There was this old haunted house on the far edge of the ravine.

How did they know it was haunted?

Because they said so. Everyone knew it.

It had been there for close on to one hundred years and everybody said that while it wasn’t haunted during the day, at nighttime strange things happened there.

It seemed a perfectly logical place for the boys to run, Doug leading them and Tom bringing up the rear, carrying their wild treasure, the chess pieces.

It was a grand place to hide because no one – except for a pack of wild boys – would dare come to a haunted house, even if it was full daytime.

The storm still raged and if anyone had looked close at the haunted house, chanced walking through the creaky old doors, down the musty old hallways, up even creakier old stairs, they would have found an attic full of old chairs, smelling of ancient bamboo furniture polish and full of boys with fresh faces who had climbed up in the downfall sounds of the storm, accompanied by intermittent cracks of lightning and thunderclaps of applause, the storm taking delight in its ability to make them climb faster and laugh louder as they leapt and settled, one by one, Indian style, in a circle on the floor.

Douglas pulled a candle stub, lit it, and stuffed it in an old glass candlestick holder. At last, from a burlap gunnysack, he pulled forth and set down, one by one, all the captured chess pieces, naming them for Charlie and Will and Tom and Bo and all the rest. He tossed them forth to settle, like dogs called to war.

‘Here’s you, Charlie.’ Lightning cracked.

‘Yeah!’

‘Here’s you, Willie.’ Thunder boomed.

‘Yeah!’

‘And you, Tom.’

‘That’s too small and plain,’ Tom protested. ‘Can’t I be king?’

‘Shut up or you’re the queen.’

‘I’m shut,’ said Tom.

Douglas finished the list and the boys clustered round, their faces shining with sweat, eager for the next lightning bolt to let loose its electric shower. Distant thunder cleared its throat.

‘Listen!’ cried Doug. ‘We’ve almost got it made. The town’s almost ours. We got all the chess pieces, so the old men can’t shove us around. Can anyone do better?’

Nobody could and admitted it, happily.

‘Just one thing,’ said Tom. ‘How’d you work that lightning, Doug?’

‘Shut up and listen,’ said Douglas, aggrieved that central intelligence had almost been wormed away from him.

‘The thing is, one way or another, I got the lightning to knock the bellybuttons off the old sailors and Civil War vets on the lawn. They’re all home now, dying like flies. Flies.’

‘Only one thing wrong,’ said Charlie. ‘The chess pieces are ours right now, sure. But – I’d give anything for a good hot dog.’

‘Don’t say that!’

At which moment lightning struck a tree right outside the attic window. The boys dropped flat.