Your True Tales
April 2004 – Page 3

The Grinning Demon
by Charles

I have only told this story to my sister who is two years younger than I. I was born in Sydney Australia to Maltese immigrants. At the age of nine, my family decided to move back to Malta. My parents separated when we arrived. My sister and I lived with my mother at my grandmother's tiny terrace house where two of my uncles also lived. It was cramped in the evening when we settled for bed.

One uncle slept on a single bed in the front room. My grandmother, mother and young sister slept on the double bed in the main bedroom. I slept on a mattress on the floor beside the double bed. In between the two rooms was a "gap" room wide enough to hold a fold-out single bed where my other uncle slept. This is also the spot where the religious shrine was kept, as all good Catholic families have.

One night, I woke up to my mother weeping and waling. My head and face were covered in blood. My mother had just had a miscarriage about two months into a pregnancy. I don't recall much else happening as I must have been in shock or some sort of daze. I know I was scared.

My mother was taken to hospital and things were cleaned up. I remember settling into bed with my uncle (heads at opposite ends) in the narrow "gap" room. I felt protected by the dim glow of the eternal light that lit the shrine. Except when I looked at the opposite end of the "gap" room, where the light didn't reach, I swore to my sister I saw the face of dark olive-skinned man with black curly hair grinning and then disappearing back into the shadow. To this day, I remember the face vividly and the look of satisfaction on its face.

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