Dead Souls

by Michael Laimo

  He slammed a fist against the door. "Damn it to Christ! Damn! Damn! Damn!" Bathed in sweat and blood and waves thick with dizziness and madness, he reeled back toward the church, pressing a hand against his chest wound. Blood seeped sluggishly between his fingers. As he approached the front doors, a sudden, strange weight bore down on him, making him feel as though he were trapped in some crazy nightmare. His muscles felt numb, his entire body moving with uncontrollable lethargy, seemingly unable to flee the horror nipping at his heels.

  He climbed the steps and staggered inside, the blood and mud on his chest feeling icy cold upon his skin. His footsteps echoed throughout the church as he stumbled down the aisle. He traipsed up onto the altar, fell, then crawled awkwardly toward the open office door.

  The keys were on the floor where he'd dropped them, sitting amidst the mess of photos that had fallen from his diary. The injured eyes of the women in the Polaroids stared up at him, having once pleaded for God's forgiveness, now accusing him of their lifelong woes. A series of sharp pains stabbed at his brain, and he had to grip his skull tightly in a useless effort to ease them.

  A voice whispered, "The ritual…"

  Only this time it hadn't come from his head. It had come from somewhere in the room, so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that he couldn't have escaped the shocking truth of its source.

  Helen Mackey.

  So embroiled with his actions, he hadn't even considered the fact that her body was still in his office. But there it was, there she was, lying spread-eagled on the floor with her dress hiked up around her pale thighs; her face, indescribably unrecognizable beneath the mass of gore he'd made of it, jaw hanging, dead lips split wide, smiling crimson-stained teeth.

  Grabbing the keys, Benjamin crawled back against the doorjamb, staring incredulously at her, squeezing both the keys and the knife firmly. Her eyes suddenly came to life, rolling beneath her death-mask, wet and yellow and peering reproachfully at Benjamin. She spoke, her voice seeming to come from very far away: "The ritual…". Her teeth and gums showed in a repulsive, leering grin.

  "Osiris…" Benjamin said, his own voice sounding muffled, as though he were speaking into a vacuum. "Is it you?"

  His question went unanswered. In a blink, Helen Mackey had returned to her old, dead milky self, unmoving and unspeaking, eyes clouded over, jaw slung in a lifeless gape.

  Benjamin pulled himself up and staggered from the office. Agony ripped up from his wounds as he fled across the altar and down the center aisle. I have to get out of here, he thought, barely lucid. I must complete the ritual now.

  As he made his way outside, dizziness beset him. His feet tangled and he spilled down the wooden steps. Dropping the keys and the knife, he threw his hands out to absorb the shock, which traveled to his shoulders. He lay sprawled in the soil for a moment, breathing raspily, shivering coldly, realizing now that time was short, and that the ritual must be completed at once.

  He stood, and retrieved the keys and the knife. He leaned up against the truck and looked back at the church. Its chipped surface was swelling, breathing as if it had retained a life of its own. Terrified, he turned away. He looked at the blood on his hands, his chest, his legs. Grayness overwhelmed him, and he had to grab the open door to keep from collapsing.

  Suddenly, something brushed up against his ankle—like a cat endeavoring to relieve an itch. He jerked away from it, nearly fainting from the bullets of pain inside his head.

  In the soil, next to his feet, was a dead bird, it feathers black and ragged, blanketing a withered skeleton. Maggots crawled in its eyes and on its head.

  A voice from the unmoving bird whispered: Go to the house…

  Wheezing, he scrambled into the truck, shut the door, and locked it in a panic, noticing only as he backed away that the dead bird was now perched on the roof of the church, staring down at him.

  Chapter 26

  September 8th, 2005

  12:09 PM

  Johnny couldn't believe what he was seeing: a disfigured man—a baseball-sized portion of his forehead missing, his left eye little more than a dark empty void—repeatedly stabbing the gut of the man that brought him here.

  Blood spurted out onto the floor. It spattered the disfigured man. It saturated the front of Judson's white dress shirt, who was caught in an appalling, seizure-like death grip, hands and feet tapping out discordant rhythms on the dirty wood floor.

  Johnny tried to move but was paralyzed, his body and thoughts trapped in a sudden deep-freeze. The floor swayed and rolled beneath his feet. A thick, muted ringing filled in his ears.

  The crazed man yanked the garden spade out, hesitated, then leaned back and carefully inspected his work. He cried hoarsely, "You are NOT his blood!"

  He cocked his arm and drove the spade back into Judson's chest. A gargled moan escaped the lawyer's bleeding lips. The crazed man jerked the spade upwards, twisted it, and yanked it out. Judson's body bucked and thrashed, then fell motionless, arms and legs spread out in snow-angel form, a sickly wheeze blowing out from his lungs.

  In silence, the murderer peered over at Johnny.

  Gasping, Johnny sidestepped along the length of the wall and threw himself out of the room. His feet slid through the puddle by the steps. He lost his balance and thumped heavily to the moldy floor. A hard, burst of pain lanced up his spine, and in this moment he realized with horror that the one-eyed man who'd just murdered Andrew Judson was the same man whose picture he’d seen on the news this morning—the psycho escapee from the mental institution.

  He scrambled to his knees, looked back over his shoulder. The psycho was perched in the doorway, staring at Johnny with his terrible, glowering eye. Johnny could see the spade in his hand, doused in blood, his hand equally coated and dripping. The black robe he wore hung open like a drape, exposing green institutional scrubs underneath, tattered and soiled with mud. His breathing, heavy and labored, whirred as though clogged with phlegm.

  Johnny leapt to his feet and ran back through the house, feet pounding through the living room, the kitchen, then out the back door. Not once did he look back, brutal fear keeping his motive to escape this terror wholly focused. The psycho had looked possessed, set on a path of unimaginable purpose, his one eye wide and wild, lips cracked and coated with yellow mucous, hair raked with mud. Johnny stumbled across the porch. He lost his footing as he went down the steps. He reached out for the iron handrail, but couldn't manage a grip. With a yell he went sprawling into the knee-high grass. The tight swarm of horseflies he saw upon his arrival flew apart, their singular drone bursting into a chorus of disbanding tones.

  A swaying shadow covered him, and when he looked up he saw the psycho standing on the top step of the porch, the dripping garden spade in his hand. Here in the sunlight, he looked even more crazed, his skin pocked and peppered with cuts, lips wide and brimming, a slick and slimy cold sore oozing at the corner of his mouth.

  "Conroy…" he moaned disjointedly.

  Johnny gained his feet and raced around the side of the house, the psycho's putrid stink washing over him as a warm breeze swept by. He cut to the right, sprinting across the weedy driveway to the driver's side of Judson's car. The psycho screamed, and Johnny could hear his approaching footsteps on the buried gravel of the driveway. Johnny yanked furiously on the door handle. It popped open, and he lunged inside, locking the doors a split moment before the psycho latched his bloody fingers onto the driver's side door handle.

  The psycho pulled and pulled, grunting with each failed attempt. Unable to get in, he leapt on top of the hood and pressed his ragged face against the windshield.

  Gasping, Johnny pressed back against the seat. He could hardly breathe in the oppressive heat of the car. His heart was a big bass drum in his chest. He groped at the ignition, already knowing that Judson had taken the keys with him.

  Face still on the windshield, the psycho shrieked, then clawed at the glass, leaving behind squeaky finger paint-swirls of blood. "Conroy!" he snarled, spewing spittle. H
e slammed his fists against the windshield, the bloody spade still clenched in his right hand. Johnny flinched, shuddered, then clambered over into the backseat, watching with nightmare terror as the psycho leaped off the car and ran toward the house.

  With surprising strength, the psycho grabbed the rusty handle of the water pump, and ripped it free of its brace.

  Johnny scrambled back against the door, watching through the opposite window as the psycho limped back to the car, the iron handle gripped in both his hands.

  There was a moment of terrible silence as the psycho stopped, looked in at Johnny, and grinned. He appeared to laugh…then wound up and swung the iron handle around in a wide arc, smashing the rear passenger window in.

  Johnny reached behind his head and felt out the automatic locks on the door, all the while frantically kicking his feet at the psycho who was clawing his way in through the shattered window. "You know, I've got a son about your age," the psycho barked, shards of glass puncturing his skin. "The two of you can get together, have a nice time!" He grabbed at Johnny, who thought with terrible fear and trepidation that certain, agonizing death would consume him should the psycho simply touch him. This thought gave him the strength to flee the car and seek another refuge. He turned, pulled the door handle, and lunged out into the foot-high weeds. Honeybees and damselflies rose up and away around him. He pushed through the weeds, looked back and saw the psycho crawling across the seat after him.

  "Conroy! Your blood is mine!" he called.

  Johnny stood and moved back around the front of the car, tripping through the weeds, hardly feeling the hidden brambles poking at his arms and hands. He fled into the high grasses of the backyard, his legs nearly buckling as he eyed his two choices: the woods, or the barn. Which would prove the better of the two?

  Before he had a chance to consider the advantages and disadvantages of either, the psycho shot out from around the side of the car and blundered awkwardly through the weeds after him. His arms were outstretched, printed with bloody gashes from the broken glass he'd crawled across. He yelled, "Come to me, boy! Your parents, they are awaitin' for you!" His voice was saturated with mindless ferocity. His tongue lolled out like a dog's.

  My parents…

  Johnny shrieked, then spun and raced toward the barn, praying with outrageous optimism for all this to be some crazy nightmare, one he'd soon wake up from, sweating and shivering in his bed...alive.

  …thump…thump…thump...

  He shoved the thought aside and raced all-out toward the dilapidated barn. He could see a rusty clasp on the doors of the barn. It was free of a padlock. If he could get inside, maybe get his hands on a shovel or a pitchfork or some other makeshift weapon (as the psycho presumably had), then he might have a shot of coming out of this alive. It was a better substitute than getting lost in the backwoods of Wellfield, where the psycho had most likely spent his time hiding out.

  Johnny reached the barn, yanked on the doors. The clasp separated. The hinges made a screeching sound like braking train wheels, and the psycho echoed the noise with an untamed shriek of his own. Johnny quickly slipped inside, grabbed onto the rusted handles, and pulled the doors shut…but not before the psycho shot a scabby arm in and latched onto Johnny's left wrist.

  Johnny yanked on the doors, trapping the psycho's arm. The psycho howled in agony, but his grip was strong, fingernails biting like teeth against Johnny's skin. Johnny pulled the handles furiously and watched as the splintered wood on the edge of the door sliced into the psycho's skin. His wail was a cruel siren in Johnny's ears. Johnny was only barely aware of the blood bursting from the wounds he was inflicting upon the psycho's forearm.

  "Let me go!" Johnny cried, only now aware of the suffocating heat inside the barn. He braced his foot against the lower frame and pulled on the handles with all his strength. The psycho's grip on him began to give, allowing Johnny enough leeway to break free.

  Johnny stumbled backward and thumped down on the solid earthy ground. The psycho had fallen too; the door was cracked open and Johnny could see him outside, already climbing to his feet. Coughing, eyes stinging and tearing from the dusty air, Johnny quickly collected his bearings and raced toward the rear of the barn. The light faded as he approached the underside of a loft. A old wooden rope-extension ladder was perched up against it, leading perhaps fifteen feet high. He jigged his eyes back and forth, saw no means of a useful weapon…then, with no time to consider any other course of action, began climbing the ladder.

  The psycho burst into the barn and barked something incoherent.

  "No!" Johnny cried. "Leave me alone!" He ascended the ladder, his heavy breaths taking on a flat, dull tone in the empty barn. He was about three-quarters of the way up, when he felt the ladder tremble. He looked over his shoulder.

  Beads of sweat fell from his brow onto the psycho, who'd begun making his way up after him. He'd had a limp, and it seemed to be encumbering him from scaling the ladder with any sort of speed. "Oh God!" Johnny screamed, then climbed up into the loft and glanced about in a panic. He saw a small porthole beneath the peak of the ceiling. Dim light seeped through, coating the loft and the drifts of dusty hay covering the planked floor. On the floor below the porthole was a moldy mattress, a graveyard of cigarette butts, and a cluster of empty beer bottles; at some point, someone must've thrown a small party here.

  Johnny reeled over to the beer bottles and grabbed one by the neck.

  The ladder shifted slightly from left to right…and then the psycho appeared, first his filthy matted hair, and then his face with the caved-in eye socket, caved-in forehead, and plethora of marks and contusions.

  "C'mere boy!" he yelled. "Gonna teach you a lesson of God!"

  The psycho reached over the top of the ladder and started climbing up onto the loft.

  Johnny still couldn't believe that all this was actually happening. Ten minutes earlier he was having a quiet conversation with a man promising him a fortune. Now that man was dead, and Johnny was looking his killer right in the face.

  Gripping the beer bottle tightly, he raced forward and smashed it over the head of the psycho. The psycho howled, hands groping for Johnny's legs. The ladder tipped back from the loft, though not enough to send it flying backwards. A stream of blood burst from the man's forehead and ran into his good eye. He squeezed his eye shut.

  Now he was blinded.

  Holding the jagged base of the beer bottle, Johnny drove it forward into the psycho's face. It tore open his forehead, and ripped into his shuttered eye.

  The psycho gasped and squealed. He squeezed his hands to his face. Blood and clear fluid gushed out between his fingers. Johnny thrust the beer bottle at him again, pushing forward with his weight behind him. The ladder tipped away from the loft. The psycho pinwheeled his arms for balance, but this only lent to his backward momentum. This time, the ladder fell back, taking the psycho with it.

  Johnny watched with terrible awe and fascination as both man and ladder slammed into the front wall of the barn. The psycho's head hit against the wood wall with a sickening crack, the top rung of the ladder pinning him there for a few awful seconds before he plummeted to the hard ground. Both of his legs went out from under him, and there was a fracturing-tearing sound that was amplified in the emptiness of the barn. His torso fell forward, head slamming against the ground. He remained in this position like a spent animal, surrounded in a cloud of dust, legs splayed out from under him in a yoga-like split. Blood cascaded from the back of his head like a fountain. Sickened, Johnny pulled his eyes away and saw a print of blood on the wall where the psycho's head came in contact.

  Johnny waited, half-expecting the psycho to still be alive, to get up and come after him again. He listened to his own breathing, now racing in the aftermath of terror. The world spun around him. His anxiety culminated into an all-encompassing panic, causing the image of the man on the ground, and the ladder laying beside him, to bend and sway and swell. He clutched at his heart, felt himself teetering, and nearly t
oppled over the edge before backing up into the dusty recesses of the loft. He tucked himself into the corner, too scared to move, too scared to flee the safety of the loft. He stayed there for an indeterminable amount of time, standing motionlessly, staring at the moldering mattress and the assortment of empty beer bottles.

  Flies flitted about his head. He struck at them, then scratched at his neck, feeling as if the psycho were now touching him with ghostly, blood-sticky fingers. Your blood is mine Conroy! the psycho had yelled, his hideous, cavern-eyed image striking Johnny's mind's eye like a flash of lightning.

  Soon Johnny came to realize that he needed to find a way out of here, off the loft, then off this property forever and ever. He wanted no part of it—nor the money that came with it. As far as he was concerned, the mayor and his businessmen friends could have it for free.

  He shifted his body.

  The wood beneath him gave slightly.

  Curious, he hunkered down on his knees. He stared at the floor for a few seconds. Then, using his palms, slowly began clearing away the thick layer of yellow hay dust.

  A sudden, ghostly voice whispered: Bryan...

  He coughed as the dust flew into his face. "Hello," he called, immediately feeling foolish, and troubled. The voice…it had come from his own head, was nothing more than his traumatized mind playing cruel games with him. He shuddered. Tears of fear and uncertainty filled his eyes, and he wondered with great concern if this was what it felt like to lose your mind. Hey, maybe the psycho's bed at the insane asylum is still available?