Bigot Hall Read Free Page B

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 

SO WHAT
     
     
    Adrienne found that deja vu could be induced by arranging to have a condescending moron tell her something she already knew. ‘What’s the use of that?’ I asked, threading small predators into my hat and snapping the line.
    She explained that the phantom events we recall during deja vu are enclosed in free-floating etheric bubbles squeezed