The Time Sonny and Don Came to My House
By JACOB LEEBRON
I never saw it coming. Or, I guess I did see that red, wood-paneled station wagon blazing down the dirt country road to my house. You could see anything coming your way for miles if you were sitting out on the porch, which I was. It must’ve taken a full ten minutes for that car to get from the 83 turn-off all the way up to my country house. And when it did, the thing came to a screeching halt.
It was a deep, dark red mid-80’s station wagon. It was that sorta shade that you only ever see on cars, like ruby and brown had canoodled on the hot metal and left only maroon in their wake. The paneling was that fake, plastic type of wood that never gets water-logged and always looks like shit. In the windshield, back-left window, and on the bumper were hand- made cardboard signs of varying sizes that all read: “WE DO SHIT INC.” in black marker.
The driver stepped out first. He was a tall, gangly young man with sandy hair and
a piece of straw between his teeth. He wore cut-off denim shorts, a plain t-shirt, a hat with some foreign insignia and, most noticeably, no shoes. I would come to know this young man, couldn’t be more than 25, as Sonny.
“Hey, howya doin? I’m Sonny and the other one still in the wagon” he gestured towards the car, “is my partner, Don. You’ll find him quiet, but he likes to say I talk enough for the two of us, so he an’ I are symbiotic like that.” As Sonny spoke, his straw danced playfully about his mouth.”
“Well hi there,” I replied, “What brings you to these parts? We’re a bit far out from town.”
“Haha, yeah you sure are!” Sonny laughed. “Took us longer than we woulda thought to get all the way out here. Me an’ Don are actually lookin to get into town to try an’ find an old friend of ours. Must’a taken a wrong turn someways back, you’re the first house we seen!”
I hesitated a moment before saying, “Maybe I could help y’all? Don’t know who it is you’re looking for, but I’ve been out here for a few years now. Aren’t many of us here.” The man who must’ve been Don got out of the car just then. He was shorter than Sonny, darker, more muscular too. He wore a serious sort of expression and had cold, dead eyes that struck me in the sternum. If he was looking at you, that is. Don seemed to stare through you and into the negative space where he rested his gaze. He wore khaki pants and, despite the heat, a blue sweater with the white points of his collar poking out.
“Ah! Don! Good of you ta join us,” Sonny said as he clapped Don on the shoulder. “I was just about to ask Jordan here about our dear friend Mary-Anne.” I knew that name. There was only one Mary-Anne in all of Delham, and that was Mary-Anne Spindley.
“What do you two want with her?”
Sonny laughed and said, “Well, that’s somethin of a complex situation to explain. Let’s see, we know her cuz of-”
“We’re here to kill her,” Don suddenly said, never once looking my way. This made Sonny laugh again.
“Yeah, I suppose that’s the truth. We’re here to kill Mary-Anne Spindley on account of her witchery and associated crafts,” Sonny said.
I stared at him for what felt like minutes, completely frozen. I’m sure my mouth hung open, but the two young men seemed completely unfazed.
Sonny looked me up and down before asking, “Can we get a bite? Don and me been on the road for hours, and I don’t know about you, Don, but I’m fuckin’ starved.”
“I could eat.” Don spoke with the same cool demeanor with which he had just proposed murder.
“Alright,” I said as I tried to think of a reason to move this conversation off my property. “I have to run into town anyway to get groceries, so I guess we can get food there.”
“Well that’s fine with me!” Sonny clenched his straw between his teeth and turned towards his car. Suddenly, he spun back around. “You got a car?” he asked. “The wagon’s a bit packed to fit a third.”
Mary-Anne was the type of girl who holed-up in her house all day and all night. I used to take her for a hermit, but then I would see her parents or her brother at the grocer’s and they would always talk about how popular Mary-Anne was and how much time she spent with her friends and how I should come over for coffee and pastries. I won’t lie, I was quite tempted by that, but something always felt off. Maybe it was that her brother was just as pushy as her parents. My parents were pushy about me too, but never either of my siblings. Or maybe it was the fact that whenever I saw any of them, they looked like they hadn’t slept in days or weeks or maybe just never at all. Either way, something about Mary-Anne and her zombie family tended to unsettle me.
When I said all of this to Sonny, he simply nodded. Though I had just met him, I already thought his silence was unusual. Sonny sat back in the booth and his straw began to twirl lightly, as if he was rolling my words around his mouth. A mostly-eaten burger sat in front of him.
“Sounds Witch-y to me,” he finally concluded. “Thoughts, Don?”
“Sounds like a witch, Sonny.” Don returned his gaze to the strawberry milkshake in front of him. I took the old man’s truck and Sonny and Don into town and to Ruth’s, which was by far the best and only restaurant in Delham. Aside from here, O’Rourke’s Grocery, and the hardware store, there wasn’t much to see, do, or talk about. I guess that’s why I decided to let this whole “witch” thing play out.
“So,” Sonny said, crossing his arms. “We should figure out what type a’ witch we’re dealing with.” He stuck out his tongue and bit it, thinking for a moment. “It seems to me perhaps a swamp witch? Yeah, that’d make sense. You think she’s a swamp witch, Don?”
“Sounds like a swamp witch, Sonny.” Don was almost done with his milkshake, which I took as an indication of our impending departure. Sonny did as well.
“Shall we take off to the hardware store? We need to replenish our supplies before we go huntin’.”
“Wait,” Don said. “I want another shake.”
25 minutes later, we arrived at the front doors of True Value, the hardware store just across the street from Ruth’s. Sonny grabbed a shopping cart and started listing off what we needed to pick up.
“Duct tape, zip ties, gas can, fire starter.... Don, do we need a new mallet?”
“Yeah, Sonny. We broke the last one.”
“I figured as much. We should also grab a vice grip or two, just in case,” Sonny said pensively. I started having doubts. Zip ties? Duct tape? A vice grip? These seemed like supplies for a serial killer, not a pair of young exorcists.
Jordan, what the fuck are you doing? I thought to myself. You don’t even know these people, and you’re going to help them kill some girl? You’re losing your mind. We walked up and down the aisles throwing the items Sonny prescribed into our cart. I had so many questions, and it suddenly occurred to me that I had forgotten to ask a very important one.
“Sonny,” I said. “Why do you think you can do this? I don’t mean to offend, but where’s the evidence?”
“Well shit, Sherlock, you’re the one who gave us all the evidence!” Sonny threw his head back and laughed. His piece of straw started flicking up and down as he ground his teeth. “But, uh, you’ve got a point there,” Sonny began, “That might be somethin we could show ya, rather than say. I think that’d have more of an effect at the very least.”
“Show me? What, how?”
“First off, let’s purchase our goods,” Sonny said motioning to our full cart. “And then we can go back to yer house, yeah?” I hadn’t even noticed how much stuff we were getting. At Ruth’s, Sonny insisted on paying for our meal and left a wad of bills on our table. But there must’ve been a couple hundred dollars worth of supplies in our cart. There was much more rope than I would’ve thought necessary, as well as a pry bar, a bucket of road salt, and a pneumatic nail-gun.
“Yeah, alright,” I said as we approached the checkout. There was a stout man behind the counter with a name tag that simply read “Greg”.
“Hiya folks! Find everything alright?” Greg enthusiastically asked as Sonny butted in front of me and started unloading the cart onto the counter.
“Well hey there, Greg!” Sonny said as if he had known Greg his entire life. “We sure did find everything, no problem at all. Howya doin’ Greg? Busy day at the store?”
“Ha! You must not be from round here, it don’t get much busy anytime. ‘Cept maybe during the holidays.” Sonny’s face twitched, almost unnoticeably if it weren’t for the straw exaggerating the motions of his mouth. He’d miscalculated and been identified as an outsider.
“You’re right bout that!” Sonny said happily. “Me an’ Don, here, are friends of Jordan’s. We’re just comin by for the weekend.” Sonny grinned real big, showing his teeth and the gap where that tooth just next to the big tooth is, or for Sonny, was.
“Yeah? You stayin all the way out there?” Greg inquired.
“Yeah, Greg,” I piped up. “They’re friends of mine from school. We’re gonna work on the house a bit before they head out West.”
“Odd tool choice,” Greg said as he scanned the gas can and then the pry bar. He stopped when he got to the bucket of road salt. “Y’all expecting ice sometime soon?”
I chuckled, trying to hide my racing heart. “No, but you know it’s never too early to be thinking of these things. ‘Always be prepared’, that’s my motto!” I practically shouted the last part.
“Yup!” Sonny intervened. “Jordan’s always sayin’ how much he needs to be prepared. I swear, he’s gotta have three condoms in his wallet. Though to be honest with you, Greg,” Sonny leaned in. “I doubt they ever get used! I suppose it’s better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it, huh Greg?” Sonny belted out a deep laugh and I punched him lightly in the shoulder because that felt like the right thing to do. Even Don forced a quiet chuckle and even though it sounded robotic, I think it helped. Greg chuckled and shook his head while giving us the usual “oh you youngsters”-look.
“Well you boys just be careful,” Greg said as he finished bagging, “and how are we paying for this today?” Sonny dug into his pockets and pulled out a wad of bills.
“Keep the change,” Sonny said as he put down what must’ve been $500. Our total was $304.57“.Alright, thanks for coming in,” Greg said as he thumbed through the cash. Sonny, Don, and I walked back out the doors and to my truck and drove off towards home.
Sonny and I chatted for awhile as I drove us back to the Pierce House. Sonny asked all sorts of questions about me, like “where ya from?”, “watcha doin’ out here?”, “you go to school?”, and other inquisitions into the mundane details of my life. I gave him the standard answer I had been conditioned to give, which was something along the lines of: “Chicago, born and raised. Dad was an optometrist and Mom played cello in the pit orchestra of a small theater. I had some great-uncle who invented a special type of spork, he died and left me some cash. I came out here ‘cause property was cheap and now my parents say I’m having an ‘existential crisis’ and ‘figuring myself out’.” As I was speaking, Sonny asked me all sorts of details that I can’t be bothered to recreate. Don sat in the backseat and didn’t make a noise except for a single sneeze.
“Well now that we’ve finally arrived,” Sonny said as he stepped out of my truck. “I can show you everythin’ ya need to know. Can you find us a rat? Do you have any rats? Wouldn’t a rat work, Don?”
“Any type of rodent will do,” Don replied as he and Sonny looked at me expectantly. “There’s a raccoon under my porch that I can’t afford to get rid of,” I offered.
“Deus ex machina!” Sonny threw up his arms in excitement. He and Don wasted no time in running back to their wagon. They each threw open one the back doors and started putting on coveralls and pulling out various pieces of equipment.
“Hey Jordan,” Sonny shouted, “You got any work-clothes? This might get just a hair messy.”
I hurried into my house and into my room. I threw open my closet doors and put on the jumpsuit I wore when I did repairs around the house, as well as a pair of boots that I bought because it was the type I think I saw a construction worker wearing.
When I came back out the front door, I found Sonny and Don holding the raccoon by the scruff of it’s neck.
“What? You caught him already?” I asked.
“Then why are we all dressed like this?” Sonny and Don were wearing dark, stained coveralls with thick, heavy boots and gloves. There seemed to be some type of plating woven into sections, almost like they were wearing armor. While my outfit was a mish-mosh of navy and tans, theirs were uniform black.
“Yup!” Sonny said cheerfully. “It was incredibly convenient.”
“Because that wasn’t the messy part,” Sonny replied. “We’re going to find out where Mary-Anne lives, an’ Don has a little trick he learnt that can tell us exactly that.”
“What? A cell phone? The internet? You’re not gonna pull out a fucking phonebook on me, are you?” I was beginning to feel incredibly frustrated with Sonny’s antics. Don’t get me wrong, I am incredibly grateful that he miraculously removed the racoon from beneath my porch, but my patience can only wear so thin.
I think Sonny felt the same way when I saw the corner of his mouth and the end of his straw both twitch. He took a deep breath and then spoke.
“Don, please show the man.”
I hadn’t noticed that while Sonny and I were on the verge of arguing, Don had procured two small pieces of wood and had bolted them together at the midsections forming an “X”. I watched in horror as he used the nail-gun to affix one of the raccoon's paws to the wood. Right through the palm. The raccoon screamed.
“Yeah, this part gets real fucked up.” Sonny laughed cheerily. “You may wanna look elsewhere!”
“What the fuck?” I shouted.
My head started to spin and I was overcome with nausea. I vomited and dropped to the ground as the animal kept howling and howling. Three more shots through the remaining paws, the raccoon was crudely crucified. Don dropped the nail-gun and took a knife out from his boot. I lost consciousness when Don started ripping out intestines and rolling the bloody guts around his fingers.
I came to in the backseat of my truck. Don was in front, driving, and Sonny sat in the passenger seat with his feet on the dash. I was right behind Don and there was a black duffel bag in the seat behind Sonny. My head felt like TV static. It took me a minute before I sat up.
“Well good morning, sleepyhead!” Sonny chirped. “Don’t worry bout your ‘little nap’, some people just don’t have the stomach for what this line of work entails.”
“What the fuck, Sonny? What fucking purpose did that serve?”
“Here!” Sonny rebutted as he triumphantly handed me a bloodstained scrap of paper. I struggled for a moment to make out the letters. It read: “2 LEE DRIVE” in black marker.
“It’s her fucking address, man! We could’ve gotten that shit anywhere! We could’ve just gone on facebook!”
“IT WOULD BE LIES!” Sonny screamed at me. He turned around in his seat and leaned so close that the end of his straw was threatening to poke my eye. “She would put up a fake address! Yes, anything we find could be so easily doctored! She’s a witch, Jordan. Don confirmed it-it was written in the sacrifice! SHE’S A FUCKIN WITCH FUCK!” Sonny’s face had gone red with absolute rage and a madness of the greatest magnitude. He turned back around in his seat, my seat, and rubbed his temples.
“We’re here,” Don said, totally unphased by Sonny’s outburst. He reached into the center console and pulled out two full-face masks. They were made out of some type of metal or plastic and Sonny and Don had to strap them to their faces. Don’s was blue. Sonny’s was red.
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said as I tried to grab Sonny’s shoulder. “You have one of those for me, right?”
“You don’t need it,” Sonny coldly responded, brushing my hand away. He and Don both got out of the truck and moved to their respective backdoors. I watched Sonny throw open the door opposite to me and drag out the duffel bag before Don grabbed my shoulders and hauled me to the ground.
I struggled to get up for a moment. I couldn’t catch my breath and all I could think was Well Jordan, I guess you’re really in it now. You’re going to die tonight, you fucking idiot. You should’ve gone home to Chicago you piece of shit, dickhead, absolute mor-
Sonny picked me up by the collar and forced a gun into my hands. It was a some tactical-looking rifle that I had never seen before. Sonny pushed me forward towards the house where I could see Don standing by the door with a rifle like mine in one hand, and the pry-bar we had gotten that very same day in the other. Sonny marched me right up to the front door and then moved in front of me. I could see the lights on in the bay window, I think it looked into the kitchen. Sonny put the butt of his shotgun up to his shoulder, assumed what I can only call a “battle-stance”, and then nodded at Don.
Don slammed the pry-bar into the door right by the handle and forced it forward. As he stepped out of the way, Sonny slammed his shoulder forward and broke through into the house. BOOM
Sonny fired his gun. Before he could finish cocking it again, Don was pushing me forward with him into the house. We turned left in the doorway. Don leveled his rifle over my shoulder while mine hung limply in my hands.
KRAK-KRAK-KRAK-KRAK BOOM
KRAK-KRAK
KRAK
The smoke cleared and I started to get a picture of my surroundings. In front of me lay what was left of Mary-Anne and her parents and her brother. Behind them, I saw the remains of their dinner, the food still steaming. Blood was seeping into the carpet.
“Fuck yeah!” Sonny whooped. “We did it! Mission accomplished! Nicely done sirs and madams!” Sonny took off his mask and dipped into a deep, exaggerated bow. Sonny snapped up and began dancing around the room.
“WHAT THE SHIT?!” I didn’t notice myself screaming, yet I all the sudden felt my vocal chords vibrate as the words were forced through my mouth. “What the fucking shitting shit is this, Sonny? This is her fucking house. This is her FUCKING FAMILY DEAD ON THE FLOOR!”
“Of course it is, Jordan. We did our job, and we did it well. Not all of these witch hunts end in magical fireworks. Sometimes,” Sonny pulled his straw out from a pocket on his jumpsuit and put it between his teeth before he finished his sentence. “you just get lucky.”
“Fuck you.”
“But in all honesty, Jordan, Don and I owe you an immense debt of gratitude. We never could’ve done what we did here tonight without you and your christly nature. From the depths of this sweet heart, thank you.”
“Fuck you.”
“Oh well,” Sonny said without a care at all. My grip had tightened around the gun, and I couldn’t help but level it at Sonny’s head. I had only ever gone hunting once, but I remembered how to shoot.
*click*
*click*
*click-click-click-click-click*
I frantically mashed the trigger but nothing happened. Sonny turned to me and flashed a grin, tooth-gap and all. I heard deep laughter from behind me, and I turned to see Don, still wearing his mask, smiling through the eyeholes.
“You really think we would’ve given you bullets?” Sonny asked sweetly right before he hit me in the temple with the butt of his gun
I came to for just a moment. I was somewhere in a field, maybe in the tall, grassy plains where there used to be buffalo before they were all killed. I saw Don and Sonny throw a lump onto a larger lump. Then my eyes refocused.
–
They had piled up the bodies on top of a palette of dried wood. Sonny started pouring gasoline out of the can and over the Spindley family. Don walked around them in a circle, leaving a trail of salt in his wake. I craned my neck and tried to pick myself up, but Don turned suddenly and he and I locked eyes. He calmly finished his salt-circle before walking over to me and kicking my skull back into the earth.
–
And then I woke up for the last time. There is something indescribably awful about the smell of burnt flesh, like it triggers a biological alarm in the brain. A violent “NO” that tells you to run and consider a life that doesn’t involve murder. I woke with a start as the stench penetrated my nose. As my breath returned, so did memories and I jumped out of the dirt with raised fists.
But as I looked around I didn’t see a single living soul. No, instead there were the ash- heap remains of Mary-Anne and her mother and her father and her brother. There were still embers burning, but the fire had run its course. I stood staring at the Spindley family for a few minutes before I realized where I was.
Alright I thought Where are you fuckers?
Right behind my house, in the tall grass. I ran out front, hoping to see the maroon station wagon still parked by my truck. But there was only my truck. As I got closer, I could see that the truck bed was caked with blood.
“Well that explains how everyone got here,” I said to the open air. Through the windows, I saw the guns in my backseat with what I could only assume were the remains of the poor racoon that used to live under my porch.
I started laughing. Just laughing and laughing like Sonny had laughed. I threw my head back and howled up at the sky. I laughed so hard that I feel on my butt right there in the dirt. I laughed until the joke wasn’t funny anymore and then I cried.