Dead Souls

by Michael Laimo

  He could recall lying on his back, helpless as though drugged. There had been the sound of a bell tolling, and then a golden light that floated over him, and from out of that light emerged the indistinct figure of a person, head tilted, arms outstretched. The figure was flanked by a small group of faceless people he would years later describe as 'witnesses'. As the central figure emerged from the light and drew closer to him, the witnesses crowded around Johnny's body and latched on to his arms and legs. He could easily recall the pain of trying to struggle away from these dark people, his muscles stretching, the skin on his biceps and thighs burning beneath their determined grasps.

  And that's where his memories ended; the proverbial blackout had taken effect, as if he had awakened from a nightmare moments before dying, only to find himself lying atop the damp sheets in a cold sweat. But the images had stayed with him, in his memories, and then again in his dreams, where at least once a month the dark, faceless man and his witnesses would visit him while he slept.

  Once, after an extremely colorful recurrence of the event in his dreams, he'd drummed up the courage to discuss it all with Mary, but she acted as expected: with utter indifference, grinning incredulously and shooing it off as what she described at the time as some 'repressed engram in his subconscious'. This is the exactly why we don't want you reading those trashy science-fiction novels…next thing you'll be telling us is that you were abducted by aliens!

  But now…the name of one Benjamin Conroy was in his head, super-glued to his brain and functioning like a hypnotist's suggestion drawing out suppressed memories, or a password in a computer revealing a wealth of hidden information. Upon bringing back the memories of the golden pain into his head, new remembrances began flooding his mind—memories of the golden pain and the events that occurred after the witnesses grabbed his arms, after the blackout. It seemed to be a faultless combination: the recollection of the golden pain, plus the presence of the name Benjamin Conroy, now together in his mind for the very first time, working hand-in-hand and resulting in the reclamation of lost memories. He could see it all now, playing out on the walls of his mind as though a motion-picture projector had been turned on. And it made him realize that the dream of the golden pain was not a dream after all. It was an eye-opening affair, a life-moving revelation that was real. It'd really happened!

  He could see the ensuing events playing out in vivid color. He viewed them in the same first-person point-of-view: the central figure looming over him, features hidden in a veil of suffocating smoke. There was a moment's hesitation as a voice of protest filtered in from somewhere close by. Johnny saw the central figure kicking away one of the faceless witnesses, then kneel down before his prone body. There was a glow of golden light, sharp and concentrated, followed by a quick blow of hot searing agony upon his chest.

  Johnny could feel the pain upon his chest now.

  My God…it is real. It really happened.

  There were instances when Johnny himself had thought the incident too fanciful to be true, and he'd made a keen attempt to write it all off as a dream. But now, with the rest of the memories now present in his mind, he couldn't do that. As surreal and displeasing as it was, it carried an undeniable realism that couldn't be ignored—it could only be described as a memory.

  Because, despite it seeming like some weird faraway dream, Johnny Petrie had unequivocal proof that the event had actually occurred—that at some point, years ago in his past, when he was just a baby, it really happened.

  It was no dream.

  He opened the collar of his shirt and placed a hand against his chest,

  …it's a birthmark Johnny. It was there when you emerged from my womb…I should know, I'm your mother…

  running his index finger against the loose flaps of skin making up the scar on his sternum.

  Mother, if it's a birthmark, then why is it shaped like this? It's so…perfect.

  The central figure leaned down over him and delivered a blow of hot searing agony upon his chest…

  His mother would grin away his queries, looking slightly concerned but maintaining her composure nonetheless, perhaps having known quite well that at some point growing up her son would ask about the strange scar on his chest…the wrinkled, purple blemish that was in the perfect shape of an ankh.

  Johnny sat steadfastly at the table, body stiffening with tension, his mind now leaving the newfound memories behind for a moment so he could place one and one together and unearth a sudden revelation. He shifted in his chair, stood and paced back and forth, checking the facts over and over again. He took a few long deep breaths, then sat back down. It's falling into place. Yes, I can see it now, it's as clear as black and white. If there had been any doubt about confronting his parents with the letter, or traveling up to see Andrew Judson in Wellfield, Maine, then it was now as dead as Benjamin Conroy.

  The mark on his chest was not a birthmark, as his parents had always insisted. It was a scar after all: a piece of a bigger puzzle, one suddenly cast down upon him on this afternoon of September 6th, 2005.

  The ankh on his chest.

  The memory of the golden pain and the central figure looming over him, delivering unendurable agony.

  And now, the name of Benjamin Conroy in his mind, triggering additional memories.

  It's all a part of my past, something my mother probably knows something about, and has kept it a secret from me my entire life. I will find out. I will…

  In the hallway outside the door, footsteps approached.

  He heard a key enter the lock.

  Mother was home.

  Chapter 9

  August 24th, 1988

  6:23 AM

  They moved down the hall in a procession: Benjamin in the lead, holding a white candle as a guiding light. Faith followed close behind, clinging to a censer from a thin chain and rocking it back and forth as pungent smoke puffed out. Elizabeth and Daniel trailed their mother's elongated shadow, heads bowed slightly, hands folded in prayer.

  At the tolling of the next bell, Benjamin entered the last bedroom on the left, everyone else falling in behind his lead. The wood floor settled beneath their gentle footsteps, the aroma of sandalwood from the censer immediately filling the air. The room was stark, adorned with only the necessary ingredients: the painted circle; the pentagrams, unlit candles at their cruxes; the triangle and associated hexagrams. The blinds were drawn, coating the room in welcoming darkness.

  Beneath the lone window stood a wooden crib. Inside, Bryan Conroy rested peacefully upon a plain white mattress, his tiny chest slowly rising up and down, naked as the day he was born.

  Benjamin stepped to the crib and peered down into it. He uttered the preliminary prayer to Osiris, adding soon thereafter, "It is time, Bryan Conroy, for you to join us in our quest for ancestral afterlife. As Jesus once rose from the dead to deliver his miracle to the people of Jerusalem, and then ascended into heaven to be seated at the right hand of God, we shall live together infinitely, beyond the confines of our graves. Upon the deaths of our physical existences, our souls shall be gathered up by the hand of Osiris and be granted eternal afterlife, where we will thrive infinitely, bound by love and commitment."

  The bells sounded. Benjamin waited until the resonance faded, then leaned into the crib and picked up the baby. Holding his son close, he felt a wave of elation consume his body. The time—Bryan's time—had finally arrived.

  Benjamin turned and faced his family. He held the naked baby out like an offering and said, "Here, on his first birthday, the last of the Conroys will pledge his allegiance to Osiris, and request the gift of ancestral afterlife."

  "Praise the Lord Osiris," the family repeated in unison.

  Benjamin beseeched his wife, singing in monotone, "Do you, Faith Conroy, elect to share your gift of the afterlife with Bryan Conroy?"

  Faith nodded, and revealed her scar. "Yes," she replied in the same note.

  "Do you, Elizabeth Conroy, elect to share your gift of the afterlife with Bryan Conro
y?"

  She too showed her scar. "Yes."

  "Do you, Daniel Conroy, elect to share your gift of the afterlife with Bryan Conroy?"

  Daniel hesitated, earning him a concerned gaze from his father. He shifted uncomfortably, eyes peering downward, then opened his robe and replied, "Yes," his tone slightly off.

  The bells rang. Benjamin waited in silence, eyes shuttered in supplication, lips trembling as the baby began to stir. The toll's reverberation faded. Thirteen seconds passed, and instead of another bell, silence dominated like a massive mute ensconcing the entire house.

  Benjamin's smile was immediate. The first half of the ritual had played out perfectly: exactly one hour and thirty-three minutes had elapsed since he rose from bed to initiate Bryan's allegiance to Osiris. And now, here he was: standing with his entire family at the correct point in the ritual he'd spent months meticulously plotting.

  "Osiris is with us now," he finally said. "Jesus has been with us since we opened our eyes to the light of the earth. Both the Lord Osiris and the Lord Jesus Christ will now work in concert to ensure us the miracle of everlasting togetherness, now and beyond the scope of our present lives."

  When Benjamin looked down at his infant son, he saw that Bryan's eyes were wide and alert. He was looking up at his father. Smiling.

  And the Conroy family repeated in unison: "Amen."

  Chapter 10

  September 6th, 2005

  5:48 PM

  Mary Petrie stepped into the apartment, not even noticing her son sitting at the kitchen table with his arms folded, staring straight up at her. Her keys jingled from a loop ornamented with rosary beads and a silver crucifix, one still inserted into the bolt lock. She yanked it out and draped the entire ensemble over the wooden cross mounted on the wall beside the door.

  She turned, peered up, and like a laser beam of light, caught her son's penetrating gaze. Johnny could plainly see that whatever false sense of security she'd gathered from either the doctor's office or the confessional that afternoon, was now gone—her face had become marred with a fresh state of disquiet.

  Undoubtedly foreseeing a grave situation with her son, Mary pointed her face down and promptly paced past him, into the living room.

  Johnny stayed glued to his seat, shaking his head with disappointment. Still, he became conscious of a need to rejuvenate the previously dormant assertive skills in his brain, and felt suddenly grateful that she didn't immediately allow him the opportunity to pounce. His mother, despite all her insecurities and her ensuing will to dominate every aspect of his life, had never shown any outright concerns for her son when something visibly bothered him; her priorities lay solely within herself, and if his issues didn't directly affect her, she would simply carry on with her compulsive routine. And that was what she was doing now: ignoring her son at a time when he needed her most.

  Mary placed her faux-leather pocketbook on the sofa. Through the tops of her eyes she peered at her festering son, conceivably investigating the strange emotional climate in his features. When Johnny returned her uncertain gaze, she yanked her eyes away and took off her polyester blazer, clearly uncomfortable with what she saw.

  He watched her steadily, eyebrows pinched, making his preoccupation obvious. She kept her glance aside, almost certainly thinking, he's been waiting for me to come home, and under normal circumstances this would have made her happy because it would have meant an eagerness on his part to get on with the daily chores. But, her mind was also surely telling her, he's got some kind of bone to pick with me today, and my nerves just aren't equipped to handle that kind of pressure.

  So, head down, she darted off into the bathroom without a word being exchanged between them. Johnny heard the toilet flush, and then the water running, and it was at this moment he realized that Andrew Judson's letter was still in his hands. He folded it in thirds, wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans, then folded it in half. He slid it into his back pocket, thinking that over his dead body would he let his mother get her prying claws on it.

  He closed his eyes, and rehearsed his delivery: I'm leaving you, mother. Dad too. And there's nothing you can do about it. I know you're going to be disappointed, but I'm eighteen now, and of legal age to go out on my own. I really should be going to college this September like all the other graduates, but instead you have me living here like a slave, doing chores, praising God and all that jazz. You can't really expect me to study the bible and do the dishes for the rest of my life…

  For the first time, the painful truths of his existence were delivering a trace of bittersweet happiness: finally, Johnny Petrie could see a pinpoint of light at the end of the gloomy tunnel he'd been traveling through all his life. And it was within reaching distance too, the payment for the toll sitting right in his back pocket.

  "What…is…this?" Her voice came out strongly and suddenly, with no question or concern for his apparent worries.

  He flinched guiltily, and the first thought to cross his mind was indeed filled with guilt: She knows about Andrew Judson and the letter, and somehow she'd reached her hand into my back pocket and pulled it out and read it without me knowing it, and now she wants to know every last detail! But when he looked up at her, he saw that this wasn't the case at all, of course, and he was angry with himself for thinking so irrationally.

  Mary was standing in the doorway leading into his bedroom. As she did nearly every day, she'd changed into her sleeveless blue floral housedress, topped off with a matching head-band that pulled her mostly gray hair back into a short, flat wave. In her hand was the book he'd taken out of the library, H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds.

  Upon arriving home, he'd taken it out of his knapsack, and tossed it on the bed. He'd left it there because his attention had been diverted by Judson's letter. Damn.

  He smiled at her thinly, partly out of blame, partly out of indifference.

  "What have I told you about reading this…this trash?" She was holding the book out like a preacher would a bible. "If you read this, your mind will turn to rot, and your soul will carry the taint of The Devil!"

  It had been no revelation that if Mary found the book, her response would be overloaded with narrow-mindedness and antagonism. Of course, it wasn't Johnny's intention to leave it out on his bed, either. Kind of like leaving your phone number at the scene of the crime, he thought. History always had a way of repeating itself in the Petrie home. Today was no exception.

  "We need to talk, mom."

  He thought it was possible, noticing the sudden redness of her skin, that the blood rushing to her head had blocked her ears from hearing what he'd just said. "This is going where it belongs," she pronounced, then marched defiantly into the kitchen and pitched the book into the garbage pail. "Utter trash, read by those whose tickets to Hell are already paid up."

  Now Johnny wondered if all that redness in her face had been caused by a broken blood vessel in her brain—clearly she knew a fine would be assessed if the book wasn't returned. And Johnny didn't have a dime to his name.

  Or, did he?

  There are many legalities to discuss regarding this situation, but I assure you that the estate of Benjamin Conroy has been willed to you…

  She took a step toward the kitchen table, placing a wrinkled hand upon the chipped wood, as if trying to maintain her balance. To Johnny, she appeared strangely tentative, despite her anger. He supposed her aggressive behavior with the book acted as some sort of cloak to hide her true concerns: the unusual, and rather extraordinary manner of her son. Indeed, the ordinarily meek Johnny Petrie had put up an unspoken wall of rebelliousness between them, and for Mary, this was a steep mountain she'd never had to climb before.

  Johnny stared her down, and was about to speak when Mary shifted her body and dropped into the kitchen chair opposite him. She looked at her hands, and said briskly, "I saw Doctor Webster today and he told me that I'm making some improvements. Helen Sampson, you know her from church, right? She told me that her daughter also suffers from generalized anx
iety disorder and mild depression, and that she just started taking this new drug on the market, so Doctor Webster prescribed for me—"

  "Mom…"

  She stopped talking and stared at him. The string of silence between them was bitter and tense.

  "We need to talk."

  She cocked her head and squinted. "Johnny…are you listening to me? Your mother hasn't been feeling well, and now I might be going to a—"

  "I'm leaving here," he interrupted, the words coming out with no doubt or uncertainty in them.

  She kept her gaze on him, and holding on to the pretense, said, "To church, I presume? Well, as long as you're back for dinner. I'm anxious to tell you all about Helen's daughter. She's a member of the choir at St. Anthony's."

  And then an incredible thing happened. Johnny felt his blood rush, as though all his pent-up emotions had finally been released after eighteen years of mental incarceration. His eyes began to tear, and his jaw clenched. And his scar: it was tingling. All of these feelings coalesced to form a brewing wrath inside him that he'd never sensed before. And damn, it felt good.

  And as good as it felt for Johnny to experience this thriving state of defiance, he could see an equivalent amount of fear rising into his mother's features: her eyes, as wide as cue balls, her lips quivering as though chilled. She plucked a string of rosaries from her housedress pocket and began to nervously toy with it, apparently convinced that something hideous and evil had suddenly possessed her son.