Dead Souls

by J. Lincoln Fenn

  I’ve always been curious, so I approach one that’s open, pull out a small wafer marked with the cross, or an X, depending on how you hold it. It’s lighter than I thought it would be, like it could just float above my palm. I open my mouth, place it on my tongue. It tastes like paper, with the consistency of foam, and after a few strange moments it dissolves into a mush. I don’t know what else to do, so I swallow. For luck, I guess.

  Suddenly above me I hear the muffled sound of a whimper, followed by the scrape of something heavy being dragged across the floor. I get a rush of adrenaline—fight or flight, the oldest of instincts—but I’m so exhausted, so spent that I would rather know than wonder. I just want whatever is going to happen to happen.

  For what I know might be the last time, I close my eyes, imagine my corporeal body reappearing. There is that icy creep again, but I’m blessed with an easy transition. When I open my eyes, I look down to my arm where I’d brushed the dust away, and I see my flesh again. Bloody, bruising, but there.

  It’s the only real home we ever know, our bodies. It feels good to be home again. But it’s cold in the storeroom, and I start to shiver, so I grab an old priest’s robe that’s hanging from a hook on the back of the door, put it on. Too big, but it’s warmer.

  The lights flick off, then on again.

  I’ve made mistakes—I realize that now. My own paranoia that first took me out of my apartment in the rain, made me doubt Justin, talk to a stranger in a bar. Trusting Alejandro just because he knew more than I did. Fucking Scratch to buy more time. And before that, being too scared of what might happen to seriously think about a future with Justin, or a real life. Trying to stay small, invisible, safe, all that worrying and fretting for nothing. Lying to everyone, including myself, framing it all within the context of saving Justin, my supposed deep and abiding love for him, when really I was just lonely, and scared, and desperate to save my own skin.

  I wonder if I ever really left that purple room in Lowell, if the girl I used to be is still there, pressing her headphones hard against her ears. Choosing to stay compartmentalized because it’s safer than venturing outside, risking real love, and the pain that comes with it.

  At the back of the storeroom is a thick, plain wooden door. Beyond it is my reckoning, where the faceless Oz waits for me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THE DOOR CREAKS as it opens, and I step into a dim hallway, not sure what to expect. I find cement block walls painted yellow, the continuation of linoleum floors, and a couple of new but cheap light fixtures overhead. Empty. Quiet. It’s interesting, the back part of the church no one sees, plain and unadorned, like the wings of a stage. A quiet despair that reminds me of San Quentin.

  I head down the hall to a waiting staircase, dark railings worn smooth by many hands, rubber treads on the gray marble so no one slips.

  Another sound from above, the hard click of Alejandro’s flash. Some unintelligible murmuring.

  They’re here.

  It terrifies me completely, but there is only one way, and that is forward. I reach out for the railing, grab hold of it tightly. Anchor myself. Pull myself forward, take a step up. Then another. The sixth step nearly does me in because my ankle twists and I almost fall backward, but I manage to hold onto the rail until I can recover my balance. I look down and find there’s a gash just above my heel, blood smeared down all along my foot. Behind me, I see a trail of my bloody footprints leading to the storeroom.

  What a perfect, unassailable bit of evidence, linking me to whatever scene is playing out above. Part of Scratch’s plan for me, no doubt. But how did he know? What if I hadn’t followed him, what if I’d gone home, what if I’d let a stranger guide me to a bench until an ambulance came?

  Because I’m not a person, I’m a demographic, predictable. I predict behavior every day—my industry depends on it. And I’m in the presence of a master marketer, the source code of envy, desire, narcissism, all the ingredients for a successful campaign. We’re in the same line of work, after all, a thought that triggers a bitter smile. And if Saul is right, everything I do to escape just tightens the snare trap. Maybe the trick is to stop struggling. Unless that’s what my demographic would do too.

  I take the next step.

  There are portraits on the walls, photos housed in dusty black frames, all priests, apparently, who’ve been pastors at St. Patrick. Their names and the dates of their tenure are written in soft pencil on the yellowing mats. I try to focus on them instead of the muffled, whimpering sound that echoes down the stairwell. Take the next step. Father Ashton, 1919–1938, bald and old with thin, mean lips; Father Fitzpatrick, 1938–1941, young and slim, looking into the camera like a soldier with a thousand-year stare. Take the next step. Father O’Brian, 1941–1951, stout as Santa with a jolly smile to boot. The next frame holds a newspaper clipping with Father O’Brian bowling: “St. Patrick’s Charity Bowl a Smash Hit for Troubled Tykes.”

  I reach the landing. Wipe my mouth with my hand, which leaves a blood smear there too. Not that it matters now. A small window, round like a ship’s portal, lets in some light, but there’s no seeing through it, not with the dust and ash. I hear the keen of more ambulances, the whir of helicopter blades. A lament that feels like a homecoming of sorts.

  I grab the railing, take the next step.

  Father Graham, 1951–1958, skinny as a blade of grass with crooked teeth; Father Dempsey, 1958–1976, his round, bald head reflecting some of the light from an overhead fixture. He has the kindest eyes of the lot. The next frame contains an article: “City Mourns Pastor Murdered During Bank Robbery. Professor Held for Questioning.”

  I hear the loud click of Alejandro’s camera again, his brick shit house. More murmuring. My heart beats faster, but I take the next step, reach the final set of stairs.

  It’s the next portrait that causes me to stop, that takes my breath away. Father Torquemada, 1976–1980. An accompanying article: “New Parish Priest Named Pastor of St. Patrick.”

  The name. The name. It can’t possibly be a coincidence.

  When I look closer, I notice the photo is askew in the mat, probably rattled free with the explosion. I lift the frame from the wall—heavier than I expected, the glass is thick—and turn it over, leaving bloody fingerprints, but I don’t care. I pry up the small metal tabs, remove the back of the frame.

  I pick out the photo, slowly turn it over.

  And the face grinning back at me? Sans triste, with his curly locks clipped short?

  None other than Alejandro’s.

  IT’S NOT POSSIBLE.

  “It’s not possible,” I whisper out loud. As if these are the magic words that will somehow make it true, revert the evidence in my hands to something that makes more sense. Any kind of sense.

  A photo taken thirty-seven years ago, but Alejandro doesn’t look like he’s aged a day—a day—the same crow lines gathering near his eyes, the same patches of gray in his hair, he stares into the lens looking bemused. An expression I’ve seen flit across his face thousands of times at our dead-soul meetings when we’re swapping theories about the latest crimes, deep in discussion about double deals, when we all got a little too drunk, a little too loud, a little too despairing. With us, but never of us. We all clung to his calm, his acceptance, as proof that no matter how bad it got we could have the same presence of mind. That we wouldn’t go insane. The story about growing up in Rio de Janeiro, the man who came to take photos. Lies. All of it, lies. The long sessions at the New Parish, playing us like we were rubes, like he was the P. T. Barnum of the dead-soul circus and we were the dancing bears. Creeping into our interior minds, mucking about with the machinery, keeping us isolated, dependent on him. All those midnight calls when I thought he was easing my pain and instead he was surgically extracting useful information.

  And the name, the name—Father Alejandro Torquemada. A relation? The beneficiary of some kind of immortality
inheritance?

  But that’s impossible too, friars weren’t allowed to procreate—or they could, but not legitimately. No name to pass down. No heir.

  Unless.

  I start to breathe faster, a panicky roll in my chest.

  Unless he is the Torquemada.

  Alive and causing torment for more than five hundred years. Non, je ne regrette rien.

  Anger hits, or more like a murderous rage. It feels good, this rage, like power, clarity; it makes my fingers tremble but it drives all the pain away. I tear the photo into pieces, let them fall from my fingers. I might not be able to kill him, but I will make him suffer, and suffer greatly.

  The lights flicker again. I hear a gasp, like someone’s choking.

  It’s my rage that delivers me up the last few steps, to a door with a small sign nailed in the wood—SACRISTY—then through a carpeted room with high ceilings, bright white paint, past a long row of polished cabinets, to an arched door with another small sign—SANCTUARY—which is already open, just a bit. I step through it.

  SOME THINGS should never be seen. Some things should never be spoken of. What I see in the church is one of those things.

  IT TAKES A MOMENT for my eyes to adjust to the dim, solemn interior of St. Patrick, and when they do, I sincerely wish they hadn’t.

  The smell hits me first. Blood and piss and shit and vomit.

  Alejandro’s Linhof Technika is set up in the center of the aisle facing the altar, empty pews on either side heading all the way to the back. Gorgeous columns fronted by statues of nuns and saints, Gothic arches that direct the eyes upwards to Tiffany-­style stained glass windows. A marvel interrupted only by rough, metal scaffolding, drop cloths and sheets of plastic. I don’t see Alejandro, not at first. I don’t see Scratch.

  There are forms in the sanctuary, statues, although a part of me knows they’re not statues. I quickly compartmentalize that thought, banish it to the mausoleum where I keep all the real shadows.

  I wish I could compartmentalize smell too, because I now detect the faint, trippy notes of rotting flesh and something else I can’t identify. But it’s harder with smell. Smell knows how to bypass thought; it just jumps right to the limbic system, triggering emotion. A massive advantage the perfume industry has over hard goods.

  One of the forms moves. An arm, I think.

  I focus on the light. Diffused, it streams in through the stained glass, which has miraculously survived the shock wave, illuminating Saint Patrick in a pointy hat like the pope’s. He holds a staff and a cross, stands on the back of a snake, eyes solemn and sad. It’s beautiful, and unlike the New Parish, still holds the effect of worship. It would be a nice place to think. To reflect.

  Except. I hear something gurgle, a drowning sound.

  I take a step farther out into the sanctuary. Although it’s not really one anymore.

  Dark metal cables stretching out in all directions, like a vast, filigree spiderweb. Trapped in the web are things that look like people, cables attached to their bodies, holding them in place, anchoring them to the columns and interior scaffolding.

  There’s a click and a sudden blast of light from Alejandro’s camera that blinds me, and I’m left with floating red orbs and a memory that wants to surface. Something about that night in Make Westing.

  “Oh, Fiona.” Alejandro’s voice rings out in the empty cavern, tinged with his characteristic warmth. “You came.” When I turn and see him sitting in one of the pews, hands folded calmly on his lap, I wish I had followed his advice and left it all alone. “Although I should not be so pleased, should I? You just photobombed my picture. And it has taken me so long to compose. Although it is still not complete. Not yet.”

  It’s just that I didn’t know him at all. “Should I call you Torquemada?”

  He claps his hands. “You see? I told him you were a clever girl.”

  Oh yes, I’m a very, very clever girl. And while I don’t know quite how I’m going to destroy him, the first rule of marketing is desire. After five hundred years I’m sure Alejandro—­Torquemada—desires something. For now, I have to play along until I see it. So I force my wooden legs to move although they don’t want to, they’d prefer to crumple beneath me. Take another step into the sanctuary. Note the poinsettias arranged in front of the altar, and a cradle set on the floor.

  Something wet and warm drips onto the tip of my nose. I look up and see feet dangling above me. A body held aloft, hands forced in prayer, ankles bound with barbed wire. But it’s not the barbed wire that’s causing blood to drip. It’s because the body has been flayed. Stripped of all flesh, except the scalp.

  Renata’s wild red hair catches some of the light.

  “Come.” Alejandro holds his hand out, beckons me forward. “Come and see, Fiona Dunn.”

  And I do. Oh Jesus fucking Christ, I do.

  HOW TO DESCRIBE IT?

  A few years back, there had been a fierce discussion among the creative team at Sumpter when an exhibition rolled through town, the plasticized corpses of human beings and animals flayed alive. Sometimes they were cut in sections; sometimes they were holding their skin, or organs; sometimes they were sliced through so you could see the layers of flesh, fat, and muscle, like the rings of a tree trunk. All of them were posed artistically, whether they were staring at themselves in a mirror, cradling a baby, brushing their nonexistent hair, or riding a flayed horse into war. The eyes, and exposed orbital sockets, gave them all a fiercely determined gaze, and without their skin, they became strangely anonymous, interchangeable except for gender.

  Was this art? Was it an abomination? Temperatures ran hot around the water cooler. But to me, without their skin, the bodies just seemed like the medical plastic models used in high schools—remove the exterior rib cage to reveal the plastic lungs, which could then be removed to reveal the plastic heart. I even pitched a campaign that would subtly point to the exhibit, with nude models instead of flayed ones, private parts covered by Sumpter packs, but the team thought we’d risk our staid market share in the Deep South, our bread and butter.

  It’s different, witnessing that degree of brutality and violence leveled at people you know, even if you don’t know them well, even if minutes before you would have sold each and every one out to score your double deal.

  Would you have done this to them though?

  The perceptive part of you answers Maybe. The honest part of you answers Yes.

  Somehow I find my voice. “Is this your favor?” I ask Alejandro. “Is this what Scratch called in?”

  But Alejandro doesn’t answer.

  From somewhere at the back of the church though, Scratch does.

  “I would say that what we have here is more of a collaborative effort. Including you, Fiona. You might not realize it, but you’ve been quite the inspiration.”

  I catch a movement out of the corner of my eye. Renata’s head shifts slightly to the left.

  Jesus Christ. They’re still alive.

  RENATA’S HEART. It’s beating.

  I stand in the aisle of the church, next to Alejandro’s camera. I try not to look, to see her pulpy red heart clenching and unclenching, quivering in the cold, still air. Her flaccid lungs that fill, go limp like a deflated balloon, then fill with air again.

  I try not to look but that’s not possible, it’s mesmerizing and horrifying in equal measure. All the compartments of my compartmentalized mind break apart, shatter in a hundred thousand pieces, and I see it, I see it all.

  Wings. Renata has wings, a Christmas angel. They radiate out from her back, her skin draped over a lightweight frame, the structure a dark shadow visible through her translucent flesh, which glows from the light behind her. She hangs from metal cables that pierce her wrists, a puppet’s strings. How is she still alive? Her eyes twitch, land on me. Her eyes must feel so dry, naked, without lids to blink. Her jaw drops like she’s abo
ut to speak, but she has no lips anymore, and no tongue. I see these realizations strike her and then watch as her heart starts to beat faster, panicking. Bloody saliva drips down her chin and onto the floor.

  A Christmas angel for a Christmas nativity scene.

  Beneath her, a straw-tufted wooden box, a manger. To the right stands Mike as Joseph, posed in supplication, the eternal, holy cuckold. His cables are connected to Renata’s, so when he drops his arm slightly—ever so slightly—it pulls on the hooks in Renata’s wrists, causing her to shudder.

  Behind the holy family stand two shepherds, identical height, curved staffs nailed into their hands, Jeb and Dan. Jeb’s eyes plead with me, for death probably. Death would be like winning the lottery at the moment. Clarissa, another angel, hangs just above the altar, her eyes and head forcibly raised up toward heaven by a metal hook in her forehead, her skin draped over another winglike structure. Her toes barely touch the altar’s surface, caught in the moment before her ascension.

  Ellen as Mary kneels next to the cradle, her flayed hands sewn together in prayer. Her body, with a drooping, postpartum belly, is also held upright with a series of cables and hooks. At least two in the muscles behind her shoulders.

  Where’s her baby? She was pregnant the last time I saw her . . . unless . . .

  I take a step forward to see what’s in the manger. What I find almost makes my knees give out. Oh God . . . Oh dear God . . .