Mr Murk's Head

The children discovered a skull in the playground and kicked it about like a football until Mr. Dower, the authoritarian maths teacher told them they shouldn’t be doing such a thing.
‘Will you all please stop this at once.’ he bellowed through his graying beard. The pupils obediently froze as the boney old head clunked to a halt on the tarmac.
‘Whose head is this, please?’
The autumn sun seemed to defrost each of the kids individually until little Brian Roach piped up from the back.
‘It’s Milly’s Dad’s head, sir.’ he said, looking like he’d been eating dirt again.
Jimmy Whistle leaned down to collect the skull and began moving the jaw up and down, clicking the teeth together, and making it speak in a silly, squeaky voice.
‘Hello,’ it said, ‘my name’s Mr. Murk. Now where’s my smelly daughter?’ He turned the empty, black eyeholes until they faced a small dishcloth of a girl with long red hair, frayed like old rope. Half a furrow sat unhappily on her pale brow.
‘Oh, there she is.’ continued Jimmy Whistle in that ridiculous tone, and the whole playground erupted with furious laughter.
‘Yes. Very good, Jimmy.’ Mr. Dower’s voice boomed through the trees, dislodging a few browning leaves. ‘Milly Murk. Would you like to collect your father’s head and take it with you to the principal’s office, please.’
The school bell rang like some terrible alarm in her ears and she swallowed hard. Jimmy dropped the skull with little regard for it and followed the whooping crowd inside for lessons. Milly slowly dragged her feet to where the head bone lay and stared down at it. She sucked back the tear that had welled in the corner of her eye.

‘Now Milly, you shouldn’t be bringing your father’s things into school with you, should you?’
Ms. Croker was a large woman with small glasses.
‘No maam.’ Milly’s mouth was so dry that her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. The head stared at her from Ms. Croker’s desk.
‘And I think that this particular item is something your father might be needing in the future. Am I right?’
Milly looked down at her legs that swung back and forth beneath the chair. ‘Yes maam.’
‘I was once an actor myself, you know?’ she declared with bubbling pride.
Milly looked up from the floor. ‘An actor, maam?’
‘Oh yes. Like your father. He is an actor, is he not?’
Milly tried to hide her confusion. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, why else would he be in need of a skull if he weren’t an actor? Tell me, Milly, does he often pretend to be something he isn’t?’
Milly considered the question. ‘Well, I suppose…’
Ms. Croker jumped in with enthusiasm. ‘Then, just as I said, he must be an actor. Oh how I used to love to tread the boards in my youth. The exhilaration, the acclaim, the sheer honor of it all.’ She swept the skull up with one hand and turned to the window, seemingly forgetting that Milly was there at all. ‘Alas, poor Yorik.’ She began, and rolled into a recital of flowery nonsense. Milly watched the grinning ivory face dance with the headmistress and smiled, waiting for Ms. Croker to finish. The big woman finally fell back into her chair and sighed. A little laugh passed her lips as she leaned over and positioned the head in front of Milly.
‘I suggest you take this back to your father right away.’
Milly started in shock. ‘No. I can’t take it back now. I have to take it to parents evening after school.’
‘Silence.’ Ms. Croker’s voice lost its soft edge. ‘You will take this straight back to your father immediately after school. I hardly think your teachers will appreciate this abomination staring at them whilst trying to talk to your parents.’
‘But…’
‘ I said no. Now off you go.’
The principal dismissed her with a wave of the hand. Milly’s eyes turned back to the floor as she bundled the head into her schoolbag.
‘Yes maam.’ she sighed.

There was only a stain of daylight left when school finally ended for the day. The sun threw orange among autumn leaves as Milly Murk crossed the disused train tracks and climbed the hill to where the cemetery lay out flat, overlooking the whole village. She stepped lightly among gnarled headstones until confronted by a gargantuan stone tomb. Two black, iron gates obstructed the entrance, chained together and secured with a padlock the size of a fist. Milly’s slight frame allowed her to push between the gates and continue on into the heart of the catacomb.
A huge stone room opened out ahead of her, barely lit with a few cracks of twilight that squeezed between fractures in the walls. In the centre, on a large granite slab, lay a dusty old pile of bones. Milly stepped closer and dipped a hand into her schoolbag before dislodging the skull from her PE kit and carefully positioning on top of the other remains.
‘I’m sorry, Dad.’ she said in hushed tones. ‘They wouldn’t let you go to parent’s evening.’ She blew a little dust away from the corners where cobwebs gathered among the bones.
‘Did you like Ms. Croker? She was right about you, Dad. You are an actor. It’ll be Halloween again soon and you can go outside. You won’t have to pretend to be dead anymore.’
Milly smiled at the face that used to be her Dad. And the head grinned back. She didn’t imagine it. The skull of her father really was grinning back.