Lux Esoterica (Nifiluz)

In the Visayan islands of the central Philippines — Cebu, Bohol, Leyte, and across the water into Mindanao — the elders speak of a creature that has managed the rare feat of being ridiculous in every detail and terrifying in sum. The sigbin resembles, the accounts agree, something like a hornless goat crossed with a lean dog, or a kangaroo assembled from rumor: crouched hindquarters stronger than its forelegs, a long whip-like tail it lashes for balance, and enormous flexible ears that it claps together — clap, clap, in the night quiet, like soft hands — which is often the only sound it makes and the only warning anyone gets. It stinks; the tellings are unanimous and unkind about the smell. It can make itself invisible at will, and mostly is. And it walks backwards — this is its signature in all the lore — moving with its head lowered between its hind legs, looking behind itself as it advances, so that even when glimpsed it is going the wrong way, and even its tracks, like those of ...