Tales of Mt Cloud: The Bookshop Ghost and the Crying Floor
It took me an hour and a half to get to the bus station in Cubao from Makati (It wasn’t raining), and four hours to get to Baguio on the 10:15 express bus (no stops, snacks, washroom on board). As soon as we left Metro Manila I could feel an invisible iron band loosening around my head. That’s what living in Metro Manila is like: an iron band around your head, growing tighter and tighter. You’re so used to it, you don’t even know it’s there. Metro Manila is killing us.
Fifi, who runs Mt. Cloud Bookshop, had invited me to give a talk. I discussed my writing method (lots of doing apparently nothing) and read an excerpt from my novel. Mt. Cloud carries books about the Philippines, books by Filipino authors, and a smattering of other titles. It’s a charming two-storey shop, the kind that has a portal to another dimension, in the refurbished Casa Vallejo near the Session Road rotunda. The shop is packed with books, so events are held at the Cinematheque next door.
Like any self-respecting temple of literature, Mt. Cloud has a resident ghost. They call her Carmen, and she regularly pushes books onto the floor. One week Noli me tangere was on the floor, and the following week El Filibusterismo, so there is a theme to her picks. No one has seen the ghost, so she’s either antisocial or looks perfectly human and indistinguishable from the clients. Of course it could be an industrious mouse, whose hard work is callously attributed to the supernatural.
Apart from the ghost, the bookshop is haunted by the heartbroken. For some reason, people like to sit on the cushions on the second floor and have a good cry. I don’t mean silent tears rolling down their faces, I mean wailing and sobbing. Sometimes they don’t even get to the second floor, but sit on the stairs and start bawling. Maybe it’s because being surrounded by books is so comforting: all those alternate universes offering asylum.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
August 23rd, 2016 at 10:06
Did you see the corridors of their hotel? The hallways reminded me of the hotel in The Shining. I could imagine the little boy pedaling his go kart all around.