Dead Souls (28 page)

He walked across the matte wood floor into the living room, passed a small table topped with an empty vase, then moved down a short wallpapered hallway toward a set of stairs leading to the second floor.

He gripped the banister and peered up into the gloom. As he waited—for what, he couldn't guess—he struggled to make sense of the sudden events: of Elizabeth Conroy, the preacher's daughter, wandering aimlessly through the fields, physically damaged and distraught; of her little brother, gravely wounded and maybe even murdered; of the dog, the flies, and the screams. A cold sweat broke out on his brow, and he made every effort to convince himself that despite the mysterious truths these events concealed; the survival of Elizabeth Conroy, and his own self-preservation, was paramount.

He took one step up. The wood creaked beneath his feet.

From upstairs came moans of anguish, of pain.

Then, a cry of terror:

"Get…it…off!"

G
o to the house, go to the house
, the voice in Benjamin's head said, and he faithfully complied, speeding down Pine Oak road toward his home. He spun the pick-up into the driveway, a shower of gravel pitting against the dull red finish.

He pulled the truck forward and got out, waving away the dust invading his eyes. The evening air was chilling against the blood drying on his body. His wounds throbbed in syncopation with the pain in his head. Despite the heavy, glutinous pressure in his ears, he could still hear the distant fields of wheat and corn swaying richly in the distance, filling the air with static-like tones.

He limped into the shadows cast by his home. Here he could smell the death of one of his own. This sudden ability startled him, but he accepted it graciously, assuming it a gift from the spirit God. He gazed toward the basement well and saw his son Daniel, the young boy's life spilled out onto the earth in a dark, patchy river.

Alongside him was the damned-to-hell dog, right where he left it.

Benjamin stopped…then smiled, not at all surprised, and rather tickled, at what he saw.
Thank you, Osiris, for your assistance.

From the boy's body, Benjamin heard the voice of the spirit call out:
Commence with the ritual.

He nodded, paced up the steps and stared into the house through the open kitchen door. He could sense their presence,
smell
them as he did Daniel just moments earlier: his family, still alive and intently waiting, heated throes of preparation.
I shall carry out your destinies.

I…feel…pain…

He closed his eyes and embraced the agony piercing his brain and skull, the stab wounds on his arm, shoulder, and torso. In his shuttered sights, ghostly flashes of white light blazed—lights that flickered and revealed a dark, gray shape: the silhouette of the Lord Osiris. And as the shape moved into focus, Benjamin could make out the spirit's black robe of watered silk, his black Egyptian
nemyss
, and even the long drifts of dark hair pouring down over his shoulders.

Benjamin reached his bloody hand out toward the spirit.

The spirit reached a glowing hand out toward Benjamin.

The windows to the astral plane are opening!
He thought dreamily.
Osiris is here to assist me with the ritual.
 
           
 

Their fingertips touched.

Benjamin smiled, feeling the power of the spirit within his entire body, his entire soul. His breathing quickened. His skin rode with a gentle charge of electricity. The agony of his wounds converted into a massive surge of power, of euphoria.

Commence with the ritual
, the spirit whispered, and then like a fire doused with water, disappeared, leaving behind a shadow rife with rotting feathers and swirling black things.

Benjamin opened his burning eyes. He rubbed the tears away, then jerked his gaze around. Bursts of air leaped from his lungs. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end—that which wasn't matted down with sweat and blood. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear a bird caw.

He peered down at his dead son.

Commence with the ritual…

Nodding to himself, he trod down the porch steps, keeping his eyes pinned to the boy. He felt oddly calm and unafraid, sensitive to the evening breeze breathing cool air upon his heated body. Putting an ear up, he could hear the wind sighing through the tree boughs in the woods behind the barn.

Benjamin stepped to the boy. He noticed a halo of dead horseflies—hundreds of them—surrounding the boy and his dog.
A gift from the God
, he reasoned. He looked into Daniel's ashen face. The boy's lids were closed, his mouth a beaten frown frozen in time. Benjamin crouched down, touched Daniel's exposed scar. Mutilated like his own, it made Benjamin wonder how the boy had met his fate.
By what means did the Lord Osiris deliver your support, my son?

He prayed:
thank you Lord Osiris for—

There was a flicker of movement to his right.

Flinching, Benjamin bulleted his gaze toward…

…oh no, damn it to hell…

…the dog, its eyes open, wet, looking…

With the suddenness of a lightning strike, the dog's head snapped around, gummy eyes contemplating Benjamin with feral aggression. It latched its foamy jaws onto Benjamin's left wrist. He screamed and immediately started pummeling the dog's head with his right hand. The dog snarled, its trembling muzzle wrinkled back to expose huge shredding teeth. Benjamin's fingers closed on the matted fur around its neck. Staggering back, he dragged it away from the bloody circle, a wash of fresh blood leaching out from its coagulated wounds.

Dust rose up as the dog kicked its paws into the dirt. Seeing the dog making a desperate attempt to right itself, Benjamin saw no choice but to throw all his body weight on top of it.

He plunged down, yelling,
"
Ahhhrrrggg
!."
There was an immediate cracking sound—the sound of Pilate's backbone snapping in two under two hundred and twenty pounds of reckless minister. The gash in its side split open. Blood and dog-insides burst out like piñata treats.

Benjamin fell away from the dog, hunks of grass and soil sifting down the back of his pants. Lying on his back, he pried his wrist free from the dog's jaws. Pink blood and frothy saliva strung away like syrup. He heaved and gagged, spat on the ground, then rolled over onto his stomach and climbed to his feet. He stood teetering for a moment, examining his wrist. There was hardly any feeling in it, cold and numb. For a moment, all the pain and agony of his prior injuries shot back into him, alerting him to the fact that he couldn't waste anymore time here—the time to complete the ritual was now.

Shaking off the burst of pain,
thank you Osiris
, he stooped down, tucked his arms beneath the body of his dead son, and picked him up.

For a moment he stood there, gazing at the dead boy's face, feeling an unexpected, clear-headed flood of accomplishment: the moment he'd been waiting for all these years had finally arrived. The final stages of the ritual were about to be set into motion.
Osiris is with me. I touched him, and now he is watching me, guiding me, relieving me of my pain and soothing my injuries so that I may complete the ritual.

He carried Daniel across the backyard, tripping and staggering but finally making it to the barn. He hoisted the boy's body over his shoulder, then pulled open the clasp on the doors, and went inside.

He placed the boy down alongside the mess of ashes from the morning's ritual, then hurried to the extension ladder leaning against the loft. He climbed halfway up, reached to his left—fresh blood trickled from his injured shoulder—and pulled down a bale of hay from underneath the fifteen-foot platform. He then climbed back down and shifted aside two more bales, which furnished an access to the rear of the barn. He picked up Daniel's body, and moved into the concealed area under the loft.

He placed the boy's body down. Taking a deep breath, he gazed forward and admired his handiwork, visible beneath the dusky light seeping in through the small window: five wooden crucifixes erected in the hard soil, all of them different sizes, ranging from six feet tall, to one only three feet in height.

To his right he retrieved four nails from the pile of twenty-five on the ground.
 
Each one was six inches of honed iron, their points as sharp as razors.

Benjamin grabbed the boy's body by the arm, dragged him across the hard dirty floor to the second-smallest crucifix.

Here he placed the five nails down, at the foot of the cross. He recited a prayer of thanks to the lord Osiris.

Then bequeathed upon Daniel Conroy the gift of ancestral afterlife.

C
ertain that his assistance was immediately needed, Eddie raced up the steps to the second floor landing. Behind the closed door of the room closest to him, a baby cried. He moved to the door, halted, listened. Just a baby. Not the voice of the adult he'd heard pleading for help:
Get…it…off!

He took a deep breath, then backed away from the door. Slowly, he stepped down the corridor and turned the corner.

Here he saw Elizabeth.

She was standing in the shadowy hallway, pale and terrified, her right hand cupped over her mouth, eyes pouring with tears. She was staring unblinkingly into a room.

"Elizabeth?" Eddie called, his voice an injured whisper. "What's going on here?"

She shook her head in a quick panic, sick dread crossing her face. "No…no…no…" she sobbed, her gaze still fixed on whatever was in the room.

Eddie ran to her. He smelled something horrible. He grabbed her hand, it was rough, crusted with grime and blood. "What is it? What's going on?"

Finally she turned toward him, colorless and in shock, her pupils black, wide, and frozen. Her body trembled uncontrollably, as stiff as a board, the dirty robe pulled tightly around her waist. "We're…in…Hell…," she uttered, then gazed back into the room.

Eddie tore his gaze away from Elizabeth, turned, and looked into the room.

My God, we
are
in Hell.

It was a bathroom. There was a naked woman inside, sitting on the floor in a pool of diarrhea and vomit. To Eddie, she appeared to have shrunken, her face and body shriveled like an old skinless apple, the wrinkles in her skin long and cut deep. Her tone was a sickly yellow, with jagged splotches of tan. She trembled like a frightened rabbit.

The woman saw Eddie and pinned his gaze.
"Get it off of me!"
she screeched, baring yellow teeth like tusks.
"Get it off!"
Her eyes bulged and rolled insanely as she clawed at what appeared to be a large scar on her chest, the skin bloody and raw beneath the grope of her long, yellow fingernails.

Elizabeth had a scar just like that, in the same spot. I saw it when I first found her. I thought it was a birthmark.

Eddie shook his head, a sick fusion of bewilderment and disgust igniting his mind, all the intellect within feeling as if it were smoldering away to ashes. He tore his gaze away from the woman and looked at Elizabeth, who continued to stare in a catatonic stupor.

"Jesus…we've got to get out of here." He shuddered, terrified, adding to his current thoughts the image of the dead boy in the backyard, and
the
drove of horseflies blanketing him as if he'd already begun to rot.

An earsplitting cough came from the bathroom. Eddie shot his gaze back toward the woman. Her cheeks and jowls drew in.

"Oh…my…God…"
he uttered, drawing back.

The woman vomited something. Eddie's mind instantly rejected what his eyes perceived as a liver or a kidney or a spleen falling from her mouth to the wet floor.

Abruptly, from somewhere downstairs, a howling voice shot through the house like a burst of fire:
"Faith? Elizabeth? I've come to save your souls!"

B
enjamin stood in the kitchen. He was staring into the living room, an ear cocked to the ceiling. He sniffed the air. He could smell them. All of them. His daughter, his wife, his baby, and…something else,
someone
else here in the house. An interloper determined to take him down, crush his lifelong attempt to bring his family ancestral afterlife.
Nothing can stop me!
He massaged his forehead as the pain made its way back into his body. His wounds began to burn and throb again, and when he gazed down at his shirtless body, all he could see was blood, a suit of it coating him from his chest to his feet.

He moved to the kitchen counter. With a quick jerk, he removed the largest stainless steel knife from the butcher block alongside the sink. It made a
sleek!
sound that sent shivers down his spine.

He held the knife up and gazed at his beaten reflection in the twelve-inch blade.
I am all-empowering. I am working alongside the Gods. Nothing can stop me now!

Slowly, step by methodical step, he made his way into the living room.

"Faith?" he called, holding the knife out before him. "Elizabeth?"