Celestine was born on September 18, 1993, in the quiet province of Cavite. She came into the world healthy and silent, her small fists clenched as if already bracing for something unseen. The midwife told her mother she was a lucky child — no illness, no complications. But luck, Celestine would learn, didn't always mean happiness.
Her childhood was not the kind you'd see in storybooks. She never knew what it felt like to have a group of friends calling her name in the street, or to be pulled into games until the sun went down. While other children whispered secrets and laughed in corners, Celestine's conversations were with herself.
It wasn't that she hated people — it was that no one seemed to truly see her. They'd look at her and smile politely, but their eyes would always wander elsewhere, as if she were an extra in someone else's life.
Her older sister, Lianne, had no trouble blending in. She had a voice people liked to hear, a smile that invited others to sit beside her. Celestine would watch her from across the yard, surrounded by friends, and feel a quiet ache in her chest. She wanted that — not attention, but belonging.
Sometimes she thought maybe she was just too strange.
Strange like the nights she would wake to faint knocking sounds, even though their house was too far from the road for anyone to pass by. Strange like the way dogs sometimes stopped barking the moment she walked past, their eyes fixed on her as if they knew something she didn't.
But she told no one. People laughed at things they didn't understand.
---
It was on a late afternoon, when the air was thick with the scent of wet earth after a short rain, that Celestine wandered to the river. It wasn't far from their home — a ten-minute walk past bamboo groves and narrow dirt paths. The river had always been her refuge, a place where she could listen to the water instead of the world.
The sun was beginning its slow descent, painting the surface with streaks of gold and blood-orange. She sat on a flat stone by the bank, her bare feet in the current, pretending the ripples were carrying her thoughts downstream.
That was when she saw her.
On the opposite bank stood a woman — or at least, she looked like one. She wore a white dress that clung to her frame, the fabric moving slightly though there was no wind. Her hair spilled over her shoulders in long, black strands, too dark for the fading light.
She didn't move. She didn't blink.
She just stood there, her gaze locked on Celestine.
At first, Celestine thought it was some passerby, maybe a neighbor from another village. But the longer she looked, the more wrong it felt. The woman's face was pale, not in the way of fair skin but in the way of paper left too long in the dark. Her posture was rigid, almost unnatural.
The sound of the river filled the silence between them.
Celestine looked away, forcing herself to focus on the water. When she glanced back, the woman was gone.
---
In the days that followed, Celestine went on as usual — talking to herself in quiet corners, humming songs she made up on the spot. But she began to notice something different. Sometimes, while she spoke aloud, she would feel it: the sensation of being watched. Not from the front, but from just over her shoulder, as though someone stood close enough to breathe against her hair.
One cloudy afternoon, she was in the yard, tracing patterns in the dirt with a stick. That's when she saw it.
A shadow.
Not the kind cast by the sun — there was hardly any light that day — but a shape darker than the air around it. It had the outline of a person, but no features. It didn't sway like a branch shadow or shift like a passing cloud. It stood still, and it breathed.
It was watching her.
Her chest tightened. Without thinking, she dropped the stick and ran.
---
She burst through the front door, her slippers slapping against the wooden floor. Her mother was in the kitchen, bent over a basin, washing vegetables in the dim light.
"Mama," Celestine panted. "There's someone outside. A shadow. It was—"
Her mother didn't even turn her head. "It's just your imagination. You've been out in the heat too long. Go upstairs and clean yourself."
Celestine's voice faltered. "But—"
"Upstairs," her mother said firmly.
She wanted to argue, to tell her mother that shadows weren't supposed to breathe, that they weren't supposed to watch you, but the words tangled in her throat. She climbed the stairs instead, each creak loud in the heavy air.
When she reached her room, she hesitated before going in. Slowly, she moved to the window and pulled the curtain just enough to peek outside.
The yard was quiet. The sky had deepened to a bluish-grey, and the trees swayed softly in the distance.
Then she saw it.
The shadow was still there, exactly where she had left it, as if it had been waiting.
As she sneaked closer to the window, her breath shallow, she realized — it was waiting for her.