The family needed help. They called a spiritual society and eventually a Muslim priest, who listened to the Hindu family politely, realising how desperate they must have been to seek his help.
“You must realise that if you try to get rid of the spirit, it might work,” he warned. “But it might also make it more angry.”
Which would it be? They did not have too long to wait.
Sita woke up to find bloody scratches down her arm. The next day, the next arm was gouged. The next day she watched in horror as scratches appeared across her belly. The next day, it was her legs.
She began to think that she was losing her mind, that she was somehow hurting herself in a fit of hysteria. They called a doctor in to treat the wounds, and Sita watched him carefully, sure that he too thought that she was hysterical. But the spirit was clearly warning the family not to confront it.
As Sita pulled up her sleeve to show him her arm, blood oozed in little red drops from a scratch that spread down her arm, as though someone was pulling the sharp point of knife along her skin. He fled.
There was nothing the rest of the family could do. Sita sank into a deep depression, driven almost insane by her unseen, unknown attacker.
The months passed, and well-meaning friends were put in touch with a variety of people believed to have special powers.
Raju carefully copied out holy writings on the wall but these disappeared by the morning, leaving only a faint scorch mark on the wall.
One man brought a mysterious looking tin with him, which he assured them contained a secret concoction which would drive away evil. He left it on a windowsill but it disappeared from there soon after he did. He was deeply upset to find the tin waiting for him on his desk when he returned to his office. He refused to return.
A sense of frenzy was building up. The family knew that a showdown could not be too far off.
A blind man was recommended but the day he visited, watches and clocks disappeared from the house, only reappearing once he left.
A sense of frenzy was building up. The family knew that a showdown could not be too far off
The spirit – if that is what it was – started to warn the family to back off and they could hear the ominous sound of a blade falling onto the floor in the still of the night.
They felt they had tried everything... except tribal medicine. Swallowing their reluctance and instinctive fear, they made an appointment with a witch doctor who lived some 70 miles away.
That morning, the family woke up feeling more optimistic than they had in years. Everything will be OK, they tried to reassure each other.
But their optimism was short-lived. On the shiny, polished glass-topped table in the centre of the hall a footprint appeared. It was over 13 inches long, and Raju could only describe it with a shudder as “not ordinary”. The sweaty imprint lingered for a full half-hour.
The family put the last few things into the car, hardly aware of what they were doing. They piled into the car and raced off down the long, straight road, hardly paying any attention to speed limits, weaving in and out of the traffic.
And then the brakes failed. The family found themselves sitting in the car, strangely silent, with clouds of dust still swarming around the car after Raju’s heroic effort to control the skid. No one was hurt, at least not physically. But the expression in Sita’s eyes told of a much deeper hurt. Could they beat this... this thing? And yet they were determined to get to the witch doctor.
They felt that the footprint and the severed brake-line were a sign that they were getting close to a solution, that the Thing was feeling threatened.
They knew all about witch doctors and their strange incantations but still watched in fascination as the old man burnt feathers, deeply breathing in the fumes until he fell into a trance, mumbling incoherently. When he opened his blood-shot eyes again, he stared intently at Sita.
“I know the spirit that is tormenting you and he will not leave you alone until he is happy. I will give you a necklace to wear with chants on the beads.”
It did not seem to be much of a weapon against the evil that they were fighting but Sita was ready to try anything. She almost gave up when the attacks continued, a small cut in her tongue, a slight nick on her chest. She had suffered for so long that she could hardly believe it when a whole day passed without incident. But then another passed and another and the family breathed a deep sigh of relief.
Six months passed and the family was lulled into a glimmer of hope that the ordeal was finally over.
Sita began to function again, getting out of bed, taking over some of the cooking duties. Raju caught his wife humming in the garden and felt an overwhelming sense of relief that his life was returning to normal.
Alas, it was not to be.
The attacks on Sita started again. In desperation they wrote to the witch doctor asking for his advice. His son wrote back to explain that his father was very ill but that he would come to see them. The man did not have the same awe-inspiring presence as his father but the family waited patiently.
“There is nothing I can do. If my father could not help you to get rid of the spirit, then no one else can,” he ended with a shrug of defeat. “You just have to rely on your faith. You must believe that you can make it disappear.”
After the witch doctor’s son left, Raju and his family put all their energy into willing the spirit out. They had beaten it for six months; they felt they could beat it forever.
The attacks grew milder and less frequent. Eventually they stopped. The ordeal had lasted four years.
It was a long, long time before they could pick up the strands of their life. It was years before they dared to talk about their story, terrified that mentioning it might somehow open a crack through which the evil could return.
They moved away from Kenya soon after and can scarcely believe the horror of those relentless days. But sometimes as Sita is getting changed, Raju stares at the scars still visible on her arms and belly. They catch each other’s eyes and shudder.
Concluded. The first part was published on February 21.
This is the 44th 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.