Killing Down the Roman Line

by McGregor, Tim

  “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 Watchman. “But if it brings in some tourist dollars, I’m all for it.”

  “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 ‘The Corrigan Horror’.

  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 trees that needed felling. Not an urgent task but he wanted to keep an eye on their neighbour and his attraction, or scam, or whatever it was. By noon they had felled all three trees and cut the trunks into logs, Jim letting his son have a go with the chainsaw. Not a single vehicle came up the road to the Corrigan property, no trail of dust disturbed the Roman Line this Sunday morning. Good. People had the good sense to stay away from the carpetbagger’s shenanigans. Emma came out to the yard and waved them in for lunch.

  Eggs and salsa, toast with the last of the elderberry preserves. It was Travis who spotted the first car on the road, spoiling the pristine sky with its dust cloud. It was followed by two pickups and a minivan. Jim went to the window, surprised to see Puddycombe’s Cherokee turning into the Corrigan lot.

  Damn.

  “Are we going?” Travis looked up, hopeful.

  “No.”

  “Oh come on,” Emma said. “Let’s see what all the fuss is about.”

  “Plain foolishness is what it is.” Jim turned away from the window, ending the matter.

  Emma cocked her hip. “Aren’t you even a little bit curious?”

  ~

  Jim counted nineteen cars, crowded ass to grill down the narrow rut and snaking back onto the road. Most of them he recognized. He, Emma and Travis had walked, it being such a warm day. He felt his wife’s hand slide into his, fingers meshing. He didn’t know what she wanted at first, it being so long since they’d held hands like that. For no reason. It felt good and he told her so with a little squeeze.

  Travis walked ahead of them, eager to get there and groaning at his turtle-trodding parents. He caught them holding hands. “Do you have to do that? There’s people around.”

  Coming onto the yard, they nodded to people milling about in the shorn crabgrass. Puddycombe and Hitchens leaned on Puddy’s truck while their wives talked nearby. The Ryder family next to Phil Carroll and his brood. Joe Keefe and his wife. Elaine and Bertie O’ Connor. The Murdy clan and Orlo Miller. Even Bill Berryhill was there, loafing with his little toadie ‘Kombat’ Kyle. Chinless under a downy moustache, Kyle was the local nazi wannabe enamoured with all things military. He wore camouflage and combat boots and never ever spoke.

  Puddycombe spotted Jim and waved him over. “You know what this nonsense is all about?”

  “No idea.” Jim surveyed the crowd, impatient but polite. “But I thoroughly expect it to be a scam.”

  Hitchens laughed. “keep your hands on your wallets, boys—”

  KA-BOOM!

  The crack of a gunshot blast, the report echoing off into the field. Everyone jerked and ducked, shutting the hell up. All eyes swinging up to the sound.

  William Corrigan stood on his tilting porch, a double-barrelled shotgun in his hand. The stock resting on a hip and smoke drifting from the twin bores. He mouth twisted into a satisfied grin.

  “Good afternoon!” Corrigan roamed the faces staring back at him. Some still startled, others angry or offended. He grinned back at them, delighted with the effect. “And welcome to the Corrigan Horrorshow. Nice to see so many of you out today.”

  He clomped down the dryrot steps to the crowd. Mrs. Murdy pulled her children away and stepped back. Donny McKinnon bubbled up, “What the hell’re you doing with the gun?”

  “My name is William James Corrigan,” he hollered, shouting down the protests and clucking tongues. “The last of the Corrigan clan. And this crumbling shell before you is all that’s left of the family homestead.”

  The crowd parted, stepping on one another’s toes as their host ferried forward. “Like most of you, my family emigrated here from Ireland. County Tipperary. My predecessors and yours alike. All fleeing the blight and the bastard landowners, the tithe troubles and the bloodshed of ancient feuds. Here to the New World where there was land for the taking, if you had the backbone to clear it. Land you could own, something denied the Catholics in the British scheme to starve out the Papists. If you survived the coffin ships crossing the Atlantic and the sick houses at the port lands.” Here he swept his arm wide, taking in the horizon. “And of course this godforsaken climate.”

  Emma glanced at Jim, like she was waiting for the punchline to a bad joke. He had nothing to offer so he put a hand on her shoulder. Travis was slackjawed, eating it up.

  Corrigan welcomed the stares coming his way and glared back with delight. “And come we did. The Corrigans and the Connellys. The Keefes and the Farre
lls. Hitchens, Hawkshaws. The Carrolls, O’Connors, the Donnellys and the Berryhills. Land enough for all. But we didn’t leave the old world behind, did we? No, we brought with us the best of the old country and we ferried the worst of it too. The old hatreds and the feuding. Our cherished bigotries and enmities, one for the other.”

  He broke the shotgun at the hinge and dug the spent casings from the barrels. Flung them into the ashes of the bonfire at his feet.

  “So we settled our little corner of the promised land. An enclave of the bedraggled and the dispossessed, desperate to carve out a new life but unwilling to let go of the old ways. No quarter asked and none given. A volatile mix this. A scrap of hope churning inside a hungry belly, and all of it Irish.

  “If you had a quarrel with your neighbour you didn’t turn to the law. That law was English law and all knew there was no justice to be had in it. You settled it the old way. With your fists. You shot the bastard’s horse or burned his barn down. That was the old way.”

  The shotgun remained broken at the breech, cradled in the crook of his elbow. His mouth set into that leering grin.

  “The Corrigans were a rough bunch, no denying that. No worse than any others in town and yet they came to be the enemy of all. And why is that? Simple. They could outfight and outwit every dullard who crossed paths with them. But what they didn’t have was the numbers.

  “The good people of Pennyluck decided life would be a lot easier if there were no more fucking Corrigans around. So they formed a little club and called it the Pennyluck Vigilance Society. They holed up at the old swamp schoolhouse not a mile over that ridge and drank their courage up. Then they came south across the fields, a dozen men, maybe more. Armed with rifles and axes and sticks. February fourth, eighteen ninety-eight.”

  He went back up the broken steps and turned to the crowd. “Come on inside. I’ll show you where my family died.”

  Corrigan disappeared into the house. The crowd of onlookers remained on the grass, glancing around at one another but no one made a move. Berryhill spat onto the grass. “Horseshit,” he said, and clomped up the steps. Kombat Kyle at his heels.

  The spell broken, everyone funnelled into the house. Emma wrapped her hand over Jim’s arm. “I don’t think I want to hear anymore.”

  Travis was already on the porch, waving at his parents to hurry up. “Come on,” he said. “It’s just getting good.”

  Inside the house it was dark and the June air fetid with must and mould. Everyone squinted until their eyes adjusted from the blue sky to the dim of the house, tumbling into one another at the door. The front room was enormous but almost bare of furnishings. A roughsawn table to one side with three matchstick chairs. A rolltop desk pushed against one wall. Antlers hung over the wide stone hearth, cobwebs drifting from the points. The shotgun lay on the mantle.

  Corrigan stood in the center of the room, holding the crowd near the door. “They kicked the door down and stormed the house. James Corrigan, the patriarch, came out from the back with a pistol in hand.”

  Under Corrigan's boots was a rough dropcloth. Another was tossed on the floor to his left and a third draped down the stairs. He retreated back into the hall and swept forward, swinging up a pantomime pistol. “He got off one round. Missed. He was shot through the stomach by one vigilante. Another gored his ribs with a pitchfork.”

  Everyone ducked as he pointed the make-believe gun at them. Corrigan reached down and yanked away the dropcloth at his feet. Chalk lines drawn onto the wooden floorboards, sketched in the shape of a body.

  “Then the mob went for the rest of the family. Mary was struck down running to her husband’s side. Bludgeoned with a shillelagh. Choking on a mouthful of shattered teeth, she begged for a moment to pray. ‘Pray in Hell’ the murderers told her, and then they broke her skull in.”

  Emma winced at the thought. Some shuffled uncomfortably while others folded their arms in defiance, disbelieving the tale.

  Corrigan pulled away the second dropcloth to reveal another chalk outline on the floor. He crossed to the stairs and swept up the third shroud. “Thomas was shot coming down the stairs. His ears were docked from his head and thrown into the fireplace. Michael was cudgelled in his bed. Young Bridgette, not yet sixteen, was chased to the loft where she was raped and cut open with a cleaver.”

  Corrigan flung the sheets into a corner and waved at them to follow him through into the kitchen. “When all was quiet, the vigilantes collected the bodies and dragged them out the back.”

  His voice trailed off. No one moved for a second and then Travis chased him down the hall. The crowd trooped through the kitchen and out the backdoor to the yard where Corrigan waited for them.

  “This way.” He led them through the newly mowed path, up a rise and down to the willow trees. “The bodies were hauled out to the barn where the horses were stalled. Lamp oil was doused over the straw and the whole thing set to blaze. Bodies, horses, all.”

  Ten paces from the willow trees to the graves. Six stones, no taller than a foot, arced in a wide circle. Each one with a chiselled name:

  James. Mary. John. Thomas. Bridgette. Michael.

  Corrigan stood in the middle of the ring of graves waiting for them to catch up. Behind him rose a spire seven feet into the air, hidden under yet another dropcloth. Berryhill was the first down the path and he stopped cold. Joe Keefe bumped against him and cursed, and then he too went silent when he saw the graves. The others tumbled in, the same reaction all round. A few genuflected but most stood gaping. Corrigan registered it all with a perverse grin.

  “Even in death they were wronged. The parish priest, a known lecher and drunk, refused them burial in the churchyard at Saint Patrick’s cemetery. So they were lain to rest out here. What was left of them anyway.”

  Corrigan stepped left and took up the end of the dropcloth. Some new horror waiting to be unveiled. “Yet it wasn’t all tragic. One of the family survived. Young Robert Corrigan, all of eight years old, hid under the floor and watched his entire family slaughtered. He fled barefoot through the snow to a neighbour’s house. They hid the boy, fearing for his life. Later, young Robert gave an eye-witness testimony to the local magistrate, naming each and every one of the murderous assassins.”

  A breeze blew up, dipping the willow branches into the faces of the stunned onlookers.

  Corrigan let the tension run its pace before going on. “But the magistrate was partisan to the Vigilance Peace Society and publicly dismissed the boy’s claims as delusions. The assassins, cowards and bastards to a man, walked away scot free.”

  He flung back the dropcloth, sweeping it to the ground. A tall grave monument refracted the sunlight. Black granite, cleaned and polished. Thick at the base and narrowing to an elegant spire that towered four feet over their heads. A dark hub to the ring of small gravemarkers, the black spire repeated the names of the dead in gothic script. James and Mary Corrigan, the four dead children. Each name catalogued with the date and place of birth. The date of demise for all six was the same but here the elegant chiselled letters gave way to a bolder inscription hammered into the stone.

  James Orin Corrigan - Born 1839 - MURDERED February 4, 1898

  Mary Agnes Corrigan - Born 1846 - MURDERED February 4, 1898

  John James Corrigan - Born 1872 - MURDERED February 4, 1898

  Thomas Finn Corrigan - Born 1877 - MURDERED February 4, 1898

  Bridgette Mary Corrigan - Born 1882 - MURDERED February 4, 1898

  Michael Patrick Corrigan - Born 1883 - MURDERED February 4, 1898

  No one moved, no one dared breathe. A full minute and it was Travis of all people who broke the spell. “So who did it?”

  Emma shushed the boy but Travis played deaf and hollered again. “Who killed the Corrigans?”

  “Look around you, son.” Corrigan levelled his eyes to the boy and chin-wagged at the people gathered before him. “They’re all here. All the upstanding, salt of the earth gentry of Pennyluck. Hitchens and Keefe. The Carrols and the O�
�Connors. Gallaghers, Farrells, McKinnons. The Connellys and the Berryhills. Those that committed the deed and those that covered it up.”

  Bill Berryhill snapped to attention at the mention of his name. Like a sharp slap to the face it stung and stung until his mind clicked over to what the son of a bitch was saying. Berryhill’s response was immediate and predictable. “Fuck you, asshole!”

  “The truth is ugly, isn’t it? Your great grandfathers murdered my family and everyone knew it. Those that kept silent were just as guilty as the ones that did the deed.” Corrigan stomped forward, his leering grin even wider. “Look at your hands,” he said. “All of you. Do you see the blood stained there? The blood of my kin. My blood.”

  Berryhill pushed Kyle aside and stomped up face to face with his accuser. “That’s a fucking lie!”

  Violence folded thick in the air but Corrigan didn’t turn away. “What’s your name, son?”

  Berryhill shoved Corrigan hard into the monument. Someone in the crowd hollered at him. “Knock it off, Berryhill!”

  “Berryhill?” Corrigan zeroed in on the big man’s eyes. “It was your scum ancestor that raped the girl.”

  Big Bill Berryhill was strong but he wasn’t fast, the punch telegraphed a mile away. Still, the accusing party didn’t seem to care, too busy staring at the big man’s face. Corrigan took the punch and bounced off the gravemarker. Hit the ground.

  “Hit him again!” Someone from behind, goading him on. Jim and Puddycombe jumped in and pulled Bill away. Others yelled at them to stop and a few ordered Bill to shut his mouth. Bill flung the two men off, spat at the bastard on the ground and stomped away.

  Corrigan brushed the grit from his hands and rubbed his jaw. The grin was still there, as if everything was how it should be. “If you don’t believe me, look in your attics and your crawlspaces. You’ll find proof there.”

  Joe Keefe told him to go to Hell but Corrigan shouted him down. “The morning after the massacre, the whole town came out and traipsed through the ashes. They took little souvenirs, like they were at the fair, snatching up little pieces of bone and pocketing them. Fingerbones and ribs, keepsakes of a lovely day’s outing. Look in your basements, people. Search your hidey-holes and your attics and you’ll find the bones there. I want them back. Bring them to me.”