Around the back of the house, the dog was going crazy, thumping the door from the inside. It sounded like the stupid mutt was banging its head against the wood, hoping to batter its way through. This was no time to hang about to see how long it’d take before the dog knocked itself senseless, so we scooted as fast as we could, shoes slapping across the back yard, kicking up hay and straw.
When we rounded the far corner of Cassie’s farmhouse—our furthest point from the start, the point of no return—the lights went on.
There were voices, shouting, internal doors banging, and Stephi faltered. Like the dog, this too, I guessed, had never happened before.
Ahead of us, around the front side, light gushed out like the house had opened its eyes in shock, and the dog’s bark became a loud row-row-row-row out in the open.
To the side of us was a rusted heap of metal parts—old plough blades, a shredded tractor wheel with thick cable wires stabbing through like rows of spiny teeth, and a pile of wooden pallets, stacked uneven, with weed and thistle growing through—but it was cover. A hiding place.
I pulled Stephi sideways, and we hit the ground.
She kept herself as low as she could. “We have to finish,” she said.
I told her, “We will,” but at that moment I didn’t know any of us were going to see the end. Jojo, he turned back...
Death will come to those who turn back.
...and us, we were relying on the shadows for cover, the shadows where the devil always hides.
“I should have refused,” Stephi said. “This is my fault.”
I put my finger to her lips to shush her, because through the wood and the weeds, over by the house, over in the light, that’s where a billowing white figure appeared.
“Where are they, ‘Casso?” She was a good six feet tall, with wild blow-away hair, frizzed out like a fire-halo around her head. Her shoulders jutted out as far as her hair, and she was wearing a long nightdress or a dressing gown, which caught the breeze of her own making as she moved, a huge block of a woman.
The dog, I couldn’t see it, but I could hear its heavy chain scraping over the concrete, hear it padding back and forwards, sniffing and blowing.
“Where are they, boy?” Cassie said. “Find the little shits.”
From the distance came a victory call, a scream of, “Wooo-weeee,” and other cheering cat-calls, and a cry of, “We got one, Ma! We got one!“
Stephi looked at me, and held her breath. We both knew the same thing: they’d got Jojo.
31 Jan 2008
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