The Seers Table

VIGNETTE 3
In the fading light of early evening, the shapes standing in the middle of Southfield Park could have been anything. From a distance, the five rough, upright sticks with something ragged perched on top, seemed like an unsettling art installation, unusually placed to provoke thought. Some passersby, catching them out of the corner of their eye while hurrying along the paths of the small park in West London, might have thought they were scarecrows for some odd, temporary display or even the remnants of strange, exotic plants. Others might have dismissed them as discarded pieces of trash, caught in the wind and snagged on sticks left by unsupervised children.
But curiosity pulled a few people closer. A couple of joggers slowed their pace, squinting in the burgeoning gloom as they tried to make sense of what it was that they were looking at. Dogwalkers paused, pets tugging frantically at their leashes. As people neared, the outlines became sharper, the details clearer, and a sense of unease began to creep in. The things skewered atop the sticks were not sculptures or weird plants, but something much more disturbing.
They were heads – human heads – impaled on the coarse, splintered wood. The hair, matted and dark with clotted blood, clung to the scalps like the brittle legs of dead insects, rustling faintly in the breeze. The skin, pulled tight over the skulls, reflected the dim streetlights with a sickly, unnatural sheen, like the exoskeletons of massive beetles. What first appeared to be hollow sockets in a bizarre piece of art revealed themselves to be sunken eyes, staring out blankly into the growing night.
He smokes his pipe and cracks his knuckles.
“Playing cards, fiddle?”
She threw her cards out years ago—tired of playing alone. And she flunked out of violin in grade three for playing crooked.
“I have potatoes.” Her cheeks burn when she says it. Two years to think of something—and this?
“Dice then.”
He puffs an “O.” Takes off a leather glove and smiles at her. He reaches into his maw while she watches. Pulls out his hand and opens his palm.
Two dice. She thinks.
She’s never played dice, but it can’t be that different from cards or bingo. She knows those. Her grandma taught her.
She sits down. The thorns in her hand are killing her. She reaches for the dice but he closes his fist.
“We play with four.”
He opens his palm. She jumps backwards.
Teeth.
Her gums throb at the sight of them. She looks up.
He puffs his pipe, grinning.
She should say, “Enough.” Shoo the Devil out into the cold, where he came from. She breaks out in a sweat. The paperback heroines are never this desperate.
But she’s tired of hoeing potatoes. Living vicariously through books. Tiptoeing like a ghost. Holding onto thorns just to feel something.
She nods and the room shifts.
He holds out pliers and she takes them. The metal is heavy. She fits them into her mouth and winces when they brush a filling.