Dead Souls

by Michael Laimo

  Then, as if nothing at all happened, she placed her bag on Ed's lap and wheeled him out into the hallway, stopping only once to feel out the soft, ephemeral comfort of the feather in her pocket.

  Chapter 31

  September 8th, 2005

  10:04 PM

  Guided only by the moonlight, Johnny sought refuge in the night's unfamiliar embrace. His legs moved and his arms pumped. A giddiness roiled in his head, that of exhaustion, fatigue, and pain.

  At some point he questioned whether he still existed on earth as he'd always known it, if he were still breathing its air and consuming its lively resources. Then he wondered if he existed in some other plane of reality now, where fires burned and the dead walked the earth, seeking retribution upon those cast here by some higher authority.

  There is no God, Mary. There is no God…

  The dark road he traveled was endless, bounded on both sides by fields of wheat and rustling weeds. Beyond, an unending symphony of crickets filled the air, drowning out the likelihood of hearing footsteps on the road left behind.

  After endless minutes, a sound encroached on his faltering consciousness: a car engine. A wash of bright light opened out on the road, pinning him like a prison escapee.

  Johnny didn't try to stop. He continued running at a slow, staggering pace, his eyes searching the road ahead, its emptiness illuminated by the approaching car lights. As if compelled by some unseen force, he lurched to the roadside and waited for the car to pass. In his pocket, the plastic bags holding the feather and Ed's note seemed to shift slightly.

  Yes, and dead people are coming back to life. And if I turn around, there might not be a car behind me after all. I am losing my mind...

  But there was a car. It drew up beside him, soil and pebbles crunching grittily beneath its tires. On the verge of hyperventilation, Johnny halted and leaned with his hands on his knees.

  The car stopped, engine idling. Johnny could hear the passenger window go down, and when he looked to the side, he saw the bulk of a red sedan.

  A voice emerged: "Hey…you all right?"

  In Johnny's mind: It depends…are you dead or alive? Feeling as though he were drifting in and out of reality, he peered into the car, listening to the crickets and the gentle rumble of the car's engine. If Andrew Judson leaps out of this car at me, I'll drop dead, right here in the goddamned road. And then who knows? Maybe I'll come back to life too. But it wasn't Andrew Judson. Or the psycho. In the picture of moonlight and broken shadows before him, a man—one very much alive with no guts or blood on his clothes—leaned across the seat. He was old, pushing sixty, with a gray moustache and a Red Sox cap on his head. The skin of his face was a white patch beneath the brim.

  "You okay, kid?" he asked, visibly scrutinizing Johnny's soiled clothes.

  Johnny shook his head. "No." His voice was a pained whisper, and in this moment of sudden lucidity, it all came back to him again, like a ghastly flicker of bright light: the dead men seeking him, calling after him: Brother…

  I feel like I've gone crazy, he thought. Oh God, do I ever. And no matter what I do, what choices I make for the remainder of my life, I will never be able to release the terrible images I've seen. They will go on and on in my mind, frame by frame, hurting me forever and ever…

  "Are you hurt?" the man asked, brow furrowed. "Do you need to go to the hospital?"

  "I…I don't know…"

  More than likely, the man was well aware that Johnny was a stranger in these parts, and despite Johnny's victimized condition, was probably assuming him guilty of some major wrongdoing.

  "What's your name, son?" the man asked. Johnny saw him lean over and open the glove compartment. He figured the man might be retrieving a weapon of some sort—something to protect him should the strange boy in the road get unruly.

  "You got a name?" the man asked again, bringing his gaze back up.

  Johnny nodded and opened his mouth to speak…but what leaped off his tongue didn't coincide with the intentions of his mind. No, what emerged from his trembling lips was the name that had sourced all the terror inflicted upon him and his family since Judson's letter arrived in the mail two days earlier.

  "Conroy…"

  The man froze. His eyes, studying Johnny intently now, narrowed with immediate uncertainty. A defining moment of silence passed between them, forcing Johnny to realize that this encounter may very well extend far beyond their simple exchange of words.

  "Conroy…" the man replied, sighing nervously.

  Johnny nodded gravely, uncertain as to what compelled him to utter that name. Perhaps it's the evil that's been following me around since this all started. It made Ed kill himself, made Judson and the psycho come back from the dead. Who's to say it won't make me say things I don't mean?

  And then the man muttered, "Bryan Conroy," as if his knowledge of Johnny's presence had blossomed long before driving down this dark road. He leaned across the seat and opened the door. The dome light came on, igniting the man's elderly features. "Get in."

  Johnny hesitated, at once uncertain if he should get in the car or flee into the tall growths off the side of the road; it didn't take long for him to realize that, despite his injured mind, there'd be no murdered people back from the dead inside the car, and only heaven knew what waited for him deep in the darkness of Wellfield's farms. Grabbing the window frame, he slid into the car and pulled the door shut…then brought his gaze around and faced the man.

  Indeed, the man had retrieved a weapon from the glove compartment: a large hunting knife. It lay across his lap, sheathed in leather. But he didn't seem all that concerned with using it. Instead, he regarded Johnny for a moment and plucked a cell phone from his waist.

  "Give me a minute, okay?"

  Johnny nodded. His scar itched and throbbed, as if warning him of some future horror.

  The man dialed the phone and placed it to his ear. With his free hand he shifted the car into drive and started down the road. In a true northeastern inflection, he spoke: "Henry? Phil. Evening. Don't mean to be botherin' ya at this late hour, but…well, I have a young man here in my car. Found him wandering around about on Brunswick Road, 'bout a half mile from the old Conroy place. Yep, that's right. Looks like he's been through the war, too. And Henry…he's telling me his name is Conroy. Yep. Bryan Conroy. Uh, I'd say about eighteen, nineteen tops. So, I figured I'd call you first before bringing him down to Sheriff Steven's—"

  The man nodded, then added, "Okay then, we'll be there in five minutes."

  He clipped the phone back onto his belt, shifting his girth as he did so. "I'm gonna bring you over to see someone."

  "Who?" Johnny asked. A wave of lightheadedness struck him from out of nowhere; his breaths quickened, and he had to clutch his chest. Anxiety attack, inherited form Mary…no, wait, Mary is not my mother. Some other woman named…named Conroy is my mother. Oh God!

  "Someone who's going to help you."

  "Help me…"

  "Someone who's been expecting you."

  His heart started pounding furiously. Huge goosebumps formed on his arms. Now his lightheadedness grew into a stupor. Numbness gripped his body: an equal combination of shock and lethargy racing in. His head bobbed forward as if tethered with strings, and a fibrous grayness seeped into his sights. He drifted toward it...

  And in his swoon saw himself back in the barn, at the bottom of the broken steps, staring into the darkness and seeing five makeshift crucifixes jutting crookedly from the hard ground. Nailed upon them were the bodies of a man, a woman, a young girl, a boy, and…something else on the smallest one, not a human...and they were all alive, staring at him with their bulging eyes and bloody faces, calling for him to join in their quest…he tried to pull away but all of a sudden a gray shadow limb oozed out of the darkness and latched onto his arm…

  He screamed.

  Jolted up.

  Looked around.

  The car was stopped and his door was open. Another man about the same age as the one who p
icked him up was gripping him gently by the arm.

  "It's okay, it's okay, I'm here to help."

  Johnny gasped, his mind rolling crazily. Dead men, coming after me! He licked his cracked lips with his dry tongue. The fibrous grayness that had taken him down squirmed in and out of his sights. His shirt was torn, bunched up around his neck.

  "My name is Henry Depford, and I'm here to help you."

  Johnny nodded, unable to wrestle the images from his mind. Dead men, walking, coming after me! He took a few deep breaths in an effort to beat back the stupor, then struggled to his feet and followed the man's lead. Nausea filled his gut (which he instinctively pulled his shirt back down over), and he thought he was going to throw up, but it quickly passed. Both men helped him along a short walkway toward a house with a bright yellow porch light. Bugs flitted about the light in droves.

  "You just come with me," the man said, leading Johnny up the porch steps. "You'll be safe here."

  Safe! Safe! Safe from the dead men coming after me!

  Brother…

  The man, Henry, showed Johnny into a living room with two blue plaid sofas and a planked wood floor that glowed richly. The cool clean air inside was refreshing, making him feel a little more connected to the world…a world where only kind living people existed.

  He gazed forward and noticed a woman standing in the entrance to a kitchen. She had auburn hair and bright blue eyes that gazed at Johnny from behind a pair of wire-frame glasses. She wore a bathrobe with an embroidery of a rose on it. In her hands was a wooden rolling pin, the lack of an appetizing aroma leading Johnny to assume it as a prospective tool for defense. Indeed, she didn't look all too pleased to have a filthy stranger invading the privacy of her home

  "Don't just stand there, Teresa," Henry said. "Get him some water."

  The woman grimaced and disappeared into the kitchen. The two men eased Johnny down into a chair alongside a small round table. Johnny gazed up at the two men, both of them pacing and fidgeting, seemingly impatient for the woman to return with a glass of water. Soon enough, she did, and she handed it to her husband, who then gave it to Johnny.

  "Drink up, my boy. Mrs. D. will fix you something to eat—you must be hungry."

  Johnny drank the glass of water, and Teresa—Mrs. D.—was there to refill it, albeit tentatively. He looked around the room. Straight ahead, a needlepoint tapestry of a barn—a barn—hung on the wall above an antique Hi-Fi stereo. On the right stood a breakfront overflowing with ceramic farm animals.

  "Please…what's going on here?" he asked.

  "We were fixing to ask you the same thing," Henry said, regarding Johnny with what appeared to be deep fascination. "Are you hurt?"

  Dead men, coming after me…

  Johnny shook his head. "A few bumps and bruises…" He took another sip of water, wondering if he should compromise this moment of security with his story of men coming back from the dead. Instead, in a decision to maintain a pretense of sanity, said, "Something terrible is happening."

  Henry nodded grimly. "I know."

  Johnny gazed up at Henry, realizing now with dismay that whatever in God's name was going on, it was far from over. In fact, it was probably just beginning. And that scared him…scared him in a way that was both perplexing and certain, as if he were in a dream, standing naked in the center of a busy intersection, conscious of what to do, but incapable of doing it.

  Henry added, "We'll get you washed up, get some food into you, and then we'll talk about everything that's been going on, okay Bryan?"

  Johnny sipped the water, then responded, "Johnny…my name's Johnny Petrie."

  Henry hesitated. For a moment he looked at the man who drove Johnny over, then back at Johnny.

  "But…" Johnny added, "I am Bryan Conroy."

  Henry nodded insightfully, lips pursed. "You look just like your father."

  "So I've been told."

  Henry kneeled down on one knee and placed a gentle hand on Johnny's thigh. At once, Johnny felt a cautionary tightness in his chest, which he countered with a long, deep breath. "Johnny," Henry said, "I'm gonna need to hear everything that's happened to you. It'll help me decide what to do next, although I do have an inkling as to what lies in the road ahead." He paused, then added, "I'm going to need your help, son. Can you help me?"

  Of course Johnny didn't know what to make of the situation. Common sense told him that he should insist on a ride to the nearest bus station and get the hell out of Wellfield, now and forever…but his heart told him otherwise. There was something evil at play here—he'd become well aware of it upon first entering the house with Andrew Judson. It had invaded his home back in Manhattan, and had made itself known through Judson and the psycho. And more than likely, it would follow him home should he decide to leave.

  He gazed at Henry's pleading gray eyes, his wrinkled skin. The man really did seem genuine in his intentions to help, despite having unspecified motives.

  Johnny nodded, seeing no alternative at this point but to submit himself to the niceties being offered. Trembling with fear and uncertainty, he said, "I'll help you, but please, tell me…what the hell is going on here?"

  Seeming both nervous and secretly pleased, Henry smiled. "Okay."

  Chapter 32

  September 8th, 2005

  10:29 PM

  Fatefully easy.

  That's how the journey from the third-floor hallway to the sidewalk was for Mary Petrie. She hadn't run into anyone inside, and just as she'd assumed, the pedestrians outside did nothing more than wrinkle their noses at the strange odor in the air. Yes, they'd all shot their gazes around and even eyed the swaddled, wheelchair-bound man wearing sunglasses and a pea-cap, but soon moved on (although Mary was almost certain they'd had their suspicions, especially the elderly man who started gagging out loud), perhaps blaming the stink on garbage or dog crap or dead rats buried in some nearby sewer. Even Mary, whose newfound consciousness interpreted Ed's rotting state as 'natural', had imagined it would take a few good applications of bleach to rid the building's elevator of its nearly visible stench.

  She used the remote on the driver's key to open the sliding side-panel door of the mini-van. Set into the frame of the door alongside a universal handicap logo was a red, quarter-sized button. She pressed it, leaving a wet smear of blood on it, and with a mechanical whir, an automatic lift slid out and dropped to the sidewalk. She rolled the wheelchair onto it, back-stepped into the van, and pressed the button again. The platform rose back up.

  She pulled the chair in the van and anchored the wheels to the braces in the floor; there were no rear seats at all, affording enough room for four wheelchairs if needed. Once the second wheel was locked in place, she settled in behind the wheel of the van, where she stared at her dead, sunglassed husband in the rearview mirror, while gasping from all the activity.

  Don't you worry, Ed. I'm taking you to see Johnny. He's at the house. That's right, the same house we're going to save your dying soul at. There'll be no short stops, no reunions. We'll just do what we have to do, and then we'll get Johnny and leave. And be rest assured, he'll be getting the whuppin' of his life when we get back home.

  She started the van, but before leaving, removed the feather from her pocket and tucked its quill into a slit in the passenger seat beside her. Help me guide the way, she implored in thought, then pulled away from the building she and Ed and Johnny had lived in for the last seventeen years, blending into all the sights and sounds of the city, just as she had upon leaving the hospital.

  Twenty minutes later, long after she’d caught her breath and made certain that Ed's chair wasn't going anywhere, she was driving in light traffic on the George Washington Bridge, looking for signs to Interstate 95 which would take her north, all the way to Wellfield, Maine.

  And not once did she consider that, up until this moment, she'd never driven a car before.

  Chapter 33

  September 8th, 2005

  10:56 PM

  The shower in the Depfo
rd home was hot and strong. For nearly twenty minutes, Johnny scrubbed himself from head to toe, making certain to rid himself of every speck of Wellfield taint. Teresa—Mrs. D. as she was so cordially referred to—was kind enough to place his clothes in the trash; he'd emptied his pockets of the plastic bag containing the feather (and struggled to remember as to why he felt the need to keep it, but couldn't come up with a sensible answer, although the thought of ridding himself of it left him feeling scared and sick and hollow), and Ed's final note,

  (OSIRIS)

  plus the now infamous letter from Andrew Judson, which having gone through a war of sorts, looked much older than its date indicated. While toweling off and quickly dressing himself in Henry Depford's clothes (the pants given to him were a bit too big, but Johnny still had his belt and was able to fasten them around his waist), he shuddered at the cruel fact that Judson had essentially waited around for eighteen years to get murdered, and, as it would turn out, come back from the dead.

  Come back from the dead? That couldn't be. It just isn't possible. Yet…I saw them die with my very own eyes. Judson. The psycho. Both of them. I KILLED THE PSYCHO MYSELF.

  But wouldn't Mary have argued that Jesus rose from the dead? So, then, why not these men?

  Dead men, coming after me…

  Brother…

  Massaging his head with the towel, Johnny shook the harrowing thought from his mind. He tucked the plastic bags and Judson's letter in his pocket and exited the bathroom.

  At once he smelled the aroma of fresh coffee brewing, and upon reaching the dining room, found Henry Depford sitting at the small round table sipping from a small mug. Johnny sat at the table across from Henry, and Mrs. D. appeared from the kitchen with a sandwich and mug filled with black coffee.