Bigot Hall

SHADOW

I had an imaginary playmate who bullied me constantly until I shoved him into the lake and held his head under. When the bubbles stopped I felt immensely relieved. The bastard had been making my life hell for years.

But I was appalled when Snapper reeled it out of the depths a week later. ‘Nothing all day,’ he said, packing up his gear in disgust. He slammed the tackle box closed on the kid’s ear and conveyed the weightless, balloonlike body to the back porch, crashing it down. The body lay mauve and bloated amid the carp rods, its slitted eyes accusing. The last few days I’d been as happy as a spider in a firebucket and wasn’t about to let this rotting phantom ruin my ease. When Snapper caught me opening the tackle box he barged me into Father’s study. ‘Raiding the gear!’ he bellowed, causing a crack to jag across the ceiling.

‘Wanted to catch some funny fish from the lake,’ I said. ‘Perhaps a relative. You’ve always said that when I was born Mother thought I was a Coelacanth.’

‘So she did,’ said Father, nodding. ‘It was a shock for us all. Put the boy down, Snapper, and there’s no call for the knife. The boy and I are going to the lake.’

By the light of a storm lamp I hooked the swollen kid onto the line with a mind to pitch it at the deeper waters. A strong wind was blowing. Father’s line went into a tree, becoming tangled. As I tried to cast, the wind came up and gusted my imaginary playmate backwards into the night, breaking the line.

The next morning I discovered that the rotting kid was tagged on the roof like a stray piece of laundry. Rain was tumbling over it. I was out of Adrienne’s window in a moment, crawling toward the black and splitting corpse. I had just tied its belt to mine when Snapper appeared at the window of his treehouse, transfigured with rage. ‘It’ll be a sad day for the devil when you see the light, laughing boy. Everything’s in ruins because of your arrogance. So help me I’ll come over there and smash your head like a snail!’

The granite jaws of a gargoyle closed on my ankle — I yanked myself free. ‘You bastard,’ it yelled. ‘Lemme down. Lemme down or I’ll be sick again.’

Clambering down the east wall toward poor Mr Cannon’s window, I established a foothold which turned out to be the socket of poor Mr Cannon’s eye. Letting out a scream, he held his face like an objet d’art until assured it was intact.

‘An unprovoked attack,’ yelled Snapper, having roared me into Father’s study.

‘What do you say is wrong with that?’ I asked. ‘He enjoyed it, and it didn’t hurt me.’

‘How can you stand for this boy’s life?’ demanded Snap. ‘Clout him eighty-three times with a belt, brother.’

‘Or a hose,’ I suggested. But at this Snapper tore the belt from my waist, flipping the kid onto Father’s desk. To my dismay the corpse’s belly burst open, spewing maggots and slime onto architectural blueprints.

‘Pulverise him with this,’ shrieked Snap, brandishing the belt at Father, and began to laugh uncontrollably, his face scarlet.

‘Are you alright, brother?’ asked Father, frowning.

‘Don’t answer for my sake, Snap,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t slam an eyelid if you folded with a stroke.’

‘Just fall the other way,’ said Father, gesturing away from the desk.

‘The desperate acts of this demon child are more important than your imploding house!’ With a violent sweep of his arm Snapper sent everything flying from the desk — the body rocketed through an open window into a wheelbarrow trundled by Professor Leap.

‘Leap!’ I yelled through the window. ‘There’s an invisible corpse on the barrow!’

‘Now listen to me, laughing boy,’ he said, stopping and looking stormy. ‘Just because you’ve turned your back on logic’s province doesn’t mean it isn’t there.’

‘And just because I say there’s a rotting cadaver on the cart doesn’t mean — Wait!’ But he had given up and trundled on, shaking his head in dark disappointment.

‘This is a fine joke you’re playing on us all, eh boy?’ chortled Father. ‘A rotting child!’

‘Madness is climbing the ladder of the boy’s spine,’ Snap was saying as I slipped from the room, ‘and all you can do is sit there drumming like a clockwork chimp?’

The barrow stood empty at the back door. In the kitchen, Mother was carving up vegetables and the remains of the murdered boy. The body had pulped as though beaten with a claw-hammer. ‘Mother,’ I stammered, shaking, ‘what’s for tea?’

She turned to me, a shred of gut dangling from her knife. ‘Stew,’ she said, and to this day I don’t know whether she meant it as a noun or a verb.

My stomach revolved like a ferry, dumping its cargo with a splash.

‘Laughing boy,’ said Father’s voice. My eyes opened upon my own room, its familiar chains and ring bolts. ‘Collapsed in the kitchen — first sign of maturity. How you feeling?’

‘As though I have been nailed to a rural door.’

‘That’s the spirit. Sit up, boy, and sip some of this. Hot broth.’

I had swallowed three spoonfuls when I saw the broken rib in the bowl.

But there was no sense in trying to speak to these people. So what if there was a rib? I took the bowl from Father and poured it away when he left. Thriving for two days on scraps of curtain, I soon felt ready for anything.

Calling on the Verger, I gave him a spud. ‘Trying to bamboozle me again with votives?’ he rumbled.

‘And if I am?’ I said. ‘It’s no secret I think you’re useless. But seeing as you swan around in dark clobber and a hood I suppose you’re the man.’ I gave him a canvas bag containing all the remains I could salvage. ‘Blather a bit of ceremonial pap over this and I’ll stay out of your way for a year. Verger?’

He had gone. Squinting out of the window, I could see him already digging a hole half a mile away and nattering over a book.

The following winter I trudged to the burial site and lay some fishing weights on the grave. Brushing soft snow from the headstone, I read the simple epitaph.

Here lies

FREUD

Rest in peace