Tim McGregor - Killing Down the Roman Line

“Did you sleep okay?” He slid around her and washed up at the sink. Emma had trouble sleeping sometimes, waking deep in the night and unable to fall back under. Exhausted and spent for the new day. He himself slept like the dead no matter what.

“Yeah.” She gave him a shy smirk, like they shared a secret. “Very well.”

“Where’s Travis?” Jim looked to the empty table and then his watch.

“Getting the paper.”

He sat down and she slid a mug of coffee onto the table just as the screen door banged shut. A sound Jim hated, knowing one day the bang would be the old door’s last. The house was set well back from the road and it was Travis’s job to go get the paper stuffed into their mailbox. He rode his bike out to fetch it and every morning let the screen door bang the frame no matter how many times he’d been told not to.

Travis dropped the paper onto the table, reached for the cereal box and was already pouring cereal before he noticed his dad watching him. “Sorry.”

“That door is just gonna fall right off the hinges you keep banging it like that.”

Emma brought the milk and Travis poured and ate noisily. Halfway through the bowl, he looked up. “What’s going on next door?”

Jim lowered the front page. There was no next door, their closest neighbour was a quarter mile away. “What?”

“Did someone buy that crappy old house?”

The crappy old house. It took a second before Jim understood what he meant. The derelict farmhouse on the property next to theirs, a crumbling tinderbox so old that Jim didn’t even see it anymore. Part of the landscape, no more visible than the weeping willows that surrounded the place.

Travis clocked the confusion on both their faces. “The haunted house. Up the road.” Travis had called it a haunted house since he was five. To Jim’s knowledge, the boy had never gone near it, death-trap that it was.

“What do you mean, honey?” Emma sat down, hands drawing warmth from her mug.

Travis poured a second bowl. “Some dude’s over there. Tossing junk out on the front yard.

Jim pushed his chair back and went to the window. He knew full well that the old house wasn’t visible from this window but he went and looked all the same. Nothing. Trees, the old fence.

“Did you recognize him?” Emma asked.

“No.”

“Maybe the town’s decided to finally pull it down.”

Jim crossed to the backdoor and slipped his boots back on. “I doubt that. Probably just some junk collector. I’ll go see.”

“I want to come.” Travis, already on his feet.

“Stay here.”

Jim climbed under the wheel and rumbled down the driveway to the road. A fly bounced inside the windshield before being sucked out the open window. Trespassers weren’t uncommon on the old property, usually antique hunters from the city. Sometimes just kids looking to explore. The old Corrigan house was big and spooky-looking, a natural draw for any curious eyes driving past. Two years ago it was some college kids with a bunch of weird gear. Said they were ghost hunters searching for signs of paranormal activity. Jim had chased them off, telling them they were trespassing and he’d call the cops if they didn’t pack up and skedaddle.

The driveway to the old place was nothing more than two rutted tracks of hard packed clay. Overgrown crabgrass trailed beneath the pickup’s undercarriage. Jim could already see a vehicle parked in the front yard. A new Toyota FJ, tricked out with floodlights on the roof and a heavy grille guard. Long way from home too. Nova Scotia plates. Another antique hunter.

An ambitious one at that, Jim thought. There was a tidy pile of trash and debris just off the veranda, hauled from inside and pitched out. Jim went up the rotted plank steps and stopped outside the open door.

“Hello?”

No response. A dull crash deep inside the house.

The interior was dark and musty smelling. An overturned chair to his left, the spindles splayed and broken. A table against the wall with a yellowing calendar hung over it, forever frozen to June 1973. A rack of stag antlers over a wide stone hearth. The floorboards warped and filthy with the dry bones of mice and other small creatures. The staircase and the hallway to the back. He hollered again.

Noise thudding through the floor. A shatter of glass and the tinkling of shards. Jim passed under the staircase to the hallway, the light brightening into what was once the kitchen.

A silhouette in the room, the man a blur against the sunlight squaring the grimy windows. His back to Jim. Rubble at his feet and dust frosting the air. An iron poker in his hand.

“Hello.”

The voice was low and unfamiliar. He didn’t turn around.

Jim’s back went up, wary. He reminded himself the man was a trespasser. And a vandal, judging by the damage he’d wrought with the poker. Jim dropped an octave, injecting authority into his tone. “Can I help you with something? This is private property.”

“Private?” The man finally turned. Jim ballparked his age at forty or so, the features deeply etched. Eyes that bored into Jim’s and wouldn’t let go. Big shoulders and raw looking hands. “It looks like it’s been used as a public toilet,” he said.

“It’s been empty a long time. You scavenging for antiques or something?”

The stranger sized Jim up and down but said nothing. Locking that weird stare onto him. Creepy was the word that sprang to mind. “Couple places in town for antiques. Regular shops instead of trespassing.” Jim stressed the trespassing part, impatient to hustle this weirdo on his way.

“No trespasser here, sir.” The man grinned wide, like someone clutching a flush. “Except you maybe.”

“Beg your pardon?”

The man passed the iron rod from his right hand to his left and stepped closer. “You live next door, yeah? What’s your name?” He thrust his hand out to shake.

“Jim. Jim Hawkshaw.” Without thinking, taking the hand and shaking.

“Will Corrigan.” The man pumped Jim’s hand. Watched his face for a reaction.

Jim creased his brow, the name bouncing around inside his head but not making any sense. Corrigan. That’s the name of this derelict tinderbox. The ‘old Corrigan place’. A term he’d heard since he was a kid but never stopped to ask what it meant or who the Corrigans were. Like asking who Santa Claus was. It just was.

“Corrigan?” Jim stumbled over the name, saying it aloud. “No, that’s the name of this place. Or it used to be—”

Will Corrigan squeezed Jim’s hand. “The very same. Pleased to meet you, Jim.”

Jim pulled his hand away. Something didn’t add up, he thought. There are no Corrigans.

“I’ve come to claim the family homestead. Or at least what’s left of the fucking place.” Corrigan tossed the poker to the floor where it crashed against a mess of broken plates. “Guess that makes us neighbours.”

“Get outta here! Shoo!”

The damn goats. Emma chased the pair of them from her vegetable garden, where they had devoured the tomato shoots and the flowering bell peppers. The slat fence Jim had put up to keep them out lay trampled in the dirt. Unlike horses, goats didn’t spook and bolt. The goats, whom Jim had named It and Shit, just worked their jaws and watched her bellow with their slit eyes. A swift kick to the hind end and the animals brayed and meandered off slowly. Plodding to the weed border of the yard and nipping at the clover, looking back at her with what Emma could only read as resentment.

“You two can be sold,” she scolded them. “In a heartbeat.”

The goats lowered their heads and chewed, turning their behinds towards her.

Emma kneeled down to inspect the damage. The tomatoes might survive but the peppers would never bear fruit now, the stalks devoured up along with the buds. She brushed her hands off and straightened up, catching sight of the pickup roaring onto the road and pluming dust as it steered towards town.