Dead Souls

by Michael Laimo

  "Mom…I said I'm leaving here."

  Keeping her tear-filled eyes on the rosary, she replied angrily, "You stop this nonsense at once."

  "I'm not kidding. I'm packing my things, and I'm leaving."

  "Johnny, are you feeling well? Perhaps I should call Dr. Cutler. It's been a few months since your last check-up."

  "I am not sick," he answered in that same unambiguous voice. He was making every effort to keep his cool, difficult as it was. He did still love her despite her craziness, and it was a good thing because it was the only thing stopping him from cranking everything up a few decibels. "Listen mom, I have someplace I need to go. It might be for a few days, it might be for a few weeks. It might be forever. I'm not sure yet. All I do know for certain is that I need to leave here."

  The redness flushed back into Mary's face; this time, it was triggered out of anger. She cracked her chin up like a whip, the rosary slapping against the table, gripped defiantly in her fist. "I beg your pardon, young man…I'm your mother! And I make the rules around here! You, my dear boy, are not going anywhere! So you drop this nonsense at once before I summon the wrath of Jesus upon you, you sinner." Tiny droplets of spittle flew from her lips. One alit on Johnny's cheek.

  Johnny stood up, fists immediately coming down hard upon the table. My God, I have never been this angry, this frustrated. The drug store circular fluttered to the floor like a falling leaf. "I am no sinner," he said, voice firm and domineering. "I have obeyed your demands all my life, and now…now...I'm done with it." He paused, swallowed a dry lump in his throat, then added, "If you want to see a sinner, then look no further than dad, with his smoking and his drinking and his carousing. C'mon, do you really think he gives a damn about the bible and Jesus? Huh? All he cares about is staying away from you as much as possible."

  Oh, the horror. Mary's face blanched. Her entire body trembled. Her mouth fell open, as big as a mountain cave. Her hands were massaging the rosary hard, as if it might bring about some magical peacefulness to the situation. Then, the tears came, flowing down her cheeks and carving wet lines into her foundation. "Bite…your…tongue," she stammered through her sobs.

  Johnny stood over his cowering mother, currents of command and power radiating from him. God, this feels good. "I'm giving you the courtesy of telling you what I plan to do. You can't stop me, mom. You can't."

  "Your father—" she cried.

  "He can't stop me either."

  "He can."

  Johnny shook his head and stepped into the living room.

  "You get back here at once!" Her voice was the rage of a tiger encircled by a pack of hyenas. Unruly. Defensive. Tears streamed down her face in mad currents. She was so sad and angry, disappointed and betrayed—it showed in her features, the flood of tears, the trembling scowl, the gasping and the sniveling. Did he expect anything less?

  What did I expect? I'm not sure if this is it. She came in, looked at me once, and knew, just knew that something was wrong. It was almost as if…as if she were expecting this to happen.

  He stayed in the center of the living room. He felt out the letter in his back pocket, and it was still there, of course. He looked at his mother and shook his head slightly, denying her any form of argument. "It doesn't have to be like this, mom."

  She shook her head, perhaps thinking, Satan has come to claim my child, God help his poor soul. She moved to speak, but a blurt of sobs stifled her words. With all her crying, a lull was created. In this brief amount of time, Johnny felt a flutter of anxiety tickle the walls of his stomach—the adrenaline, it had stopped pumping, and was leaving him with a weak, hollow feeling. It was because he was disappointing her—was breaking away from her personal life-plan for him. And in a way, he felt bad for her. But…

  …you, Mr. John Petrie, are to receive the entire estate bequeathed to me as executor. The value of the inheritance is estimated at two million dollars…

  "Mom…I'm sorry…but there's something I really need to do."

  She kept her gaze down, not answering for a minute or more. A fresh flood of tears filled her eyes and spilled out onto her face. "You're hurting me," she finally whispered. "More than you know."

  "I'm sorry, but—"

  "Why are you doing this Johnny?" She asked the question almost as if…as if she knew exactly what he was doing, and why. No, it can't be…

  "I can't say."

  And then the anger returned. She stood up quickly and pointed at him, shouting in a frenzy, "Like hell you will! You'll tell me, and then you'll tell your father, and then we must exorcise this evil that has taken hold of you!"

  Jesus Christ, he thought. She's completely lost her mind. "Mom…please—"

  "Who's putting you up to this?" she demanded. "I know you're not acting alone. And whoever it is, you must believe me when I tell you that they will bring you nothing but misfortune. Pain and misfortune! Tell me, Johnny! Tell me!"

  He shook his head. "No." He felt a sudden need to end this insane conversation, because crazily, she was, in some far-out roundabout way, beginning to rekindle his skepticism—was beginning to make him think that, maybe, just maybe, he might be making some grave mistake after all.

  "Who, Johnny?" she asked, leaning forward with her fists on the table, voice deep and intense. "I can see it in your eyes, there's something you're not telling me. Is there someone who's making you act this way?"

  And then he said it. It charged out of his mouth unbridled, loudly and clearly, sounding as foreign as one's own name might appear if repeated out loud a hundred times.

  "Benjamin Conroy."

  And at this definitive moment, Judson's canned voice filtered back into his mind: Silence is of the utmost importance. I strongly request that you not mention the letter or this conversation with anyone, including your parents, and as this thought filled his head, Mary's mouth fell open and she slammed back down into the chair quickly and suddenly. The chair toppled over, taking her with it. There was a loud crack against the kitchen floor, either wood or skull meeting the vinyl tiles. Her arms flailed and her hands groped the air, and Johnny raced into the kitchen, instantly regretting his hasty decision to mention Conroy's name. But a thought had crossed his mind as to whether Benjamin Conroy was indeed a relative (it only stood to reason), and if he was, then his mother would've known about him, despite him being told in the past that the only Petrie family members in existence were the three of them. She coughed three heaving chokes, the words following unintelligible garbles, "gahh" and "ahhg." Her face twisted into a mask of repulsive fear. Her arms jerked in the air.

  "Mom!" He kneeled down alongside her and grabbed her hand. It was cold. Her fingers were locked around the rosary like chain links.

  Her bulging eyes turned on him; they were ablaze with terror. Her mouth opened…but no words came out. Smatters of white foam coated her lips.

  "Mom, are you okay?" When she didn't answer, he jumped up and unhooked the telephone handset from the cradle on the wall. He dialed 9-1-1, then gazed back at her.

  Her arm was raised, the rosary still gripped from her hand, the tiny cross dangling between two fingers. She pointed it at Johnny in pathetic vampire-hunter fashion.

  Suddenly, his scar felt hot and itchy.

  "Jesus mom, are you okay?" he asked nervously, clutching at his chest.

  She squinted, emitting a blatant ray of dread that was nearly palpable. Her lips parted, and in a voice that was barely recognizable as hers, shouted: "No power to the enemy! I implore you, Dear God of heaven, God of earth, God of all creation, save him…save him…"

  Chapter 11

  August 24th, 1988

  6:43 AM

  The Conroy family exited the house, Benjamin in the lead, followed by Faith, Elizabeth, and then Daniel. Bryan, now wrapped in a gray blanket, lay calmly in Benjamin's arms. Pilate, the family dog—a black lab—was leashed to the basement well outside the house. He was laying down on his side, tongue lolling, staring at them inquisitively.

  The family w
alked about a hundred feet to the center of the backyard. When Benjamin stopped, everyone spread out alongside him and faced the barn, which loomed in the near-distance.

  Benjamin stared at the old, wooden structure, its once trim red surface faded to a shoddy pink, peeling away in unsightly patches. He smiled. My sanctuary. It is…changing…

  And so it appeared. The low-lying eastern sun splayed its golden rays across the entire backyard, capturing the barn beneath its unmarred brilliance. Now the chipped white trim and ramshackle structure appeared to take on a newfound potency, its ugliness beaming heartily in the day's fresh light. Everything around them—the overgrown grass, the wandering weeds, the dandelions—appeared savagely rich and lush, highly aromatic.

  The morning was very hot and humid, more so than it had been all summer long. Perfect conditions for ritual, Benjamin thought. Beneath his robe, his skin felt clammy, sticking to the hot black fabric in damp patches. Behind the barn, from the woods that ran nearly twenty miles all the way to the outskirts of Skowhegan, tendrils of smoky mist crawled in, low-lying and dense. It seeped around the barn, seizing the entire perimeter like an oncoming tide. It carried with it an acrid odor of burning timber that filled Benjamin's nose instantly.

  "The Lord Jesus Christ has given us a glorious day so that we may commence with Bryan's allegiance to Osiris." The air seemed to absorb Benjamin's words, and it was at this moment he noticed that there were no sounds at all on the farm: no birds chirping, no roosters crowing, none of the penned goats or pigs bleating for their meals. Even Bryan remained silent in his father's arms. All Benjamin could hear was the static rustle of the hot summer wind as it carried through the distant wheat fields.

  Moments passed as Benjamin prepared his mind for ritual. Breaking up the brooding silence, he could hear the metallic clanging of a cowbell. It seemed to come from inside the barn. He stood motionless, and listened. It struck thirteen times, then stopped.

  "The bell has tolled. It is time," he said.

  Without saying a word, Benjamin stepped toward the barn, his feet kicking through patches of crabgrass and dew-soaked dandelion clusters. Strangely, even the sounds of their footsteps were muted, seemingly trapped in the strange vacuum that had siphoned off everything in the surrounding area.

  He reached the door to the barn, which was padlocked. He looked left, and then right, surveying his surroundings. They were familiar, of course…but had taken on an unusually exotic appearance, as though he'd stepped into an old sepia-toned photograph—the vibrant colors of the previous moment had mysteriously vanished, and when he looked overhead, he saw peculiar tan-shaded clouds impregnating the sky.

  Before Benjamin could consider the abrupt change in the atmosphere, a flapping noise overhead fell into the eerie silence. He saw a lone blackbird settling down on the pointed peak of the barn. The bird jigged in its effort to find a solid landing position, then pointed its tiny eyes downward, ruffling its feathers as if to acknowledge Benjamin's presence, and the event about to take place.

  "Osiris's messenger is here," Benjamin uttered, feeling strangely intimidated. It has delivered the perfect setting for the spirit's arrival, he speculated as something heavy turned over in his midsection. The bird cawed, and in this instant some of its feathers fell out into the gutter, leaving behind a bare patch of pink hide on its body. The bird poked its beak deep into the raw skin and resurfaced with a fat, buzzing horsefly.

  The ground mist continued to spill out from the woods. It made its way across the high grass in the backyard—rising as high as their knees—all the way to the rear of the house. Benjamin took a step forward; without the sound of his footsteps, he was unable to tell if his feet were actually touching the ground.

  It feels as though I'm floating…

  He turned and handed the baby to Faith, then removed a key from his robe pocket and unlocked the padlock. Despite the visible pop of the latch, there was absolutely no sound at all. He removed the lock, and in that instant the bird dropped the horsefly at Benjamin's feet, its falling weight parting the mist like a rock in a pond. Benjamin could see the plump insect fidgeting frantically amidst the blades of tall grass. He pocketed the key and lock, then pulled open the large wooden doors to the barn, whose hinges had lost their loud rusting screech.

  The wind gusted, blowing across the mouth of the barn and sending in rolling pillows of fog. It crawled along the hard soil ground, seeping toward the bales of hay piled beneath the fifteen-foot loft. He could hear a high-pitched whistling sound, the result of a warm breeze whipping in through gaps in the wooden beams; apparently, the strange vacuum appeared not to exist in here.

  Benjamin hunkered down and picked up the horsefly, which he gingerly placed into his pocket. For Bryan, a special gift from the messenger. He then crossed the threshold into the barn, leaving just enough room behind for Faith, Elizabeth, and Daniel to settle in behind him. He looked at the gloom-filled store, the hay-bales stacked high beneath the loft, blocking the way to the rear of the barn; straw was spread out amidst hunks of wood and pieces of rusted tractor parts. Flattened tires leaned drunkenly against the right wall. Clutter existed nearly everywhere, except at the very center of the barn where Benjamin had put in order all preliminary measures for the ritual.

  The first thing he noticed was the heat: dense and oppressive, hitting him like a tangible force. It could've been a hundred degrees in here, maybe more. Sweat poured down his back in quick rivulets, and a warning voice inside his head told him that he would need to commence with the ritual quickly and efficiently—that the infant would not be able to withstand the extreme temperature for too long.

  Slowly and soberly, he stepped toward the center of the barn where two four-by-eight slabs of black-primed wood were lodged flatly into the soil. Painted in white on the wood was the magic circle, its circumference measured out at exactly eight feet. Benjamin stepped into the circle, the hairs on the back of his neck immediately shifting from the loaded conditions of the air. On the ground outside of the circle were the four pentagrams, plus the north-facing triangle of the gift; each held white candles at their points. He removed a box of wooden matches from his pocket, then kneeled down before each figure and lit the candles, first at the pentagrams, and then the triangle. Scrawled in white paint along the edges of the triangle was the Seal of Osiris, the inch-high words now aglow beneath the bask of motionless candlelight. Once the candles were lit, Benjamin nodded to Elizabeth, who as directed, closed the doors to the barn.

  He immediately paced to the rear of the barn, to a point near the bales of hay, where a black silk sheet had been draped. He removed the sheet to reveal the consecrated mirror, frameless, supported only by black-painted plywood wedged between the bales. About six feet tall and two feet wide, various symbols adorned the edges of the mirror's surface: six triangles, running along the top with the name of OSIRIS split up, one letter at each of their peaks; down the sides ran the symbolic representations of air, earth, fire, water, and spirit.

  Benjamin returned to the center of the eight-foot circle. He nodded to the others, who slowly walked over and stood just beyond the circle's circumference, alongside the pentagrams. He then closed his eyes, and pledged: "Here I stand at the center of the magic circle, where I shall act with the authority of the divine spirits of Jesus Christ and Osiris. I respect you both, my Gods, and shall act in accordance to your divine rule. We pray to the Lords."

  And the family replied in unison: "Lords, hear our prayer."

  He opened his eyes and gazed at his family. Their eyes were closed, but their lids still reflected the candle light, giving off the impression of magical sight. Their faces were a sheen of golden sweat, wet and glistening. Benjamin listened intently to the environment: the wind…it had stopped gusting outside, the high whistling sound once blowing through the barn's cracks now gone. For a stretch of twenty seconds, only silence existed...a silence that had an unnerving anticipatory quality to it. Then, a sudden rumble of far-off thunder pervaded the air, hang
ing in the distance like an ominous charm. Odd yellow light seeped in through the clouded window at the peak of the barn, carrying with it a thick tangy aroma that smelled like battery acid. Outside, Pilate began to bark.

  Benjamin kneeled down and retrieved the magician's wand that he'd placed in the triangle days earlier. As if trying to attract lightning, he stood and aimed the wand up over his head, using the molded end to trace an ankh in the air. He visualized the shape in his head in the color of gold, saying, "The time has come for Bryan Conroy to pledge his allegiance to the Lord Osiris, as we already have, so that we may as a family remain in togetherness for all of eternity. I thereby consecrate thee, implement of the afterlife, by celestial power, that thou may be used as the divining tool in our quest to beseech the all-empowering Osiris."

  Elizabeth kneeled down and picked up the black silk cloth from the center of the pentagram before her, which contained the Sigil of Osiris; like the others, this too was drawn out on a leather parchment. She removed the parchment, unfolded it, then stepped forward through the circle and placed it in the center of the triangle. Benjamin lowered the wand, plucked the horsefly from his pocket, which he placed on top of the parchment. Removing the candle from the outermost point of the painted triangle, he said the prayer to Osiris: I summon and beseech thee, O Spirit Osiris from the vast astral plane, by the supreme majesty of God, to allow the child Bryan Conroy an association to our purpose, so that he too may benefit from your empowering gift…

  He then struck a match and placed it to the parchment. Both the scrawled prayer, and the horsefly, disintegrated beneath the mounting flame.

  Benjamin stepped back and watched the flames rise, his eyes following the pillar of smoke winding its way up toward the vaulted ceiling of the barn. While doing this, he imagined himself as a soaring figure, with the earth a tiny sphere below him spinning on its axis. He felt a sudden flood of all-powerfulness, as though he were standing at the center of the universe, surrounded by the galaxies and stars. At the very top of the pillar of smoke, a glowing sphere of white brilliance formed. The sphere expanded, and soon began to descend, forcing down the smoke and emitting a loud wind-like sound that nearly deafened him. Using the wand, he reached up and pulled the white light down into his body, vibrating the word "Matah" from his lips as he did so.