At the Big Red Rooster

by William Taylor

  ‘Make it thirty the pair if you really want them,’ I said.

  Mary nodded agreement. ‘The covers have just been dry-cleaned, ’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t have to get them cleaned again. They’re very comfortable chairs.’

  The fingers on the purse played at the clasp and she glanced between us. We looked away and in a brief furtive silence she extracted some notes.

  ‘I… I don’t seem to have quite enough with me… er…’

  ‘That’s all right, Mrs Peters, we’ll make it that shall we? Now then, how are you going to get this lot where you want it?’

  ‘I’ll manage the cleaner, but that’s about all I’ll have room for in my car. My son will come and get the rest for me. Would Saturday be all right?’ She looked uncertain. ‘You see, he’s away this week, and carriers…’

  ‘Quite all right. It can just wait in the room for him,’ I said. ‘And we both hope your little flat works out for you and that you find good tenants.’

  ‘I’d like to feel the chairs were going to a good home,’ said Mary, smiling.

  ‘I’ll be back Saturday too,’ said Mrs Peters. ‘I’m driving up to stay with my daughter for a little holiday, but I’ll be back by Saturday.’

  We stowed the cleaner in the back of her car, helped her in, and waved her off.

  ‘I hope she gets there all right,’ said Mary.

  The car lurched backwards down the drive, this time nicking the mail-box.

  ‘And it’s only been up a week,’ I said.

  ‘You’d better fix that wonky chair,’ said Mary. ‘I wouldn’t like to think of some spiteful tenant suing the old thing for God knows what. It’s good to have that room clear. Well… nearly clear.’

  A week of phone calls later (everyone told us we could have asked more for the stuff), the son called. The car, sleek and fatly German, towed a trailer into the carport.

  ‘I came for Mum’s stuff. Mrs Peters.’

  ‘I don’t know why you bothered with the trailer, it’ll all fit inside.’

  ‘Mum doesn’t like stuff spoiling the upholstery.’

  ‘Mum…?’

  ‘It’s her car. Did she say where the stuff was to go?’

  ‘To her little flat,’ said Mary.

  ‘Which one?’ he asked.

  The Man of the (Haunted) House

  ‘JUST DON’T YOU FORGET, Mick, you’re the man of the house while I’m gone,’ said Dad, at the airport just before he took off on his way to Oz. ‘It’s your job to keep an eye on your mum and don’t let her worry.’ Hugs and kisses and tears and he was gone. Gone for six months.

  It all seemed too much and it all seemed too sudden. Mum and Dad had bought this small farm right, right out in the sticks, the back of beyond. God might know why these two townies had taken it into their heads to be small-time farmers, I didn’t! Dad was going to do a six-month contract as an engineer for some mining outfit light years north of Perth in Western Australia. Big money for six months would mean next-to-no mortgage on our new place.

  ‘You’ll love it, Mick,’ Dad had said. ‘This’ll be the life, all right,’ as we toured our backcountry estate. ‘Great. Real great. You’n me, Mick, we’ll get ourselves a gun and er… shoot things… you know… stuff to er… eat.’

  Dad with a gun? Shooting stuff? That’d be the day. This was the guy who rescued baby rabbits, half-eaten, from next door’s cats and then nursed them back to health!

  So we moved. Mum got a job nursing at the new health centre in the nearest town. Dad’s money started coming in. The mortgage began to shrink. After the winter holidays I started at my new school and met Staunch.

  Staunch, aka George O’Riley, was the youngest kid of our nearest neighbours. They lived a few kilometres down the road and had a real farm. Well, more real than ours. Staunch and me caught the school bus at our front gate and we were the only passengers for half of the trip into town. We became sort of mates. Staunch was a good year older than me, a good head taller and about twice as big. At fifteen he was already captain of the first XV rugby team at school. He had a bull-head of short-cropped bristles and his legs, arms and neck were thicker than fenceposts. Staunch was one big, no-nonsense dude, a dude you’d far rather have on your own side than on any other.

  ‘Play footie?’ he asked me, on the first day I met him.

  ‘Soccer,’ I sort of whispered.

  ‘Whaddaya?’ he boomed, with a great big shark grin. ‘Smoke?’ He fished out a pack of cigarettes from his bag.

  ‘Shoot no,’ I squeaked. ‘Mum’d kill me!’ Could I tell him smoking would stunt his growth?

  ‘Whaddaya?’ he repeated, lighting up. ‘My mum would, too. That’s if she caught me.’

  Staunch took to inviting himself in to our house for afternoon tea, a couple of smokes and a chat before biking back down the hill to his home. I was glad he became my friend. Well, in some ways. He didn’t seem to mind having to sit outside to smoke, even in the winter cold. ‘Don’t go in this place ’less I really have to,’ he said, having checked out our fridge to make sure I wasn’t lying about being out of steak, sausages and eggs for afternoon tea. He turned down a nice slice of vegetarian lasagne and settled for a packet of biscuits and a carton of milk. ‘Don’t your mum have any beer?’ This new mate of mine was clearly going to prove an expensive hobby and it was very hard to say no to someone as friendly and as big as this guy.

  ‘Why’d youse guys come here?’ he asked, as he jumped on his mountain bike. The whole machine shuddered under his weight. ‘Youse must be bloody mad. You know this place is haunted,’ and he took off.

  I shivered in the misty cold and looked around me at the overgrown, wintry jungle and the old house that needed, at the very least, a good paint job and, more likely, a complete re-build. Haunted? Rubbish!

  Mum worked at the clinic afternoons and until eight each night and often it was about nine when she got home. Well after dark. That first two or three weeks, middle of winter, were not the happiest I had ever known. Still, as Dad had said, I was the man of this very old, half-furnished, cold and creaky house. This is my dream house,’ Mum had said. Yeah? Some dreams can end up nightmares! Still, I couldn’t worry Mum with any nonsense about haunting. Not with Dad so far away.

  ‘What did you mean haunted? This place?’ I asked Staunch, a couple of days and three or four packets of biscuits later. I didn’t want to ask. I had managed to put it off for two days.

  ‘Shoot, Mickey Mouse. Did I say that? Haunted? Geez, mate, I am sorry,’ he grinned. ‘Didn’t mean to frighten the jocks off of you, mate. Forget I ever said it. Sure you got no beer?’ he grinned again. ‘Look, jus’ don’t you ask me, Mickey Mouse…’

  ‘Please don’t call me Mickey Mouse.’

  ‘Call you what I bloody well like, Mickey,’ said Staunch, pleasantly. ‘I’d like to tell you, Mickey. Honest to God, I would, but what you don’t know don’t hurt you, my mum says, and I don’t want you pissin’ yer pants, not right in front of me. You’d feel bad about it after.’

  ‘I want to know,’ I said. ‘I know there’s no such thing as haunted houses.’

  ‘Ya reckon?’ Staunch lit a cigarette and polluted my personal space. ‘That’s what I thought, Mickey. Once upon a time that’s what I thought. We…ell,’ and he eyed me up and down. ‘Maybe it’d be for your own good but don’t you say I didn’t warn you.’

  ‘Go on,’ I urged.

  ‘This place is haunted by the ghost of the old girl what lived here and was brutally murdered…’

  ‘Old Mrs Wichell? The one we bought it from?’

  ‘You didn’t buy it from her, Mickey Mouse. How could you? She’s dead.’

  ‘She’s not. She’s in…’

  ‘Yeah? What? Some dump-bin for olds down the city? Bet that’s what they told you so’s they could flog off this dump. You ever see ’er? Nah. Course not. You will, but, that’s if you go on livin’ here. You’ll see ’er ghost. They done ’er in, see. She was one of them witches, you know. How d’y
ou think she got ’er name? Wichell? See? It figures.’ Staunch smoked away very happily. He stood and pointed over to a corner of the wild garden. ‘They done ’er in over there,’ he nodded towards a dead patch of grass. ‘The blood of that old witch killed all that grass. Always does, yer witch blood. Well, so they say.’

  ‘That’s not right, Staunch,’ I said. ‘I asked Mum about that dead patch. She said it was where the old lady used to take her dog, Rover, out for a piss at nights and over the years his piss killed all that grass.’

  ‘God help me, Mickey Mouse. You’re one big sucker,’ said Staunch, shaking his bristle head sadly. ‘Believe anything, you would. Your poor old mum, too. Two suckers.’

  ‘Who killed her?’

  ‘Her three sons. Mad Jack, Mad er… Ernie and the other one, Mad er… er… Darren. Bashed ’er head in with ’er very own poker.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Cos they wanted to and they were sick to bloody death of having a witch for a mum. Look, Mickey Mouse, I can’t stay rabbiting on to you about your problems all day. Gotta feed out and do the pigs or me old man’ll take to me with our poker.’ Staunch looked up at our house. ‘Rather you than me, Mickey Mouse,’ he shivered. ‘Just you remember, a witch whacked with ’er own poker sure don’t rest easy. I’m outa here.’

  Rubbish! Crap rubbish!! Double crap rubbish!!! Every bit of it.

  That old house creaked, groaned and whispered and the clock ticked away oh so slow and there was a howl of wind and a tap tap tapping on the windows that wouldn’t stop and the wind howled even more. The fog folded down and the night came and Mum was late home from the clinic and all she said, when she did get home was, ‘God help us, Mick. Where’ve all my bikkies gone?’

  At least she was company. ‘It’s Staunch from down the road, Mum. He eats them all for afternoon tea when we get off the bus.’

  ‘Well, you just tell Staunch to bring his own, love,’ said Mum.

  As if! Staunch? Bring his own plate?

  ‘It’s as cold as a grave in here, Mick. Pass me the poker,’ said Mum.

  ‘Wha..?’

  ‘You’ve let the fire die right down. Really. Me and your dad working our fingers to the bone…’

  The whole evil story of the whacking of old Mrs Wichell, the witch, took some afternoon teas to unfold. It would have been so much easier if Staunch could have found the time to come out with it all in one sitting but it seemed he had to just about run the O’Riley farm singlehanded in the hour or so after he got home and before darkness closed in. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t keep him talking long enough so that the time between his leaving and Mum getting home was anything other than eternity.

  ‘Hell’s bells, Mickey Mouse, dude, I got work to do. Can’t hang around here all day. Besides, youse guys got stuff all to eat.’

  My pocket money, all of it, now went on biscuits for Staunch. ‘Anyway, Staunch, how come you know all this shit about old Mrs Wichell? No one else seems to.’

  ‘And don’t you dare ask no one else, Mickey. Not if you value your life and safety,’ said Staunch. ‘It was her grandson, see. Little nerdy geeky weed, Mickey Mouse. Just like you, really. Sure you won’t have a smoke? Looks like you need one.’

  I did but I didn’t. ‘How come he told you?’

  ‘All got too much for the poor little sod. He’d seen it all and it preyed on his nerdy mind and he just had to tell someone so he told me ’cos I’m so kind and helpful. He had to unload before he crapped out, big-time. Marvin was his name and he was the son of Mad er… Damon.’

  ‘Darren, you mean?’

  ‘Yep. That’s the bugger. Made me swear on a pack of Bibles and slit me throat if I told…’

  ‘You’ve told me.’

  ‘That’s different. You live here. He would’ve wanted me to tell you, I know. That’s if he’d lived… Seen the old bat yet?’

  ‘Ug… er…’

  ‘You have, eh?’ Staunch sounded triumphant. ‘I was right, see! Well, if you haven’t seen ’er yet you’re gonna real soon. She comes out, they all do, the ghosts, at full moon and it’s that now. I checked it out. She comes out with ’er cat…’

  ‘You never mentioned a cat before.’

  ‘All witches have a cat, thicko. Goes with being a witch. Geez! Are you thick or are you thick? Her one was called Tom, on account of her never havin’ his nuts off. Tom Cat. Geddit? They done him in, too. Only good bit about the whole thing. Real savage cat, that Tom. Shoulda seen it! Big as a flamin’ lion and blood dripping from its mouth and all its… ’

  ‘Full moon? What happens?’

  ‘That’s when old Ma Wichell really gets into hauntin’. Even seen ’er down our place once.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Never you mind. Even if you don’t spot ’er you’ll know she’s been here. Oh yes you will, little Mickey dude.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Shouldn’t tell you this,’ and Staunch shivered. I could have sworn his bristly hair spiked up more than ever.

  ‘You’ve told me everything else,’ I said. ‘Go on. Gotta new packet of biscuits inside.’

  ‘That’s right. Twist me bloody arm,’ said Staunch. ‘Full moon, and that is tonight, is when she comes hauntin’. Regular as clockwork. You know how you know she’s been, even if you don’t spot ’er?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That dead patch of grass,’ Staunch pointed. ‘See it?’

  Of course I saw it. Day by day it seemed to be getting bigger and deader. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Remember I told you that’s where they whacked ’er?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’

  ‘At full moon, Mickey Mouse, that deader than dead patch of grass bloods up all over again. It turns as red and bloody as the evil day Mad Jack, Mad Ernie and Mad er… Darwin done their own mum in.’

  Staunch looked at his watch. ‘Shoot! Look at the time. Gotta get on me bike. Dad says if I don’t do a house mutton and a dog tucker today they’ll roast me up and chuck me bones to the bloody dogs. Wanna come down, gimme a hand?’

  ‘What? Kill sheep?’

  ‘Can’t eat them alive. Wouldn’t be nice. Come on. You’d enjoy it,’ he grinned at me wickedly. ‘Well, you’d enjoy it more’n them sheep’s gonna enjoy it.’

  ‘Nah. Thanks, Staunch. Gotta do stuff for Mum.’

  ‘Please yerself,’ he picked up his bag. ‘Don’t you forget, Mickey. Full moon. See ya.’

  Man of the haunted house!! In the course of the next few hours how I wished I had accepted Staunch O’Riley’s kindly offer. Staunch’s sheep were having a far more pleasant time than me, even if they were getting their throats slit.

  At about eight o’clock the mother of all storms let loose, it seemed, right above our house. The power went off. Black. Black as all hell. The phone rang. When I finally found it, it was Mum. ‘I’ll be late, love.’

  ‘Geez, Mum…’

  ‘Look, Mick, I know you’re a home alone kid and I could go to jail but there’s nothing I can do and you’re big enough and ugly enough… gotta go, love, accident… ’ and she left me to it.

  The storm raged and bellowed and boomed and roared and shrieked in increasing intensity. Lightning thunder lightning – never ending. Didn’t really need the power on – the lightning lit the old place brighter than electricity! The force of that winter storm was such that I almost, but not quite, forgot all about old witch Wichell, Tom her cat, or even full moon hauntings.

  The storm passed, or so I thought. The lights flickered on, flickered off. I got more candles and finally found a torch that went. I stoked the fire and sat right up close to its comforting warmth and flame. The clock ticked the time away. The minutes, the hours, oh so slow. All of a sudden everything was dead, deathly quiet. Quieter than – a tomb? A grave? I think I might have dozed off ever so slightly when oh, dear God, the most unearthly scream broke the silence.

  Every hair on my body poked up, or out, ramrod stiff and straight. I could feel each of those hairs and the clawing
cold that grasped at me, clutching, choking…

  I unfroze and stood, my heart pounding, about to burst forth from my poor little chest. I’ll never know why but I grabbed my torch and ran for the door. Where was I going? God only knew. Towards Mum? To the freezing winter outside?

  As I flung wide the door the clouds rolled from the golden fullness of the moon. The fitful light of my torch coupled with that of the moon caught a glimpse of a white-clad and ghostly figure slipping away into the leafless trees of the garden. Or was it my mind, my poor tortured mind playing cruel tricks? Was it there, that ghostly apparition? Was it there and then gone? Had it been there at all?

  But, but, but… No trick of mind, this. The dead patch of grass out beyond what had once been lawn glistened – and, even in the faint light of my torch and the half-light of the moon – I could see it glowed a full and ruby red.

  Drawn as metal to a magnet so was I to that pool of blood – for that is what it was. Oh, yes, it glowed and glistened and threatened in that moonlight, reminding me of the dreadful drama once played out upon this very spot…

  Somehow, and I’ll never know how, I pulled myself back to the house, the fire and to a big swig of Mum’s brandy.

  ‘Heavens above, love! You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,’ said Mum, when she got home just a few minutes later and right on cue for the power coming back on. ‘Sorry I’m so late, sweetie. I’ve brought us some fish and chips. I’ll just nuke them up a bit – they’re half cold. Oh, and while I remember. Saturday, dear, the old… ’

  ‘Can I show you something, Mum. Gotta show you something,’ I didn’t let her finish.

  ‘Of course, Mike. What is it?’

  ‘It’s outside, Mum. It’s outside.’ This man of the house couldn’t bottle up things for ever.

  ‘Okay. Come on.’

  We got halfway across the overgrown lawn. I could almost smell that pool of blood. I could smell it! But we weren’t to see it this time. The heavens opened with more fire and fury than ever for part two of that storm and Mum chased me back to the house. ‘Whatever it is can wait till morning, Mike. What a night. I need a brandy.’