Bigot Hall

RISE

Glad of the company of a gormless tyke to whom he could feed outrageous bullshit, poor Mr Cannon would spin me the same yarn every time he had a break from maximum security.

‘You’re descended from werewolves,’ he said, going at his leg irons with a bandsaw. ‘Why d’you think Uncle Snap’s forever howling at the moon?’

‘Because he’s a throwback and barking mad.’

He eyed me with sharp good humour. ‘Why d’you say — “barking”?’

I explained that if the lifespan of the world were a twenty-four hour clock, humans would appear at two seconds to midnight and Snapper would appear at teatime.

‘Precisely,’ said Cannon. ‘And aren’t you always saying he’s only just learnt to walk on his hind legs?’

‘It’s a metaphor, Cannon — something a strumpet like you wouldn’t understand. Don’t drill here, you moron — take it to the foundry.’

‘Think carefully, laughing boy — haven’t you an appetite? If it so much as moves you pour milk on and eat it.’

‘Out of sheer bloody desperation!’

‘No smoke without fire.’

‘You know very well there is — get out you bastard and take your ribboned premise with you.’

‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ he said, standing up with a smirk of mischief, ‘turn thirteen and you’ll know exactly what you are.’

But after three years of being dripped such effervescent nonsense I no longer bothered to reject it. Amid the unnameable abjections of the Hall it made a refreshing change from the truth and was quietly absorbed into the charcoal of my flash-fried personality. I had always known the others were keeping some grand secret from me — Mister Hieronymus had said as much. Clearly I would start roaring at some point and undergo an agonising change, my bones thickening and creaking like the plot of Uncle Silas. I’d howl at the murky window and so on. I was glad to have something to look forward to.

Fascinated by the idea, I lay at night believing that I sensed the onset of the transformation. Adrienne became worried that I no longer struggled against my chains. ‘It’s no fun when you’re like this, laughing boy. Won’t you pretend for me?’

‘These chains are the best idea you ever had, sis. Come my birthday, we’ll need them.’

Adrienne pouted so that her mouth, regrettably, resembled the suction pad of an octopus.

‘The werewolf,’ she later read from a monster encyclopaedia, ‘can be killed by a silver bullet through the heart.’

‘So can I.’

‘There’s more. It’s covered in hair, eats sheep, sees in black and white and is easily enraged.’

It became clear that we were dealing not with a mythical beast but a vapid adult male. I saw the slow-motion fire-bombing of my spirit. ‘Tighten the chains,’ I blurted. ‘It’s a bloke I’m turning into.’

‘That’s not terrible,’ said Adrienne scornfully.

I told her to take a gander at the precedents. Uncle Snapper — nought to sixty in five hours. Roger Lang — oblivious to anyone but himself. Father.

‘What about him?’

I slammed into Father’s study. ‘No hanging and shooting Uncle Snap this birthday, Father — I want answers. Why has poor Mr Cannon been telling me all these bloody years I’m due for the wolfhouse? I’ve been straining to endure an erupting musculoskeletal system because of his lies.’

‘He meant it kindly, lad — a distraction. Misguided ofcourse — you could park a ship in his madness. People make a meal out of a tedious transition. Truth of it is the meatheads you deplore were meatheads from the start. Snap, for instance, thundered antlered and snorting into his teens without a twang — just got louder, is all. Here’s a picture of him aged two.’ Father showed me a picture of a toddler at the handles of a Gatling gun. ‘Same goes for the ineffectual,’ he said, becoming balmy and philosophical. ‘Whatever the quality, it’s expressed to progressively exponential extremes. The power-hungry will inevitably run for leadership and the drab will support them — but you know this, laughing boy.’

‘I suppose so,’ I frowned, picking up a clock from the mantel. In five minutes I would be thirteen. ‘But what’ll happen to someone like me?’

Father’s face froze with fear, then seemed to crumple. ‘I could be wrong,’ he stammered. ‘Exceptions to everything under and over the sun…’

I couldn’t watch his uncertainty. Returning to Adrienne’s room, I lay on the bed. ‘Tie me down,’ I said.