Bigot Hall Read Free Page A

lead sharpener. One flight of stairs twisted upside-down and fed out of a window, to sort the men from the bugs.
    The Hall was carelessly furnished. Tangled mountains of chairs were draped in bladderwrack and bladed with plate fungus. In the sitting room was a piano - I once lifted the big lid and underneath was a whale-size ribcage and a lattice of muscles stretched like bubblegum. The keyboard lid was nailed permanently closed. The dining room was dominated by a large and luridly precise painting of a clown before a firing squad. As the years passed it was to echo the desolation of a burgeoning family at mealtime, as we stared at the erstwhile food set out for us. I remember one day as we were inspecting some soup which had the shape and resilience of a demolition ball, Father seemed worried. The omen of Snap’s denial was the Hall’s foundation-stone but the building was proving a beacon for mothfaced resenters and Snap had yet to say the magic words. Father feared the place was due to fall about his ears. We were oblivious to his concerns, having become deaf even to the gargoyles’ mindboggling profanities.
    What I alone didn’t know as I grew up was that the Hall was a transcendence machine. Under tremendous pressure, Father finally held a demonstration for Snap who, his sparse hair wilding in the wind, pointed at the house. ‘You can’t do that !’ he gasped. Father heaved a sigh of relief - he was onto a winner.

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