Dead Souls

by Michael Laimo

  A few moments of threatening silence followed.

  Suddenly, slowly, the door to the bedroom creaked opened.

  Elizabeth's dirty bare feet came into view. Directly behind them, a pair of muddy brown work boots. He could see out the side of the bed as Elizabeth's feet rose up off the ground. They hung oddly motionless, like slabs of meat in a slaughterhouse. For a moment he thought about leaping out from beneath the bed and braving a rescue attempt…until he saw the blood, thin winding lines of it dripping down over her ankles to the floor.

  Eddie cringed back. He attempted a deep breath but his lungs were constrained from being weighted so close to the floor. The dripping blood began to pour, and then her body collapsed to the floor. First he saw her limbs, twisted in a broken heap. Then he saw her head as it came into hard contact with the wooden surface.

  Its appearance…it was so immediate, so shocking, that Eddie could only shudder and stare at the horror Elizabeth had suddenly become: her eyes, pinging back and forth; her lips, twitching, as though she were trying to whisper something; and…her wound, a thick purple gash running across her neck from ear to ear, pumping blood out onto the floor toward him.

  The minister's boots moved off to the left, deeper into the room. Keeping one ear to the floor, Eddie rolled his eyes to follow them, his squashed heart beating furiously against his ribs. The boots stopped before the charred mess inside the painted circle at the foot of the bed. The minister kneeled down before it. A blood-coated hand came into view, sifted through the ashes, and removed what appeared to be a black feather.

  At that moment, Eddie felt something warm and wet against his cheek. He jerked his eyes back toward Elizabeth.

  She was no longer alive, that much was clear now. Her eyes were glossed over, lips unmoving and spilling saliva. The blood draining from her wound…it had traveled under the bed and was now puddling against his face. He tightened his lips, but could still taste it, sharp and metallic against his tongue.

  The booted feet moved across the room, back alongside Elizabeth's dead, bloody, staring body; in their wake, Eddie could see bloody tracks on the floor.

  A knee came into view.

  Eddie shuddered, feeling sick and lightheaded. Dear God, help me! He’s going to find me here, and he’s going to murder me like he has his children.

  His children…

  Oh…my…dear…God.

  The baby!

  He couldn't hear the baby crying anymore, unsure if it was due to his secreted position in the house, or if the baby had indeed ceased its wails. He prayed for the latter, guessing now that his purpose in being here had not been to rescue Elizabeth from the clutches of this madman, but to save this poor innocent babe's life.

  More tears welled in his eyes and blurred his vision. He blinked frantically in an effort to clear them away, and saw the minister's ashy, bloody hand grab Elizabeth by the hair and drag her out of the room. Eddie heard a thud in the hallway. Soon thereafter, the door to the bedroom slammed shut, the discordant sound nearly wrenching Eddie's heart from his throat.

  He waited…his instincts told him so, keeping himself tightly sequestered in the refuge beneath the bed. He would have to wait here until a lengthy stretch of silence passed, giving him a chance to get the baby and flee.

  If I get to the baby first. The minister might be out there right now, plucking the baby from its crib in preparation to bestow his evil goods upon it. Dear God…am I a coward for placing my safety before that of the baby's in the other room? No, no…if it weren't for my bravery, my courage, then I wouldn't be here in the first place.

  Yet, despite Eddie wanting to face the threat, to get to the baby as quickly as humanly possible, he could do nothing but remain beneath the bed and listen to the horrors persevering beyond the closed door: to the gruesome sounds of the minister murdering the sick woman in the bathroom.

  Benjamin swung the knife around and plunged it into Faith's chest. All twelve inches of it went through her scar, her sternum, and perhaps her spine as well. He twisted it back and forth, and with a quick flick of his wrist, jerked it out.

  He watched with fascination as his wife dropped face-first onto the slimy-wet floor. He slammed the knife into her upper back, just to the right of her spine. Droplets of blood flew across the room like spittle. He twisted it, then let go. The handle jutted crookedly out of her back like a tombstone marker.

  He leaned down and grabbed Faith by the hair. Making certain not to slip on the wet tiles, he dragged her out of the bathroom. Her legs made loud knuckle-cracking sounds as they snapped back against the floor. A thick crimson swath trailed out behind her that gathered up as he halted to take hold of Elizabeth, also by the hair.

  Struggling to harvest his strength, and his inner voice, guide me Osiris, Benjamin leaned his weight forward and dragged both bodies down the hall. He was able to peer down the hall as he went—its perspective seemed skewed, the walls too tall, the distance too far along. Even the floor seemed to slope up and down. All these manifestations made the journey a slow and arduous one, and he parted each heavy-footed step with a few seconds of rest.

  Eventually he reached the top of the landing. Here he stopped and listened…listened to baby Bryan's exhausted whimpers seeping out from behind the closed door of his room; he sniffed the air, seeking some form of guidance from his newfound faculty, but his senses were clogged from the sooty, ashy stench in Elizabeth's room. He couldn't smell the baby.

  Or the intruder, he thought. If there is one.

  His mind asked: maybe I should check on Bryan?

  Then he thought of the ritual this morning, how it had played out so perfectly until…until…

  Commence with the ritual, Benjamin…

  Heeding the warning in his head, Benjamin pulled the bodies across the hall. One at a time, he shoved them down the stairs. Elizabeth tumbled head over heels like a sack of potatoes and hit the bottom in a twisted, bone-shattering sprawl. Faith's arm got caught up in the banister about halfway down. The crook of her elbow tore open, but her withered, bloody body traveled no farther, and remained stretched out on the steps like a fallen tree-limb. Benjamin lumbered down after them. He unhinged Faith's arm and pushed her down on top of Elizabeth, then moved down to the bottom step. Careful not to fall, he climbed over their twisted bodies, re-secured his grasp on their tangled manes, and began dragging them across the living room floor.

  In the kitchen, he saw it was going to be a tight squeeze. He gave it a shot anyway, attempting to work himself and both bodies between the refrigerator and the table. His leg struck one of the kitchen chairs as he went by, which tipped up against the heavy table and pressed against the wound on his arm. Hot and spastic pain lanced through his body like a poke from brand, and he howled out.

  He sidestepped the chair and shoved the butcher block table aside with his hip, never once unlocking his hair-bunched fists. He managed to work the bodies past the table, then slammed into the back door and went outside.

  At once he saw the black bird. It was standing on the wooden porch railing beneath the dreamy moonlight. It tweaked its head and contemplated Benjamin with beady, oil-drop eyes.

  "Osiris…" Benjamin whispered.

  The bird flew off toward the barn and Benjamin watched it as it settled on the apex of the roof.

  Keeping his eyes on the bird, he pressed forward, hauling the bodies down the porch steps, and without stopping, across the backyard. By the time he reached the barn, both of the bodies were coated with soil and grass, and had stopped trailing blood behind.

  He gazed up at the bird, then, despite a wave of grayness trying to overwhelm him, dragged the bodies inside and placed them before their designated crucifixes.

  He took a moment to gather his breath, standing there in the back of the barn, gazing at Daniel, now nailed upon his very own cross. The boy's face was gray and riddled with splotches of blood, eyes yellow and starting to bulge from their sockets. His tongue was black and swollen, peeking out from between hi
s bloated lips like a piece of liver.

  What a fine job I've done, Benjamin thought. Osiris will be proud.

  He said a prayer to the Spirit God, performed the sign of the cross, then sent the souls of Elizabeth and Faith Conroy to join Daniel in his wait for ancestral afterlife.

  As silently as possible, Eddie made every effort to relieve the cramps in his body. He twitched and jerked and flexed his muscles, but it did him little good.

  Through the solid, incessant beating of his heart, and the agony ripping into his stiff limbs, he'd heard a variety of hurting sounds in the house: thumps, crashes, and inhuman grunts—the after-effects of death's duty. He'd felt utterly helpless, lying there under the bed, feeling as though he were withdrawing into an unseen abyss where he would remain until the minister abandoned the scenes of his crimes. He also realized that by doing this, he would most assuredly witness the death of the baby in the other room—why would the murderer spare this particular child, when the lives of his others were deemed so insignificant?

  There'd been a banging noise downstairs, a grunt of pain, followed by a loud slam, which Eddie recognized as the screen door in the kitchen slamming shut.

  He'd waited, breathing a bit more heavily now that the minister was outside. He darted his eyes back and forth, moved his arms and legs. The seconds trickled down his neck like phantoms, the long stretch of silence he'd hoped for now at hand.

  Finally, he slid out from beneath the bed and rose into an immediate stoop. He stared at the door, nearly invisible in the shuttered gloom, listening for the minister's slow plodding footsteps to emerge once again in the hallway. But he heard nothing. All was silent, like a mountaintop beneath a sky of summer stars.

  He looked down and saw that his feet had come to rest in the drips of blood on the floor—Elizabeth's blood. He touched his face and could feel her blood on his cheek, his lips. Feeling sick, he stood up. A surge of lightheadedness beset him, and he had to outstretch his arms for balance. His feet slipped in the blood and made a loud squeaking sound that echoed about the dark room. He pitched forward onto a patch of dry floor, and froze as he regained his balance.

  He waited. Heard nothing.

  He tread softly to the door, pressed an ear against the jamb.

  Still, heard nothing.

  The minister went outside, he thought. I heard the door in the kitchen slam shut—and I know how it sounds because I came in through that door myself. Yes, he's outside, he can't hear me. He doesn't even know I'm here…

  He gripped the doorknob with his right hand, and slowly turned it. The latch made a gentle popping sound. He cracked the door and peered out into the hallway, visible beneath the glow of the bathroom light. On the floor, he could see thick streaks of blood like skid marks leading down the hall toward the landing, where the baby's room was located.

  He stepped out of the room, and silently shut the door behind him.

  He stepped to his right, into the tacky-wet blood—there was no avoiding it. Keeping his back pressed flat against the wall, he skirted along, taking very small steps, the floor creaking slightly beneath his shifting weight. He approached a closed door, presumably that of Elizabeth's dead brother. As he moved by, a wicked shudder gripped him, and he envisioned the boy's ghost reaching out through the wood, brushing cold dead fingers across the nape of his neck.

  Despite being wholly terrified, he could move no faster—his legs were bloodlessly numb, his breathing shallow, his injured mind unable to act in any rapid form of response. All he could do was sidestep in a slow, feeble manner, and listen to the preternatural silence enveloping the house.

  He crept to the corner of the hall, paused, then peeked around the edge, his eyes following the blood streaks as they angled to the left. The hallway was empty, apart from the streaks of blood that led downstairs.

  Across the hall from the stairway was the baby's room. All was deadly silent. There was no whimpering, no crying spilling out from behind the closed door.

  Eddie felt as though he'd missed his opportunity to save a life.

  Dear God, I hope I'm wrong. Please, please, let the baby be alive.

  Without hesitation, he gripped the doorknob, turned it, and opened the door just enough so he could slip through.

  The room was smaller than Elizabeth's. Beneath the soft amber glow of the plug-in nightlight, Eddie could see a crib, the only piece of furniture here, situated alongside the room's lone window. On the floor before the crib was a white drawing similar to the one in Elizabeth's room. It too had a small pile of ashes at its center, plus melted candles, and a small brass censer.

  Eddie walked to the crib, cautiously tiptoeing around the ashy mess—tracking this stuff around would certainly lead the minister to him.

  He glimpsed into the crib.

  And shuddered.

  The baby was here…sleeping, thankfully. What'd made Eddie so disconcerted was the tightly-wrapped gauze around its chest, and he immediately came to assume that at some point today, a traditional family sacrament had been performed, one that had left the baby with a scar—a brand—upon its chest. He'd seen the mark on Elizabeth when he first found her wandering, had thought it to be a birthmark, but eventually shunned that theory upon sighting a similar marking on her mother's chest. And then there were the drawings on the floor. Eddie's stomach turned as the truth of the matter sunk in: this innocent little baby had been the focus of some sick gratuitous ritual.

  And Eddie could only assume that something had gone horribly wrong, given the deathly results he'd witnessed. What do they call this? Satanism? Black magic? Voodoo? He peered over his shoulder, then reached into the crib and plucked the baby out. It lay motionless in his arms. Eddie estimated the baby to be roughly a year old, but the darkness in the room shrouded its face and sex, making it difficult for him to foster any individual attributes upon it. If it hadn't been for the ripe stench of urine rising up, and the slow rise and fall of its bare belly, he might've believed he were holding a life-like doll.

  Clutching the baby under his arm like a football—a force of habit more than a protective move—Eddie stepped across the room and moved out into the hallway.

  Now he had his legs back—and it was a do or die moment, escape or be killed. He told himself to listen for the slam of the screen door, as this would be his indicator, his cue, to immediately seek out a hiding spot.

  The baby's diaper hung like a swing. He shifted his hand beneath it, the wet swell mashing against his fingers. Bitter acid rose from his stomach into his throat, and he felt a sudden urge to vomit. He swallowed his gorge, and moved across the hall to the staircase.

  Stepping into the blood, he went downstairs, one hand gripping the iron banister tightly. He reached the bottom landing, paused. The front door was ten feet ahead, across the foyer. He could see a fastened deadbolt and chain, both suggesting impassability, the keyhole a mocking eye telling him to look elsewhere for escape.

  The baby fidgeted, its head twisting, its eyes opening slightly, then closing. Looking at the baby, then toward the front door, Eddie decided not to trust his instincts this time. He moved across the foyer. Here, when he glanced around, he could see across the entire house: down the hall, through the living room, into the kitchen, and out the backdoor into the gathering darkness.

  Using his right hand, he unhooked the chain. Then, gripped the knob.

  The door didn't budge. He yanked on it more forcefully, but it was dead bolted.

  Damn!

  He would have to go out the back door. The same door the killer went through. The same door, Eddie ascertained by the blood streaks leading from the stairs to the kitchen, that the minister dragged the bodies of his wife and daughter through.

  Hinging on the stillness that seemed to offer safe passage, he secured his grip on the baby and staggered down the hall toward the living room, gazing across the length of the house toward the back door.

  Which opened.

  Osiris, I pray for your empowerment, your continued guidanc
e in my quest for ancestral afterlife. Soon, I shall join my family—oh, my family, how easily their bodies were crucified, thanks to your guidance—in the astral plane. And like Jesus Christ, who employed your magic to rise from the dead and deliver the earth from evil, we shall summon your greatness and pass on to the astral plane where we will remain together as a family for all of eternity, under your spiritual guidance, forgiven of all our sins.

  And then we, the Conroy family, will be known for an eternity as those who have risen in the spirit God's shadow. We will become Gods ourselves…

  He emerged from the darkness, into the bright light of the house. The screen door, which rested on his hip, fell away with a jarring slam.

  The baby flinched, and began to wail.

  Eddie drew back. The thud of his heart rose into his ears, nearly drowning out the baby's cries…and the rising shout of the minister as his turbulent gaze pinned Eddie.

  Eddie froze, his mind swooning with horror at what he saw…this grotesque image of a man—if you could call him that, although monster seemed a more befitting description of the thing staggering into the kitchen. He was tall and thin, with ragged hair that fell into his eyes…eyes that were wide and bloodshot amid swollen black/yellow bruises of flesh. The skin of his face, aglow beneath the kitchen light, was gore-streaked, lips spread into a ghastly grin baring dark, craggy teeth. His bare chest was covered in returned-from-the-grave filth, riddled with clotting injuries. His pants were dark with blood, and Eddie could see the familiar boots, now swathed in mud and severed blades of grass.

  "Give me my child, boy," the man growled.

  Eddie peered from side to side. There were two closed doorways in the hall, one on his left, the other to his right. I'll take what's behind door number one, he thought crazily, taking a step backwards and lining himself up with the doorknob.

  "Give him to me!" the minister barked, taking two steps forward, and it was here that Eddie saw the hammer gripped in his right fist, dripping with blood.