Although Philip and Sheila had a lovely house in Rabat, they knew it wasn’t The Right One. It was 1976, they were not married yet but they and a group of friends all hung out together, living in a sort of commune arrangement.

As is often the case when looking for something, you come across it in the most unexpected way.

Philip and Sheila went to see literally dozens of houses via various real-estate agents but all were discarded without a second thought. But there was one old farmhouse in one of the old villages, Attard, that they immediately fell in love with. The house was 500 years old in parts and boasted 22 rooms.

Unfortunately, it also cost twice their budget. The disappointed pair listened to the door click shut as the agent showed them back to the car but a little bit of the house’s atmosphere seemed to leave with them.

Philip was determined to have the house, one way or another. He felt that if he could just speak to the owner in person, he could somehow persuade him to sell it.

For two years, he searched through the land registry files and pestered neighbours, but he could not track down the owner. Then one day, an English friend of theirs, Kerry, came down to stay with them for a holiday.

They did all the usual sights and then, for no particular reason, drove her to the end of the alley to show her their “dream house”, or at least all they could see of it: the locked door.

Was it fate? She immediately said: “Oh, I know the owner”. And so it was. He was coming to Malta just a few days later.

Philip went down to meet him, he pleaded his case and was perhaps the most surprised of all when it worked. The owner halved the price and gave him the key there and then.

The couple and their three friends moved in almost immediately.

Life got into a routine quickly: they went to work, came home and ate together, played guitars and talked. But then their lives started to be manipulated in ways they could not at first understand, let alone believe.

At first the incidents were minor and easily explained away as carelessness, or the consequence of too many people sharing one house. Keys hung up carefully on a hook would turn up in a bedroom. A wallet would be found underneath the bed, in the wrong person’s room. But nothing actually disappeared. The normally placid dog would go mad, growling and snarling by one particular corner, but gradually learnt to avoid it.

At first the incidents were minor and easily explained away as carelessness

Life continued…

Till one day the five were watching television, when they heard clapping from upstairs. Just that, two or three claps, and then nothing. They did a quick head-count to check that no one had gone upstairs and then turned off the television. But there was just a thick, heavy silence.

After a little nervous chuckle, the television was switched on again. But this time, Philip watched the bottom of the stairs out of the corner of his eye. Clap. Clap. This time, the lights in the hallway went on and off with the sound. An explanation: It was just an electrical fault.

Philip and one of the men de­cided to go and investigate. They only got as far as the bottom of the stairs. Clap. Clap. The lights flickered again and ignoring any attempt at bravado, the two just ran back in terror.

They sat in silence for a while and as the minutes ticked away, the five suddenly felt rather foolish. The two men went to the mains and turned off the electricity, and they all sat silently, waiting in the half light of dusk. The claps echoed one more time before stopping. They looked at each other – what next?

Soon after, the friends were again terrified by noises, this time louder and more inexplicable than before. For three consecutive nights, they were awoken by screeching noises from the courtyard, like an empty metal container being dragged across the flagstones.

This time, the friends peered out of their windows to the quiet courtyard below. The scene was as peaceful as one would expect at three in the morning and yet the awful noise continued. This time, the need to find a rational explanation made them blame the water in the pipes. But no neighbours heard the grating sounds, either on that first night or on either of the two subsequent ones.

Philip remained perplexed. He examined the yard with the help of the torch, convinced he would find gouges in the flagstones. But there was nothing, nothing at all.

But then one night, John and Michelle came down to breakfast, looking dishevelled and upset. They had obviously had a bad night. It wasn’t just the lack of sleep which made them touchy either.

They had been kept awake by some prankster who kept knocking on their door and running away.

The others looked at each other. Why would anyone want to do that?

After the third or fourth bout of knocking, he had stood in wait behind the door, flinging it open as soon as the noise began again. The corridor to the right and left of their room was completely empty.

By now, Philip and Sheila and their friends were terrified.

A priest was called for advice but all he could do was reassure them that at least nothing physical had happened and they were still in no danger.

The intense pace of the incidents slowed down. Weeks went by without any strange phenomena at all. Gradually their fears abated. They even started to look upon the incidents as a bit of an adventure.

But it was not all over...

To be concluded next week.

This is the 25th 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.

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