NEW
RELEASE and EXCERPT
The White Lady of Marsaxlokk
by Rosanne
Dingli
Today we bring you an excerpt from Rosanne Dingli's brand new release, The White Lady of Marsaxlokk (pronounced MARSA-SHLOCK).
This is the fifth in our special feature on author Rosanne Dingli. For more
books by this author, please check out our previous blog posts: Death in Malta (blog post), According to Luke (blog post), Camera Obscura (blog post), and The Hidden Auditorium (blog post).
Description
A doctor returns to a dilapidated mansion after 25 years, seeking
something he thinks he saw on his honeymoon. Obsessed about the house and its
history, he has dreams of restoring it and starting a business.
Uncertain whether his deteriorating marriage will sustain such a plan,
unsure whether a madcap scheme to start a guesthouse is even worth considering,
he becomes as haunted as the locals say the house is. Memories, visions and
dreams merge to present something inescapable; the story of a young woman whose
life, whose possessions, could not be extinguished or destroyed by time or
death.
Based on local anecdotes and landmarks, The White Lady of Marsaxlokk is a melancholic story of the melding of
history into present day. It takes the reader on a captivating journey through
time, on a feasible excursion that is both enchanting and just a little bit
eerie.
Excerpt
‘Philip! You can’t
go in there. It’s a ruin, I tell you.’
He walked alongside
the limestone boundary, looking up at rusty iron railings in the wall. Before
Meg could call out to him, Dr Philip Falzon reached up and vaulted the railings
in one smooth movement. His raincoat caught on one of the ornate spearheads and
he heard it rip, but nothing could stop him. The narrow front garden was weedy
and slippery after the rain. He stayed on a path of loose flagstones that led
round the side, where he found a doorway stacked with loose rubble, some of it
flaking, some of it grey like iron.
It was easy; he
kicked at the bottom of the wall of rubble and it collapsed instantly, making
him leap backward and nearly twist his ankle. He took a deep breath and avoided
falling boulders and fragments of stone block. ‘A way in.’ He talked to
himself. With Meg out of sight and out of earshot, he could do that. He could
explore. Five minutes was all he wanted. Five minutes. Five minutes to absorb
the atmosphere of that place. It was starting to enthral him. He needed to do
it. It felt so … it felt like no other place he had ever visited.
But then, he did
not break into abandoned ruins very often. This did not feel like intrusion. It
felt like rediscovery. Unsteady on his feet, he stepped over rubble, rubbish;
the accumulation of decades of debris, fallen from above. His eyes travelled
upward as he entered a cavernous room without a ceiling.
‘Oh god!’ His
exclamation rebounded off grimy walls full of half-hearted graffiti, gouges,
spatters of paint, and the inexorable water stains that rain had channelled
downward, through the broken roof, over the years. Grey, green, black.
He had seen nothing
like this in his twenty-nine years. He had worked hard, he graduated, class of
1976, and did his internship, and was poised to start general practice. This
holiday with Meg was necessary, urgent. He was practically exhausted. Newly
married, on the verge of a new life. Exhausted. In seven weeks, however, when
he was rested, when he had recovered, he would launch a career – a successful
one, if hard work had anything to do with it.
Moving forward, he
came into a huge space, once an enormous stairwell. ‘Oh god!’ Philip raised a
protective arm over his head in realization that the entire staircase had
collapsed at some point, making it possible for him to gaze upward to the sky
from the ground level of this three-storeyed house. Two arched apertures and a
Cyclops window loomed high above his head on the right. The day’s last sun rays
beamed in.
‘Oh – what a pity.
What a shame.’ Words, words that came back at him, bounced off filthy walls.
Dust, rubble, broken masonry and twisted metal rods and beams around him showed
little evidence of glory or elegance, but he felt it was there once. ‘The
curved stairs are gone.’
They were gone, but
the stubs of stone treads – the remnants of what once was a truly glorious
staircase – were still embedded in the wall, curving upward, the bowed shape
clearly outlined. He could see stone and plaster fragments banked and clinging
to each stair stub, and traces on the wall of a painted green pattern, artfully
done to resemble a trellis; a dado leading upward. ‘The risers are gone, but
parts of the treads are there. I wonder …’
He could see others
had tried before him, to the height of about ten stairs. The eleventh tread was
piled with debris that had never been trodden or pushed aside. It was narrow
and dangerous. Philip heard Meg’s voice shout his name on the deserted road
outside.
‘Oh, Meg!’
He mouthed exasperated words under his breath. She did not understand his
feeling for this place. People said he was intuitive, an excellent doctor, with
an instinctual bedside manner. He was spontaneous and fun to be with, his
friends often said. But there was something deep inside him that had never been
satisfied. Would climbing the remnants of those stairs give him part of what he
sought, whatever it was?
Philip Falzon did
not know. He did not understand what it was he sought, but he certainly had not
found it yet. Meg’s voice faded. She would wait. She had to wait. His foot
found a clear space on the first tread, and on the second and third. Upward, he
went upward, ascending towards a void. The stairs, he could now see, had led to
a wide landing underneath a pair of ornate arches, joined in the middle by a
fluted stone orb. What a glorious place this must have been once.
Now, it was a dump,
a ruin. Meg was right. So why did it make him feel so welcome, so at home? The
higher he rose, the more cautious Philip became. He did not dare look down. The
rubble and wreckage that lay on the floor underneath him was ample proof that
downward was the only direction solid matter travelled in that space.
His feet found
space beyond the eleventh stair. But it was clear no one had gone before him –
not recently, in any case. Philip held his breath and climbed upward another
nine treacherous treads, and came to a gap, fully three feet wide, in front of
a platform composed of long limestone slabs, the remnants of wooden architraves
and, dark brown with rust, some bent and twisted ancient metal beams. Rubble
piled heavily everywhere. It was not a stable landing on a fine staircase any
more. For some time, this had been a perilous perch, a full storey above ground
level.
Philip waved away
all thought of danger with his right hand. His left grasped a knob of stone
that jutted out of the uneven wall. Deep audible breathing resounded in the
cavernous space. ‘Oh god. How will I ever get down again?’ He dared not look
down. The only way was forward, over that gap of empty space, underneath which several
metres below, was certain death. ‘Oh god. I must be crazy.’ He did not dare
think what his weight might do to the landing if he jumped over that opening
and landed heavily.
He held his breath
and leapt.
‘Oh.’ He made it.
‘Oh.’ Righting himself where he landed, not daring to move another muscle,
Philip waited. His ankle protested again. Would the whole structure collapse,
taking it with him to the floor below?
It held, but it was
not a safe perch. Knowing there was little underneath to support him, Philip
looked up. The wall to his left was unusually marked. This was not the staining
and blooming of green mould and rainwater runnels he had seen downstairs. This
was not the grey, green and black of neglect. He wished he had more light.
Peering into the darkness, he took two unsteady steps to the left and saw what
it was.
A mural. A tracery
of fresco. Imagery of a trellised garden, cleverly drawn so the perspective
gave the impression of distance, of depth. It was a wonderful garden, with
arches of lattice bearing vines, some with blue blossom, others with white,
fading into the distance where the landscape was golden. Church spires pierced
the sky, which was a brilliant blue, studded with cotton-woolly clouds, and
there, in the distance, a deep blue bay.
‘How lovely. How
beautiful and …’ Among the foliage, further on, Philip glimpsed movement. A
minute, momentous, breathtaking miniscule movement. Could it be? No. No. A
spark of white light. He held his breath. It was cold up here, it was suddenly
freezing, but he did not dare move, lest whatever moved two seconds before
would stop. Or pounce. Or escape. Or frighten him out of his wits with some
unexpected action.
‘Wait. Wait, wait.
This is crazy.’
About the Author
Sought by an international audience for prize-winning short stories and
intricate novels, Rosanne Dingli has published fiction successfully for over 25
years. Most of her body of work is available in paperback and ebook.
This author's fiction centres around the classical Arts, such as
painting, music, and literature. She also uses locations and their allure to
anchor her stories and give them substance. Folklore embellishes some of her
works.
Rosanne is the author of a number of books, including The Hidden Auditorium, Camera Obscura, According to Luke, and her latest release, The White Lady of Marsaxlokk. She is now writing full-time after retiring from
teaching in 2009. Her out-of-print short fiction and poetry is once more
available in handy easy-to-read volumes that do not cost the earth. She gives
occasional workshops on writing and publishing.
Giveaway
Enter the Goodreads giveaway for a chance to win a copy of The White Lady of Marsaxlokk by Rosanne Dingli (ends 8 May).
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