Soul Hostage

by Jeffrey Littorno

  “It’s okay, Joey. A certain amount of skepticism is healthy.” Stoaffer’s words appeared to please Joey. “Considering your name, Thomas, I would expect nothing less.” He smiled at my blank expression. “You do know the story of your biblical namesake, don’t you?”

  I flashed an exaggerated smile and answered, “I’m not sure that I do. Why don’t you tell us a bedtime story, Uncle Lou?”

  Joey shot me another stern expression. But after a moment, Stoaffer sort of giggled, and Joey joined in the laughter. “Well, it’s a story about having faith. Thomas was one of Jesus’ disciples. By all accounts, the most skeptical of the bunch. At the Last Supper, when Jesus told those in attendance he would go to prepare a place for them in the heaven and they should follow, Thomas questioned how anyone could follow him without knowing where he was going or the way to get there.” Joey snickered, and Louis gave him a warm smile. “After Jesus got crucified, Thomas became separated from his fellow disciples. He wasn’t around when Jesus came back to life and appeared to the others. When others told him about the revival of the messiah, Thomas said he would not believe it until he saw the nail marks in his hands and touched the wounds. A bit of well-deserved skepticism it seems to me. Anyway, a few days later during dinner, Jesus suddenly appeared among the group. Naturally, Thomas was shocked and probably more than a bit frightened. Jesus stood before Thomas and opened his robes-“

  “Jesus was a flasher!” Joey cried out with boyish delight and snickered playfully. “Didja know Jesus was a flasher, Thomas?”

  I shook my head and started to respond but stopped when Stoaffer said, “You certainly bring a new view to an old story, Joey. But I was going to say, Jesus opened his robes to reveal his wounds. He told Thomas to touch his wounds and to stop doubting and believe. So this is how we came up with the expression ‘doubting Thomas’.”

  The room was quiet for a second as Stoaffer’s words trailed off. Finally, I remarked, “Well, thanks for sharing, Louis. Now, we should get some sleep, so we’re ready for a day of staking out your old house.”

  Both Joey and Louis showed clear happiness at hearing my suggestion and took it as a sign of enthusiasm for the plan. We headed down the dark hallway to the room where the mattresses waited. I plopped down on the mattress where I had taken my nap and fell asleep in an instant.

  In my dream, the words of Stoaffer’s story echoed through darkness. But the words came from another voice. I did not recognize the voice at first. Then it came to me. The screechy voice belonged to the skinny little woman from Sunday school at Tabernacle Baptist Church. With my recognition, the darkness lit up and revealed the cramped room with the brightly-colorful Biblical scenes on the walls.

  “…Thomas would not believe until he touched the wounds for himself. He did not have the faith necessary to trust the word of Jesus without proof. He was a doubter.” The venom of her words seemed directed at me and was punctuated by spittle flying from her mouth. “Thomas needed more proof! The word of Jesus, the son of God, the one true savior whose pure love rescues us from the eternal flames of damnation! His promise did not satisfy doubting Thomas!”

  Her words seemed to hang in the air even as a chorus of voices joined them. The voices came from the children chanting as if repeating a nursery rhyme. “Thomas is a doubter! Doubting Thomas! Doubting Thomas! Thomas is a doubter! Doubting Thomas! Doubting Thomas! Thomas is a doubter! Doubting Thomas! Doubting Thomas!” The chanting continued and became more and more like jeers and taunts. In the middle of all these sounds, I found myself surrounded by a spinning ring of the children I vaguely remembered from my Sunday school class. I caught sight of a bucktooth girl with long brown hair braided into pigtails tied at the ends with dark red ribbons. Next to her was a tall thin boy in a dark blue with matching slacks and a dark red bow tie at the neck of his white shirt. Also there was a chubby redheaded little girl with a swarm of freckles dotting her pale cheeks wearing a loose, drab black dress, which set off her fiery red hair. “Thomas is a doubter! Doubting Thomas! Doubting Thomas!”

  The chanting bounced around my head until the sound seemed to be coming from everywhere. I gawked at the spinning faces trying to find a way to stop them. I pleaded. I cried. Finally, I screamed, and the noise freed me from the room at the back of the Tabernacle Baptist Church.

  I did not recognize my surroundings as the bedroom in the abandoned house in San Pietro straightaway. The gray light of early morning against the blinds gave the room a faint, hazy glow. I lay there staring up at the ceiling still shaking from the images of the dream. The room was silent, and I thought I was alone. Some slight movement in the far corner caught my eye, and I suddenly saw Stoaffer leaning against the wall watching me. But it was not the casual stance of someone just hanging out until someone woke up. He was clearly anxious. I recalled the impression I had of him back in the grocery store. Even though that day felt like it was years ago, I remembered first seeing the little old man trembling like some speed freak. Now the image returned as I saw Stoaffer practically vibrating and fidgeting with his hands.

  As soon as he saw my open eyes, Stoaffer smiled wide and bright. “Good morning! We’ve been waiting for you to wake up.” If the whole thing had not been so odd, I would have laughed out loud as he bounced around the room like some hyperactive rabbit. Instead, I watched silently. Louis came to rest for a moment right in front of me before spinning and bouncing out of the room. I stayed still for a few seconds trying to make sure I was awake before rolling off the mattress and getting to my feet. I listened to the laughter and smell of cooking food coming from the kitchen. It seemed inviting, and I headed toward the kitchen like a moth to a light.

  Inside the kitchen, Louis and Joey stood in front of the large white stove. A lively discussion was taking place about whatever was in the frying pan in front of them. The bright mood lit up the kitchen and brought a smile to my face as I walked up next to them.

  “What’s cookin’?” I asked.

  My question produced a loud outburst of howling laughter which echoed through the kitchen. Although the laughs held no genuine happiness, I felt irritated at being left out of the joke. So I pushed closer to get a better view of the pan on the stove. I gasped for air and my stomach jumped into my throat when I saw what the pan held.

  In the middle of the large frying pan with sizzling oil all around was a bloody newborn baby. The baby began to shriek and squirm around.

  “Well, look at that! Her mother had it right!” Stoaffer exclaimed with a chuckle and another wave of laughter boomed through the kitchen.

  I spun away from the horrible sight of the frying pan. As I turned, I faced the pale form of the grocery store clerk. She stood barefoot and draped in a pale green hospital gown. Her long, straight black hair hung limply on either side of her deathly-white face. Louis and Joey blocked her vision of the stove, but I realized she would soon discover her baby in the frying pan. Preventing her from reaching the stove became the most important thing in my life. I quickly moved to block the path. I stood a few feet away as her eyes locked with mine. We stood frozen like this for a short time. Then her eyes trailed downward. My eyes followed hers until they stopped at her thighs just below the hospital gown. After a second, a thin red trail began to snake its way down her leg to her feet and on to the ivory-colored tile floor. As I watched, the thin red trail widened until it became a gushing stream of blood. My eyes shot up from the blood on the floor to the young woman’s face. The beaming smile I found made the horror of the scene ten times greater. A long high-pitched shriek broke out from my throat.

  I needed a minute to recognize my surroundings as the bedroom in the abandoned house in San Pietro. The gray light of early morning against the blinds gave the room a faint, hazy glow. Still shaking from the traces of the dream, I stared up at the ceiling. With some difficulty, I managed to push the images and thoughts far from the center of my mind concentrated on the present situation.

  I thought of all the things which had happened over the
last few days to lead me to this place. In the incredibly short time since meeting Louis Stoaffer, my life had been thrown into a swirling pool of confusion where every-thing felt unreal. But that was not really the weirdest part. Even with all the strangeness that old man had brought with him, I could not ignore the feeling that I had met him somewhere before. In some crazy way, it felt like he had always been a part of my life. I let that disturbing notion sink in for a minute. Suddenly, another idea forced a path through the swamp of thoughts seeping around my head.

  I should simply get up, walk to the car, and drive away from all of this. Leave Louis Stoaffer and Joey far behind. The pocket of my pants held the car keys. A sense of relief and freedom swept over me. I pictured myself smiling as I gazed into the rearview mirror at the stunned faces of Joey and Louis as they came out of the house to see the Chevy pulling away. Driving away would be so easy. After all, nothing was forcing me to go along with Stoaffer’s scheme.

  All my life I had been going along with schemes. Trouble was all it had gotten me. Maybe it was time for me to stop going along and set off on my own. Forget the promise of money. Some things were worth more than money. This last crazy thought nearly made me laugh out loud.

  Until that point, I had believed I was alone. A quiet chuckle drew my attention to the far corner of the room and Stoaffer leaning against the wall watching me. He lifted his hand to show something hanging from his middle finger. He shook his hand and I heard the metallic jingling.

  “Really, Thomas, you should be more careful. These must have fallen out of your pocket,” he said as he tossed the keys to me on the bed. “Ready for some breakfast?” He turned and left the room before I had a chance to say anything.

  I made a determined effort to fend off any thoughts about how the car keys had made their way into Stoaffer’s hand or why he had chosen that particular moment to give them back to me. Fortunately, I had plenty of practice in keeping such concerns from entering my brain and changing my behavior. I simply rolled off the mattress and got to my feet. As I headed down the hallway toward the kitchen, I could hear laughter and smell food cooking. The light tingle of déjà vu fluttered near the back of my neck.

  To my relief, Stoaffer and Joey were not huddled in front of the stove when I entered the kitchen. Instead, Louis stood at the counter to the left of the stove stirring something inside a mug and Joey put plates on the table.

  He turned toward me, smiled, and said, “Well, good mornin’. I thought maybe I was gonna be makin’ you lunch insteada breakfast.” He glanced toward the digital clock on the stove. The clock read 10:48. I was surprised by how late I had slept, but the thing which surprised me more was the digital clock on the stove.

  Before I was even able to form the thought into a question, Stoaffer offered, “I suddenly recalled hearing somewhere that sometimes the power company simply throws the main breaker switch rather than shutting off power to an abandoned house. I found the breaker box in the garage and presto! We have electricity!” He beamed with pride.

  “Helluva job! Right, Thomas?” Joey looked at me signaling that I should praise Stoaffer.

  “Helluva job, Louis.” I parroted sure my lack of sincerity would be obvious. Instead, both Joey and Louis gazed at me with expressions of overwhelming gratitude. “So now that we have praised the miraculous feats of Louis Stoaffer, can we decide what we’re gonna do today?”

  “Well, I believe the best way to get started is to visit my previous residence and see what we find there.” Joey dropped the plate on the table harder than was necessary, and Stoaffer looked over at him. “Of course, before we do that, we have to enjoy this wonderful-looking breakfast.”

  That is exactly what we did.

  Chapter 11

  Joey’s breakfast tasted better than any I could remember. The enjoyment of the breakfast translated to relaxed, friendly conversation around the table. We joked and teased like old friends. After eating, we worked together to clear the table, rinse dishes, and load the dishwasher. If I had given some thought to the matter, our attention to house-keeping would have seemed a bit odd given the fact we were trespassing. At the time, everything seemed completely natural. Anyway, I felt truly refreshed after having a terrific breakfast and a hot shower.

  In my new state, the present situation appeared to offer potential. True, we did not have every detail down, but sometimes minute details can actually get in the way of getting thing done. Anyway, there was no sense in worrying about things too much before we knew what we were going to find at Stoaffer’s old house. The whole thing could be seen as kind of an adventure. Besides when you cut to the bottom of it all, Joey and I had no better opportunity available.

  We piled into the car still enjoying the general sense of optimism. Even the strange emptiness of the street on an early Thursday afternoon did not dampen the mood. Adding to the enjoyment, Louis played tour guide as we made our way to his old house.

  “Over here on the right is where the first movie to be made in California was filmed. The film was just a fifteen minute scene of a bank robbery being foiled by a lone cowboy, but the work started talk about San Pietro becoming a center of movie making. The first movie studios even built facilities here. However, fate did not smile on San Pietro, and the dream of being the movie capitol passed the city by and moved up the road about ninety minutes to Hollywood.”

  “You see that old apartment building next to the grocery store? That is where my wife and I lived right after we got married. Not much to look at now, but we were happiest living there.”

  “Just up the street here is the Plaza del Pietro, where in 1768 Father Junipero Serra established Mission San Pietro. One of the earliest missions built in California for the purpose of converting the child-like local Indians to the ways of Christianity. Unfortunately for the monks, the local Indians were not quite as docile as they appeared. The monks had a habit of bestowing very special attention on some of the Indian women as well as a few young boys. This did not go unnoticed by the men of the tribe. They also noticed the monks rarely participated in the heavy tasks or tedious chores involved in building and running the mission. Instead, at times of such labor, the monks suddenly became preoccupied with prayer or took a supervisory role. Eventually, the Indians had enough and locked all of the monks in the chapel of the mission and burned the place to the ground.”

  “What a cheerful story, Louis,” I commented. “Thanks for sharing!”

  “Just trying to give you some local color,” he replied and smiled into the rearview mirror. “Oh, we have arrived.” Stoaffer nodded toward a large Spanish-style house on our left, and I started to pull over to the right curb.

  “We oughta drive down the street a little, donchya think?” Joey said.

  I smiled at my own foolishness and drove down a few houses. We all twisted around in the car to look at Stoaffer’s old house.

  The place looked well kept. The lawn had been mowed recently, and the rose bushes under the front windows were trimmed. The multi-color roses all looked freshly bloomed, and the ground beneath the bushes was covered by fresh, dark, moist peat moss. I was wondering how they kept the old leaves and dried flower pedals from falling into the peat moss. Then the idea struck me that the plants sort of looked like they were artificial. My reflections on landscaping were interrupted by Joey’s voice.

  “Okay, so this is step one o’ the master plan, right?” His voice carried more than a hint of ridicule. “Wake me when it’s over.” Joey made a show of interlocking his fingers, putting his hands behind his head, and leaning back against the seat as if preparing to sleep.

  As if on cue, the door of the house opened. No one appeared in the doorway. Instead the space stayed vacant and dark like some yawning mouth. When it seemed the mouth would remain empty, a figure emerged from the darkness of the doorway.

  This was definitely not what I had expected Theresa to look like. Louis had told us enough about her and how she set him up for the murder of his friend that my mind pictured a mid
dle-aged woman with heavy makeup and a bit of a hard edge. The woman in front of the house in San Pietro looked to be about twenty-four years old if even that. I saw no hint of a hard edge. Even from several hundred feet away in the driver’s seat of a 1957 Chevy, I found myself captured by the fresh, innocent or perhaps naïve glow of an optimistic and attractive young woman with her strawberry blond hair pulled back into a long ponytail. She had a small red book bag hooked over her shoulder. Her gray sweatshirt and blue jeans completed the distinct look of a student. It occurred to me that maybe this young woman was someone other than Theresa, but I was unable to take my eyes off of her long enough to ask Stoaffer.

  The young woman stepped out onto the porch and turned to lock the door. When she turned back around, I would have sworn she looked right at us. Her light blue eyes seemed to focus directly on me as she smiled brightly. I reflexively scrunched down in my seat to hide from view. I noticed my companions did the same. I peered through the bottom of the car door window to see Theresa standing in the driveway as the garage door slowly rose with a hum.

  The dark red little truck and a baby blue newer model Ford Mustang had room to spare in the huge garage. The blonde-haired woman with light blue eyes got into the Mustang, started it up, and was out of the driveway and down the street before the garage door was halfway closed.

  Everything in the car stayed silent for a few seconds, and then Joey let out a whoop. “Shit, Lou! You ol’ devil! You never said you robbed the cradle! Yer ex is friggin’ hot!”

  Stoaffer appeared distracted as he looked at Joey and flashed a smile that looked less than genuine. “Yes, she is, isn’t she?” He eyes stared off into the distance as if remembering something.