THE OLD SCHOOLHOUSE lay west of the Corrigan farm, half a mile from the main road. A one room brick hut, built and paid for by the farmers of the Roman Line in 1889. James Corrigan and Robertson Hawkshaw had contributed the lion’s share of the funds and the labour, the two men working side by side in the August sun of that year. Children born on the Roman Line were schooled here until 1944.
The shell of the schoolhouse stood firm but the roof was little more than tarpaper. The windows long gone, the interior pilfered and abused. Three vehicles sat parked in the track leading in from the road. Puddycombe’s Cherokee, a silver Tahoe belonging to Hitchens and Combat Kyle’s shitbox Corrolla.
Bill Berryhill had brought a six of tall boys, like he was at a picnic. He found a crate to sit on and lit a cigarette. Puddycombe stood looking out the window and Hitchens leaned against the desk. Kyle couldn’t stand still, kicking debris with his scuffed combat boots. Snickering at the graffiti on the walls. Cartoonish genitalia and swear words.
Berryhill blew smoke through the room, eyed the other men. “What does Jimmy plan on doing?”
“He didn’t say,” Puddycombe said.
Hitchens snorted. “He isn’t gonna show. He doesn’t have the stomach for it.”
His whole life, Jim had never made an entrance. Never seen an opportunity, never needed to. He’d make one now. Like Clint fucking Eastwood. Clomping up the steps and pushing past the rotting door. The four men looked up at him and then down to the instrument in his hand.
“Speak of the devil,” Hitchens said.
Puddycombe, still eyeing the gun. “What are you doing with that?”
Jim looked at their hands. Tall boys, a cigarette. Nothing else. “What did you bring?”
“Tools.” Berryhill stood up, shooed Hitchens away. Two objects lay on the desk. A baseball bat and a tire iron.
Jim frowned. “That’s it?”
Kyle grunted and pulled two sticks from his boot. Twirled them around. Nunchucks.
“Toys?” Jim eye-fucked the camouflage clad weasel. “Did you pack your watergun too?”
“I got a couple surprises in the truck,” Hitchens said. “What’s the plan?”
“We fix the problem.”
Puddycombe chin-wagged the Mossberg. “Not with that. We’re just going to scare the son of a bitch, Jimmy. Leave the cannon behind.”
“You backing out?”
“No. I’m telling you to put the gun away before you shoot yourself.”
Hitchens sneered at the pub owner. “Go home then, Puddy. Leave the work to the men.”
Combat Kyle was twitching by this point, bouncing on the balls of his feet and twirling the nunchucks. Striking poses, beaming silently at the sight of the shotgun. Waiting at the door, like a dog eager to be let out.
Berryhill rose from the stool, slow and wary. The whole thing seemed a lark. “He’s got a point. I thought we were just gonna lay a beating on the guy.”
“Not you too,” Hitchens moaned. “Christ.”
Squabbling boys in a schoolyard. Who had time for this? Jim stomped to the door and spit with as much venom as he could muster. “To hell with you. I’ll go alone.”
“Quit crying, Hawkshaw” Berryhill said. “I just want to be clear on what we’re gonna do.”
Jim levelled his eyes at Bill, then the other three. “We’re not going to scare him off,” he said. “And we’re not going to beat him up.”
He walked out the door, an electrical charge juicing his bones. He felt unstoppable. Powerful. And not only had he learned to make an entrance, he’d just made one hell of an exit.
They decided on one vehicle only. Hitchens drove, Puddycombe grousing about his bad knee so he could snag the passenger bucket. Bill tucked a small gas can into the box and climbed in after it, leaving Jim crammed in the back bench with the rat Kyle. Even seated the wiry little man would not be still, fidgeting endlessly. He smelled foul too, dollar-store deodorant overtop unwashed clothes.
“No lights.”
Hitchens killed the headlamps and eased off the gas to a crawl, tires crunching down the gravel of the Roman Line. Straining to see the road. “I can’t see shit.”
“Puddy, can you see the road?”
“A little.”
“Guide him,” Jim said.
No one spoke save Puddycombe, directing Hitch to pull left or right to keep them out of the ditch. A box turtle could have outrun them.
“Come on. The sonofabitch is gonna die of old age before we get there.”
Hitch flared his eyes into the rearview mirror. “Would you shut up?”
“All right, all right.” Puddy said, ever the peacemaker. “We’re almost there.”
Jim listened to the men gripe. Real hardcases, he thought. Worse than a pack of grannies. Soft and easily upset. Doubts and second-guesses goosed across his spine.
Turn back. This is crazy. You’re not cut out for this shit.
“There it is.”
The house shimmered up out of thin air. One minute nothing but black pitch, then it was there. The old haunted house. Rotten to the core with secrets, fungused with sins. Damp things that festered in the dark.
Hitchens killed the engine. Everyone shut up, tumbled out and looked up at the old timberframe shell.
Jim snagged Berryhill’s eye. “Where’s that gas can?”
Bill reached into the box and drew out the small red cannister. Innocuous looking, like he had come to mow the grass.
“I brought something better.” Hitchen ducked back into the truck and groped under the driver’s seat. He angled out a long barrelled rifle. Bolt action, looked like an old 303. He handed it off to Puddycombe. The pub owner held it awkwardly, face screwed into an embarrassed pinch as he looked at Jim.
Hitchens slid his arm deep under the seat. Plucking out a wine bottle with a rag stuffed into the neck as a stopper. Liquid sloshing inside.
“A Molotov?” Puddycombe’s mouth dropped open. “Are you totally insane?”
“Fucking straight,” Hitch said. Big stupid grin on his mug, like he’d just won the swinging dick contest. “Let’s do this.”
An electric current pulsed between the five men, coursing pole to pole. A fire in the belly, all anticipation and butterfly giddiness at the prospect of violence condoned and shared. Alien but invigorating, something not felt since they were boys. Strength in numbers, righteous in their collective consent.
“Let’s roll,” said Jim. Clichéd but effective. Good enough for George W., good enough for them. He marched for the house.
No further prompt needed, Hitchens caught up with him. Stride for stride. Puddycombe followed them. Combat Kyle started then stopped. Something felt wrong. He looked back.
Berryhill hadn’t moved.
The others stopped and looked back at him. Jim hissed. “Berryhill, let’s move.”
The big man didn’t budge. Gone was the bellicose bravado. He looked at the fuel can in his hand. “This is a bad idea.”
A vein popped on Hitchens’ brow. “Quit fucking about. What’s the matter with you?”
Bill said nothing. Kyle paced and bobbed like a swallow. He rabbit-punched Bill’s shoulder, urging him on.
“I can’t.” Bill kept his eyes down, unable to look at them. “This is crazy. Let’s get outta here.”
Puddycombe was sick with doubts too but he kept it to himself. This whole business was insane, despite all the their tough talk. Still, he was surprised that it was Bill Berryhill who broke first. Funny that. “It’s all right, Bill,” he said. “You don’t have to come. Wait here for us.”
“No.” Jim turned snarling on the big man. Up in his face. “You’re in or you’re out.”
“Jimmy…”
“There’s no halfway here.” Jim snapped at Puddy, then turned on Berryhill again. “Come with us or go home. Now.”
A wind blew up, dipping the wet clover against their shins. Head bowed and shifting his weight from foot to foot, Bill Berryhilll looked twelve years old, hammered on by older boys for his indecision.
“Fuck him,” Hitchens said. “Let’s go.”
Jim marched forward, not waiting for an answer. Hitch and Puddy followed. Kyle spat on the gravel, his face a rictus of contempt. There really wasn’t a Santa Claus. Kyle spoke, his voice steady and free of stutters. “You. Motherfucking. Pussy.”
Shame worked wonders. Bill fell in line behind the others. Kyle at the stern like a prison guard, ready to club Bill if he bolted. Neither spoke but both felt some terrible shift in their world, their status, but neither able to articulate what that was.
A fingernail of a moon drifted out from the cloud cover, casting a glow over the wet grass and stone fence. Corrigan’s truck was angled at the end of the driveway and the men moved around it and stopped in the yard. The house was dark but for a small light kindled on the front porch. An oil lantern on the stoop, the little flame warm and glowing, as if to welcome them.
“Maybe he’s not here,” Puddycombe said. The men exchanged looks, ears cocked for any sound. Crickets, nothing more.
Hitchens nodded at the vehicle. “He’s here.”
No one moved. Berryhill’s reluctance algaed over the rest of them, dampening their anger and grinding their momentum to a crawl. The old house loomed above, defying them.
Jim felt a tremor in his knees, a wobbliness like his legs were ready to turn and run away on their own. Nothing here seemed right. Too still, too serene.
“Do we call him out?” Puddycombe shifted the tire iron to his left hand, smeared a sweaty palm down his shirt.
“No,” Jim said. “Let’s get his attention. Who’s got the gas can?” Berryhill raised the canister for him to see. Jim nodded to Corrigan’s vehicle. “Burn that.”
The big man looked at the can then the SUV then to Jim. Like he didn’t understand what was asked of him.
“Pussy” Combat Kyle’s voice sounded alien to them all. He snatched the can from Bill and spun the lid off. Splashing gasoline over the hood, the roof and down the back, gleefully dousing it head to stern. He soaked a ring around the tires and flung the can under the FJ. Kyle produced some matches and lit the whole matchbook on fire. He flung it onto the vehicle and stepped back. The FJ went up with a great whoosh, the whole vehicle cooking in flames. Heat rolled off it in shockwaves that forced the men back. Hitchens, holding his homemade Molotov by the neck, stepped back even farther.
Kyle pranced and clapped his hands at the bonfire, deranged little arsonist that he was.
Jim turned away, letting the heat ripple up his back. He pumped the Mossberg’s action, spitting a round into the chamber. Shouldering the stock, raising the barrel to the front door.
Nothing happened. The door didn’t burst open, no one came running out. The rotten old house just stared down at them as if bored.
Is that all you got?
Puddy backed away from the fire. He couldn’t believe they had just torched the man’s car. How long until the gas tank blew? He yelled to Jim, “He’s not home!”
“He’s playing us.” Jim lowered the barrel and hailed the house. “Corrigan!”
Nothing. The only movement the mirrored flames in the window glass.
“Screw this.” Hitchens dug a lighter from his pocket and lit the rag wick of his bottle. “We’ll smoke him out.”
The bolt action in one hand and the Molotov in the other, he marched up the steps, dripping dollops of flame behind him like bread crumbs. Armed to the teeth, Hitchens kicked the door open and swung back to hurl the incendiary through the doorway.
Boom.
A muzzle flash hot on the report from the shotgun blast. The back of Hitchens’ head blew off. Brains and bone splinter sprayed over the porch.
Every man dropped to the grass.
Except Hitchens. Still on his feet with the top of his head gone, wet drapes of scalp flapping loose. Blood pulsed up over shattered teeth and spilled down the jawbone swinging loose on a webbing of tissue. It didn’t look real.
The legs folded. The body dropped to a sitting position and keeled over like a felled tree. The Molotov clunked over the steps and rolled onto the lawn. Flames sputtered in the wet grass but didn’t extinguish.
Jim tasted dirt on his tongue, he’d hit the ground that hard. Someone was screaming his head off, alternately cursing God and begging for his help in the same breath. Puddy? He couldn’t tell who.
Where the hell was Corrigan?
Sliding the gun out from under his ribs, he swung it around and propped his elbows in the grass. Drew a bead on the door and fired. The front door splintered. The screaming stopped, the screamer holding his breath.
No movement at the door. Nothing in the windows—
A flash in an upper window. Blue steel in the fire light. Gun barrels.
Jim flattened, heard the crack of gunfire. Something hot bit his calf. He didn’t stop crawling and clawing until he rolled up behind the rusting hulk of an oil tank. The sting in his leg burned hot and salty.
Something nudged his arm. Bill, hunkered into a foetal ball beside him, back hard against the tank. “Jesusfuckingchrist,” he hissed.
He gripped Bill’s arm. “Easy. You’re okay.”
“The fuck? The sonofabitch is shooting at us!” He yanked his arm from Jim’s grip. “It wasn’t supposed to go like this!”
Jim would have agreed if the sting in his calf wasn’t sizzling. He pulled up his pant leg, the calf slick with blood. Too much blood to see ho w bad it was. His heart banged away and he couldn’t slow it down, knowing too well that the faster his heart pumped, the sooner his heart pumped blood to the buckshot spray in his leg.
Berryhill was right. It wasn’t supposed to go like this. Hitchens with his head blown clean off, himself with a leg shot to hell. What the fuck were they supposed to do now?
You kill the son of a bitch. That’s what you came here for.
Jim craned his neck, inching an eye out past the shield of the tanker. Scoping the house. Nothing. The lantern still on the porch, peaceful looking. Hitchens sprawled down the steps, twisted at the waist in an unnatural way. Still and quiet. Nothing so still as the dead. The bottle nearby, its rag popping and roiling but still alight. How long before it blew?
Jim scoped the house again. “Goddamnit. Where is he?”
Berryhill snapped his head up and around, looking for the chicken-door in a spookhouse ride. He uncoiled his legs and rolled into a sprinter’s crouch. “We gotta get outta here. He’s gonna shoot us all.”
“Easy, Bill.” Jim grabbed Bill’s belt to stop him from rabbiting.
“Fuck this!”
Bill slapped his hand away. Shot up and sprinted for the road. Feet pounding loud on the earth, arms pumping. His back as wide as a bullseye.
“Bill!”
Berryhill didn’t look back, putting yards away fast. Cover him, Jim thought. That’s what they did in old war movies, didn’t they? Lay down fire on the enemy to cover Bill’s escape. He edged out from the end of the tank to favour his gunhand. Swung the shotgun up and—
Corrigan straddled the porch, bold and exposed. Rifle shouldered and aimed.
Boom.
Twelve gauge buckshot shredded Berrhill’s back, rippled up his legs. The big man pitched forward, hurtling into the witchgrass where he vanished from sight.
Jim pressed hard up against the tank, blinking madly at what his eyes just saw. Some thought buzzing around his head. Two shots. Corrigan’s weapon was double-barrelled. He had to reload, meaning he was vulnerable.
He swung around the tank and fired without even aiming. Nothing to hit but the house. Corrigan was long gone. Leaving himself open. He flattened back up against the tank and looked to his right. Hissed into the dark. “Puddy! Where are you?”
“Jim?” Puddy’s voice was shrill and disembodied in the night air. The pub owner, out there in the dark somewhere.
“Get over here.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Goddamnit Puddy, On the count of three, you come running!”
Puddycombe refused and cursed his name. Jim racked the slide, spinning out the dead hull and counted off loud and clear. One two three. He stepped out from behind the tank and fired but the trigger locked up. The gun didn’t fire.
Jim blanched. He pumped the slide to clear the jam and blasted the house without aiming.
Puddy bolted into the open and dove for cover behind the rusting tank just as Jim withdrew to safety. The barkeep’s eyes saucered in a desperate hope. “Did you get him?”
“No.”
He pumped the slide again, emptying the smoking shell. He pumped the slide one more time but all that spun out was one unfired round. Just one.
Puddycombe trembled so hard the tank rattled. “Tell me you have more ammo for that thing.”
Jim wiped the last shell against his shirt, drying it off. He slid it up the breach, landing it into the ammo tube. One pump on the forearm and the round snapped into the chamber.
One round. Make it count.
He looked down at Puddy’s hands. Empty. No gun, not even the tire iron. “Where’s the other rifle?”
“God knows. Hitch had it.”
Hitchens lay in the wet grass, his feet propped on the bottom step. Lit up in the flames of the burning vehicle.
There, next to the body lay the rifle. Out in the open, in full view of the house, the bolt action smack in the middle of no man’s land. It may as well have been on the moon.
“We have to get it.”
“Screw that,” Puddycombe said. “We need to get the hell out of here.” He flipped onto his belly and crawled away, keeping the tank between himself and the house.
The shotgun roared. Buckshot rippling the grass before his hands, Puddycombe scuttled back to safety. “Oh Jesus.”
Jim cast his eyes into the dark, seeing nothing. “Where’s Kyle?”
“No idea. Probably dead.”
“Kyle!” Jim hollered the name over and over. No answer came. Was he expecting one? The man never spoke.
Puddycombe snatched him by the arm. “Quiet. Do you hear that?”
Jim cocked his ears. A cold vacuum. “I don’t hear anything.”
Then he heard it. Corrigan’s voice calling from the darkness. Calling out Jim’s name.
He edged an eye past the corner of the tank, seeing only a bit of the house. Didn’t dare stick his neck out any further. “Where is he?”
The pub owner listened, trying to triangulate the voice in the dark. “I can’t tell.”
“Jimmy!” Corrigan’s voice bellowed again. “Throw out your weapon and we’ll talk!”
Jim felt his balls shrivel. They were trapped and Corrigan knew it. How fucking stupid were they? Was he? They had walked right into this mess. He had led them all into this.
Puddy was shivering. “We gotta make a run for the truck. There’s no other way.”
Corrigan kept calling to them, his voice anywhere and everywhere. “Put down your arms,” he hollered. “Let’s talk about this like civilized men!”
Jim felt his legs cramp up from squatting so long. He shifted positions, working the blood back into them. It only made the stinging in his calf worse. The shredded leg of his jeans was black with blood and clinging to the skin.
Their position was beyond bad, pinned down behind a rusting tank. Waiting to be picked off.
Their position! Listen to him. Jesus! Clichés from a hundred movies rattling around his brain. Whatever. Use it. What did soldiers do when they pinned down like this? They used a distraction to cover their run. Lobbed a grenade and ran for higher ground when the thing exploded.
They had no grenade. He looked at Puddycombe, shivering and close to tears. They weren’t soldiers. Just two soft, middle-aged morons who deserved to die for being so fucking stupid.
Puddy nudged his ribs. “Jim. The Molotov.”
The wick was still burning but the bottle lay out of reach. Ten, twelve paces away, near the useless bolt action. There was no way he could make it in time. Run out into no man’s land, hurl the bottle at the house? How long had it been burning? It would blow up in his hand.
“Come out, Jim!”
The voice was closer this time. For all he could tell, Corrigan was on the other side of the oil tank. “Come out, Jimmy, and I’ll reserve some clemency for you! I know your heart wasn’t in this! You were led astray by the petty bastards of this town!”
Jim couldn’t help himself. “Go to hell!”
Puddycombe snatched Jim by the collar and shook him. “Shut up. You’ll lead him straight here.”
He pushed him away and stared at the burning bottle. He could make it.
It’s not that far.
Do it.
When Corrigan sounded again, the voice rang from somewhere else. “Didn’t go as planned, did it? You cocksuckers come for the kill but this time the Corrigans were ready for you!”
Puddy gave up. Gurgling up dry sobs and a web of drool blowing down his lips. “Oh Jesus. What have we done?”
Corrigan kept calling from the darkness. Come out! I’ll show mercy! Jim listened to his name echoing in the night and in a flash, it all clicked together. Puddy’s question and Corrigan’s bellowing. What had they done?
“We walked right into this—”
Puddycombe wiped a fist under his nose. “What?”
“He planned it this way.” Jim felt his heart banging off his ribs. “We walked in here with guns and he kills us in self-defence. He’ll get away with it too.” Jim felt his guts empty out. Outsmarted and played for a fool. Local bumpkins go after city slicker, wind up dead in gun battle.
Puddycombe saw it, as clear as Jim now. His jaw worked up and down stupidly and he was blubbering all over again. Sobbing for what they had become.
Dead men.