Published 'Lost' 1992
The boy sat at the foot of the stairs in the half-light of the late afternoon. He was unable to see to the top where, presumably, the landing lights were off. He could only resort to playing cat’s cradle with his own shadow, until the growing darkness expunged even the shadows.
Quite close was the broom cupboard under the stairs. In fact, the boy leant towards its ill-fitting door, his ear against it like a pressed flower.
He had grown accustomed to the noises from one of the bedrooms which led from the unseen landing. He was not sure which one, but it was his father’s voice speaking in low tones to his guest. The words grew wilder for a time and then gradually tailed off into undertones....drifting on into eventual silence.
***
The broom cupboard door suddenly banged violently on its loose hinges, as if a spirit fresh from the slips of hell was hammering from the inside with its head.
“Mummy, mummy,” murmured the boy, a dewdrop welling like a priceless emerald from the end of his nose. The battering forthwith ceased immediately, and a harsh breathing ensued.
***
The boy’s head was literally massive, with a high frontage which bore honest, unfurrowed brows. At birth, his mother had had to strain to force him through to the nest of her loins, the flesh cracking and bones creaking to bear the giant skull.
His friends, soon to learn how to be deeply cruel without really trying, had called him spamhead.... The house was quiet. The father’s guest had left, stepping over the boy’s pretence of sleep at the foot of the turning stairs, but not without leaving a slight heel-mark in his cheek, like a dimple....
From the broom cupboard, the boy could hear a low voice, vaguely reminding him of one who had lapped him in rhymes of breaking boughs. The voice was the one who had told him not to worry about the outlandish size of his head, and he had felt safe in her arms, as if all the fu¬ture was preserved in her soul like an irreducible gem...
But it dripped out, like blood.
And all he could hear now was the same voice in the cupboard addressing him over and over again: “Spamhead.. sssspamhead.... ssssssss......”
