyone’s business, told the best campfire stories, and once convinced an entire barangay fiesta committee that a stray cat living behind the chapel was actually a reincarnated engkanto: a rumor that, as far as Allan knew, half the titas still believed.

“Tito Jake now, to the kids,” Jake said, setting his thermos down on a dusty seat like it was a throne. “I’ve been busy with school building rehabilitation, local tourism with storytelling, about reviving the legacy of Ibalon, about the monsters, about the legends. And then, I’m the business side of this project too.” He gestured grandly at the ruined cinema like a real estate agent presenting a penthouse. “So if there’s funding, I handle it. If there’s a story, I handle that too. Multi-tasking.”

“He means,” Robby translated dryly, “he does the grant paperwork, and he also does the ghost stories.”