It was nice, the end of high school, me and my friends and classmates finally earning our degrees after working our asses of for weeks, but it finally all paid off. Dave, the joker of the group, decided to buy our friend group tickets to a nice remote cabin in the wilderness of the Philippines. We all thought it would be amazing to hang out and get away for a while, there were six of us including me. Luis, the big muscle guy who is actually gentle at heart. Jerry, the party animal of us all. Peter, the quiet nerd who everyone defended. And Jack, he was weird, but also smart and athletic at the same time.

When we got there, I was shocked, the air was fresh, humid, and it was hot. After some searching, Dave got us a taxi to the road that lead to our cabin, and after an hour, we had made it to the cabin. It wasn't decrepit, to say, but you could tell Dave got it for a discount. When we actually entered the cabin, it looked passable, but smelled like a retirement home, mixed in with pet smell, thankfully Peter brought some Febreze, and after spray bombing the whole place like 5 times, we noticed it was dark out, so we decided it was time to hit the hay. But just before we went to bed, I swear to god, I saw a pair of glowing, yellow eyes, staring at me from the woods. But just before I could process what was happening, they faded into the trees, I passed it of as an animal staring at the new residents to it's woods, and went to bed.

The next morning, I woke up first among our group, and decided to take a nice nature look on our balcony, and I noticed a large tree in what was visible in the edge of our yard, so, I decided to show the animals who's in charge around here, and peed on it. I didn't think much of what I was doing at the time, but I would soon come to regret it.

After that, the rest of the group woke up, and we decided to head into town to get some food and souvenirs for our families, and just as we bought ourselves some talisman's, an old lady from the tent selling them approached us, specifically me.

"The Tikbalang is angry with this one.", she said in a cold, loud whisper.

"Oh come on lola, there is no such thing as a Tikbalang, it's just a story they tell to young kids so that they don't wander off into the woods and get lost."

The old lady gave her a stare, and looked back at me, "If anything strange happens, turn your shirt inside out, and run away as fast as you can to here, no stops!", and with that, she went back into the tent.

"I'm sorry about her, she's my grandmother and she can be a bit supernatural."

I was curious about what the old lady meant and asked, "What is a 'Tikbalang'?"

"Oh, it's a Filipino folktale, the Tikbalang is a humanoid with the body of a muscular man and the head of a horse, they love to mess with travelers in the forest to get them lost, and will play tricks on them, like making return to the same path over and over again, no matter how hard they run, or how much they turn."

"But why would it be mad at us?", Jack asked

"Have any of you disturbed the forest or nature near where you are staying?"

I thought about that large tree I peed on, but decided to keep my mouth shut. After getting back from the market, we decided that we shouldn't worry about some creature that probably isn't even real, and spent the rest of the afternoon having fun, and eventually, night came, and we went to bed.

That night, I couldn't sleep well, because I swear to god, every 5 minutes, just as I was about to doze off, I heard hoof steps, somewhere in the house, but I couldn't quite locate it, like it was coming from everywhere in the house at once. After some time of this cycle, I couldn't take it anymore, I decided to go out and see what in the hell that noise was. I left my room, and wandered through the house, and after doing a full sweep of the house, there was nothing, not even a fly. So I decided to head back to bed, but, just as I turned around, I heard it. And then, there it was, a tall man, he was in good shape, but his skin looked wrong, like he was diseased, then there was the head, I was a dark brown stallion, it's eyes looked at me with those same yellow dots as the first day we got here. It's legs were completely that of a horse, hoof, hair, and all, and that smell, it was the same smell the house originally had, before we fixed it.

The creature was staring back at me, with a crazed look in those yellow, animal eyes, it breathed on me, which broke me out of my trance, and I ran back to my room, but it didn't follow me, as if it knew that my fleeing was pointless. I ran, but just as I reached my room, the door opened back to the exact same hallway, and the thing was still there. I ran again, and again, and again, for what felt like miles, until I was sweating with exhaustion. There stood the creature, standing completely still, almost like a statue. I realized with absolute horror, this was the Tikbalang. I frantically tried to remember what the old lady told me, and I flipped my shirt inside out as rushed as I could, and when I put my head through the hole, the Tikbalang looked, confused, as if I couldn't recognize me, I didn't waste my opportunity, and shoved the creature out of the way, and ran out the front door. I ran all the way back to town, my legs ached and shacked as I looked for the original tent with the talisman, it took some time, but I was able to find them as they were closing, and the old lady from before looked at me, and knew from my face what had happened. She took me inside the tent, and sung some prayers, covered me in salt, all the holy stuff. She finally offered to let me stay in the tent, and return with the local church to the house in the morning, I agreed.

After the sun rose, the local church members and the old lady accompanied me to the house where me and my friends were staying, when we got there, it was quiet, like, quiet quiet, there were no animals, no breeze, no nothing, just silence. When we got inside, the smell nearly made me vomit, it smelled of blood and flesh, all over the house, it seemed to smell like a crime scene. Then, we got to the bedrooms, Luis was dead, his arms and legs were broken, and twisted at unnatural angles, impossible for a person to achieve, his chest was flattened by what looked like hoof marks. Next was Jack, his body was strewn across the floor, there was a large opening in the middle of his abdomen, with his internal organs flung out and laying on the floor. Next up was Jerry, his body was separated and dismember, and left across the room in pieces, with his organs mashed and hung on the walls with his own bones as nails. Finally, as we entered Peter's room, we saw him in a fetal position, rocking back and forth, his hair a mess and his eyes filled with fear, he only had a couple bruises, but with the state he was in, he might as well be dead.

Dave was nowhere to be found, his room was empty, nothing, the police never found his corpse, whenever we tried to ask Peter, he just said one word, "Monster", I was mortified by the sight, my friends were all dead, and the autopsies showed, all of them were alive for the whole process. I entered a deep depression, and so I hand all of you this message, if you ever visit the Philippines, beware of the Tikbalang, and make sure to be respectful of the nature there, or you might just suffer the consequences for it.