Lady Christine, Part 1

The doe statue marks the midpoint of the island's beach front, all the way from the pier in the east to the studio at the west. I decided to reconfigure and revise the statue. It was an awkward work, probably by an NCO when the U.S. military still had control of the island decades ago. According to Boy the base of the statue must have been initially conceived as a low-relief model of the island, because it roughly approximates the shape of the island, and then, through someone's change of mind and a build-up method, eventually made to look like an animal with long ears. Some employees and guests referred to it as a deer, others as a rabbit. It somehow made me think, however, of kangaroos. We are still working on the statue; I will post photos of it when I get back home tomorrow.

...

There is a second statue on the island that dates back to the U.S. military period. It is the statue that everyone refers to as "Lady Christine". According to Tom it used to be located out at the pier; according to Fatima it was eventually relocated to the barracks at the top of the tallest hill, which was converted to staff housing years ago. Employees say that one of the managers used to fondle the statue and eventually died of bangungot; another employee used to make fun of the statue, took on high fever, left the island, and never came back. As a consequence of these two incidents employees became afraid of the statue and have come to believe that anyone who touches it gets sick. It is now in a corner of the motor pool, behind the old hotel a.k.a old hospital building. At 5:00 PM yesterday, Friday, after working on the doe statue, I took Carlo with me to the motor pool to check out "Lady Christine".

The statue's right arm and hand are damaged. The image is of a seated, nude woman looking out into the distance. There is what looks like a small, inscribed gravestone at her knees. The stone is partially obfuscated and has evidence of having been vandalized, so that passages are illegible. It reads something like this:


"LADY CHRISTINE

___ (?) PROTECT
MRS. C. KELLY

___________________ (?)
MAINTENANCE CREW

1983 * 1984"

I will, again, post the photos I took when I get back home tomorrow.

One's (my) first impression, though, going by the albeit obscure inscription, is that a one-year-old child named Christine died in 1984 and that its mother, a Mrs. C. Kelly (the statue's nipples are pronounced), may have suffered severe depression afterward.

The docents and the staff members, however, are fond of telling a version of the the statue's history. According to them a Filipina nurse assigned to the island was raped and murdered by the servicemen, and her body was buried in cement inside a big, iron drum. I have always been skeptical of this lurid story. For one, the U.S. military usually travel with their own doctors and nurses, who are, as a matter of fact, also trained military personnel. Second, why rape a nurse when all the servicemen had to do was take a boat to Olongapo City and haunt its night clubs? Third, why erect a statue of a nude woman with pronounced nipples in memory of a rape victim? Fourth, if the staff members have true compassion, why do they not bother to have the "crime" investigated, know the name of the victim, and contact her family for veracity? Fifth, the inscription on the stone then makes no sense, unless the statue and the stone were created on two separate occasions and later merged.

Later that evening I asked permission from Tina to conduct a spirit quest at the motor pool with Carlo, whose third eye is also open. I asked Fatima to send us a third party, a witness, and she promptly sent Marvin, who is also able to sense entities.

The moon was full, low, and a dark red-orange. It was a blood moon. We were equipped only with two electric torches, a white vigil candle in a glass bottle that a waiter sent over from the bar, and my disposable lighter. As we trudged up the slope of a hill toward the old hotel everything became still. None of us felt anything strange or supernatural, but I noted that, although the sun had already set, it was an extremely hot night.