Dead Souls

by Michael Laimo

  Henry said glumly, "Better get some food and caffeine in ya. Gonna need your energy."

  Feeling exhausted and fatigued, these weren't the words Johnny was hoping for, but didn't argue the point. He was suddenly starved, and given the events of the day, didn't think he'd be able to sleep at all. He attacked the sandwich in silence, peering at Henry once through the tops of his eyes and seeing a man who seemed to have aged quite a bit in the last half-hour. And rightly so. I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror and beheld a stranger of eighteen going on fifty.

  A moment later, when Johnny finished the sandwich, he inquired about the man that'd picked him up.

  "Carl Davies."

  "Why'd he bring me here?"

  "Because he knows me better than anyone else in the world, Mrs. D. included." Henry took a sip of coffee, then added, "Used to be my deputy. But like myself, he's retired now."

  "Your deputy…?" Johnny's voice was slightly louder than a whisper.

  Henry nodded. "Used to be the sheriff here in Wellfield. Retired almost seventeen years, though."

  "You're not old enough to be retired that long."

  Henry rubbed a thumb along the handle of the mug. "I was thirty-eight at the time, had been the sheriff for five years." He cleared his throat, then added, "Something happened right here in Wellfield that'd not only made me step down from my sheriff's post, but also forced me devote my life to a new field of study."

  Johnny took a sip of coffee, his gaze fixed questioningly on Henry Depford.

  Henry stood from the table. "Come with me Johnny. I've got something to show you."

  Johnny rose and followed Henry through a short hall to a set of carpeted steps that creaked as they climbed to the second floor. Once in the top foyer, Henry made a left. Johnny kept close behind, noticing a closed paneled door about four feet away. Across the foyer was an open door and Johnny could see another bathroom, the synthetic stench of cherries leaching out.

  Henry stopped at the closed door. He gripped the knob, then turned toward Johnny, face was solemn, icy, and pale. "Here's where I've spent much of the last seventeen years. Here's my life's work."

  He opened the door and ushered Johnny into a study room roughly twelve by fifteen feet. Perched in the far right corner was a studiously neat pinewood desk that held a computer, a small wrought iron lamp, and a steel mesh document tray piled with notebooks. Against the walls were a series of rolling cork boards—Johnny counted seven in all—each and every one jam-packed with a wide variety of neatly-arranged documents: newspaper clippings, photographs, and scribbled notes. A floor-to-ceiling bookshelf alongside the room's only window was clogged with hard and soft-cover books. A cursory glance revealed a few titles relating to religion and the occult. Johnny couldn't help but marvel at the meticulous amount of work Henry Depford had carried out here.

  Henry shut the door behind them.

  "What is all of this?" Johnny asked, and was about to add and what does it all have to do with me? when he noticed an eerie black and white photograph on one of the display boards. He walked over to it and placed a gentle finger upon it, stomach roiling with apprehension.

  My god…

  It was a photo of him, and one from not too long ago either. It appeared to have been taken from a distance; Johnny had been looking to his left, and the photographer, screened on a street somewhere in Manhattan, had snapped the photo at the perfect moment, capturing his face.

  Johnny struck Henry Depford with a questioning glare.

  "There's many more where that came from, Johnny. I've got some so old, that you were just a toddler holding Mary Petrie's hand."

  Johnny was stunned…and yet at the same time not entirely surprised, given the situation, which had now achieved an all-new level of complexity. He blew out a deep breath, thinking, Ed and Mary really pulled the wool over my eyes on this one. This, coming from a God-fearing woman who would bring me to the doctor when I was a kid and say, 'Yes Johnny, it will hurt more than a pinprick. Plenty more in fact. But it is God's will, so be it'.

  "And I thought Andrew Judson was the only one keeping tabs on me."

  Henry grinned knowingly, obviously aware of Judson's interests in Johnny. He paced over to the bookshelf and pulled down what appeared to be a spiral-bound photo album. He handed it to Johnny.

  "Andrew Judson couldn't hold a flame to what I know about you. His motivations are purely financial. Mine run much deeper than that." He motioned to the photo album. "Go 'head. Take a look."

  Johnny opened the album and saw a picture of himself at about ten or eleven years old. He'd been standing in a crowd outside St. Michael's Church alongside Mary. It'd been the summertime because he was wearing blue slacks and a white short sleeve school shirt. Taped below the picture was a corresponding note indicating the time, date, and place the photo had been taken: July 20th, 1997. Ten AM. Johnny thumbed through the book, each page, perhaps twenty in all, displaying a single photograph of him at various ages, along with the details of its taking.

  Shaking, Johnny felt scared, petrified…and yet, in some strange way, felt secure. It was as though he'd just come face to face with a guardian angel that'd been watching out for him his entire life.

  He handed the photo album back to Depford then sat in the metal folding chair in front of the bookshelf. The cork board before him displayed a number of laminated newspaper articles, many of them yellowed with age.

  One in particular caught his eye:

  WELLFIELD MINISTER MURDERS FAMILY, LOCAL WOMAN, BOY

  Scar throbbing like a heartbeat, Johnny stood and touched the blurry black and white photo of Benjamin Conroy.

  "I was the first to arrive at the scene," Depford said, unpinning the article and handing it to Johnny. "It'd been late in the day, and I was driving home after working late because a group of local thugs had had their way with some kid…who later on, turned out to be Daniel Conroy. Your brother."

  Johnny stared mutely at Benjamin's photo.

  "I'd passed the Conroy farmhouse," Depford continued, "and noticed Bill Carlson's Red Mustang in the driveway. Now, it wasn't at all odd for Bill to loan out the car to his son Eddie—who at the time was heading into his senior year—but I did think it odd to see the car there; you see, the Conroy's kept mostly to themselves, and of course to the more generous members of Benjamin's church. And let me tell you, Bill Carlson was no advocate of Conroy's preachings."

  Gazing no further than Benjamin's photo—my family was murdered. my father murdered them, my father—Johnny absorbed every last word of Depford's story.

  "I'd had it in my mind to ring up Bill Carlson, but didn't want to cause him any alarm. If he'd been keeping an eye out for Eddie to come home, then the entire town would've been ringing my office, and I didn't want to set anyone into any sort of panic. So I'd pulled into the driveway and for a moment considered the possibility that young Eddie Carlson had been making nice with the Conroy girl, despite the improbable odds—given all the roadblocks and drawbacks of such a tryst, that didn't seem all too likely.

  "So I pulled in behind the Mustang, got out…and at once knew I was going to be in for a long night."

  "What'd you find?" he asked, handing the article back to Henry.

  Henry hesitated, then took a deep breath and said, "Your family, Johnny. And Eddie Carlson. They'd all been brutally murdered."

  Eddie felt a sudden, sharp pain in his head. Again the feather in his pocket seemed to grow warm, and his scar itched furiously. Is this a warning? He sat back down and ran a hand though his hair, then touched the sudden comfort of the feather through his jeans, which eased the burning in his scar. God, he was scared. Scared of Henry Depford. Scared of the truth held within him, the truth that upon being divulged would grip him like a dreadful fever and never let go. He wanted to avoid the pain knowing would cause, and considered for a moment fleeing the room.

  But he didn't. He couldn't. He had to know.

  "I was there when it happened, wasn't I?"


  Henry nodded.

  "How, Henry? How did he do it? And why not me?"

  Henry hesitated, then licked his lips and said, "First, Johnny, what did you see up at the Conroy House today?"

  Chapter 34

  September 9th, 2005

  12:03 AM

  Mary Petrie was driving north on I-95 at 85 miles per hour. Traffic continued to be light. She avoided being noticed by highway patrol, a stroke of good fortune credited to her 'lucky feather'. Every minute or so she would gaze over at it, with its quill tucked firmly into the tear in the seat beside her, its glossy surface wavering gently beneath the cool breeze of the air conditioner.

  While on the GW Bridge, she discovered that the van's radio didn't work—this little quirk of fate didn't bother her at all. God wants me to think about the task at hand. Save Johnny. Save Ed's dying soul. The bird was sent to me, and I have heeded its word.

  Yes, Mary was quite certain that God was close by, guiding her.

  Guiding me to Wellfield. And when I get there, God will tell me what to do. Tell me how to save Johnny, how to save Ed's dying soul.

  The van shot its way through the night, chasing its headlights through Connecticut and Rhode Island. A bit of traffic built up on the interstate around Boston, but thinned out once she headed north away from the city, where she was able to get the van moving even faster, pressing past ninety at times.

  Gonna save my family, she thought as the van crossed the Maine border, running between blurred queues of blue spruce and pine. Gonna save my family, gonna save my…

  And it was here, for the first time since leaving Manhattan, that Mary's newfound consciousness began to wane, leaving her feeling confused and unsure. She reached over to her right and grabbed the feather, trembling with sudden fear—to Mary, this was her only hope of hanging on to the false perception that had guided her this far…the false perception now struggling against the harsh surge of reality rearing its ugly head.

  Chapter 35

  September 9th, 2005

  1:05 AM

  It had taken Johnny nearly an hour and a half to relay his entire experience to Henry Depford. Henry had sat riveted as Johnny spoke, taking vigorous notes and asking frequent questions, sometimes getting up and pacing nervously about the room. As anticipated, Henry had been particularly interested in Johnny's after-death confrontations with the psycho and Judson. Twice Henry had asked if Johnny was undeniably firm of his certainty, but Johnny vehemently reassured Henry of his conviction. Henry had nodded both times, fully trusting in a piece of evidence that anyone else in their right mind would interpret as some screwball delusion.

  "You're lucky to have found me, Johnny."

  "You found me, Henry."

  Henry leaned forward, then, whispering as though trying to hide their conversation from Mrs. D., said, "Here in Wellfield, like anyplace else, most things run as nature intends them to. But…and I've spent the last seventeen years studying Benjamin Conroy, his history, his studies, and I can say with the very same conviction as you, that all things surrounding Benjamin Conroy's legacy do not run with any sort of natural guidance. There's another force at play here, one we cannot see or feel or hear, but it is powerful and it is there, strongly influencing all those with a hand in its doing. Johnny…it is influencing us right now. Yes, we may have found each other—and it may very well have been by accident—but it knows we're in this together at the moment."

  For a second, Henry appeared to Johnny like a raving madman, and if not for the detailed presentation in the room, Johnny might have thought him a victim of a sick and injured mind. But Johnny, despite the mass of confusion besetting him, was able to see beyond the surface—Henry Depford was in fact a brilliant, albeit obsessive man, who knew more about him than anyone. More than Andrew Judson. Even more than Mary Petrie. And to Johnny, madman or not, that was all that mattered right now.

  Nodding, Johnny stated, "I've told you everything. Now it's your turn. What did you find when you got to the house?"

  "Blood," Henry answered without hesitation. "A trail of it, leading from the house all the way to the barn out back."

  "The barn…" Johnny uttered, a cold shudder marching along his spine. Nausea pitted his stomach. He closed his eyes, remembering…

  A gust of hot stinking air bounding up from below…a chorus of whispering voices ascending from the whirlpool of darkness. Touching me! Penetrating me! Tasting my soul! Their souls…now free of the ghostly wooden crosses doused in blood, free of the four bodies crucified upon them, free of the pleading eyes chasing me as I drift into the gloom…

  "What is it Johnny?"

  Johnny shook his head. He pinched his cheeks and gazed at Henry. "Nothing…please, please, go on."

  Henry eyed Johnny suspiciously, then continued. "I'd thought I'd heard some voices coming from the barn, and given the blood, well, I ran over to it like a bat out of hell. When I reached the barn, I allowed myself a few seconds to say a prayer, then drew my gun and spun inside.

  "The first thing I saw was an odd occult-like painting on the ground. There was some charred remains in the middle of it, plus a shattered full-length mirror on a pivot stand. I saw the bloody trail which continued toward the rear of the barn. Slowly, I walked alongside it…and that was when I heard a groan. It was that of a woman. There'd been a wall of hay bales stacked up beneath the loft that'd concealed the back portion of the barn. One row had been pulled down. I walked toward the opening, paused for a moment to mentally prepare myself for the worst, then went through it."

  Henry hesitated.

  "Henry?" Johnny said. "What did you find?"

  But Johnny already knew. Four human bodies crucified upon wooden crosses…

  "Hell…"

  It's the entire family, all of them. Benjamin Conroy. Faith Conroy. And their kids, Daniel and Elizabeth. They've been…crucified. Oh God! There are four wooden crosses, each one crudely sized to fit each family member's body. There's a fifth cross. It's maybe two feet tall: just the perfect size to fit a baby…but there's no baby on this cross…it's…it's…oh god, my heart is slamming, my head is spinning, the air is thick and there's an acrid stench assaulting my nose…dear Jesus, what's going on here?

  "That tiny cross," Johnny said. "It was meant for me, wasn't it?"

  Henry nodded. "But Benjamin couldn't get to you, so he crucified the family dog instead."

  Sickened, Johnny blew out gush of air.

  Henry stared at Johnny, eyes welling with tears, and continued…

  I can't move, my legs are paralyzed with fear, and it takes my tortured mind a few moments to realize that they're all still alive! Benjamin. Faith. Their kids. And the dog too. I can't possibly see how—they've sustained injuries that no human could ever live through. Stab wounds, gougings, harsh beatings—the damn boy has been disemboweled! Yet, here they are, writhing on these wooden crosses, moaning, each and every goddamned one of them grasping at the nails driven into their hands and feet. It appears they have no idea I am here watching them, just feet away, near death myself from fear, from shock, from pure mental anguish. Oh dear lord, there…there is so…much…blood…"

  Tears welled in Johnny's eyes. He asked, "Where was I, Henry?" but Henry seemed not to hear him. The man's gloomy eyes were swollen with tears and unsympathetic memories...

  It's only after a number of endless minutes pass that I realize I am still holding my gun. I point it forward, at no one Conroy in particular, knowing suddenly through the promise of insanity that by shooting them, I wouldn't be taking them out of their miseries. No. These people have already died. And like some mockery of Christ's magnificent legend, they have risen from the dead.

  Johnny nodded, gazing forlornly at the aging man who was tortured by his dark recollections. "Like Judson, and the psycho."

  And I can only assume that it has something to do with the occultist painting on the ground. Jesus, they're all groaning, these condemned-to-hell monsters, bleeding…bleeding and hanging like slabs of meat in a sla
ughterhouse. Jesus, there is no plausible way for me to describe the scene, with the blood and the human innards amassing on the ground below each of them. It is here I begin to wonder who could have done this to them, but my guesswork lasts for only a moment, because Benjamin Conroy says something…

  "What, Henry? What did he say?"

  I bullet my gaze forward and see the elder Conroy staring at me with his only seeing eye, and he is grimacing, and I step over to him and see that he is different from the others. He…he has not experienced death yet. His injuries are brutal, but unlike the others his chest is heaving and I can hear a sickly wheeze escaping his lungs. Somehow he has lived through it all. With an obscene tearing sound, he manages to shred an arm free from the crucifix, the nail once planted firmly through his palm still set deeply into the wood. Blood spouts from his torn palm onto the ground. But it seems not to pain him. Dizzied, I pace to within inches of him, and ask, "What has happened here, Benjamin?" and he replies in a blood-saturated croak, "I was wrong," and then begins to sob, and it is at this moment I can only stare and begin to step back because I am wondering if this is something that may affect me somehow, not just psychologically, but communicably as well. And then Benjamin howls, "Don't let them come back! I was tricked. It was not Osiris! It was not Osiris!"

  "Osiris…" Johnny, keeping his eyes on Henry, dug into his pocket and pulled out the plastic bag containing Ed's suicide note. He plucked the note from the bag, but before he had a chance to show it to Henry, the man continued on…

  "Who?" I ask through the rising moans of the others, whom are now aware of my presence. Benjamin Conroy looks over at his family: Faith, Elizabeth, and Daniel, all of them moaning like mad, and he appears stricken with unfathomable grief, his free arm reaching toward them but unable to gather their attention. "Benjamin, who is this Osiris you're referring to?" I ask again, but the man is quickly dying, his body slumped, one arm still securely nailed upon the cross, his other dangling slackly. I lean in and hear him croak: "I was wrong…evil had me…don't let them come back," but it appears there is no way to heed his command. Or…is there? Instinctually, I take aim with my gun, twelve inches from Faith Conroy's head. "Is this what you want, Conroy?" I shout, and with every last bit of strength left in his dying body, he nods. So, without hesitation or the wits to consider the gravity of my actions, I pull the trigger. The woman's head explodes. There's a screech like no sound I've ever heard before, like the howl of a jackal with its leg ensnared in a steel-jawed trap, and then a gush of foul air springs up and hits me like a tangible force and nearly knocks me over. I stagger back, bulleting my gaze over at dying Benjamin who again nods weakly, informing me to carry out the dreadful deed upon his children…his children, with their slit throats and their gutted midsections and skins of glistening blood; his children, who in their living-deaths can see and somehow understand their demises are close, and are now jerking and bucking crazily upon the crucifixes, screaming monstrously, trying to get down. In a quick, no-thought succession, I plant bullets in each of their heads, and what follows is a storm of ghostly howls and blackened winds that stink of burning sulfur and rotting vegetables. It grabs me and throws me to the ground. I crawl to my knees and wait amid the storm until it fades, leaving Benjamin and I gasping in the dreadful silence. Shivering in sudden coldness, I struggle to my feet and move to unfetter Benjamin, but he resists by saying: "The baby…in the basement."