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The stranger watched them lynch the boy.
He took out his mobile phone, filming the whole thing.
The hood over the head meant they didn’t have to watch his expression as he realized he was dying all over again. Some days he didn’t wear the hood. His fingers clawed at the noose while his legs kicked. Then they stopped kicking and he just twisted in the morning breeze.
Alvina Dobbs crossed the street in the shadow of the hanged boy. She didn’t so much as look twice as Quinn played to his audience of one.
“He won’t show on the photos, hon,” she told the stranger.
That surprised him. He looked from her to the dangling Quinn and back to her again.
“Easy way to see if I’m telling the truth,” she said, meaning the phone. “Check it out for yourself.”
He did, scrubbing back through the short film of the tree he’d taken. There was no sign of the hanging boy in any of it.
“How did you do that?” the stranger asked, ignoring the obvious answer. No one ever wanted to think about the obvious answers when it came to the dead. He took several more shots, building quite the portfolio of early morning light on the rust colored leaves.
She left him to it, skirting the edge of the green to climb the short flight of steps into the Town Hall. The building was cool in the already rising heat of the day. The world had gone crazy over the last few years. Every summer seemed to be hotter than the last. It played havoc with the seasons. The old Hangman’s Oak was already shedding like it was autumn.
“Quinn’s having fun with the tourists again,” she told Adele, the other half of the double act that was Alvina and Adele. Adele was busy polishing the information counter to a shine despite there not being a speck of dust within one hundred feet. “Any mail?”
“On your desk,” the other woman promised. “And Maggie Carlisle called four times. She keeps going on about wanting to bring her television show here to prove to the world once and for all that ghosts are real.”
Alvina laughed as she went through the letters, discarding the endless junk mail. “And how, exactly, does she think she’ll persuade a jury with a bunch of photographs with nothing in them? Can you imagine the fakery they’d need to resort to simply because when they went ghost hunting in Mallam Cross the supernatural phenomenon didn’t show up on film.”
“She’s determined, though.”
“That she is. You just know Carlisle and her crew will come here thinking they’ll put on one of their Ghost Hunter shows and make our little town look stupid for all America to see. I say let them come, we’ll give them the show they deserve, Adele.”
“And the best part is that they leave with nothing to show for it,” Adele agreed.
“Poor little lambs. Maybe we should set Murdering Myrtle on them?”
Myrtle McMahon was one of the first recorded cases of Munchhausen by Proxy. She had six children and killed each of them. The tragic losses fed her need for attention. She was the perfect victim. She murdered the three girls by the pond. She slit the throat of one, drowned another and hung the third one. She blamed each one on some colored stranger she’d seen lurking around town. Her friends took the law into their own hands, and now Quinn got to relive his death every morning.
The truth was always going to come out, though. Doctor Grealish suspected a very different killer lived among them, though he had no evidence. His old diaries were now one of the main exhibits in the Curiosities Museum on the other side of Hangman’s Oak. He kept meticulous notes about Myrtle’s condition and his suspicions. He became quite the sleuth, following Myrtle about town, watching her, recording her movements and peculiarities in her behavior that failed to match up with the façade of the grieving mother she portrayed.
When her eldest son was strangled in the alley between Godwin’s Dry Goods store and the barber shop he found the body, less than fifteen minutes cold. So close, and yet so far away. Those were the precise words Doctor Grealish recorded in his journal for that day. Nothing else. So close, and yet so far away.
The fifth child, the middle boy, was smothered at the former livery and black smith shop which was now Mallam Cross’s gas station.
The sixth was the worst by far. Grealish finally caught her in the act of putting hot coals on her baby.
She claimed she was burning the devil out of her child.
There never was a trial.
Grealish understood some of Myrtle’s mental anguish, but no one wanted to listen to him. They sent Myrtle up the hill, but she escaped and hung herself from the same the oak that had taken young Quinn’s life.
That beautiful tree had seen more misery over time than anywhere else in this town of ghosts. And none of it would show up on Maggie Carlisle’s television cameras.
––––––––
The Women’s Guild meeting was in full swing.
In another life, the meeting hall had been the school.
It was one of the old buildings in Mallam Cross, on the third of the four sides of the town square. It was a long time since any children had studied there. One wall was painted in special black slating. There was still a drawing on the wall from the last child to take lessons there. It was dated September 9th 1947.
“Okay ladies, we all know why we’re here, so let’s bring the meeting to order, shall we?” Jasmine McIntyre said, struggling to be heard over the room’s rather unique acoustics. “Okay, Esmerelda, you’re laughing, care to share?”
Esmerelda Goodlow pointed at the black slate wall.
Jasmine turned to see what was behind her and saw the drawing of a very naked her reclined like some Rubens beauty, all folds and pink flesh. “That will be quite enough of that,” she said. “Why don’t you go and play,” she told the artistic spook. “Now how about we get down to business?”
She wasn’t entirely sure which of the three items to bring to the group’s attention first. Papers were sliding out of the folder faster than she could cope. She closed her eyes and chose one of the pages at random. Tourism. “You might have noticed our visitor this morning? A young chap, seemed quite taken with Quinn’s death throes.” Jasmine pushed her glasses to the end of her nose and looked out at the women. “Obviously, we need to be very careful after the debacle at the beginning of the summer.” They all knew what she was talking about. “We can’t keep scaring newcomers away if we want our little town to survive. We need to be more welcoming. Try to remember that we were all newcomers once.”
“Speak for yourself,” Sam Goodlow said. “Mallam Cross born and bred.”
Jasmine nodded, acknowledging the point. “I just want to make sure we are ALL on the same page, when it comes to putting on a united front. We need to be a little more circumspect, keep our more, ah, colorful, residents away from prying eyes, at least until we know if they’re friend or foe.”
“Agreed,” Doctor Grealish said from the doorway.
The old physician wore the marks of his death, the needle tracks from the opiate injections, openly. His white shirt sleeves were rolled up. There was a blood red rose growing at the corner of his mouth.
“Which brings us neatly to the reason for this sudden spike in tourism: The Ghost Hunters.”
The room fell silent.
All eyes were on Jasmine.
––––––––
Two cyclists slowly peddled up the winding road as it climbed the endless rolling hills into Mallam Cross. It was a town that barely warranted a dot on their maps, but their route finder had picked it out as an area of natural beauty and it was vaguely between where they were and where they wanted to be on their grand tour. So, they climbed what felt like a neverending incline to their thighs.
Cresting the final hill, the view that opened up ahead of them was truly spectacular; a living Rockwell painting of small town Americana. The colors were so vivid, the rusts and russets, the white pickets, the black shingles, all of them glittering in the rising sun.
Smiling to each other, they began to freewheel down the long straight stretch of the descent that gradually became Main Street, Mallam Cross.
One of the two took the opportunity to hydrate, drinking a steady stream of slightly warmed water from his flask as they rolled into town. It was easy to enjoy the warm late summer day when the world around you was as beautiful as Mallam Cross.
They hadn’t noticed the turn, or the rust-riddled old pickup that came barreling around it far too quickly for them to avoid. The lead cyclist swerved, veering out into the middle of the road desperately trying to avoid slamming into the pickup’s tailgate. It all happened so quickly. With a few seconds more to react, the following cyclist managed to dip the bike’s frame, half-sliding as he lay his bike down on the road. The frame scratched along the hardtop as he bailed. The lead cyclist wasn’t so lucky; but somehow, impossibly, managed to veer just wide enough to miss the truck.
Or a least that’s what he wanted to believe.
He could have sworn he didn’t make it, but somehow, he didn’t fall, and with no impact to send him sprawling, clung onto the handlebars as he watched the wretched old truck disappear down the hill and into town as if nothing happened.
He went back to help his friend.
Neither could quite believe just how lucky they’d been, because picturesque town or not, roadkill was still roadkill.
They made it into town, feeling a little worse for wear, and found the little diner where Ella served the best patty melts in all the State.
The boys, Dan and Seth, ate like it was their last meals, and every bite tasted all the sweeter for their brush with mortality out on the main road.
The old juke box played classic tunes, mainly Elvis, and behind the counter there was a fly-poster for a new movie that was already fifty years old, part noir, part ghost story, Sally Pinup.
Seth’s bike was pretty beaten-up after the long slide, one wheel buckled and some minor damage to the gear block, so they were going to need to get it fixed, which was going to be an issue in a tiny place like this.
Ella had the answer. “You boys need to go see Dermot. He runs the gas station on the far edge of town. He’s a good soul. I’m sure he can help you with your bike. He can fix most things if he sets his mind to it.”
The boys started down Main Street, taking in what counted as the sights in Mallam Cross.
Along the way, they saw a faded sign above dark windows that promised them they were looking at Logan’s Hardware and Garden Store. The rusted pickup truck was parked outside.
“You see what I see?”
“I see what you see,” Seth said, limping alongside him. And what they both saw was the shape of a man in the driver’s seat. He had one arm out of the window and appeared to be enjoying a nice relaxing smoke, and a passenger who appeared to be fixing his hair in the little vanity mirror in the sun visor above his seat.
“Hey you! Dale Earnhardt, we want a word with you,” Seth bellowed at the two men, loud enough to draw a couple of curious locals out onto the sidewalk to see what all the fuss was. “You damned near killed us up on the hill, driving like fucking maniacs, and you didn’t fucking stop. My bike’s wrecked. So, come on, man up, get out of the fucking truck and apologize.”
The smoking man and his bouffant conscious companion leaned round in their seats to look out through the rear window, taking the measure of Seth and Dan, and then looked back at each other. They exchanged a nod and got out.
They walked toward Seth and Dan with the half-swagger of bowed legs.
The smoking man flicked his cigarette out into the road, then hawked and spat a wad of tobacco-stained phlegm.
Seth realized that what he thought was a bat in bouffant boy’s hands wasn’t a bat at all. It was a shotgun. Sawn-off.
“Christ, buddy, there’s no need for that.” And as he raised the gun and pumped the action, aiming squarely at Seth’s chest, managed “Jesus, dude, fine. It’s fine ... ” That was all he could say.
The shot rang loud.
Both Seth and Dan threw themselves to the ground, hitting the sidewalk and expecting the worst. There was no way they could hope to outrun shotgun spray. Even as they hit the ground they expected fifty holes to leak blood out over the warm flagstones. But that didn’t happen. No impact. No pain. No blood. Seth didn’t understand, but he wasn’t about to complain when the alternative was being pumped full of lead.
He looked up to see both men standing over them, laughing like it was just the funniest thing they’d ever seen.
The pair swaggered back to their pickup, a 1933 Dodge, clambered in and fired up the engine with a roar. A couple of seconds later, the pickup was backing up like it intended to roll right over them.
Seth and Dan scrambled out of the truck’s path.
The cigarette smoker had another smoke in his mouth though neither had seen him light it. He ground gears, changing up, and accelerated away in a belch of misfiring smoke, his companion fixing his hair in the mirror.
Their laughter hung around long after they were gone.
––––––––
Peter Logan and his son, Michael, came running out of the hardware store to help the two men on the sidewalk. With a helping hand, they had them back on their feet and walking back into the comfort of the store, dazed and very much confused. “Are you boys all right?” Peter fussed, brushing the dust from Seth’s shirt.
“They look like they’ve just seen ghosts, Dad.” Michael smiled as he brought over a couple of cans of soda for Seth and Dan. “These okay? Unless you want something stronger?”
Seth looked at the younger man, everything he thought he understood about the world undone in just a few short moments. He shook his head. “What the hell is wrong with this town? They just shot at us. In broad daylight. Shot at us!”
Dan sat silently beside his friend, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He stared at the wooden floor.
“You know, Mike, he’s quite right, you really shouldn’t be quite so flippant about all this. It can be quite traumatic if you don’t know our town. I mean, don’t you remember our first visit?”
The boy just shrugged and grinned, then went back over to the counter to get on with some of his daily chores. After all, life in Mallam Cross didn’t end just because someone got themselves shot at.
“First those idiots ran us off the road, then they tried to gun us down in the middle of the street.” Seth shook his head, reliving it all over again as he checked for bullet holes on his body. He kept looking down at his chest in disbelief, not quite grasping how he’d got so lucky. He realized he was shaking. It was the adrenaline climb-down after the sheer ball-clenching terror that went with the sound of that shotgun going off.
Dan just watched him quietly. He didn’t move or talk, obviously wrestling with his own confusion.
“I don’t ... I mean ... Just ... ” He put the flat of his hand against his chest, his bare forearm showing the graze where he’d gone sprawling across the road on the way into town. It was the only real injury they had between them. “What’s happening?”
“I think you boys might need something stronger than soda pop,” Peter said, realizing even as he did that the anachronism might give him away if Seth and Dan weren’t so twisted about by what had just happened to them out there. Soda pop. He should have used the brand name like they did now. “How about a nice dram of brandy? Yes, I think that’s exactly what’s in order.” He was already pouring out the measures before either of the cyclists answered.
The first shots went down smooth. The second round was smoother still. Peter poured out a third round, noticing that the boys were beginning to relax a little.
“Okay, I’m going to try and explain what just happened to you, but I’m going to need you to keep an open mind, and it’d probably be for the best if you didn’t interrupt with questions until I’ve got it all out. By then you might want the rest of this brandy.” But how was he supposed to explain how the ghosts of two long-dead outlaw brothers from the ’30’s had just introduced themselves to the newcomers in such a spectacular fashion? “You just had a run in with Homer and Elmer. There’s no getting away from the fact they were seriously nasty pieces of work back in their day. By modern standards we’d call them sociopaths. They cut a swathe of murder and mayhem across three counties before their reign of terror was ended. They ran folks down with stolen vehicles like it was a game for them, and it wasn’t like the law was ready to cope with their kind of psychos. You already saw their weapon of choice, sawn-off shotguns. I can’t remember how many people they killed, can you, Mike?”
The younger man looked up from behind the counter where he was arranging some 1980s issues of Playboy. It was the Vanna White issue. They hadn’t had a new issue in town for a very long time. “Don’t recall the actual numbers, Pete. But you’re right, it was all about personal enjoyment. They weren’t robbers. They didn’t pick targets thinking they’d make a quick score. It was all about the killing. Still, if there was a bit of cash involved, I guess that added to the fun they could have afterwards. When they were finally caught, ’38 I think it was, they were sent up the hill.” He nodded in the direction of the derelict building on the hill they’d seen on the way in. “They were the last ones hung up there.” He let that line just hang for a few seconds so Seth and Dan could digest what he’d just said. It was 80 years since the brothers, Homer and Elmer, had swung for their crimes. A little simple math and a lot more complicated metaphysics needed to be worked through in those few seconds. “Whenever I see them on the road I just give them the finger. It gets them really pissed, but what can they do? I’ve forgotten how many times they’ve shot me.”
“That’s enough, Mike. I’m not sure these boys appreciate hearing how many times a couple of our not so friendly ghosts have taken pot shots at you.” He offered another drink to Seth and Dan, who, to be honest, didn’t look like they’d understood a word of the Logans’ stories. Being shot at by the shades of ’30s Good Old Boy sociopaths wasn’t what you expected on a nice morning ride in the country. “Seth, I heard you saying your bike was wrecked. Want me to take you over to see Dermot at the gas station? Least I can do. And Dermot’s an old friend. I’m sure he can get it up and running in no time.”
Seth nodded.
Dan finally looked up from the can of Coca Cola Classic in his hand. “It’s expired,” he told Peter. “Best before Super Mario Brothers and Like a Virgin.”
“What?” Seth asked, not following.
“1984.”
“Man, that’s one vintage can of Coke.”
Peter smiled over at them, “’84 was a great year. It’s when so many good things began.”
––––––––
“Dermot, you old devil, let me introduce you to two new friends of mine. Seth, Dan, this gnarly old soul is Dermot. Dermot, these two fine upstanding young gentlemen are Seth and Dan. They just had a bit of an unfortunate run-in with Elmer and Homer.”
“Ah,” said Dermot, understanding immediately. Everyone did in Mallam Cross. It was that kind of town.
“Poor old Seth took a tumble, mangled his bike a bit. I said you were the man to fix it. Like Oscar Goldman, if anyone can rebuild it, it’s Dermot, I said.”
Peter lifted the bike from the bed of the Tacoma and set it down. The mid-morning shadows of the pumps stretched like strange, eerie sentinels across the forecourt.
Dermot hemmed and hawed like every well-versed mechanic as he looked over the slightly mangled frame, testing it a bit before he decided it was doable.
“Won’t be fast, got a few other bits on, so it’s probably gonna be a couple of days, I’m afraid.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Seth said. “It’s not like we can go anywhere without it.”
“True, true. So, you better get yourselves somewhere to stay. There’s a little guest house over by the town square, the Silver Bough. It’s decent, clean, and has a good breakfast. Or, if you’re not fussy, you can stay with me and mine, we’ve got a spare room.”
“That’s incredibly generous of you, but I’m sure the guest house will be fine. Wouldn’t want to put you out.”
“Wouldn’t have offered if it was a problem, boys. Why don’t you save yourself some money? Edmund will love the company. I think he gets a bit fed up with having to talk to me every night. Sometimes it feels like we’ve been together for all eternity. You know what I mean? You just kinda run out of things to say when every day can be summed up in the words fixed a car, sold some gas.” He grinned. “You’d be doing me a favor.”
“Well, when you put it that way,” Seth said. “How about it, Dan?”
“How’s the breakfast compare?” Dan said, earning a chuckle from Dermot.
“Eddie is a demon in the kitchen, believe me.”
It was only a short walk from the gas station to the house. Dermot let the way, chatting about the landmarks of the little town along the way.
“The Silver Bough was a coaching inn before there was even an official town. Mallam Cross was on a popular transportation route, marking a north, south, east, west crossroads, hence the Cross. I always liked the fact they decided to call it Mallam so the name was the same whichever way you came into town.” He chuckled at that. “It was a young Irishman, Samson Feary, who took a fancy to the spot. He squatted here for years, farming the land. No one ever complained. And, far as I can tell, he built the place with his own two hands. Pretty soon, he was taking travelers in when they encountered bad weather or needed help, and that was how our little homestead was founded. Not the most fascinating story, I’ll grant thee, but Samson tells it pretty well.”
And with that, Dermot led them up a garden path to a red door. He didn’t knock as he opened it.
“Hi Honey! We’re home,” Dermot called out as he crossed the threshold, earning a grin from Seth, who was already beginning to appreciate the mechanic’s strange sense of humor.
Edmond came racing down the stairs to see just who “we” were.
“Eddie, my sweet, my love, these fine upstanding gents are Seth and Dan. They’ll be staying in the spare room for a few days.”
“Will they now?” Edmund said, pretending to be annoyed by the way his partner sprung the news on him.
“They had a run in with Elmer and Homer,” Dermot said, as though that explained everything. Which, of course, in a small town like Mallam Cross, it did.
Dermot started to strip in the hallway, pulling his work shirt off over his head and tossing it into the hamper by the door. “Eddie is a Neat Nick,” he said, smiling as he leaned in to give his partner a kiss on the cheek. “So, let’s see if I’ve got this straight, boys ... Seth is Dan’s brother-in-law, which means Danny here is straight, not sure about Seth, never got as far as asking. I was too busy telling them about the coaching inn and old prison up on the hill, of course it’s long gone now, knocked down. Now there’s that empty house up there. Beautiful old place. The house up on the town boundary, used to belong to that Marybell woman. You know me, talk, talk, talk. Sometimes I need to stop and listen. Okay, well then, now that the prelims are over, how about I fix you boys a good stiff drink and fire up the hot tub so you can have a good soak? Nothing like that for putting those hoodlums out of your mind. How’s that sound?”
“I’ll be honest,” Seth said. “It sounds like the best idea I’ve heard all day.”
“I’m on it.” Dermot grabbed a couple of beers out of the fridge, tossed them over to the boys, then walked out the back door to the deck and the built-in tub.
He dropped his jeans and, naked as the day he was born, clambered into the tub.
He leaned back, grinning, and offered the others a toast with his beer.
“Why don’t you boys make yourselves comfortable? I’ll sort out some dips and crudités and we can all get to know each other,” Edmund said, though to Seth it sounded as though he was suggesting some crudity.
––––––––
“So, all of this talk is all well and good, Jasmine, but the question remains: what are we going to do about the ghost hunters?”
“I really don’t know. Part of me thinks nothing, it’s not like they can prove anything, is it? So taking them seriously just keeps them coming back. Maybe it’s better to just ignore them?”
Iona was fixing dinner.
“I don’t know, Jazz. Maggie Carlisle is a celebrity. People watch her stuff. And now she wants to come here and make a show about us. About our ghosts; I don’t like it. It’s dangerous. We’ve got a good thing here. It’s peaceful. Life is good like it is. I don’t know about you, but I kinda like it this way. You do know she’s threatening to bring in actual ghost hunters?”
“It’s not like they’d have to hunt very hard,” Jasmine McIntyre said.
Iona didn’t laugh because it wasn’t funny. It was their very existence she was talking about. “What kind of bitch does that, though? Doesn’t she have a life of her own?” The carrots took the brunt of Iona’s wrath, sliced and diced with small orange cubes going in all directions.
Jasmine stood in the middle of the kitchen, her terry robe wrapped tightly around her. Her hair was pulled up into a towel. She made herself a mug of chamomile tea. She understood Iona’s concerns all too well. They echoed her own, but she couldn’t let her partner know that. She needed to be strong for her, so instead she wrapped her arms around the other woman and gave her a reassuring hug.
Iona moved onto peeling the potatoes.
“You remember what happened the last time people brought in hunters,” Iona carried on, regardless. “It was chaos. Worse than chaos. I was counseling practically everyone in town. For months. Months, Jazz. Hell’s teeth, do you remember that idiot shrink who kept trying to sell us as a story to the Networks? They wanted to make a laughing stock out of our friends, Jazz. But this is our existence. It’s not like ghosts can harm anyone. But, still we have bitches like Carlisle trying to make a name for themselves with their cheap shots and cheaper shows all about stupid scares and tawdry thrills. Why should the dead have to put up with it, Jazz? It’s just not fair.”
There were potato skins everywhere.
“It’s going to be all right,” she promised, gently stroking Iona’s face. Jasmine was a liar. She was deathly afraid of what the future held for their home town.
––––––––
“Well here we are again once more,” Judge Joshua Bremen said into the microphone. It was an overflowing crowd.
Speakers were placed across the green to make sure his voice carried. Not that he needed such modern paraphernalia. He was an old school judge, he could project.
He smiled for the assembly; he had to measure his words carefully. People looked up to him. They respected him. When he spoke, they listened. That made him very conscious of the weight of each word before it left his mouth. The problem was that he didn’t believe what he was about to tell them. He wanted to believe it was true, but truth in this day and age had become such a malleable concept. It wasn’t like it had been when he’d first put the black hood on. He breathed deeply, looking out across the faces of friends he’d known for all of their deaths, and set about trying to convince them everything was going to be all right.
“I’m so pleased to see you all out here, tonight. I knew I could count on you all. I have been talking to Jasmine McIntyre about the situation we find ourselves in with these wretched ghost hunters. We have been weighing up the options open to us, and I must admit, we are both very aware of the sense of unease around the town these last few days. I am not a newcomer here. It’s been a long time since I could ever call myself that, but this is my home, and has been for longer than a lot of you have been dead. I don’t mind admitting my first day here was terrifying. And oh boy, the first night was so much worse. But here we are now, and I wouldn’t take back a second. As weird and wonderful as this place is, Mallam Cross is our home, and it is that because of you. Without all of you it would just be a place our old bones rotted to fertilize the earth, so believe me when I tell you, we won’t let Maggie Carlisle destroy our town.” He received raucous encouragement for that promise.
“What are we going to do?” someone in the crowd shouted.
The judge smiled.
They were looking to him for answers, and he had answers to give them.
“Make Maggie Carlisle’s life hell,” he said, and banged down the gavel in his right hand as though passing sentence on the television medium, her show and the entire circus she intended to bring into town.
––––––––
A car pulled into the gas station.
The couple inside were well into their twilight years. They had to struggle a little in the dim light to read the sign: 24 hour self-service at pump.
The gentleman, a dapper old soul, smiled at his good lady and promised her they’d be home for midnight as he punched the button for the gas tank’s auto open.
He got out of the car and began to fill her up.
Standing there, listening to the quiet of the night, the flit of bat wings and the rustle of leaves in the breeze, he couldn’t help but think how lovely the town looked in the moonlight. And it was. It was the kind of place you thought about settling down. Everything was just so pretty. Picture perfect.
But considering it was still only nine, he’d thought he might see some people out and about. The place was a ghost town.
The pump cut off. He squeezed the last few drops of gas out of the nozzle and shook it off before putting it back in the pump.
It really was a beautiful night.
It was the kind of night meant for lovers, young or old, and breathing in that rich, fresh air, so full of earth magic and possibility, he decided he was going to take Sue, his long-suffering wife, out to dance beneath the stars. He was an old romantic at heart. He leaned in through the open window to turn up the music, and said, “Shall we?” holding out a hand to Sue.
She wasn’t looking at him.
She looked into the middle distance over his shoulder.
Harry half-turned to look back that way to see what she was looking at, and saw a man running toward him.
The man was shouting, but Harry couldn’t understand a word that was coming out of his mouth. He could hear it all right, that wasn’t the problem. It was just some primal, guttural language he had never heard before, not once in his seventy years on God’s green earth.
As the man charged at him, Harry’s brain finally registered the wicked axe raised above his head.
The language of violence shifted, and all of a sudden those unintelligible words made perfect sense, brought into sharp clarity by the axe.
“Get into the car, Harry! Now!” Sue leaned over and tried to haul him down into the driver’s seat. “Come on, Harry. I’ve got you. Come on. Get in.”
He stumbled onto the seat and struggled to get his legs in before he slammed the door. Even as the metal rattled in the frame he hit the auto-lock and with a trembling hand tried to force the key into the ignition as the crazed man came at the car, swinging his axe wildly.
It all happened so incredibly slowly, time dilating to draw out the fear, and yet must have passed in the blink of an eye.
The axeman wore faded dirty denim overalls, but that wasn’t dirt, Harry realized, as much as he wanted it to be; the man was covered from face to throat, down his greasy top, arms to hands, in blood.
The axe head crashed through the driver’s window.
Harry closed his eyes. There was nothing he could do. He turned his head away, arms raised uselessly to shield his face from the breaking glass. There was none. The axe passed back out through the glass as though it wasn’t there.
Harry felt a chill deep in his heart.
He was stunned. His heart raced away inside him, beating wildly as he stared into the crazed man’s contorted face.
Blood dripped down the glass from a large gash across his forehead.
Sue was screaming. As he turned the engine over the music changed tracks, and suddenly Perry Como was promising that on some enchanted evening they may see a stranger, though this couldn’t have been the kind of stranger he meant.
The engine stalled.
Harry turned it over again, desperate to get the car started without flooding the engine.
The axeman threw himself on the hood, climbing up toward the glass, leering in at Harry and Sue as Harry tried to drive. He couldn’t see around the madman. He couldn’t see the road as it opened up before him, outside of the gas station. He couldn’t see the lights and the promise of safety down in the Main Street of Mallam Cross. The axeman blocked his vision.
He swerved right and left, yanking down on the wheel in a desperate attempt to dislodge the madman clinging onto the hood.
In the grip of panic, Harry hit the switch for the windshield wipers and in a couple of seconds the glass was smeared with streaks of blood that thinned out to create a red haze across the road that made it all the more difficult to see.
Sue kept moaning and clutching Harry’s arm.
Gathering speed, he sent the car in a vicious skid, using the handbrake to force the turn. The sudden shift in momentum sent the axeman sliding from the hood and sprawling across the blacktop.
Harry didn’t look back; he put the pedal to the floor and kept his foot on the gas until they were roaring out of the far side of town, all thoughts of how idyllic and pretty life in Mallam Cross must be banished by the last street light.
A mile through town, up on the boundary, he saw the shadowy shape of an old abandoned house. There wasn’t another building to be seen anywhere, only the shadows of tall trees. A single light burned in one window, and he saw the silhouette of a man sitting at an old typewriter. Some night owl hammering out an outraged letter to the local rag about the youth of today, no doubt. Harry didn’t think about it. Up ahead, a tractor dawdled down the middle of the road.
He passed it without using his turn signals.
A mile on, the adrenaline finally beginning to fade from Harry’s system, he saw overpowering lights coming up in his rear view mirror. He needed to dip the mirror to avoid the blinding glare as the reflection dazzled him.
Suddenly, the car lurched forward, butted by the tractor.
He sped up, but the tractor stayed within ramming distance.
The car filled with the diesel roar of the tractor’s engine.
Harry felt Sue’s fingernails digging into his arm as again the car lurched forward, slammed by the tractor. Metal groaned and shrieked as the tractor’s engine surged. The smell of gas fumes and burning rubber filled the night air, the tires screaming louder than Sue as they dragged along the verge, Harry wrestling with the wheel, sure he was going to die.
“Christ, Sue.” It wasn’t a scream. It was almost a prayer. He held his wife’s hand, thinking what he assumed would be his last thoughts, and wishing they’d got to dance that one last time beneath the stars before being driven off the road to their deaths.
Blazing lights filled the car.
Those twin beams traveled through them, making both Harry and Sue appear transparent.
They felt ethereal and prickling sensations, as if they were being submerged in a seltzer bath, except it was happening inside their bodies.
There was a whooshing sound as the tractor drove through them.
Then it was over.
They were on the side of the road, the tractor gone—not as in down the road, just gone.
Harry sank back into his seat. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as the hysteria welled up inside him.
They were alive.
He didn’t know how. He didn’t know why.
That, or they had just driven into the afterlife, and were dead after all, and that was why they had rolled up in Mallam Cross ...
––––––––
Dermot left Seth and Dan to have breakfast with Edmund.
Eddie moaned of course, how much extra work it was to make eggs benedict and squeeze fresh juice and be a proper host while he went off to play with his toy cars, but of course it was all an act. Eddie loved to make a fuss of guests. He’d have been right at home running the Silver Bough.
Liam, his one and only employee, was reviewing the security footage from last night. Dermot leaned in to look over his shoulder at the small black and white images flickering across the screen. Liam smoked his smoke, shaking his head. He had a copy of a well-thumbed book on his desk beside the monitor. The cover, Dermot saw, was of a strangely luminescent boy seeming to rise up out of the dirt. Or girl. It could have been a girl, he realized, looking at the weirdly asexual youth with the devastating eyes.
Liam tapped the monitor screen. “Griffin was on the loose last night.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Take a look-see. Couple of out of towners stopped for gas. He went full on axe murderer on them.”
“He plays to type,” Dermot said, unfazed by the images on the screen. He saw the old man lean in to get something from the glovebox, maybe, and then look around in pure horror as Paul Griffin came at him with a bloody axe. “Look at the woman’s face, that moment when Griff throws himself on the hood of their car ... she looks like she’s shitting a brick.”
“As you would,” Dermot noted.
It was very easy to forget just how harrowing it must be to encounter the residents of Mallam Cross for the first time, not knowing their true nature.
“Jeez, look at the way that guy swerves to ditch Griff. Damn, that’s gotta hurt.” Liam winced as Griffin hit the road and rolled. The ghost that was Paul Griffin rose unsteadily to its feet, axe still in hand, and watched the tailgate lights disappear. “Reckon they’ll come back to pay for the gas?”
Dermot laughed. “I think not.”
“You know, it’s always bothered me, how come we can watch the ghosts on film but those ghost hunters like Maggie Carlisle always come up empty-handed?”
“It’s because Artie White is a genius.” Art White was a retired Kodaker. He worked in their governmental division, doing all sorts of secret projects. One such project was to develop a special coating for film that enabled the capture of what he called ghost lights. “His film coating means our cameras can see everything that happens, and why we have so much surveillance here for a small town. We don’t want any outsiders claiming all sorts of damage where there is none. The reality is our ghosts really don’t have that many human traits, they’re more echoes or half-formed memories stuck on a loop. They can’t hurt anyone, or cause any actual physical harm. Of course, you can hurt yourself.” Dermot thought of Seth tumbling from his bike. “So, while our ghosts might be mass murders and the mentally deranged, they’re pretty harmless.”
––––––––
“I know what I saw. I’m not some old fool in her dotage. I know a scam when I encounter one, and I know when it’s real,” Maggie Carlisle shouted into her French-styled phone. “Lenora, listen to me, I am going back there, I am taking the full team, and I am going to drive the devils of Mallam Cross off the face of this God-Blessed earth! If I have to sue them to get access, I’ll sue. If I have to batter down the doors, an exorcist at my side, then that is exactly what I will do. I’ll throw holy water hand grenades at them. If that’s what it takes to wipe the smug self-satisfied grins off their faces, then so be it. I’m serious. I’m not done with Mallam Cross. I’ll do whatever it takes to see that miserable town erased from the State map if that’s what it takes to expose them.”
Maggie Carlisle paced the fabulously appointed kitchen with its ridiculously overpriced appliances, all endorsed by celebrity chefs from up and down the land. She gesticulated wildly, hands conducting an invisible orchestra as she pointed to where the hapless maid had missed a spot on her custom granite counters. Maggie did another circuit of the room, pointing out another smear, this time a fingerprint of the cut crystal cupboard door-knobs. She shook her head, passing judgement on her immigrant maid. You just couldn’t get the help these days.
“You know I am a person of my word, Lenora. Without my word, what am I? I trade in truths. I promise the people who watch our shows that they can trust me. How can they trust me if I don’t speak my mind and believe what I am saying?” She shook her head, like it was inconceivable. “Don’t forget, they invited me there the first time. They wanted to prove to me their ghosts were real. They wanted to prove to the world that death wasn’t the end, once and for all, and give hope to all of those watching loved ones suffer, just waiting for the end to come. They wanted me to give comfort to the left behind. Well, I’m telling you, Lenora, I didn’t deserve what happened to me in that place. It was both cruel and unusual.” Maggie Carlisle was losing patience with Lenora. The woman was insufferable. “Look, I don’t need your I told you so’s. They aren’t helping. They wanted a show, well I will damned well give them a show. On my terms. They want to be known as the most haunted town in America? I’ll make sure they’re a fucking ghost town by the time I leave, you mark my words. Yes, Lenora, your objections are noted. No, Lenora, frankly I don’t give a fuck what you think. It has been a pleasure, as always, now goodbye, Lenora.” She smiled at herself in the spotless stainless refrigerator door, right up until the moment she noticed the maid pulling faces behind her back. Without turning, Maggie told her, “Go and detail the cars. I want them spotless.”
“Yes, Miss Maggie,” the woman said, shuffling out of the kitchen.
Upon entering a room or a public setting, one must have the sense of presence, one must project theater. To do otherwise is to shrink, and no one loves an entertainer who appears small. That was Maggie Carlisle’s gift. She understood how to give her audience a show. But then she had the background. Once upon a time she had been a proper actress. She had trodden the boards with the very best of them, leading lady material. She projected authority, and that allowed her to enter the realm of the supernatural and not be laughed off as some foolish old woman. She was, after all, Maggie Carlisle. She had danced with Fred and been crooned to by Frank and seduced by Larry. She was the queen of her particular theatrical country. It wasn’t narcissism, it was simply true. Maggie was wellbred and accomplished, with a voice that had been trained to elicit every emotional response from the listener. It wasn’t simply projection, or eloquence, either, it was its own unique magic. And it gave her authority in even the strangest of situations, like the unholy hell that was Mallam Cross.
––––––––
They stood at the front door, ringing the bell.
It was a ridiculously old-fashioned bell pull, a tasseled golden rope.
When they pulled, they heard a single toll of a brass bell deep inside the house.
The maid was in no hurry to answer, but finally the door opened and they stood looking at each other with no words. There was a slight cough from one of the visitors, the eyes of another looked skyward, there were hands in pockets and shuffling feet as they shifted their weight from side to side. And still no word of introduction until Rowena, Maggie Carlisle’s long-suffering maid, asked, “And you are?”
The small group looked at each other.
They nodded toward one person, obviously their erstwhile leader. He cleared his throat. “I am Zachary Taylor. Maggie contacted us.”
“Did she now? Why would Miss Maggie do that? A name won’t tell me that, so, let’s try again, who are you?”
“Give her the card, Zack,” one of the women on the doorstep said.
“Of course.” Zack smiled as he dug out a crumpled business card from the back pocket of his faded jeans.
He handed it to the maid.
Rowena peered at it, not letting on that she was short-sighted as she struggled to make out the message. “Something Psychic Analysis? What’s the first word?” She turned it over and nearly died laughing as she saw the inadvertent acronym. That couldn’t have possibly been intended, surely? She read out each word slowly. “Paranormal Investigators Seeking Substantial Evidence Regarding Spirits?”
PISSERS
It was priceless.
“Who is it, Rowena?” Maggie Carlisle paraded her way through the main hall towards the door where the impromptu gathering waited for an audience with the great lady herself.
“I believe they call themselves PISSERS, madam,” Rowena shouted through, her Scottish brogue really hitting the syllables on that acronym. She just shook her head as she pocketed the business card. “That really is an unfortunate name you’ve given yourselves. Was WANKERS already taken?”
Maggie Carlisle stopped her pacing.
Rowena watched the mistress of this very peculiar house hold her left hand to her brow, close her eyes and tilt her head upward. Communing with the spirits. Her right hand was gently pressed upon Apollo’s white marble head. She was quite the picture in her lavender morning gown. The silk draped about her robust body as she lost herself in thought. A moment later she nodded, as though word had come down from on high that these pissers were worthy of her time.
“Show them into the sun room, my dear. I shall return shortly. Make sure you offer them refreshments.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Rowena said, her accent seeming to thicken even more on the final syllable.
Maggie slowly promenaded up the winding stairs, the mirror image of the debutante’s coming out, as the old woman gently rested her hand on the golden railing as she ascended. She held her head high, aloof to the comings and goings of mere mortals.
“Go through the room on your left, you’ll see an archway leading into the sun room. Mistress Maggie will be with you presently.”
The room was glass and gold, rather like a plush greenhouse with expensive carpeting where the old psychic was the overripe tomato.
They took up comfortable seats and settled in for the wait.
The maid returned a few minutes later with mint juleps, which she distributed amongst the pissers without asking who was driving. The whiskey was potent enough, despite all of the mint leaves, to have Louisa coughing her guts up after one overly ambitious mouthful.
“Maggie likes her drink strong,” the maid offered, with a wry grin.
“I can tell,” Louisa said.
The others were more careful with theirs. Zack nursed his glass, turning it round and around in his hands, before he crossed to the wide windows and stared despondently outside like some half-price Heathcliff looking out over the moors. Zack was their resident sceptic.
Daphne, the team’s production assistant, which translated to dogsbody most of the time, walked over to a corner to inspect the cacti collection; it was nothing if not impressively spiky. Next, she examined the vases, tipping them one after another to look at their markings to see if they really were as expensive as they appeared. They made great set dressing.
Each one was in their own personal world while they waited for Maggie to make her grand entrance, which as it turned out wasn’t particularly grand at all.
Daphne held up her glass, looking at the cut of the crystal in the light and the rainbow of reflections it cast on the far wall.
“It was my mother’s,” Maggie Carlisle said, by way of introduction. “These glasses have touched the lips of Greta and Errol, Ronald and Rudolph.” She reeled off the first names of the old Golden Age gods as though they were old friends, long since lost to the tragedies of time and forgotten, mostly, by the modern world. “And Marilyn, of course. She loved a mint julep. Ah, Marilyn, dear sweet Marilyn, such a lovely girl.” She gently wiped a non-existent tear from the corner of her eye.
Maggie Carlisle positioned herself on the Sevigne Bergère chair, one hand on the upholstery, the very height of faux elegance.
“It’s amazing how you can fall in and out of the Madam routine so easily, Mags,” Louisa said, smiling. She was the on-air talent. The hostess. In other words, the eye candy to draw the dads and the boys in and keep the show on your television set when the temptation was to channel hop. “I can only imagine what you were like in your heyday.”
“I was a wonder to behold, dear girl,” the older woman said, matching her smile. “I had them eating out of the palm of my hand. There wasn’t a boy in that big old town I couldn’t have bent to my will had I wanted.”
“Now that I can imagine,” Louisa said, not risking another sip of her far too strong liquor.
“So, here we are, Mags; you called, we came. Something exciting?”
Maggie Carlisle was their public face. Without her they’d be another one of those abandoned strip mall casualties squeezed in between bail bondsmen and Goodwill. No one summoned paranormal investigators to help them hunt ghosts. The reality was most of their work was in disproving, not proving, the presence of the Other, as Louisa liked to call it. They weren’t like the usual television teams, it wasn’t all flash and bang and cheap effects. They were serious. They investigated properly, they didn’t feed their psychic fake facts to make her look like her spirit guide was on fire. But more often than not that didn’t make for great television, which was why they needed the legitimacy Maggie Carlisle gave them. Without that, the Network would have dropped them like a hot, boring, potato.
Maggie tapped well-manicured fingernails on her own glass. Devastating Red. That was the name of the nail polish. It was garishly glamorous and glinted in the light as she lifted one hand to her face.
As the gown slid down her arm, Daphne noticed the pronounced scars of a former user tracking the veins. Maggie did nothing to hide them. The first time they’d seen them she had simply dismissed them with two words: “Showbusiness, darling.”
Zack looked up from his untouched glass and saw the anguish in her eyes.
It was all an act.
“I need a cigarette,” Daphne said. “I’ll be outside while you grown-ups play.”
She scuffed across the room and went out through the glass doors that led onto a small terrace that in turn led onto a lawn as manicured as the old actress’s fingernails.
Maggie Carlisle regained her composure and turned back to Louisa.
She arched her back, held Louisa’s face in her hands, her entire countenance changing. The deep craggy lines where the makeup dried and powdered within her face tightened, and a voice that seemed to harken all the way back to the first raspy sounds of the talkies hissed out, “I’ll get you yet, my pretty,” through a weird static burst as Maggie Carlisle threw her head back, seemingly in the grip of ecstasy. Louisa didn’t move. They leaned across the glass table, face to face, locked in some trance-like rage state.
Daphne watched from the terrace and saw the electromagnetism between them as a steady stream of blue and white light.
“And I’ll fuck up every one of your flying monkeys if you come at me, witch woman,” Louisa said, not blinking from the challenge.