“So what happened to them? The family?”
“Not sure.” Emma looked to Jim. “They were all killed, weren’t they?”
Jim shrugged but said nothing.
“By who?” Travis’s eyes darted from his mom to his dad and back. There was a hidden graveyard less than a quarter mile from their house and neither of them seemed to care. How could they be so lame? “Dad?”
“Convicts, I think. A gang of them busted out of the jailhouse over in Garrisontown, came through this way in their escape.”
Travis stopped eating altogether. “Then what? They just went after them?”
“Dunno. It was a hundred years ago.” Jim looked at the boy’s untouched plate. “This isn’t dinner conversation. Eat up.”
He mashed his potatoes, watching his parents. Forks clinking against the china, reaching for another biscuit. No other conversation came forth. Travis wanted to scream.
The offices of the
Tilford scrounged up a pencil and asked for the exact wording of his ad. Reworking the layout of the classified pages would take some overtime but the doubled rate would ease the pain.
The caller produced a large envelope and said he had already laid out the ad. Slipped from the envelope was a clean sheet of paper showing the ad, formatted and correct to the size. It could be cut and pasted into a layout board or simply scanned and fitted into place. Tilford smiled, knowing at a glance that half of his job was already accomplished.
Mr. Tilford smiled again when the man paid cash for his ad. They shook hands and the man left. He read through the copy, proofreading as he went along.
THE CORRIGAN HORROR!
Historical Tour and Attractions
Come visit the Corrigan homestead and be thrilled by a true tale of horror and intrigue. Learn the hidden secrets and shocking truths behind the murder of this noble clan and the founding of our pleasant community. All will be shocked, all will be amazed! Not for the timid!
No children under twelve will be admitted. Scenes of violence and depravity told. Bring a raincoat, there will be blood!
Sunday, 1:00 PM
“The Corrigan Horror? What the hell is that?”
Bill Berryhill leaned against his truck outside the diner, holding up the latest edition of the
Hitchens squinted at the ad, reading it for a third time like he had missed something. “Dunno. Some kind of tourist attraction, I guess.”
“To see what?” Berryhill snatched the paper back. “A rotting house?”
“Maybe it’s one of those haunted house things? A spook house like they put on at Halloween.”
“In June?”
The bell over the diner door rang as Kate came out onto the street. Eyes on her Blackberry, walking straight into Hitchens. “Oops,” she said. “Sorry.”
Berryhill thrust the paper at her. “Kate, what do you know about this?”
“No idea.” She had already seen the
“Did you see this?” All three turned to see Jim coming up the sidewalk, a copy of the newspaper in his hand.
“We seen it,” Hitchens said. “Do you know what the hell it is?”
“It’s about his family.” Jim saw the copy in Berryhill’s mitt. “The ones buried out there on the property.”
“Buried? The hell you talking about?”
“There’s a small graveyard out behind the house.” Jim rolled the newspaper into a tube and looked for somewhere to pitch it. “The Corrigan clan all died there.”
“Oh come on. That’s just an old spook tale.” Hitchens guffawed at him but Jim wasn’t smiling.
Berryhill swatted him. “You’re an ignorant bag of rocks, Hitch.”
Kate’s smile dropped as she looked at Jim. “Have you seen this graveyard?”
“They’ve been hidden under brush all this time. Corrigan’s cut back all the weeds so you can see ‘em.”
Berryhill spat onto the pavement. “So what’s this guy doing? Turning that shitty firetrap into Disneyland?”
“God knows.”
Kate scanned through the ad again. “Says here it starts Sunday. Anyone going?”
“Hell yeah,” said Hitchens. “Nothing new ever happens around here. You going, Jimmy?”
Jim tossed his paper into a bin. “I got better things to do.”
“Our Jim’s gonna be in church,” Berryhill laughed.
Jim ignored the oaf and walked back to his truck. Like Berryhill could talk, the man hadn’t seen the inside of a church since the day he was baptised. Even then he was trouble. Screaming blue bloody murder as Father Toohey poured holy water over his wee head, as if it burned.
Over the next two days Jim kept an eye on his new neighbour, watching the Toyota FJ roar away and come back in. Watching Corrigan unload lumber and supplies. The overgrown weeds and timothy choking the yard were mowed down and cleared away. Corrigan dragged the framed posts out to the end of the driveway and hammered the big signboard to it. It stood fourteen feet in the air, its neatly stencilled face declaring the site of ‘
To Jim’s relief, the man never took them up on Emma’s invitation. No unannounced pop-in visit or borrowing of a cup of sugar. In town, the stranger was still the subject of endless speculation as to the veracity of his claims and his bogus stunt.
Friday night, Jim caught sight of a glow beyond the treeline and walked the halfacre to the stone fence. A clearing in the elm trees gave a clean sightline to the old Corrigan property. An enormous bonfire blazed on the front yard, the flames trailing up twenty feet into the night sky. The mound of trash and debris pulled from the interior burned up, spewing foul black smoke south to the creek. A hazy silhouette shimmered before the rippling flames, tossing more debris into the fire. Corrigan, no doubt. Jim watched the man feed the fire and stoke the flames like some evil hobgoblin intent on torching everything in sight.
7
SUNDAY. JIM OILED the chainsaw and took Travis to the eastern property line to clear away three dead
