Samantha Hunt - Mr. Splitfoot

“Karolina?” Ruth tries to confirm.

“Kar,” Nat says low, slow.

“Mommy and Daddy are here.” The mother’s eyes roam, tracing the air near the ceiling.

“Cree-ack,” Nat says.

“We have a contact.” Ruth, as some sort of ghost traffic controller, confirms. She adjusts her body on the brown plaid couch. “Would you like to deliver a message, Karolina?”

“DB-D-DD.” Nat dribbles like a baby, lurching over the low, pressed wood coffee table.

Ruth feels suddenly sick. Their dead child’s been reduced to grunts from a boy in slick polyester clothing.

A smile crosses Nat’s face. He speaks clearly, precisely, dramatically. “I’ll tell you a story. A lovely story. You must hear it. I shall tell it to you. There, now, you sit there.”

Mr. Bell smiles from up on tiptoes.

All six paying clients lean in. The marathoners are particularly eager — every ache they’ve felt since their girl’s been gone.

Nat’s eyes flutter, revealing a bit of white each time. His mouth resembles a sea creature’s. “On the dark nights, stormy nights, you can hear him, the wind, and the fluttering of his great cloak, beating wings. The thunder is loud and louder.” Nat raises his voice. His best Vincent Price. “At the midnight hour, he gallops. Always searching, always seeking. And if you stand on the bridge at the wrong hour, his great cloak sweeps around you, his cold arms clasp you to his bony chest, and forever you must ride and ride and ride.” Nat’s head tumbles to his chest, wasted after his performance.

“Oh,” the mother says.

“The very story of addiction.” Karolina’s father shakes his head. Tears are forming. He holds his daughter’s name in his mouth.

“Is there something you’d like to say to Karolina?” Ruth asks.

The mother turns to her husband, the destruction of the past years evident on her skin. “Mommy and Daddy are here,” the mother whispers. “Mommy and Daddy,” she begins again. Every failure she served her daughter ruffles her face. How she forgot to pack one hundred Cheerios on the one hundredth day of kindergarten. How she was late to high school graduation because the parking lot was congested. Nights that teeth went unflossed.

Nat moves. He braces his arms on his knees. He shakes a little bit from the shoulders, some sort of boogie-woogie. “Donald!” he calls out loud and sunny.

The marathoners twist their noses. They don’t know anyone named Donald.

“Donald and Karolina.” Nat finally says the dead girl’s name. “Together forever. And that’s a looooonngg time.” Nat giggles, does the Elvis shake again, then it’s over. He grabs the back of his neck, looks at those gathered, and disappears into the back of the house.

The father, having waited for a sign to break down, does, a whining moan. Tears shake his chest. He balls his hands in front of his eyes. But the mother’s sorrow is most sickening. “Karolina.” She stands. “Karolina.” She swings her hands through the air searching for her daughter’s body. “Karolina, don’t go.” But there’s nothing there.

Mr. Bell offers the mother a box of tissues. She holds on to the box with two hands, as if it’s someone’s head. She sobs. No one knows how to comfort her, so they don’t. They listen to her cry until eventually the punk guy interrupts. “Sorry, but that’s it? Where’s our dead person? Where’s theirs?” He points to the older couple.

Ruth collects her gown around her.

“Communication with the spirit world can be utterly exhausting for the medium,” Mr. Bell says. “I’ll remind you, there’s no guarantee with the dead. It’s not AT&T.”

“’Scuse me? The freaking kid tells one crazy-ass story? For a hundred bucks? You got to be freaking kidding me.” He throws his shoulders back, getting in Mr. Bell’s face. “My wife lost her dad last year, so you go get that little faggot back out here.”

“A hundred? We paid more than that,” the old guy says.

Mr. Bell sours. Things are about to go very badly, indeed. “Sir, please.”

“Bullshit!” Barrel Chest turns to the others.

Karolina’s mom huffs. “Just because your dead person didn’t show up doesn’t mean—”

“My dead person?” He’s shouting like a drunken uncle. Ruth pulls her legs onto the couch, under the cover of her gown. “You think your dead kid’s better than my father-in-law?” Black curls and a red face. He beats one hand into the other. “I bet you do. Think ’cause you paid more that your dead person’s going to show while we get nothing? Fuck you and fuck your dead kid!”

“Please. Please!” Mr. Bell moves between the two like a jumping spider.

“What did you say?” Karolina’s mother asks. “What did you say!” But it is Karolina’s father who responds. He’s still crying, but he uses all that grief to land a punch on Barrel Chest’s left ear. The guy ducks but not enough, and the punch throws him back into his chair.

“Please!” Mr. Bell shouts. “Please!”

“What the fuck?” Barrel Chest goes ape shit. “He punched me!” He tells his wife, “The freaking stiff punched me.” He flexes his arms, an overweight gorilla about to charge, when Ruth has a moment of inspiration.

She rolls her eyes back and, mustering a clear, crowd-dousing voice, asks, “Sweetheart?” loud enough to draw the heated room to immediate attention. “Peanut?” she continues. Everyone’s watching her now. “Sugar? Little girl? Baby doll? Princess?”

The punk wife grips her husband’s flexed arm. “Holy shit, Mike. It’s him.”

“Princess.” Ruth repeats the key word.

“Daddy?” The woman draws one whiny breath before cracking into sobs. She collapses into a chair, hauling up sorrow like a sloppy, wet bucket. She lifts her eyes, face already running with boogers and black mascara. “Why, Daddy?”

“Forgive me, Princess.” Ruth keeps her voice low, her eyes twitching. She shakes her arms and shoulders. “I’m so sorry.” She flutters her lashes. The woman is bent forward, convulsing with coughs, some thick stream is working its way out her mouth.

“Know that I love you. That I’d be with you if I could.” Ruth breathes through her mouth.

“Daddy?”

Ruth hesitates only a minute. “Maybe I cheated.” She pulls bits of a stranger’s imagined life together. “Yeah, I, uh, cheated.” The room is silent. Ruth makes sure to twitch and convulse.

“Daddy?”

“It wasn’t true.”

“OK. We forgive you. Whatever it was.”

“Thanks,” Ruth says, a terrible, terrible impersonation. It doesn’t matter. Then one last time, “Princess.” Keep it rare. The woman sobs, and suddenly Ruth doesn’t feel bad anymore. She feels like a bitter orphan taking aim at a town filled with parents, dead and alive. Ruth opens her eyes in time to see Mr. Bell’s surprise melt into smiling conspiracy. She’s been accepted into his con man’s union. He nods with a tiny tick in his cheek, a meter counting the dollars they’re going to earn.

Nat and Ruth buy a box of Frosted Mini-Wheats and two pairs of jeans for her, the first pants she’s ever owned. She hides them in her closet. They buy a used Ping-Pong table for the kids at the home. The Father doesn’t like that. He smolders. He doesn’t know how to play Ping-Pong. He doesn’t know how they got the money, but he knows it’s sinful. “God placed the law in men and you shall yield!” He locks Ruth in the downstairs bathroom. He goes at Nat’s backside with a length of plastic tubing right outside the bathroom door. Ruth sings any song she can think of, something for Nat to hold on to, “Here You Come Again,” “Old Dan Tucker” loud as she can.

Eventually Ruth falls asleep on the tile floor. When the Father unlocks the bathroom, he hits her in the head with the door. “Forgive me,” the Father says. He’s weepy. She passes him by. She does not offer forgiveness. Upstairs she applies a beeswax salve to the welts on Nat’s back.