Fearing the living: Spirits and cults according to Bob Ong

There is an oft-repeated saying that goes: "We have more to fear from the living than the dead." What scenario then awaits when the paths of the living and dead meet?

This premise is answered by the book Ang Mga Kaibigan Ni Mama Susan -- humorist Bob Ong’s eighth book and his first foray into the diary-horror genre. Released last year, the novel is a slow descent into the terrors of a small isolated island called San Ildefonso, along with its people who are cut off from what they perceive are the evils of modern technology and modern society at large.

Worshiping a strange spirit in a foreign tongue, the people are left to themselves, to their own devices, fears, and lingering knowledge of the world outside the island.

As the story progresses, so does the shift in the main character's different dilemmas: his heartache, his tuition fee, his aunt’s wrath, his grandmother’s health, and a situation he suddenly finds himself in.

It’s a slow descent from the random musings of college student Gilberto, nicknamed Galo. In the first half, he talks about getting over a breakup, worrying about money for his tuition, and feeling certain angst about his parents and dreadful relatives. These ramblings take a sharp turn in the second half, leading to a revelation of fears for his life, spirit, and sanity.

Ong draws the reader into the story through idle chatter and an easy prose that mirrors Galo's character: slightly self-depreciating and disapproving of the world around him. His musings discuss much about his home life: an absentee father, a silent uncle, a nagging aunt, and three annoying cousins. To escape the mounting pressure, Galo heads home to his grandmother (Mama Susan)’s house on a remote island in Tarmanes to take care of her, saying she is the only relative he has left that has any sympathy for him.

He arrives at a house that resembles a cross between a church and a museum, filled with relics and statues of different saints with painted, vacant eyes, all dedicated to the "Kordero ni Apo" which is headed by Mama Susan and her friends. In a series of strange circumstances, Galo then begins to suspect that Mama Susan’s friends mean him harm and that her cult may be the end of him.

It’s the kind of fear that builds slowly, borne from whispers, strange shadows, and noises he hears in the dark. The kind that makes one doubt that fearing the living makes more sense than fearing the dead. Much like how the Shake, Rattle and Roll series has come to embody the dark thoughts we hold about isolated places in far-flung provinces and the evils of modernity and the west, the book is a footnote on the hodgepodge nature of fear in Philippine culture.

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