Page 81 of If Looks Could Kill

She stung him. Like a hive of hornets, she stung his face.

He isn’t sure how. Fingernails, he supposes.

She’s got some kind of weapon, too. He has to get that away first. But this fire she’s building will cook them all if it spreads, and bring the whole house down upon them, dead landlords and all.

If he survives it, he’ll hang for it, curse her.

He lumbers to his feet and finds a shovel. One swing should be enough. He winds up like a baseball batter.

She yanks the sheet out from under his feet, and he topples, landing hard on his tailbone. It knocks the wind from his lungs, and he gasps in terror. He can’t breathe.

And she is on him. Her face hovers inches from his own. She holds the lamp close so he can see what she is, what she has become.

Snakes encircle her in a venomous halo. A wrathful crown. Her wicked eyes laugh. Her forked tongue thinks it tastes victory in the air.

Her too? How many of these snake women are there?

His vision narrows to a dark tunnel. Well, he has survived these before, though this one has murder in her eyes.

“Little Francis,” a familiar voice tells him. “Look what you made me do.”

He sinks into the oblivion of the past.

He cowers in the corner, by the hearth. A pot of something gray bubbles on its hook over the fire.

His father stands in the doorway as cold air swirls around him into the smoky room.

He is bloodshot with drink and furious at the squalor he finds there.

A swarm of runny-nosed children. A bucket of greasy dishes.

The tang of urine in the air mixing with the flatulent odor of boiling cabbage.

Young Francis is frightened. He wails a shrill cry. His father’s eyes narrow.

Sharp voices rise. His mother orders the older girls out.

His father yells at the boys to look lively.

Only Francis remains, crouching by the fire, in soiled pants, to watch as his father socks his mother.

Her chin flies up, her head snaps back, and her skull hits the corner of the hutch.

She lands hard on the floor, stunned, and his father slams a chair against a doorframe.

Young Francis opens his mouth to scream. His mother makes eye contact with him. No. Not now, little Francis. Be still; in God’s name, be still.

But his fear is too great. He can’t swallow it down. He wails in terror.

His father raises a hand and approaches, squatting down by the hearth for a better angle.

“Leave the bairn alone,” his mother calls. “Hit me if you like, but leave him be.”

His father rises and turns toward his wife.

His eleven-year-old sister, Elizabeth, darts into the room, seizes her baby brother, and flees with him to the temporary safety of a cold bedroom.