Fiona was like many other teenagers during the war. She still wanted to go out, to see films, to meet her friends. But the harsh realities of war had a way of taking over. Her parent’s house in Sliema was destroyed by a bomb and they were forced to rent a house in Pietà.

It should not have been such a hardship. The house was, after all, huge. At the back of the building, a huge garden stretched out beneath the towering mass of St Luke’s Hospital. And yet, something was not quite right.

When Carmen, her mother, first climbed up to the door and walked into the house, she would have sworn that something was barring her way. Nothing tangible, just a “thickness”, a pressure, across the doorway.

The house had plenty of space for Carmen and her husband, Fiona and her younger sister, Carol, and her married daughter with her baby. She set about decorating it. The house was soon filled with huge, dark paintings and old, imposing furniture that they managed to find here and there.

Carmen may have liked the style but Fiona found it oppressive, spooky. And it was not just because of the furniture.

The house was often shrouded in smoke screens let off to protect the boats in the nearby Torpedo Depot, giving the place an eerie atmosphere even in broad daylight.

And on the wall at the top of the roof they could see where some stones had crumbled and fallen. It seemed that lightning had once hit that spot, killing a man in the process.

And were the neighbours’ stories true? Had someone committed suicide in the house?

The house was often shrouded in smoke screens let off to protect the boats in the nearby Torpedo Depot

Unlike Fiona, Carmen could not allow herself the luxury of allowing her imagination to run riot. They were lucky to have a roof over their heads. She was a fairly no-nonsense woman.

For some time, the family lived there contently and the only change in their lives was the asthmatic wheezing caused by the smoke.

Until some people moved in next door. The house had an even larger garden than Carmen’s and the family decided to start up a small weaving industry. Fiona and her sisters spent many hours sitting on their balcony that summer, draped over the railing, watching the men work in the garden next door.

Fiona was quite a stunner and was quite aware of the admiring glances she was getting from the men below. But the harmless flirting came to an abrupt end when the men started cutting down a huge blackcurrant tree at the bottom of the garden.

The men had started to dig out the roots when their spades uncovered a gruesome sight. They carefully dug out the crumbling bones of a skeleton. Or at least most of a skeleton.

Fiona and her sisters could hardly believe their eyes. Their hands flew up to stifle their screams. They watched in amazement as the men lifted out one long limb after another.

The men gathered around the bones and seemed to be discussing the find. They then casually tossed them into the pile of rubble which had accumulated against the adjoining wall and carried on digging.

“Ma, Ma!” the girls yelled as they ran indoors. “They’ve dug up some skeletons...”

But Carmen would not have any of it.

“Don’t be ridiculous. It was probably a dog or something.”

Fiona was about to insist but thought better of it. After all, she argued with herself, why on earth would a skeleton be buried under a tree, unless....

Her mind was filled with images of murders and strange disappearances. It was only later that evening that Fiona realised that the men had only dug up the limbs and torso. No skull.

Fiona’s younger sister was studying for her school exams at that time and she was asked to help the neighbours’ sons with their homework. It wasn’t too difficult; they were only about 10 years old and quite hard-working. So Carol had no idea what their mother would want to talk to her about when, one day, she pulled her over to one side.

“Have the kids said anything to you about a man?”

Carol stared at her blankly.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

It seemed that the boys kept complaining that there was a man wandering around at the bottom of their garden. The neighbour wanted to know whether Fiona and Carol had ever seen anyone from the balcony.

Carol mentioned it to her mother but soon forgot all about it. Shame, really, as it was a warning of the things to come.

To be continued next week

This is the 45th in a series of short stories The Sunday Times of Malta is running every Sunday. It is taken from The Unexplained Plus (Allied Publications) by Vanessa Macdonald. The first edition was published in 2001 and reprinted twice. It was republished, with added stories, as The Unexplained Plus. The Maltese version of the book, Ta’ Barra Minn Hawn (Klabb Kotba Maltin), is available from all leading bookstores and stationers and from www.bdlbooks.com.