Dead Souls

by Michael Laimo

  "Johnny, I want you to know that I'm here to help you, that it's my job to see you are rightfully taken care of in the eyes of the law. Benjamin Conroy was my client, and I've been paid to make certain his will is properly executed. I assure you that every last detail will be thoroughly outlined for you so that you may understand everything correctly."

  Again Johnny thought of his mother. Mary Petrie. Formerly Mary Conroy. And again he wondered if she were lying in her hospital bed, praying to the good Lord Jesus Christ to heal her of her ails, all the while looking for Ed or Johnny to appear at the door and take her home. Then he thought: Has she been released? Is she now home in the apartment, passed out on the floor beneath Ed's hanging body?

  Ed Petrie: not his father.

  He looked at Judson and asked, "What about Mary? Is she my real mother?"

  Without pause, Judson answered, "Mary Petrie is your aunt. Benjamin Conroy's sister. Your real mother's name was Faith Conroy.

  Johnny clutched his chest with the tips of his fingers, his heart seemingly attempting to leap into his throat, his scar tingling on the surface of its tireless beat. "No…no way. There must be some sort of mistake. I mean…I have memories of my parents since I was little, three, maybe four years old."

  Judson grinned solemnly, then opened his desk drawer and brought out a photograph. He showed it to Johnny. What he saw in the lawyer's hand was a dull color portrait of a man and a woman. They were dressed nicely (Sunday wear, Mary would say), standing in a small flower garden in front of a farmhouse.

  Johnny noticed the resemblance at once: he looked just like the man in the picture. Additionally, he could see the man's resemblance to Mary. Which is where, Johnny realized, I thought I'd inherited my features from.

  Jesus.

  "The resemblance is uncanny," Judson remarked. "Wouldn't you say? I really couldn't believe it when I came out to see you just now—there was no question in my mind at that point, and there is no doubting it now. Johnny, you are Benjamin Conroy's son. Bryan Conroy."

  Johnny leaned forward and took the photo. He stared at the picture, into Conroy's far-away eyes. Inexplicably, he interpreted their firm dark stare as an accusatory inquiry from the past. He could virtually hear the man's deep voice, what is your real purpose? The woman, his real mother, stood meekly at his side, one limp arm cradled loosely through the crook of his elbow. She'd blinked just as the photo was taken, which made her look as though she were wincing in pain.

  "These people, they are my real parents…" Johnny stated dully, eyebrows pinched with bewilderment.

  Judson nodded.

  "So…if Mary is really my aunt, then Ed—"

  "Ed Petrie is your uncle. Married her right here in Wellfield over thirty years ago."

  Shaking his head, Johnny laughed uncomfortably. He placed the photo down on Judson's desk, then sat back and looked out the window; Wellfield's locals paced busily along Main Street. He let a few moments of silence pass, Benjamin Conroy's face

  …I have his nose, his eyes, his hairline…

  imprinting itself upon the surface of his mind.

  What is your real purpose?

  Johnny pulled his gaze away from the window. His brain knocked and whirled, and he began to feel sick to his stomach. He opened his mouth to speak, the words falling out without restraint: "So, Mr. Judson…what is my real purpose?"

  Judson grinned and looked at him intently over his folded hands. "Your purpose is to claim your estate. But first…you need to know exactly what it is we're dealing with."

  "Okay, I'm ready."

  "All right then…so, in a nutshell, you've inherited Benjamin Conroy's farmhouse, as well as all five acres of his land, which, if you look out the window, down Center Street, you can catch a glimpse of. It used to be a thriving farm, but has remained untouched since Benjamin's death seventeen years ago."

  "Wait…seventeen years ago? My real father died seventeen years ago, when…when I was one?"

  Judson nodded. "As did Faith Conroy, your mother. Benjamin Conroy's will stated—which I myself prepared many years ago—that in the event of Benjamin's and Faith's untimely passing, Ed and Mary Petrie would become the lawful guardians of their children. So, they legally adopted you, and had your name changed to Johnny Petrie. Soon thereafter, Ed and Mary Petrie moved to Manhattan. Being that I had also been assigned to hand over Benjamin's estate, I had to keep close tabs on Ed and Mary all these years, which really wasn't all too difficult, since they hadn't moved since arriving in New York all those years ago."

  "Andrew…you said his children. Does this mean that I have…siblings?"

  Judson hesitated. Oppressive silence descended down upon them. Dimly, the lawyer replied, "You had a brother and a sister. They too are dead." Judson tilted his chair back; it made an uncomfortable creaking noise, matching the look on his face.

  Johnny was about to ask how? ,when there was a light knock on the door and Susan poked her head in. "Your guests are getting impatient."

  Judson saw the tears filling Johnny's eyes—tears of sadness, tears of anguish, tears of so many diverse emotions. "Perhaps now is not the time we talk about finances, John. If you'd like, I can reschedule them for later today. They've waited seventeen years, they can wait a few more hours."

  Judson rose up and circled around the side of the desk. Standing alongside Johnny, he asked, "You okay?"

  Johnny nodded. "I'm a bit overwhelmed, but I'm trying to keep it all in check."

  "That's good, Johnny."

  Johnny stood, then walked to the window. He looked out beyond the small drug store across the street, toward the sloping land a few hundred yards behind it.

  His land.

  A single black bird landed on the fence, just above the No Trespassing sign. It fluttered its wings once, then quickly flew away in the direction where Johnny imagined his very own abandoned farmhouse to be.

  Chapter 23

  August 24th, 1988

  4:13 PM

  Erotic assault.

  It seemed the only way for her to rationalize the affliction, with her means of feeding it growing to proportions far beyond mere self-gratification. She wished not to speak of it, but to only assuage it using any means necessary. Without question, she felt chosen by the superior influence, as if it looked down upon her and guided her with its protective hand. Yes, she believed in God, and loved God, but judged Him not responsible for this blissful intervention. No, something else was at work here, something previously laying dormant within her, now out to cultivate what had always lingered within. She felt unreservedly alluring: a sexual creature for whom no rules applied. She retained a level of buoyancy that insisted she not waste time ignoring her insatiable desires.

  And now, at exactly forty-eight minutes after fleeing her home, she stood between a parked Dodge pick-up and a beat-up Harley, outside of the The Bull Pen Tavern, the closest public establishment to the Conroy house—and one with a notorious reputation that had reached even Benjamin's ears—where she felt she could make her passions known to the world.

  Opening her bathrobe, Elizabeth paced across the graveled lot, her slippered feet crunching mutely. Without being seen, she pushed opened the front door and went inside. The interior, dank and dark and stinking of stale beer, was presently home to eight men, all of whom the very type one might find getting soused on a weekday afternoon.

  They all halted their activities—throwing darts, shooting pool, snuffing out their Marlboros—and looked at her. The men, with their swollen beer bellies, their tattoos and full beards that challenged the length of their hair, gazed at her unwaveringly, this pristine, strawberry-smelling teenaged peach from town.

  She dropped her robe to the sticky floor, a move that elicited wide incredulous grins upon the Bull Pen's clientele, all of whom had had no such good fortune in the past, now feeling as if their lottery ticket had finally been pulled. She sidled alongside the closest man, a burly waster stinking of cigarettes and body-odor, and grabbed his huge hand. This bro
ught forth a gap-toothed grin and guffaws from the others (including the bartender, who, Elizabeth noticed, was already stroking himself through his worn denims). She led the man to the pool table (but not before he downed the rest of his beer), where she sat, legs spread apart, her glistening wetness pooling out upon the cigarette-burned frame.

  In her mind she saw no wrong, no personal crime in her actions. She saw and felt only a means to remedy her unceasing desires, her unbridled lust. And she proceeded toward performing the deliberate act as God had intended her to do so: with a goal toward fulfilling her yearnings.

  She spoke no words, just gazed into the man's unthoughtful eyes, knowing he would now never allow her to cease her feat should she decide to do so. Keeping her gaze firm, she reached forward and unbuttoned his jeans; out fell his dark, filthy, (and more-than-ready) manhood, which she expertly led inside her.

  At once, Elizabeth drifted off into a state of mind she never knew to exist, her fragile virginity shattered, making way for a newfound existence, one she eagerly accepted. The wide-eyed men howled, their tattooed arms raised, cheering on their comrade as he shamelessly emptied his venomous seed inside the no longer sweet-smelling girly-girl from town.

  With the front door now locked, and the windows drawn, Elizabeth offered herself to the next brute willing to come to bat. The shouts and laughs grew, and the beer flowed, free for everyone in celebration of this miraculous event. They took her, and she them, sometimes more than one at a time as they filled her every orifice. An hour of brutal, animalistic behavior passed, after which she lay hoarse and bleeding…and even after every man had had his fill, she writhed and thrashed atop the saturated pool table, unfeeling of her bruises as she masturbated furiously, stinking of much more than beer and burnt tobacco.

  The men…she could hear them talking now, not laughing anymore, some of them in fear of having to return to the county lock-up, in fear of contracting the other's diseases. Arguments rose, muscles flexed. Still, they unanimously agreed to keep this event a secret—a pledge soon to be forgotten. The bartender, in his post-orgasmic lethargy, found the common sense to return Elizabeth her robe and send her on her way, out the back door so those presumably waiting in the parking lot for the bar to open wouldn't see her.

  Tattered, torn, and bloodied, a filthy Elizabeth Conroy, a virgin not an hour prior, left The Bull Pen Tavern, finally feeling sated of her desires.

  "Oh yeah!!!" he shouted.

  The words came out strongly and triumphantly. Eddie Carlson gripped the steering wheel of his father's Mustang convertible with the same vigor he would a football while crossing the end zone of the opposing team. He pressed down on the accelerator, taking it up to sixty despite Mill Pond Road's thirty mile-an-hour speed limit. He honked the horn playfully, Steve Miller's The Joker blasting loudly from the stereo speakers. The wind whistled in his ears. His wavy blond hair blew back from his head in a rippling wave. First string quarterback, Eddie thought happily, knowing that carrying the team to a winning season would propel him into the local spotlight. Which in turn meant passing grades, lots of friends, and girls. Not to mention the possibility of a scholarship. Yeah!

  The local farmland sped by in a blur, adding to his gleeful rush. The Mustang gripped a tight curve effortlessly, and he cruised by a stop sign that had never proven itself useful in this very-lightly traveled section of Wellfield. Ahead, a mile of straight, single-lane blacktop met his eyes. In the past he'd taken the car up to eighty here, and for a moment considered taking a crack at breaking his speed record (the adrenaline pumping through his veins begged him to do so), but he decided to ease up on the gas instead, and fire up the congratulatory joint Jimmy Gibson had given him for a 'job well done'.

  That was when he saw the girl.

  Head faced down, arms hanging limply at her sides, she walked out of the wheat fields like a zombie in Night Of The Living Dead. Eddie realized that if he had decided to take the Mustang's speed up instead of down, he wouldn't have had time to stop. Even now, cruising at fifty, the tires screeched and the car spun out when he slammed down on the brakes, sending up a thick cloud of dust. His body jerked sideways, one hand slipping from the wheel. His eyes darted left and right, trying to focus in on the sudden upheaval. There was a heavy jolt, as if a tire had plunged into a deep pothole. After what seemed an eternity but was only a few seconds, the car came to a jarring stop at the side of the road.

  He sat motionless, breathing heavily, both hands back on the steering wheel, gripping it tightly. Dust and dirt buried the scene, and he had to wait for it to settle before determining any sort of outcome—fatal or not. He shot a bullet of a glance forward, and was immediately thankful to have narrowly missed the girl who stood just feet away in the middle of the road, oblivious to the fact that she'd almost been killed.

  He opened the door and got out, coughing away the dust entering his lungs. Despite the heat of the day, a shiver marched across his spine. His heart thudded like a drum, and he could only spread his arms in question and study the girl in disbelieving silence.

  He was as amazed by her beauty as he was her obscene state. The girl remained motionless, staring at the ground, a ghostly figure enveloped by the settling cloud of dust. Eddie glanced left and right to see if any cars were approaching, but the scene was deserted. Harried thoughts warred in his head, and he came very close to leaping back into the car and hightailing it home, certain the girl, who seemed to be in some sort of blank daze, hadn't even seen him.

  Instead, he stepped toward her, treading the cracked pavement hesitantly, wondering if he himself should be scared; after all, something did this to her. In the distance, a passing diesel engine chugged and blew its whistle. Closer by, a bird cawed loudly.

  Moving only her neck, the girl glimpsed up at him. Eddie didn't recognize her, but thought her to be about his own age, seventeen, eighteen tops. She wore only a bathrobe, stained with mud and brambles. It hung open, revealing a filthy, naked body, rivulets of dried blood zigzagging down her trembling legs to her bare feet. Her blond hair was wet and matted, muddy strands dissecting her wavering gaze. Her eyes, dark and glossed, were threaded with stitches of red.

  "Hey," Eddie called to her, one arm stretched out and waving as if testing her sight. "Hey there…you need some help?"

  Moving only her lips, she replied feebly, "Yes," her voice seeming to come from someplace far away.

  Eddie examined her closely, his heart running fast in his chest. He could smell a horrid stench upon her, of cigarettes and beer, of body odor and of something foul. What the hell happened to her? Stepping alongside her, he grabbed her bicep gently, the terrycloth material of her robe feeling grimy-stiff beneath his grasp. "I think you better come with me—I'll take you to the hospital—"

  "No!" The girl jerked back, as though suddenly repulsed, her face a sullen mask, rife with fear.

  Eddie flinched, the girl's shout wrenching a dismayed cry from him. He held his palms up, an instinctual gesture attempting set calm into the situation. "Hey…okay, look, I'm just trying to help you…" He struggled to make sense of her predicament, but his thoughts flitted inside his head like butterflies. "Good god, what's happened to you?"

  The girl shook her head gently and closed her eyes tightly as if anticipating a blow. She began to sob uncontrollably, teeth beating through a taut grimace, wet with saliva. "I…I don't know."

  Again Eddie looked up and down the road. He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, his eyes returning to her grime-coated breasts, which trembled beneath the weight of her sobs; he noticed an oddly shaped birthmark on her sternum that looked like a Greek letter, and found himself more awkwardly conscious of it than her exposed breasts.

  He pulled his gaze away and immediately found himself drawn to the streaks of blood on her legs, which he guessed to be the product of an unbound period. All this time, his emotions responded to the images meeting his ricocheting gaze: looking at her breasts, he felt strangely allured; her legs, revulsion. He forced
himself to turn away, loath to react to either. He wished for another driver to come along, to take control of the situation so he wouldn't have to bear this burden all by himself. Of course, he'd driven along Mill Pond Road enough times in the past to know that unless you were traveling east to the dairy farms, or were out for a little rubber-burning, you had no real reason to be here.

  So he motioned with his arm for her to follow, making an effort to keep his gaze away from her exposed body. "If you don't want to go to the hospital, then maybe you should let me take you home. Do you live around here?"

  At last she wrapped the robe around her body, then motioned east, over the wheat fields. "Pine Oak," she whispered huskily.

  Eddie peered off into the bustling field. "Pine Oak Road? Off Breton?"

  She nodded.

  Holy! A flash of recognition hit him at once: a sudden revelation exposed like a magician revealing the secret to his best trick. He knew who this girl was, which now made the sudden circumstances even more mysterious—and alluring. "You're the minister's daughter."

  She trembled and looked away, her sobs tapering down into whimpers.

  He thought, Man, I…I've heard some crazy stories about him…but this here takes the cake. She remained silent, staring down at the cracked, weedy road, seemingly unable to help herself at all. Gently, Eddie grabbed her by the arm and this time she followed him to the car. In her current state she would soil the Mustang's seats, which in turn would piss his father off, and when Harry Carlson got pissed off, it meant no more Mustang privileges for Eddie. So he reached into the back seat and yanked out his football jersey, weighted beneath his helmet so the wind wouldn't take it away (and damn, he just got it this afternoon too, his name 'Carlson' nice and clean across the back). "Here," he said. He placed it down on the front seat and gently guided Elizabeth inside.

  Once she was seated, he shut the door, then circled around the front of the car, looking in at her and deciding that his first impression of her had been correct: despite her wretched state, she was quite beautiful. Prince charming rescues the fair maiden, he thought smugly, interpreting this chance encounter as an unanticipated product of fate: a gray sketch of some bigger, colorful picture. Things have been going my way, he thought. So why not let them continue?