Dead Souls

by Michael Laimo

  Johnny, paralyzed with fear and uncertainty, remained standing. He kept looking back at the moving blood puddle; at the filth-encrusted window; then, at the sitting room doors which were still opened from when the psycho leaped out and stabbed Andrew Judson with the garden spade.

  "Johnny, please," Henry said urgently. "Come sit before me and take my hands." Henry held his hands out, palms facing up, the pouch of nails hanging from his wrist like a carcass from a tree limb. In the dim light, Johnny could see a queue of thick bleeding calluses just below his flexing fingers. Johnny shook his head and drew back, afraid to come any closer. Tears ran from his eyes, cutting across the thin layer of dust that had settled on his cheeks.

  From the kitchen came a rattling sound at the back door.

  Henry pinned Johnny with a severe glance, lips and eyes now drawn with anxiety and fear. "Now, Johnny! Come here now!"

  Outside, the breeze picked up and shook the cloudy panes of the room's only window. Johnny bulleted a glance toward the window and glimpsed a pallid shadow stirring just beyond the grimy surface. Interchanging swells of coldness and warmth swept through him. He ran his hands through his hair, suddenly sick to his stomach. He tried to step away, but his legs and feet were numb with fear.

  Without notice, Henry leaped up and grabbed hold of Johnny's wrists. The man's fierce, abrupt hold startled Johnny. They locked gazes for a split moment, and then Henry, face strained and pale, collapsed back down, pulling Johnny down with him…right on top of the wooden crucifix planks.

  Bryan Conroy, save our dying souls…

  Johnny whimpered in pain, in shock. He made a weak attempt to pull away, but Henry had him good and tight. The sick feeling in Johnny's stomach turned to nausea, and there was a thought in his mind that he might throw up right in Henry's lap.

  The door in the kitchen rattled louder. The moving shadow at the window began clawing against the panes. Somewhere outside, Johnny heard a muffled banging, like an incessant fist against an impassable door.

  Thump…thump…thump…

  Henry closed his eyes, and in near-silence, began to pray. He was still gripping Johnny's wrists with both hands, pulling them now into his chest. All the noises just beyond the walls of the house grew louder, closer, setting a violent fear into Johnny more potent than the fear he'd experienced upon confronting the living-dead men. The living-dead men, he thought madly. They're coming after me again! And it came to him suddenly that there'd be four of them now, and that if all four of the Conroy souls had finally tracked down recently deceased bodies to inhabit, then two more people he knew—had had some association with—had been killed.

  Johnny made another attempt to pull away from Henry, but the man had him fettered in an unforgiving grasp. At that moment, Henry began to utter a wheezing sound—it carried in it some odd foreign language, one Johnny didn't recognize at all. Henry's eyelids shot open, divulging wet, bloodshot whites. His mouth dropped, and a white-coated tongue perched out. Urine stained the front of his pants in a sudden, dark patch. His grip tightened painfully upon Johnny's wrists.

  Somewhere in the house, glass shattered.

  Johnny startled. In a panic, he whispered, "Henry! They're here!"

  But Henry didn't hear him—the man was buried in some type of powerful trance. His face was ashy-gray, lips trembling, eyes twisted up into their sockets. Huge beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. There was a banging sound in the room and Johnny twisted his head toward the window, where the looming shadow was striking against the grimy panes. One of the panes shattered, and a bloody, wasted hand clawed through, the fingers swollen and creaky, flexing blindly in the air.

  In a heightened panic now, Johnny struggled to pull and jerk away from Henry's powerful grasp. Henry, responding with a tighter grip that rattled the nails in the pouch, continued producing incoherent mumbling sounds.

  Until, suddenly, one intelligible word whispered out amid all the garblings: "Eddie…"

  Somewhere in the house, another window shattered. The clawing hand at the dining room window hacked away at the rotted frame, causing the paned glass to collapse inward. It dangled over the sill, scraping against the water-stained wall like a wind-torn branch. Strangled moans leached in from outside and assaulted Johnny's ears like a fatal virus. A second deadly, festering hand bludgeoned its way inside. Henry yanked hard on Johnny's wrists, digging them into his torso. Johnny tore his horrified gaze away from the thing in the window, looking not at the convulsing Henry, nor the doorway to the room where the sounds of dragging footsteps approached, but to the pool of blood on the floor…Andrew Judson's blood that now bubbled and rippled as though something was surfacing from its depths.

  "What the hell…" Johnny uttered, but his words were cut off by Henry's sudden, violent choking fit, his convulsing body. Johnny attempted to stand, and managed to climb to his knees, but Henry wouldn't allow him to withdraw any further. Johnny shot a gaze back to the blood on the floor and watched with gross fascination as the undulations began to branch out from the jagged periphery like meandering trickles of water along the surface of a windshield.

  They seemed to be forming letters.

  "Henry!" Johnny shouted, pinging his gaze back to the window. The bloated hands were gripping the sill. There was a moist, squashing sound. Rivulets of congealed blood and yellow matter trickled down the wall and dangling glass. Then, Andrew Judson's dead face appeared from the pool of darkness beyond the frame. It was white and swollen and streaked with blood. The hair was a muddy and matted mess. His eyes, although coated milky-white, sparkled with wicked intelligence and consciousness.

  Johnny's chest hitched, and finally he screamed. It broke the trance Henry was in, at least partially—just enough for Johnny to break away from the man's strapping grasp. He climbed to his feet and backpedaled toward the entrance of the room, gazing at Henry who in his half-stupor was fumbling for the gun in his lap.

  Johnny gazed back at the blood, at the twisting, veiny streaks that were indeed forming letters along the edge of the puddle. He couldn't make them out in the darkness. "Henry! The blood! Look!"

  Henry looked quickly. He narrowed his eyes, but his shrugging shoulders and shaking head told Johnny that he didn't see anything other than blood on the floor.

  In his peripheral vision, Johnny saw a flicker of movement to his left.

  He whirled, and saw them, standing in the entrance to the room. His parents. His dead parents. Ed and Mary Petrie.

  Stunned into a new level of fear and disbelief, Johnny staggered back. He tripped over his own feet and thudded down on his rear. An explosive jolt of pain burst across his lower back, and his breath corkscrewed in his lungs. The familiar invading grayness that had assaulted him earlier seeped back into his sights, reacquainting him with semi-consciousness. Yet, in spite of everything, he was still able to clamber back against the moldy mattress, all the while gawking incredulously across the blurring vista toward the two monsters that had once been his parents. He wondered with shock and dismay as to how they managed to get to Wellfield—and what had happened to them in the process.

  Ed killed himself. But Mary?

  Mary. As she stepped into the flashlight's beam, Johnny could tell that she hadn't died that long ago. Unlike Ed and Judson, she still retained most of her facial features, despite having turned a pale blue color. Her hair was Einstein wild, infused with bits of hay and dead grass. Her mud-spattered dress was torn open and her pale-flattened breasts pendulated as she shuffled into the room. Both she and Ed carried with them an unbearable stench (Ed more so, Johnny thought absurdly), like a heap of dead fish turned to chum-sludge beneath a hot summer sun.

  Mary's mouth dropped open. Thick black fluid oozed jelly-like from it as she croaked: "Son."

  So here was the soul of either Faith Conroy, or Benjamin Conroy himself, free after seventeen years of otherworldly confinement to retrieve its son's soul, so the family could commence toward their goal of ancestral afterlife. Johnny remembered what Henry had
said, It's a false guise, set up by the evil for its own self-seeking purpose, and felt a strange sense of pity for them, despite their intentions to kill him. They're intending to kill me because…because they love me, and want me to be with them.

  To his right, Andrew Judson was battling his way into the room, fighting with the broken panes. He was completely naked, his torso a vacuous pit gaping blackly like a huge opened mouth. His legs were caked with dried blood, gristle, and debris. Henry pointed the gun at Judson, but his eyes were aimed at Ed and Mary Petrie, the gaping expression on his face one of mixed bewilderment and fear. Henry knew who these two dead people were (having spent many years keeping tabs on Johnny), and was just as baffled as Johnny as to how they ended up here in Wellfield, as dead as Andrew Judson.

  Johnny, swallowing a scream, climbed to his feet, but through his obscured vision saw no clear path out of the room. Ed and Mary were blocking the entrance, Judson the window. He fixed his sights upon the sitting room doors twenty feet away, but all too late now: Mrs. D. was there, clawing mindlessly at the jamb with her sideways head and vertical mouth chomping back and forth, whispering, "Brother."

  Andrew Judson twisted his neck toward Johnny. It made a rusty hinge-like sound. He moaned, "Brother."

  In unison, both Ed and Mary Petrie, their voices deep and whistling, uttered, "Son…"

  Johnny took a shaky step forward, keeping himself a fair distance from all the living-dead Conroys. He fixed his eyes for a split moment on the blood puddle. He could see the meandering lines now, branching out from the jagged circumference to form two words, and they read:

  Fifth Nail

  "Henry!" Johnny shouted, pointing. "The blood! Look!" His heart was pounding so fast now that he couldn't discern the individual beats, and he thought for certain that it would explode any moment.

  Henry, trying to look everywhere at once, fired the gun at Andrew Judson. The bullet entered his gouged midsection and exited out his back, punching a hole in the wall behind him. Plaster and dust flew everywhere.

  But it didn't stop him.

  "Jesus Christ!" Henry shouted in a panic, firing the gun again, this time tearing out a hole in Judson's neck. Judson collapsed down on the ground, flailing like an upturned cockroach. A gush of ichor, as black as oil, oozed out from his neck onto the floor.

  Johnny shouted, "Fifth nail. It says fifth nail!" His skin seemed to ripple beneath his clothes upon uttering the words.

  Henry made a gagging noise, his eyes locking with Johnny's. "Where Johnny? Where does it say that?"

  Johnny felt a clear and unmistakable frustration rise in him. He turned, and his eyes locked with Ed and Mary's eyes. Almost instantly he sensed the true feelings of the souls within the rotting husks of the couple who had raised him. He sensed that they were hurting, had suffered terribly all these years, trapped amid the domain of some terrible evil force that had come to them with promises of blissful eternity. They'd been taken for fools, even after death, and despite having obtained their just desserts for playing with evil's fire, had in truth wished for nothing more than to bring their final blood with them into the afterlife.

  Johnny shouted again, "It says 'fifth nail'! It must be a message, from Eddie! In the blood!"

  "Eddie didn't come!" Henry shouted, now glancing despondently at his living-dead wife, still clawing at the doorway to the sitting room. Unexpectedly, Henry spun around, face drawn with hatred and anger. He pointed the gun at Ed Petrie, and fired. It punched a fist-sized hole into his chest. A shower of bloody gristle sprayed the wall behind him like sauce on a stovetop. Ed staggered back and collapsed down, arms and legs drumming out odd rhythms upon the dusty wood floor. His head, having been nearly severed, rolled to the side, exposing a ghastly white strip of spine.

  Johnny jerked his gaze toward the blood. The letters were still there, as dark as the puddle itself now. "Eddie did come, you said his name, and there's his message!" He pointed to the puddle.

  Henry cried, "I can't see it!"

  "It's there, god damn it! It says fifth nail!" he screamed, then, huffing and puffing and on the verge of passing out, added, "What…what in hell does it mean Henry?" There was a flicker of movement to his right. He spun. Mary was perhaps six feet away from him…and approaching. She uttered, "Son," and held her arms out toward Johnny. Her mouth fell open and a black, craggy tongue lolled out.

  Henry pointed the gun at her, and fired. The bullet hit her in the skull, just above her left ear. The top of her head exploded, leaving behind an open cavity that displayed her dead brain like a walnut in a broken shell. She staggered back and tripped over Ed, who was struggling to his feet. She crumpled down alongside him, her dress hiked up to her waist, exposing paste-white legs that disappeared into blood-stained bloomers.

  "It's a myth!" Henry cried out, more to himself than to Johnny. He was waving the gun around in an erratic semi-circle, geared to fire at any approaching ghoul. His head jerked back and forth as he yammered: "Th-there were f-five nails crafted for Christ's execution, n-not four…the fifth nail…it was meant to pierce his heart…but the gypsies, they hid the fifth nail from the Romans…they were p-punished by God for prolonging Christ's suffering!" He paused, seemingly deep in sudden thought. His head stopped jerking. "My g-good god…it m-makes sense, yes it does! The fifth nail…it ends all suffering!" He kept waving the gun in a wide arc, joggling it up and down as if it were too heavy to hold. He looked like a raving lunatic in the shadowy darkness, eyes wide and wild and bulging. "The Conroy souls are dying," he said, pointing at each ghoul with the gun. "If they succeed in gathering your soul, then they will end up as dead souls in Hell! We must save their dying souls and pierce their hearts! It is the only way!"

  Mrs. D, who to this moment had been wavering without moving in the entrance to the sitting room, shouted abruptly, "Son!" then leapt across the room toward Henry like a lion pouncing a gazelle.

  Henry, fumbling to remove the pouch of nails from his wrist, never saw her coming. Johnny shouted "HENRY!", but all too late. Her hands swung up like grappling hooks and closed around his neck.

  Johnny, who'd been keeping his eyes on dead Mrs. D. all along, had never assumed she'd be able to move more rapidly than her brethren, especially given her wrecked state. Now she had a choke-hold on Henry and was attempting to kill him with her dead-bloated hands. Her arms pumped back and forth like pistons. Her head rolled forward and around like a pendulum, the open gash on her neck making fart-like sounds with every revolution.

  Johnny, frozen with fear and loathing, moved to leap forward, but a hand reached out and closed around his ankle. It startled him so much that he lost his balance and collapsed to the floor. He looked over his shoulder and saw: it was Mary, his husk of a mother with her stained rag of a dress and shattered-open head. She was crawling on top of him, grinning, yellow teeth glinting in the shadows. "Sonnnnn", she croaked, exposed brains gleaming wetly. Johnny looked at the soft pulpy tissue there and saw little black worms squirming on the watery surface.

  "Saaaaaave my dyyyyying soul, Bryaaaaan…"

  Johnny tried to scream. A surge of black dread rolled over him, and he had the odd sensation that he was finally dying—as if his soul were being sucked into the twisting storm of hellfire trying to drag him down. A second hand grabbed him, this one on his thigh; pain lanced up his leg like a poke from an electric prod. A third hand locked onto his wrist, brutally strong despite missing two fingers. He twisted his head forward and saw Andrew Judson's face, just inches from his own. The dead lawyer had crawled across the floor, leaving behind a slimy slug-like trail of coagulated blood on the floor.

  "Cooooome with usssss Bryaaaan…" he moaned, his breath stinking like a crateful of hot, rotting fish.

  Dead people, coming to get me!

  Johnny couldn't scream, his lungs didn't have enough air in them. He did manage a weak, whistling sound, but it was drowned out by the dogged hissing and moaning of the three dead people climbing over him. It didn't seem to matter, though,
scream or no scream—Henry would not be able to save him now. Peering quickly and vainly over Judson's advancing body, Johnny could see Henry, on his knees and sinking fast, Mrs. D. on top of him, strangling him, slamming his head against the floor. Johnny could see the gun dangling loosely in his dying grasp, the pouch of nails

  (The fifth nail)

  still tethered to his twitching wrist.

  The dead, pallid hands clawed furiously at Johnny's clothing, his skin. He twisted and bucked, but it did him no good. His mind, flirting with insanity, clicked and snapped, and the grayness in his sights—that familiar grayness—returned full-force, like a sudden surge of water filling his head. His chest finally disengaged and he managed a scream, but no one alive or conscious was around to hear it.

  Mustering every last bit of strength, he rolled his fading sights once more toward Henry. The dying man lay motionless on the floor, gun dangling uselessly from his motionless trigger finger. The pouch of nails was now open, its contents spilled out onto the floor like a challenge of pick-up sticks.

  Mrs. D., in all her dead, twisted-headed glory, had abandoned Henry and was now crawling toward Johnny—toward all her family members—four of the six-inch nails gripped in her colorless fist. Her head dangled nearly upside down now, eyes triggering back and forth, teeth still chattering.

  Again Johnny tried to scream, but only a shrieky whistle came out. Blinded by fear, he made one last attempt to crawl away, but the hands of the dead had him in their remorseless grasp, their voices calling out to him as the gray semi-consciousness in his sights turned to black oblivion.

  Chapter 44

  September 9th, 2005

  4:47 AM

  In his swoon, Johnny saw himself as baby Bryan Conroy. He was floating somewhere in the upper rafters of the barn, holding his breath against a black plume of smoke rising from a small fire. The baby was lying on its back amid a painted circle bordered with hexagrams and other odd symbols, helplessly bawling just feet from the blazing flames. Johnny heard the sound of a cowbell tolling, and then a small golden light appeared. It started as a mere pinpoint but soon expanded into a wide, hazy sphere that hovered motionlessly over the baby. From out of the light surfaced a robe-clad figure, clutching a magician's wand with its uppermost end forged into a flattened ankh-shape. A small group of people emerged from the dark periphery of the circle, a woman, a teenaged girl, and a young boy, all of them also wearing black robes. They crowded around the crying baby boy, hunkered down and grabbed onto his tiny arms and legs. The baby, eyes closed and sprouting hysterical tears, kicked and flailed like an upturned turtle in an unproductive attempt to crawl away.