There is something about a garigor that plays on a child’s imagination. The twists and turns of the stairs create deep pools of shadows, and disembodied voices seem to carry up the stairwell.
And Marianne shared a room with her sister half-way up the winding stairs. So perhaps it was no surprise that she used to lie in bed with the covers pulled up high, occasionally glancing across at her sister in the next bed.
She often wished she had the courage to jump out of bed and in with her sister but she knew that Daniella, six years her senior, would tease her for being a real baby. And seven was too old to be such a baby, wasn’t it?
But she was so frightened of the footsteps. At least once a week, for years on end, she would hear them. They seemed to start way down below from the most terrifying place in the house, taħt it-taraġ, the little, triangular cubby-hole at the foot of the stairs that was not really big enough for anything but the odd box and tin, and yet seemed large enough for all a child’s nightmares and fears.
There were two pairs of footsteps and she could visualise the people as they came up stairs, one slightly ahead of the other on the narrow stairs. And then they would come to the landing. And then, Marianne would see them.
They would turn and stand silently side-by-side in her doorway, an elderly couple, the man dressed in a dark, formal suit, the lady in a black dress. Neither of them had their heads covered.
There were two pairs of footsteps and she could visualise the people as they came upstairs, one slightly ahead of the other on the narrow stairs
Marianne would try to lie as still as possible. “Perhaps if I don’t move,” she thought, with the innocence of youth, “they’ll think I’m dead.”
They would stare intently at the two lying figures, and after a few seconds they would turn and disappear again, leaving the little child shaking in her bed.
She would close her eyes tightly and then start yelling at the top of her voice: “Ma, ma!” And her mother would come and calm her down, trying to stop her from waking up her sister nearby.
She always had the same explanation: “It’s probably just the neighbours you can hear...”
Although her mother never said so in as many words, Marianne was sure she thought that the whole thing was just an over-active imagination.
And over the years, she too began to wonder. She moved into a bigger room when she was 10 and never saw or heard anything again. Yet she would dread having to go up the garigor and would go to all sorts of lengths to avoid it. There were times she could not get out of it, though, like when her father wanted her to fetch something. Then she would take a deep breath and run all the way up and all the way down without stopping to even look into her old bedroom.
But children do grow up and she did begin to feel silly.
After all, her brother had slept in that room before her and he had never complained of seeing or hearing anything.
With time, she forgot all about the strange couple, peering at her through the dark.
Until she read one of the Unexplained stories in a Weekender and brought up the subject over their family get-together. They discussed the story that had appeared, and then, with a bit of a laugh, Marianne turned to her mother and said:
“Remember when I was little and I used to see that old couple standing on the stairs?”
Her mother nodded, smiling. But Marianne’s sister, Daniella, did not. “I never told you,” she said to Marianne. “I didn’t want to frighten you, but I used to hear them and see them too. And perhaps because I was older, I never called out for mum or anything. But, yes. I used to see them every week too.”
A hush fell over the dinner table. And Marianne felt a cold shiver run up her spine.
This is the 13th 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.