An entire village was startled.

It was morning when a neighboring sea-side village found the body of the first. Her legs tangled up with slimy seaweeds, the crabs prayed on her face—thanking the gods for a good meal. Overnight, the others were washed up ashore and by morning, the beach was littered with carcasses. And the sea that mothered the fishing village until then became a cold, devouring leviathan that spit and threw up bodies in frightening regularity. For weeks, their bodies came and taught the fisher-folk the various stages of putrefaction.

They did not dare venture out to sea. Obviously, the gods were displeased: a storm brewed dangerously, the sky had been overcast for weeks.

By the second week, they counted forty-seven males, thirty-eight females, eighteen children, and a puppy. The dead were the inhabitants of a village in a nearby plateau. Two miles away from their village was a famous cliff that jutted out to the sea.

When the investigators from Manila came, they examined the empty houses.

In the first house they entered, they saw breakfast spread out on a table. Flies settled on the putrid sardines on a plate. They could make out the teeth grooves on a half-eaten pan de sal. In another house, they saw baby things spread out on a bed. The soiled nappy was spread and the clean diaper was left unused.

Near the communal poso, there was a gathering of buckets and clothes that suggested that women were doing laundry together. The chickens were left out of their coops and wandered around, mindlessly pecking the ground.

The investigators, J. Ramos and S. Santigan, deduced what had happened to the villagers. With very solemn faces, they told the media-men: approximately two weeks ago, the villagers suddenly dropped whatever it was they were doing. They walked for two miles until they reached the cliff. There, they jumped off to the sea.

The fisher-folk concluded that the gods protested at having been made the unwilling murderers. The sea, raged against the befouling of her body. Their anger took form of a violent storm that threw all remaining carcasses on the shore.