Dead Souls

by Michael Laimo

  Dear God, my parents, he thought, tears filling his eyes.

  Regrettably, there'd never been any good opportunity until now. Mary Petrie had kept a very short and tight leash on her boy throughout his growing-up years. With the city being a dangerous place and all, Johnny was forced to keep to the paths and schedules granted to him, attending (and eventually graduating) from St Anthony's Catholic school (obedience school, if you asked him), instead of PS 35 which was more than ten blocks away—it might as well have been on the other side of the world. All summer he'd been made to continue his Catholic Studies at St Anthony's, and he respectfully complied despite his pleas to obtain a more formal education in college. On the weekends he was allowed recreational time in Central Park, but only if Mary or Ed had come along, or if he'd had an adult chaperone joining him, preferably a God-fearing parent of a well-known school friend. Mary Petrie had done everything for Johnny's own good, at least in her own mind, treating him with all the love and protection a child could expect from a parent. That, and so much more.

  So much more…

  He thought of his mother, of how she would remind him every time he protested her protection: Remember, Johnny, everything I do, I do for you. Parents know much better than their children. God created us to steer you from evil, to teach you from right and wrong. To protect you from the evils of the world…it is my sole purpose to do so, praise God. Despite his mother's idiosyncrasies, and religious zealousness, he loved her…he would always love her, realizing now, after spending his entire childhood and teen years controlled by her repressive discipline, that she did everything out of fear—a fear she was incapable of understanding.

  But then he wondered: Is she really incapable of understanding her fears? There is so much more to the story she's not telling me, so much hurt, so much pain. She has spent her entire life trying to keep me from learning about it. No, she does understand her fears, and has been keeping them locked away in the dark her entire life. Now, dear God, they're out in the open, and she is too terrified to face them, to reveal them to me.

  Ironically, Johnny had spent his entire life obeying his mother's every demand because he feared her. So, in a convoluted, roundabout way, he was able to empathize with her—he could see the odd direction from which she had come all these years. But, there was one chief difference between them: Johnny had finally found the strength to confront his fears, and was able to flee them, something Mary Petrie had never been able to achieve, in spite of her support from Jesus, and the doctors, and the church groups.

  I've fled my fears…that, and so much more…

  So much more…

  The bus shifted lanes, jarring him from his thoughts. It passed a sign that said, 'Dover, Exit 43'. Johnny kept his gaze out the window, nature's scenery blurring as he recounted the events that had changed his life—his parents' lives—less than twenty-four hours earlier...

  September 6th, 2005

  3:38 PM

  He returned home from the library (the only place he didn't feel guilty about sneaking off to without his mother's knowledge) and retrieved the mail from the clouded glass box in the lobby. He took the stairs three flights up instead of riding the elevator because the old man from 4F that smelled like cauliflower had just gotten in, and Johnny didn't really want to bear such an undying torture. Once on the third floor, he entered the two-bedroom apartment and tossed the mail on the kitchen table, never once thinking to look at it because nothing ever came for him, except his monthly delivery of Catholic Digest—one of the few periodicals both Ed and Mary approved of. He went into his room, dropped his knapsack on the bed, and changed into a pair of shorts and a tee-shirt, thinking of how he might take pleasure in the next ninety minutes before his mother returned home at five o'clock. Maybe read the copy of Wells' War of the Worlds he had checked out of the library, or watch the talk show that came in on the UHF channel his parents didn't know about. It was a daily ritual, this time alone where he could take part in some of the simple pleasures of life (God forsaken sins, if you asked Mary) before he was made to contribute to the whims and ways of his mother. He'd have to perform his chores—every eighteen year-old was expected to do something—either taking out the trash or helping with dinner; but Mary pushed the envelope with Johnny, making certain that the bathroom was free and clear of the germs that'd undoubtedly festered while the house was empty; or, the shelves in the fridge, God forbid if some errant crumbs made their way out of the bread bag. And then, after dinner, Johnny would be forced to perform his bible studies, sitting at the kitchen table in plain sight so that his mind wouldn't stray. 'There's more than enough to keep you busy until bedtime', Mary would say, regardless of whether he had assignments or not. And then she'd add, more than once, and don't forget to say your prayers before you go to bed!'

  He went into the bathroom, washed up, then pulled open the medicine cabinet and experienced the same disheartening feeling he felt every day when performing this routine act. The new bottle of the day was something called Lexapro, but Johnny had no idea what that was used to treat, not yet anyway. It was set alongside a few dozen other bottles, the end-results of Mary Petrie setting aside her paralegal duties at three o'clock every day, so that by three-fifteen she could be seated in the waiting room of some non-discriminating doctor's office on the Upper East Side in hopeful search of that magic pill to cure all her woes. Johnny had performed a bit of research on his mother's tribulations, writing down the names of the scripts from the tiny brown bottles—Valium, Darvocet, Xanax, Celexa, amongst many others—then searching them out on the web in the library. What he discovered was that mom had a considerable number of personal issues, ones she never elected to talk about, at least with Johnny. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, panic attacks (he'd never seen her in a state of panic, so he wasn't quite sure what that was all about), Attention Deficit Disorder, amongst some other serious sounding mental ails. Johnny had wondered if there was a pill she could take that would alleviate her 'iron-fisted control disorder' and 'over-zealous Jesus-worshipping disorder'.

  He pulled out a bottle of Ibuprofen (one of the many over-the-counter bottles segregated to the lowest shelf in the medicine cabinet hierarchy), popped the top and dry-swallowed two pills, a preventative measure to ward off the headache he'd be bound to develop upon Mary's return home.

  He closed the medicine cabinet and peered into the mirror, frowning at the face staring back at him: meek and mousy, skin peppered with acne; hair, short and curly, already receding at the hairline, the promise of baldness perhaps six or seven years away. He rubbed his eyes, then paced out of the bathroom, the wood floor creaking noisily beneath his footsteps.

  He unzipped his knapsack and removed his textbooks, thinking now of his father, an act not so commonly performed. He peered over at the photo of his parents sitting on the nightstand—a decorative choice on the part of Mary; It matches the portrait of Jesus on the wall, she'd once said—taken by Johnny himself a few months ago, just moments before they’d all attended his mother's co-worker's funeral. An odd time, Johnny had thought, to snap a picture for prosperity. Ed Petrie was a big man, now losing the dark curly hair he'd passed along to Johnny; this single feature, however, was where their similarities ended. In contrast to Johnny's wiry frame, Ed boasted a gut like a medicine ball that exploded over the waistline of his pants, making it damn near impossible, Johnny thought, to ferret out his privates in order to take a leak. His shirttail was always out—as it was in the photo—and he was always in need of a shave. He held a job—a union job, he would brag—as a longshoreman on pier 121 directly below the Brooklyn Bridge. He drank often, and smoked even more.

  Ed was a big pushover when it came to Johnny's mother, giving in to all of her idiosyncrasies and religious outbursts with calm replies such as 'Yes dear', and 'Of course, hon'. He'd rub his eyes at her every word, most likely hoping to find her gone when he opened them. Of course, she'd still be there in all her bible-slinging glory, reciting the Lord's
Prayer, or the Twenty-Third Psalm, and he'd find no choice but to give in and grant her the freedom to run the household under her restrictive guidelines, as long as he was able to go to work twelve hours a day, Monday through Friday, and watch the latest sporting events at Glen's Tavern on the weekends. Ed had spent most of his time avoiding the wrath of Mary. And, avoiding Johnny.

  Johnny's relationship with his father was trifling, their conversations kept to a bare minimum. Sometimes weeks would pass without them uttering a single word to one another; the fact of the matter was that Johnny only saw his father on the weekends, at some point between noon and three after Ed woke up, before he headed out to Glen's Tavern on 2nd Avenue and 64th Street. It'd seemed obvious to Johnny that Ed Petrie had never really wanted a child in the first place—the man was a huge lazy ne'er-do-well that only showed attention to his son when he returned from The Food Emporium with arms full of groceries (strangely, Johnny would be allowed to the grocery store by himself, but Mary would always preface the two-block walk with a firm "Don't get lost" followed by an emphatic sign of the cross; it seemed that having food in the house was quite worth risking their son's life for). Oddly enough, Johnny was always pleased with the smile on his father's face when he handed over the bags of food.

  He tore his eyes from the picture, then dug out the H.G. Wells book from his knapsack. He tossed it on the bed and went back into the kitchen where he took out a quart of milk from the fridge and chugged it straight from the carton, an act, according to Mary, worthy of eternal damnation.

  As he chugged, his eyes darted over to the kitchen table where a light beige envelope peeked out from between the pages of a drug store circular. He could see the return address clearly, printed in a dark, old-style font:

  Andrew Judson, Attorney-at-Law

  14 Main Street

  Wellfield, ME 12789

  There he stood, quart of milk in hand, staring at the envelope and wondering what a lawyer from Maine might want with his parents. Soon, however, he quickly came to assume that the letter had been accidentally mishandled, that it had gotten caught up in the circular and was really meant for someone else in the building. He put the milk back in the refrigerator, then stepped toward the table. Looking at the envelope, he felt strangely tentative, as if approaching a cockroach with a paper towel in his hand. He stopped, reached forward and pinched the corner of the envelope, breaths escaping his lungs in quick, sudden bursts.

  He wondered incredulously: Why am I so damn anxious? Is it because I'm snooping into something I really have no business in? Or is it something else? Perhaps I've inherited some of my mother's ills? Lord Jesus Christ, come strike me dead!

  He slipped the envelope out from between the ad pages, realizing instantly upon peering at the address that these curious apprehensions he felt were surprisingly justified, rooted by something intuitive he couldn't put into words.

  The envelope…it was addressed to him.

  Chapter 3

  August 24th, 1988

  5:17 AM

  Benjamin Conroy opened his eyes. The golden light hovering in the air before him slowly vanished, like a shot from a movie projector turning in on itself. Once gone, the circles of gray mist alongside his ears performed the same magical feat. At the tolling of the next bell, he slowly stood up, keeping his feet at the core of the circle, flat against the floor, eyes pinned to the flames rising from the candles centering the pentagrams. He folded his hands together, feeling the beads of sweat running down his naked body as he silently recited a prayer of thankfulness to Osiris.

  Flexing his muscles, first in his arms, then his legs, he stepped free of the circle, to his right, between the two pentagrams. The aroma of sandalwood incense filled the room, its rising smoke creeping out of the censer like lengthening tentacles. The candle on the bureau tossed its glow against the smoke-coated walls in quaint, nimble flickers. He stood before the bureau, listening to the vibrating hum of silence between the bells, feeling his nerve endings idling in heated anticipation, and the eager beat of the blood in his ears. For a moment longer he peered longingly into the candle's flame, then opened the bureau drawer where he removed a hooded black robe that had been folded in thirds. He immediately donned the robe, all the while keeping his tear-filled sights on the flame, its golden depths drawing him in, deep into its comforting warmth. He tied the braided sash around his waist, the perspiration on his body melting into the warm cotton fabric of the robe. Then, he pulled the hood over his head, drawing the sides close against his ears. Inside the drawer, he pulled out a small black book, its worn leather releasing a bitter odor—of dry autumn leaves burning in the distant fields. He opened the book to a page scrawled with hieroglyphs and sigils, and silently recited the ancient prayer. Once the prayer was complete, he spread the robe at his chest. He dipped his finger into the censer, dousing it with ash, then gently ran it along the wrinkled scar tissue on his sternum.

  "Bryan," he whispered. "May your soul live with us for all of eternity."

  He squeezed the book in his hand, the leather comforting beneath his grasp despite the feeling of something heavy turning in his midsection. He turned and exited the room, then stood in the hallway, peering ahead as he awaited the next toll. The sun had begun to climb up over the horizon, sending elongated shadows down the hall, through the front window—the sheer curtains had been drawn, but were mostly inefficient in blocking the pervading light. A bell rang. He looked both ways, up and down the hall, then went left. Hands groping the wall, he reached the first door, which was left ajar, and at the toll of the next bell, pushed it open.

  Here, in this room, the curtains were black, and fully drawn. The light, it did not break through at all. The lingering mouth of darkness invited him, cool and welcoming, establishing a faultless milieu for the sacred cause.

  He stepped forward into the room, closing the door behind him. Looking forward, he regarded his wife Faith, she kneeling naked in her very own circle, hands upturned against her knees, beaded sweat glistening beneath the toss of candlelight rising from the quartered pentagrams. He gazed about the room and smiled, seeing it perfectly prepared for ritual: the circle, drawn to precise circumference and etched with the many names of God, her personal triangle positioned on the floor alongside it in the southern hemisphere, its apex pointing south. Within the triangle, a line of hexagrams ran like soldiers along the edges, sandalwood smoldering in a censer at its heart, a sole candle burning alongside. At her knees lay a leather parchment containing the seal of Osiris, wrapped in black silk. Beside it, two small chalices, one containing water, the other salt, both offerings to the spirit of the Lord.

  Benjamin approached the circle. Faith's crystal blue eyes stared straight ahead, toward the curtained window. Within the walls, the bells tolled. Immediately thereafter, a dull pecking sound surfaced at the window, Faith's unwavering stare fixed to it as her lips trembled in soundless prayer. Benjamin spread the curtain, and cracked the window.

  On the sill was a single black feather. A gift from Osiris. Thank you, my Lord. He retrieved the feather, then closed the window. He returned to Faith and knelt down facing her. Gripping the feather between two fingers, he lifted the lid of the censer and placed it inside. Both husband and wife inhaled the pungent odor that developed.

  He took her hands in his and allowed his eyelids to close, his heart now beginning to pound at the initial state of perfection the ritual had brought. He called out to Osiris, his voice a monosyllabic string: "Come, thou all-powerful Lord Osiris, who exists amongst the Gods in the astral plane, and governs the Realm of Resurrection and Everlasting Life, I conjure thee to bestow upon Faith Conroy your influence of spiritual rebirth, so that she may purely and honorably engage your powers for the purpose of ancestral afterlife, with utmost earnestness and commitment."

  Upon his utterance of the final word in the spell, a bell rang. Benjamin grabbed the candle positioned at the outermost point of Faith's triangle, and dropped it on top of the parchment containing the sigil of
Osiris. It immediately burst into flames. They held their hands over the flame, both repeating out loud, "To your service I dedicate water to cleanse your body, and salt to feed your blood, oh infinitely powerful Osiris, in hope that you may find this an acceptable offering for your bounteousness."

  They broke their grasp, at which point Faith grabbed the chalice of salt and Benjamin the water. At the same instant, they overturned their offerings onto the flame, extinguishing it. Benjamin opened his eyes and gazed at his wife, she naked and glistening with a passive grace in the flickering gloom. He forced himself to cage in the smile of satisfaction attempting to pry his lips wide.

  So far, things were going perfectly. God bless…

  A bell tolled, signifying the next stage of the ritual. Using his index finger, he rubbed it in the wet mess of ash between them, held it up as though displaying a harmless injury, and nodded. Faith closed her eyes and stuck out her naked chest.

  On her sternum, directly above the breastline, was a mass of scar tissue exactly like her husband's. Benjamin pressed his finger against the bottom of the scar. He slowly traced the shape—a loop up, curving over, and then back down, leaving a trail of wet ash upon the ridges of gnarled flesh.