Splitfoot

Splitfoot

Paul Walther

There wasn’t much to see. The house, which the title indicated was over a hundred years old, consisted of a living room, with the television always going, a kitchen nook, and two bedrooms overlooking the back of nowhere to the north. The youngest girl was an infant, sharing a bedroom with her mother. The boy and girl, eight and twelve respectively, had been sharing the second bedroom. Now that Violet and company had been trapped, the entire sad-looking family was sleeping in the mother`s bedroom, crashing on blankets and filthy comforters.

Violet looked at the ugly girl in question. She was a pudgy little thing with stringy blonde hair and fatty little breasts just starting under the thin fabric of her dirty tee shirt. Staring at the television, as usual, her slack little mouth was hanging open, her spattering of acne turned into craters of the moon by the flickering green light of the TV. She had no reason to obstruct this transfer of property, since it couldn’t possibly make any difference to her whether Trixie owned the paper or Royce did (or Violet, for just a moment) – it was still just her mother’s rent check, every month. Violet eyed her closely – this nasty little girl in ripped stretch pants. When it started up again – and it would start up again, as soon as the sun dipped under the horizon, Violet was sure of it – the awful thing that had prohibited sleep last night, and would certainly prohibit it again tonight, they would have a chance to catch the little schemer at it.

The banker plummeting on a coin – the teacher disappearing into a blackboard – and the grocer silent under a pyramid of vegetables. (Scenes of Hell, Billy Collins). Illustration: Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

The first night, Violet, Royce and Trixie – stranded by the cold – had usurped the children’s bedroom, but that arrangement had not lasted the night, because of the awful… infestation. Tonight, Violet was keeping an eye on the girl. She was not going to queer Violet’s one and only real-estate deal. If that was, in fact, what was happening. Violet was not sure. She viewed every member of the family with suspicion, but her heart was not in it. She was afraid because, deep down, she believed it was real.

The evening was on; the world was going on without them. Soon it would begin. Trixie was sitting at the kitchen table, her sunglasses still on. Royce squatted on a round footstool with stuffing leaking from the seams. Those were candles everywhere, none of them lit, all of them bearing some image of the Virgin Mary or some anonymous, grimacing saint. Last night, at the high of the madness, Royce had gone through a trapdoor in the kitchen floor into the frigid crawlspace under the house with nothing but a cigarette lighter for light, looking for an explanation. He’d found none, and now he perched on his stool, looking grim.