Under Your Stairs? Mr Skriegley
With Halloween just beyond the next tombstone, mentions of the Bogeyman will be rife, (and all should take heed), but, one can be overly focused on a single threat. It may comfort a select group to unearth one of the lesser known legends, a man who understandably makes few acquaintances – Mr Skriegley.
Just what kind of a danger he presents is unknown, but I’ll relay what’s come in on excited whispers…
He seeks shelter under your stairs. That is our first concern. He must therefore gain access to our homes…somehow, silently. Why under the stairs is anyone’s guess for he’s not a short man, folded up in an absurd manner, knees beside the head. Clothes are tight and thick – surely much too hot for indoors – but content he seems, strangely occupied.
In better light you can see what’s oft repeated – loooong hair and loooong nails. A pale face lives behind greasy strands, but never does he turns to you fully, only giving you one of his ears.
This is what children see when they open the door…when they are called…
It is only children Mr Skriegley is interested in talking to. He knows how to hush them up on first sight, tell them its okay, and once a connection is quickly made he instigates the talks via scratching and tapping from below, pricking the bubble of deep sleep, bringing them back down to open the door, to see him folded up like that…yet somehow, always, without waking the others…
As far as can be told he doesn’t kill, but now that doesn’t mean it’s not worse. The few who have seen him can’t stop talking about him, perhaps just three souls, but with enough volume and repetition to elevate an incident into legend.
And as for the name, well, it seems that’s the last thing he tells them on their final talk, one that’s like any other, one that doesn’t forewarn of a goodbye, but one night when they suspect they hear that scratching, that odd tapping, the door is opened to see it’s empty under the stairs…
Perhaps Mr Skriegley anticipated a problem. Perhaps that’s why he visits other homes.
But most odd of all is that when he is truly gone, when the startled child, cocksure of having heard that tapping and scratching, tip-toes downstairs to open the door and see an empty space…they can’t tell if they miss him…
