Samantha Hunt - Mr. Splitfoot

“Yes.”

The woman smiles quickly, limiting the glimpse of her teeth. “Please,” inviting them in. “Have a seat.”

A small tabletop fountain trickles in one corner. Ruth saw the same model for sale at a hardware store in town, had even considered a purchase.

“Make yourselves comfortable.” The woman smiles.

Ruth sits on one couch with Nat beside her. The walls are brain-colored.

Nat clears his throat, his voice rigid. “What can we help you with?”

“Both of you are mediums?”

Nat nods.

The woman sits opposite them, arraying her limbs on the sofa as a Hollywood starlet might. “Both of you are touched with the sight? How unusual.”

“It’s less sight. More listening.”

The woman turns toward the cowboy, throwing out an elbow. “I told you. Highly recommended. He knew there was something special about her.”

“Who?”

“Are you alone?”

“We are together.”

“Of course. We won’t take much of your time. I understand you’re in demand.” The woman claps a call to order.

“Thank you.” Nat drags his nails across the couch’s fabric.

“Hold hands?” Ruth asks, unsteady. “We need to do that, right?” Her speech is slow.

“Of course we do,” the woman says. “Of course.”

The four of them scoot in close. Ruth holds the cowboy’s hand while Nat begins to sizzle, saliva pooling at the top of his throat. His eyes shut and Ruth follows him, down or back or up, wherever it is he goes when he goes.

Ruth lifts her arms — and consequently one of the cowboy’s and one of Nat’s — to address the universe. She speaks like a hungry child reciting grace, rushed and reductive. “Great spirit, gather here with us today. Help these good people.” She’s hopeful. “Great spirit, finder of the lost, engage our souls in your work so that we may in turn serve the realm where you dwell.”

Then the room is silent for a minute, two minutes.

“Please,” she adds to her entreaty, a little late.

Nat grunts. His head rolls like a bowl ready to spill, swinging from four o’clock to seven, stopping at five. He opens his eyes.

“Ask your question,” Ruth instructs.

Nat growls.

“Slowly,” Ruth cautions as if they are approaching a wild creature.

The woman slides forward on the couch. She looks left and right. She closes her eyes, opens her sternum and arms. “Where is the vessel containing the trust?”

“Vessel?” Ruth looks for some clarity. “Trust?”

The woman lowers her arms, her chin. “What happened to the funds?”

“Money?” Ruth tries to confirm again.

“Yes. The trust.”

Nat raises their clasped hands to his brow for a moment, then down to his mouth, inhaling, dribbling spit on Ruth’s thumb. When he lets go, he gives a sour look. The room is still. Nat blinks, remains quiet until — Ruth hears it first — there’s a sound like dice. Nat’s jaws are shivering. His teeth click against each other, bones. “Unearth,” Nat says. “Catechism. Cataclysm. Really now.” Nat chuckles as if in response to an unheard dirty joke. His head swivels, lifting his left ear to the sky, then his right. His eyes are white. “What’s the matter? I thought you were going to dive. You thought I was going to dive? There’s no water in the pool.”

They’d seen it a couple weeks ago. Burt Lancaster’s navy-blue swim trunks in The Swimmer. Ruth allows a moment to wonder why the supernatural comes to Nat as old movies.

Nat shuts his eyes lightly, lowers his torso into his lap, draws his knees together, shaking. “You see, if you make-believe hard enough that something is true, then it’s true for you.”

The moment passes.

“I see an empty swimming pool,” Nat says.

“The money is in an empty pool? Are you sure? It’s been gone a long time.” But the woman’s words are lost as a rush of people file into the room from the back of the house. The trance is broken. Nat looks up, awake. Fifteen people, twenty, all of them dressed in the brightest colors like a rainbow choir. They move silently. They are all white. Many of them are young, in their twenties. Their smiles are cemented. Their eyes are as glazed as a drug addict’s.

Ruth thinks this is not right.

The people find seats on the ground. None of them sit on furniture. They cram in together, unaware of borders and personal space, the way insects crawl over other insects. They say nothing. Once they’re seated, a tall, slim man follows them in. The colorful people look to him, and their smiles take on a fresh electricity. He’s the candy man.

Ruth’s ribs fold in an act of protection.

The man enters mid-song. “‘I’m not the man they think I am at home. Oh. No. No.’” His singing stops. “Oh”—suddenly aware of Nat, of Ruth. “You began without me.”

It takes Ruth a moment to understand what she’s looking at. The man’s arms are open to receive, though Ruth wants to flee because the man’s face has an awful flatness, ragged with dried blood. The man does not have a nose, but rather two cavities, two crusted holes. “Brothers,” he says. “Sisters.” He wears a magenta tunic and turquoise slacks like a hippie, a noseless hippie. He lights a stick of incense. Ruth thinks of a lion’s sliced nostrils, a camel’s open beak. It is horrible to see a man without a nose.

“Yes. Sorry. Just getting started.” The woman stands. “May I introduce you to Nat.”

Nat stands.

“And this is—”

“Ruth.” The man provides her name. He extends both hands for a double shake. “Congratulations, Ruth. I hear you recently married. What happy news. To some.”

The room unravels. Zeke. The carpeting becomes cold, damp sand. The rough stucco walls crest and trough, a cream-colored ocean. He used to have a nose. Ruth dips her chin into her neck, wonders if she might get sick. Where is his nose? Last time she saw Zeke he had a nose.

Zeke takes a seat on the arm of the couch across from them. He nods to Nat. He smiles again, but it is hard to see a smile on the face of a man who has lost his nose. “Happy to meet you finally, Nat. Ruth has spoken to me of your closeness.”

“You know one another?”

Ruth stammers. “I met him at the hospital. My appendix.”

“You never mentioned me to Nat?” Zeke asks her.

“No.”

“You also never told me you could talk to the dead.”

“It’s more Nat than me. He’s the one.”

“Is that right?” Zeke smiles at her. “Is Nat also the lucky young man, your husband?”

“No,” she says. “No. No. No.” Ruth sickens.

“Come on,” Zeke says. “I’m happy for you. We’re friends, Ruth. I mean it was my idea, but we’re friends. Right?”

A large dog, Saint Bernard, emerges out of the back room.

“Right. Friends.”

“You like dogs?” he asks.

Ruth nods, noncommittally.

Zeke snuggles the dog in a particularly intimate way, allowing the holes of his nose to be licked. The dog finds a seat near Zeke’s feet. “Yes,” he says. “Dogs don’t attempt to deceive. Who wouldn’t like that?”

The woman smiles at Zeke, lifts a hand to her neck and further up to her freakishly white ear, cupping it, catching sound waves.

“Green tea?” the cowboy offers around. “It’s no trouble. I’m making one for myself.”

“Lovely,” Zeke says, and the cowboy, after picking his way over the seated, silent people, disappears through the same doorway.

Ruth’s horror is fully unveiled. Zeke leans into it, into her. “You can’t look away, can you? I know. Neither could I at first. Go ahead. Take a good look.” He leans in even closer, so close she can smell what a man with a rotten hole in his face smells like. He’s right, she can’t look away. He rocks forward as if he’ll kiss her. Instead Zeke stands, singing again. “‘And I’m going to be high as a kite by then.’”